The Merry Misogynist Read Online Free PDF Page B

question every closet member of the sûreté de police yearns to hear. Although brilliant in his own way, Phosy never pretended to be anything he wasn’t. He knew his limitations.
    “You already have a picture of the girl?” Siri asked, although he knew Phosy’s subordinate, Sergeant Sihot, had arrived that morning to meet the body and taken a Polaroid instant photograph. The camera was one of the police department’s latest crime-fighting tools.
    “Sihot went back with the cadre to Vang Vieng. He’ll show the picture around and try to get an identification.”
    “Good.” Siri nodded. “Then I suggest we look at the pestle.”
    Rinsed clean now and tagged, the object sat innocently on a shelf above the dissection table.
    “It’s not your common or garden variety,” Phosy noticed, weighing the heavy, blunt tool in his hand. “Unusual size; somewhere between a cooking implement and a medicine crusher.”
    “Black stone. Looks expensive,” Siri agreed.
    “I’ll have someone show it around, too, and see what we can come up with. Does the body tell us anything?”
    Siri walked to the corpse and pulled back the plastic wrapping. He held up the callused fingers and indicated the sunburned ankles. He and Phosy ping-ponged ideas back and forth for almost an hour but still they were unable to come up with anything plausible. The state of the corpse left them both baffled.
    ∗
    Dtui usually put her foot firmly down on any plans her husband might have to work on the weekend, but this case had become personal to her. She’d told him to do everything he could to avenge the girl’s death. He would leave that afternoon for Vang Vieng to join Sergeant Sihot. Siri vowed to invest more thought into the condition of his Madonna while the policemen were away.
     
    To the great displeasure of many, Madame Daeng’s noodle shop was not open on Sunday. This was Siri’s day off and she insisted on spending every one of its twenty-four hours with her husband. He had no objection whatsoever. They both loved to walk but Daeng’s arthritis limited their treks. Invariably, they would head off on Siri’s motorcycle to beauty spots that in another era would have been crowded with happy people. These days they often enjoyed their picnics alone.
    But Siri had designated this Sunday a Vientiane day. The capital was somewhat ghostly when they set out at nine. Stores were shuttered, many for so long the locks had rusted to the hasps. Houses were in permanent disrepair. The dusts of March had settled on the city like a grey-brown layer of snow. Roads, even those with bitumen surfaces, looked like dirt tracks. There were no obvious colours anywhere, only shades. Even the gaudiest billboards had been reduced to a fuzzy pastel. The most common sounds they heard as they cruised the streets were the sweeping of front steps and the dry-clearing of throats.
    Theirs was not an aimless tour of the city. Siri and Daeng passed all the spots at which Crazy Rajid had been a feature: the Nam Poo Fountain, the Black Stupa, the three old French villas on Samsenthai, and the bank of the river. As far as they knew, that was the young man’s territory. Siri stopped at every open door he passed and chatted with neighbours. Yes, they knew Crazy Rajid, although not by name. Siri began to wonder whether he and Civilai might have christened the poor man themselves. Some had given the vagrant food; most had offered him water at one time or another. Some had tried to engage him in conversation, but it appeared that nobody other than Siri, Civilai, and Inspector Phosy had ever heard him speak, and even to them he had uttered only a word or two.
    Everyone considered him a feature of their landscape and all agreed, “Now you come to mention it, I haven’t seen him for a while.” The last time anyone recalled a sighting had been the previous Thursday. That meant the local crazy man had been absent for ten days. Details were sketchy at best. Nobody makes a note of