Thirty-Three Teeth by Colin Cotterill Read Free Book Online Page A

now.”
    “Oh? Okay. What do you want?”
    “I need an animal expert.”
    “Any particular breed?”
    “Bears.”
    “You never fail to astound me, Dr. S. I’ll ask around.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Oh. And I think I’ve got something on your mysterious chest at the DSIC.”
    “Excellent. You can tell me all about it at lunch.”
    Siri put down the receiver, thanked the hospital clerk, and walked back to the morgue. But even though there was a lot to be learned from Civilai that day, Siri wasn’t going to be able to make lunch. In fact, although he didn’t know it yet, he wasn’t even going to be in Vientiane.
    The sand had been packed quite tightly at the construction site, but the cement Siri mixed the night before had still spread a good deal. He and Dtui sat at his desk comparing the concrete cast with the agar scratch marks. They measured the separation between the claws. It wasn’t identical but the difference wasn’t great enough to preclude them coming from the same creature.
    “Dtui, if it was the bear that ripped Auntie See apart, that same bear came to visit me on Tuesday.”
    “Wow. You saw it?”
    “I thought it was a dream. But dreams don’t pull down fences and leave footprints.”
    “How come you’re still alive?”
    “That’s a good question.”
    “And one you’ll have to wait for an answer to.”
    Siri and Dtui both looked up to see where the whiny voice had come from. In the doorway, a thin, well-dressed man in his early thirties stood with his hands on his hips. The hot weather had inflamed his acne to the point that it seemed to glow on his cheeks.
    “Goodness, Judge Haeng. What an honor.” Siri smiled.
    Dtui made the man a polite nop with her palms tightly together. “Good health, Comrade Judge.”
    The man responded to neither the nop nor the words. He sat at Dtui’s desk and fanned himself in exaggerated fashion with the papers he carried.
    “Hot, isn’t it?” she tried again, but he ignored her.
    “If I could trust any of the fools in my office not to run off and go shopping before they brought you a message, I wouldn’t have to be here myself. But this is an emergency, and it has been entrusted to me.”
    Mr. Geung had seen the judge arrive and had gone for a glass of cool ice water from the canteen. It was one of the services he happily provided. When he got back, he put it down in front of the ruddy man and looked at his blemished skin as he said “Good h…h…health, Com…Comr…”
    “Heaven help us. Does he ever get to the end of a sentence?”
    “He’s overwhelmed by your omnipotence.” Siri smiled again.
    “I’m not about to consume any liquids in this place, am I? Tell him to take this away.”
    “He speaks Lao quite well.”
    “I’m sure he does, eventually. Take it away.” He despaired of the fact that Geung ignored him and stood his ground, just as he despaired because his department was hiring a mongoloid when they had the budget for a “normal” person. But Siri was unshakable. He said the day Geung left, he’d follow.
    “What’s so urgent?”
    “It’s a delicate matter. You two go and find something to do.”
    Siri smiled at Dtui. “I think he means you two.”
    She stood very slowly, walked across the room, took Geung’s hand in an extravagant manner, and led him to the door. “Come, Mr. Geung. Let’s go and get started on those excreta samples before they go lumpy.”
    She looked back and caught Haeng squirming. When they’d gone, the judge leaned forward and said “Siri, there’s a military helicopter waiting for you at Wattay.”
    “Why?”
    Before answering, Haeng took a deep breath. He’d run headfirst into Siri’s stubborn streak on a few occasions. “You’re going to Luang Prabang.”
    Siri seemed to consider this for a moment. “When?”
    “Right now. My car’s outside.”
    “But—”
    “This is a national security matter. It’s top secret. That’s why I didn’t risk using the telephone.”
    “What’s it