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technical advisors who’d come to install the lights insisted that it was vital in a hospital to have a minimum of 73 RNO or BZF, or some such twaddle, of visibility. He had no idea what that meant apart from the fact that if the Great Wall of China was visible from space in daylight, the Mahosot morgue would be a glittering beacon at night, visible from even the most distant solar system. He wore his old sunglasses to reduce the glare and decided that, on Monday, he’d borrow the hospital stepladder and remove two of the parallel tubes before everyone received third-degree burns.
    Fortunately, he wasn’t called upon that often to work at night. Even for the living, nothing was that urgent in Vientiane. The dead could always keep for another day. But this had been an exceptional day, and an exceptional case. The poor lady who lay on her side on the cutting table in front of him had been the centre of a political storm for much of the afternoon and evening. Siri had, of course, called Inspector Phosy from the nearest telephone he could find in K6. The inspector was the man responsible for all police matters concerning government officials. Phosy and two of his colleagues had jumped into the department jeep and sped to the scene of the crime.
    There followed an unpleasant stand-off during which both the Vietnamese security personnel and the Lao National Police Force had stood toe to toe insisting that they had jurisdiction over the crime. Until it was sorted out, Sri wasn’t allowed to remove the body to the morgue and the victim voiced her discontent by smelling violently. The Vietnamese called in reinforcements from their embassy. The police called in the military. It was starting to look as though 6 th Street would be the scene of a new Indochinese war were it not for one simple fact. The movie ended and the polit-buro members, strolling off their stiff legs, came upon the stand-off.
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” they said. “Of course this is a Lao matter. Enough of this nonsense.”
    Broken Vietnamese faces notwithstanding, the matter was finally resolved. On their way back in the jeep, police inspector Phosy had appeared to be as annoyed with Siri as he was with the entire nation of Vietnam.
    “Did I do something wrong?” Siri had asked.
    “No.”
    “Come on, Phosy. Something’s eating you with a fork.”
    “You didn’t get my message last night?”
    “The ‘need to see you urgently’ message?”
    “Yes, that one.”
    “Not until early this morning. Madame Daeng saw it as an amber rather than a red alert.”
    “Oh, did she? And this morning?”
    “I had a swimming lesson.”
    “Don’t make fun of me.”
    “I’m serious. The Seniors’ Union has a class on Saturday mornings. They cleaned all the gunge out of the Ian Xang pool.”
    “You’re learning to swim, at your age?”
    “I’ve found the god of drowning is particularly insensitive to the age of his victims. I’ve had one or two narrow escapes in water lately. I thought it was time to master the element. And if I suddenly have the urge to swim across to Thailand, I could – ”
    “And your swimming lesson took precedence over my request to see you?”
    “Phosy, you have to admit you’ve become a little oversensitive since you became a father. You’ve had me drop everything and rush to the police dormitory for…for what? A little wind? A touch of diarrhoea? A small – ”
    “You can never be too careful.”
    “Your wife’s a nurse. And she’s a very competent one. She can handle all these things.”
    “Dr Siri, Dtui comes from a bloodline of disaster. Her mother lost ten children during or shortly after birth. Our country has a horrible record. Twenty per cent of kids don’t make it to their first birthdays. Forty per cent don’t reach eleven.”
    “And I guarantee not one of them had a mother who was a qualified nurse and a father who could afford to put regular meals on the table. The only danger little Malee has, as far