Love Songs From a Shallow Grave by Colin Cotterill

Author:Colin Cotterill [Cotterill, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9781455119240
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2010-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

Madame Daeng’s noodle shop was fast becoming the surrogate after-hours police briefing room. While he waited for the actual police officers to arrive, Civilai stood beneath the altar Daeng had lovingly built and decorated. It was a two-story affair attached to the main pillar of the building. It was traditional to have a spirit house outside as a boarding inn for the displaced spirits of the land, but the authorities were finicky about residents displaying their animism blatantly in public. So Daeng had flown in the face of tradition and brought the land spirits inside. She had even dared to house them under the same roof as the ancestral shrine.

The ancestors lived upstairs in a one-foot-square box behind a barricade of Buddhas, incense sticks, wooden elephants, Chinese and Indian deities, a half bottle of red Fanta, and Sainte-Barbe, the patron saint of firemen whom Daeng had rescued from the bin of one of the French oppressors back in the fifties. Downstairs lived the rehoused phaphoom. These spirits of the earth were unashamed capitalists. Like the poor Lao who lusted after the consumer items they heard about on Thai radio, the phaphoom were far more cooperative when bribed. A free lodging wasn’t always enough. Madame Daeng’s spirit house was straight from the high-society catalogs. Inside was all the doll furniture she could cram into the space: a miniature refrigerator, TV, bathtub, wardrobe, and shoe rack. Parked on a ledge in front were a toy school bus and a Mercedes-Benz with diplomatic plates just in case they felt like an excursion.

Civilai chuckled to himself. Daeng was married to a man who lived among spirits. Surely, with such personal contact, she could dispense with all this mumbo jumbo. Why would a woman so worldly, so astute, put so much effort into superstition? He was reaching for the patron saint of French firemen when Mme Daeng came down the stairs.

“Don’t you dare,” she called.

“I was just …”

“Then don’t. A woman’s spirit house is her soul. Leave it alone.”

“You’re an enigma, Madame Daeng.”

“And plan to stay that way.”

A lilac Vespa stopped directly beneath the shop awning and a rain-sodden Phosy climbed from its seat.

“Will it ever stop raining?” he asked nobody in particular. He kicked off his sandals and shook himself like a dog before entering. He carried a wad of papers wrapped in several plastic bags. They were obviously more important than he was as he wore only shorts and a T-shirt. At the sound of the bike, Siri had shelved his book and come downstairs.

“No Sihot?” he asked.

“Family crisis,” Phosy told him. “Seems the more relatives you have to live with, the more crises you have to endure.”

“And where’s Dtui?” Daeng asked.

Phosy hesitated.

“She’s not here? I came straight from the ministry,” he said. “Haven’t had a chance to go home.”

“You were at the ministry dressed like that?” she asked.

“Er, no. I have … I have spare clothes at the office.”

On their way to the meeting table, Siri and Daeng exchanged one of their now customary glances.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.