Free Anarchy and Old Dogs (Dr. Siri Paiboun) by Colin Cotterill

was left of her."
    "What do you mean?"
    "Well, I got there at about eleven. The door was ajar and when I called out, there was no answer. I went inside and it was obvious there'd been some kind of struggle. The table was on its side and the pieces of that game thing had been scattered. There were cups and papers lying all around. Then I saw the blood."
    "Oh, my. Poor woman."
    "There was a pool of it near the couch, and a trail leading to the back door. I went through the place. Glean as a flute. No rifled drawers or cupboards. No overturned mattresses. Whoever hit the old lady hadn't gone there to rob her. At least I don't think so. There were odd pieces of jewelry upstairs but I didn't find any money. And no personal documents for either of them."
    "No identity cards, house documents, licenses?"
    "Not a one. But they might have had them stashed away somewhere else for safety. I didn't find a purse or handbag, so whoever it was might have taken that stuff when they dragged the old woman's body out."
    "You think she was dead?"
    "There was a hell of a lot of blood, Doctor. I'm not sure she could have survived a wound like that. I brought you some."
    "Some what?"
    "Some of the blood." Phosy produced a small sauce bottle from his shirt pocket. "I think I cleaned the sauce out pretty thoroughly."
    "What in hell's name do you expect me to do with that?"
    "I don't know. You're a coroner. I thought you might be able to tell me something from it."
    "Like how she died? What she had for breakfast on the morning of her attack?"
    "I don't know. You're the expert."
    "I'm a very little expert, and certainly not a magician. And I'm an expert only in the absence of real professionals who have the benefit of a laboratory and technicians and years of training--people who might know what they're actually talking about. This isn't Hollywood. There, I believe, they can tell you a victim's shoe size from a sample of blood. Given my present state, I can barely tell you what color it is."
    Siri took the bottle from Phosy and shook it.
    "How did you get it into the bottle?"
    "Just scooped the bottle through the puddle."
    "It was that deep?"
    "Deep enough."
    "Then I imagine your old lady hadn't been gone long."
    "Why so?"
    "In this heat, on a parquet floor, blood would dry in--I don't know--an hour at the most."
    "That means they must have taken her body out in daylight. That's odd. I asked around. None of the neighbors remembered seeing anything. In a little place like that, you'd notice a body being removed."
    "That's one more thing that doesn't make sense," Siri said. "Let's look at motive. Say someone wanted to keep the messages a secret. They knew we were nosing around and that she'd seen the contents of the notes. They couldn't risk her disclosing what she knew. So killing her I can understand. But what could be gained from taking the body away? Delaying the discovery?"
    "Not likely." Phosy began to wash his hands and face in the small sink in the corner of the office. "If you're going to all that trouble, you'd clean up the crime scene. At the very least you'd shut the front door. Whoever did this wanted us to know that she'd been the victim of a violent assault."
    "That message would have been clearer if they'd left her body there. They could even have made it look like a housebreaking."
    "But this way leaves us in doubt. Maybe she didn't die. It leaves us wondering what else they could be doing to her."
    "A kind of warning, you mean? To us?"
    "Possibly. We might be well advised to spread around what we know to others. As long as we're the only ones privy to the information it wouldn't be that difficult to contain the damage by eliminating us," Phosy cautioned Siri.
    "I talked to Civilai. He thinks he has people he can trust. He'll spend the afternoon setting up a network."
    "Dtui and I will have to be in on it."
    "We've already discussed you two. You have your parts. But we can't arrange anything for certain until we've nosed around in