Free Thirty-Three Teeth by Colin Cotterill Page A

into a deep rut. She overbalanced sideways.
    Too slow to right herself, she tumbled onto the hard earth verge, the bicycle with her. She held her breath to listen for the growl. She looked around at the shadows. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. She laughed out loud at her foolishness.
    She untangled herself from the bike and was about to get to her feet when the creature was on her. The huge first bite muted her scream. Blood soaked quickly into the white blouse. In less than thirty seconds she was dead.

Garden of Earthly Delights
    Two hours later, Siri was back at the orchard. His hosts were early sleepers, unused to company. In his sack he had two bottles of earthy rice whiskey, the remains of the river fish, and a container of sticky rice. This would be a fitting last meal for a man who loved his vocation.
    The moon had lit his path from, and back to, the orchard, like a lighthouse beacon guiding a foreign ship. He walked the aisles of fruit trees, breathing in their sweet nighttime scents. A blind man could have identified each tree.
    The gardener had abandoned his futile task and was sitting between Siri and a blazing fire. A good pile of lopped branches was at his side, and the smoke carried the scent of the trees they came from. The man was stockier than he’d appeared earlier, and he hunched forward slightly as he stared at the flames.
    Siri announced his arrival. “Good health, friend.”
    “Welcome back.”
    Siri put his aid package on the ground in front of the old man and the bottles clinked together as he pulled them from the sack.
    “This should soften the pain of saying goodbye to your friends here, eh?”
    He chuckled and turned to the old man. It was his intention to shake his hand to re-launch their friendship. But as he moved out of the line of the fire, the flames lit up the hooded eyes of the gardener. Siri froze. His own face must have reflected his shocked disbelief at what he was seeing.
    The firelight shone directly onto the man’s wide round features. The mouth spread slowly into a broad smile of neat teeth. It wasn’t a face Siri had seen in the flesh, but it was one he knew only too well. It was a face he’d seen on 8mm film in the caves of Houaphan, accompanied by the jeers and laughter of the cadres. It was a face he’d carried to the market, folded in his shoulder bag. It was a face on propaganda posters they’d used in hate sessions at endless political seminars.
    The man spoke through his smile. “I hope this doesn’t disqualify me from having a drink.”
    “It isn’t Dom Perignon.”
    “Thank goodness for that.”
    The king, into his second year of unemployment, leaned forward to shake the hand Siri had misplaced somewhere between them. “My name’s—”
    “Yeah. I know. Bugger me. This is one for the books. I’m Siri, Siri Paiboun. Am I supposed to…I don’t know…curtsy or something?”
    “I doubt that would do either of us any good. For heaven’s sake, sit down and open a bottle.”
    Siri did as he was decreed, but he couldn’t help laughing at the weirdness of the moment. He poured the whiskey into two half-coconut shells and handed one to the old man.
    “What exactly are you doing here?” Siri asked.
    “Bidding, as you rightly say, farewell to my trees. This is the place I’ll miss most. Good health.”
    He gestured the coconut shell toward his guest, then took a swig. Siri was already aware of just how awful the homemade brew was, but the king showed no reaction to it.
    “Good health.” Siri drank and winced. “Yecch. I reckon we could piss this out as weed killer by the end of the night.”
    They both laughed.
    “What brings you here, Comrade Siri?”
    “Some mysterious emergency. I’m the national coroner, for want of a better one. They asked me to identify a couple of crispy fliers. The local Party head expected me to tell him their names and addresses. In return, he wasn’t prepared to tell me a damn thing.”
    “I think you’ll find