“What’s she saying?” he asked.

“No. It’s impossible.”

“What?”

“She said she’d like to get to know you better.”

“She didn’t.”

“If you say so.”

“Did she?”

“She was wondering whether you might care to join her in a coffee shop one morning.”

“I don’t know,” he said, a glimmer of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “Really? I don’t know.”

“I’ll tell her no.”

“Wait, I . . . you know? I do feel a little bit sorry for her, looking the way she does. Perhaps one small coffee wouldn’t do much harm.”

“He’s so excited at the prospect,” I told Moot. “It seems he’s really fond of you. He said it’s a dream come true.”

“Or, in my case, a nightmare,” she said. “What time?”

And that was it. I’d never seen a couple try so hard to repress their happiness. I agreed to act as a chaperone for their coffee liaison even though it really didn’t matter how well things went. I wasn’t about to go on dates with them into the future. The important thing was that they’d both experienced the pleasure of being desired, however briefly. There was just one more thing left for me to do. I knew Moot would never be able to smell Ukabane’s nasty breath but I was sure her colleagues at the market would be only too pleased to pass on the bad news. So I felt it was my duty to investigate the source of his toxic output.

“Warrant Officer Ukabane,” I said one day. “I would like to discuss your dental hygiene.”

“All right, Major Toshi,” he said with a slightly baffled expression.

“I would like you to go back to your tent and bring me your toothbrush. I wish to see whether you are brushing your teeth correctly.”

He seemed lost.

“My what?” he said.

“Your toothbrush,” I replied. “You do have one, I assume?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “What does one look like?”

The Mi-26 helicopter traced a route along the milk-tea-brown Mekong. Dark clouds still lurked on the horizon but Siri and Daeng were blessed with a fine day overhead. Word had reached Vientiane that insurgents based in the refugee camps on the Thai side had again raided Thakhek and attacked a government office. Some soldiers had been killed and valuables pilfered from private homes. But that news only made it to the Lao community, not the UN. So Roper had no cause to cancel the trip.

On board were three Bru male adults, a Lao Loum couple from a village just outside Mahaxai, and two girls whose mother had died of malaria in the camp at Ban Vinai. The girls’ father had refused to travel with them to the camp. He was unable to walk long distances due to a war wound of some description. The UN had contacted him and he had requested his daughters be returned to him. They were eerily silent children, unresponsive to questions. Neither did they appear to speak to each other. They were clearly terrified.