“What about him?” said Siri. “He’s a nasty little shrew if I remember rightly. Did he run off with the old lady’s belt collection? Wouldn’t put it past him.”

“No, he’s dead.”

“Ah, well. Then I apologize to his spirit for being so negative. Someone shoot him?”

“He died in his sleep.”

“Really? How old was he?”

“Seventeen.”

“Hmm.”

“He’d worked the night shift in the kitchen at the Russian Club,” said Daeng. “The curfew’s flexible at the moment with all the journalists in town. He came home at two-ish and went to bed. Granny Far tried to raise him at nine but he was dead. No wounds.”

“Any vomit—saliva?”

“No.”

“Well, I hope our donations to the family were generous enough to cover a nice budget cremation.”

“Siri, he’s still there.”

“Still where?”

“On his bed roll on the floor.”

“Why?”

“Because I promised her I’d take you there to have a look at him.”

“Oh, did you?”

“Yup.”

“You do know I’m not a coroner anymore?”

“It’s like riding a bicycle, Siri. You never forget.”

“What about my replacement, the good Doctor Mot?”

“About whom you were quoted as saying, ‘If they weren’t stuck on, he wouldn’t know a breast from a buttock’?”

“I did say that, didn’t I? What about Dtui?”

“She and Phosy are taking care of their journalist group. And Granny Far specifically asked for you.”

“Why?”

“There are . . . unusual circumstances.”

The thing Siri liked most about his Pigeon bicycle was its padded passenger seat and the fact that Madam Daeng had to wrap one arm around his waist and push one breast against his back while they were riding together. Whenever he hit a pothole, a spontaneous samba ground them together. There were few potholes that escaped his attention. But Granny Far’s house was only ten blocks away along the river. She was on the doorstep when they arrived. Ugly was with them of course. He hadn’t expected to be on duty that evening, so he trotted drowsily to the spot where they parked the bicycle and collapsed beside it.

“Lucky it’s not been a hot day,” said Siri. “Or we should start to get a whiff of the boy by now.”

He and Daeng followed Far to a room at the rear of the house, where the nephew lay beneath a grey mosquito net. The youth’s face was contorted into a horrible death mask. His hands were poised in front of him as if warding off an attack. And he was wearing a nightdress; a woman’s pink, sleeveless nightdress with Disney dalmatians printed all over it.

“I take it he wasn’t given to homosexual tendencies?” said Siri.

“No, Doctor,” said Granny Far, “he had a lot of young lady friends.”

“And he didn’t dress in girls’ clothes at any other time of the day?”