Thirty-Three Teeth by Colin Cotterill Page B

been a kitchen, but there was a large tiled concrete slab in the center that was ideal for the autopsy.
    Siri was alone in there. The two corpses were so crisp, there were unlikely to be any delicate organs to weigh, or stomach contents to analyze. There certainly wasn’t going to be a national emblem tattooed anywhere.
    He wrote his observations in a notebook. From the breadth of the skulls, Siri was certain these were males. The smell told him they’d been engulfed in a petroleum fire. It had been intense enough to cremate them rapidly. They had assumed the same attitude, one that suggested they’d been in a sitting position when the flames first hit them. There was no trace left of their feet.
    Remarkably, although their bodies and faces had been reduced to carbon, the top quarters of their heads were comparatively unscathed. Their hair was singed but in place, and a line of skin, free of soot, followed the hairline of each man.
    With a blunt scalpel, he began to probe at the outer layers that were now a fusion of skin and clothing. With no microscope and no laboratory he’d have to get samples from various locations to take back to Vientiane before he could be absolutely sure of what he was seeing. In the meantime he had to trust his nose. The scent of burned leather was oddly distinct from that of burned skin. He found traces of it at the truncated ankles and at the waists.
    This suggested to him that both men had been wearing high-top leather boots and belts. If he ever got to the site of the fire, he’d probably find buckles there to confirm his theory. He also discovered traces of some thick synthetic material welded to the left shoulder and chest of one man and the right shoulder and chest of the other.
    He was about to cut into the bodies when he was disturbed by a light tap at the door.
    “Come in.”
    The door opened slightly and a middle-aged woman with a pleasant face and long healthy hair put her head through the gap. She was deliberate in not looking in the direction of Siri or the bodies.
    “Dr. Siri. I’m Latsamy. Comrade Houey has assigned me to take care of you while you’re here.”
    Siri melted at the sound of her musical Luang Prabang dialect. There was no tune more erotic in the whole of Laos than the spoken song of a Luang Prabang girl. “Do you need anything?” she asked.
    “Perhaps you could just stand here and talk to me for a few hours.”
    It was unlikely. She still wasn’t able to turn her head in the direction of the corpses.
    “I would like to avoid such a thing if I could, Uncle.”
    “Am I that unpleasant?”
    “Not you, Uncle, them. I’d be as sick as a vomit bird if I had to look at those things. I don’t know how you can do it. Would you like some tea or anything?”
    “Tea would be very nice, thank you.”
    Once the door was closed, he reproached himself for flirting. He was old enough to know better. He knew he was a harmless old codger, but he’d probably frightened the girl.
    He returned his attention to the bodies. Cutting into them was like retrieving baked roots from an earthen kiln. The heat had done a thorough job of overcooking everything. The angle of the pelvic indentation and the narrow sacrum confirmed that these were male. From the lengths of the femurs he assumed they were of small stature, more likely Asian than Caucasian.
    He used a chisel to force open the jaws. The upper incisors curved into the shape of a shovel. This single fact put them into the Mongolian category. There was over an eighty-percent chance that these two poor gentlemen had been Asian. Either that, or they were Finnish. That was as close as he was ever likely to get to establishing their nationality. There was no fancy foreign dental work, no rings or bracelets, and they weren’t talking: not yet, anyway.
    It was while he was digging around in one lower abdomen that his tea arrived. It slid in on a chair between the open door and its frame without a word from the server. Siri was