The Tsunami File Read Free

Dactylography .
    The Henry volume sat even now in pride of place on a shelf in Smith’s living room at the Bay Hotel, alongside the Galton and the Faulds. Even if he did not consult Henry often, the book was always there as a silent testimony to the shining history of fingerprint science and of the service it had rendered to humanity in general and to Smith and his professional life in particular.
    Smith empathized entirely with the Victorian suspicion of anonymity and of uncertainty. He would happily read and re-read the various textbooks and histories of fingerprinting, and he embraced, as the British had done in colonial outposts and in England itself, the need for a swift and sure method of identifying individuals as waves of international migration and domestic movement and social change intensified in what had too rapidly become a society of strangers.
    But in the tropical society of strangers—living and dead—that was Phuket after the tsunami and the other affected countries throughout the region, and to which Smith and the other forensic experts had gravitated each for their own personal or professional reasons, there was, Smith thought as he pedalled his bike through the heat and humidity, not just tragedy but challenge, stimulation, inspiration, pleasure and, yes, sometimes even joy.
    Jonah Smith was not normally a very gregarious man, but among the transformations he had undergone in Phuket, among the changes to his previous identity, was a newfound or possibly long-forgotten pleasure in the company of friends.
    He liked now, for example, to meet his new Dutch friend, Stefan Zalm, at the Whale Bar in Phuket Town for ice cold Thai beers after both of their workdays had ended. He liked to compare notes on identifications made, technical troubles encountered, rumours heard, scandals and diplomatic machinations underway, and the various misdemeanours and misadventures of the police who had gathered in such large numbers in Phuket after the disaster.
    Zalm was at his usual place at the end of the long dark bar on that March evening, sipping Singha beer from a small sweating bottle and looking every bit the earnest young Dutchman, the earnest young Dutch dentist, that he was. His skin was still like a boy’s, his hair blond and wispy, though already receding noticeably at the sides despite his being only 35 years of age. Though finished work for the day, he still wore his white team shirt, with the flag of his country emblazoned on both shoulders.
    Zalm waved to Smith and called out to the Thai barman. “Another Singha here, Prasan, please.
    Thank you.”
    The barman, impossibly slender, implausibly feminine, came immediately with the beer, placing it before Smith as he sat down, then putting his hands together and bowing his head slightly in the wai , Thailand’s elegant sign of greeting and respect.
    â€œ Khun Jonah, welcome once again to the Whale Bar, welcome,” the barman said in the broad tonal drawl of Thais speaking English.
    Smith raised the beer bottle in a toast. “My pleasure, Prasan. Cheers.”
    Prasan glided back down the bar to serve a group of Belgian DVI officers already shouting and red-faced despite the pre-dinner hour. Zalm, too, raised his bottle in a toast.
    â€œOur heroic efforts have ceased for another day,” Zalm said, taking a short sip of his beer. “You have made dozens of identifications today, Jonah, of course.”
    â€œOf course,” Smith said.
    â€œYou will soon begin to tell me the entire history of the development of fingerprint technology by your Englishmen predecessors. I will grow bored by this. We will drink much more beer before I am able to stop you.”
    â€œMaybe not tonight, Stefan. I’ll spare you that ordeal tonight,” Smith said.
    â€œPerhaps, for once, it will be my turn to tell you the entire history of the development of forensic dentistry?”
    â€œThe Case of the Matching Molars,” Smith