The Tsunami File Read Free Page A

said. “Coming to a cinema near you. Starring Dutch dentist and international film star Stefan Zalm?”
    â€œNot yet, my friend. Not yet.”
    â€œNo IDs today?”
    â€œToday one only,” Zalm said. “We are slowing down. One elderly woman from Italy. Very badly decomposed.”
    â€œBut not the teeth, of course. Intact as always.
    Miraculous.”
    â€œExactly. Yes. Teeth intact. Always. Not like fingers. But the Italians have taken all this time to locate her dentist over there. Almost three months, if you can imagine. The dental X-rays were sitting in Milan all this time. A perfect match, it was obvious to me immediately. Two big fillings side by side right rear, she had, and some nice caps. Very nice work. Milan has good dentists.”
    â€œAnd bad systems for storing X-rays, it seems,” Smith said.
    â€œExactly. Yes,” Zalm said.
    The Belgians at the end of the bar hooted and shouted and jeered. There was the sound of breaking glass. More hoots and jeers.
    â€œA bit early for that, even for the Belgian police,” Smith said.
    â€œThey are only a few bodies away,” Zalm said.
    â€œOnly a few missing Belgians left to identify and then they can go home. They are happy tonight.”
    â€œBastards,” Smith said.
    â€œInternational solidarity,” Zalm said. “Fuck you, our missing countrymen have all been identified, and so we go home.”
    â€œBastards,” Smith said. “If all of us did it like that . . .” “Exactly.”
    They drank in silence for a moment. “And you?” Zalm asked eventually.
    â€œThree today,” Smith said. “One particularly difficult one. Very bad antemortem marks from Denmark. Taken from a CD cover back there. CDs are usually good for this, as you know, and the Danish technician did his best back there but the marks were smudged badly in this instance, very badly smudged, and he only got three fingers off the cover, two of them partials. I was able to make the match, but it almost made me blind.”
    â€œThe heroic fingerprint man,” Zalm said.
    â€œI suppose.”
    â€œThe Identification Board will ask for corroboration for that one,” Zalm said. “If there is any doubt. They cannot afford any more false IDs.”
    â€œThere’s no doubt in my mind,” Smith said quickly. “It was a perfectly good match. Fourteen points of similarity. Ridge minutiae even a police cadet could spot without a magnifying glass. There’s no doubt.”
    â€œSmudged AM marks, three fingers only. They will want more, the Board.”
    â€œTeeth,” Smith said. “Of course.”
    â€œOf course. Then she can go home for a nice burial.”
    â€œHe. He, in this case.”
    â€œLet me look at his X-rays tomorrow,” Zalm said.
    â€œIf there are any.”
    â€œThen you will have to wait until they come from Denmark.”
    â€œIf they come.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œBastard,” Smith said. “And when they come you’ll claim the identification for yourself.”
    â€œOf course,” Zalm said. “And for the glory of Dutch forensic dentistry.”
    The other friend Smith had made in Phuket was Concepción. Much more than a friend, in fact. For the first time in his married life, Smith had acquired a lover.
    She was Spanish, from Madrid, from a family of doctors—a civilian expert in victim identification from bones. She had spent years, literally, in Bosnia after the Yugoslav civil war left thousands of buried corpses with no names. Her work with the United Nations Mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina had established her reputation in certain international circles. When the tsunami struck, she was immediately on a plane from Sarajevo.
    Smith, and all the other police gathered in Phuket, called her Conchi. She was young, 34, much younger than Smith. She was single, and beautiful in the heartstoppingly dark, glowing, smouldering way