“Uncle Ching, your arthritis is acting up again. Why don’t you sit down and I’ll get you a drink.” Ming turns to go.
Yang gives his brother a wry smile, at the sight of him humouring their rheumatoid uncle, then gets himself another glass of red. He retreats to an empty room adjoining the buzzing parlour. He has had enough of putting on a grieving face in front of reproachful relatives and successful old classmates from Anglo-Chinese School. While he is grateful this is not the usual three-day wake of a Taoist funeral, he rues his idea of the tea buffet, which has encouraged guests to dawdle. As the cutlery clatters against porcelain through the thin wall, he imagines his father looking out of the casket at the revelry with dismay, as though his family is celebrating his departure, which would save them from further ignominy.
From the day Yang was born a son of a mandarin, he has had to bear the cross of becoming a superior man. In today’s language, it means going to university. So when he did not make the grade to enter the University of Singapore, his father got him a Public Service Commission scholarship to send him to any university in Britain which would offer him a law course. He did not relish doing law but did not want to further disappoint his father. He knew his father wanted him and his brother to become what Chow himself could not be, an independent professional who did not have to rely on other people’s favour. His father was not yet rich then, but he had scraped together enough to afford Yang a comfortable flat in England and some money to spend on his hobbies, of which he had many.
Yang remembers he actually had fun in a provincial university in Birmingham where even the overseas students were relaxed and easygoing. Then his father had told him to get active with the Singapore Students’ Association in London, whose members were groomed for leadership positions when they returned home after their studies. Yang suspected some of the committee members were on the secret payroll of the Singaporean government to conduct suitable activities for members who would otherwise fall under “bad Western influence.” He hated the endless forums the association organised to mould members into model citizens. Even at the disco parties held every month, students never failed to one-up each other. There was a gang of four Yang loved to hate, who turned up at every function to make sure they didn’t lose out on anything. Yang looks back with amusement at one such function when one of the gang, the son of a banker, told no one in particular but everyone in general that he had been offered a spot to do a PhD at Oxford.
Speaking as if he had marbles in his mouth to mask his Singaporean accent, he announced, “My godpa has promised to fly over and attend my graduation and Auntie Annie says she will get me BMW’s latest sports model to make sure I return home.”
Everybody knew the sainted godpa in question was no less than the deputy prime minister himself and his good wife, Auntie Annie, was the chairwoman of the United Overseas Bank. Yang lip-farted on those proclamations.
But the virus of competition had eventually spread and infected him. Even now, whenever he thinks of how he had just barely scraped through his first year after sitting for supplementary exams for three papers, his stomach turns. While he was busting his brain trying to remember landmark cases on legal principles that weren’t relevant to life, his friends at the association were already talking about which class honours they were vying for. After those hellfire exams, he had been tormented by frequent nightmares of violent red swirling all over his blank answer sheets. He had heard of a Malaysian student jumping off the Westminster Bridge on the first day of the year-end exams. Yang did not want to end up like him. When exams rolled round for the second-year law students, he took the train to the Lake District and did not look back. That was his way of telling those self-important sons of the gentry that he, Chow Yang, didn’t give a damn.
As he rolls the red wine around in his mouth, he can still remember the crack in his father’s voice when he rang from London to tell him he had dropped out of law school that year. Yang asked if his father would still support him if he switched to arts. A few days later, Chow sent him a telegram saying that as long as Yang promised not to abandon his studies and to return home with at least a degree, the money would continue. Yang was so grateful tears had brimmed in his eyes. He knew his father was not rolling in cash and his prolonged stay in Britain would only affect his younger sisters’ chances of getting into university when their turns came. He felt selfish but he liked living in London, around which the rest of the world revolved, he thought. He later heard from Ling that their father had been promoted to permanent secretary in the Ministry of Housing. He was truly happy for his father for, despite running the family like an army camp, Chow had always doted on him, sparing him the discipline reserved for his siblings. At the same time, as he received his monthly remittance, Yang worried that the money had come at somebody’s expense. After he completed his studies, Chow told Yang to return home but he stayed on. He had seen photographs of the big house the family had moved into, got more worried about the source of the money and wanted to stay away. Much as he wished to please his father, he did not want to do the things his father had wished for him, such as joining the administrative service.
He counts the times in his 36 years he had broken his father’s heart. How many of those times had his father actually been disappointed with himself? Did he actually expect me to become a mandarin when he, of all people, should know that there was no honour but shit in it, Yang wonders. Or was I the projection screen of his own failings? Did he really kill himself? Because he was tired of facing his own abject misery? Yang remembers the last time they talked, that weariness in his face, that stillness of his body as he stood against the diffused light of the setting sun in the study, that yearning for rest, looking for a place to withdraw to. Yang now realises, watching him, I should have seen it coming. Father had made so much of his own disgrace when it is the legal culpability alone that matters. I made the horrible suggestion that Father get out of the country and he gave me a look that distorted his face. I can still taste his bitterness in my mouth. He could not understand how his son could entertain such a despicable possibility. Father had responded to my counsel of amorality with the moral simplicity of death. Both would promise a finality, but my suggestion would guarantee that the Chows be mired in sewage for a thousand years, whereas Father’s action might restore a little honour to his muddied name. Hope you went away taking this solace with you, Pa, otherwise you have punished yourself to excess.
Yang clasps the wineglass so hard, it cracks and cuts his finger. He places the broken glass in a bin, goes to the toilet to wash off the blood and returns to the cocktail party.
SIX
HELD UP FOR an hour in traffic on the Pan-Island Expressway, the inspector turns up the air-con and tells himself not to fret over the delay. He diverts his thoughts to the life and death of Chow Sze Teck. He is amused by the sentimentality of a seemingly unsentimental man. Those copious red hibiscus in his garden, the accessories such as the hibiscus motif tiepin he died with, and those same flowers at the funeral. Is the hibiscus the birth flower of an old girlfriend or his current mistress? What extravagant ideas did he hope his death would induce? If he did kill himself, that is. Maybe this is divine retribution, the inspector tells himself. But still, many other people have committed worse crimes and are living near-nirvana lifestyles. Chow had been too greedy and weak to resist the temptation of licking the honey from the mouths of the mega-bucks contractors. But did he deserve what he got? Some years back, a bent minister jumped bail and is still at large in Taiwan to this day, probably living in luxury. At least Chow had stayed and slugged it out. If it were just money, he would at most have gotten a few years. Why had he resorted to such a desperate act? Was a more hideous wrong catching up with him?
The inspector gets through the traffic jam into the CBD and reaches the maze of a car park to Chow Ming’s office. After a dizzying ride in the lift, the door opens onto the 43rd floor of the OCBC Centre; the inspector steps into the country’s highest-grossing law fir
m. Ming’s secretary takes him past several glass and chrome rooms into a painting-lined office that looks more like an art gallery. The external trappings accord with the inspector’s notes on the eldest son of Chow Sze Teck, worldly-wise and accomplished by the time he was 29. He has also heard that Chow Ming had been so consumed by work and ambition that he neglected his father’s other plan for him, to go forth and multiply. Until he turned 35. But by then he had neither time nor patience to woo women with witty conversation, movies and long dinners. He has only a pragmatic marriage and quiet children on his mind. And he has bad skin, beady eyes and a slight hunch which makes his 165-cm frame appear even shorter. But that did not stop him from hitting on TV starlets when he was in his twenties. He believed that what he lacked in looks, he more than made up for with a scintillating career, flash Ferrari and solid lineage. He got himself invited to TV station events, and brandished his business card like a real estate agent. Zoe Tay had not yet been discovered by the broadcasting station, otherwise she would have been his wet dream prize.
His churlish social skills and lacklustre looks, coupled with flagrant expectations of a wife, connive to destroy all his chances of finding a partner within the scope of his romanticism. With so much money made from his law practice and no one to spend it on, he buys himself a luxurious condominium. He swallows his pride and downgrades from TV stations to karaoke lounges and pubs, and sleeps with women who humour him for some quick cash. One of these women is now returning him the favour by providing him with an alibi on the night of his father’s death.
Armed with this locker-room gossip and a disdain for machismo, the inspector feels ready to tackle his subject. “Thank you for giving me the time to talk to you.” He can only hope his SBC-newsreader accent, tie and tailored pants sit well with the moneyed environs that command a stunning view of the Singapore skyline.
“I’m not sure if I can tell you anything you don’t already know.” As lawyers go, Ming is being truthful. The events of the last five days tell him that the family has been the last to know of anything damaging to its reputation, such as the news that his father had returned $12 million to the ministry. Before that bombshell was dropped, Ming had always insisted his father was not guilty of the charges by the CPIB. His early years of defending petty criminals and recent experience of acting for corporate clients have helped him appreciate the mental and physical ferocity of police interrogation. He had believed his father had buckled under the pressure of several weeks of inquisition, and that exhaustion and humiliation finally drove him to take his own life. But the $12 million changed all that. He is no longer sure of what is real and what is the created reality of his own will. These days, he is not certain if he is driving to work or if he dreams he is driving to work. He had always looked upon his father as an enshrined figure, untouchable. But he now grows weary of being the counsel for defence of his father’s memory. He knows the mind of the judge has already been made up.
“Mr Chow, I know of all his children, your father trusted you most. Did he confide in you anything about the CPIB investigation in his last days?”
“For example?”
“For example, whether he did or didn’t do the things he was accused of, or if…if there was something he couldn’t tell the CPIB even if it could save his life?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Just a hypothetical scenario.”
“Tell me what you think.”
“My theory is that your father could not have obtained those drugs on his own. He must have had an accomplice or someone who made those drugs available to him.”
“You mean someone wanted him dead?”
“Are you surprised? Your father was a very wealthy man. In Chinese, they say huge trees drive the wind up.”
“And you think they picked a time like this to make it look like—like he killed himself?”
“Just a hunch. Do you know of enemies your father had made or people who found your father an obstacle in their projects?”
For Ming, the possibility of murder casts a different light on his father. Maybe his father was the victim of a vile conspiracy and not the perpetrator of some low act? He feels the dead weight on his chest absurdly lightened. “Enemies! Sure, those commies back in the 60s.” He curls his lips at the thought of the leftist elements infiltrating trade unions and inciting strikes and riots.
When Edward Wee led his party to victory in the first general election after self-government in 1959, Chow Sze Teck was given the job of cleaning up the troublesome unions. Ming remembers he was 13 years old when his father had come home in a bloodied shirt. His father had told him the communists were exploiting the confusion at the Neptune Shipyard after an explosion inside a tanker had killed several workers. When the union did not get the compensation they demanded for the families of the dead and injured, they instigated workers to picket the gates to the shipyard. Riot squads were brought in and fire hoses were used to disperse the pickets. The confrontation escalated. Three thousand Chinese-language secondary school students marched the streets to support the demands of the union. Riot police were again called in to defuse the flashpoint quickly. But this time, the students were in the mood for a showdown. When security troops closed in with truncheons, tear gas and even guns, the students retaliated with stones and bottles. After three hours of running battle, five people were killed. One of them, a 16-year-old student, was shot and wounded in one lung. Chow told his young son that before taking the injured boy to a hospital, his friends had paraded him around the streets to expose the brutality of the police. By the time the boy arrived at the hospital, he was dead.
The violence of the incident was etched in Ming’s juvenile mind. From then on, he hated strident demonstrations and screaming protesters, believing them misguided by the false god of ideology. He never forgot the story often retold by his father. Nor did he forget the blood he saw soaking his father’s shirt the day he came home from school. His father had taken a rioter with a bleeding head wound to hospital in his car. After that episode, he had mentally decorated his father with several more medals. Chow’s entry into the hallowed halls of Parliament House further elevated his standing in Ming’s mind. How could such a brave and righteous man be guilty of such a sordid crime? At the same time, Ming is painfully aware that he had consciously blocked out all speculation about the source of his father’s wealth even as the family house got bigger and bigger, and his father’s list of properties got longer. He probably made it from shrewd investment, Ming had assumed. Hadn’t he? He wouldn’t have been so goddam stupid, surely, or do anything to harm himself or his children?
The inspector takes a deep breath as Ming remains distracted. “You think the communists are making your father pay for what he did to them 20 years ago?”
“Possibly.”
“How? From the jungle? Most of them are old and planting vegetables along the Thai border.”
“They are resilient and great organisers.” Ming’s eyes shift to the wild daubs and mad splashes of the paintings on the walls.
“What about more recent enemies?” The inspector looks into Ming’s eyes and sees dark pools stirring.
“The director of the CPIB.” By dragging the anti-corruption boss through the mud, Ming feels he has his revenge on the director. As he was born into a life of privilege, Ming’s childhood path was paved with private tutors and brain tonic food. With all the ambition of a high court judge, but without the judicial wisdom and vice, Ming had swotted up piles of law books. His father’s success had been a tough act to follow, but Ming vowed to become a millionaire before he turned 30. After much sweat and tears, he emerged with second upper honours. His degree, achieved without having to spend a fortune at an overseas university, cemented Ming’s position in his father’s heart and mind. Chow could even wax patriotic about the importance of ministers sending their children to local universities.
Politics did not interest Ming, though he saw the advantage of having connectio
ns in high places. His father took care of that. He got Ming into the country’s top law firm, which had been contracted to do the conveyancing of the sales of new flats built by the housing ministry. Ming’s meteoric rise from legal assistant to partner was thanks to his own hard work as well as his father’s clout at the ministry. But since the start of the investigation, his gilt-edged world has come crashing down. Instead of receiving a massive fortune, he will inherit only his father’s reputation, his standing as a legal high-flyer shot down by the chimera of his father’s guilt.
“The director of the CPIB?” The inspector knits his eyebrows.
“My father coughed blood under interrogation. They kept him in a dingy room for 24 hours, hammering him with the same questions again and again. You think they would dare to treat him like that without the director’s approval? And they kept dragging him back for more questioning, the same questions. Each time, he grew several years older.”
“Perhaps he was just getting a taste of his own medicine,” the inspector ruminates.
“What did you say?”
The inspector clears his throat. “What axe do you think the CPIB director had to grind with your father?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did your father tell you anything else or did you yourself observe anything?”
Ming shakes his head. He leans back into his leather swivel chair. He feels the silent searching stare of the inspector boring holes into his body. Amid the splendour of his office, Ming’s downcast eyes and laboured breathing throw a veil of inexplicable pathos over his shrinking body.
Eventually, Ming cannot tolerate the staring any more. “Perhaps I’m one of your usual suspects? After all, my brother and I would have gotten the most of our father’s money if they had not—” His mouth feels parched and he desperately needs a drink of water. He knows the government has frozen his father’s estate, and the CPIB is tracing his father’s secret bank accounts all over the world. He will not get even a brick of the properties.
Death of a Perm Sec Page 3