Death of a Perm Sec

by Wong Souk Yee

By the time they check into the Holiday Inn, it is midnight. They lie on the beds, close their eyes and listen to the ticking of the clock. Ling secretly resents her brother for not having taken the initiative in this project. She nurses the idea that if she didn’t have to do it tomorrow, she would fly back to Sydney and return to the ease of living with Matthew. After all, it is only fitting that Yang, their father’s favourite child, be the one to raise a hue and cry over their father’s death. Like they do at funerals, where the dearest wails the loudest. Since he’s single, he would have fewer regrets if he should lose it all tomorrow, she reasons. And it’s not as if he has a job to go back to after the saga is over. Whereas she’s in a hurry to pick up the life she left off so many years ago.

  She turns her head to look at her brother, in the room lit only by the street light outside the window. “Tomorrow, leave it to me to talk to the press. Don’t try to be a hero.”

  “First you chided me for being a snivelling coward. Now you want to butt me out.”

  “I knew about the whole thing first. You came in much later.”

  He stares at the ceiling. “So? What sort of a brother am I if I let you face the firing squad alone?”

  “We have to strategise. There’s no point in dying in each other’s arms. If they get me, you’ll still be around to tell the people what happened.”

  “Then they will still come for me.”

  “You can get out and do it somewhere else, Hong Kong or London.”

  “So why didn’t you do it in Sydney?”

  “I thought of that. But Sydney is too far removed from here. Nobody there will be interested in what I have to say.”

  “And you think Johor Bahru can protect us from them?”

  “We can only count on the bad blood Singapore has with Malaysia. They say your enemy’s enemy is your friend.”

  “And what are we going to do after tomorrow? Live in exile?”

  “Haven’t we been always living in exile?” She smiles for the first time that night.

  *

  Back in Singapore, several unmarked cars are parked at the Whitley Road Detention Centre outside Block C, the control centre. Inside the operations room of the building, the lantern-jawed director of the Internal Security Department is briefing his officers. He talks without expecting to be contradicted. Nor does he ask his officers if they have questions. He expects his orders to be obeyed and executed to the letter. After all, his men, and a few women, are the cream of the police force, selected for their quiet militancy and discretion. He passes round a dozen photographs. A few officers are familiar with the faces in the shots for they have been the subjects of their surveillance in the last months.

  After the briefing, the assistant director, T.M. Chua, returns to his small office in the same block and sits behind his desk. He unlocks the bottom drawer and removes a revolver. He points it towards the floor with both hands. Then he takes six bullets from a metal case in the drawer and loads the magnum. During his 20 years in the service, he has armed himself as many times as the number of fingers in his hands. Nine. One finger was lost many years ago on a tour of duty. He had been armed mainly during the late 1960s, when he was a police constable called to quell the riots on the streets. He remembers once, when he was under the command of Chow Sze Teck, he had been tasked to sniff out agent provocateurs during the Confrontation with Indonesia. The last time he used a gun was during another ISA arrest in the 1970s of theatre artists, troublemakers spreading communist ideology in their performances. A bunch of softies, he recalls, and no need for the hardware. No resistance at all when he and his boys raided their training schools and hauled them in. Probably this time too. His subject is too weak even to slaughter a chicken. They wouldn’t even need the arms if it weren’t happening outside Singapore.

  He goes to his office door where a leather holster hangs. He straps it under his left armpit and places the revolver snugly into the holder. He shrugs on a dark windbreaker and zips it up. He puts his hands into the pockets of the windbreaker. A Cadbury chocolate wrapper is in one pocket and a soiled tissue paper in the other. He dumps them into the bin underneath his desk, sits down and waits.

  *

  A few low buildings away at Block E, a 50-something man with a high forehead, deep-set eyes and a doorknob nose is sitting on a wooden bunk, reading a book. The bunk is the only furnishing in the room. The room’s four walls have no windows. His absorption in the book suggests he could be at home reading in bed on a Friday night. He is in a loose top and pants made seemingly from flour sacks. The metal door has no knob and can only be opened from the outside. A small ventilation fan is installed high up in a wall and the fluorescent light on the high ceiling is switched on 24 hours a day. Embedded in the thick, heavy door, a peephole, which can be slid open and shut from the outside, enables the man’s captors to observe him any time of the day.

  He is sure his brother had spent many years in such a cell. Perhaps he even hanged himself in the very cell he is now in. He drops his book on the bunk that has no mattress, only a filthy pillow, walks to the door and bangs on it. When he hears the peephole open and sees an eye peering at him, he yells, “Toilet!” After a clinking of keys and the clang of metal, the rusty bolt slides in its socket and the door bangs open. A Gurkha guard grunts to indicate that he walk in front of him. It has become a habit for him to fix his eyes on the bulging holster on his guard’s hip before walking to the toilet. He is obliged to leave the toilet door ajar so as not to be out of the guard’s sight. He stands over the hole in the ground, and as he relieves himself, he hears cars moving out of the compound. He knows there’s only one reason why so many security personnel would be mobilised at this time of the night.

  Six unmarked cars, led by the assistant director, pull out of Block C’s car park. They roll past the blue gate at the back exit and speed off to the Pan-Island Expressway towards the Causeway.

  TWENTY-NINE

  CHOW LING JERKS open her eyes from a fitful sleep of four-headed monsters with hairy tentacles and a pervasive sensation of falling over a cliff. She jumps into the shower and washes herself of any remnants of the dream. She puts on clean underwear, a fresh shirt and a pair of good cotton pants, in case it’s going to be a long day. Then she kicks Yang out of bed. Going to the dressing table, she puts her hand inside her sling bag and feels for the rectangular book. She pulls out a plastic folder and sorts the photocopies. Looking at herself in the mirror, she rehearses the points she has jotted down on two sheets of paper. When Yang comes out of the bathroom, she hurries him to put on some clothes then they take the lift to the restaurant on the third floor for breakfast.

  Over chicken congee, she repeats her order to Yang that at the press conference, she wants him to sit among the audience and not stick his neck out. She is disappointed that he is not hard to persuade; the spirit he got from Johnnie Walker yesterday has vaporised. Yang, who is just having tea comprising two bags of Lipton in hot water, is alarmed by his sister’s appetite. “You’re eating like your life depended on it.”

  “You never know when your next meal is going to be.” She laughs nervously, minding all the time the tables around them.

  “Stop staring at other people. They are beginning to stare back.”

  “Shit, when all this is over, I’m going to take a long holiday with Matthew at the Great Barrier Reef.” She deposits a whole sunny-side-up into her mouth. “What are you going to do after this?”

  “Nothing exciting.”

  “You can go look up Miss Law or you could find a job.”

  Yang gives a wry smile and sips his brew.

  *

  At 8.30am they walk into the function room, where the press briefing is scheduled to start in half an hour. The table and chairs had been arranged the previous day, and a technician is setting up a microphone on the table covered with a green felt cloth. Four rows of chairs divided into two columns face the table with the microphone. A waiter comes through the door with a jug of ice water and two glasses a
nd places them next to the microphone. The technician moves to the aisle and sets up a standing microphone there for the audience. How many reporters will come, Ling wonders. And will they believe what she is going to say? Will they ask questions that will embarrass her or the family? She hopes the foreign journalists will be more charitable as she is resigned to her compatriots in the media who have blurred the line between news and propaganda. The congee and bacon and eggs churn in her stomach. She clutches her bag.

  Yang sits at a corner of the last row. When she comes over, he asks her again if she wants him to sit next to her.

  “No. Please just help me by collecting any leftover photocopies from the distribution later.”

  At around 8.50am a journalist slouches in, followed by a stream of Singaporeans, not all from the press, Ling reckons. She realises too late she should have checked their identities at the door before letting them in. Then a couple of foreign correspondents, one with a camera slung over his neck, take the front row. By 9am, the seats are almost filled and Ling leaves Yang in the back row and goes to lock the door. She walks to the front table with her bag by her side and takes a seat behind the microphone.

  “Good morning, members of the press. My name is Chow Ling. Thank you for being here today. I have some vital information I think the people of Singapore and Malaysia need to know.”

  Except for the photographers, the press corps point their tape recorders towards Ling.

  “It has come to my knowledge that two men have been murdered in Singapore, one several years ago and the other just last year. But not only are the people responsible for the crimes still at large, no one even knows about the murders.

  “My father, Chow Sze Teck, died last year during a corruption investigation of his ministry and himself. He was found guilty by the CPIB posthumously. Later in the year, the coroner’s court concluded that his death was by suicide. But, members of the press, I’ve evidence in my bag that shows the coroner’s court was wrong in its decision.”

  Ling pulls the diary from her bag and raises it with her right hand. She explains how she got hold of this journal, written in Edward Wee’s own hand, detailing the tumultuous days of Singapore’s anti-colonial movement and its disastrous merger with Malaya.

  “I am not here today to discuss why the merger failed. It’s common knowledge that it failed largely because Singapore was too small for the grand ambitions of Edward Wee. However, what is not so common knowledge is that Edward Wee initially saw the merger as a means to get the Tunku to put Lim Min Tong and his Socialist Party comrades away in jail, without getting blood on his own hands. Lim Min Tong was eventually detained under the Internal Security Act in 1963 for his so-called communist activities and for being anti-merger. Lim was, of course, at that time, the only formidable contender to Edward Wee’s rule of Singapore. Lim had massive support from the workers and students who had been a major threat to Wee. The diary I have in my hand chronicles that quite clearly. But it’s still not the main reason why I’m here today. This journal serves merely as background.

  “Unlike Edward Wee, my father had worked hard on the merger, for he passionately believed the two countries should be one. He abandoned Lim Min Tong and the workers’ cause because he thought Edward Wee was better able to bring about the reunification of Malaya and Singapore. In the end he paid a terrible price for his belief in the return of Singapore to the motherland.”

  Ling begins to distribute sets of the photocopies among the rows of seated journalists. “If you would like to check the authenticity of the diary, please approach me at the end of this press conference. I’m certain it will be admissible evidence in a court of law.”

  She pauses for some minutes, giving the journalists time to read.

  *

  Meanwhile, the convoy of six cars from Singapore and a car with a Johor licence plate pull up at the back entrance of the hotel. Several men, including the assistant director, T.M. Chua, and a woman, all in plain clothes, pour out of the cars and enter the hotel lobby. The remaining drivers and their colleagues remain in the cars, splitting up to guard the two hotel guest exits and the car park exit. The car engines are left running and the air conditioners on, as the heat is oppressive even at that time of the morning.

  *

  Upstairs, in the function room, Ling shivers from an inexplicable source of cold. Then she begins reading aloud those three critical entries. It is her first time reading those lines aloud, and she stutters slightly.

  2 January 1965

  We are now expelled from Malaysia. Maybe that’s for the better. No more race politics with the Tunku and his Malay ultras. We’ll declare Singapore independent before the Tunku celebrates Malaysia’s National Day.

  Min Tong’s detention order will be up for renewal in the coming months. But with the merger going down the drain, his grounds for detention have become tenuous. I’ll need stronger grounds to put him away for another two years. Since his arrest, he’s refused to say a word. Let’s see if he is tougher than our solitary confinement. Sze Teck had better check the cell to ensure it does the work it’s been designed for.

  25 January 1965

  Min Tong has been in that rat hole for three weeks and he is more hardened than ever. Even the British top brass and communist kingpins during the Japanese Occupation came out of those cells broken men, smearing their own faeces on their faces. Unless he is made of steel, I can’t see how he can last another three weeks.

  Sze Teck hinted about using a small dose of hallucinogenic drugs. I told him I didn’t hear anything about the drugs from him.

  4 March 1965

  Min Tong has finally gone on TV and radio and confessed to being a member of the Malayan Communist Party. He revealed their plot to sabotage the merger and organise workers and students to destroy the existing economic and political system of the country. Photos of his meetings with his leader in the jungle have been splashed in the papers.

  He looked a sorry sight, his youth gone. But I’m not responsible for his downfall. He can only blame his own poor choices in life. If only he had abandoned those lunatic ideas of his, I would have made him a junior minister, even though he didn’t complete his senior high school. And his depression. The doctor has to give him something to treat his depression, otherwise those unionists will cry that I have deprived him of proper medical care.

  “So ladies and gentlemen, the ‘small dose of hallucinogenic drugs’ described in the diary finally broke Lim Min Tong enough to go on TV to make a confession in his mind-altered state.”

  She pauses again.

  “As you know, in the 1960s and 1970s, pharmaceutical companies in the West developed all sorts of hallucinogens, such as LSD, lysergic acid diethylamide. Lim suffered from severe depression during detention, especially after he made that TV confession. His condition was used as a pretext to give him the drugs to ‘relieve’ his mental pain. LSD can cause distortion of the senses, hallucinations and illusions. In the extreme, it can cause panic, confusion and anxiety that can lead to violence and depression, and finally death or suicide.

  The interviews I have with some of his old comrades who survived the imprisonment show, beyond doubt, that the prolonged use of these drugs later drove Lim to hang himself in prison in 1967. According to one ex-detainee who shared the same prison block as Lim for three years, Lim changed from a caring and sociable colleague to a paranoid man who kept very much to himself in prison. About a week after the TV confession, he had another bout of depression. He was then taken to the Woodbridge Hospital where he stole a knife from the kitchen. A guard saw him sneaking into the kitchen and stopped him in time from slashing his wrist. From then on, his comrades noticed that he had been taking quite a lot of pills from the prison doctor. But his condition did not improve and he often complained of people, even his prison mates, trying to harm him. By 1967, Lim had been in prison for four years and on whatever drugs they had been giving him for two. This time, in the deep of the night when inmates were locked up in their own ce
lls, Lim removed his pants and hanged himself from a horizontal bar in the window. So, members of the press, that was the first murder.

  And now, the second one. My father did not take his own life. He was told to take his own life. He died with the direct help from his boss. He had been the hatchet man of Edward Wee and privy to the PM’s every act over the last 20-plus years. Wee naturally found him a ticking time bomb. The accusations of corruption and my father’s presumed guilt gave Edward Wee the perfect opportunity to get rid of him, making it appear as if he committed suicide.”

  A rumble of disbelief and shock is audible in the room. A reporter from a wire agency asks if Ling wasn’t making an inference based solely on the journal entries.

  “It is not an inference but an inescapable conclusion. It is a conclusion which is supported by the powerful motive explained in the diary, and the strong circumstantial evidence surrounding my father’s death.”

  The faces in the room are rapt. She continues, “The day before his death, my father was summoned by Wee’s personal assistant to his office. My father died the next day with enough morphine and Valium in his bloodstream to kill an elephant. He couldn’t have obtained such a huge amount of prescription drugs by himself. Besides, all that time, he was under surveillance by the CPIB. They claimed they never detected anything suspicious.”

  “So who do you think got the drugs for your father?” asks the reporter.

  “I believe it is someone from the prime minister’s office, which the CPIB reports to.”

  A woman from the audience asks why Ling didn’t take the evidence to the police.

  “Wouldn’t this be tantamount to taking the body to the murderer for an autopsy?” counters Ling.

  The foreign correspondent with the camera puts up his hand. “Are you saying Lim Min Tong’s death was premeditated or that it was due to an accidental overdose?”

  “It was a premeditated accident.”

  A journalist raises his hand. “Aren’t you afraid of the consequences of speaking up now?”