by Ming Cher
“Varasamy might have some idea about what to do. He’s investigating a case for a moneylender in Little India, but should be back soon.”
When Varasamy returned to the office, he analysed the whole situation and furrowed his brows. “Why don’t you get your kampong source to ask the girl’s landlord? That should give us some clues to follow up on.”
“Do you think two or three days will be enough?” Eng Hock looked at Abdullah. “I have to work out my timetable and ring the manager back.”
“Tell her to give us a week.” Abdullah gestured with his cheroot. “My source has to scratch the surface again.”
“Give your source a bonus if that will make the results come faster,” Varasamy advised. “Pass the costs back up to our clients since money is not a problem for them.”
•
Abdullah’s source was a small and lively old Malay woman in her mid-seventies, a well-known local matchmaker who had no teeth left. She had known Big Mole’s landlord for over half a century: the same semiretired kampong doctor in his late sixties who had felt sorry for Big Mole and removed her mole when she was fourteen. When the old matchmaker went to see him, it was the late afternoon, and he was watering his flowers in his compound.
“Good afternoon, Tuan. Can I have a few words with you?” she asked.
“What is it about, Ibu?” the old doctor asked curiously.
“Let me be frank,” she said with a slight bow. “I came on behalf of a good keen man who is interested in that girl renting your house. Does she have a man?”
“I think so,” he answered. “Don’t you know?”
“I heard she sold her pet fish shop and is now living alone.”
“How can that be?” he wondered aloud. “I didn’t know. She certainly hasn’t told me when she came to pay her rent. I saw the small Chinese fellow in her pet fish shop when I walked past with my grandchildren last week.”
“Was that her boyfriend? I heard there were two Chinese chaps living in the same house with her.”
“I am not sure. You’ll have to find that out yourself.” The old doctor avoided saying too much, as everybody in the kampong knew the old matchmaker was quite a gossip.
“Thank you the same, doctor.” She bowed slightly and left for the pet fish shop to find out more.
The General was feeding the pet fishes inside their tanks when the matchmaker arrived. “Hello, where is your girlfriend?” she asked casually.
“She is not here. Can I help you?”
“I know her landlord. We live in the same kampong. Can you give me a good discount?”
“Mmm, can give you a twenty per cent discount only,” the General said, wanting to avoid wasting his time on her.
“That’s very kind of you,” she nodded, smiling at him and pointing at four angelfish inside the tank. She watched the General’s long fingers as he scooped up the fish with a net and put them into a small plastic bag filled with water. She paid him twenty cents for each fish, thanked him and left the shop.
The following morning, at the busy morning market in the Malay kampong, filled with loud bargains and housewives chatting noisily, the old matchmaker reported her findings to the much taller Abdullah. “I swear to Allah what I say is correct, Abdullah. He has very long fingers. I saw that when he scooped up the pet fish for me.”
“How do you know that fella, and not the other one, was her boyfriend, Ibu?”
“Oh, that was easy,” she explained. “I asked him where his girlfriend was, and he said she was not there. He gave me the answer himself, right?”
“Hmm, I see. Good trick.”
“Thank you,” she said, bowing slightly and holding out an open palm.
Abdullah slipped two $10 notes into her hand. “Our work is not finished, Ibu,” he said. “Ring me if there are any changes at that girl’s house.”
She winked at Abdullah and tucked the two notes inside her bra under her finely embroidered sarong kebaya, then strolled away to gossip with a local housewife passing by.
Abdullah passed along the old matchmaker’s information regarding the General to his two partners back at their office. Later that afternoon, Eng Hock went with his 12-year-old daughter to the pet fish shop to buy two goldfish while the General was there. He saw those exceptionally long fingers for himself, as well as the second-hand van parked outside at the roadside. He took down the van’s number plate so that he could get the General’s identity card number and home address from Eng Hock’s government connections at the Registry of Vehicles. Then after dropping his daughter off at home, he went to see his ex-colleague Lim at CID headquarters just outside Chinatown, at the bottom of Pearl Hill near Outram Road Prison.
“This chap is not in our books,” said the senior detective sergeant after checking the criminal records. “He looks clean, Eng Hock. What else do you need?”
“His photo from his driving licence records. My client wants it.”
“I’ll need to ring the registry department for a photocopy tomorrow. Will that do?”
“That’s fine. Thanks for the favour, Lim. Hey, how is your Spottiswoode case?”
“Still working on it. How is business with Abdullah and Varasamy?”
“Not very consistent. It could be better.”
“Have you read about the reward offered by the CID chief?”
“Yes, I have. Why?”
“The Spottiswoode case is ‘unprecedented’. That’s what he told reporters when those bodies were found months ago, therefore the $5,000 reward.”
“Has anybody come forward with any clues and tried to claim the reward yet?”
“Nobody so far. The chief might have to increase the reward amount. The case must be solved—that’s what I was told. The noise won’t go away. The newspapers are using the case to spin news on gang wars. Business leaders are voicing their concern over the increasing crime wave. The politicians are promising tougher laws on crime to gain votes in the coming general election. The pressure is coming at my boss from all sides.”
“That’s interesting. Thanks for everything. So when can I come to get that chap’s photo?”
“Should be here by 10am tomorrow.”
“We should go for a walk together along Spottiswoode Park Road after that,” Eng Hock said, hinting at his interest in the mass murder case. “I would like to look at that redbrick house.”
“I will mention it to my boss.”
“I will talk to Abdullah and Varasamy.”
“You do that, Eng Hock,” said the younger and very ambitious senior detective sergeant; he had a university degree and was aiming for a further promotion. He wanted to crack the case as badly as his boss.
•
The CID chief was an Irish Australian in his early fifties with a goatee. He had been obsessed with the mass murder case from day one. He had a double degree—an LLB, as well as an MA in criminal psychology. He sat at a table at the Singapore Cricket Club opposite Parliament House, nursing a whiskey and feeling uncomfortable in such an ostentatious setting; across from him was the big boss, the Commissioner of Police. An Englishman.
“We are dealing with organised gangs, not communist terrorists, sir,” said the CID chief. “I need more resources.”
“Very well, Adam,” the Commissioner said after a pause. “You can bloody well have what you need. But don’t let me down, will you?” He finished his whiskey with a twitch of his mouth. “Very well. I’ve got to go. I have to see the Governor General. And, don’t call me ‘sir’ when I see you next time, okay? I’ve told you, call me Tony.”
“Yes, sir. Tony.”
As Adam drove towards his home on Holland Road, he thought once again about the bodies they’d found in the redbrick house, so professionally dispatched. The other recent gang killings had not been so neat, consistent with the regular turf wars he was always fighting against, but the mass murder was clearly premeditated, and whoever was responsible would hang.
He pulled into the car park at the expatriate residential are
a for senior officers from the police, army, navy and air force. His daughters had also heard about the mass murders from the radio and newspapers, and from friends at the international school, and always wanted updates they could relate to their classmates.
“Any breakthrough in the case, love?” his wife asked that night, while sitting with a book under a reading lamp in their bedroom.
“Still none,” he said. “If I can’t wrap this up soon, the Commissioner might transfer me to Papua New Guinea as punishment.”
“Ah, don’t let them run you down,” she said.
“I was thinking of resigning and joining a law firm in Singapore or Malaya, if it comes down to that.”
“But you’ll lose your service pension if you resign. And it will cost us a bundle to start all over again.”
“The case is eating me up. And my boys only do as they’re told; they have no initiative to think on their own, and never speak their minds. The good ones are those who’ve resigned to run their own detective agencies.”
“Can’t you use them?”
“I am going to. The Commissioner has just approved special funds so that I can include them in the investigation. I’m going to visit the chief coroner tomorrow morning; he’s always good to bounce ideas off of, and may help me think of something I’ve overlooked.”
•
The next day at the coroner’s office, the chief coroner said, “My morgue is full to overflowing with homicides, Adam. Can you see an end to it?”
“I can’t answer that,” Adam admitted. “I have to catch the monkey by the tail. All these recent gang wars were triggered by the mass murder on Spottiswoode Park Road.”
“Alfred Hitchcock could have made a movie out of all this. Your reputation is at stake, you know. There was no sign of violent struggle on all the seven bodies, except for the strangled man whom you say was inside the blue Mercedes.”
“All the fingerprints we found led back only to the dead men in the house. The safe was empty, and all their wallets and identity cards are missing. It was a clean job.”
“Have you looked at their criminal records outside Singapore, in Malaya?”
“I’m still waiting for reports from Kuala Lumpur.”
Most of Adam’s work in the CID normally involved reading reports, making decisions, holding meetings, releasing occasional press statements and delegating responsibilities. After returning to his office from visiting the morgue, he pressed the intercom button for his senior detective sergeant.
The sergeant entered his office with a sharp salute. “Good afternoon, sir!”
“Sit down, Sergeant Lim.” Adam addressed the detective nicely for a change, gesturing at the chair in front of his desk. “We are not in the army, you don’t have to salute—is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied, and sat down.
“You can have my full support on the Spottiswoode case. Do you want that responsibility? If you crack the case, there’s a promotion to Inspector in it for you.”
The senior sergeant asked frankly, “What kind of assistance can I have?”
“That’s up to you to tell me what you need.”
“If given free rein with enough funds at my disposal, I will work something out with the Three Musketeers Investigation Agency. I’m still on good terms with Eng Hock.”
“That’s what I had in mind. Do what you need to do, Sergeant Lim.”
•
The next day, when Eng Hock returned to CID for the General’s photos from the Registry of Vehicles, Sergeant Lim gave him the photocopies in an envelope and said, “This chap is very clean. I double-checked his driving licence and identity card. He has no black marks at all.”
“Hmm. Almost suspicious to be so clean,” Eng Hock said, pocketing the envelope. “Thanks a lot for the photos. I owe you something for this. When can we go out for a drink?”
“Hey, it’s nothing,” Lim replied. “Actually, my white boss has handed me responsibility for the mass murder case. How would you like to help us out? There is overtime pay, if you all want. The chief will approve it.”
“That’s very generous of you, Lim. I am sure Varasamy and Abdullah will appreciate it. And we can use the work.”
“I am going to that redbrick house now to have another look around. Can you come with me?”
“Of course. After you.”
Eng Hock drove them both to the house on Spottiswoode Park Road. As they walked around the interior, Eng Hock said, “None of the locks were broken, right? Could it be an inside job? What did the autopsies says about the time of their deaths?”
“The coroner said early morning, between 2 and 5am. Why?”
“That would explain how the victims were caught in their sleep. An insider must have opened the door to let the murderers in. He could have slipped some sleeping pills into their drinks.” Eng Hock pointed to the VSOP bottles and glasses still unmoved on the lounge table.
“You could be right, Eng Hock,” Lim said. “Except for the body found inside the Mercedes, all the others were found in their beds.”
“Somebody must have seen them before they were murdered. I need all their photos to investigate that with Abdullah and Varasamy.”
“I can get you their photos by tomorrow. Come by CID at lunchtime. I’ll arrange for a monthly payment into your investigation agency’s bank account, and I’ll recommend that the $5,000 reward be given to you if no one claims it once we have cracked the case.” Lim knew that the private detectives could do a better job than he could, and wanted to offer a proper incentive for them to wrap things up quickly. He had no hesitation using the money and power at his disposal. The faster he could solve the case, the faster his career would progress; his dream was to become Police Commissioner one day.
They walked back out to the car, as Hong’s photo in the envelope rustled in Eng Hock’s pocket.
8
The Makassar Prahu
At the Three Musketeers Investigation Agency, Abdullah and Varasamy were excited at the news of their new high-profile case. Their worries about paying the increasingly expensive rent was gone.
But for now, Eng Hock wanted to concentrate on completing Aunty Tan’s request. He rang her up and quoted her the cost for sixteen hours of work. “He has no criminal record. He is of small build, just five feet two inches tall, with exceptionally long fingers. The registration for his van and bike, and his new address, are all up to date and I will include them along with the invoice. I saw him working at the pet fish shop in Geylang. If there is anything else we can do, let me know.”
“Thank you, Eng Hock. I’ll pass this to Jade. And please keep watching that boy.”
•
That evening, at her Katong apartment, Aunty Tan decided to get more personal with Big Mole. “Djalima,” she said after the English lesson, “have you ever thought about where you would like to be at my age?”
“No, I don’t think that far. I only live from day to day.” Big Mole packed her homework and a small cassette recorder—which she had bought for her English lessons, so that she could listen to them again at home—into her red cotton shoulder bag.
“Wouldn’t you like to be married and have children of your own?”
“Did you, at my age?”
“Oh yes,” the manager replied. “I married an accountant when I was 23. But we weren’t able to have children and lost interest in each other. We both ended up having affairs and then got divorced when I was 38 years old.”
“Do you have you any regrets?”
“Oh no, I had a ball after that!”
“What happened then?”
“That was when I was the assistant principal of RGS, and I met Jade at an old girls’ reunion. I was feeling old before my time, and she asked me to join her in her new fashion venture. I remember her saying, ‘This new challenge will make you young again.’ What she said changed my whole attitude towards life. I believed in her, which is why I gave up my teaching career to join her. That was five years ag
o now, and it was liberating. I felt free. And I had more fun with men after that, choosing them, rather than having them choose me. I felt more attractive, which lit a fire in me.”
“So what kind of men do you like?”
“I like a man who is healthy and vibrant, and has confidence. I can show you an example at the fancy dress party this weekend. You’ll have to tell me what you think of him.”
“I might practise my English on him.”
“But don’t you steal him from me!” the manager warned playfully.
“Ha! I might!” Big Mole giggled, and stood up to go home.
“Oh! I have something to ask before you go, Djalima.”
“What’s that?”
“Jade and I are considering having you model in Hong Kong soon. We would pay you for eight hours’ work every day while we are there. What do you think?”
Although Big Mole was excited, she kept her cool. “Is that all, for going all the way to Hong Kong?”
“Okay, on top of that, you will get an overseas allowance of an extra one hundred dollars a day, and food and accommodation will be provided. Are you happy with that?”
“I am, but I am not sure about my house. I’m not used to being away for so long with nobody at home.”
“Do you have a lot of things in your house?”
“All my things are there.”
“Why don’t you keep your things at Jade’s place while you are in Hong Kong? I am sure she wouldn’t mind.”
“Hmm, it’s too troublesome to move in and out,” Big Mole said. “I also have to let my landlord know where I am going. Can we talk about it in a few days?” Her main worry was the box of valuables buried under the house.
“You’ll have to make up your mind soon, Djalima,” the manager said. “We have to get you an international passport and book the plane ticket in advance. Can you decide by tomorrow?”
“No, not tomorrow. I must see what my landlord has to say first.”
“I understand,” the manager replied.
Big Mole left Aunty Tan’s apartment with a lot on her mind.
That night she tossed and turned, unable to stop thinking about the plastic container. What if Sachee happened to come back and catch her in the act of digging it up? She thought of going to Woodlands and giving the valuables to Kwang, but he hadn’t talked to her in months. She decided to just throw the plastic box into the Kallang River, to finally free herself from being haunted by the fear of being caught with the valuables.