Moonrise, Sunset

by Gopal Baratham

  I felt the excitement of the preset girls as I walked between them that morning. They went about their packaging silently, as always, but the tension in the air was inescapable. It caused my hair to stand on end and produced an uneasiness in the back of my neck.

  I stopped to chide a preset girl for allowing a taloned finger to protrude from her plastic glove.

  “I am sure you know that our regulations require that the food we pack is never in direct contact with skin.” She was a pretty girl who I seemed to remember as a friend of Vanita’s. I bent over to read the name-tag on her lapel. “Anita Chew, you must make sure that the protection worn is intact and that you wear gloves at all times.”

  “So we don’t leave fingerprints, yah,” she muttered before walking off to change the damaged glove.

  I ignored the impudence but hurried through my tour of inspection. The phone was ringing when I got to my office.

  “Menon,” D’Cruz asked, “what d’you think of the news in the papers?”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  “I’d like to talk to you. Put you in the picture, like.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll run down to security and get clearance…”

  “No need for that. My inspector’s uniform will get me past your bully-boys.”

  In less than an hour he was seated at my desk.

  “Tell me what the papers left out.”

  He did.

  The girls were lesbians. The butch had wanted a sex change operation so that they could be married but the doctors had refused to do this, on the grounds that she was homosexual and not transexual. I looked puzzled. He explained. “Homosexuals love their own sex. Transexuals feel that they have been given the wrong sex organs and wish these changed.” He laughed cynically. “No big difference when it comes to practical politics. This butch lady was really into love, big guy.”

  “Why d’you say that?”

  “A female to male sex-change would mean that she was prepared to give up sexual sensations altogether. And she was prepared to do this just so that she and her lady love could live openly as man and wife.”

  “I don’t get it. Won’t the doctors give her functioning sexual organs?”

  “Functioning, sure. But only for her partner. She’d get a piece of bone covered with skin and muscle stuck between her legs. A couple of plastic balls to hang below this.” He glared at the NO SMOKING sign on the wall before lighting a cigarette. “The whole caboodle would have about as much feeling as a lamb chop straight out of your deep-freeze.”

  I thought for a bit then added, “Clearly these girls had strong feelings for each other and didn’t keep this secret. Their families must have objected.”

  He shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Could these objections have been strong enough for someone to want them killed?”

  He shrugged again. “Could be. But my money’s not on that type of killing.” He began to tell me about the dead girls.

  They had been going steady from the time they were in primary school. Stella Stevens, the “male”, was Eurasian. Lee Bee Choo, the “female”, was Chinese.

  “Could there be a racial angle to the murders?”

  He shook his head. “Race only comes into cunt‘n’cock type sex. Know why, big boy?” I shook my head. “Cause that’s the kind of fucking that produces funny-looking kids.”

  “And you don’t think that anyone could have had strong enough feelings about sexual perversion to want to kill them?”

  He threw up his hands. “No. If we killed all our weirdos we’d have no one left to hate.”

  I had come, more or less, to accept that Vanita’s death was central to what was happening and that everything else would have to be linked to it. The murder of the lesbians was bewildering.

  “What connects Vanita’s murder with that of these girls?”

  “Sometimes you don’t think too good, How Kum.” It was the first time he had used my name. He stopped, resisted the temptation to pun and said, “You tell me, maestro?”

  “Nothing I can think…”

  The inspector gave in to temptation. “How Kum, you’re so stupid.” It wasn’t a good pun and he looked at me apologetically before going on. “They were killed in the same place, at about the same time. The same type of weapon was used in three of the four killings.”

  “But one of the girls had her neck broken.”

  “Sure. But that was an accident.” He lit another cigarette, aimed carefully and chucked the match into the wastepaper basket. “Poor Stella. She was a brave little soldier. Her lady love gets stabbed in the back. She jumps up to try and do something. Has to fight the bloke that did it barehanded. He still has the knife, mind you, and her breasts were slashed to shreds. I think she somehow managed to kick the knife out of his hands. It’s unarmed combat now and the bloke’s much stronger than our Stella. He gets behind her in the struggle, gets on a full-nelson and breaks her neck.”

  He stopped talking and looked at me.

  D’Cruz and I are different. As different as two people can be. But the exact scene that was being played out in my head was being played out in his.

  It is dark. The darkest of darknesses that precedes the dawn. A girl fights for her life. She is terrified. Not for herself but for her lover who lies bleeding on the ground. She knows she must get her to a doctor or the girl will die. The man is strong. He gets behind her. His hands slip under her arms, lock behind her neck and begin forcing her head downwards. She struggles but cannot free herself. She has only one thought before her neck snaps. One thought: she must save Bee Choo who is bleeding to death on the grass.

  I thought of Vanita crying out in the night when the murderer struck. I had not risen to fight her murderer as Stella had done. I had slept on as her life’s blood seeped from her body. As these thoughts passed through my mind, Vanita’s ghost joined us and sat on the desk between me and D’Cruz. The Inspector was speaking and she was agreeing vigorously with what he was saying. I noticed this and began listening myself.

  “I think that you now have begun to see that your girlfriend’s murder is the main action in this case. The rest,” he shrugged, “are sideshows, jokes, razzmatazz,” he looked worried, “or, maybe a killer gone crazy.”

  “I think I am convinced that Vanita’s death is central to the case,” I said and paused. The ghost leaned back and applauded. “And I have a rough idea as to what you want me to do.”

  “Yes, How Kum. Poke around and see what kind of fires you can start.” He seemed to look in the direction of the ghost as he said, “I did a little digging myself and came up with this priceless nugget. Seems like your friend Loong who was putting it to the victim…” He coughed apologetically. I shrugged. Vanita laughed. “Seems like this Loong had a father-in-law. And this geezer just snuffed it and left all the moola to Loong’s scrawny little wife.”

  “How did you find this out?”

  He grinned. “Twisting arms, rummaging in dirty linen, cashing in a few cheques. Call it routine police inquiries. Call it what you want. The important thing is that my sources are one hundred per cent reliable. They tell me that this Mrs Loong is so ugly that the sight of her makes you wish you were blind.” He scratched his nose thoughtfully. “I guess she’s not the kind of dame who’ll tolerate competition. The same sources tell me that if the said Mrs Loong caught her beloved spouse waving the wick anywhere outside honourable family bedroom, she’d chew it off and spit it in his face before shoving him back into the gutter in which she found him. Am I correct, How Kum?”

  I nodded and added, “There’s one other thing. If the missus does give Loong the boot there’s no way she’s going to let him get near his kids.”

  A slow smile spread across D’Cruz’s face. “I realised that Loong didn’t like sticking it into hairy legs and vice versa. Even though she held the keys to the safe, fear of her discovering that he was into extra-marital sex was no reason for murder.”

&n
bsp; “But something I said has made you change your mind?”

  “You bet your sweet life there is.” I frowned and he explained.

  “What you said about the kids, big fella. What you said about access to the kids. I got none myself, but I guess that those who do will go to some trouble to make sure that things are OK for their children. Chinkos carry this kind of thing to extremes. They think in terms of dynasties, see their children as pieces of immortality they have cornered for themselves.

  “They are fanatically proud of them and see them as the start of something that will go on for centuries. The true-blue Chink has such a strong connection with his children that he’d think nothing of murdering anyone who threatened to break it.”

  “Vanita was not the kind of girl who would have done anything to have damaged his relationship with his children.” Even as I spoke the words I felt a sharp stab of pain in my chest which expanded into a ball of agony. The thought that she should have even this kind of decency, this tiny loyalty to Loong, was unbearable. I forced myself to continue. “And if she was not going to betray him, what was the point of getting rid of her?”

  “He could not be a hundred per cent sure of that. No one can.” He lit a cigarette from the one he was smoking. “She could do it unintentionally, mention it to friends, casual like. Even make jokes about it. Then again, and this may hurt you, big guy, she could have used it as a lever to get him to do something for her. She may not have actually threatened him but, remember, the bloke is a fanatic about his kids.

  “Suddenly ugly wife comes into big bucks. Not a few K here and a few K there but the multi-millions. It’s a new ball-game as far as the future of his kids goes. We are talking Oxford and Cambridge now, we’re talking Harvard and Yale. No longer does our Chinaman see his son as, at best, becoming the Chief Medical Officer of the Toa Payoh out-patient dispensary. He sees him as a Cabinet Minister, the Secretary of State. If shit-face finds out about his black bimbo…” He stopped, coughed on his cigarette and started again. “It’s unlikely that ugly wife is going to let him be a part of all this if she knows he’s been unfaithful to her with any woman at all.”

  “You are assuming that Mrs Loong suspected something was up between her husband and Vanita and, perhaps, other…”

  “God only can guess what fart-face suspected or did not suspect. Wives generally guess more than they let on and I don’t think our boy was the kind who would take chances.”

  I thought about what the inspector was saying. Much though I wished it, I could not bring myself to believe that the supervisor had murdered Vanita.

  I said, “Surely it would have been more to the point for Loong to have got rid of his wife?”

  “Not really.” He grinned again. “Police sources inform me that on Mrs Loong’s death the money automatically passes on to one of the old man’s nephews.”

  A strange thought struck me. “There’s no possibility, Ozzie,” the inspector looked pleased at my using his first name, “that the Loongs could have been in this together to save family face or some such thing?”

  “The family that slays together stays together.” He shook his head. “The hag’s mean as miserliness and sour as sulphuric acid but she’s not the sort who gets herself mixed up in violent crime.” He stubbed out his cigarette on his shoe. The butt just made it into my wastepaper basket.

  “I also called on Symons again and put the wind up his ever-loving backside.”

  “How?”

  “I told him I didn’t think much of the alibi provided by his mother. Said I thought he had motive enough as he and the girl were after the same bloke.”

  “God. You didn’t mention me by name, did you?”

  “Didn’t need to. After flouncing around the room for a bit the bum-jumper admitted that he did fancy you but not enough to kill for, especially as you had not made up your mind as to which team you were batting for.” D’Cruz became serious. “He seemed actually relieved that I had brought you up as a reason for his wanting to kill the girl. My policeman’s nose tells me that there might be other reasons why he might want her dead. Reasons that he wouldn’t like me to get near to. I felt that my latching on to your Vanita interrupting the free flying of fairies was just the red herring he was looking for.”

  He leaned back and stretched. “I’ve done my bit. Now you go in and stir things up some more and see what comes to the surface. But before you rush off and do that, tell me what’s happening with the rest of the cast.”

  “Rest of the cast?”

  “I want to know what’s happening with the girlie’s kith and kin,” he looked into my face, “but maybe you would like to start by telling me what’s happening at home. Your home.”

  I hesitated.

  D’Cruz lit a cigarette and raised his eyebrows. I told him about Ma and Oscar being lonely without me and of the minor disruption that Vanita’s entry into my life had caused. I mentioned Oscar’s going walkabout on Friday and the fact that he had been hobnobbing with his old cronies again. I also mentioned Oscar’s strange notion of finding out something about the murders from his old friends.

  “Oscar…what did you say his name was?”

  “Wu,” I replied. “The same Wus that own the chain of department stores.”

  D’Cruz scratched his head and smiled slowly. “I think I know the guy we’re talking about. I thought the family, embarrassed by his fecklessness, not to mention his drinking, shoved him off to England in the late sixties. Now you tell me that he’s simply moved out of the Orchard Road area to downmarket Buona Vista. It’s funny that he should be involved in the case…”

  I was indignant. “Oscar has nothing to do with these murders. He’s the gentlest person I know. He couldn’t kill anybody.”

  “The second son of the Wu family is rich enough to buy anything he wants, murder included. But he needn’t even have had to buy someone. Your Uncle Oscar has a reputation for being a nice guy. Always going out of his way to help this or that bit of riff-raff who found trouble for himself. There must be many hit men in town who owe him and will be only too happy to let him cash one of his cheques.”

  I laughed out loud. “You’re not seriously suggesting that Oscar is involved in Vanita’s murder, are you?”

  “I’m not saying that any of the characters we talked about is. But I’m not saying that they are not either.” He reached over and touched my hand. “We’ll let Oscar rest till he returns from his walkabout. I’m sure he will have something that will surprise us all. Tell me more about the girlie’s family.”

  I talked about the old man’s involvement in religion and of his son’s mockery. I told him about Kishore. Then I remembered the seance that was planned for the evening.

  The inspector leaned forward, all alert. It may have been my imagination but his ears seemed to twitch. “Whatever you do, don’t miss the ghost party this evening. Do exactly as they ask but keep your wits about you. Under no circumstances must you accept any food or drink they offer.”

  “Are you afraid this Kishore might try to poison me?”

  “No. But he’s not the sort of bloke who’d hesitate to spike your beer with some mind-blowing drug so you heard and saw things the way he wanted you to.” He thought for a bit. “I would like to know details of what happens at this seance and the order in which they happen. I don’t think much of ghosties but I like to keep tabs on crooks and cranks who raise spirits and especially how they go about the business.”

  He stood up. “There’s one more thing. This Kishore is bound to have something of a surprise for all of you or he wouldn’t be holding the party. He’s going to make a ghost materialise. How I don’t know. When the girl’s spirit does make its presence known I want you to remember to ask it who did the murders and why.”

  I had planned all along to do this but was reassured that D’Cruz and I were still on the same course. “I did think of doing that,” I said. I hesitated before I asked, “You don’t think that there might be something to this ghost-raising bus
iness do you? That this Kishore might in fact be able to communicate with the dead?”

  D’Cruz laughed. “My God, no. I’m an old-fashioned Catholic and believe that the Almighty has the good sense to keep the dead to himself.” He grinned. “At least till Judgement Day.

  “What you will be hearing or seeing at this seance will be coming from Kishore. He’s a conman and he’s on the inside, as far as the Sundrams are concerned, and I’d like to know what might be in it for him. I’d also like to know how his plans affect the rest of the cast.”

  The inspector stamped on his cigarette. He had difficulty bending over to pick up the butt so he kicked it into the far corner of the room. “Even the most civic-minded of citizens occasionally litter,” he muttered as he left.

  I was brooding on the questions I would ask Vanita and the order in which I should do this when Loong came in. He sniffed, looked at the NO SMOKING sign and sniffed again before speaking.

  “I have come to speak in private, Menon,” he said, pulling up a chair.

  I shrugged. “As long as you don’t expect me to conceal any crime you may have committed, Loong.” I was gratified by his look of alarm.

  He laughed in the way that Chinamen are supposed to when they are hiding something. “No crime, Menon. Maybe a minor indiscretion only.” His manner became obsequious. “You know my son, En Lai. He is sitting for O-level exams this year. En Lai has good brain like father but not fully matured yet. So exam results at the end of year may not be good enough to secure a place in Junior College.”

  I had opted out of the Singapore educational system a decade ago but remembered it well. It was a system that was competitive and unforgiving. If Loong’s son did badly in his O-levels, he would not be given a second chance. He would be debarred from entering a Junior College, which was the only way of gaining admission to a Singapore university. I understood the supervisor’s problem but did not see how it had anything to do with me, still less with the murders.