Waiting for Venus - A Novel

by Robert Cooper

  ‘My wife died in the night you see,’ Ra’mad complains, ‘but the hospital only thought to tell me twelve hours after she died. They came out with some nonsense about not being able to get in touch with me. But they managed to get in touch with the superintendent quickly enough. And he just orders an autopsy without a by-your-leave. Can you imagine?’

  Venus looks unsure if she is to imagine or not to imagine and settles for a little tut to indicate general disapproval. I can’t manage even a tut. A husband who passes his time poisoning his best friends, all of them rats, steps out of the Sunday morning routine and visits his wife on a weekday evening a few hours before she dies and nasty Wong orders an autopsy; appalling. The image of Ra’mad holding the dead Snow comes into my mind and stays there; funny Ra’mad never mentioned his wife’s departure this morning.

  Ra’mad hesitates. He wants to complain but not complain too much, an understandable position in 1980 Singapore. ‘What gets me, you see, is the attitude of that superintendent. I’ve been home all morning. He didn’t even bother to give me a call. I had no idea my dear wife had gone.’ So, if he can be believed, Ra’mad didn’t know his wife was dead when he sent Snow to join her.

  ‘But the autopsy?’ Venus coaxes. ‘Do you know the findings?’

  ‘That’s the ridiculous thing. The initial autopsy showed traces of all the drugs that the home was treating her with. Well it would, wouldn’t it? It seems one of the drugs found in my wife was the same as the drug that killed Professor Fox, or knocked him out or whatever. Since the Home was prescribing the drug, you would think the police would question the doctor. But that superintendent, without a by-your-leave orders a full autopsy and sends Madhu to grill me.’

  Toshi appears from the kitchen and stands in the doorway. The avid learner of English is trying to follow the conversation. He frowns. I know today David-san is teaching him the special language of the fucking kitchen. If he understands correctly, Toshi’s face tells me, the police in this country have grilled the good doctor. No doubt Toshi finds this form of interrogation very passé. The image forms in my mind of Ra’mad spread-eagled over charcoal brassieres as Madhu fires questions in Ra’mad’s ear and fans the coals.

  ‘According to Madhu, the sedative found in Professor Fox and in my wife was the same as one I use in my experiments. That’s hardly reason for police to enter my flat and seize my drugs. I am a certified research chemist. My work depends on drug availability.’

  ‘You keep a supply of the drug?’ Venus keeps the incredulity low in her tone. She is the only one prepared to humour Ra’mad further. The rest of us have already found him guilty: the wife-killer chemist.

  ‘Quite legally, yes. Every gram under lock and key with its use accounted for in my logbook. As I pointed out to Wong yesterday, the only quantity that went out of my flat was that given to the Chins. If the police want to float accusations of murder, they could begin with Chin, not me.’

  Venus, perplexed or playing at being perplexed: ‘But, Doctor Ra’mad, why would Doctor Chin kill your wife?’

  Ra’mad looks at Venus as if he cannot blame her for being stupid, she is a woman after all. ‘Oh. Not my wife. My wife died of natural causes. I’m talking about the death of Professor Fox.’

  ‘Ah, you think Doctor Chin might have had something to do with the professor’s death?’ Venus plays the dumb woman so well I’m not sure she’s playing.

  ‘Of course, he does, Venus dear,’ K butts in. ‘It doesn’t take a genius to connect Chin to Bernard’s murder but Superintendent Wong is more interested in what music young Haddock played on the night of the murder. Went on and on about it this morning. Practically accused me of killing Bernard because I wasn’t sure I could remember all of Haddock’s weird taste in music. Gave me a real grilling.’

  Toshi frowns again. These Singapore policemen seem to be grilling all round. He looks from Ra’mad to K, perhaps searching for visible scars.

  Venus opens her mouth to speak, but K has the bit between his teeth and is galloping into the jungle. ‘The police have been grilling practically everybody.’ Toshi looks positively alarmed. K continues in his thespian tone of self-indignation. ‘Wong more or less called me a liar to my face.’

  ‘More, or less?’ I ask sarcastically. ‘Did he really call you a liar?’

  ‘Not in so many words.’

  ‘Pity.’

  ‘I appreciate your sense of humour, Haddock,’ K says in a tone implying the opposite. ‘But it looks like everybody except Chin is getting the treatment. David has been told to be at home for interview tonight. I’m sure he’ll be grilled in the same way. The police will probably even roast Toshi if they find him in the Mess.’

  ‘Roast Toshi and grilled David, quite a menu.’ I can’t resist. ‘I suppose Haddock will be battered and fried in oil.’ Toshi’s face is white. I turn to Ra’mad. ‘So, you think Chin’s Bernard’s killer?’ I bowl the question towards Ra’mad. It is caught midfield by K.

  ‘Yep. I’ll lay it on Chin. Chin wanted to be dean and supports the campus move to that wasteland.’ At K’s words, Ra’mad winces. Few have been more vocal than Ra’mad in supporting the new National University location. Ra’mad’s views on relocation are identical to those of Chin, although their motives for supporting the move are not. Chin supports it because he’s for all officially-sanctioned plans. Should the plan change, Chin’s views change to fit. Ra’mad, on the other hand, believes the move signals an upgrade. Chin acts like most academics in following the winds of change. If wanting to be dean and supporting relocation indicates Bernard’s killer, then nine out of ten of Singapore’s academics are suspects.

  K then clutches at the weakest straw. ‘And there’s Barnaby,’ he says. Barns raises her head at the sound of her name. ‘Bernard’s dog is always chasing Chin’s fancy cats.’

  ‘So, Chin killed Bernard to protect his cats against Barnaby?’ I speak as flippantly as K’s line of prosecution merits. Barnaby, at repeated mention of her name and the total abandonment of discursive logic, withdraws with a shake of the head into the kitchen.

  ‘Whose side you on then, matey?’ David fires at me. ‘Chin had the opportunity. Chin lives right next door. Chin could have known Bernard’s housekeeper was away and he would not be disturbed in his dastardly deeds.’

  ‘The super made precisely the same points about me,’ I throw in. ‘And most of them, plus some, could be made against any of us here.’

  ‘Yep, maybe,’ says K, ‘but the important thing is: we didn’t do it. So, Chin must have done it.’

  ‘There’s more,’ says Ra’mad loudly and pauses to signal a big revelation coming. Surprisingly, Ra’mad introduces a note of sanity into the Kangaroo Court. ‘Chin had access to the sedative that knocked out Bernard Fox and his dog because I gave it to his wife and noted down in my log exactly how much I gave. Some four weeks ago it was. Agnes came to me and asked for something to keep the cats quiet on the twelve-hour drive to Ipoh. Twenty-four hours that drive is, there and back. A quantity to put those cats out of action for twenty-four hours would be more than enough to knock out a man and his dog, if you see what I mean?’

  ‘I do,’ I say. ‘But can you imagine Chin being physically and mentally up to murder?’ I pose the question and it draws a vacuum of silence quickly filled by K.

  ‘You have a point there. Loathsome fellow that he be, it’s hard to imagine Chin having the nerve for premeditated murder … on his own. Perhaps he had help.’

  ‘Such as?’ Venus chips in.

  ‘Agnes,’ K chips back. ‘She’s a strong wench; perhaps she’s the driving force behind Chin’s ambitions. A real Lady Macbeth that one.’

  ‘Come on, K, you can’t be serious.’ The image of my lady of lonely orchids is in my mind. ‘Agnes might be a Madame Bovary but she’s no Lady Macbeth.’

  ‘As you will, Haddock. But both women drove their husbands to desperation. Yes, perhaps you’re right, ha ha ha. Doctor Bovary maimed by incompetence. I can see the incompetent
Chin doing by accident what he wouldn’t dare do by design.’

  Venus, having never read Madame Bovary, looks unpleased with my defence of Agnes, bestows a smile on K and purses her lips; three actions in such rapid succession she must have practised in a mirror. ‘Aren’t we forgetting the important thing?’ She speaks quietly and calmly. Another one of those pauses. We all wait to hear what the important thing is – just about everything unimportant has been thrown into the witches’ pot, a spicing of something important can do no harm. ‘If it were Chin, how would he get the professor and Barnaby to swallow the knockout drug? It’s not as if the two of them were neighbours who dropped in on each other for tea.’

  This has everybody stumped except Ra’mad, the expert on poisons. ‘Perhaps Fox’s housekeeper is involved. She could easily have put it in his dinner and in the dog’s food. Who knows what went on in that house? An attractive Malay girl and an old Englishman; perhaps she couldn’t take his abuse anymore, so killed him and fled the country.’

  ‘Don’t forget, Doctor Ra’mad,’ says Venus. ‘Professor Fox was Singaporean, not English. And the housekeeper disappeared before his death.’

  Ra’mad then lapses into the academic’s disease of defending his thesis past reasonable refutation. ‘How do we know when she went away? Even if she is away, she might have left something behind for Fox to eat, in the fridge like. I heard Fox died after eating a steak and kidney pie. She knew she would be far away when he ate it, the perfect alibi.’ K and David nod like donkeys.

  ‘Cunning,’ I speak acidly – the rat-poisoner is accusing my cousin of killing her father. ‘The housekeeper sedates Bernard long range with a steak and kidney pie and Chin keeps popping his head around Bernard’s door to see if he is ready for the noose.’

  Toshi enters, cutting short a dialogue that has outlived itself. Barnaby frisks around his legs in delight as he places a large steaming tray in the middle of the table. We stare at it.

  ‘Runch,’ says Toshi.

  Venus looks dubious. Before her is not the fine Japanese cuisine she loves. ‘What is it?’ she asks, trying to sound polite.

  Toshi swells with pride and declares: ‘Steak and kidney pie.’

  * * *

  The superintendent’s car pulls up outside my windows but he hasn’t come for lunch. We sit in silence, expecting him to appear through the open front door; he doesn’t. We hear his shoes click up the tiled stairs of the hollow stairwell and the bell sound on Ra’mad’s door overhead. ‘Maybe there’s news about your wife, Doctor Ra’mad,’ Venus suggests as Ra’mad’s face registers suppressed alarm.

  ‘Or maybe it’s time for another grilling,’ K adds unhelpfully.

  Ra’mad is still. But evading the long arm of the law is not so easy. The bell upstairs stops ringing. The click of shoes marks the super’s descent and in he walks. ‘Ah there you are, Doctor Ra’mad. I wonder if I might have a word. In your flat.’

  Ra’mad rises sheepishly, a bit like Barnaby when she has done something naughty. ‘We’ll keep you some pie,’ K calls after him.

  David nods me toward the kitchen. ‘Look matey, chances are Ra’mad’s kitchen door’s open. If we go up the back stairs, we’ll hear every word.’

  ‘Despicable, David. Fiendishly cunning. Well done, indeed.’ Barns looks torn between joining us and staying where the food is; no contest. David and I climb the stairs dog-less.

  * * *

  Ra’mad’s kitchen door is wide open. We creep in like a couple of ninjas. The flat is the precise image of mine, except his kitchen is dominated by a huge padlocked fridge with ‘poison’ written on the door. Rats in cages sniff at intruders.

  ‘It must be about the death of my poor wife,’ I hear Ra’mad say sadly.

  ‘No,’ replies the super, sounding for the first time like a tough cop. ‘It’s about the death of Bernard Fox and Harry Chin’s father.’

  ‘Harry Chin’s father? That’s going back a bit, isn’t it? Would you like an orange juice? There’s some fresh in the fridge.’

  ‘No. The death – murder – of Chin’s father takes us back to the end of World War II, but the case has never been closed. Chin Senior was hanged after being tortured and forced to swallow a massive dose of opium that might have killed him before his head entered the noose. The similarity with the death of Bernard Fox is obvious.’

  ‘Maybe so. But that was surely before your time on the force?’

  ‘Before I joined the police, yes. But there are a lot of confidential files dating from that period that remain active, including one on you, Doctor Ra’mad.’

  David grips my arm. I’d love to see Ra’mad’s face but don’t dare poke my head around the kitchen door. I imagine chocolate draining white. Ra’mad’s voice sinks so low I strain to hear his answer. ‘I wouldn’t know about that. I suppose the police have their job to do. I wouldn’t know about your files.’

  ‘But I do, Doctor Ra’mad. Or should I call you Ali Ridzuan?’

  ‘Lots of us took aliases during the war, Superintendent. I did so in the hope the Japanese would not connect me with Ra’mad who had studied in England and returned in 1944, landed secretly in Johor and crossed into Singapore with the idea of grouping Malays for an uprising to coincide with an allied attack.’

  ‘Others don’t give you such a noble role,’ the super says sharply.

  ‘I’m not sure I care for your tone,’ says Ra’mad, sounding politely indignant. ‘And that has nothing to do with the death of my poor wife. I’m going into the kitchen to get a drink.’

  ‘You sit down!’ The super almost shouts and I imagine Ra’mad sits down pretty smartly. ‘And since there is nobody to hear us and this is off record, I can tell you I don’t give a damn if you care for my tone. Either we have our talk here or at Police Headquarters. It’s all the same to me.’

  ‘There’s no need to get confrontational, is there now? I’m always willing to help the police.’

  ‘Like you did in Wales?’

  ‘You’ve lost me, Superintendent.’

  ‘Janet Jones. Suffocated in her sleep after taking a sleeping draft. You were living with her. Slipped out of the country damn fast, lah. Paid your passage on a cargo ship to Ceylon, connected with the anti-British forces there, slipped into India and made your way to Burma, from where you took a boat to Singapore with the blessing of the Japanese. Don’t give me crap about working with the British forces. We know you were wanted by the British police.’

  ‘I never killed Janet. It was her husband. He came back in the middle of the night. She’d told me he was already dead, killed at Dunkirk. I ran out of the house leaving him inside. Anyway, that’s all long ago.’

  ‘Yes, Ali. Long ago. Not much chance of British justice catching up with you now, is there, Ali?’

  ‘Why do you keep calling me Ali? I’ve told you that was a pseudonym adopted during the war.’

  ‘Adopted when? Precisely when? Before you left the UK? When the ship docked in Ceylon? In Burma?’

  ‘All right. I changed my name to Ali before getting on the ship to Ceylon and used Ali in Malaya.’

  ‘Not in Wales?’

  ‘I took the ship from Southampton in England.’

  ‘You enrolled in Aberystwyth University as Ali. Your first degree is in the name Ali. Stop playing games with me or I’ll arrest you for your wife’s death. Even if that one was a mercy killing, the result will be the same. In Singapore, killers hang. Tell me the truth!’

  ‘All right, Superintendent,’ says Ra’mad, a resigned whine in his voice. ‘You are right, I was born Ali Ridzuan and went to the UK under that name. That doesn’t change the facts of my life in Wales. It’s as I told you, I swear it. I changed my name to Ra’mad to avoid that raging husband. I left as soon as he turned up. There was no reason to stay, I’d got my degree. I didn’t even know Janet was dead until the war was over. I took a cargo ship to Ceylon using the name Ra’mad. It was my grandfather’s name. My father was Ridzuan Ra’mad. I kept the name Ra’mad bin Ra�
��mad after the Japanese left Singapore because I had signed on for a doctorate in that name with Hull University. They had a special programme and grants for ex-servicemen after the war.’

  ‘Ex-serviceman? You?’

  ‘Well, not in the sense of regular army. But I was able to give the British forces useful information on the Japanese in 1945 and they showed appreciation with a grant.’

  ‘And you showed your appreciation by conspiring to sabotage the Malayan Federation before it got started.’

  ‘I opposed the idea of a Federation at the time. But not once it became reality. I have never been disloyal. I just wanted a greater Malaya. One that included all the British, Dutch and Portuguese colonies. At the time the colonists were coming back and I thought we should unite with our Indonesian brothers against imperialism.’

  ‘From a fishing town in Yorkshire!’

  ‘Times were complicated, Superintendent. And I needed to further my education to serve my country after its birth pangs.’

  ‘You spent three years back in the UK and returned to Singapore only after Chin Peng had taken to the jungle to oppose the Malayan Federation. With Chin Peng out of the way and the worst of the revenge killings over, you felt safer returning to Singapore than remaining in a country where you were wanted by the police who might at any time connect Ali and Ra’mad.’

  ‘I just don’t get you, I’m afraid. One minute you are accusing me of conspiring to sabotage the Federation and the next you are implying that I fled Malaya to avoid revenge by those trying to sabotage the Federation.’

  ‘I would call that covering your bets. You worked with the Japanese and against them by helping Chin Jin-Hui – Harry Chin’s father – to pass information to Chin Peng in the Malayan jungle. And along with the information went funds to support Chin Peng’s operations – although you never passed over very much of what you collected, did you?’

  ‘That was a lie put about by Chin Jin-Hui in 1945. He blamed me for stealing Chin Peng’s funds to cover the fact that he stole it. Chin Peng chose to believe his clan relative against a Malay. Jin-Hui managed to save his neck, but only until the Japanese surrendered. During those lawless days between the Japanese surrender and the return of British forces, Chin Peng worked out that Jin-Hui had been betraying him for years and justice was done.’