Waiting for Venus - A Novel

by Robert Cooper

  K nips off the light. We all run into the kitchen, pull down our stockings and look out from the darkness. The girl trips over K’s black-bag burglar’s kit in her haste to pick up the phone. It’s Venus: two rings, hang up, ring again; Chin has left the studios. Wrapped in a towel, the girl says ‘Hello’ into the receiver then drops it back in place. That she does not notice the vandalism is almost unbelievable. She steps over the black bag without giving it a glance and returns to the bathroom leaving the light on. I am holding the snout of quivering Barnaby. From a distant darkness we can hear a Japanese accent call, ‘Rook out. Girl come. Rook out.’

  K the gang leader looks resigned. ‘We’ve found nothing and Chin’s on the way. Time we’re off.’

  We retreat towards the back door. ‘Come on Barns,’ I sigh. Barnaby is whining beneath a table set against the wall and covered with a table cloth that reaches to the ground. I look underneath. ‘Nothing here but the smell of cats. Come on, Barns.’ I drag her out by the hind legs. She digs her claws into the wooden floor and leaves little tracks to mark her unwilling departure. ‘Not now, Barns, for Christ’s sake. For once be a good dog.’

  Barnaby is not known to respond to entreaties to be a good dog. She breaks free and disappears completely under the table. ‘Leave her,’ says our leader.

  ‘Fine. I might as well leave a calling card and a signed confession.’ I pull the table away from the wall to get at Barns. At this stage, I am not beyond a little corporal punishment in the recipient’s best interests; after all, this is Singapore.

  K is opening the backdoor when I stop him. ‘Look. K. David. Look.’

  K gapes inside his stocking. Words elude this minor thespian of the Singapore stage. David stands in for him. ‘A safe. Who would have thought of a safe?’

  K lifts his stocking onto the forehead, a signal for us all to follow suit, and finds his voice. ‘Obviously not you, Nincompoop. A nice discovery that does us no good at all since we left the gelignite behind.’

  ‘What we need is a safe cracker,’ David says.

  ‘No doubt,’ breaths K. ‘I regret the subject was not covered at Oxford. Did either of you pick up the art at your red-brick universities?’

  Ignoring K’s pinprick sarcasm, David asks, ‘How thick is the wall?’

  ‘Not as thick as your head,’ K rejoins.

  ‘David’s got a point,’ I reason. ‘Either the safe is a very thin one or it sticks out the other side.’

  ‘I can’t see what difference it makes, since we can’t open it anyway,’ K grumbles. ‘But if it’s going to make you happy, go back into Chin’s study and look at the thing’s backside. But hurry it.’

  Barnaby hurries it. A leg-splaying run into the study, a scamper through the exam papers and a skidding charge at a corner table. She sinks her teeth into a long cloth that covers a small table and snaps her head to one side. I catch a crystal vase of plastic flowers just before it hits the ground. A cat runs out. Barnaby ignores it. The corner table stands naked, and it’s not a corner table anymore. It’s the backside of the safe.

  David runs his long, thin fingers along the welded edge of the safe and immediately wipes away his prints with K’s kerchief. ‘These seams aren’t all that strong,’ he states as if he knows what he’s talking about. ‘They are supposed to be encased in cement, not just sticking out naked from the wall and covered with a table cloth.’

  ‘Now how, I wonder, did you come by that information?’ K leers. ‘Don’t bother to answer unless you can open those flimsy seams with a Swiss army knife. Now let’s get out of here while we still can.’

  ‘I saw it in a James Bond movie. You cover the safe with a silk bedspread and chisel away at the seam.’

  ‘A silk bedspread? Thai silk or Chinese? Any particular motif?’ K’s sarcasm is never subtle.

  ‘There’s a silk bedspread on Chin’s bed,’ I say. ‘A nice heron motif for long life, luck and happy nesting.’

  ‘Happy nesting, eh? Doesn’t seem to have worked, ha ha.’

  ‘Come on K,’ David appeals. ‘Why not give it a try?’

  ‘I’d happily give anything a try. Well, almost anything. But we don’t have time to lark around with silk bedspread magic tricks.’

  ‘It won’t take long,’ David whines.

  ‘How long?’ asks K, resolve on the wane.

  ‘Only two minutes.’

  ‘Two minutes?’ K repeats in disbelief.

  ‘In the movie …’ David explains.

  I fetch the bedspread, fold the herons several times and lay the pretty padding on the safe’s seam. In David’s movie it no doubt deadened the noise of a safe being smashed open. K stands sledge in hands.

  A car’s headlights flash on the shutters. A car’s engine approaches, slows and goes past. ‘Okay, it’s Venus in the Starlet.’ I say. ‘Chin can’t be far behind, so let’s get on with it.’

  David has the six-inch chisel in place on the welded seam of the safe, his long fingers clutch the cold steel lovingly. ‘Right,’ he says, ‘when I nod my head, you hit it.’

  ‘A blow for Bernard’s revenge,’ K sings out dramatically and much too loudly as he swings the hammer to connect precisely with the head of the chisel. The chisel slices nicely through the layers of silk herons and bounces off the safe. David holds onto it bravely; I feel his fingers stinging. A resounding clang echoes through the house and the bathroom door opens.

  ‘Is anybody there?’ the maid calls out in Mandarin. I hold Barnaby’s snout tightly closed to silence the reply I can feel swelling in her throat.

  ‘Stockings down,’ whispers K and we dutifully roll down our foot and thigh.

  The girl continues to call out. I can’t make out what she says. From outside comes a dolorous, ‘Rook out’. The door opens and the girl comes two steps into the study.

  The sight of three masked men and a dog take an eternity to register. The girl blinks. We all look at her as she looks at us: stupidly. In baggy Chinese pyjamas, her hair wet and long, she looks little more than a child. Barnaby, fortunately, has her wits about her and lunges. The girl screams and turns to run.

  The full force of an overweight Barnaby bowls Chin’s maid across the room. I wince as the girl’s face strikes the door with her cute little snub nose, causing her only means of escape to slam shut. She turns her eyes from the barred fangs and presses herself against the door as flat as she can, which is very flat indeed.

  David throws a string of deep-gutter Hokkien obscenities at the poor girl. I have no idea where he gets such words. I don’t understand them and I doubt the girl does but the tone alone threatens a multitude of very nasty things if she doesn’t shut her mouth and keep it shut.

  ‘Was there a Chinese maid in your movie?’ K asks David.

  ‘No, just some massive Japanese butler with a killer bowler hat who smashes his way through the wall.’

  ‘Can’t quite see Tosh in that role,’ quips K, preparing to strike his second blow for Bernard’s revenge.

  The need for stealth has gone. The silk bedspread is cast aside and K strikes with the full force of his considerable muscle. David winces but holds onto the chisel. The risk of an irreparably broken hand mixes with the smell of masculine sweat and the danger he shares with his hero. David is visibly more excited with every swing that K makes; I swear he’s enjoying it.

  ‘Let’s hope there’s something in this fucking thing,’ K gasps between blows.

  Worn over the face, nylon feet and thigh get indescribably sweaty in the tropics, unlike balaclava helmets. The sweat pools and dribbles where it can. My eyes are stinging. The chisel head and David’s hand are a blur to me. By luck or judgment, K distinguishes them and strikes with force, blow upon blow until a crack opens along the seam. And David the nincompoop drops the chisel into the crack and sucks his fingers.

  ‘Jemmy! I need a jemmy,’ K calls over his shoulder like a surgeon asking for a scalpel. He is now fanatically involved; the safe is a challenge to him and K would see us all in Changi
Prison before he gives up.

  ‘Jemmy?’ I query, being unfamiliar with larcenist jargon. ‘Can’t you wait until we get home?’

  ‘Jemmy! Not jimmy! I could have an effing jimmy right here and nobody would notice. I need a lever. A crowbar.’ K is yelling. How am I supposed to know what a jemmy is? If he wants a crowbar, why not say so? Anyway, the chances of finding a crowbar in Chin’s study are as likely as finding a good book.

  ‘The golf clubs,’ K cries in exasperation. ‘In the corner, dumbo.’

  A gleaming new set of golf clubs. Virgin heads sealed in moulded plastic, unkissed by any ball, untested on any green. They stand hugging each other like a group of pretty monarchists awaiting their turn at the guillotine, their heads poking proudly up from a tumbrel propped in the corner near the door beside the petrified maid. They are about to do a far, far better thing than they ever might have done in the hands of Harry Chin.

  The girl shudders as I reach around her to select a putter. Battered to Death by a Golf Club – the headlines of fear in her young eyes. I’d feel sorry for her but don’t have time.

  K grabs the putter from my hand, inserts the head into the cracked seam and puts his weight on the handle. The head snaps off as easily as an Indian matchstick and clangs onto the chisel inside the safe. Another. It too is cleanly decapitated. Made in China. The third one puts up more resistance. Both K and David jump on it. The crack in the seam of the safe widens a bit before the shaft slowly bends. I am ready with the fourth. This one also bends, but in bending opens the gap wide enough for David to get his skinny arm into the back of the safe. The girl begins to sob uncontrollably. Barnaby stops growling and licks her hand. The girl shrieks.

  ‘Keep the wench quiet,’ K yells. ‘Sing to her or something’.

  ‘Sing?’

  ‘Sing!’ yells K.

  David’s lean hand pulls out a bundle of money. He tosses it to me and I hold it out to the girl, hoping the sight of loot will calm her down. She turns, looks up at my masked face and begins to beg for mercy, terror in her eyes. Silly kid. I am holding out to her more money than she might ever see in her life. Well, want it or not, she’s going to get it. As her tears flow I reach for her pyjama top and drop the money into her slight cleavage. Her body is fear-rigid. I try to make a reassuring don’t-worry-everything-will-be-all-right type smile, although it probably doesn’t come through the stocking the way it leaves my lips. She shudders again. Lucky I didn’t sing to her.

  Barnaby bounds across the room as David’s hand pulls out the manuscript. She looks about to eat it in her attempt to get to Bernard. ‘This it?’ K asks me. I nod. K throws the prize into the black bag along with the sledge hammer and orders an immediate retreat.

  ‘Just a minute,’ says David, pulling out a cloth-wrapped bundle; he drops it in the bag.

  Three sweaty masked men and a hound coming towards her to get at the door is the last straw for the girl. She screams hysterically; worse than Agnes. K brushes her from the door. He hands me the black bag and remains those vital seconds to take the key from inside the back door and lock it from the outside, delaying pursuit or entry and totally confusing detective Madhu as to how the villains entered and left with all windows shuttered and all doors dead-locked.

  Repeated screams pierce the night. As I leave Chin’s house and run along the dark back path, I see the Guild House lawyers spilling drunkenly onto the road to save a maiden in distress. Shadowy figures are pounding at Chin’s front door and landing karate kicks at the louvred shutters. For the second time, Madhu will find himself first at the scene of the crime.

  * * *

  Venus is waiting in the flat as we troop silently in through the kitchen and turn off the kitchen light. ‘Out of those clothes and under the shower,’ she orders. I tuck the manuscript among some large-size volumes on my bookcase, where it looks happily at home. The girl’s still screaming. If she was frightened by us, she’ll be terrified when a dozen drunken Tamils led by Madhu smash into the house to rescue her.

  K showers first while David looks on, ignoring K’s advice to paint his scratches with iodine. Then I shower, while David looks on. Then David showers while K goes to select the least unacceptable items of my limited wardrobe and I go to rejoin Venus.

  Only when we are all sitting around the whisky bottle and ice bucket and Venus has taken the black bag, sweaty clothes and nylon masks and dumped everything into a bath full of soapy water, does anybody think to ask what’s become of Toshi. He never entered Chin’s house and he must have had the sense to clear out at the sound of trouble. Should we include him in our alibi? We decide that unless he shows up, we haven’t seen him.

  Ra’mad pokes his head around the front door, which I have for the first time since the super’s warning deliberately left open. ‘There’s an awful racket coming from Chin’s place. Can’t you hear the screaming?’

  K replies cordially. ‘Afraid we’ve been too engrossed in a discussion of Nietzsche. Now you mention it, yes, there does seem to be something going on down at the acting dean’s. What’s Chin up to now? Torturing a student, I suppose. Anyway, none of our business, is it? Would you like to join us, Ra’mad? Orange juice, perhaps?’

  ‘No, thank you all the same. I think I’ll just pop along and see what it’s all about. Never know like, I might be able to help. Sounds like somebody needs a sedative.’

  When Ra’mad has gone to dispense sedatives, K raises his glass. ‘Here’s to the successful caper of the Neckerchief Gang and the release of the manuscript from false imprisonment.’

  ‘Oh, blimey,’ says David, glass frozen at his lips. ‘I’ve just remembered. The chisel’s still there in the bleedin’ safe. It’s covered in my prints.’

  27

  Three Men and a Dog

  ‘MADHU. GREAT TO see you. Get in here and grab a glass.’ Madhu smiles like a little boy who finds himself wanted rather than simply tolerated. K draws him into our circle.

  Barnaby is pushed off her armchair and the cushion turned. Madhu is centre stage. ‘There’s trouble at Chin’s. The super said to ask if you noticed anything out of the ordinary and …’

  ‘Check our alibis?’ K completes Madhu’s sentence.

  ‘… look around the flat to see if anything looks odd. But I suppose there’s no harm checking alibis while I’m here.’

  ‘We’ve all been here together,’ K begins. Madhu takes out a notebook and pencil from his tote bag, leaving it open and empty.

  ‘Where’s your gun, Madhu?’ I ask.

  ‘The super suggested I leave it at home when not on duty.’

  ‘So, you’re not on duty now?’ K plops in.

  ‘Well, yes and no. I am on duty now but I wasn’t on duty then.’

  ‘When’s then?’ K’s easy nothing-to-hide banter suggests a confidence I do not share. Surely the maid recognised Barnaby – who was not wearing a stocking – and there’s that damning chisel covered with fingerprints. Everybody on campus was fingerprinted after Bernard’s death – how long will it take to link the chisel to David?

  ‘Then is when I left home and in the Guild House bar. I came on duty when a crime occurred.’

  ‘An automatic cop. Turns on when crime occurs. I like it. Should save the taxpayer money.’ K never takes his ex-student very seriously. ‘What’s the problem this time? Chin strung himself up from a chandelier in a look-alike suicide? Or something serious?’

  Madhu’s dusky face creases up. He’s obviously had a few already and the large whisky K pours him should maintain his good humour. ‘Nothing like that. There’s a team at Chin’s house now going through things but it seems clear enough it was a simple robbery. Three men got in and attacked the safe. They stole a lot of money. They also tried to rape the maid but her screaming alerted us at Guild House and we scared them off.’

  ‘You saw them, then?’ David enquires with an edge of nervousness to his voice.

  ‘No, they went out the back way, the maid said. They must have passed your flat. Did you
see anything?’

  ‘What do they look like?’ I questioned in reply.

  ‘Three men and a dog. Hey, you’re three men and a dog. Lucky you don’t look anything like the girl’s description. She says all three were massive great Sikhs who wore turbans and beards and spoke their strange language – she heard a couple of them say Sing – and the dog was a male bloodhound with a big red dick. That lets you out as suspects, but a trio of club-wielding Sikhs and a randy bloodhound should be recognisable. Can’t imagine them getting far.’

  David laughs. ‘Sounds like a traveling circus …’

  K interrupts David, ‘It’s pretty hard to mistake a Sikh. You can rest assured we would have noticed three of them. And probably Barnaby would have lifted her head if a horny bloodhound passed within a hundred metres. She’s neutered but has a good memory.’

  ‘Right. And you’ve been here all evening? Nobody go out for a time?’

  ‘Sitting right here, Madhu,’ K continues. ‘Discussing Nietzsche and whether Singapore might best be typified as one of Nietzsche’s caves where the shadow of a dead God might still be seen or as the cradle of the new Ubermenschen.’

  ‘How do you spell that?’ asks Madhu, pencil at paper.

  ‘U-b-e …’

  ‘No, the other thing.’

  ‘Nietzsche?’ K spells it and Madhu writes the strange name down.

  ‘You noticed nothing odd. Sat here talking about … God and Singapore. And nothing unusual in the flat?’

  ‘You’d best look for yourself, Madhu,’ I invite him. ‘If there are three rampant Sikhs hiding under my bed with their bloodhound, I’d rather you find them than me.’

  Madhu strolls into the kitchen as coolly as possible. I follow. ‘If I were you, I’d lock that back door.’ Madhu is not me, but I lock it and he seems pleased. We pass into the back bedroom which saw so much activity earlier and Madhu looks under the bed and into the wardrobe. ‘Hello! A Uher. Haven’t seen one of those for years.’