Surrogate Protocol

by Tham Cheng-E

  She tipped another heap of persimmons back into the crate and there she remained; tolerating their poisonous reproach, breathing, repressing her responses. Beside her Poppy stood with his jaw ajar, drool leaking from it. Over the unceasing barrage of curses she went calmly over to a public tap and rinsed her hands. Then she took out her purse and scattered a few crumpled notes over the ruined fruits before grabbing Poppy’s hand and dragging him away.

  “Hoey hai sor geh! Soey zai!” said a reedy, vindictive voice from behind them.

  A persimmon left Hannah’s hand and found its way onto the woman’s face, splattering on impact. The audience laughed.

  The shock rendered the wife speechless and the husband marched from his stall to deliver a slap across Hannah’s face. She saw it coming and received it without a wince. The smack rang loud and stilled the crowd, and her stolidity surprised the assailant. He drew up to her, flailing a finger and demanding more payment for the assault. Lust got the better of him, and two more shoves from his lecherous hands was all it took to incite Hannah’s wrath.

  Their audience saw little, only Hannah turning around and leaving with Poppy in tow. Behind them the man, stunned to silence, sank to his knees cradling his fractured wrist. Shards of bone showed through the open flesh, and the crowd scattered in a fearful hush. Witchcraft. They thought.

  “No one calls you an idiot, Poppy.” Hannah started up the stairs, biting her lower lip. She knew he couldn’t hear her but it made her feel better saying it. “I’d break more hands if it helps anything.”

  Poppy looked up at her, mouth open, dribble stretching from his chin to his tummy. He had an inkling she was speaking to him, even though she wasn’t looking at him.

  “People judge and there’s nothing you can do about it,” she said, angling in her bag for her keys. “You’d convince yourself they’re either liars or fools.”

  They arrived at the apartment to find the door unlocked and conspicuously ajar.

  She swore in an exhalation and pushed it fully open, the blade of a pocket knife flicking open in her hand. She could handle more than a common thief. But she knew whoever had done this wasn’t one. Poppy made a sound and she muffled it with her free hand. She cursed her luck. At such a moment she had to be burdened with a child.

  The kitchen had been rummaged through. Drawers and cabinets were left open. The larder, its legs perched on four porcelain bowls of salt water, had its contents strewn across the kitchen floor. The living area appeared untouched. There was the blue velvet sofa near the small balcony and a coffee table with the half-finished needlework.

  A wind chime twirled in a breeze.

  Hannah kept Poppy shielded as they approached her bedroom. By now there was no longer caution in her actions, only a kind of morose lethargy. She could hear the whir of the electric table fan on her dresser.

  She entered the room and saw Khun lying on her bed, sweating gently and wearing nothing but a pair of white boxers yellowed at the crotch. A half-nibbled roll of waxed sausage lay on the nightstand.

  “Hell…” He pounded his forehead with the back of his hand and his biceps bulged. A smirk stretched across his face. “You changed the lock.”

  “You don’t live here.”

  “Don’t forget who you’re working for, dolly.”

  “Not you,” said Hannah. “Now get off my bed.”

  Khun sat up and his lean abdominal muscles rippled at the effort. “You should join me up here.” He patted a spot beside him.

  “Maybe I should twist your head off.”

  He flashed a lewd grin. “Anytime, baby.”

  “Don’t push it.”

  “Or what?” He leapt off the bed and stormed over to her. She barely flinched at the move but it made Poppy clutch tighter at her skirt. “You’ll get physical? I’d welcome that.”

  Hannah, refusing to respond, hustled Poppy protectively behind her.

  “Don’t forget the favour I did for that Chronie of yours.”

  “We’ve paid you enough.”

  “Now, now.” He stroked Hannah’s arm and pinched her soft skin. “The last time we met he only bought your service for two months.”

  Hannah threw off his hand. “I could slit your throat right where you stand.”

  “I stand as your faithful victim.” Khun breathed an insidious whisper, his face just inches above her clavicle and neck. She could smell the sourness of his breath. “But what’s going to happen to you? Who’s going to look after your pet Chronie? A chump like him won’t last a day without you.”

  She stiffened as his hand on the small of her back crept downwards. Then in a sudden and violent act he tore Poppy from her arms. She lunged for the child but he held the boy beyond her reach.

  Poppy flew into a feral struggle to liberate himself, twisting and clawing and hissing. Khun closed his massive fingers over his thin arm and wrung out a wheezing scream.

  “This dumb thing doesn’t have a voice!” he laughed.

  Hannah, unable to restrain herself, lashed out at Khun’s arms with her nails. “Let him go!” She withdrew quickly, repulsed by the folly of her actions and the very touch of his flesh.

  In the blink of an eye Khun found the blade of Hannah’s weapon scarcely an inch from his sweaty, glistening neck. “Let him go, now!”

  Khun held Poppy farther from her. “Come back to me, dolly.” His tone softening. “We could start over, like how we began.”

  “Let go of him! You’re scaring him!”

  “Drop the knife. For old times.”

  Hannah levelled the blade at a point just below Khun’s chin and nudged it menacingly into the skin. “Let go of him!”

  In a fit of rage Khun drove Poppy into the wall. The bawling child fell silent upon impact, dazed by the unexpected blow. At once both nostrils expressed dark trails of blood. His eyes, already swollen from the crying, now grew wide with shock.

  Driven by a manic fury Hannah delivered a wild slash that missed Khun by a mile. In retaliation the man slammed Poppy into the wall a second time. A sickly crunch of flesh and bone against brick and plaster. Blood from Poppy’s nose quickly soaked his vest, and the side of his face began to swell.

  Khun’s face was stone cold. “Drop—the—knife.”

  Once more Hannah advanced and brought the point of the blade to Khun’s throat. She could slit his trachea just by the flick of her wrist but she had lost the initiative. If killing that pimp afforded any benefits she would’ve done so a long time ago. There would be consequences, and very grave ones.

  She twisted her lips viciously and showed teeth, “You’ll burn in hell.”

  At this range a careless opponent would’ve attempted to wrestle Hannah for the knife. But Khun knew, by Hannah’s uncanny reflexes, how badly this move would have turned out. He wouldn’t have been able to seize Poppy if she hadn’t been distracted. Now he only had to exploit the initiative.

  Khun dashed Poppy against the wall a third time. The poor child was out cold, and hung by his neck from Khun’s hand, limp as a ragdoll. This time the impact has split his lips and bloodied his face.

  “Drop the knife, dolly.”

  Tears drenched her cheeks, wrung of silent rage. She’d thought the years in her had made her far too resilient to weep. But the sight of Poppy drained every drop of strength in her. She allowed her arm to fall slowly to her side. Her fingers went slack and the weapon slipped harmlessly from her hand.

  / / /

  Arthur alighted at the blue-windowed estate just short of seven o’clock. When he arrived at Hannah’s door he was caught by the peculiarity of it being unlocked. He stepped inside cautiously, and the first thing he saw was the floral fabric of a long skirt deposited along the way to the bedroom. The air went out of him. A little farther on he picked out a white blouse against a drawer chest by the corner. A silken brassiere at the edge of the bed.

  All strewn like a candy trail.

  Hannah was perched stiffly on the bed like a guru, swathed in a green terrycloth bl
anket, her hair tousled and plastered to her neck. Arthur painfully took in the details and felt asphyxiated. He advanced with the intention to hold her, but it only made her pull the blanket tighter around her neck. She stared at him with catatonic eyes, her expression so frigid that he couldn’t read anything from it.

  Poppy was lying on a bed of folded towels by a wall, drawing breaths in whistles because congealed blood had obstructed his airway and nostrils. He was so bruised and bludgeoned that Arthur couldn’t decide where to hold him.

  Arthur’s eyes burned. His mind spun into an infusion of pure, white rage uninhibited by logic or reason or mercy. It compelled him to hate and destroy, and in the wake of the lurid discovery it made him a vastly different man.

  From the kitchen came the roar of a toilet flushing. Like a chant it drew Arthur out of the room and Hannah made no attempt to stop him. When he got there he found the aluminium toilet door closed. As if on cue he stepped aside and picked up a stone charcoal stove that sat below the window. He lifted it over his head and waited. The toilet door swung open. Out came Khun, splendid and muscular, and down came the stove.

  The first blow didn’t render him unconscious. It allowed ample time for Khun to identify his assailant. And it pleased Arthur that their eyes met.

  Revenge—a dish served cold? Better if it’s piping hot.

  Arthur delivered the second blow right across the face, splintering teeth and brutally dislodging the jaw. More blows rained, each liberating a seemingly inexhaustible supply of anger. Khun’s skull caved like a shattered eggshell. His arms fell to the side of his body and twitched convulsively at each successive blow.

  When it was over the bloodied stove fell out of Arthur’s hands and rumbled across the kitchen floor like a millstone. Khun, his head pulped, lay unmoving. In an unrecognisable orifice near his throat blood foamed and frothed to faint breaths of air. Arthur twisted his bloodied hands in a dishtowel to stop them from trembling. His hair hung in greasy strands over his brows. Was there fear? There was certainly euphoria. He wouldn’t have mustered the guts to break a chicken’s neck but he’d gladly take up the stove and smash Khun’s head in all over again. The rush of adrenalin ebbed, and the conviction that he’d just committed a heinous crime stole in like an infusion of poison. He thought of lawful retribution, of justice.

  But how could justice exist for someone like Khun?

  He returned to the bedroom and Poppy tracked him with swollen eyes. Being inadequate in speech he made an unintelligible sound, and by its tone Arthur knew it wasn’t one of distress but relief. He composed himself, crouched by the child’s side and carefully felt his body for signs of trauma that would frustrate any attempt to move him.

  Hannah sat erect on the bed, still wrapped in the blanket and with the same inert expression. Arthur did nothing either. Anguish held them both in a state of petrification, until Arthur found the strength to take Poppy into his arms. He did not know why he dithered, and his mind, brutalised by the events of the day, failed to conceive reason. He took a step towards Hannah and watched her stiffen.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said.

  Her words put Arthur under a spell. They turned him around, walked him past a bloodied corpse, and spat him out of her door.

  21

  SCARS

  THERE ARE MOMENTS when you lie supine in bed trying to figure things out. Your limbs are flaccid. You divert all energy into your thoughts and believe that in doing so you’d eventually figure things out. And Landon, still reeling from the effects of a soporific infusion, falls asleep twice trying to do just that.

  He is awake, on his third attempt, and still he has figured out nothing. He knows he is in a hospital but has no recollection as to how he got here. Only a morsel of memory remains—the one of him touching up the chalkboard behind the bar. He watches the ceiling fan and grudgingly lets his mind drift.

  A nurse pulls the curtains aside. She is a large woman with short curly locks and smiling lips. Landon notices a large pink sportswatch on her wrist. Her name tag reads Nabillah.

  “Good morning, Mr Lock,” Nabillah chirps.

  He sits up and feels the stiffness of surgical plasters all over him. A saline drip leads from his left hand. “Is it morning?” “Still is.” The nurse looks at a wall clock above the ward’s entrance.

  “How long was I out?” He expects days, even weeks.

  “About eight hours.”

  Just eight hours?

  Nabillah straps the blood pressure monitor over Landon’s arm. “They brought you in about three am.” She starts the pump and the belt begins to inflate. “You lucky man,” she says, “only some light burns on the back, minor cuts on your head, a bit of smoke inhalation. Someone saved you. I think you will be on the news, we got police and reporters outside.”

  “Really?”

  The belt eases its grip on Landon’s arm. Nabillah stows her equipment and adjusts the saline flow on the IV drip. “We’ll leave this on for another hour or so.” She taps gently on the needle taped to Landon’s hand. “You want something to eat?” She brings her fingers to her mouth as if Landon can’t understand speech.

  “Just water, please.”

  She waddles over to a little rolling table, pours him a cup from a plastic tumbler, throws in a straw and hands it to him. The water tastes bitter and searing against his smoke-tainted, parched throat.

  As the nurse leaves a portly man with a bald, meaty head enters. He has one eye that moves and one that is dead. An eager, younger looking man, likely to be an aide, stands with him.

  Where is John?

  The older man offers his hand to Landon, grinning very broadly and genially and revealing a gap between his central incisors. “I believe we’ve met.” He lifts his police pass clipped to the end of a lanyard. “Marco, from Police Intel.”

  They shake hands and Landon finds something familiar in Marco’s deadened eye.

  “Live birth notification and your missing IC?” Marco, still grasping Landon’s hand, tilts his meaty head. “Ring any bells?”

  “Ah, yes.”

  “Any luck with your missing IC?” Marco pulls up a chair and sits by the bed. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do much. It’s handled by another department.”

  “Can’t help that.”

  “It’s amazing how we keep bumping into each other.” Marco’s tone is affable, his mannerism pleasant, almost debonair. “One of my men, off-duty, happened to be around the café when it blew up. It was he who got you out.”

  “Really?” Landon wonders if it’d been John. “I must thank him in person.”

  “He refused accolade.” Marco’s smiling face glows. “A fine example of the corps. We saw to it that he receives due credit.”

  “Did he get my stuff?” Landon blurts in haste, thinking of his bag, which he had left hanging on a hook at FourBees. “I meant— was I carrying anything when he got me out?”

  “Well, I wasn’t informed of it.”

  “Did you salvage anything from the café?”

  Marco draws a look of sympathy. “I’m afraid there’s nothing left.”

  Oh hell, my journal. Landon draws a long, slow breath. When did he begin that one? That’s it. Another chunk of my life obliterated, never to return.

  “Your employer didn’t make it,” Marco adds.

  “R…Raymond?” Landon manages to catch the name before it slips into the precipitous gorges of his ruptured memories.

  Marco nods, his hairless head gleaming under the fluorescent lights. “The gas or smoke probably killed him before the flames got to him. In fact, for this reason we hope to obtain a statement from you, if you don’t mind.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Thank you,” says Marco graciously. His aide takes a step forward and pulls out the stylus from the tablet he is holding.

  In the course of the exchange Landon learns that the police suspect someone tapped illegally into the gas mains and tampered with the meters. He admits that from time to time Raymond tended
to doze off at his desk. In such situations gas poisoning is at its deadliest.

  “I’m quite certain I didn’t smell anything,” says Landon.

  Marco nods as his aide scribbles on. “So how did you end up working in FourBees?”

  “I kicked up a fuss at the Kinos Café once, about the quality of its Arabica, the grind, that sort of stuff.” Landon pauses to think before he continues. “I insisted they didn’t blanch the filter paper because I could taste it in my cup. I wanted them to replace my coffee and they almost threw me out. Then someone came over, dropped his own cup on my table and told the manager if he hasn’t got a qualified barista at the back to challenge my claims he’d better change my cup and his as well.”

  Marco laughs briskly at the story.

  Landon continues, “Then this person sat down in front of me and told me how annoyingly anal I was with that coffee, and that he would like to offer me a job if I truly was a qualified barista. I offered him a taste test and that was it.”

  “It’s one account you’ve remembered very well,” says Marco.

  “Staying on the job helps. But now that I’ve lost it I don’t think I’ll remember it for long. Besides,” Landon takes a sip of water and grimaces as he swallows, “that person who offered me the job was Raymond.”

  “I’m sorry to hear. How did you find Raymond, as a person?”

  “Honest man. A hard worker. Drives you up like cattle over the manic weekends, but then who doesn’t? Seriously I don’t see him as someone who would tap illegally on anything.”

  “You liked working with him?”

  Landon shrugs. “He takes care of us.”