by Ovidia Yu
A small, automatic snort came across the line when Mathilda heard the name “Selina.” But she was a fair person, and besides, it was much easier to be charitable about the Selinas of the world from a safe distance. “I’m surprised she’s stuck with him. I suspect Selina married dear Marko meaning to make him over and do him some good. And Mark probably went along with her until he got tired of it. Remember they were signing up for all those public-speaking and investment courses together? They were going to be incredibly successful entrepreneurs or something. But Mark couldn’t decide what business he wanted to succeed at, so that fell through. Poor Selina. Actually I’m glad Mark stuck with her. It would have been terrible if he was going around changing wives instead of jobs. We have an uncle like that, you know. He’s off somewhere in Canada or Australia with wife number four or five now.
“Anyway, has he signed over the wine business to Mycroft’s wife yet?”
“The drinks business,” Aunty Lee corrected automatically. “No. There’s the issue of some wine missing from the wine room. Selina was checking the inventory and she says several of the more expensive bottles are missing. I think she suspects Nina and I go in there and drink it when there are no customers around.”
“You know Mark’s probably taking them himself, don’t you?”
Aunty Lee thought so too. Mark wouldn’t see it as stealing. As far as he was concerned, he had selected these wines and they belonged to him even if it was not his money that had paid for them.
“Mark is like a small boy.”
“And he’s never going to grow up if you and Selina keep treating him like one. But honestly, I don’t know that Mycroft’s wife is going to be much better.”
“Cherril? Why not?”
“She’s so skinny, for one thing. I can’t see her working in a café if she doesn’t like eating.”
Aunty Lee knew Cherril loved eating. She was one of the few who could eat huge amounts without putting on weight. That was part of what made her such a good air stewardess but it set other women against her.
“But there must be something in her that made Mycroft marry her,” Mathilda said thoughtfully.
“Cherril is actually very smart and capable of learning almost anything. Except she never got to study. She became a stewardess because she wanted to see the world. But going around the world shopping with colleagues was not really what she wanted either. I think she has potential.”
“I think I’m jealous,” Mathilda admitted.
“Jealous? Of Cherril?” Aunty Lee’s mind spun. “Hiyah. Don’t tell me you also like that Mycroft.”
“No, no, no. Of course not. I mean because you seemed to get along so well with her at once. And after I tried so hard to show you I was okay with you and Dad—sorry, I’m talking rubbish.”
Sometimes parents did not even realize they had favorites, Aunty Lee thought. And sometimes the favorites themselves did not realize it. Because Mathilda had never given her any trouble, it had never occurred to Aunty Lee that she might feel overlooked. Mathilda changed the subject.
“What are you going to do while your shop is closed, Aunty Lee?”
“I’m going to lunch with the commissioner of police tomorrow and then to a prayer and healing meeting tomorrow night.”
“Covering all the bases, eh?”
“You know what I do,” Aunty Lee said with a laugh before her voice grew serious. “But you don’t know me. Mathilda, ah, you listen to me. I like that Cherril because she reminds me of myself. But you, you remind me so much of your father. Once when somebody saw your photo in the shop and thought you were my daughter I didn’t correct her because I wished so much I had a daughter like you.”
“Thank you,” Mathilda said. Then, after a pause, “Mum.”
To Aunty Lee’s surprise her throat knotted up and she could not speak as sudden tears welled up in her eyes. Like her brother, Mathilda had always addressed her as “Aunty” with their late father’s full approval.
18
Lunch with Commissioner Raja
“I thought this would be a nice change,” Commissioner Raja Kumar said. “Since you’re not cooking for once, I thought we should have something totally different.”
They had been friends for years but Aunty Lee knew better than to ask Commissioner Raja to pull strings and get her kitchen ban lifted. This was Singapore, after all. Tattletale bloggers with camera phones lurked everywhere, eager for material. Aunty Lee had no wish to draw any more attention to her (temporarily) closed café. She knew Raja Kumar would do all he could for her without her having to ask. Aunty Lee usually enjoyed talking to Commissioner Raja. But today she felt uncomfortable. It was the first time she had been a suspect in a police case, no matter how nicely he put it when he asked her to have lunch with him.
They were upstairs (and barefoot) in a little restaurant along Upper Dickson Road in Little India.
“They serve both North and South Indian food and they can prepare dishes for meat eaters and non–meat eaters alike.”
Commissioner Raja was no longer as familiar with the neighborhood and its people as he had been when his grandfather had a shop in the area. But he still knew a few of the long-term shopkeepers. As was happening throughout Singapore, fewer and fewer children were going into their families’ businesses and more and more of the old medicine shops were being transformed into nail-art boutiques and 7-Elevens.
Floor cushions were provided and it was cool and comfortable in the private upstairs room. It had been a long time since Aunty Lee sat on the floor. She patted the polished floorboards beneath her bent knees and was reminded of long-ago family gatherings where children always ended up sitting on the floor “picnic style” because there were never enough chairs.
“I don’t know if you like Indian food,” the commissioner said lightly, “but you will after today.” Memories of the vegetable curries his late grandmother used to cook and her special-occasion fish-head curry were making him hungry. He wondered whether there would be fish-head curry today, hot and sour and tender.
“Shall we order?”
But Aunty Lee had fixated on his opening comment. “I cook Singapore food. Singapore food is a mixture of Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Indonesian food. And then because of the English we eat sandwiches and chicken puff pie and because of the Americans we eat burgers. My cooking is not limited to what I picked up in my family. Of course I like Indian food. I even cook Indian food!”
Commissioner Raja held up his hands in surrender. “Not here to fight, Rosie. But since I’m buying today, let’s have a good lunch. Their mutton biryani sounds good.”
“If the mutton they use is from a castrated male sheep, then it should be good. But if it comes from a female sheep killed after it is too old to have any more babies, then it may be tough.”
Commissioner Raja debated between chicken and beef for a moment but decided against provoking another information attack. “Ambur mutton biryani,” he said to the waitress. The commissioner’s ability to make quick, calm decisions under pressure was one of the reasons he was so respected within the force. Singaporeans generally liked having decisions made for them. They much preferred complaining to making decisions on their own. Besides, Raja Kumar was sure Aunty Lee would enjoy the sour, curried brinjal dalcha and raita of sliced onions mixed with curds and chili tomatoes that made up Ambur biryani.
“Rosie, I don’t want to fight with you. You know I can’t do anything about the order to close your kitchen.”
“I never said I want to fight you, what. Did you invite me for lunch just to tell me that?”
“I just wanted to eat lunch with my old friend, cannot meh?
“You’ve helped us before. You made us look good,” Commissioner Raja said. “I’m asking you for your help again. I know you didn’t poison those people but we have to follow procedures.”
“If you won’t help me reopen my café at least you can help me with this—the newspapers printed a translation of the PRC woman’s suicide not
e.” Aunty Lee had come prepared. She took out her reading spectacles and a folded newspaper cutout with yellow highlighter markings.
“The woman wrote to her missing fiancé, ‘Because of me you were willing to sacrifice part of your own body.’ So clearly the man she was looking for came to Singapore to be an organ donor, right? Have you found any unidentified bodies that you didn’t put in the newspapers yet? I am thinking the man obviously came to Singapore to sell his kidney or something. Then the operation must have gone wrong and he died. A man who loved a woman enough to want to sell a kidney to marry her would not just go off without a word to her. Then the illegal organ-donor people just disposed of the body in a reservoir or a construction site or somewhere like that. The point is somebody must have organized it. What if Mabel Sung was talking to organ-donor people to get a transplant for her son and she found out they were illegal and being a lawyer she tried to stop them and they sent somebody to silence her. They probably murdered her and her son as a warning. Criminal gangs are always doing things like that to warn people, right?”
“Maybe in the West,” Commissioner Raja said.
“And in the West they probably say it only happens in the East.” Aunty Lee was not discouraged by the police commissioner’s tone. “The point is, it must be happening somewhere or people wouldn’t be talking about it all the time, right?”
One problem with a mind that worked as quickly as Aunty Lee’s was how fast and how far wrong it could go with just a nugget of information, Commissioner Raja thought.
But why not?
“How would they have contacted her?”
“I already thought of that. Through her prayer and healing group. Because all the people there are desperate. Desperate people don’t ask too many questions.”
“I’m not saying there aren’t people here looking for illegal organ transplants. But it’s not as easy as all that, you know. You need the doctors, the anesthesiologists, the donors, the facilities—operating theaters, recovery space. You just consider cost and you’ll see why people go to Thailand or to India for procedures. And the controls here are so much stricter, the risk is just not worth it.”
“If your life is at stake, then of course it’s worth it. What do you have to lose?”
Commissioner Raja looked at Aunty Lee’s earnest face. Singapore people did not think like that, he wanted to say. Singapore people would think about what people would think of them if they survived thanks to an expensive operation that their family could not pay for (and insurance was unlikely to cover transplants of organs, especially illegal ones). In such cases the medical expenses would most likely ruin them. But instead he said, “You would do it?”
“Not for myself. I’m not interested in letting people cut me up and put funny things in. When my time comes to go I will just go. But if I had a chance to save somebody—”
Aunty Lee was thinking of her late husband. She would have broken any laws she had to if there had been a chance to give him a few more pain-free years. And she could see Raja Kumar’s thoughts turning to his lovely Sumathi. Watching as the cancer ravaged her, he had prayed for her to die, to end her suffering. If he had had the power to save her, would the cost—or the law—have stopped him?
It was as though Aunty Lee could read his thoughts. “That’s why I keep busy,” she said. “But now you all close down my shop, what am I supposed to do?”
“Just don’t do anything I have to arrest you for, okay?”
“Are you wearing a wire?” Aunty Lee leaned over the table and whispered.
“No I’m not,” Inspector Raja stage-whispered back. “And if I was, whispering wouldn’t make a difference. Our devices are very sensitive.”
“You said you don’t think I had anything to do with poisoning Mabel and her son, right?”
“If I thought you were going around poisoning people’s food, would I be sitting here eating lunch with you?”
“Here we are!” Shanti, the hostess, appeared with a tray full of dishes; an assistant who came in behind her was equally laden. “Kaesevan sent you a mix of northern and southern dishes with your Ambur biryani.
“Time out,” Commissioner Raja said. “Let’s eat.”
“I’m going undercover,” Aunty Lee said.
Normally Aunty Lee enjoyed spending time with the commissioner. Raja Kumar had ML’s way of listening to her go on without feeling any need to comment. And then saying something that showed he had got it. And she enjoyed his company because few other people understood it was easier to lose a life partner after a happy marriage than a difficult one, because it was a loss not warped by regret. But then there were times (like this) when Raja Kumar could be as irritatingly overprotective as the late ML Lee had been. Playing the “man of the world” role, never mind it had always been the women of the world who wrung chickens’ necks and scraped the guts out of still-flapping fish.
As they ate, Commissioner Raja explained to Aunty Lee in great detail why she should not get involved in things beyond her control. Despite his admonishments, Aunty Lee enjoyed her lunch.
Commissioner Raja sighed in contentment as he finished his lecture and started on his dessert laddus. Nothing could be more familiar than these traditional soft, sweet dessert balls, but even so he paused in surprise after the first mouthful.
“Grated coconut.” Aunty Lee had also tasted the innovation. “And spicy pine-nut paste inside, interesting.”
They were certainly interesting but Commissioner Raja thought innovative laddus should not look like the sweet, safe chana dal laddus his grandmother had made . . . and an inexperienced, untrained, self-appointed detective should not look like a sweet, friendly widow.
“So what are you going to do now?” Aunty Lee asked.
He knew she was not asking about his plans for the afternoon.
“We will investigate, following the proper channels. As you say, there may be a connection with illegal organ trafficking. We will follow up all leads, get information from our overseas contacts about organ traffickers, and leave the case open until it is solved. And it will be solved eventually. Either the perpetrators will be caught or they will find that it is not worth the risk to operate in Singapore, and take their business elsewhere.”
It was always that way, Aunty Lee thought. As long as criminals stayed out of Singapore, they were not Singapore’s problem. The United States was criticized for minding the world’s business. But was ignoring everything outside your borders that much better? Given how interconnected everything was, was that even possible?
“I don’t think Mabel Sung and her son were killed by illegal organ traffickers,” Aunty Lee said.
“I thought you said illegal organ traffickers were involved?”
“Oh yes, definitely involved. But you remember I was there when Mabel and her son were poisoned. I saw Sharon scooping out the chicken buah keluak and the rest of the food. She thought she’d bring it up to the house. GraceFaith Ang and Edmond Yong were going up to Leonard’s room and she gave them the food to bring. They left it in Leonard’s room. He did not eat until Mabel came up to feed him.”
“So any of them could have put the poison in the food. Granted. But most likely the perpetrator is still Mabel Sung. No one else had a reason.”
“It could have been someone at the party who went up to the house to use the toilet like I did. And we just don’t know the reason yet.”
“We already checked out all the people at the party. Friends of the family or members of Mabel Sung’s law firm. No illegal organ traffickers. And just for argument’s sake, if these illegal organ traffickers really exist, what reason would they have to kill Mabel Sung and her son? These people are here to make money from selling harvested organs. They want to keep a low profile, do their business, get their money, and get out as fast as possible without anybody noticing them.”
“Exactly. That’s why I believe they are around but I don’t think they killed Mabel and her son!”
“Mabel Sung knew that Leonard
Sung was not going to recover. He was a drug addict who destroyed his health. The woman killed her son rather than watch him suffer.”
There was a note in his voice that indicated the discussion had ended. Indeed Commissioner Raja started (not without difficulty) to raise himself off the cushions.
Commissioner Raja waved the problem away. “She must have added the poison to the food before serving it up to herself and her son.”
It didn’t feel right to Aunty Lee. But enforcers of Singapore law—even one as nice to her as Commissioner Raja—generally did not operate on what didn’t feel right to regular citizens. He would have pointed out that she had no proof. He would have thought her not wanting to believe that another old lady could have chosen to kill herself and her son was old-lady squeamishness. So she said nothing. She would think about all the separate parts of the puzzle, and when she managed to put a complete picture together, she would present it to Commissioner Raja
“It’s always harder to get up than sit down,” Aunty Lee observed. She had somehow got to her feet without trouble and was smoothing down her flared batik pants as she watched her friend struggle to his feet.
“Your men didn’t find anything else at all at the Sung house? Even after checking everything? Did they check the house, the grounds, the swimming pool for anything suspicious?”
Finally back on his feet, Commissioner Raja wondered whether genuine police work would ever recover from the effects of television procedurals. “There wasn’t much point searching for clues when it was obvious how the poison was administered,” he said. “But actually our men did search the whole place thoroughly and they documented the process very meticulously.”
“Even the pool filters?”
“Probably. I can go look if it will make you feel better, but I tell you there is nothing to find. Anyway the pool had just been cleaned, so I doubt there was anything.”
“Whoever added the poison to my buah keluak must have got it from somewhere. If they just cleaned the pool, some kinds of water cleaner can be very poisonous . . .”