A Deadly Cambodian Crime Spree

by Shamini Flint

  Singh took off the large earphones. The added layer on top of his turban was making his ears itch. Still, he needed the headphones for the simultaneous translation of a multitude of languages: Khmer, English, French and Vietnamese, carried out by court officials. To his relief, he noted that while his headphones had been resting on his ample lap rather than wound around his ample head, proceedings had been adjourned for lunch. Samrin was led away to a small building adjacent to the compound. It looked like a small home on the edge of suburbia but was actually a prison for those appearing before the ECCC.

  A tight voice at his elbow muttered, “Under the Khmer Rouge, millions died from starvation – but he still gets three meals a day.”

  Singh looked down at his minder, the Cambodian woman with the short glossy hair, square, almost masculine face and perfect rose-petal skin. “It doesn’t help reconciliation if we behave like our enemies.”

  It was trite and Chhean wrinkled her nose in disgust. Singh was not sure he believed his own platitudes.

  “That’s why we have a judicial process,” he argued, determined to play devil’s advocate. “So that we don’t behave like those in the dock – Samrin executed the poor bastards who were sent to him, no questions asked.” He wondered for a moment if he was trying to convince Chhean or himself of the value of due process.

  “They made everyone work as farmers but no one had enough to eat.”

  The policeman nodded. The Khmer Rouge era had been riddled with ironies.

  Chhean grinned suddenly at the fat man, her gaze resting for a moment on his belly. “I suppose right now you also do not have enough to eat?”

  Singh guffawed. This small creature with the unexpected sense of humour that punctuated her usually stern demeanour was growing on him.

  “How come you got the job of looking after me anyway?” he asked.

  “My official tide is court liaison but that just means we have to do all the odd jobs.”

  Singh contemplated the reality that he, the leading murder cop of Singapore, was nothing more than an ‘odd job’ to his Cambodian companion as they walked slowly towards the canteen reserved for staff. The other canteen was heaving with Cambodians from all walks of life, queuing for food and waiting to get into the trial chamber. He noted the subdued air – justice could be hard to stomach sometimes. Singh’s own tummy growled audibly and Chhean raised an eyebrow that was so fine it looked as if it had been plucked by a professional. Singh doubted this. Chhean did not strike him as the sort of woman who spared a thought for her personal appearance. Her entire concentration was devoted to the war crimes tribunal.

  “Why are you so angry?” he asked suddenly.

  She did not pretend to misunderstand him. “You have heard what they did to my people.”

  Singh suppressed a smile – her command of English was excellent but her accent was pure Cambodian, every other hard consonant abandoned so that what she had said sounded more like, “Yu hafhear wha they di to mhypeepo.” Still, if he concentrated he had no difficulty, well, almost no difficulty, understanding her.

  “Yes, but your countrymen – many of them are not interested in this tribunal. They want to forget, to put things behind them.”

  “Probably all Khmer Rouge,” she muttered darkly.

  He raised an eyebrow, tufty and grey and in complete contrast to hers.

  “Even Hun Sen is ex-Khmer Rouge.” Singh knew she was referring to the Prime Minister.

  “Well, he did flee to Vietnam and return with the troops that liberated Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge.”

  Chhean waved a hand dismissively.

  Singh abandoned his defence of Hun Sen. For this woman, everything was in black or white, there was only cadre or victim, she had no faith in the grey area of ex-Khmer Rouge turned good guy. She had a point as well, conceded Singh. Who knew what atrocities had been committed by any of these men before their defection? And could one ever atone for the past? It was a difficult question. The inspector felt strongly that there should always be room for forgiveness, even redemption. But his position was held in the abstract, as a principle. It had never been properly tested and he hoped to God that it never would be.

  He reverted to his original theme. “But many of the victims want to forget as well. Why are you so different?”

  “They used engineers as farmers and tried to build irrigation channels to make water run uphill. They murdered people for wearing glasses or having a book.”

  He continued to look at her quizzically. These were all good reasons but not the real ones. Singh was surprised and discomfited to see tears well up in her eyes. “I was brought up in a refugee camp after the war. The Vietnamese soldiers found me wandering alone not far from Tuol Sleng prison. No one knows what happened to my family. The Khmer Rouge, I hold them responsible.”

  ♦

  Jeremy Armstrong smiled and held out his hand. His wife slipped a thin hand into his and he gave it a comforting squeeze, noting – as if it was for the first time – the way his big hand engulfed her slim pale one.

  He stated, “I saw you in the public gallery this morning.” His tone was edgy, but it was the sound of worry rather than anger. “You know I don’t think you should attend the trial. Not all day, every day. It’s not good for you.”

  “You’re doing it,” replied Sovann, smiling at her husband, a demure curving of the lips that did not reveal any teeth.

  He had always loved her smile, so different from that of the American women he knew with their wide grins and enormous, shiny, orthodontically-perfect teeth.

  “That’s different, you know that.” Jeremy was impatient and it showed in his tone. “It’s my job to be there. I don’t have a choice.”

  He worked for a Cambodian-American society representing a group of victims. He had worked for years with these survivors. It was how he had met Sovann in the first place, the quiet girl with the stricken face who had been unable to articulate her grief, to talk about her past. Now, he was attending the trial, tasked with presenting the written testimony of those victims who were too old or too afraid to appear before the court.

  His wife said, “It’s your job, I understand that, but it is my duty. I have to be present for those…for those of my family who cannot be here.” Her voice was almost inaudible, not a whisper with its feathery sibilant sound, but just words spoken at a volume so low that he could barely hear. “I need to understand.”

  Jeremy closed his eyes briefly and his short white-blond eyelashes, the same colour as his hair, rested on his cheeks. He had listened to so many tales of hardship that he was almost inured to the pain. And then he would remember what Sovann had been through and he would feel the suffering of the victims amplified through his love of his wife – he was not so hardened after all. He spoke, his voice loud and determined. “There is nothing to understand. A bunch of mad men took over the country for a few years…it’s in the past now. There’s just no point in putting yourself through the trial.”

  “You know it’s not as simple as that. Besides, I signed and filed a witness statement. I don’t know if they will use it – there are so many after all – but it means I am part of this too.”

  He loved her accent, Cambodian with a soft American lilt from the West. She was a frightened refugee but also an independent-minded cowgirl. This wife of his was a creature of immense contradictions.

  Jeremy stood up and wrapped his arms around Sovann. He could feel the slender bones under her simple white cotton blouse. She felt like a sparrow in the hand – fragile and yet pulsing with life. She put her hands on his chest, and pushed gently, seeking an escape from his embrace until she had his agreement on her attendance at the trial. He let go and they stood apart, the few feet between them representing a gulf of experience. He smiled a little to see the sampot, the wraparound slim skirt made from fine silk that she was wearing.

  Back in the United States, she rarely wore traditional Khmer clothing. When he had first met her she had adopted a Western style of dress
– another attempt to distance herself from the memories. And now, thirty years after she had fled a Thai refugee camp for the United States, she was attending the war crimes tribunal and reverting to Cambodian attire.

  “You said that you just wanted to get re-acquainted with your home, your country. To bury the past.” His tone was accusing now. She had lied to him. She had not come to forget, to finally say goodbye. On the contrary, she had come to remember, to rake up every memory.

  And what about him – could he give her the courage to live with her experiences – as he had tried to do when they had first met so many years before? Jeremy acknowledged in a small quiet place in his heart that, truth be told, he was part of the problem. The secret that he carried within him could well be the cudgel that finally broke his wife’s determined resistance to the memories. The knowledge made him brusque and angry. He squeezed his eyes shut. His whole life since those early days had been an act of atonement. And yet it was not enough. Nothing could undo the damage, but there was nothing more he could do. He shoved two fists into the already distended pockets of his suit jacket and reverted to his original theme. “I don’t want you at the trial.”

  Her enormous, light-brown eyes gazed at him as if she was a small child seeking absolution for breaking an ornament. He noticed that her pupils reflected the light and were flecked with gold.

  “Sovann…” he whispered, savouring the word, knowing that it meant ‘golden’, just like her eyes that were the windows into her past, “I just want to save you from the memories – from the pain.”

  She smiled but the expression did not touch her eyes. “It’s a bit too late for that.”

  ♦

  Chhean left the inspector at the tribunal canteen looking miserably at a bowl of fish stew. He was definitely going to lose some weight if he did not quickly develop a fondness for Cambodian cuisine. That would at least appease his doctor, a large Tamilian at the Singapore general hospital who was given to prodding Singh in the belly with a long finger and sighing.

  The last time Singh had turned up reluctantly and late for his appointment, the doctor had looked him over carefully, poked a thermometer into his ear, tied a blood pressure gauge around his arm and a held stethoscope to his chest. He had then energetically stuck a needle into a fat vein to extract some blood. They had both watched as the rich liquid slowly filled the vial. Singh was struck by the fact that he usually came across this particular substance in less salubrious surroundings, pooling around a dead man’s head or staining the front of a shirt around a knife entry point. He didn’t like the stuff. Blood was so rich and red, so heavy with life – even after death.

  The doctor distracted him from his melancholy contemplation of his own life blood with his next remark.

  “You hunt murderers, right?”

  “Yup,” agreed Singh suspiciously.

  “Well, I think you’re a cold-blooded killer.”

  “Eh?”

  “You’re killing yourself,” said the doctor, turning red with amusement, his loud chuckles no doubt audible to the taciturn nurse and impatient patients in the waiting room. “Look at you: food, fags and beer – death by a thousand cuts.”

  “But not so painful,” pointed out Singh.

  “We can discuss that again after you’ve had your heart attack.”

  Singh scowled at the memory. Why did the medical profession take such an interest in trying to ruin his simple pleasures?

  Food, fags and beer. In Cambodia that translated into fish soup, Angkor beer and Ara cigarettes – this latter product asserting firmly on the box that it was of ‘international quality’. Did that mean it killed you just as fast?

  The policeman scooped up some soup, blew on it gently to cool it down and sipped it reluctantly. He grimaced, plump bottom lip curved downwards. It was disgusting, fishy without being tasty. He imagined that cat food tasted like this.

  The woman across from him had been watching his facial contortions with amusement. She said now in a soft voice which he had to concentrate to hear, “I think you do not like our Cambodian cuisine?”

  “I’m not a huge fan,” he admitted. He hadn’t meant to offend the Cambodian beauty sitting across from him. She had delicate features and kind eyes, her hair tied back from her face in a neat bun.

  She smiled and it emphasised her cheekbones, high and sharp. “This canteen food is not an example of our finest.”

  He nodded and spooned more of the stew into his mouth heroically.

  She nodded approvingly at his willingness to give the dish a second chance even if only to appease her. The flush of blood under her pale skin gave her face a rosy hue. She wasn’t young, at least forty he would have guessed from the fine tracing of lines fanning out from her eyes, but she had aged gracefully.

  “Any better?” she asked. He noticed that she did not show her teeth when she smiled.

  He grimaced and pushed the bowl away with an air of finality. Some of it slopped onto the plastic table top. “I’m afraid not.” He glanced around and wondered at the other diners who were slurping away without hesitation or complaint.

  “We in Cambodia have some experience of going without food,” she explained. “So we are less fussy about taste.”

  He managed to keep an expression of chagrin off his face. This country was impossible – he couldn’t even abandon a truly awful meal without having the past flung at him like a wet blanket.

  She must have noticed his discomfiture because she sought to put him at ease by changing the subject. “What are you doing here?” she asked. Her tone was friendly.

  Apparently this creature was thoughtful as well as beautiful. Singh found himself almost tongue-tied. “Watching brief – ASEAN,” he said, more abruptly than he had intended.

  The woman held out her hand. “My name is Sovann Armstrong.”

  Singh wiped his hand on his trousers and shook the thin fingers gingerly. The delicate appendages looked as if they might snap like dry twigs if he exerted any pressure. “Inspector Singh, Singapore police.” He sounded – staccato and verb-less – as if he was reading from a telegram, not speaking. The policeman took a deep breath, coughed as his tobacco-damaged lungs protested at the influx of oxygen and added, “That’s a beautiful name.”

  “My husband thinks so too.”

  Had he behaved so ridiculously that she felt obliged to bring up a spouse in order to thwart any further foolishness? He felt his cheeks grow hot and was glad that his dark complexion would disguise it even from the most discerning of observers. He was behaving as awkwardly as a pimply schoolboy in the presence of this exotic woman. He was curious about the husband as well. From the name, he was a foreigner. From Sovann’s softened tone when she referred to him, there was love and dependency in the relationship.

  “ASEAN has not been a good friend to Cambodia,” she remarked, following on from his earlier explanation.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They demanded a Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia after 1979. Didn’t they realise that would have meant the return of the Khmer Rouge?”

  Singh could only shrug his burly shoulders. “Cold War politics,” he murmured.

  “Is that an explanation or an excuse?” she asked and Singh realised that this fragile creature had a core of steel.

  He scratched his nose with a blunt fingernail. There was nothing he could say, no defence to be made for a foreign policy that, if it had succeeded, would have resulted in innumerably more deaths.

  “Well, perhaps you are here to make amends.”

  Singh didn’t even bother to explain that he had neither the ability nor the means to make amends. There had been a sardonic hint to her suggestion that indicated she understood the realities of politics all too well. This woman would have been a kid in those days of the Khmer Rouge but she had learnt her history lessons. He focused on her accent. “You went to the US?”

  “Yes. After a couple of years in a Thai refugee camp I managed to get an exit visa.” She added thoughtful
ly, “I was one of the lucky ones.”

  The policeman from Singapore had seen a lot of death. Sometimes being the one who survived could be very difficult indeed. Every moment was filled with guilt at the things left unsaid because death had intervened to form a permanent barrier between loved ones. It explained her married name as well. She must have met her husband – lucky man – after she had escaped to the United States.

  Sovann rose to her feet and her hands met, palms together, in a gesture of farewell. He noticed that she had not touched much of her food as she turned to walk away. “You haven’t eaten,” he exclaimed.

  “I don’t have much of an appetite,” she said apologetically. “You’re right, of course. It is shocking of me when so many died in my country from lack of food.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” explained Singh hurriedly. “I was just…concerned, that’s all.” He was embarrassed at his instinctive honesty. She would think he was mad giving a damn whether a complete stranger had finished her lunch. Perhaps he was mad. But this woman, with her natural elegance, a complete contrast to his own gross fleshiness, and gentle manner, had provoked an unusually chivalrous response from him. An image of Mrs Singh flashed into his mind – scrawny elbows protruding from colourful caftan and voice raised in admonishment. No wonder he was drawn to Sovann.

  She smiled at him and walked away in the direction of the courtroom. He realised that he had no idea what she was doing here. Was she a witness, an observer, a victim? He felt a strong curiosity to know more about this woman with the kind eyes that were more inward-looking than outward-looking.