A Deadly Cambodian Crime Spree

by Shamini Flint

  Singh winced. It was the wrong choice of words.

  “Unfortunate, colonel? I would not describe it as unfortunate – incompetent, maybe, but not unfortunate.”

  The colonel shuffled uncomfortably but did not respond.

  “Do you have any suspects?” The question was from one of the Cambodian judges. Looking at the flyer surreptitiously, Singh identified him from his receding hairline and reading glasses as Judge Sopheap. He vaguely remembered him from the trial.

  “Not yet, sir.”

  The judge leaned back in his chair and Singh was puzzled that he sensed relief from the man rather than disappointment.

  “We have just begun the investigation. The autopsy report will not be out until tomorrow.” Menhay sounded defensive.

  The Australian butted in and Singh noted his broad shoulders and barrel chest. A man capable of dispensing justice – as well as rough justice – by the look of him. “We have been forced to postpone this trial for a week against our wishes. There are many who would like to see this trial fail and the accused go free. Are you one of those people, Colonel Menhay?”

  Singh breathed a sigh of relief that they had not been informed by Adnan that he was jointly in charge of the investigation. He had no desire to be at the sharp end of this interview. These justices were worse that Superintendent Chen.

  Menhay shook his head decisively. “No, sir. I am a supporter of the trial. I believe that these men should be called to account for what they did to my country.”

  Had there been an emphasis on the ‘my’? Was this policeman trying to provoke the red-haired, short-tempered Australian?

  To Singh’s surprise, Menhay appeared to have drawn the sting out of the judges. There were friendlier expressions all around except from Justice Sopheap, who was staring out of the window with a worried expression on his face.

  “Very well, Colonel Menhay. We wish you luck with your investigation. Please keep us informed of progress.” It was the Frenchwoman – she looked like the headmistress of a girls’ boarding school – who was all smiles now.

  One of the Cambodians – Judge Phanit – leaned forward. “Colonel, we need you to get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible for the sake of the ECCC. Cambodia depends on you,” he added and his voice quivered with passion.

  Great, thought Singh, lay on the pressure, why don’t you? If he was Menhay, he would retire to bed with a pillow over his head. He stole a glance at his counterpart. He was obviously made of sterner stuff. His back was ramrod straight and he saluted smartly. “I will do my best, sir.”

  Nine

  “So, what’s this?” asked Singh, looking at his plate will ill-concealed distaste. The inspector, accompanied by Chhean, had embarked on a hunt for some food and to peruse Huon’s file.

  “Try it. You won’t regret it, I promise.” Chhean could not help smiling at the tubby inspector’s expression. She had persuaded him to give Khmer food one last chance, insisting that the canteen food at the tribunal and the roach kebabs had not been a reasonable trial. Singh was reluctant. He had, through a careful perusal of the tourist map handed out at the hotels, identified two Indian restaurants in Phnom Penh and was desperate to try at least one of them.

  “It might not even be run by Indians,” she pointed out. “Could be Khmer-style curry. Very watery. Just like soup.”

  Singh had blanched – he could not face any more soup, stew or watery curry. Finally, he had agreed to try an upmarket Khmer restaurant. “You will like it, for sure.” Chhean was reassuring. “All the corrupt business people eat there. Must be good.”

  And now the policeman was staring at his plate, an expression of utmost suffering on his face.

  “Pickled green vegetables with chillies.”

  Singh’s drooping jowls received a non-surgical face-lift at the reference to chillies. He poked the dish with a finger and licked the tip tentatively. “Spicy kang kong,” he said appreciatively and tucked his fork in with enthusiasm.

  She supposed that he must be referring to the leafy vegetable on his plate. She didn’t know what it was called but was pleased to have found a dish that appealed to the fat man’s taste buds. Or what was left of them. He had smoked all the way to the restaurant, puffed vigorously as they crossed the flagstones, passed the stone Buddha and made their way over the decorative koi ponds. He probably didn’t have much sensation left on his tongue and she wouldn’t have thought his lungs were in good condition either. As if to reinforce her opinion of his state of health, the Sikh man broke into a paroxysm of coughing.

  She waited until he had recovered his breath and replaced the snowy white napkin over his expansive thighs. She reached for the folder on Huon and asked, “Do you want to know what’s in here?”

  Her dinner companion’s attention had wandered. Chhean sighed and beckoned a waiter. Unfed, this policeman was as useless as the usual crooked Cambodian variety.

  A platter of rice accompanied by a fish dish was laid before them.

  She pre-empted his questioning by indicating the fish. “Fish amok.”

  “What?”

  She explained impatiently, “Amok krei – national Cambodian dish. It is cooked with kroeung, you know – spice paste with turmeric and chillies and other things. Also, coconut milk. Everything steamed in banana leaf. Very tasty. And,” she gestured at the other plate, “vegetarian spring rolls.”

  The inspector ate quietly for a while, spooning white rice and fish into his mouth and chewing contentedly. At last, he leaned back, beckoned a waiter, ordered a bottle of Angkor beer and said, like an indulgent parent, “Now you can tell me what’s in the file.”

  She opened the folder and slipped two photographs across the table. One was a recent head shot in colour, the travails of experience visible on Huon’s half-smiling face. The other was an old black-and-white picture of a young man in baggy pleated trousers and a long-sleeved shirt. He was leaning against a pillar, arms folded and broad smile for the camera. It was almost impossible to imagine the life that had turned the smiling youngster into the ravaged old man.

  Chhean turned the photo over and read the date out loud. “April 1975 – just before the fall of Phnom Penh.” Her tone was subdued. The photo that she carried about with her – which he assumed was of her family – had probably been taken around a similar time. So many smiling faces, none of them with any inkling of what the future held.

  She continued to flick through the file while Singh stared at the pictures.

  “Nothing much new in here,” she said. “We heard it during his testimony at the trial.”

  Singh nodded.

  “Colonel Menhay was right – no family. His wife disappeared when Pol Pot was in charge. He never married again. No children.”

  “I’m not comfortable with learning about the victim from a file,” grumbled Singh. “I want to talk to people!”

  Chhean said, rifling through the papers to confirm her surmise, “There is not much information on Huon between 1975 and 1978. In 1978, there is a record of him being admitted to Tuol Sleng. As you know, Duch kept good records of admissions and confessions.”

  “It sounds like your people were scattered to the four winds when the cities were emptied by Pol Pot.”

  “Huon must have been sent to one of the villages, maybe moved around a few times as the food ran out.”

  “Anonymous until he annoyed someone and ended up at S21,” said Singh.

  They were both quiet, listening to the low sounds of a busy restaurant; voices, laughter, tinkling glasses and cutlery scraping against crockery.

  Chhean had a quick look around. The place was filled with the prosperous of Cambodia. Older men with coarse features were accompanied by young heavily made-up women. The men were uniformly overweight. It was a sign of prosperity in the poverty-stricken country – and in Chhean’s view, an indicator of the level of corruption. The fatter you were, the more you had stolen from your countrymen. She looked across at her dinner companion and grinned. It was possib
le that the same formula did not hold true in Singapore.

  “What are you smiling about? Have you thought of someone we can speak to about Huon?”

  She racked her brain for an answer. It would not do for the policeman to realise that her mind had been wandering. “Usually the landmine victims who sell postcards and books stay at the same spot.”

  “So?”

  “So, maybe other sellers in that place might know him,” she retorted.

  “It’s possible, I guess. Where did Huon ply his trade?”

  She didn’t understand the expression and looked at him blankly.

  “Where did Huon sell his books and postcards?” The fat man’s tone was impatient.

  She looked down at the file. “National Museum.”

  “That big red building in town?”

  “Yes.”

  Singh’s phone beeped loudly. He held it up some distance from his face. He was getting long-sighted, she guessed. He needed a pair of those reading glasses to perch on the end of his large nose.

  “The autopsy report will be ready at noon tomorrow. Good, that means we have time to stop at the museum on the way to the tribunal.”

  ♦

  “We were patriots,” said Samrin, “and this is our reward.”

  Menhay and the man accused of crimes against humanity were in a small room within the fortified bungalow that was home to Samrin and the other defendants. Duch had been held there as well until he had been transferred to a prison at an undisclosed location. Policemen, wearing the insignia of wardens, stood at the door and the window, the only two exits to the room. It was as if they feared an escape attempt by the eighty-year old man sitting across from them. A nurse sat in a chair in the corner, watching proceedings with a blank face.

  “Why am I on trial? What about the Vietnamese? What about the French, what about the Americans?” He spat on the ground. “Especially the Americans.”

  This was an old argument. There was Cambodian blood on so many hands: the French for propping up Sihanouk, the Vietnamese for arming the communists and the Americans for carpet bombing Cambodia from 1969 onwards, killing thousands of civilians and driving the terrified population into Pol Pot’s arms. Why, the question was asked, had all these criminals, from Kissinger onwards, escaped justice while a small group of old Cambodian men – and one woman – were hauled before some multi-million dollar UN tribunal?

  “We were trying to save Cambodia,” insisted Samrin, fixing his gaze on the colonel.

  Menhay remained silent. He had come to see Samrin on a hunch. After all, who more than the man accused of crimes against humanity would benefit if the war crimes tribunal fell into disrepute because of Huon’s murder? But now he found himself unexpectedly intimidated by the dapper figure with the hot eyes. It was that sense of shock when coming face to face with evil and discovering it was housed in the body of an ordinary man, a frail old man who was accused of being Duch’s henchman – more accurately, Duch’s hatchet man – the commandant of the killing fields at Choeng Ek.

  “What do you want anyway?” demanded Samrin. The voice of command still came naturally. “I am tired, I need to rest.”

  Menhay stole a glance at the nurse. He was under strict instructions not to exhaust the old man for fear that he might cheat justice by dying before his trial concluded.

  “There was an incident at the compound,” he said carefully.

  Samrin cackled like an old hen. “That ridiculous one-legged man was killed.”

  “How do you know about it? Did you have anything to do with it?”

  The man accused of mass murder looked offended at being accused of killing an individual. Perhaps it seemed a petty crime compared with this man’s grandiose efforts. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped. “You think I snuck out at night and stabbed that fool?” He held up his hands to show that they were shaking with a mild form of Parkinson’s disease. “I’m just an old man waiting to die.”

  Menhay’s expression was grim. “How do you know about the killing?”

  Again, the dry chicken cackle erupted from Samrin. “You think just because you lock me up I don’t know what’s going on? The walls have ears and a tongue to reveal all your secrets.”

  The colonel ignored the hyperbolic language. It was possible that Samrin had picked up the gossip from the kitchen staff or one of the policemen, even the glowering nurse in the corner.

  “I think you’re like the queen bee with many servants to do your bidding,” retorted Menhay. “And if I find you had anything to do with this…” He trailed off uncertainly.

  The old man, sometimes known as the ‘butcher of Choeng Ek’ – to distinguish him from the Khmer Rouge military leader, Ta Mok, who was known merely as the ‘Butcher’ – was gleeful. “Well, what are you going to do?” he demanded, a broad smile exposing teeth that sprouted in all directions like an untended garden. “Charge me with murder?”

  Menhay glanced out of the window. The statue of the Lord of the Iron Staff, Lokta Dambang Dek, a Khmer spirit who administered justice, was just visible within the ECCC compound. He noted that the statue was facing away from the court buildings and wondered whether this guardian too had turned his back on Cambodia. He made a silent vow that for as long as the blood ran red in his body, he would not abandon his country.

  The colonel leaned forward and placed his hands on the table. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the nurse fidget nervously, afraid perhaps that he was about to attack her patient.

  “Did you know,” Menhay asked quietly, “that there is someone killing Khmer Rouge? Eleven dead so far in only three months.”

  The old man was alarmed and it showed in the whites of his eyes. “What are you trying to say? Who is doing it?”

  Menhay shrugged. “You should know it’s a dangerous world for old men with blood on their hands.”

  “I want my protection increased. It is your obligation as the police to protect me.” Samrin was pounding the table angrily like a small child deprived of a treat.

  It was Menhay’s turn to laugh. “My men are busy hunting murderers, not protecting them. You should watch your back, Comrade Samrin,” he whispered and walked out of the room.

  ♦

  The following morning, Singh, fortified with a large breakfast of pancakes and maple syrup, decided to walk to the National Museum. It wasn’t too far, he was sure of it. A brisk, health-giving walk would clear his head of the conspiracy theories that had raged through the morning’s English-language papers. God only knew what the Khmer-language dailies were saying. He didn’t doubt they would run the gamut from shock to outrage. The murder was out and everyone from government to ex-Khmer Rouge and from big business to the United Nations had been implicated by insinuation and innuendo.

  There had been a lot of criticism of the security at the tribunal as well – Colonel Menhay would not be enjoying his breakfast. Neither for that matter would that hideous starched-up creature from the UN. A few newspaper editorials had demanded that the trials go ahead immediately – unbowed by the setback – and a number of others had insisted equally firmly that the ECCC hearings be put on hold indefinitely until the safety and integrity of the institution could be guaranteed. Of Cheah Huon himself, very little was said. Singh decided, feeling mildly heroic, that it was his role to look out for the interests of the dead man.

  Ten minutes into his walk, the sun beating down on his head from a cloudless blue sky and his nose wrinkled against the stench euphemistically known as the smell of ‘drains’, he had forgotten any laudable aspirations and was concentrating on putting one sneaker-clad foot in front of the other. He wished he had sunglasses for the glare but he never carried a pair, disliking slipping the glasses under his turban and around his ears.

  Young men wearing baseball caps shouted offers of rides and he was tempted to accept but decided, with a combination of stubbornness and courage, to persist. Old women tried to sell him brightly-coloured foodstuffs and small children offered him bottles of water. He t
urned them all down and the vendors shouted in a regular chorus, “You remember me, OK?” as if he could be trusted to make his way back to an individual whose product he suddenly desired.

  The Mekong River that looked so inviting from his hotel room was stinking, muddy and slow-moving at ground level. Singh tried not to breathe too deeply and wondered whether he should light a cigarette to cocoon himself in a layer of smoke. At last, he reached an enormous square of dry grass and stopped to stare at the Royal Palace on the other side. Here, inspired no doubt by the picture of Mao in Tiananmen Square, a large portrait of Prince Sihanouk looked down benevolently as his people tried to make a living selling transportation opportunities to unwary tourists.

  He wheezed his way across the square – there wasn’t any shade from the morning sun here either. Singh was quite sure from his map that the National Museum was behind the extravaganza of gold and glitter that formed the palace compound. He had read somewhere that the palace housed floors of solid silver and diamond-encrusted Buddha statues. The policeman wasn’t impressed. He waved away a small child trying to sell him trinkets. They’d be better off selling the royal collection and providing some income to these kids. On the other hand, if Chhean was to be believed, someone would pocket the proceeds.

  He reached the museum and breathed a sigh of relief. The red-brick building with fish-scale roof tiles made a pleasant change from all the palatial gold and yellow. There was no sign of Chhean so he bought an entry ticket – priced in US dollars, why in the world had he changed any money into riels? – and wandered through the high-roofed building constructed around a square forecourt dotted with charming lily ponds in which stood unlikely plastic egrets. There was no point looking for anyone to question – they wouldn’t speak English. The cool, almost deserted interior with its dark wooden roof beams and whirring ceiling fans was restful and he sauntered past the enormous stone statues, relics of Angkor mostly, with mild interest.

  He was contemplating a statue of the elephant god, Ganesha – Angkor had been a Hindu kingdom – when Chhean found him.