Sovann spoke in a perfectly reasonable tone. “But you must know all this already. I filed a police report when I recognised him as a murderer and not the victim he pretended to be.”
“You made a police report?” demanded Menhay angrily.
She nodded briefly. “The policeman who took my statement didn’t look very convinced. I’m not sure I blame him. I could hardly believe it myself.”
The colonel stormed out of the room, his face the colour of a thundercloud. They could all hear him screaming at his underlings although no one gave any overt sign of it.
“He’s asking for the report,” whispered Chhean.
Sovann gazed down at the hands folded in her lap and then looked up at all of them, finally fixing her gaze on Inspector Singh. Did she suspect, had she guessed, that he was the soft touch? The policeman blinked rapidly a few times; his eyes felt grainy and tired. Didn’t Sovann Armstrong realise that by revealing that she believed Huon had killed her father, she was providing them with a motive? She was damning herself out of her own mouth.
“Listen,” he whispered urgently to the woman accused of murder, one eye on the door to watch for Menhay’s return, “I’m not convinced you killed Huon. So just try and be calm until we figure this out.”
Chhean, who had been rifling through her papers like an angry accountant, found what she was looking for. She waved it in the air like a lion tamer with a whip and a collection of frisky lions. “Autopsy report – Huon did have a birthmark as described by Mrs Armstrong.”
“Yes,” said Singh impatiently. “Unfortunately we only have the word of Mrs Armstrong that such a birthmark was also on the neck of the cadre who killed her father. That’s evidence of nothing except her keen eyesight.”
Chhean looked miffed but did not deny Singh’s point.
Menhay walked back into the room. He held out a handwritten report to Chhean who ran through it quickly for Singh. It was the police report that Sovann had made fingering Huon as the killer of her father. Only the deep indentations of pen on paper revealed the internal turmoil of the writer. The information itself was succinct and clearly expressed. No wonder Sovann had been surprised that her interrogators knew nothing of her motive.
“Apparently we’re getting a lot of reports of this nature – my boys didn’t realise the importance of this one.” The policeman was apologetic, hinting at the many Cambodians who were imagining Khmer Rouge cadres behind every bush now that the war crimes tribunals had commenced.
Singh turned his attention back to the accused but was preempted by his impatient interpreter. “What did you do?” she asked Sovann. Chhean was speaking out of turn but no one shut her up. Instead, they turned to Sovann as one, waiting for the answer. The hands folded on her lap balled into fists. Singh noted uncomfortably that for a slight creature, the thin fingers looked strong, certainly strong enough to stab a man with a bit of luck and a sharp kitchen knife.
“I decided to confront him. To ask him why he had done it. Even if he lied to me, I would know the truth if I could watch his face when I asked the question.”
She paused, as if gathering her thoughts – or her strength – for what was to come next. They all waited like children at a storytelling, knowing the climax was coming, guessing what it was, but breathless with anticipation anyway. Singh tried to tell himself that it was all over bar the sentence of life imprisonment. It was ironic that this woman faced the same penalty, no more, no less than Duch and Samrin. Sometimes, the law really was an ass. Singh pinched the bridge of his nose firmly, trying to ward off a migraine. His famous instinct for guilt and innocence had been completely out of kilter. It was Cambodia with its bloody past and beautiful women that had thrown him off balance. How was his antenna supposed to operate accurately in such a strange land?
“I went to find him, late that evening. It was quite dark, perhaps about eleven? I can’t remember. It was a very confused time for me. I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything for hours.”
Singh nodded. It was as good a time as any to lay the groundwork for a plea of temporary insanity or whatever the equivalent was in Cambodia.
She glanced at him and the inspector was rewarded with a small smile for his support.
“I went towards the wing where I knew some of the witnesses were staying. As I grew closer, I heard voices shouting. There was a lot of anger. I kept going…”
Her audience had almost stopped breathing.
“I heard the sound of footsteps, someone running – but whoever it was did not pass me. I reached Huons room. I was terrified. Part of me wanted to run away…I know it sounds strange but I felt as if I was eleven years old again.”
She stopped. The fortitude that she had shown from the beginning was showing signs of wear and tear. There were tears in her eyes and the hands on her lap were clasped together tightly to stop them from shaking.
“Go on,” said Singh in a gravelly whisper.
“His door was ajar – I opened it and saw Huon – the man who murdered my father.”
“Did he say anything?” It was Chhean again, forgetting her role as translator and turning into an inquisitor.
Sovann looked up with an expression of astonishment on her face.
“What do you mean? I saw him lying on the floor. He was dead!”
♦
“Dead?” Menhay was mystified and it showed in his raised eyebrows and round eyes.
“Yes. So you see, I didn’t – couldn’t have – killed Huon. I didn’t realise he was dead at first. He was lying on the ground. His artificial limb was lying across him.”
Menhay noticed a small nod from Singh. The description of the position of the body matched what they had seen. The colonel did not see where this approbation was from – of course she would be accurate about the details of death. She was the murderer.
“Then I saw the hilt of the knife…” Sovann shuddered like a leaf in a gust of wind.
It was a good performance, thought Menhay sceptically. It needed to be if they were expected to swallow this ridiculous tale.
“What did you do?” Singh asked the question, indicating with his words that he was not treating the story with the outright disdain it deserved.
Menhay was fast coming to the conclusion that the leading murder investigator from Singapore was a gullible idiot. It seemed that he had a better nose for stale biscuits than a blatant falsehood.
“I knelt down by the body. I touched him.” She pressed her own forearm to indicate where she had put her hand. “He was still warm, like a living person.”
“Very cool behaviour,” remarked Menhay. Unexpectedly, he hit a nerve.
“How old are you, Colonel Menhay? About fifty?” Sovann had risen to her feet. She was literally trembling with anger. “Then, as a Cambodian, I think you would have seen a lot of death. I was fifteen when I left for the United States. By then, I had learnt to walk past a corpse as if it wasn’t there, to ignore the screams of the dying and to be indifferent to the pain and suffering of children. Do you think that sort of training disappears after a few soft years in the land of plenty?”
She was leaning forward, waggling a finger in his face like an angry schoolteacher with a student who had forgotten the lessons of history.
“Every night, every single night, I relive those memories. Seeing another body…this was just a waking nightmare, but not that much different from the rest.”
Menhay put his hands out, palms flat and facing her. He said, and he meant it, “I’m sorry.” His voice was husky. “I get the nightmares too sometimes.” He drew a deep breath, he was a policeman again, not someone who shared a common past with the accused. “But the fact is that nothing you have said explains why your fingerprints were on that knife.”
She sat down suddenly as if the strength had gone out of her legs. “I had this idea that I should remove the knife. I wasn’t even sure if he was dead.” Sovann was miming her actions, leaning forward, her fingers curled as if she had her hand on the dark, rubbery hilt of the
kitchen knife.
“You were trying to save him? This man you believe killed your father?” It was Singh who had spotted the inconsistency between word and deed.
“No, but I wanted to ask him why he had killed an innocent man. I wished to know what was in his mind.”
Singh nodded as if he was satisfied and she continued. “The knife was stuck fast. It wouldn’t move. I looked at his face. As I watched, his eyes rolled back into his head so I knew he was dead.”
“What did you do next?”
Menhay let the Singapore policeman speak uninterrupted. Sovann was more likely to respond to the man she perceived as the ‘good cop’ rather than to his ‘bad cop’.
“I left the room and returned to my hotel. A part of me, a large part of me, was very, very happy that Huon was dead. The man who killed my father was dead.”
“And that’s your story?” demanded Menhay with unfeigned disbelief.
“That’s the truth,” said Sovann Armstrong.
♦
A knock on the door was a welcome distraction. The colonel was about to blow his top and start haranguing Sovann. Even Singh needed a few moments to regroup after her revelations. He had been certain Sovann was innocent. But he had not imagined that she would present them with a motive for murder as well as a rather peculiar explanation for her fingerprints. As to the former, he supposed she had no choice. She couldn’t have anticipated that her police report would have been lost, even temporarily, in a pile of paperwork. As to the latter? Well, her fingerprints were on the knife. If she hadn’t killed Huon, it was as good an explanation as any.
The policeman who came in whispered something to Menhay. The short powerful man rose to his feet, nodded curtly to Sovann and then beckoned to Chhean and Singh to follow him out of the room.
Once outside, he locked the door carefully, as if Sovann was some sort of desperate killer bent on escape, thought Singh irritably, and pocketed the key.
The rookie handed him an envelope and Menhay opened it with a fingernail, one of the few he had left. He stared at the picture and then handed it over to Singh. Chhean stood on tiptoe, peering over his shoulder to see what he was looking at.
It was a vibrantly coloured reproduction of a painting.
“By Vann Nath,” explained Menhay.
“One of the seven survivors from S21,” added Chhean.
Singh looked at the picture of a baby being snatched from her mother by a Khmer Rouge cadre while other children looked on, the expression of terror on their faces causing Singh’s heart to turn over with a combination of intense sympathy and profound helplessness.
“Why are you showing me this?” he asked, swallowing hard to clear the lump in his throat.
“That was the painting the Frenchman, François Gaudin, was looking at when he collapsed.” Without another word the colonel marched down the passage.
Singh stared at the picture for a moment longer, committing it to memory although he feared that it wasn’t necessary, that the image would return to him often in the cold hours of the morning. He slipped it into his shirt pocket and hurried after Menhay.
“Where are we going now?” he demanded, puffing in his effort to keep up. The colonel was not much taller than Singh and almost as broad, but his width was densely packed muscle, not the flabby evidence of a few too many curries.
“I am going to my office. You can do whatever you like!” Perhaps regretting his rudeness, he added by way of explanation, “I thought it would be good to give that woman some time to rethink her lies.” He glanced at the winded Sikh. “And I think we need to make a progress report to Adnan Muhammad as well.”
“What are you going to tell him?”
Menhay stopped in his tracks. He turned to face the Sikh man, his expression one of weariness. “What am I going to tell him? That I have my murderer, what else?” He continued, “And I hope you’re not going to make this difficult.”
“You heard her – that was a plausible explanation for the fingerprints!”
“Are you trying to be funny? She tried to pull the knife out? Give me a break.”
“People behave in strange ways when they are confronted with violence. It’s possible.” It sounded lame even to Singh’s ears. He needed to come up with something more convincing if he was to sway the colonel.
“All I know is that she’s presented us with a motive,” enunciated Menhay clearly. “That was the one weakness in my case. I mean, why would some rich woman from America stab the star witness at the war crimes tribunal? Now we know, she thought he killed her father.” He shook his head. “She must be mad.”
Singh had no idea how to break down this man’s wall of certainty, buttressed as it was by compelling evidence. Even he was doubtful as to the veracity of Sovann’s story. But they had to test it, they had to investigate. That was their job as policemen, not reaching for the suspect nearest to hand and chucking them in jail for the rest of their lives. “Look – let’s look at it the other way. Let’s assume she’s telling the truth,” he said, trying to inject a note of patience that he didn’t feel into his voice.
Menhay snorted.
“Just listen to me for a moment. If she was right, Huon was a Khmer Rouge killer. It opens up entirely new avenues of investigation.” Avenues as wide and as long as Phnom Penh’s French boulevards, thought Singh excitedly, pleased with his own reasoning.
“Like what?”
“Well, your serial killer for starters! Huon would have been the perfect target, escaping justice by pretending to be a victim.”
“Those men were shot – a single bullet to the head. There is no similarity between the killings at all.”
Singh swatted away the argument as if it was an irksome fly. “It would have to be different here. Too difficult to smuggle a gun into the compound with the metal detectors and things.”
“Take my word for it – it wasn’t the serial killer.”
“Huon’s story at the tribunal was true – about being the gravedigger. Some of the others remember him.” Chhean spoke with understandable tentativeness. It took courage to insert herself, even conversationally, between these two angry men locking horns in a narrow corridor.
Singh emitted a deep sound from his throat, like an aggressive dog. This woman worked for him, he thought, conveniently forgetting his preference for sidekicks who were prepared to play devil’s advocate. Shouldn’t she be on his side?
Chhean redeemed herself. “But do you remember I mentioned that there was a gap in his file before he was sent to Tuol Sleng? Maybe he was Khmer Rouge and they decided he could not be trusted and sent him to prison.”
“That’s quite possible,” exclaimed Singh. “I read in one of those books that most of those in S21 were ex-Khmer Rouge anyway. They were purged from the party for whatever reason.”
“Usually their crime was only in Pol Pot’s imagination,” added Chhean.
“His is not the only active imagination,” said Menhay pointedly.
“Look, colonel. All I’m trying to suggest is that we look into this a bit further. I agree with you that the evidence points to Sovann and she most likely did it.”
Menhay visibly wavered.
“Just let me keep sniffing around,” urged the fat man.
The colonel slammed a fist into the palm of his other hand. Singh didn’t doubt that Menhay would rather have made aggressive contact with Singh’s bearded chin. He waited, holding his breath, deeming it prudent to keep out of Menhay’s internal debate, reflected in his flickering eyelashes.
“OK, Cambodia has seen too much arbitrary justice. You may keep investigating. I won’t tell Adnan that we have a suspect – he’ll read about it in the papers tomorrow anyway. If he asks, I’ll say we need to keep ‘sniffing around’ for a few days to shore up the evidence.”
Singh’s usually grouchy expression was transformed by a broad cheek-to-cheek grin. He slapped the colonel on the back. “You won’t regret this,” he said reassuringly.
“I already d
o,” was Menhay’s snide response.
Twelve
Singh crooked his finger at his interpreter and set off towards the main entrance to the police station. “We’ll see you a bit later,” he muttered over his shoulder to the colonel. He hurried away before Menhay could call him back or ask him his plans. He didn’t have any but he was sure that, as and when he formulated a strategy, the colonel wouldn’t like it. It was best to plough his own furrow – ideally in parallel to the efforts of the Cambodian police but if necessary at cross purposes. Singh was suddenly happy. A murdered man, a beautiful woman wrongly accused (he amended the description in his head, possibly wrongly accused), the bosses against him – this was a murder investigation as he understood it. If only the food in Cambodia was more to his taste, he would have everything his heart could desire. He glanced at Chhean, walking purposefully by his side, short legs taking long strides – a slightly less crabby sidekick would be an improvement as well.
“So where are we going?” the crabby sidekick demanded.
“Your job is to follow me around and translate all these airy consonants and suppressed vowels into an intelligible language, not ask questions, I will ask the questions.”
She groaned and he glowered at her. He deserved some respect for his seniority at least. Weren’t Cambodians taught to respect their elders like the children of other Asian societies? He grimaced – the reality was that there just weren’t that many Cambodian elders. Thanks to the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia had one of the youngest populations in the world.
He shook his great head, all smiles gone. He was investigating a murder in the early twenty-first century. But every aspect of the killing indicated that it was a crime born of events thirty years ago. It was probably the first time in his life that an investigation of his had invoked history in this way. In a sense, he supposed, it wasn’t history at all – what was that expression, the past is prologue? It was a useful phrase to keep in mind when looking at the grubby reality of present-day Cambodia. Despite Hun Sen’s efforts to model himself on the other strong men of Asia – Suharto, Mahathir, Lee Kuan Yew – and drag his backwater into the future, the long cold fingers of times gone by would not release Cambodia.
A Deadly Cambodian Crime Spree Page 14