They stepped out into the fierce sunshine and Singh mopped his brow with a large white handkerchief. He peered down at his shoes past his overhanging belly. They were no longer the pristine colour of his facecloth. He neatly folded his hanky and put it back in his trouser pocket – it wouldn’t take much exposure to the dust and grime to transform it into the same grubby beige as his sneakers.
“Doesn’t it ever rain here?” he asked irritably.
“It’s the dry season,” explained Chhean. She looked the fat man up and down. “You would not like the monsoons. Most Phnom Penh streets become rivers and the Mekong and Tonle Sap flood. People drown and you can find fish in your living room.”
Singh tugged at an earlobe peeping out from under his blue turban. She was probably right that he would not enjoy wading through flood waters but this town looked like it could use a good wash. He remembered, with an unexpected wistfulness, Singapore in the aftermath of a thunderstorm. The air would be sweet with the smell of rain and the trees would glisten in the half-light of the sun breaking through the clouds. It had never occurred to him that the entire spectacle depended on good drainage.
“Have you decided what we’re going to do now?” It was back to business for Chhean. She was not the sort to indulge in long conversations about the weather.
Her mobile phone interrupted his curt reply. She answered it with the same snappy authority that she brought to all her tasks. Singh hid a smile. If this kid was in charge, the streets would soon be spic-and-span, the children in school and the corrupt in jail.
She placed a hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “It’s one of the men from the museum.”
Two vertical lines formed above Singh’s nose when he remembered the handicapped booksellers. He had told Chhean to pass them a card with her phone number and not thought much about it since. It appeared that his forethought was about to provide dividends – either that or they had new titles that they were keen to flog.
She was still speaking in Khmer and he pointed at a hairy ear, indicating to her that he would appreciate some interpretation.
She motioned with her hand as if she was patting an imaginary, albeit large, dog. He assumed she was telling him to be patient and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, trying to comply with her instructions but without much success.
At last, she held the phone away from her small ear and whispered, “He – the one called Som – wants to see us. He says that he has good information but we will have to” – she was clearly quoting – “‘buy a lot of books to get it’.”
“How do we know he’s telling the truth? I’m not interested in setting off on some wild-goose chase.” He meant it as well. It had suddenly occurred to the Sikh policeman that a cold Angkor beer would provide his brain cells with the necessary lubrication for an investigation.
She spoke into the phone briefly and then muttered the translation to Singh. “If we do not like the information, we do not have to pay. We can be the judge – not him.” She added, her small nose wrinkled in confusion, “He sounded very afraid but now he’s laughing as if he has told a very funny joke.”
“Does he want us to come to the museum – now?” Singh reluctantly decided that he had nothing to lose by following up this lead. It was a starting point. Otherwise, Chhean would ask him what his plan was again and he would still be bereft of ideas.
“He is too afraid to see us at the museum. He will meet us at the killing fields in an hour.”
“Which one?” demanded Singh tartly.
Chhean snapped the phone shut and explained amicably, “Choeng Ek. In Phnom Penh, when we say ‘killing fields’, we mean Choeng Ek. Of course there are almost four hundred sites around Cambodia and more are found quite often.”
“Is Choeng Ek the one where Cheah Huon buried the dead? Where Samrin supervised the executions?”
She nodded.
“That’s good. It will be useful to see the place. It might give us more of an understanding of the dead man. How long to get there?”
“Around forty-five minutes.”
“Well, let’s get going then,” he snapped as if his companion made a practice of delaying him.
In the car, he leaned back and shut his eyes, wishing that there was less hooting and screeching and shouting in Cambodian traffic.
“Are you going to sleep?” asked Chhean suspiciously.
He raised one heavy eyelid and swivelled the eyeball to look at her. “I’m thinking,” he said firmly.
She had a certain tenacity when it came to cross-examination. “About what?”
If he was honest, he had been pondering whether to wait until he returned to the Cambodiana for his beer or if he dared stop at one of the small cafes that littered the side of the roads. He had no intention of being honest. “It’s none of your business,” he answered.
“I think she did it – Sovann, I mean. I think she murdered Huon.” Chhean was trying to be provocative but Singh was too sleepy to rise to the bait.
“It’s possible,” he agreed.
“Did you see the body?”
He nodded, eyes still firmly shut, hoping it might dissuade further conversation.
“Was it – was it, you know, disgusting or scary?”
Suddenly his interpreter was a voyeur? “Why do you want to know?” he asked sharply. The policeman always treated the dead with courtesy. With more courtesy than he treated anyone alive, Superintendent Chen had once remarked in disgust.
Chhean was looking at him as if he was mad. “To see if it is likely that someone would touch the knife.” She shuddered. “I don’t think I would.”
Singh nodded thoughtfully. It was an interesting line of analysis, dealing as it did with the psychology of those involved. “The wound was neat, not much blood. Someone like Sovann – with her experiences during the Khmer Rouge years – it’s possible she might have had the courage to touch the knife. Especially if she thought he was still alive.” He continued, “I still can’t believe she thinks Cheah Huon murdered her father.”
“Do you think it’s true?”
“We might never know,” responded Singh. “In a sense it doesn’t matter. Whether she was right or not – it still gives her a motive.”
“I never knew my father,” said Chhean quietly. “I don’t know who he was or what happened to him.”
Singh could find no response to this. His thoughts turned to the burly Sikh with the snowy white beard, his own father. That man had been such an enormous presence in his life – whether it was the ambition he had centred on his only son or feel of the back of his hand when Singh had failed to meet his expectations. There had been the rough edge of his tongue and the rare, almost endangered, words of praise. He had been cut down suddenly, a stroke caused by the fondness for beer that Singh had inherited. But it took only an instant to conjure him up in his mind’s eye. Singh Sr was very much alive in the memory of his offspring. It was difficult to imagine growing up without such a presence, without a father.
Chhean sniffed and battled her way back to the matter at hand. “It’s very hard to guess what someone like Sovann would do. I don’t understand her.”
Singh nodded – Sovann was certainly adept at playing the inscrutable oriental. He asked, “Do you have the pathologist’s number?”
“Of course.”
“Ring him, will you – I want to have a word with him.”
Chhean dialled the number while he considered his best approach to the rebellious young man. She handed him the phone and he took the small device in his large paw and held it to his ear.
“Kar Savuth, this is Inspector Singh from the Singapore police.”
“What can I do for you, inspector? Found another body?”
How did the fellow achieve such a flippant tone with so little effort? “I want to talk to you about the autopsy report.”
“What about it?”
“Sovann Armstrong denies killing Cheah Huon.”
He cackled loudly, dismissive of
even the possibility of innocence. “You’re kidding me, right?”
Did Savuth watch too many American movies or had he been trained in the United States? “No, I’m quite serious,” the policeman replied, injecting a note of gravitas into his voice to convince the disbelieving pathologist.
“She’s obviously lying. Her fingerprints were all over that knife. They were a perfect match as well.”
“She claims to have found the body that night, the night of the murder. She says her fingerprints are on the knife because she tried to pull it out.”
“She’s taking you for a ride, brother.” Gangster films, decided Singh. It was time to cut to the chase.
“I’d like you to re-examine the forensic evidence to see whether there is any possibility that her version of events might be true.”
“Tell me something, Inspector Singh – is Sovann Armstrong a beautiful woman?”
The policeman used his driest voice. “I have no idea what you’re insinuating, young man.”
There was a shout of laughter at the other end. “Really hot, huh?”
“Are you going to look at the evidence again or do I have to inform Colonel Menhay that I do not have your full cooperation?”
“Colonel Menhay?” asked the doctor. “I’d be surprised if he knew anything at all about your attempt to poke holes in his precious case.”
Kar Savuth was a smart kid as well, acknowledged Singh ruefully. “Look, I agree she probably did it. All I’m asking is that you have a second look. You don’t want an innocent woman to suffer any more than I do.”
“Especially if she’s good-looking,” agreed Savuth.
Singh wondered if he was about to have a stroke like his father before him. Certainly, he could feel a vein pounding in his neck as his blood pressure went through the roof.
“All right, old man,” chuckled Savuth. “Hold on to your hat – turban, I mean – I’ll have another look.”
♦
Singh had learnt to take the language of Cambodia in his stride. He used words like ‘genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity’ easily. He knew ‘S21’ and ‘Tuol Sleng prison’ were one and the same. He talked of ‘almost two million dead’ as if he understood the numbers although his career had involved treating dead bodies as individuals, each one with an identity, a history and a right to justice. Now, their taxi was drawing up outside Choeng Ek, the ‘killing fields’ near Phnom Penh, and the evocative name did nothing to upset the policeman’s composure. He had been in the country for no more than a week and he’d already come to terms with mass murder. Or so he thought.
The inspector scrambled out of the low-slung taxi with difficulty and glanced around. The muddy parking lot didn’t have many cars in it. The tourists wandering towards the gates, clutching water bottles and badly-folded maps, were mostly white backpacker types. No surprise there. He didn’t think there were many Asian visitors who would add a trip to a mass burial site to their itinerary – they were more likely to be scouring the markets looking for cheap silk and bargain-priced gemstones.
Chhean was paying the entrance fee – US dollars again – while Singh gingerly made his way across the muddy surface, avoiding an aggressive cockerel en route. He didn’t know what to expect, hadn’t put much thought into their destination except as the place where Huon had ‘worked’ and as their rendezvous point with the amputee. Now, as he stepped through the gates, his eyes were drawn inexorably to the massive white and glass stupa in the foreground. He took a few steps forward and almost bumped into a few Khmer women squatting on the ground, kramas tightly wound, feet politely folded away from him. They gestured at him to buy an incense stick. He breathed deeply; the scent was intoxicating.
“This stupa was built to commemorate the dead,” said Chhean.
He nodded. That was fairly obvious although he wasn’t certain he liked the choice of structure. There was something of that familiar communist-meets-Khmer architecture about it – straight lines with a pointy gold roof.
As they got closer, Singh’s breath caught in his throat. “What are those things in the stupa?” he asked and his voice was hoarse with shock.
“Skulls,” replied Chhean succinctly. “Skulls found on this site. About ten thousand so far.”
Singh stared up at the six-storey-high building, craning his neck so that he could see to the top of the glass structure. It was crammed with skulls. Most were damaged and cracked – Singh identified a few bullet holes and a lot of blunt instrument trauma; most of the victims had been clubbed to death. He sat down suddenly on a step. He was a murder investigator. He had seen it all before but never like this, on this scale.
“It is a shock to see this place for the first time,” agreed Chhean sympathetically.
“I don’t know how Cambodia has survived.”
“That’s why the war crimes tribunal is so important.”
Singh nodded – he could understand her point of view. These people needed some closure, some justice, perhaps some forgiveness if such a thing was possible.
“And that’s why we have to find this murderer,” Chhean added.
Singh cracked his knuckles together. Did she think that he didn’t understand the importance of finding the killer before the whole incident tainted the reputation of the tribunal? He could almost feel the weight of history on his burly shoulders.
The fat man got to his feet with difficulty. “All right, where’s this informant then?”
Chhean scanned the horizon carefully. “Not here yet – or hiding. Let’s walk about so that he can see us.”
There were tracks through the area and she set off at a slow pace along one of them. Singh lumbered after her like a bear on a lead. The whole compound was shady and quiet with a few sombre individuals drifting along the paths, stopping from time to time to read a small signpost describing a particular horror. The policeman looked around with interest. “Where are the mass graves anyway? Under those sheds?” He indicated a couple of wooden constructions in the distance that were cordoned off with rope.
“Where are the graves?” she repeated in confusion.
“Yes.” He didn’t understand Chhean – some of the time she was so quick off the mark she made him feel like an old man. At other times, like now, she stared at him blankly when he asked her a simple question.
She gestured with a broad sweep of her arm. “All around you – these are all graves.”
Singh followed the arc of her arm with his eyes. They were in the middle of grassy undulating fields, dappled in sunshine. Huge rain trees spread their protecting branches overheard. It was quiet except for the underlying sound of insects; bees humming, crickets strumming and bird calls from the trees. The compound was sufficiently far from the main road that the ubiquitous third-world traffic noise of angry horns, two-stroke motorbike engines and screeching tyres was absent. Enormous numbers of black and orange butterflies were flitting about, adding to the sense of peace. With a sinking heart, Singh realised that what he had assumed was undulating ground, smooth round verdant cavities separated by grassy knolls, were actually excavation sites. The graves, having been exhumed, had quickly been reclaimed by the spreading grass. Quite possibly, the meadow was so lush because human remains had fertilised it over the years.
“Over that way they are still digging.”
A minor building site with exposed ground and earth-moving machinery was actually an exhumation in progress, realised Singh.
“Where in the world is Som?” he asked, his angry tone a thin disguise for his distress.
“There!” shouted Chhean, attracting a few surprised, annoyed glances.
Singh saw that the man from the museum was making his way slowly towards the main entrance, placing his crutches with care so as not to fall over on the uneven surface. He had not seen them yet. Singh decided a more circumspect approach was merited. A full-frontal assault might have one of two undesirable consequences: either Som would be frightened into having second thoughts about divulging his information
or he would jack up his price when he sensed their enthusiasm. This was assuming that he had something to tell them in the first place and hadn’t just needed to make a fast buck from innuendo and falsehood. Still, what was it that Som had told Chhean – they could be the judge of his information? It sounded like he had something and, furthermore, from his choice of meeting point, that he was afraid. Singh led the way, taking a circular route that kept them out of the informant’s direct line of sight. Chhean followed him, almost treading on his heels in her hurry to get to Som.
A large four-wheel drive with blacked-out windows drove into the car park. An unusual visitor, thought Singh – he wouldn’t have expected many, or any, of Cambodia’s elite to make pilgrimages to this site. The vehicle headed closer to the entrance. Singh almost smiled. It was such a kiasu approach, as one might have said in Singapore, eschewing wide open spaces to try and find a parking lot closest to the destination.
Som had noticed the vehicle as well because he paused to let it pass. Everyone in Cambodia knew intuitively who took precedence in everyday life.
The vehicle stopped a few feet away from the amputee. Singh, who would have trusted his instincts with his life, felt a sudden overwhelming sense of foreboding. He abandoned his surreptitious approach and hurried forward, shouting to Som, waving his arms, trying to attract his attention. He realised what had filled him with intuitive dread. The four-wheel drive didn’t have number plates.
Everything after that happened in slow motion. Som turned to face Singh. He leaned on a crutch and waved a hand in acknowledgement, his face splitting into a broad grin. The policeman broke into a run, moving quickly for a man of his size. Behind him, he heard Chhean calling after him, surprised by his sudden movement.
A Deadly Cambodian Crime Spree Page 15