by Ning Cai
I hear Ashraf swearing under his breath as he rushes after the struggling constables dragging the howling Uncle Glen away. Amberlyn helps Charlie up, and he groans as he slowly gets on his feet. He coughs weakly, like he just got punched hard in the gut. He sees me and his eyes go wide.
“Max! I swear, I didn’t do this!” Charlie yells as she shoves him into the mirrored interrogation room. “I’m innocent!”
The door slams shut behind Charlie but I can still hear him yelling.
“Help me, Max, help me!”
*
My head throbs as I stand alone now in the meeting room, looking at all the pinned pictures of the Spectre’s victims, along with notes and photographs from all the different crime scenes. There is a terrible ache in my heart that doesn’t go away and I can hardly breathe. CK. I can’t believe my best friend is gone. My cheeks should be wet but my eyes remain dry. I will the tears to come, but it just doesn’t happen. What is wrong with me?
Pulling out my phone, I play the recording of Gigi’s betrayal again, feeling a crackling wildfire raging within me as I watch my cousin’s girlfriend capture every page of my personal journal. I chew on my lower lip, carefully deliberating my next steps. Expose her for the fraud she is so Jon knows his mother was right about her all along? Show this to the police and have CID arrest her for breaking and entering?
No.
I make up my mind. I won’t be sharing the video footage with Jon or Aunt Theresa. Or even the police. At least, not yet.
Yes, I reply to Gigi’s text message. We should catch up soon. There’s SO much to talk about. After attaching the incriminating evidence, I hit the send key. I’m going out on a limb here with this decision, and totally taking a gamble on my actions, but with all of Gigi’s behaviour so far, it’s clear to me now that she has got to be a rookie reporter after a juicy story.
Why else would she try so damn hard to get me to tell her my story? And then break into my house to get at my private journal? And worst of all, pretend to like Jon and manipulate him just so she could use him to get close to me, wrecking his relationship with Aunt Theresa in the process. She might have the face of a sweet girl next door, but Gigi belongs to that same evil tribe of hungry journalists who ruthlessly ambushed me at the columbarium. Now that I know who she really is, I need to use all of this to my advantage.
“Schooling, have you seen Amberlyn?” an exhausted Ashraf asks from the door, looking like he’s enduring a massive migraine himself.
“She’s in with…with Charlie.”
He gives a gruff nod of thanks before ambling towards the interrogation room, rubbing his goatee as he goes. Turning back to study the spread of evidence laid out before me, I feel an overwhelmingly dark sense of hopelessness start to engulf me.
Did Charlie really help Lenny Lye kill all these people? Why? What kind of deal was he cutting? Money? Like his father? I sigh. There are so many questions and no answers.
I stare at the picture of my late Blackmore High senior, Raeya Kaur, proudly wearing her Harvard sweater and standing with her longtime boyfriend, Huang Jun Jie, a fellow senior from our school who came to Singapore on scholarship from China. Something suddenly clicks in my head. Harvard.
I mutter the name under my breath, furious with myself for not thinking of it before, as my fingers race to complete the Google Maps search on my phone. The app seems to take forever to load. “C’mon! Hurry up!”
Locating Rae’s alma mater on my screen once it loads, I then pan across the map around the campus, carefully studying the Massachusetts terrain and finally finding what I half-remembered from a sleepy geography lesson many moons ago. I pinpoint the spot and my fingers swiftly spread to zoom into the blue body of water. There it is.
The Charles River.
Mandarin has never been my strong suit, but I do recall something my exasperated Chinese tuition teacher tried to drill into me specifically about the grand Yangtze in China. But just to be completely sure, I type “river” into Google Translate and wait for the pinyin translation to load.
Jiang.
My heart quickens as my head fits another piece into the puzzle. I check the print-outs of Rae’s calendar and email exchanges, and note the timeline. She had made plans to speak with an informant named “River” about Pastor Lenny Lye, but with her unexpected death, they never met face to face. Because of her time in Harvard near the Charles River, coupled with her keen understanding of Mandarin, necessary to converse better with Jun Jie, the informant she never met has to be Charlie Jiang!
My phone suddenly rings and I have never been happier to pick up a call at four in the morning. “Hello, Gigi.”
“Does your cousin know?” she asks in a hushed whisper, her voice guarded.
“Not yet,” I say. “And he doesn’t need to know. No one does. Not his mother. Not the police. No one, because I can delete that video of you, stored right now in the cloud.”
Gigi lets out a shaky sigh. “And what do you want in exchange?”
“Your help. Right now,” I say, hoping that my hunch is correct. “All the information you can get about the Spectre case.”
There is a brief silence on the phone, and then a barely audible sigh.
“The senior reporter on the crime beat found out something very interesting just this morning,” she finally whispers. “No one knows that I made a copy. I’ll hand it to you. But you didn’t get it from me. Deal?”
She agrees to meet me at the CID headquarters in fifteen minutes.
I dash out of the room, sprinting down the long corridor towards the interrogation room I know Charlie is in. Banging open the door, I stare back at three startled faces.
“Charlie is River,” I yell, “the second informant Raeya Kaur was supposed to meet to talk about Lenny Lye! They never did because she was killed by the first informant she arranged to meet with earlier. I don’t think Charlie killed those people or has anything to do with the Spectre. He only wants his father’s true story to come to light, because he’s an innocent man!”
All three nod in unison and I shut the door quietly behind me, suddenly feeling sheepish for my dramatic outburst. Charlie massages his wrists, now free from the handcuffs. “Thank you for believing in me,” he says.
“Charlie just told us all of this and his story checks out.” Ashraf’s steepled hands rise to massage his temples. “Thankfully he’s agreed to co-operate with us, and in exchange for dropping the charges against Glen for assaulting him earlier, we’ll also not pursue the fact that Charlie resisted arrest and punched a police officer on duty.”
“Yes,” Amberlyn sighs. “I was going to tell Glen that the body we found on Pulau Ubin was not his son, but Charlie’s grandmother. The old lady had just passed from natural causes when our colleagues located them in her kampong. Charlie was taking her there because she wanted to thank a friend for some fruit in person, but she died shortly after they arrived on the island. It’s all just very bad timing.”
Suddenly weak, I lean against the wall, unsure if my legs will buckle under me. CK is still alive! He’s out there, somewhere. It’s now up to us to find him.
“You’re correct about that blogger,” Charlie says as he cracks his neck loudly. “I went to the library and used one of the public computers to set up a free email account to contact her, but Raeya Kaur never showed up. I left after waiting for two hours and never got the chance to meet her. I was angry she diao me, because I really wanted to pass her the documents I took from the church office to prove Papa’s innocence. He worked many years for Lenny Lye and practically worshipped that man. So when the pastor told Papa to take the blame for embezzlement, he actually did. I’m trying to get him out of prison. I want people to know he’s not the hopeless case everyone says he is.”
Ashraf clears his throat. “Documents you took?”
Charlie shrugs. “Borrowed?” His face looks so different without black eyeliner. I decide that I like him much better without make-up on.
Amberlyn slide
s over the grainy screen capture of CK’s hooded kidnapper in the maroon van, and a similar print-out of Charlie behind the wheel of the same vehicle, taken from a speed camera. “What I’m still struggling to understand, Charlie, is your claim that it wasn’t you driving in the CCTV footage. Please explain this to us.”
Charlie looks at the pictures and shakes his head, a perplexed furrow on his handsome face. “I don’t know. I left our company van at the car park. I called a cab to bring us to Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal because it’s a more comfortable ride for my grandmother. The suspension is very jialat and it hurts her back every time Ah Ma rides…rode…with me.”
“Our company van?” Ashraf narrows his eyes. “Who else has the key?”
“My boss lah, ah then?” Charlie rolls his eyes. “It belongs to Uncle Eddie.”
“Edgar Lam? He drives it too?”
Charlie throws the police inspector a dour look.
“Oei, you met the man, right? Uncle Eddie has been wheelchair-bound for six years, since that car accident. So no, I don’t think my boss can drive. All I’m saying is that he has the other key. So maybe his evil twin took the van or something. Who knows? Like I said, I worked for him to find out information about the pastor, to dig up dirt about Lenny Lye. But Uncle Eddie isn’t anything like him. The man is an angel.”
“Okay, back to this, Charlie.” Amberlyn taps on the grainy picture. “Please take a moment to examine this carefully and tell us if you recognise the driver wearing the hoodie.”
Charlie shakes his head. “Buey tahan… Look, I’m telling you that it’s confirm not Uncle Eddie, okay? I know him. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. Obviously his brother took our van and used it to kidnap that crazy policeman’s son. Sorry I cannot help you. And if there is nothing else, I would like to go now. I need to make arrangements for my grandmother’s funeral. There are a lot of things that I have to do.”
Ashraf and Amberlyn exchange a look of defeat before nodding.
Charlie stands up to leave. He looks glumly at me. “Hope you find your boyfriend soon.”
“Huh?” I blink. “CK is my best friend, not my—”
My phone rings, interrupting me.
It is Gigi, texting me that she is now downstairs, waiting for me at the front door of the Police Cantonment Complex. I glance back up at everyone. “Please wait for me in the other room. I’ll be right back!”
*
Back in the meeting room, I extract Gigi’s videocassette from its spotted cardboard slipcover, and try to pop it into the equally ancient relic of a VCR player hooked up to the flat screen television. The black chunky plastic refuses to go into the slot of the machine, no matter how many times I try to shove it in.
“Er, maybe try turn it the other way?” Charlie suggests, between bites of instant Cup Noodles that Ashraf got everyone from the pantry. “The two white circles face up?”
Amberlyn grimaces and comes forward. She takes the tape from me. “Here, let me do it.” She whips the videocassette around and effortlessly slips it into the slot, with the sticker facing up. The machine swallows the tape and a mini concerto of weird clicking noises starts to play. After a long moment, the blue screen comes to life. A super cheesy montage and opening sequence from an old TV show starts playing and the awful resolution makes me cringe.
“Generation loss. The VHS tape is a copy from a recording,” Amberlyn murmurs.
“I’ve absolutely no idea what you mean, but it looks like a crappy download,” I say, pushing away my own barely-touched cup of instant noodles that taste like cardboard.
Ashraf sighs, leaning against the wall with folded arms, next to the hole made by Uncle Glen earlier. “Schooling, what exactly are we watching?”
I drag a chair in front of the flickering screen and settle into it.
“A friend of mine found this in our local television archives. It’s a recording of a Valentine’s Day TV special way back in 1980, when Mediacorp was still called Singapore Broadcasting Corporation. She told me that this SBC programme stars the Spectre’s first victim, Jo-lin Kong. My friend discovered it when she looked up the dead woman’s name and did some research. Apparently she was not your typical Tiger Beer auntie.”
The old video is blurry but we easily manage to make out a tall magician wearing a vintage ruffle shirt and bell-bottoms in shiny gold sequins. His hair is teased up into a pompadour.
“Wah! That’s Uncle Eddie!” Charlie chuckles, pulling a chair over and sitting next to me. “He was a very successful grand illusionist back in his heyday. There was nothing that the man couldn’t do. I haven’t seen this show though.”
A generous fountain of playing cards suddenly springs out from the inside of the glossy black top hat held in the magician’s large hands. Then, laughing at nothing in particular as he tosses away his hat, the handsome man with double eyelids walks down the garishly lit steps of the retro television studio. Edgar Lam’s lovely assistant, a smiling young lady with dramatic cheekbones and playful eyes, starts dancing gracefully around the entertainer’s slender frame. Her poofy hair looks like a walking advertisement for hairspray.
“Jo-lin Kong,” Ashraf mutters as he pushes off the wall, staring at the pirouetting dancer in feathered hair and bright make-up. He drags a chair over and sits on my other side. “If this television show was taped from 1980, the deceased would have been just twenty years old.”
The duo finally end their contrived, cringe-making dance number, with her landing in a split just in front of him as Edgar Lam stands with open arms. And then, at the next change of music, the young magic assistant shimmies and shakes her hips as the fluffy-haired magician waves at the audience before entering a tall wooden box.
If CK were here watching this with us right now, I could so imagine him rolling his eyes and calling it lame, pointing out that there is probably a trap door directly underneath the prop. I bite my lip and focus my attention back on the screen.
Once Edgar Lam is inside the box, Jo-lin Kong closes the gold-painted door and claps twice; a sudden burst of golden sparks dramatically showers down from above just as the box comes apart, showing that the lanky grand illusionist has mysteriously vanished before our very eyes.
The camera switches immediately to the studio audience, zooming in tight to show the triumphant magician blowing a shrill whistle from the back of the stunned crowd, having apparently teleported over in the blink of an eye. Edgar Lam’s laughing face is now in close-up, and he winks at the impressed fans who shake his hand as he makes his way back on stage.
“Pause that,” I call out and Amberlyn does. “Rewind back, just a little. Do you see it?”
They shake their heads.
“Check this out.” I get up and point at the man’s eyes on screen. “This is Edgar Lam! He’s got one double eyelid and one single eyelid. The pastor has double eyelids on both eyes. It’s the twins working together on stage. So just now, it wasn’t Edgar Lam starting the show and getting into the box, but Lennard Lye.”
Charlie gives a shrug and doesn’t seem too impressed.
“Orh okay, ten points to you for good observation skills, but you do realise that magic isn’t real right? Of course there’s the two of them. Lots of magic acts have used twins. You saw The Prestige, right? Can we get back to the show, please?”
I restrain from rolling my eyes. Charlie doesn’t get it.
Amberlyn pushes the play button and the grand illusionist struts back on stage with his ridiculous shiny bell-bottom trousers to continue the show. With a friendly smile as he yanks something fluffy out from a Japanese-style wooden crate, the glib performer introduces his “very special friend” Mister Tanuki-san, a cheeky puppet with a straw hat and a penchant for putting down his operator, making the audience roar with laughter.
The gifted ventriloquist then invites a young girl to join him up on stage, having the shy girl hold what seems to be an empty Styrofoam cup. Pouring a stream of water from the clear jug Jo-lin hands him, the illusionist dramatically makes a magica
l gesture and the cup in the child’s hands instantly fills with fluffy white snow that bubbles enthusiastically over the rim.
“Instant snow.” Charlie laughs to himself, slapping his knee as the spectators applaud generously. “Nice use of slush powder.”
The rest of us exchange looks.
“Uncle Eddie is a professional ventriloquist,” I point out slowly.
“It was all an act,” Ashraf grunts, shaking his head. “From day one.”
“Then again, it’s hard to tell who is who with all the editing that the TV station did, and the video’s poor quality isn’t helping,” Amberlyn says.
Grabbing the remote, Ashraf hits the fast forward button despite objections from Charlie. The images zip by quickly and we watch Edgar Lam perform a daring grand illusion with a giant buzz saw, cutting himself in half at the waist and then visually reattaching himself back together. He next folds an origami flower and levitates it, unexpectedly transforming the paper rose into a real one in a brilliant flash of fire.
The segment ends with the dashing young man throwing a dramatic gesture towards a special prop on stage, setting it suddenly ablaze with impressive-looking violet flames. Glittery text flashes across the screen, telling the viewers watching at home that the grand illusionist will be right back, as a dated box-in-box montage teaser plays.
We next glimpse scenes of the dashing magician hanging upside down by his ankles, bound tight in a straitjacket, his ankles tied together with a length of rope that is then set on fire. It seems like an impossible escapology feat, but he manages easily before the rope burns all the way through.
Jo-lin Kong is set on a spinning wheel, and the blindfolded magician throws a series of daggers at the board, narrowly missing the smiling young lady. Quick clips of the classic Harry Houdini’s water torture cell and a tall classic French-style guillotine, its terrifyingly large blade slamming down hard on an unfortunate watermelon, are also featured before the tape ends.