A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder

by Shamini Flint

  The house was furnished in what could only be described as traditional Malaysian Sikh. It was the end lot of a row of single-storey terrace houses. The original thin strip of garden skirting the property on one side was built on as well as paved over. No blade of grass had survived the expansion. The interior was furnished with a heavy faux leather brown three-seater sofa with two matching armchairs. In the small sitting room it was oppressive. Handmade doilies, crocheted in white, hung on the back of each chair and on each arm. In an earlier era, when coconut hair oil was de rigueur amongst long-haired Sikh women, such protection for couches was prudent if the furniture was not to be permanently stained by oily, resting heads. In his sister’s house, the doilies were merely decorative. Singh thought they were quite ugly. On the other hand they reminded him of his boyhood and were also comforting. An Indonesian oil painting of a village scene in heavy dark brush strokes hung on one wall. The purchase of cheap original art had been fashionable approximately thirty years earlier and this painting had no doubt been an ‘investment’ dating back from that period (no respectable Sikh family would buy art merely for its aesthetic qualities). Prior to the short-lived boom in art, houses were decorated with religious artefacts, photos and, for those with money, wallpaper featuring Alpine scenes. His sister’s house was dimly lit with forty-watt bulbs – adding to the overall tone of middle-class gloominess.

  Baljit had been a widow for thirty years. Her husband had died of a diet of sweet desserts and sweet tea when all three of her children were still under five. He had left her well provided for with a large insurance policy as well as a house, the value of which had increased exponentially over the years as Bangsar changed from a small rural development to the hub of the Malaysian middle class. Inspector Singh rather suspected that after the initial grief at the death of her husband she had found the whole arrangement satisfactory – money in the bank, the complete governance of her three children and no titular head to the household.

  She asked now, ‘How is Dev?’

  He answered the inquiry about his wife brusquely, ‘Fine, same as usual.’

  ‘Still too thin? Not you. You should eat less. You know what happened to my poor husband!’

  She poured him a mug of hot strong tea, thickened and sweetened with condensed milk, as she said this and pushed a plate heaped with Indian sweetmeats at him.

  ‘What is the use of telling me to diet and then serving me this sort of thing?’ asked the inspector tetchily.

  He had only been in the company of his older sister for ten minutes and she was annoying him with the general trait of Sikh women of her generation – an ability to maintain a constant stream of insulting observations coupled with suggestions for his improvement.

  She changed the subject. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I am helping out in a Malaysian murder investigation. The chief suspect is Singaporean.’

  She said with relish, ‘I saw it in the newspapers. I am not surprised she killed him – converting to Islam to keep the children!’

  ‘It is not certain that she did kill him,’ pointed out the inspector.

  ‘Don’t be silly. Who else?’

  ‘That is what I am here to find out.’

  ‘You are wasting your time, lah!’

  Later that evening in his hotel room, Inspector Singh took off his shoes, peeled his socks off and wriggled his toes. Wrinkling his nose at the whiff of athlete’s foot, he wondered if his sister was right. She was insufferable but she did have a knack, with her direct, tactless observations, of hitting a core truth from time to time. The popular sentiment was that Chelsea Liew had killed her husband and for very good reason too. Even Moslems were muted in their support for the dead man. The official line, as adopted by the religious authorities, was that any conversion to Islam had to be assumed to come from the heart. However, public sentiment was highly doubtful that a Chinese businessman of dubious repute, locked in a bitter custody battle with his abused wife, would suddenly find God, except as a matter of convenience.

  The body of Alan Lee was at the Kuala Lumpur General Hospital morgue. The reason that he remained in the morgue a month after his death was due to the dispute between the State Islamic Council and Alan Lee’s mother, both of whom claimed the body. The disagreement was over whether Alan Lee should be buried according to Moslem or Buddhist rites. The Council insisted that Alan Lee had converted to Islam shortly before his death. They had records of his official conversion. His mother said that was not possible. She had cooked him his favourite meal the week before he died – bak kut teh, a pork belly soup that would have been an anathema to a Moslem for whom pigs were unclean animals, the eating of which was forbidden in the Quran.

  The hospital, acting under a stay of execution granted by the civil courts to the mother, refused to release the body to the Council for burial. The Council was incensed and argued that Moslem religious practice required that a body be interred as soon as possible after death. Pointing out that the necessity for an autopsy had obviated the possibility of compliance, the court granted a stay until the matter was determined of what, if any, Alan Lee’s religion had been at the time of his death.

  The widow was asked if she had an opinion.

  She looked coldly at her lawyer. ‘Buried six feet under, buried facing Mecca, burnt to cinders . . . it does not matter. He is rotting in hell this very moment.’

  Her lawyer’s protruding nostril hairs quivered as he exhaled deeply. ‘You will have to rein in that sort of emotion, or at least not express it, if we are to get you off.’

  ‘But where is Mummy? I want Mummy to put me to bed!’ The little boy in his Spiderman pyjamas sobbed, the heavy tears rolling down his face. He turned his face imploringly to his brother. ‘Where is Mummy?’ The older boy, a stoic expression on his face, looked at his grandmother. She was helpless. Unable to tell them the truth, unconvincing in her lies. She had used discipline, not affection, as her primary tool in bringing up her own children. Now faced with the desperate need of her two young grandchildren, offspring of a murdered man and an imprisoned woman, she did not know how to wrap her arms around them and drive away their fears. The older boy turned to his younger brother and put his own skinny arms around him. Two dark heads together, hair damp from their bath, the brothers sought comfort from each other.

  Five

  The small two-seater Cessna aeroplane was buffeted by the winds. It was a wild bouncy ride with the updraughts from the rolling hills. The single propeller on the nose of the aircraft spun vigorously and noisily as if it was conscious of its responsibility as the only thing between the plane and a long downward spiral into the thick jungle below. There was no coming back once swallowed by the trees. The canopy was so high and thick that nothing was visible once a plane penetrated the foliage. Just a few months earlier, an eighteen-seater private plane had crashed in Borneo. Nothing was found of the wreck or the passengers. Surviving in the jungle for any length of time was near impossible. Cuts turned to gangrene. Scratches became infected. Leeches latched on in a bloodthirsty frenzy. Clothes and shoes rotted in the intense humidity. Rainstorms washed away strength. Food was scarce. And there was always the threat of centipedes and cobras to make each step forward an adventure.

  The few human habitations were small and far apart. The larger towns in Borneo all hugged the coast, keeping the jungle on one side and an escape route by sea on the other. The villages in the jungle were indigenous. Treks to the nearest big town could take weeks. Even a river ride in a canoe with the much-sought-after outboard motor took days. Only the narrow, short airstrips carved out of the jungle offered a quick way out in an emergency.

  Jasper Lee, at the controls of the small plane, envied the villages their seclusion. It was his idea of heaven to be a week in any direction from cities with their brothels, cinemas and drains clogged with plastic bottles. He looked down at the rolling expanse of green canopy punctuated by a few emergents, exceptionally tall dipterocarp trees. If he went ahead with his plan, h
e would never again know the rich beauty of Borneo – never hear the chattering of the orang utans nor the harsh cry of a rhinoceros hornbill. He would never catch a glimpse of a clouded leopard disappearing into the trees or follow the tracks of a pygmy elephant deep into the rainforest. Jasper had forced himself to visit Borneo one last time, taking to the air in a hired plane. He had to test his resolve. Jasper wanted to remind himself of what was at stake.

  Alan Lee’s younger brother sat behind the desk of his dead brother and smiled. He was a slight man, impeccably dressed with expensive elegance. It was an extra-large desk, a little too big for the brother who had inherited it, with a top of wood so highly polished as to be mirror-like. Its surface was bare except for a telephone, a Macintosh Power Book with the Apple logo glowing mysteriously and a notepad with a Mont Blanc pen next to it. The room itself consisted of bare cream walls except for a couple of pieces of art by leading Malaysian artists. A frantic Ibrahim Hussein dominated one wall. There was a sofa and a couple of comfortable chairs in a corner of the big room, for more informal business discussions.

  Lee Kian Min was a happy man. He had waited a long time to get his feet under the desk of his father and, later, his undeserving brother. He had worked hard and put in all the face time in the world, learning the ins and outs of the business while his older brothers had pursued orang utans and women respectively. He despised them for their weaknesses and envied them their seniority. But he had always known his time would come.

  When Jasper Lee walked out on the family and almost killed the old man doing so, Kian Min was sure his moment had arrived. But in the end his father had insisted, despite misgivings, that Alan take over. Kian Min was devastated. But rather than emulating Jasper and leaving, he stayed, worked hard behind the scenes and kept the company together. When his father died, he continued to do the same. He allowed Alan to play the timber mogul while he quietly controlled the business. He learnt to be patient, to bide his time, to hide his ire when Alan would make one of his sporadic visits to the company offices. And now he had his reward. The company was his and he was going to savour every moment behind the big desk.

  Inspector Singh met Sergeant Shukor at the entrance to the Ritz Carlton. He had delayed setting out on the pretext that he could not face any more time in traffic. The sergeant had taken the postponement philosophically. Now, replete with the hotel buffet breakfast, his belly straining against his shirt, Inspector Singh felt energised and ready to confront the case head on.

  ‘Take me to the morgue,’ he ordered.

  ‘The morgue, sir?’

  ‘Yes, I want to meet Alan Lee.’

  ‘I have the autopsy report if you would rather look at that.’

  ‘I’ve read that. I want to meet Alan Lee!’

  They weaved their way towards the hospital, parking some distance away from the main building. The car park was brimming with cars, largely Protons. The Proton, Malaysia’s national car, had, through a combination of subsidies and tariffs, achieved a substantial share of the Malaysian car market. It meant that a large number of patients who were too poor to buy themselves private health care could still drive to a government hospital for their subsidised treatment. It also meant that Malaysia was being rapidly paved with new roads to accommodate the burgeoning car population. It seemed, pondered the inspector, that no sooner did you give a man a car than he wanted to drive somewhere and do something. Gone were the days when life proceeded at a gentle kampung, or village, pace. Now Malaysians raced around in cheap cars with go-faster stripes looking for somewhere to go. Their usual destination was a concrete, bunker-style ‘mega-mall’.

  The two policemen walked past the array of cars distinguished with tinted glass, enlarged bumpers and sporty hubcaps. The main waiting area of the hospital was crowded with people – the cheerful visitors to the mildly ill and the distraught relatives of the dying. The morgue was difficult to find, a design feature of hospitals worldwide. An attempt, wondered the inspector idly, to hide the ultimate destination from those who were nearest to it? Contemplating the question, Singh could not help but think that, in a hospital, the proximity of death was probably best disguised – and the actual dead hidden. It was not conducive to the right frame of mind for recovery to have the morgue signposted for patients. It would be the medical equivalent of ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here’.

  Inspector Singh was dragged to the present by a wiry hospital orderly dressed in baggy green hospital garb. He was struggling to pull out the steel drawer that contained Alan Lee. With the suddenness of a champagne cork, the drawer popped open. The orderly grinned at them in sweaty triumph, his teeth black and rotting. A packet of cigarettes poked from his top pocket and the faint smell of tobacco in the air suggested that a job tending to the dead was not sufficient to dissuade him from a habit that would only hasten his visit to the drawers. The graphic picture of a pair of diseased lungs on the cigarette packet, the latest in a long line of health warnings imposed by the government, seemed superfluous in the circumstances. Singapore had imposed the same health warning and Inspector Singh, repulsed by the pictures of diseased organs, now carefully transferred the cigarettes from each new packet he bought to a grubby old one with only a verbal warning. He had changed his behaviour, but only to take steps to avoid being graphically forewarned. The orderly was made of sterner stuff.

  The policeman turned his attention to the body. It was a bloodless corpse, yellow and dry skinned with puckered lips and closed eyes. Between a few sparse, dark chest hairs, the black hole of the bullet’s entry wound was clearly visible, as were the gunpowder burns around the edges.

  ‘He must have been shot at almost point-blank range by someone standing directly in front of him,’ remarked the inspector.

  ‘How do you know that, sir?’ asked the young sergeant.

  ‘There wouldn’t have been powder burns if the bullet had travelled any distance. Also, the burns around the wound are even. That means the bullet went in straight. Otherwise, the burns would be lopsided, more towards one side or the other.’

  ‘What else can you tell, Inspector?’ asked the sergeant, trying to distract himself from a growing sense of queasiness. Alan Lee did not look good.

  The inspector grinned at him, not unkindly. ‘First body, eh? I remember my first – it must be thirty-five years ago now. A woman killed by her jealous boyfriend. Blue, puffy face. The butterfly-shaped strangulation marks. You never forget the first.’

  Attention back to the body, he continued, ‘I would say that the person who killed him knew him. The killer must have stood in front of him, spoken to him and then shot him. They were face to face when it happened. Alan Lee was not expecting violence. Otherwise, he would have been on his guard and unlikely to have been shot so cleanly.’

  Sergeant Shukor nodded his agreement, getting caught up in the analysis.

  ‘Also, I think it was an amateur . . . rather than a professional hit.’

  This surprised Shukor.

  ‘Only an amateur would have chosen to shoot him in the chest. He might have survived. The bullet might have missed the heart outright or been deflected by the sternum. A punctured lung is a lot less likely to be fatal if there is quick medical intervention. No, a professional always goes for the headshot. Unless, of course, it was a professional pretending to be an amateur.’ His belly laugh reverberated through the cold room. ‘That’s what makes this job so challenging.’

  Shukor grinned and said, ‘Where to now, sir?’

  ‘Back to the beautiful widow.’

  ‘There is a possibility that the Syariah court will place the boys in a home,’ the inspector said brutally.

  For a moment it seemed that he had not penetrated the thick haze of her isolation. Then Chelsea Liew looked up, sunken eyes staring at him unblinkingly.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘The Syariah court might take them into care.’

  ‘But my mother has them.’

  ‘She is not Moslem.’

&nb
sp; ‘Neither are they.’

  The inspector shrugged. ‘They are the under-age offspring of a Moslem man who declared them Moslem before he died.’

  Through dry lips, the accused spat. The saliva trickled down her chin. Her mouth was too dry for this expression of anger.

  She snapped, ‘I won’t let them have my children!’

  It was the first real emotion she had shown the inspector. He was delighted but he hid his pleasure. He said brutally, ‘You won’t be able to stop them if you’re dead.’

  She was silent so he continued. ‘And you will be dead if you are not prepared to defend yourself. You know they will hang you. The judge has no choice if you are found guilty of murder.’

  She nodded, more to herself than in acknowledgement of his remarks.

  The inspector felt confident enough to persevere. He seemed to be getting through to her, chipping away at the protective wall to provoke an emotional response. It was a cruel thing to do – to use her children as a tool to break through her defences. Inspector Singh acknowledged the fact to himself as he looked into her wide, frightened eyes. He did not hesitate, however, to press home his advantage.

  He said, ‘Don’t imagine there will be any mitigation. He might have beaten you but the killing was a cold-blooded execution.’

  Chelsea was silent but her eyes flickered like those of a trapped beast.

  Inspector Singh continued, this time sympathetic – a one-man ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine, ‘You need to be there for your children – and I can help you.’

  Chelsea whispered, ‘I’m so tired. I didn’t want to fight any more. After all, who would believe that it wasn’t me who killed him? After what he did to me, after he tried to take my children away . . .’ She paused for a moment and added bitterly, ‘Besides, I thought if I kept quiet, they would leave the children alone. Forget about this whole Moslem thing . . . I can’t believe they’re still trying to take the kids. He’s dead for God’s sake!’