‘It better not happen again.’
‘It won’t, Mr Lee.’
Kian Min looked at the inspector expectantly. ‘You want something else? I need to carry on with my work.’
‘There is something you could help me with, sir.’
Kian Min did not see anything incongruous about the dignified policeman addressing someone his junior as ‘sir’. If he had thought about it, he would have found it entirely appropriate.
‘I’m a busy man. I don’t know why you policemen don’t understand that.’
‘I won’t take much time, sir.’
Kian Min nodded and looked at his watch. ‘All right, what do you want?’
‘Did you kill Alan Lee?’
‘What?’
‘I asked you if you killed your brother, Alan Lee?’
‘What for I would do that?’
‘For this!’ said Mohammad, waving a careless hand at the businessman’s surroundings.
‘I no need to kill him to get this. I was boss of the company already.’
‘That’s not what I hear. My sources tell me that Alan Lee was the brains behind the success of the company.’
‘Alan? The brains?’ Kian Min barked with loud, angry laughter. ‘Who told you that?’ He jabbed his finger at the inspector to emphasise his point. ‘They know nothing about Lee Timber. I have been the boss of this company since my father died. Alan was a figurehead only.’
‘But what about that decision to switch to growing palm oil for bio-fuels? I read in the papers that it was Alan’s last decision in charge before he was killed and the analysts think it’s a stroke of genius.’
‘Of course it is genius – my genius!’ Kian Min was almost shouting now.
‘But the newspapers . . .’
Kian Min interrupted him. I tell you it was my idea! Alan did not even understand the business.’
Mohammad shook his head, like a man struggling to understand what he was being told.
Kian Min said, I thought Jasper killed Alan anyway.’
‘We have reason to doubt his story,’ said Mohammad stolidly.
‘Really? That’s a pity. But, for your information, I have nothing to do with it.’
‘You think Jasper Lee did it?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t care who killed Alan. He was useless, a piece of nothing his whole life.’ There was a small speck of saliva at the corner of Kian Min’s mouth.
‘But you testified at the custody trial that he was a fine man, a good father and a brilliant businessman.’
‘Maybe I did, I suppose . . . family must stick together.’
‘You’ve been sitting there telling me you don’t care who killed your brother but it was most likely your other brother and then you expect me to believe that you felt a family obligation?’
Kian Min maintained a sullen reticence for a few seconds and then said, ‘Well, murder not the same, right?’
‘Perhaps, but perjury – giving false testimony under oath in court – is an offence.’
‘I not committed perjury.’
‘You lied about your brother’s character. I could arrest you right now and drag you down to the police station in shackles.’
Kian Min turned pale. He said, ‘How can I change your mind?’
‘What are you offering?’ asked Inspector Mohammad carefully.
‘Some contribution to your retirement fund?’
Mohammad looked at the man across the table with an unreadable expression. ‘How much?’ he asked bluntly.
‘A hundred thousand.’
Mohammad shook his head.
‘Five hundred thousand? That should be enough. You can retire in style!’
‘That’s a lot of money,’ said Mohammad thoughtfully.
Sharifah left her apartment hurriedly, jumped into a small Toyota sports car, no doubt another gift from Alan, and set off at top speed. Shukor, waiting in a taxi, had no difficulty following her. But when she reached the neighbourhood where Alan Lee had his mansion, she drove past the house slowly, turned around, parked the car at the bottom of the street and waited. Shukor disembarked from the taxi some way up the street, paid off the driver and sat at a bus stop. He did not think she would spot him. Her whole concentration was on the street, watching cars and people with a fierce intensity. He was obscured by bushes and passers-by and had a newspaper for verisimilitude. But how long were they going to sit there? If she was planning to warn Marcus, she needed to be quicker about it.
The gates to the Lee residence opened. A Mercedes Benz purred out. Shukor, watching Sharifah, saw her duck down silently so the car she was in looked driverless. He wondered at this until he glimpsed the passenger in the back seat. It was Chelsea, her face partially obscured by a very large pair of sunglasses. Shukor realised that Sharifah must have been waiting for her to go out – unable to face the wife.
Sharifah waited a few minutes and then got out of the car. She walked slowly up the hill, each step laboured and reluctant. Shukor stayed a safe distance away but there was no danger of Sharifah turning around. All her attention was on the shiny gold gates of Marcus’s home. She reached the entrance, looked around for the bell, found it and gave it a good, long ring. She spoke a few words into the mike and the gates swung open mysteriously. Sharifah took a few tentative steps forward. The gates shut behind her.
Shukor found a shady spot under an acacia tree, and waited for her to come out, whiling away the time by weaving a flower out of the crescent-shaped leaves as his sisters had done when they were young.
Sharifah was terrified. She tried to remember when she had ever been so scared. Perhaps it was the time when she had fallen into the swimming pool and her father had rescued her – but only after she had gone under a couple of times and experienced the raw panic of a four-year-old unable to breathe or swim. It was a not dissimilar sensation she felt now, she thought. Her chest was constricted, her movements slow and uncoordinated, her skin tingling with nerves. The housemaid was at the door as she walked up the long drive. She was ushered in, led to a sitting room, invited to sit down on a comfortable sofa and offered a drink which she declined. Sharifah explained she was a schoolfriend of Marcus.
The maid said, ‘I will fetch Master Marcus. May I know your name, please.’
She said, ‘I’m Sharifah. But please don’t tell him. Just say it’s someone from school. I want to surprise him.’
The maid nodded. She was pleased to be part of a conspiracy to cheer up the young master. He had been so miserable for so long now. It was like her mother had always said, wealth didn’t make you happy. The young Filipina, leaving her farm in Mindanao to seek employment abroad, had never believed her. Surely the worst state of existence was to be poor, to never be sure that there would be enough money to feed a sprawling, hungry family. She knew better now. Since her job with the Lee family, she had truly understood how lucky she was to belong to a big loving family where everyone looked out for each other. She smiled again at the young, beautiful visitor. She noticed that the girl looked pale. Perhaps there was something more here than met the eye. This could be a girlfriend. She could not fail to cheer Marcus up.
Marcus was slumped in bed playing with a portable Gameboy. He wore the same clothes he had gone to bed in. He smelt, not just of alcohol and cigarettes, but also rancid and unwashed. The maid hoped the girlfriend was the tolerant sort. Marcus, however, had no inclination to drag himself out of bed and go down to his guest.
‘Who is it?’ he asked irritably.
‘I did not ask,’ said the maid.
‘You know you’re always supposed to ask.’
‘Yes, Master Marcus. I just forgot.’
‘Well, just find out who it is and send him away.’
‘Why don’t you just come down and say “hello”? Maybe it will make you in a good mood?’
Marcus snorted and then remembered that one of his schoolmates owed him some money. That must be who it was. And he wanted to ask Charlie Hua whether he could get h
im something to smoke that would help him forget his profound misery. This would be a good time to do it. Charlie was plugged in to all the pushers who hung around the school. And he owed Marcus a favour for lending him money when he had been a bit short. He had said at the time that the loan would save him from a good beating, or worse. Marcus got to his feet.
’All right, I’ll see him.’
The maid did not think this was a good time to mention that the visitor was female.
’What are you doing here?’ Marcus didn’t shout. His voice was barely audible. But anger ran through the words like a major artery. ‘Get out of my house!’
She cowered, as if his words were physical blows. Her shoulders shook and she wrapped her arms around herself – part defensive gesture, part an attempt to stop the trembling.
She tried to speak. ‘Marcus . . .’
He screamed this time. ‘No, I don’t want to know. Get out!’
She didn’t know how to break through his wall of anger. It had an almost physical quality. It was an impenetrable barrier between them. She tried again. ‘I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important.’
She rushed the words, got them out, but he did not appear to have heard them. He was still staring at her as if she was some sort of apparition. One small part of his brain noticed her pallor. She had lost weight and was not wearing make up as she had done in those last days with his father.
She said again, ‘You have to listen to me, Marcus. This is important or I wouldn’t be here.’
Somehow that got through. ‘You have something important to tell me? That’s a change, isn’t it? The last time you had something important that you should have told me, you didn’t bother, did you? But maybe – just maybe – I would have been just a little bit interested to know that my girlfriend was sleeping with my father.’
The words dripped with sarcasm, but the voice was still pure, undiluted anger.
Sharifah thought she had known, had guessed, how much she must have hurt him. But now she looked at the thin, young boy in front of her and realised that she had no idea what he must have gone through. She lacked the imagination to comprehend what a betrayal like hers could have done to a sensitive character like Marcus.
She said, ‘God, Marcus. I am so sorry. I could not have been worse or done worse and I will never forgive myself as I know you will never forgive me.’
He shook his head, as if her words were like a mosquito buzzing in his ear at night time.
‘But I must talk to you. You must listen to me.’
Marcus stared at her fixedly, unblinkingly.
Sharifah was beginning to worry for his sanity. She said in a determined voice, ‘The police have been to see me. They know about us. And about me . . . and Alan.’
He did not respond or appear to have heard her.
‘Marcus, the police think you killed your father!’
‘Well, was it the girlfriend? Or the son?’ The Malaysian inspector’s tone was flippant but Singh ignored it. He did not know why Mohammad was in such a good mood but he did not plan to match it. Not after having driven around Kuala Lumpur for two hours.
Singh said, ’Hard to say. The girl claims that she and Alan were still an item when he was killed and so she was not the woman scorned. And also that he converted to Islam to marry her.’
‘Really? Did you believe that?’
‘No. I think she gave him the idea and he realised it would be a powerful weapon in the custody hearings. But I doubt he would have married her.’
‘What was she like, this girl?’
‘Pretty, dangerously naïve.’
‘A killer?’
Singh said reluctantly, ‘I don’t see it. But I’ve been wrong before.’
‘Wrong? Not our infallible inspector from Singapore!’
Singh scowled at his counterpart. ‘Why are you in such a good mood, anyway?’
Mohammad ignored the question and said instead, ‘It must be the son, then . . . Marcus Lee.’
‘She claims to have been with him at the time of the murder.’
‘Who does?’
‘The girlfriend, Sharifah.’
‘She’s sleeping with the father but hanging out with the son? One big happy family?’
‘It was a fairly shaky alibi. She had no idea when Alan was killed so was trying for a fairly broad-brush approach.’
Mohammad laughed. ‘What prompted it?’
‘Guilt, probably. She knows the only reason we suspect Marcus is because, thanks to her, he has a powerful motive.’
‘You should have followed her. Presumably she’ll rush off and warn the young man now.’
‘I sent Shukor.’
‘Good thinking,’ said Mohammad approvingly.
‘So, what’s been happening around here?’ asked Singh.
‘Chelsea Liew came to see Jasper but was turned away.’
‘By us?’
‘No, by him. He’s not ready to tell her that she’s back on the list of suspects, I guess.’
‘Which brings us to the original question. Why do you look like the cat that’s swallowed the cream?’
Mohammad said, as nonchalantly as he could, ‘I dropped in to see Lee Kian Min.’
‘He agreed to see you? I would have thought he’d be reluctant to expose his person to a policeman for a while.’
‘He was. I said I was the official delegation to apologise to a leading member of the business community.’
‘I bet he lapped that up.’
Mohammad nodded. ‘He was fine until I asked him if he had killed his brother – then he got a little bit agitated.’
‘What did he say?’ asked Singh.
‘Well, he denied everything, of course, said that it was probably Jasper.’ Mohammad shook his head at the willingness of the Lee brothers to point the finger at each other.
‘No love lost between the brothers, eh?’ remarked Inspector Singh, unconsciously echoing the other policeman’s thoughts.
‘No. It made it very difficult for him to explain why he had testified at the custody hearings that Alan was such a fine fellow.’
‘Good point. We can threaten him with . . .’
Mohammad interrupted him, determined that no one was going to steal his lines. ‘Perjury! Yes, I did point out to him that we could make his life miserable.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He tried to bribe me,’ said the Malaysian policeman.
Singh refrained from saying that Kian Min must have felt on pretty safe ground if the reputation of the Malaysian police force was accurate.
He asked instead, ‘How much?’
‘Five hundred thousand without bargaining . . . ’
‘Not bad. He must really want to stay out of trouble.’
‘Well, I told him money wouldn’t do the trick. I needed another credible suspect.’
‘Did he have one?’
‘Yup,’ said Mohammad, grinning.
Seventeen
‘So who did Kian Min serve up to save his own skin?’ asked Singh.
‘A businessman from Hong Kong,’ replied Mohammad evenly.
‘What was his reason?’
‘Quite complicated. This Chinaman from Hong Kong – Douglas Wee – fronts for some Chinese conglomerate looking for bio-fuels.’
‘So?’
‘Lee Timber has been considering diversifying into bio-fuels, partly because this syndicate, or Douglas Wee anyway, promised to buy whatever they can produce.’
‘I read in the papers that they had decided to go ahead with it?’
‘Yes, that’s right – now that Alan Lee is dead. Apparently, he was standing in the way of the project while Kian Min was in favour of it. Alan’s dying made it happen.’
‘So why should this Donald or Douglas, or whatever his name is, have killed Alan?’
‘According to Lee Kian Min, he needed to land the deal for his Chinese masters or wear knee-cap protectors.’
‘It’s possible, I suppose,’ said Sing
h doubtfully, scratching his nose.
Mohammad laughed. ‘There’s no need to be polite. I know it’s farfetched. But we can get this guy in. He’s in Malaysia apparently, tidying up loose ends.’
Singh nodded. ‘And if it does turn out to be a load of bollocks, we’ll have more to harass Lee with.’
Mohammad raised a warning finger. ‘Let me make it quite clear – under no circumstances are you or Shukor to go anywhere near Lee Kian Min. He’s a petty, vindictive bastard. If you annoy him again, I won’t have the influence to protect you – and nobody else will give a damn.’
Singh held up a pudgy, stubby-fingered hand with only moderately clean nails. ‘I hear you,’ he said.
‘Good,’ said Mohammad.
Chelsea heard her. Back early from the jail when Jasper had refused to see her, she had walked into the house and followed the sound of voices. Marcus was talking to someone. She wondered who it could be. He was morose and alone most of the time. He never invited friends home. It was odd that he should have a guest. The voice sounded familiar as well – a low, musical tone with that slightly lyrical cadence of the Malay. Who could it be?
To her utter amazement it was Sharifah. Chelsea was speechless with shock. Was no place sacrosanct? How dare that woman set foot in her house? Alan was dead. Did she think that she had any rights in his conjugal home? And then she heard the sentence that drove all other thoughts from her mind, ‘Marcus, the police think you killed your father!’
She was at the door now, unseen by the two of them. They were engrossed in each other. It was the perfect stage entrance. There were overtones of tragedy with perhaps a hint of farce. All she knew was that she was not the main character in the unfolding play. That role now belonged to her son.
Instead of throwing Sharifah off the premises with all the raw rage she could summon, she found herself asking quietly, ‘How do you know? How do you know they suspect Marcus? What about Jasper?’
She might as well have yelled. Her words fell on the silent tableau like oversized hailstones. The pair whirled to look at her. They were of different ethnicities, the pair of them, but their expressions – pale and frightened, eyes wide and mouths slightly open – gave them such a strong similarity of appearance that they might have been siblings.
A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder Page 17
