Marcus spoke automatically. ‘This has nothing to do with you, Mum.’
Sharifah said, ‘I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have come here. But I had to warn Marcus.’
Chelsea barely heard them, barely registered their surprise to see her. She ignored the dismissal and apology with equal indifference. She said again, ‘How do you know they suspect Marcus?’
Sharifah turned to Marcus for guidance but he was looking at his mother. His expression revealed how he was torn between a desperate desire to lean on her strength and a reluctance to expose her to more pain.
Sharifah said quietly, opting for full disclosure, ‘The police came to see me.’
‘What did they say?’
‘That they were no longer certain of Jasper’s guilt – they didn’t say why – and their next best bet was me or Marcus.’
‘Why you?’
‘They thought I might have quarrelled with Alan. That perhaps he dumped me and I was angry or jealous.’
‘And were you?’
Chelsea’s questions were staccato and to the point. She wanted to understand fully what they were up against. She forced the fear that welled up in volcanic waves back down through a sheer effort of will. She visualised the terror and compressed it into a small black ball and placed it neatly at the bottom of her stomach. There would be time for that later. Right now she had to question this woman until she fully understood the danger that Marcus was in. He was her eldest son. Whatever information Sharifah had, whether it was hurtful or exculpatory, she needed to know it.
Sharifah said, ‘No. I still believed we were going to get married.’
‘Still believed? What does that mean?’
The younger woman hung her head, unable to look at either of them in the eye as she was forced to discuss her relationship with the husband of one and the father of the other. ‘I’m beginning to realise now that Alan never had any intention of marrying me. That was not the sort of man he was.’
Chelsea dismissed this as irrelevant. She tucked a tendril of hair that was escaping its pins back behind her ear and asked, ‘How did the police know about your relationship with Marcus?’
Sharifah shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. From the way they talked, they seemed to have some sort of tape.’
Chelsea sat down suddenly. ‘My God,’ she whispered to herself, completely forgetting the presence of the others. ‘I forgot to send the money.’
‘What are you talking about, Mum?’ asked Marcus.
Chelsea’s hands were shaking. She put them on the arms of the chair, trying to steady herself. Had she brought this catastrophe down on them?
‘A private investigator – I hired him during the divorce and custody hearings to dig up some proof of adultery to help my case against your father. He turned up the other day with a tape. It had all three of you on it – at some club.’
From their worried faces she could tell that they knew immediately which occasion it must have been – and they both knew it would not have looked good.
‘But how would the police have got a copy?’ asked Sharifah, confused.
‘I forgot to send the money. The investigator asked for two thousand ringgit. I came to see you.’ She looked at Sharifah. ‘And I just clean forgot to pay him. He must have decided to teach me a lesson.’
Marcus guessed how much his mother was suffering from the thought that she had led the police directly to him. He sat down on the arm of her chair and gave her a hug. ‘They would have found out about Sharifah and me somehow. It’s not your fault, Mum.’
Chelsea shook her head. ‘I don’t know, son.’
Sharifah interrupted them. ‘I didn’t finish. I said I was with you, Marcus – when your . . . when Alan was shot. But I didn’t really know when that was so I wasn’t very convincing. I’m not sure they believed me.’
‘You alibied me?’
Sharifah nodded, a little sheepishly.
‘Why?’
There was a pause while she considered her answer. Her young, fresh face was thoughtful, like a student pondering an exam question, not an adulteress considering an alibi.
At last, she said, ‘They think you did it because of me. I guess that makes it my fault that you’re in trouble. I just wanted to try and make things better.’ She trailed off.
Chelsea guessed that she was longing to make things better, not just in the context of the suspicion the police had about Marcus, but with everything else she had done in the last few months. This was a young, smart woman who had somehow come adrift and made some truly appalling decisions. Chelsea might have found it in her heart to feel just a tiny bit sorry for her if it wasn’t for the fact that the consequences of her actions were about to engulf her son.
‘Do you think I did it?’ The question was blurted out more stridently than Marcus intended. He was looking at her but she suspected the tension in his body was for fear of Sharifah’s answer.
Chelsea said immediately and as reassuringly as she could, ‘Of course not, darling. I know you had nothing to do with it. You’ve told me so and I believe you.’
Sharifah did not say anything and Marcus, unable to bear her non-committal silence, said almost roughly, ‘What about you?’
‘No,’ she said quietly, ‘I don’t think you did it.’
Marcus sat down suddenly. He said, ‘That means a lot.’
Sharifah said briskly, ‘I guess it’s not what we think that’s important. It’s what the police believe that counts. So let’s get this alibi straight.’
Marcus said, ‘I don’t want you to have to lie to protect me.’
Chelsea said sharply, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Marcus. Sharifah is trying to help – and you’re in no position to refuse.’
‘But she could really get into trouble . . . ’
‘You could hang,’ said Chelsea.
There was a silence after Chelsea had so brutally pointed out Marcus’s fate if he was found guilty of murder. In their imaginations, all three could picture Marcus at dawn, a hood over his head, with only a couple of policemen and a doctor for company, waiting to drop through the trapdoor with the thick, rough rope wound around his neck.
Sharifah realised that her instinctive attempt to protect Marcus would have to be carried through in earnest. This could not be limited to a lie told under the pressure of circumstances.
She said, ‘Your mother is right, Marcus.’
He was white faced but resolute. ‘I still don’t like it.’
Chelsea brushed a greasy strand of hair away from his forehead and said gently, ‘We understand that, Marcus. I don’t think we’re looking at Sharifah testifying in court or anything like that. But if you have an alibi, the police will keep looking for the murderer and not stop with you. Once they’ve found someone else, we won’t have to pretend any more.’
‘I wonder why they don’t think Uncle Jasper killed Dad? Why haven’t they released him if he didn’t do it?’
Chelsea shook her head ruefully. ‘That may be my fault as well. I persuaded the policeman from Singapore to keep looking into things. I just didn’t believe Jasper murdered Alan. I had no idea there was evidence out there that would implicate you.’
‘It was a Sikh policeman who came to see me,’ said Sharifah. ‘He was pretty unpleasant – really aggressive and accusing.’
‘It could be that they still think Jasper did it. But thanks to my kicking up a fuss, they’re looking around a bit as well.’ Chelsea turned to her son and said with something approaching bleakness, ‘I’m so sorry, Marcus. Everything I’ve done seems to have gotten you into more trouble – it was the last thing I intended.’
Marcus shrugged. ‘Let’s not concentrate on what we could have done different, Mum. It’s water under the bridge.’
Sharifah said practically, ‘Someone needs to tell me when Alan was killed. And we need a good story about where we were at the time and what we were doing.’
The three sat down, wife, son and girlfriend of a murdered man, and tried to concoct an
alibi.
The newspapers the next morning caught them all completely by surprise. Singh saw them first. He was up early – unable to sleep – which was very unusual for him. He normally slept, not like a baby, awake every few hours, but like a tired six-year-old, completely and utterly knocked out by a day’s exertions. Contrary to what his sister suspected, he had no difficulty sleeping through his own snoring. But he had drunk too much coffee the previous night, his sister had annoyed him with a tedious nag about some wedding that he should have attended but didn’t, the mattress in the room was filled with lumpy cotton and the small bedroom was either unbearably stuffy or, if he turned on the air-conditioning, an icebox. So he got out of bed just as dawn was breaking, wandered around the house looking for the source of coffee and heard the thump of the newspaper landing on the front porch.
It was a thick wad of newsprint tied up in a rubber band that snapped against his hand the minute he picked it up. Singh grimaced. It was going to be one of those days.
To his relief, his sister appeared at the door, bleary-eyed but instinctively hospitable. ‘Coffee?’
He nodded curtly and sat down at the small table outside. A few potted plants provided the only hint of green to the tiled ‘garden’ and in the distance he could hear birdsong as well as the guttural cooing of pigeons. The day was still cool. The tropical sun was just a sliver on the horizon. Singh felt almost relaxed. He took the coffee his sister proffered with a muttered thanks and unfolded the paper.
It was the lead story on the front page. Three large, slightly grainy, but immediately recognisable faces were side by side looking out at the reader. Sharifah looked beautiful and worried, Marcus looked distraught and Alan was smug. Singh recognised the photos as being lifted from the disc. He wondered how the papers had got hold of it. The same place the police had got it, he supposed. Not content with earning brownie points with the police, the source of the disc had cashed in as well. It really didn’t matter now. The cat was out of the bag and far away.
There were so many font sizes on the cover – headlines, by-lines, sub-headings – it was difficult to take in at first. ‘Alan Lee’s Girlfriend’, ‘Night Club Rumpus’, ‘Father, Son and the Woman Who Came Between Them’. There was more inside. ‘See pages 3–12 for more details.’ Singh read the articles slowly. The newspaper had extrapolated wildly from the facts at its disposal. It was interesting that within the same newspaper, individual columnists had put a different spin on where the blame should lie for the sordid turn of events. There were articles that painted Sharifah as a femme fatale and others that had her as the exploited sweet young thing. Some journalists laid the blame squarely on Alan Lee – implying it was hardly surprising that he was murdered. It had only been a matter of time. Others pointed out that the Moslem girlfriend was evidence that Alan had intended his conversion to Islam and those who had suggested it was a cynical ploy to gain custody of his children had been proven wrong once and for all.
Only Marcus emerged without blame – but he was made to look like a pathetic young thing, superseded by his own father in the affections of his girlfriend. The newspaper stopped just short of suggesting that motives for murder abounded in the love triangle they had discovered. Jasper’s confession was a bulwark against that particular storyline – but they would have a field day when Jasper was eventually released. Singh shook his head. An ugly case was getting uglier. His thoughts turned to Chelsea. She was going to be a very unhappy woman when she saw the papers that morning.
Mohammad ordered Jasper’s release. When Singh heard, he was furious.
‘Why in God’s name did you do that?’
‘He’s innocent,’ replied Mohammad patiently.
‘You know and I know that has nothing to do with it. I’m not asking you why you released him, I’m asking you why you released him now!’
‘It seemed like good timing. The other suspects more or less know that we don’t think Jasper did it any more.’
‘Good timing?’ Singh almost exploded with rage. ‘How can this be good timing? About the only thing the newspapers didn’t do this morning was accuse Marcus Lee of murder. By tomorrow, even that will change.’
‘That’s why I did it,’ confessed Mohammad unexpectedly.
‘What do you mean?’ Singh’s patience was long gone. He snapped at his Malaysian counterpart like a bad tempered dog.
‘Unlike you, I’m trying to find a murderer!’ The phlegmatic Inspector Mohammad was getting annoyed.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I am trying to catch a murderer.’ Mohammad enunciated each word carefully as if he was talking to someone of subnormal intelligence. ‘You are trying to protect Chelsea Liew from the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”.’
Singh did not know it but it was a sign of how angry Mohammad was when he started quoting Shakespeare. Shukor tried to catch the Singaporean’s eye but to no avail. The Sikh was six inches shorter but toe to toe with Mohammad and neither was backing down.
‘That’s nonsense anyway,’ said Singh through gritted teeth. ‘She’s not even a real suspect any more.’
‘That’s precisely what I mean. Your remit was to protect her from being hanged for a murder she didn’t commit, not shield her from the harsh winds of fate. If Marcus Lee killed his father, he’s going to swing for it. If we let the newspapers have a go at him, he might do something silly and give himself away. You might not have noticed but we are down to a small band of suspects with no way of narrowing the list further.’
Singh looked at the other man thoughtfully. Was he right? Had he, a policeman who prided himself on his objectivity, who prided himself on never losing sight of the endgame, so lost his sense of perspective that he was no longer looking for a murderer but just trying to protect a woman who had caught his fancy?
Mohammad sensed that he had caused at least a pinprick of doubt and was satisfied. He said, ‘I’m off to bring Douglas Wee in for questioning.’
Met with blank stares from the others, he said impatiently, ‘You know, Lee Kian Min’s latest sacrificial lamb.’ And then perhaps regretting his harsh words a little bit, he said, ‘I’ll call you in when I’ve got him – you might want to sit in.’
Singh nodded absently and the other man beckoned to Shukor and left. Inspector Singh sat down on a stool and bent over to tie a shoe-lace. He felt slightly light-headed from doubling over and squashing his huge gut. He sat up once more, waited for the dizziness to pass and pondered Mohammad’s words.
It was possible, he decided, that he was not behaving as professionally as was his norm. It might be about Chelsea but he thought it was also partly because he was not in Singapore. There, constrained by superiors who distrusted him, colleagues who were suspicious of his methods, subordinates who feared him and the endless red tape that engulfed any investigation, he did not have the freedom to follow his own instincts so single-mindedly. But here he was functioning partly as a private investigator and partly as some consultant flown in for his two cents’ worth of advice. It had led to a feeling of freedom from the normal constraints of police work.
After all, back in Singapore he would hardly have agreed to work freelance for an ex-murder suspect to prove someone innocent. He would never have gone to visit a suspect and then let a junior policeman rough the suspect up, not even one as deserving of a good kicking as Lee Kian Min. It was this free and easy Kuala Lumpur society with its hard edge of aggression that had sucked him insidiously into its culture. Singh shook his head. What did they put in the water in these parts? The stuff they pumped over to Singapore was a less potent blend.
Marcus woke up that morning in a good mood. Considering that he was suspected of murder, he had slept well. He got out of bed, showered quickly, brushed his teeth vigorously and dressed. Marcus did not lack self-awareness so he was perfectly aware that his good cheer was the result of Sharifah’s apparent concern for his welfare. It was absurd that the goodwill of a woman who had pretty much ruined his life s
hould have the power to raise his spirits this way. But there was no doubt – he felt great. And with the careful alibi they had worked out the previous evening, he felt safe too.
Then he saw the newspapers. Marcus was only seventeen. When he saw how public his humiliation was to be, how impossible it would be to forget the past and reconnect with Sharifah, he sat down on his bed and sobbed – big, heavy, dehydrating tears – like a child who had lost something precious.
Chelsea overslept. As a result she did not wake up to the newspapers like the other protagonists. She missed three frantic calls from her civil lawyer and two from her Syariah lawyer. When she got up it was close to eleven in the morning. She reached for her expensive wristwatch, which she took off and kept by the bedside table at night, and looked at the time in surprise. She did not feel like she had slept for twelve hours. Her eyes were dry and her head was full of what felt like clogging strands of cobwebs. Her mouth tasted like it had done after three weeks of prison food. She dragged herself out of bed and walked slowly to the bathroom.
She thought ruefully that she looked exactly like a woman who had been through a lot. Her skin was stretched taut over the bones, her irises were faded and the whites of her eyes had a hint of yellow – like the early stages of jaundice. She remembered that all three of her children had been born with jaundice, tiny things with yellow feet and eyes to match their new-born skin, lying under hospital ultra-violet lamps in little wrap-around sunglasses. She had been panic stricken when it was Marcus, only moderately worried with the second and had taken the newborn jaundice of her third child in her stride. Experience facilitated the ability to judge whether a situation was as bad as one feared – a mother’s instinctive fears could be trumped by the medical certainties. Could it be that her worry about Marcus was misplaced? It was impossible to know. She liked the fat policeman from Singapore. She admired his ability to lumber towards his goal, like a short-sighted rhino making a beeline towards lunch, ignoring all distractions. She had appreciated his support when she was isolated in the physical confines of the Malaysian jail and the mental prison that Alan had created for her. But she was under no illusions – Singh was not going to ignore the truth for her. If Marcus had killed Alan, and he found some evidence, there would be no dereliction of duty on his part.
A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder Page 18
