by S. P. Hozy
Chapter Twenty
The fever took Francis in four days. It started with just a headache and then, within a few hours, he felt chilled, so Annabelle wrapped him in a blanket and fed him hot soup and tea. Then a few hours later, he was burning up, sweating and vomiting the soup and tea. The first fever lasted six hours and then he slept. When he woke up, the fever was gone, but he said he ached all over. Annabelle was just relieved that the fever had passed, so she gave him more soup and rubbed his joints with camphor. The fever returned on the third day and Sutty came with a doctor, but it was too late. Early on the morning of the fourth day, Francis had a convulsion and went into a coma. He was dead before the sun went down.
Annabelle wept until she vomited and Sutty briefly feared she might have the fever herself, but she didn’t. Her skin was cold and clammy to the touch, and he could feel the bones in her back when he held her, trying to comfort her, but she was inconsolable. She was blind with grief and fear and rage. She wanted to lie beside Francis on the bed, hold him, keep his body warm with her own, as if she could bring him back to life with the heat of her own flesh. What was she going to do without Francis? How was she going to survive? How was she going to have this baby that he would never see?
Sutty, for his part, felt completely helpless. He could not console Annabelle; he could not bring Francis back. He could only pay the doctor and contact the authorities, see to the removal of Francis’s body to a funeral home, and pay whatever had to be paid for. Annabelle would not allow anyone to touch Francis’s body, and so it was only at dawn, when she was exhausted from crying and screaming at anyone other than Sutty who came into the room, that they were able to wrap Francis in a sheet and take him down the stairs to the removal wagon.
Sutty could see that Annabelle was mad with grief and he tried to get her to come with him to the Raffles, but she refused, saying she had to be near Francis, that she couldn’t leave in case it was all a mistake. How would Francis find her if she left? So Sutty went out and got some buns and some milk and came back and made tea and tried to get Annabelle to eat something. She drank the tea and took a couple of bites of the bun, but food was the last thing she wanted. Sutty sat with her until she finally fell asleep, around midnight of the fifth day. He had gotten some powders from the chemist and put them in her tea, hoping they would calm her down and help her sleep. They did, eventually, and she slept for several hours without moving.
Sutty sat in Francis’s armchair and dozed fitfully, waking every hour or two to check on Annabelle. He had never seen such grief in his life and it frightened him. When his father had died, his mother had not shown her tears to anyone, not even her son. They were shed in private, if they were shed at all, although Sutty couldn’t imagine that she hadn’t cried for her husband of so many years. They had had an amicable relationship and were fond of each other. He had no doubt of that. Maybe it was because they had been together for so long that she could more readily accept his death. They had lived their life, a good life, and the passing of one of them was inevitable. Perhaps because Annabelle had been married to Francis for so short a time, the shock and unfairness of his sudden death was so much harder to bear. Shock and grief: they left one emptied out. Frightened, even. Annabelle had lost her anchor; she had come untethered, and he could only imagine how terrifying that must be for her.
Sutty decided that when this was all over, when Francis was buried, he would persuade Annabelle to come back to England with him. He would accompany her because he couldn’t see her making the journey alone. He would not have to rearrange much; he lived an open-ended life and could come and go at will. How lucky I am, he thought, to be able to do this. But Sutty had always believed that life was short and sometimes brutal — he had witnessed the shortness and brutality often enough — and he didn’t believe in putting things off. That’s why he had admired Francis for his determination to make the most of what he had and to risk everything for a dream. And he had to admire Annabelle for leaving everything behind to come to Francis and be by his side while he chased the dream. It had been an act of faith, an act of love. She hadn’t wanted to come; she didn’t have Francis’s ambition. But she had understood that he had to do this thing, and that it could be an adventure, one that they would tell their grandchildren about from the security of England once Francis had achieved the dream and they were set for life.
Sutty began to weep for the cruel fate that had befallen them, two young people with all the love in the world to keep them going. Two people who had taken a chance on a future they would never see together. They had accepted the hardship and acquiesced to the necessary economies. They hadn’t yet reached a point where it might all be too much sacrifice for too little gain. That was still a long way off. And now it would never happen. Nor would Francis’s book happen, and the children, and the grandchildren, and all the rest of it.
His heart broke for them and he wept.
It was almost a month before Annabelle told Sutty about the baby she was expecting. During the weeks after Francis’s death, Sutty had tried to persuade Annabelle to leave the dingy little flat and come stay with him at the Raffles, or at another hotel if she chose, because there were so many memories, happy memories, starting with their wedding, that being at the Raffles would bring back. Annabelle wasn’t ready for that. She was still too immersed in her grief to begin reminiscing.
“A baby?” said Sutty. It took a minute for the enormity of it to sink in. A baby. What was Annabelle going to do with a baby? How would she cope? She could barely look after herself. She was so thin; the bones in her shoulders were visible through her light cotton dress. She barely slept at night and there were dark circles under her eyes. He had tried everything to get her to eat, to move, to leave Singapore and go back to England with him, but she was having none of it. She kept saying she needed to be near Francis. Near his spirit, she said.
They had buried Francis in the church cemetery, and Sutty had had a stone made and engraved with:
Francis Adolphus Stone
1890–1924
Beloved Husband of Annabelle.
Annabelle went there every day and sat on Francis’s grave. Sutty went with her a few times, but stopped going because he couldn’t bear to see her wretchedness.
“Yes, a baby,” she told Sutty. “I hadn’t even told Francis yet. It was too soon and I wanted to make sure everything would be all right.”
“But when?” said Sutty. “How long?”
“When is it due?” she asked. “In about five months.” She put her hand on her stomach and Sutty could see the slight roundness of her belly, despite the fact that she was so thin. “It’s still hanging on,” she said, “in spite of everything.”
“Yes,” said Sutty. “Stubborn, I guess, and tenacious.” Like his father, he thought, but didn’t say it in case it upset Annabelle.
She looked up at Sutty. She knew what he meant. This was Francis’s baby she was carrying, and this baby would not let go.
“I haven’t really thought much about it lately,” she said. And she sighed deeply, a sigh filled with every emotion she had been feeling since Francis’s death. “I’m so tired.”
“Why don’t you try to sleep, Annabelle? I’ll stay with you and read, if that will make you feel better.”
“Thank you, Sutty. You’ve been such a good friend to us. To me. I don’t think I can ever thank you for what you’ve done.”
“I’ll do whatever you need me to do.” He was embarrassed by the rawness of her feelings and by the sentiment. “Now,” he said, clearing his throat, “you go lie down and I’ll bring you a cup of tea.”
She did as he said. By the time the tea was ready, she was asleep, lying on her side with one hand on her belly, as if she were holding her unborn baby.
Chapter Twenty-One
In the three months he had been in Singapore, Axel Thorssen had scoured the markets and pet shops looking for possible dealers in animal contraband. He had even set up a small office in a glass and steel to
wer near Orchard Road and taken on a couple of people to help him. Charles Ong was a young Chinese police officer with a college degree in anthropology and excellent investigative skills. He had been born in Singapore and knew his way around, plus he spoke English, Mandarin, and Hokkien, a local dialect. His second assistant was Satya Das, an Indian police cadet who spoke fluent English, as well as Hindi and Tamil. She was almost as tall as Charles and nearly as thin. She told Axel her name meant “truth”; she was meticulous and thorough and usually ended up writing most of the reports, or correcting the reports that Axel and Charles wrote. Her computer skills were well beyond the two men’s. While they did a lot of the legwork, Satya scoured the Internet and worked the phones and Skype.
It was a good team, and Axel enjoyed the added bonus of access to the best Chinese and Indian food for lunch every day. Except for the heat, Axel liked being in Singapore. It suited his orderly mind and his punctilious temperament. Things worked in Singapore; the people were hard-working and law-abiding, much like the Swedes. He tried not to pay too much attention to some of the overzealous laws — no chewing gum on the street, no spitting (although Axel wasn’t a spitter, it seemed to him that not spitting was a matter of courtesy, not of law, and that chewing gum wasn’t the problem, but spitting the gum out on the street was) — and he knew that taxes were high, but Sweden’s taxes were among the highest in the world; it was the price you paid for everything from free medical care and education to clean streets and public transit systems.
Axel’s efforts had led him to believe that the major trafficking ring he was trying to break did not do its business at the street level of markets and pet shops. He had no doubt that the trade in endangered species and animal parts existed at that level, and even flourished, making some small-time players relatively wealthy. But it was much more of a one-on-one trade — individual seller to individual shopkeeper/buyer. He wanted the bigger players, those with international connections, who could transport and ship in quantity the rarest and most sought-after goods.
Where to look next? It was a question Axel and his team pondered at various times over dim sum, fried Hokkien mee, dumplings, fish head curry, biryani, and tandoori chicken. Today it was dim sum.
“I’m thinking we should look into import-export businesses that trade in items that can camouflage some of this stuff,” said Charles Ong one day. “Like maybe furniture, you know, like, big stuff.”
“That stuff gets scrutinized pretty tightly by customs, precisely for that reason,” countered Satya Das. “I mean, they look for any number of things, such as gems, drugs, even gold. So don’t you think they would have discovered if animal parts were being shipped?”
“You think it’s too obvious?” said Charles.
“Yes,” said Satya. “I think these guys are smarter than that.” She glanced at Charles to see if she might have offended him by implying that he wasn’t smart enough to see that. Charles had just popped another shrimp har gow into his mouth and smiled at her. She shook her head. He was either really, really smart or really, really not smart. She couldn’t decide which.
“I think we can assume they’re very clever,” said Axel. “We’ve been looking for them for three months and we still can’t figure out how they’re doing it. Unless, of course, they’re not doing it from Singapore. But I’m still pretty sure they are.”
“So am I, Boss,” said Charles, who like calling Axel “Boss” and Satya “Sat.” It was his “cool” factor, at least in his own eyes, Satya had decided. Which made him pretty uncool, in fact. But cute.
Satya and Axel watched Charles suck the meat off a chicken foot, a delicacy, he said. Satya masked her disgust by biting into a steamed bun with black bean paste in the middle: one of her favourites. Axel was partial to the steamed pork meatballs wrapped in thin pastry.
“I think we need to brainstorm a list,” said Satya. “And then systematically try and eliminate each possibility until we have a core list of real possibles.”
Axel was nodding his head. “Good idea,” he said. “Anything that involves shipping, mailing, international couriers, travel, but on a fairly large scale with regular shipments in and out of the country.”
“I suggest we go on an alphabetical basis,” said Satya, and Charles rolled his eyes. But Axel liked the idea. It was systematic rather than random, and that suited him. While Charles liked to let his mind roam and make hit-and-miss connections, Axel and Satya were definitely systematic thinkers. They liked to apply a method to a task, rope it in, and control it. Axel knew Charles would not stick to the ABC method, but that was all right. They’d still come up with a pretty comprehensive list.
“Okay. A,” said Satya, pulling out a spiral-bound notebook and pen from her bag.
“Antiques,” said Axel. “Alcohol.”
“Musical instruments,” said Charles. Satya frowned and shook her head. She flipped over a few pages and started a column for M.
“Animal skins,” she said. “Legitimate ones like fur and leather — you could hide the contraband in plain sight, so to speak.”
“Aircraft parts,” said Axel. “Do they make them here?”
“I don’t think so but I’ll check.”
“Armadillo,” said Charles.
“What?” said Axel and Satya in unison.
“It was the only A-word I could think of,” he said. “So shoot me.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
What Sutty didn’t know was that Annabelle had taken to roaming the streets after dark. During the day she rarely went out, except to the local shops if she was hungry. She seemed to be sleeping most of the day, because whenever Sutty came over, she would be in bed, whether it was at eleven o’clock in the morning or four in the afternoon. He thought she was probably depressed, but it didn’t occur to him that she wasn’t sleeping at night.
She couldn’t sleep at night because that was when she missed Francis the most. She felt like she was in a tomb. The flat was stifling and she could barely breathe. She could feel Francis’s presence around her, but it was the memory of his last days and hours that still haunted her, and she couldn’t close her eyes without seeing his pale face, the beads of sweat running into his eyes, his hair matted to his skull, and the cracked skin of his dry lips as he tried to drink from a cup of water. During the day, at least, she could ward off some of the worst memories simply because of the sunlight and the street noises, which interrupted her thoughts and allowed her to close her eyes long enough to fall into an exhausted sleep.
Strangely enough, she felt no fear as she wandered the streets at night. After the first time, when she simply couldn’t stand being in the flat another minute and had fled as if escaping from prison, she didn’t care if there was danger. She almost wished someone would knock her down and kill her, then the pain would be over and maybe she’d find peace. She would walk for hours because she couldn’t be still. Her eyes devoured everything she saw, whether it was a café full of late-night diners, or a shop that stayed open hoping to pick up some business from those same late-night diners on their way home. She passed bars and fruit stalls, nightclubs and the occasional cinema, temples, and bakeries. Often she came upon a night market and she would wander around, gazing at all the items for sale: dried mushrooms and herbs, fresh vegetables, bolts of cloth, cigarettes, hairnets, shoes, and cooking utensils. It was all a distraction from the thoughts she didn’t want to think, the images she didn’t want to see. Singapore was alive at night because after the sun went down, the temperature dropped a few degrees and it was so much more pleasant to eat and shop when the sun wasn’t beating down on your head.
Occasionally she wandered into a district populated by prostitutes and opium addicts. Opium dens were a fact of life in Singapore, Annabelle knew that, and she knew that prostitution existed everywhere in the world. But she had never been exposed to it before. She became fascinated by the women and men who populated this world. They didn’t seem to notice her, or more likely they didn’t care, so she sometimes looked r
ight at their faces to see what they might tell her. Would she find pain like her own, suffering, loneliness, boredom, despair, bitterness? She wanted to know what kept these people going, because surely they were worse off than her. They could not have been here by choice. Or could they? Was this a life someone would choose? And if so, why? She could only imagine that they had been forced by circumstances to turn to drugs and prostitution to stay alive. Or was it the other way around? They stayed alive, despite turning to drugs and prostitution.
Annabelle could almost understand that. She knew what it felt like not to want to be alive, yet to wake up every day and still be breathing, heart beating, mouth dry and wanting to drink, stomach empty and needing to eat. It was not of her choosing. It just was. This was how it was when you didn’t care anymore. You couldn’t feel anything so it didn’t matter what happened to you. Prostitution and opium addiction were passive occupations requiring only that you acquiesce. Still, she shuddered to think of being one of those women who stood in doorways or on street corners and went with any man who approached them.
It was their faces that fascinated her the most. They were painted on like masks with black eyebrows, white powder, and red lipstick. Their eyes were evasive, dark and lifeless, and inscrutable. Or else they looked straight at you, cold and glaring. That was when she started to notice that each girl was different in her own way and that they had personalities, even if they didn’t express them there on the street at night.
