Maria’s mother had prayed at the church and preached fortitude and forgiveness but she had not seen Flora’s body. Forgiveness. The concept was ludicrous. To forgive, they had to clean their hearts of the hatred and obsession which lived there. Flora’s agonies filled their waking thoughts and their sleeping dreams. Scalding water, suppurating wounds, burning flesh, despised and used, then the heart-stopping, life-ending, violent impact of a boot to her tiny frame; these were the images which overwhelmed them. When all the cockroaches are dead, Martin said, then we will forgive them and find peace.
Lim had escaped a murder charge through the eloquence of his counsel. Involuntary manslaughter. For the systematic and sadistic destruction of a young girl, these acts were deemed to be the ‘unlawful killing of a human being without malice aforethought’.
Maria finished her bottle of water, put it in her bag and mopped her brow. It was hot, humid and airless inside the factory. When her two years in London were up, she would go to Canada. With her skills and abilities, the world, crying out for nurses, was her oyster. She was sick of the heat. She wanted big, open, cold places, white winters, the clean purity of snow.
The door at number 44 opened. Skinny Stella came out with a shopping basket over her arm. ‘Off to market, is it?’ thought Maria. ‘A nice little celebratory dinner, perhaps?’ Stella was almost past the gate of number 43 when she stopped. A man came out and they began to talk. Maria rose and went to the window. The neighbour, Neo, was about seventy-five, short, fat and bald. Martin had discovered he was divorced and lived alone. He was unpopular in the neighbourhood. His only friends were the Lims. Could he have known about the mistreatment of the maid, Martin had asked. Few were willing to venture a guess but one, an old man, a cobbler, who plied his trade on the street corner, said he’d known Neo for years. He’d told Martin that Neo boasted he got his house cleaned for free. That meant that Flora was cleaning both houses. That meant that Neo knew about the abuse.
Stella moved off and Neo went back inside his house. Ten minutes later he came out. He turned the corner towards the park. A truckful of men came by and cleaned the street. Maria smiled. Even in this wreck of a neighbourhood, Singapore’s streets were cleaner than some of the best streets in Manila. Maria ticked the times against Martin’s notes. He knew when the rubbish was collected, when the streets were cleaned, every regular activity of the area. Stella came back forty minutes later. Neo had not returned. For one hour Pearl and Cyril were alone in the house. On the whole people, Maria knew, were creatures of habit. Stella went to the wet market early. Neo went off for whatever he did. It wasn’t important today. She would get to him tomorrow.
She waited. Another empty bottle of water went into her bag. She needed to pee and went to the corner of the room where Martin had dug a hole in the crumbling floor. She crouched and finished quickly. The shovel stood to one side and she piled earth into the hole. This primitive earth toilet would be filled in when she was done and the broken concrete replaced. It was probably unnecessary with what they had planned but it paid to be careful and they both liked attention to detail.
The day was up now and shadowy sunlight fell into the room. She stretched and resumed her vigil on the chair just in time to see the gate of Neo’s house closing. She noted the time but was annoyed she hadn’t seen him return. It was ten o’clock.
There was no movement inside number 44. Maria grew sleepy. The heat was intense, the roof creaked and cracked as the sun rose higher. Her head nodded. Then she heard a small squeak and looked up. Neo walked to the gate of the Lim house and went inside. He was carrying a plastic bag. Maria couldn’t see what it was but it looked heavy. Drink. Probably. To welcome home his murdering friend.
There was no point in watching any more. She would come back tonight. The Lims and Neo were settling in for a celebratory lunch and a drinking session in their charnel house. Enjoy it, she thought, for it might well be your last.
Chapter 4
Two days later she waited in the park. She was dressed sombrely with a dark headscarf to cover her hair. Exactly on time Neo turned the corner and crossed the storm drain. She had followed him yesterday and, as expected, he set off diagonally across the park. He looked neither left nor right and walked with a rapid shuffling gait, as if stiff-hipped.
On the corner of the street opposite the park there were shops, small offices and a hawker centre. She waited until Neo had greeted many of the occupants of the tables and settled himself at one under a slow-moving fan. An old man came up with a glass of milky coffee and some toast. They chatted for a few minutes, then Neo began to eat.
He was known here. She wanted Neo to die in a public place. She didn’t want him mouldering in his house for months. She didn’t want police sniffing around Lorong Makam. He had to be the first to go and his body found quickly.
She skirted round the back of the hawker centre. It was exactly as Martin had told her. All the buildings in this area were old and ramshackle. The hawker centre had one set of toilets accessed from the back of the building where cars and rubbish bins parked indiscriminately. Her heart was beating out of her chest. She had felt so sure, was so sure of what needed to be done, but now it was here and her hands were trembling.
She ducked into the women’s toilets and shut the stall. She took deep breaths and calmed herself. She heard movement and the clanking of a bucket. A woman came and peed noisily in the stall next door, then moved out, screaming something loudly in Chinese. Maria swallowed, her throat felt dry, but she was sweating. Classic symptoms of nervous anxiety. She knew it and fought to bring herself under control. When she felt calmer she left the toilet and went down the short corridor to the hawker centre. Neo was wolfing down toast. For an old man, he had a voracious appetite. He’d known every foul act of Cyril Lim, probably heard Flora’s screams. She’d cleaned his house covered in bruises and half-terrified. Maria was certain that he had probably even abused her himself, called her a lazy whore, pushed or struck her, the small thrill of his pathetic existence to see her cringe. She felt the iron re-enter her soul and fear evaporate instantly.
She bought a can of iced tea, sat down near the back door and opened The New Paper. No one paid her the slightest attention. A bowl of noodles arrived at Neo’s table and she groaned inwardly. She was ready and the delay annoyed her. Come on, she said under her breath. She popped the top of the can and drank half the tea.
Just as she thought she would have to endure a lengthy slurping session, he rose and turned and walked directly towards her. She kept her head down. Neo went out the back door. She waited but no one else moved. She rose and felt a surge of adrenaline as she stepped into the alleyway, looking right and left. It was deserted. She opened the door and went into the toilet. He was standing against a urinal, one hand on the wall, his head down, watching his piss.
She went up to him and took his neck firmly in her left hand. With the thumb of her right she pumped three times on the vagus nerve. As expected, Neo quivered … and slumped. She had practised this manoeuvre so many times it was automatic. She let him fall to the floor. This over-stimulation of the vagus would induce almost instant fainting as the heart slowed.
She felt his pulse. It was very faint. This vagus pressure alone should have killed him at his age, causing immediate erratic heart rhythms. She pinched the carotid sinus and felt the breath seep out of him. She smelt the bowel go. He lay dead in his shit, his dick hanging out.
She pulled open the door and looked quickly around. She walked rapidly away and turned the corner of the building. The entire event had taken no more than forty seconds. Within thirty more she was back in the park, heading away from the scene. She willed her heart to calm down and sat on a bench, breathing, holding her shaking hands. Then she felt a rush, an amazing heady rush of excitement, like fingers of fire were racing along her spine and out of her head. She had killed him. He was Neo-more. She laughed and got up. She felt filled with energy and knew it was dangerous. She went fast to the end of the park and
then slowed down, turned and walked back towards the hawker centre. She heard the sound of the ambulance coming closer and waited. It stopped and a sheet-covered body was wheeled out. She walked away.
That evening she returned and went into the prawn factory. She watched number 44 for two hours. She could see lights inside the house but very little movement. Then, at around eight o’clock, they all came out. They stopped in front of number 43 and rang the bell. Clearly, they didn’t know.
They set off and turned the corner towards the park. Maria was quite certain they were going to the hawker centre. She left the factory and locked the door and moved quickly along the culvert and into the park. She could make them out moving from light to light. She was right. Perhaps they were searching for Neo or perhaps they were just going to eat. Either way, they would find out.
She went back and stood in front of number 44. Here Flora had drawn her last breath. Her spirit had been snuffed out here, as indifferently as if she was nothing. All afternoon she had rewound Neo’s killing inside her head and every time it was mixed up with Flora’s burnt and beaten corpse. She wanted to get inside the house and tried the gate but it was locked. She would have to wait.
She made her way back to the hawker centre. They were there, eating and talking rapidly amongst themselves. Few people paid them any mind. If anyone knew who Cyril Lim was and what he had done, they kept it to themselves.
She was suddenly sideswiped by exhaustion and felt her legs weaken. She was stressed. The last four days had taken their toll and she needed to stop. Everything was going according to plan. Tomorrow she would eat and sleep and then the real work would begin.
Chapter 5
Maria woke with a blinding headache. She had taken sleeping pills and it always made her groggy but she could not have faced a night without oblivion. She took two paracetamol and a long cool shower.
After breakfast she called Martin on her cell phone. They had agreed not to speak until after Neo was finished. He wanted to know all the details and she thought she didn’t want to talk about it but actually she did. Now she was calm, it was over and she was proud how quickly and efficiently she had despatched him. Neo had been the really hard part, the public part. From now on everything would take place inside the killers’ house.
They talked some more. Martin’s voice was reassuring. They were in this together. He would be there as agreed. Stick to the plan.
It was nice to take time away from her thoughts. She wandered along Orchard Road looking at the shops, stopping for a meal in a road filled with elegant shophouses. The women ebbed and flowed around her with their Gucci bags and Chanel dresses. Their day would be spent shopping, lunching with friends, going to the spa, whilst their maids washed their dirty clothes, cleaned their toilets and watched over their children.
She had no trouble sleeping that night.
Inside the prawn factory she checked her watch. Nine o’clock. Stella Lim was talking to a middle-aged man outside number 43. Maria was not sure who this was. She and Martin had allowed several days for unexpected events and this was one of them. A relative of Neo’s? Or a house agent?
She had something of an answer half an hour later. A van turned up. The man greeted the three workmen in the van and together they went inside the house. For the next three hours, they removed clothes and furniture, the remnants of Neo’s pathetic life. Then the man locked the house, put a fat padlock on the gates and drove away.
Maria left the building and made her way to a hawker centre well away from Lorong Makam. She shook her head. Unpredictability was disagreeable. She decided to start today. Delay was no longer an option.
She called Martin and explained the situation. They talked for a few minutes and when she hung up, she rose and walked back towards the house.
She went round to the factory door the long way and let herself inside. She switched on the big torch and walked to the food preparation area in the centre of the building. It was probably in her imagination but it still smelled vaguely of prawn paste. The industrial grinders stood silent but she could see Martin had cleaned and oiled two of them and hooked them up to the petrol generator. He’d chosen a top-of-the-range Honda which could run for 12.5 hours on one tank of fuel. Two extra petrol canisters stood nearby however, just in case. The pit was dug, nice and deep, each grinder linked to it by tubing, to carry away the blood. Lights were linked up to the generator, too. He’d been meticulous. The three years since the trial had been well spent. Little by little, every trip to Singapore had allowed them to put together another element in the plan.
The old cold storage room nearby was ready. The plastic sheeting and their plastic body suits were folded alongside the surgical knives, waiting, on the shelves. Martin had dug another hole here, to take the dissection blood which would seep into the thirsty ground. Her job was the elegant and efficient separation of the body parts, making them small enough for the grinders. The heads would be smashed with the sledgehammer. Martin would do that. She’d studied dissection techniques carefully, had been permitted to sit in on the student doctors’ corpse sessions. During this whole preparation, she’d thought seriously about why she hadn’t become a doctor. She would have been a brilliant surgeon.
Martin would grind the remains into the wheel barrow and release them slowly into the drain outside the side door. Now, in the monsoon season, it rained massively every day. With two machines he’d calculated five to seven hours of solid work. If the rain obliged these three would be carried away to the sea, food for fishes, every trace of them gone. He would get his plane and return to Manila as usual.
If family members in Penang came hunting or the police turned up, there would simply be nothing to find.
There was a steel staircase leading to the upper floor and she tested it. It felt secure and she went up and looked out of the window, down onto the street. From here she could see into the abandoned front courtyard of 43. Why hadn’t she thought of this before?
She went out of this room and into the next. This window looked down on 44. She had a clear view into the front courtyard of the Lim house and into the upper windows of the house.
She could see him. He was sitting on a chair with a newspaper spread out on a table. His bony back was to her. He was wearing a vest and baggy shorts. He sat cross-legged on the chair the way many Chinese sat. He had a mug of tea and drank from it from time to time. She stood and looked down at him. This man was the murderer of her cousin, her lifelong friend. Sitting calmly in his courtyard drinking tea.
He suddenly looked up and around, towards the factory and she backed rapidly away from the window. The grime was thick but the sun was slanting into this room. When next she peeped he was gone. Had he seen her? She felt her heart beating in her throat. Had she ruined their plan? Everything depended on them having no suspicions about her.
Then he came out of the house, out of the gate. She almost cried out. Was he coming here? But she let out a sigh when he went up to 43 and stared into the front yard. She waited until he returned to his house.
She felt sticky. It was hot inside the factory. She left by the side door, locking it carefully and walked quickly to the park. There she sat a while before taking out her mirror and some wipes, cleaning her face of sweat. She redid her make-up and ran a comb through her hair.
She rose and straightened her skirt. She turned the corner and rang the bell of number 44.
Chapter 6
A light came on in the courtyard and the front door opened.
Stella Lim came down the two steps and peered at the gate. She barked something loudly in Chinese.
‘Hello,’ Maria said. ‘Do you speak English? I’m here about renting the house.’
Stella whined something towards the interior of the house and Pearl appeared on the door step. She came to the gate, wiping her hands. Cooking smells wafted from the open doorway.
‘What you want?’ Pearl said in guttural English.
‘Good evening. I want to talk about renting your
house.’
Pearl peered at her suspiciously. Maria smiled reassuringly. ‘Cash in full,’ she said. ‘No agent fees. Can I talk to you about it?’
Pearl didn’t move, then Cyril appeared in the doorway. He pushed Pearl aside and came down the steps to the gate.
‘What do you want?’ he said. He spoke good English. She remembered he was some sort of tour guide. Despite being face to face with Flora’s murderer, Maria felt calm.
‘I was just saying, I am interested in renting this house. For two years. It’s for rent, isn’t it?’
Cyril looked up at the ‘For Sale or Rent’ sign as if he was seeing it for the first time.
‘Yes, but you have to talk to the agent.’
Stupid, stupid man. She wanted to reach through the bars and grab his skinny neck and kill him right there and then. She smiled and then looked grave.
‘I was just saying I have cash. No need to pay an agent. I don’t want to waste time. I saw the ad in the paper. I’ll pay what you want and can give you six months in advance.
What they wanted for the goods on offer was ridiculous but, since she wasn’t going to pay it, so the price was irrelevant.
Pearl, who had understood, said something quickly to her husband. Maria didn’t understand the words but she understood the urgent tone of greed. Maria decided to push it.
‘Look, if you’re not interested, I’ll take my cash elsewhere.’
She stood a moment longer and then turned. She heard the key turn in the lock of the gate. And then she walked into the house of death.
Cyril Lim went in front of her and Pearl, behind. In the hall, under the harsh neon light, the three of them stood and looked at her.
Crime Scene: Singapore Page 18
