The Heart Radical

by Boyd Anderson

  ‘Why did you have dinner in your flat? I understand that the Selangor Club is your regular, or the Coliseum bar. Is Dom Benedictine not available at those places?’

  Mr Larkin smiled. ‘Normally that’s true. In this case, and in my position, I could not be seen with my guest. He was an old friend, but he was also a member of the Communist Party.’

  ‘The Communist Party was not illegal then, was it? A man could have sworn an oath of loyalty to it, could he not, and been entirely within the laws of British Malaya?’

  ‘That’s quite true. It was not illegal, but it was under investigation.’

  ‘When did your guest leave your flat?’

  ‘He was still there, asleep, when I left for the office around nine. I telephoned him later that morning and my houseboy told me that he left soon after the call.’

  ‘What time was your call?’

  ‘I’m not sure exactly, but certainly before midday.’

  ‘Why did you call?’

  ‘I received information regarding the incident at Sungai Siput, on the rubber estate, and told him about it.’

  ‘That would be the incident at Essex Estate, would it not?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And why did you feel you had to tell him?’

  ‘Things were about to get sticky. It would be highly inappropriate for him to be at my place. I suggested he should make his way home.’

  ‘So, Deputy Chief Inspector, are you now able to tell us who this guest of yours was on the fifteenth and sixteenth of June 1948?’

  ‘Toh Kei,’ he said. ‘Sometimes called Liew Ek Ching.’

  43

  DAY FOUR: AFTERNOON

  Mr Davies had no questions for Mr Larkin, which surprised me, and for once I could not keep my promise to be quiet and was compelled to whisper to Uncle Raja, to ask him why this was so. He had stopped fidgeting and now seemed a good deal happier with proceedings. He answered by simply smiling at me and putting a finger to his lips.

  It was not the end of Mr Davies, of course. He still had his closing speech to labour his way through. He spoke ponderously for what seemed like an age, rehashing everything that had already been said. He reminded the judge what the jaga had said and what Na Na had said. The jaga’s testimony was actus reus and Na Na’s was mens rea, and this time no one had to go to a law book to know what he was talking about. He said their testimony left no doubt that the crime had been committed by Toh Kei, and that it had been planned by Toh Kei. A planned and deliberate act of murder committed before the Emergency had begun, he said, but I don’t think by then anyone believed him. I was just a child and even I didn’t believe him.

  When it was my father’s turn he said there was only one thing that mattered and that was what Mr Larkin said. Except he didn’t say Mr Larkin, he said Deputy Chief Inspector John Beaufoy Larkin of the Special Branch of the Criminal Investigation Division, formerly Colonel in Charge of Force 136, Southeast Asia Command, DSO and Bar. It was quite a mouthful, especially when he said the whole case came down to this man’s word against a jaga who had trouble remembering, and a woman who had no problem being a terrorist or a ten-cent taxi dancer at the Celestial Cabaret.

  He said if the judge believed Mr Larkin then Toh Kei could not possibly be guilty, which was plain to all and I could not see why he had to explain that to someone who knew as much about the law as Judge Pretheroe, so I simply took it as another case of my father leaving no stone unturned.

  But then it appeared that perhaps Judge Pretheroe did not know as much as I thought about the law, because Pa said he was going to bring to his attention some important matters he should be aware of before coming to a decision.

  He said that there were many things the British brought to Malaya, chief among which were parks and gardens, roads and railways, law and order. But the most cherished of all was British justice. British justice was that nation’s gift to the civilised world, far outweighing the consequence of British authority. The Magna Carta, the very essence of that gift, had bequeathed to us the notion that justice prevails over authority. In the case of Liew Ek Ching, and in spite of the demands of those in authority, British justice demanded a decision of not guilty. In spite of the fact that those in authority had decided to make an example of a man who was innocent of the crime they falsely charged him with, politics must not prevail over the law, and the law demanded a decision of not guilty. In spite of the fact that they wished to make of him a corrupt symbol, he was a loyal and conscientious man, a man described as Britain’s most trusted warrior in Malaya, and the tawdry affairs of fading empire must not prevail over righteousness, and righteous ness demanded a decision of not guilty.

  And then he was looking directly at Mr Davies as he finished, and what he said was like thunder rolling across the courtroom.

  ‘Fiat justitia ruat caelum, your lordship. Yes … let justice be done though the heavens fall.’

  How powerful are words? Words had me jumping out of my skin again. I was exhilarated, thrilled, and really just wanted to run down and hug my father.

  Of course, I could not do anything of the sort, especially not with the whole court so quiet that his words were still echoing around the ceiling. And then, when the judge and the assessors went out through their little door, the noise started. Now everyone had something to say.

  Uncle Raja took us outside to the front steps under a carriageway where he said my father and Uncle Hung Jeuk would soon join us. When they did it was as if we were inside the court all over again, with everyone anxious to say their piece. Uncle Raja was patting them on their backs and saying, ‘Well done! Well done!’ Dr Thumboo was positively beaming, the hands that I had only recently seen being wrung nervously on the witness stand now clapping rapidly with excitement. Even Uncle Beng Woo could barely contain himself, which was a situation I had never seen before.

  For once I was not the only one full of questions, everyone seemed to have them. What now … How can … Who could … When will …?

  We were all so sure that Pa had won the day that it was now just a matter of waiting for Judge Pretheroe to agree with us. Pa said we should not be so confident. He said he had lost too many cases when both assessors agreed with him but, in spite of everything, Judge Pretheroe did not. What happened in cases like that, he said, was that the judge simply ordered a new trial and two new assessors, and made sure that one of them was an Englishman who would agree with him. I said I didn’t think that was fair, and Pa said that the law was not about fairness. That stopped me because, after what I had just heard him say in court, that’s exactly what I did think it was about, and I began to be concerned all over again.

  Where we were standing was in shade and caught a breeze that blew across the park from the railway station, and in the sky beyond it I could see the clouds gathering for the afternoon storm. Pa said that the judge could take a while and we should make our way over to the Ipoh Club before it rained. Uncle Hung Jeuk, enjoying his first cigarette in hours, said that he was certainly not going to sit among the tuans at the Ipoh Club as it would make his beer go flat, and anyway he thought it would all be over quickly.

  ‘The bloody tuans are on the run,’ he said. ‘Even Pretheroe couldn’t fudge this one.’

  In the event, Uncle Hung Jeuk was right, because before the clouds came any closer we were all making our way back into the court. Now it was the judge’s turn to sum up. I assumed this was going to take a while, as he had sat there listening to all these people for days, just speaking when required, but now he had the opportunity to say as much as he wanted.

  He began by thanking Mr Davies and my father for rekindling his love of the Latin, which once again seemed to amuse everyone but me, and also for what he said were some interesting contributions to legal theory.

  ‘I have had it put to me that law and justice are not necessarily the same thing,’ he said. ‘Such a point is for arguing in an assembly other than a court, but I can assure those assembled here that my court is both a court of law
and a court of justice, and our aim here is to bring about a perfect symbiosis of the two, as the Lord Justice of Appeal so recently said. The law is for all to see. Justice, however, requires a conscientious and unrelenting search for truth.

  ‘To that point, it is not often that I quote from this position anyone but those of the law fraternity, but I am reminded of John Ruskin, the philosopher, a calling in which I have no doubt you, Mr Tan, have an abiding interest. Mr Ruskin said he who digs for gold must dig deep. Mr Tan, I commend the depth of your digging, if not the manner in which you dug. It is a long time since I have had the Magna Carta invoked, and might I say, too long.’

  My father bowed low to the judge, and Judge Pretheroe offered just the smallest of nods in return.

  ‘This has not been a speedy trial, although it could have been if the arguments had been kept to the point. There is a man accused here, not a government or the security forces. There has been a crime and this is a criminal trial. It is a criminal court and not Nuremberg. Furthermore, the circumstances of the prisoner’s passing into custody, whether it be by the act of surrender or the acts of the security forces, is not a matter that needs to concern this court, either by relevance to the charges or as mitigation in sentencing. If the prisoner is found to be guilty of these two charges, indeed either of these two charges, there is no mitigation permitted. Be all that as it may, however, we will have a speedy decision. Delay does not serve the ends of justice.

  ‘The accused has himself acknowledged that he has committed many criminal acts, acts for which I have no doubt he will face justice after this matter is concluded, and I am not convinced by his testimony. The mere fact that he says he was not there is a feeble defence if left unsupported, and were it a simple matter of loading this testimony on the pan in the scales opposite to that of the witnesses who dispute his version of events, I would find myself compelled to accept the recollections of the only eye witness to the crime, and indeed a crime it is, as the Crown has convincingly argued.

  ‘However, it is not that simple. There is another version of events to load next to that of the accused. His claim that he was not there is supported by a reliable witness. Indeed, of all the witnesses put forward by both sides, Inspector Larkin was the most impressive and his account of the accused’s whereabouts on the day in question is the account I am inclined to find the most robust. So, as I have said, no doubt the accused will eventually face justice. As for the two charges brought against him here, the justice he receives is in his favour.’

  Heads turned and whispers rippled among the lawyers below. The judge allowed a moment for it to settle before continuing.

  ‘It is also not often that I am in complete agreement with my colleagues, the assessors. This is one of those rare occasions. These charges are dismissed, and, Mr Liew, you are free to leave this court. Whether I see you again remains to be seen.’

  All of which meant that Judge Pretheroe agreed with my father, just as we had thought. It meant that the canary woman had been right and that the turtle had done what was asked of it. Toh Kei knew all along that he did not need a tiger’s blood. He knew that he had my father on his side, and my father knew that I had done everything I could to help. That was my own summing up of the proceedings.

  As soon as the judge finished, the biggest storm of the season broke. It was as if not only the judge agreed with my father, but God himself, because Pa had said that justice had to be done even though the heavens fall, and they certainly fell that day.

  Uncle Raja hurried us outside to wait under the carriageway, where rain blew through the arches and wind swirled. He stood with Mei, Li and Uncle Beng Woo to the side of the door where it was dry, while Dr Thumboo and I waited on the steps in the wind so we could be the first to see Pa and Toh Kei. She had to struggle to hold her dress down, but in spite of her difficulties nothing could take the beaming smile from her face. The way she bounced around on those steps, like she was standing on a bed of hot coals, I could not help but do the same, and we must have looked like a couple of schoolgirls – one overgrown – who could not contain their excitement. No, their exhilaration!

  The storm did not stop a crowd of people gathering, including photographers, and I imagined that this would be the picture I would see on the front of the next day’s Straits Times, and here I was right on the spot where it was about to take place. The other men I noticed were the policemen. There were two groups of them, English officers and Malay constables in both, standing to either side of the door through which Toh Kei would eventually emerge, and I said to Dr Thumboo that it was a good idea to have them there, just in case Shorty Mak was thinking about catching up with him. But she said they were not there to protect him, they were there to arrest him all over again. Even with that, nothing wiped the grin from her face.

  I did not have time to wonder about that state of affairs because all of a sudden Toh Kei was among us. The noise of the crowd was louder even than the wind and rain and I looked up to the door and there he was, walking free.

  Whenever I had seen Toh Kei previously there were two policemen with him. Now there were only my father and Uncle Hung Jeuk, still in their wigs and gowns, but for the first time in four days, smiling. Everyone pushed forward, including the police who gathered in a line right behind Toh Kei. Pa said something to one of the officers and he nodded and the police stepped back. I ran up the steps to my father and grabbed hold of his hand. I had seen so many men shake it and I wanted to show him that I felt at least as happy and proud of him as anyone there. And then, for the first time in my life and not just in my wanderings, my daydreams as Pa called them, Toh Kei spoke to me.

  ‘You must be Tow See,’ he said.

  I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t just that I was surprised he spoke to me, it was what he said. No one had ever called me Tow See but my father.

  ‘I want to thank you for all the help you’ve been,’ Toh Kei said. And then he held out his hand. I knew what he was doing – he was showing me that there was no weapon in it. Na Na said it used to have a Webley revolver in it all the time, but Toh Kei was now past all that. That was his old life, when he was a warrior. Now he was just a man, and that was what he would be for the rest of his life. Just a good man living in peace.

  I reached up and felt my hand wrapped in the warmth of his and I looked at his face as cameras flashed and fire crackers went off next to me. They were so loud they gave me a shock, but I held on tight, even though Toh Kei’s hand went limp. I kept holding on as he fell over, holding so tightly that I was pulled down on top of him. Pa grabbed me and picked me up and from that position, where my head was as high as his, I saw the police grab hold of a man in the crowd wearing a big white shirt. Pa rushed me inside the courthouse, away from the shouts and the screams that were now much louder than the storm, and as he did I saw the police wrestle the man to the ground, and the question I had then was this – didn’t Mr Ho know that if you wanted to shake Toh Kei’s hand you were not supposed to have a gun in it? Didn’t he know that was the whole point?

  44

  THE DAY AFTER

  Inside the courthouse we were in tears. Mei and Li were crying because a man had been shot right there in front of them. I was crying because that man was Toh Kei, and shaking because not only was he in front of me, the bullets had passed so close to my head. Dr Thumboo was crying because her Dream of the Red Chamber had revealed itself to be just that – only a dream.

  She left with Uncle Raja for the hospital and Uncle Beng Woo took charge of young Paris, who was obviously bewildered by events, as were we all. By the time we came out of the courthouse the crowd had gone, the storm had cleared and there was nothing under the carriageway to suggest what had happened there just an hour before. In the car Li pointed at a red stain on the front of my dress. It was Toh Kei’s blood and I thought this must be what it meant to shoot someone in cold blood. It wasn’t the person with the gun whose blood was cold, it was the person who was shot. Toh Kei was now lying in hospital an
d his blood was as cold as the stain on my dress.

  When our father eventually came home he told us that Toh Kei was dead. And then, without giving us a moment to absorb this shock, he said, ‘You have a brother.’

  As terrible as the first news was, the other was quite the biggest we had ever heard. Toh Kei was important to me, and as much as I really wanted to help him, I had only actually met him that day. Our new brother, even though I was yet to meet him – now I knew to say ‘him’ – was someone I would know for the rest of my life, and the thought that both these important things could happen on the same day made it the biggest day of my eight-year-old life.

  Perhaps that was when I began to think they were connected, right from the moment I heard about the two events together, one of death and one of life, mentioned in virtually the same breath.

  Pa said we would now wait until tomorrow to go to Penang because the whole country had been placed under curfew. He said that with the High Commissioner’s shooting and now Toh Kei’s, it might have been on for days if not for Hari Raya. That was the biggest day of the year for Malays, the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, when families return to the kampong, and no curfew was going to keep people off the roads. He said we would go to Penang as soon as the curfew was lifted, and that would be tomorrow if the government wanted to avoid yet another emergency, this one led by the Malays.

  But that was not the end of the news. The next day, the Straits Times did not carry the picture I was expecting, or the headline either. I thought it would have splashed across the page ASSASSINATION, in the manner it referred to the killing of the High Commissioner, but it appeared that word was reserved for people of importance, not for bandits, even bandits who had been found not guilty.