A Deadly Cambodian Crime Spree

by Shamini Flint

  “He deserved to die a thousand times.”

  What in the world could Huon have done to arouse such passion in this man?

  “Why do you say that?” asked the colonel curiously. His line of thinking had obviously followed a parallel path to that of Singh and he too wanted to know why the dead man had provoked such vitriolic emotions in this cadaverous Frenchman.

  “You heard him yesterday – about the children, about the killing tree – and yet you can ask me that? What sort of people are you?”

  “That was Ta Ieng,” explained Menhay, his tone almost kindly.

  It was left to Singh, no respecter of emotions in the midst of a murder investigation, to interrupt with the most salient piece of information. “It’s not Ta Ieng that’s dead. It’s Cheah Huon!” And as Gaudin looked at him blankly, he embellished impatiently, “You know, the chap with one leg!”

  Eight

  “Well, that was more than a little strange,” remarked Singh, reaching for a biscuit. The colonel, who was receiving high marks from the Sikh inspector for his ability to anticipate the fat man’s inclinations, had placed a small paper plate on the table with an assortment of cookies. Singh, after some thought, chose a floral-shaped chocolate confection with a jam centre.

  François Gaudin had been led away by a young uniform with instructions to take him to the medical centre. The old man had been unable to stand up upon the news that it was Cheah Huon who was dead, not Ta Ieng. Only quick thinking from Menhay, who had noticed him sway on his feet and rushed over to place a steadying hand at his elbow, had prevented him from collapsing.

  “Do you think that Frenchman had anything to do with it?” asked Menhay.

  “The murder? It’s hard to see why. It seems clear enough that he’s only interested in the death of Ta Ieng.”

  “You mean he meant to kill Ta Ieng but stabbed Cheah Huon instead?”

  Despite the gravity of the situation, both men chuckled. It was difficult to imagine a situation where one could have mistaken the gnome-like amputee for the tall and emaciated Ta Ieng.

  “No harm checking up on him anyway,” said the inspector, returning to the subject at hand. “He’s certainly capable of doing something unexpected – I have rarely seen such intense hatred, even if he hasn’t committed a crime yet.”

  The colonel reached for the telephone on his desk and dialled a number. In a moment, he was speaking fluent French, his tone persuasive.

  Singh was multi-lingual like so many Singaporeans of his generation. He had been educated in English, spoken Punjabi at home growing up and picked up enough Malay at school to be comfortable in that language. His Hokkien and Cantonese, the two most common Chinese dialects in Singapore, were limited to swear words picked up from gang members he’d arrested. And he had effectively ignored the government’s ‘Speak Mandarin’ campaign for a number of years. Unfortunately, he spoke neither Khmer nor French. Singh realised that he was going to need a competent translator if he was to play an active part in this investigation. Otherwise, most of the information received was going to be incomprehensible to him. Even with an interpreter, he was quite likely going to miss the sort of nuance which often gave him the first hint as to the identity of a murderer.

  Menhay hung up and said, “I spoke to a contact at the French Embassy. He’ll see what he can dig up on Gaudin.”

  “I need Chhean,” said Singh, changing the subject abruptly.

  “Who’s that?”

  “The minder provided to me by ASEAN. She can help me with interpretation. Otherwise,” and he nodded at the phone to indicate the recent conversation in French, “I’ll have no idea what’s going on most of the time. I don’t speak any Khmer or French.”

  “Can she be trusted?”

  Singh leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his ample belly. Could Chhean be trusted? She was dogged, snappy and officious but had an unexpected sense of humour and a keen sense of justice. He said baldly, “Yes!” and hoped he would not be proved wrong.

  Menhay walked to the door of his office and issued an order in Khmer. He came back in and said, “Someone will find her for you. In the meantime, we’re back where we started before that mad Frenchman came in. What do you want to do first?”

  “When will the autopsy results be back?”

  “I told them to hurry but tomorrow is the earliest for preliminary results.”

  “I guess we should start at the beginning – with Huon’s family, friends and workmates.”

  Menhay looked sceptical.

  Singh could see that his faith in the advanced methods of the Singapore police had taken a knock. He didn’t blame the man. It was difficult to believe that some personal matter, unrelated to Huon’s role as a witness at the trial, had been at the root of the murder.

  “A murder investigation is a process of elimination,” pointed out Singh. “And statistically speaking, most people are murdered by someone they knew well – strangers wielding knives are mostly found on the television or at the movies.”

  “The statistics for Cambodia paint a different picture,” remarked Menhay dryly.

  Singh nodded a belated agreement. Most countries did not have genocide in their recent history to skew the numbers.

  Chewing on his bottom lip so aggressively that Menhay pushed the plate of biscuits closer, the inspector added, “We’d look like a bunch of clowns if we ignore the nearest and dearest and it turned out his wife hunted him down because the one-legged man was a serial adulterer!”

  He was distracted by a loud knock on the door. Chhean marched in without waiting for an invitation. She addressed Singh, ignoring the Cambodian policeman. “You were looking for me?”

  “Yes,” said Singh. “I have another odd job for you.”

  She smiled at this reminder of how she had characterised her role looking after Singh.

  “I’ve been asked to look into the death of Cheah Huon with the Cambodian police and I need an interpreter. Can you help?”

  “Cheah Huon? You mean the witness from yesterday? He’s dead?”

  Singh nodded curtly.

  “How did he die?”

  “Stabbed,” he said succinctly. The young woman’s face drained of blood. However, her first thought was not for the dead man. Singh had to admire her single-mindedriess.

  “How will this affect the war crimes tribunal?”

  “We’ve had to postpone the hearings for the time being,” said Menhay.

  “Postpone? The defendants are all so old, Samrin may die before he is found guilty.” She continued, “It isn’t fair that he might be able to cheat justice by dying. I don’t trust the gods to punish him.” Her voice was strident as she finished the sentence.

  “That’s why I’m asking for your help,” said Singh. “The sooner we get to the bottom of this the better.”

  “Yes, in that case I would like very much to help you with this investigation. The trial must continue.”

  Colonel Menhay said something to her in Khmer, his tone harsh. She turned to Singh and explained, “The colonel is warning me that this is a serious matter as the future of the war crimes tribunal hinges on it. If I care about that as I claim to do I must work hard to assist you and keep my mouth shut.”

  “And can you do that?”

  “Of course!” She added quickly, “But wait here now. There is something I need to get for you.”

  With these words, she hurried out of the room, leaving two bemused policemen behind.

  “Is she always like that?” asked Menhay.

  Singh nodded glumly. His minder rarely waited for agreement or approbation before embarking on a course of action. He fervently hoped that she would settle down and do as she was told but he rather doubted it. Perhaps he should have asked Menhay for a less determined character to interpret for him. A respectful young Khmer man would have been nice.

  In a few minutes, his newly appointed interpreter reappeared, flushed from her energetic display. The inspector noticed that she was carrying
a thick folder under her arm. “More reading material for me?” he asked, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

  She shook her head vigorously and her glossy short hair swirled across her cheeks. “I thought that the police might not realise that there is a file on each witness at the tribunal documentation centre. This is Cheah Huon’s file. I just retrieved it.” She held it out to Singh, and then as an afterthought, changed her mind and passed it to Menhay.

  Singh nodded approvingly. Perhaps his doubts about Chhean were unfounded. This was a smart woman. She knew that any hostility to her role or suspicions about her bona fides would emanate from the colonel. So she was ensuring that she treated him with the appropriate respect, placing him higher in the pecking order than Singh, to win him over.

  “All the documents are in the Khmer language,” explained Chhean.

  That was the other possible explanation.

  Menhay was leafing through the file, occasionally licking his thumb to gain traction on the smooth paper. And leaving a trail of DNA evidence, thought Singh snidely. “How come the documentation centre has so much information?” he asked curiously.

  “All the witnesses were checked – just to make sure that they had no issues which would reflect badly on the tribunal.”

  “What sort of things?”

  She shrugged – “Connections to politicians, money problems…”

  It made sense, decided Singh. After all, a little background checking might be sufficient to save the tribunal a lot of embarrassment if it turned out that a witness was subject to outside influences.

  “To be honest,” explained Chhean, “there was only a small budget. I was part of the team and we could not always dig as deep as we would have liked. It does not mean that all the information on Huon is in the file. Cambodia,” she paused for a moment, “Cambodia is a land of secrets.”

  There was something in her tone that caused Singh to look at her sharply. He noticed for the first time that there were shadows under her eyes that looked as if they had been administered with a dirty piece of charcoal.

  “Why do you look so tired?” he asked.

  “I was awake the whole night looking through papers.”

  “Why? For the trial?”

  Her words were accompanied by a small sigh. “I am trying to find some trace of my family.”

  No wonder she looked exhausted. His interpreter was burning the candle at both ends. He noted that even her eyes were bloodshot with tracings of fine red veins like country roads on a detailed map. He couldn’t help feeling sorry for her but he was also concerned that her fatigue might affect her work for him. He was about to question her further when Menhay drew his attention back to the case.

  The colonel, who had been scrutinising the file, shouted for a minion and handed the documents over. “Getting a photocopy for you,” he explained, “but I can already tell you that there was no angry wife in the background – Huon was a widower. Also, he did not have a job. He sold postcards and books at tourist sites on behalf of a charity that cared for the disabled – mostly landmine victims.”

  Singh had only been in Cambodia a few days but had already been accosted by a number of amputees, their misshapen stumps exposed – some on crutches, some in wheelchairs – selling books and cards from cardboard boxes. The juxtaposition of idyllic pictures of rural Cambodia (the postcards) and the harrowing subject of the books (mostly first-hand accounts by survivors of the genocide) had been disturbing, even for a hardened policeman. So far, he had purchased Philip Short’s biography of Pol Pot and a book by Vann Nath, an artist who had survived Tuol Sleng prison. He suspected he would buy quite a few more before he left Cambodia.

  Singh stood up slowly, feeling his knees creak with the effort. He held out his hand to the junior policeman who had walked in with the photocopies. The young man, upon receipt of a nod from his boss, handed them over. Singh hefted the file in his right hand; it was a weighty mass. The policeman adopted his most pontificating tone. “The best way to track down a killer is to get to know the victim. Most murders are rooted in the character of the deceased. There might be something in here which will point us in the right direction.”

  “Something from his past, you mean?” asked Chhean eagerly.

  “Yup,” said Singh. He was pleased with her enthusiasm despite her apparent tiredness. With some good fortune, she would graduate from interpreter to sidekick and do his leg-work for him.

  “Thank you for your assistance to the Cambodian police, Inspector Singh,” said Menhay.

  Was he being sarcastic?

  “Tomorrow, we will receive the autopsy report. Perhaps even more so than the ‘character of the victim’, this will allow us to track down the murderer.”

  Now he was definitely being sarcastic. Colonel Menhay was clearly from that school of investigators who preferred blood-spatter patterns and DNA-covered cigarette butts to the less certain, but in Singh’s eyes equally important, evidence of lifestyle and relationships.

  “They told me when I went to get Huon’s file – Samrin’s hearing has been postponed for a week.”

  Chhean’s words were a stark reminder of what was at stake beyond the death of a man and the apprehension of his killer.

  “We’ll just have to find this murderer in a week then,” was Singh’s terse response. In his heart, he really hoped that this was justified confidence, not hubris. Either way, it was time to sniff around and see if he could pick up the scent.

  “I think we should have another look at the room where he was killed and then go over his personal file with a fine-tooth comb,” suggested Singh.

  “I will set up a headquarters here and have my men sweep the area for physical evidence as well as interview everyone with any connection to this place from cleaners to lawyers,” added Menhay.

  Singh nodded. The minutiae of a murder investigation – that would have to be handled by the Cambodians. It demonstrated the flaw in Adnan’s thinking in appointing Singh top dog. There was no way he could supervise a team of non-English speakers. Menhay would have to conduct the nitty gritty of the investigation. Singh would operate like a freelance private eye – but one with whom the buck stopped. Maybe Adnan Muhammad wasn’t so dumb after all. “What are we waiting for then?” demanded Singh, trying to shake the feeling that the UN man had pinned a note saying ‘kick me’ to his back and he was the only one who didn’t know it.

  “First we see the judges.”

  The fat man pouted like a small child denied an ice-cream cone. “Why in the world do we have to talk to a bunch of men in skirts?”

  “Robes, not skirts – and one of them is a woman.”

  Singh glared at the colonel, whom he suspected was being intentionally obtuse. “You know very well what I mean – we need to look for a murderer. We’re hardly going to find him amongst the judges.”

  “Adnan wants us to brief them about what has happened and explain what we intend to do about it…” Menhay was tapping his foot on the ground impatiently.

  “Well, that shouldn’t take long,” said the inspector flippantly. “Man killed, looking for killer. There. It’s done. Why don’t we just send the justices a note?”

  Menhay ushered them out of the door, ignoring the fat man’s reluctance. He said, as they stepped out into the open, “You’ve been appointed to the case by Adnan. I guess you need to follow his instructions as well.”

  Singh looked amused. “Adnan Muhammad might be in for a surprise,” he said prophetically as they walked across the grass to the judges’ anteroom. He suspected that Adnan’s research into his background had been superficial. He’d probably just Googled him and found glowing newspaper reports from the sycophantic Singapore press. He hadn’t spoken to Superintendent Chen, that was for sure, or he would have given the Sikh policeman a wide berth. The inspector stopped abruptly in his tracks – unless they’d conspired to set him up to be the fall guy. Singh gritted his teeth. He needed to find this killer and fast.

  “Do we have any information on
these men – the judges, I mean?” asked Singh.

  Menhay handed him a double-sided sheet of paper with brief biographical sketches of the judges. Singh noted that it was a flyer for the general public – further attempts by the ECCC to keep the people informed about proceedings. He wondered whether there would be a flyer about the murder as well.

  There were three Cambodian judges, a Frenchwoman and an Australian man. The foreigners appeared to have spent their careers on a circuit of failed states trying to deal with bloody pasts: Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Rwanda. Not a life he would choose, decided Singh immediately. Dealing with Cambodia’s past was quite enough for him.

  The educational background of the Cambodians surprised the fat man.

  “Kazahkstan, Ho Chi Minh City, East Germany, Moscow – what happened to Oxford and Cambridge?”

  “Cold War politics,” replied Menhay.

  Singh nodded his head with sudden understanding. All these people had studied to be lawyers while Cambodia was still a pariah in the West because of its Vietnamese-backed government and Russian ties. It had not been easy to seek a higher education from poverty-stricken Cambodia. These individuals had qualified as judges and had the added eminence of being chosen to preside over the war crimes trial of Samrin. He would treat them with the respect they deserved.

  The five judges sitting around the table were not interested in his respect or otherwise. Singh had forgotten the gimlet eye and crisp voices of most members of the bench – whatever their background and qualifications. The Frenchwoman was particularly aggressive. She spoke in French and Chhean translated in hurried whispers.

  “You are in charge of security at the ECCC, Colonel Menhay?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And yet a man has been killed? A crucial witness at the trial of Samrin?”

  “I’m afraid so, ma’am. It is most unfortunate.”