by Ovidia Yu
‘But there’s always Traditional Chinese Medicine,’ Jonny Ho said.
Aunty Lee wondered whether Jonny Ho’s connections extended to suppliers of TCM products. It wouldn’t be surprising … he seemed to have so many contacts in Mainland China.
Jonny Ho reached over the table and put a hand over Aunty Lee’s. ‘Chinese should use Chinese products,’ he said. ‘There are so many things I can introduce to you. I can see that you are open to new experiences.’ Was he flirting with her? Aunty Lee felt something stir inside her. No, not desire. It was more like the feeling at the start of a roller-coaster ride where you both can’t wait for it to start and want to get off while you still can.
‘I use traditional Singapore medicine,’ Aunty Lee said firmly, removing her hand to scratch her nose. ‘If got stomach ache from eating too much the best thing is daun kesum.’
‘That’s a brand name?’
‘Kesum is a plant. You can find it growing along drains and in the forest reserves around the ponds. Very good for making assam laksa and treating dandruff also. You can pick off the leaves and use and the plant will grow back. But you got to be careful. These days some people see you pick one leaf off the ground also must go and call police!’ But she spoke without rancour. The Guangs had become friends, making Aunty Lee even more fond of the minty weed.
But Jonny Ho was not listening. Aunty Lee’s mention of the police coincided with the image on the large television screen of policemen milling around a construction site. Someone had found a dead body.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Add Water and Stir
It was raining again. The workers complained automatically, but without really meaning it. Memories of the last two months of haze blown over from the Indonesian forest fires were still strong, and the large gentle drops of warm rain were welcome.
Work at the construction site had not been halted even when the haze was at its worst. The government had ordered schools closed and non-essential outdoor work stopped when the Pollutant Standards Index rose above 300 into the ‘Hazardous’ range, but this was a private company and the contract workers knew better than to protest. They could be fired as easily as they had been hired, and there were too many other men who would be happy to take over their jobs. They would work through any conditions as long as they were paid but they had to stop when the monsoon winds brought the lashing, blinding rains. It was dangerous to work when they could not see three feet in front of them, dangerous for the machinery, which was far more valuable to the company than the men operating it.
There was little shelter at the worksite but they stayed there, smoking and waiting till the rains slowed or the pickup truck came to bring them back to their quarters. They were only in Singapore to earn money and there was no point getting angry at the weather or the mud. They even laughed when part of the reinforced tank sagged and ripped, releasing a flood of muddy water. But they stopped, shocked, when they saw … and smelled … the bundle of cloth that clogged the drainage from the foundation pit, one thin blackened arm trailing in the water that continued to seep out around it.
The police came to collect the body. The area was cordoned off and work halted indefinitely as the men were questioned. They all said they had no idea who the woman was or how her body had got there. One thing was clear; if the rains had not interrupted the work and the concrete had been poured on schedule, the body would never have been discovered. They had been disposing of various odds and ends … mostly metal but also any rubbish they accumulated … into the foundation dump. It was standard practice and anyway it made no difference to the concrete foundation.
‘Sir?’
Inspector Salim Mawar looked up to see Staff Sergeant Panchal standing in the open doorway to his office.
‘Yes?’
‘That body that was found in the construction site this morning? It is a female, aged between thirty and thirty-five. Possibly a female foreign domestic worker.’
It took Salim a moment to pull his thoughts back from the nightmare that immediately flashed into his mind … Nina dead with glazed unseeing eyes in a pool of mud in the construction site … that was why she had not been answering any of his phone calls … There had been photos with the report but he had not paid much attention to them. What they showed of the decomposing body would not help identification. And Yio Chu Kang was far out of his jurisdiction. But now his fingers moved to his computer keyboard to call up the recent reports. Of course it could not be Nina. Nina was safe in the house of Aunty Lee’s friend. She was safe because he was staying away from her, as she had asked him to.
Inna lillah hi wa inna ilaihi rajioon
To Him we belong and to Him shall we return
Without realizing it, Salim’s lips formed the words of the dua, familiar from childhood: ‘Inna lillah hi wa inna ilaihi rajioon,’ he murmured automatically. Almost as though his prayer was visible, Panchal kept her eyes officiously on the printout she was holding. ‘Life of my heart and the light of my breast, and a departure for my sorrow and a release for my anxiety … ’
Salim’s police and legal training surfaced through the panic. There had not been time for a post-mortem. How had a preliminary scan determined the deceased had been a foreign domestic worker? Race, possibly. These days too many Singaporeans had a tendency to assume any Pinoy or Indonesian woman was a foreign domestic worker.
‘Were there documents with her? ID?’
‘Nothing yet. This is all we’ve got.’ Glad her boss had taken the news so well, Panchal put the paperwork on his desk and left the room without pointing out that the information would be on his computer. She had picked up some tact since joining the Bukit Tinggi Neighbourhood Police Post.
Inspector Salim Mawar stared at the printout without touching it. It was over three weeks since he had last seen Nina Balignasay, three weeks since he had last asked her (again) to think about marrying him. He had been diffident, as he always was, because he did not want to push her into anything. And because he believed it more important to do things right than to do them fast. But there had been nothing diffident or slow about Nina’s response this time. Not only had she told him she was not going to marry him (which was something she always said), this time she had gone as far as to say she did not want to see him again.
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘I do mean it. There’s no point,’
Nina was afraid that being involved with a foreign domestic worker would jeopardize his career. As far as Salim was concerned, there could be no greater proof that Nina loved him. Not in the way Western romances portrayed love, but in the way of wanting what was best for him more than she wanted to be with him. Now his treacherous mind looked for ways to blame itself; if only he had not asked her again (couldn’t he take a hint?) to marry him, Nina might not have left the safety of Aunty Lee’s house and shop. There would have been no possibility of her ending up dead in a construction site!
Inspector Salim Mawar was only too aware of the restrictions governing relations with foreign domestic workers in Singapore. Indeed, he had got to know Nina Balignasay because of a complaint that she was violating her domestic work contract by working in a shop. Though he already knew the shop and Aunty Lee, he had dutifully followed up on that report, and Aunty Lee, agreeing that proper procedures must be followed, had invited him to check through Nina’s work documents. It turned out the complaint had come from Aunty Lee’s daughter-in-law.
‘I had to inform the authorities because I was unwittingly involved,’ Mrs Selina Lee had said.
He smiled to himself, remembering how furious Nina had been … furious at Aunty Lee as well as at him. As it had turned out, they were only two very small fish among the many that Aunty Lee had been frying. In some ways Salim had more in common with Aunty Lee than he would ever have with Nina.
Nina had grown up in a small village in the Philippines where she had learned to distrust authority in any form, especially the government and including the police, and she had broug
ht that distrust with her to Singapore. Salim, on the other hand, had grown up in Singapore where one of the few things people had in common was a conviction that the government was over strict and heavy-handed but well-intentioned. And that policemen and taxi drivers could be trusted. Salim’s father had been a taxi driver. He had been so proud, telling all his passengers that his son was studying law at the National University of Singapore on a police scholarship. Mr Mawar would have been even more proud that a Singapore Police Force Overseas Scholarship next sent his son to Cambridge University to get his masters of philosophy in criminology and law. Unfortunately, he had not lived to see Salim graduate. A drunk driver in a Nissan GT-R sports car was estimated to have been travelling at over 140 kilometres an hour on the Seletar Link when it hit the old taxi from behind, sending it off the expressway. Salim had booked himself on a flight back to Singapore as soon as he heard the news, but Mr Mawar’s heart stopped for the third and final time when his son was still somewhere over Afghanistan. Salim had considered dropping out of the course to stay home with his mother. But his mother insisted that he go back to England: ‘Your father was so proud of you.’
Inspector Salim knew that some thought he was being groomed to be one of the token Malays in a largely Chinese administration. So far no one had said anything officially to him, and he was happy in his present job. So happy, in fact, that he had turned down several positions that had been unofficially suggested (no senior post was officially offered until acceptance was confirmed) to remain at the Bukit Tinggi Neighbourhood Police Post where he had first come to work as a Senior Staff Sergeant. Salim’s rapid promotion to Inspector was also seen by some as a sign that the people upstairs had their eye on him and his future. Times were changing in Singapore.
Even the conservative majority was changing. Formerly they had blamed Malays, Indians, and homosexuals for everything that went wrong in Singapore. But recent massive immigration from the People’s Republic of China had brought new tensions and scapegoats. Since the new immigrants were ethnic Chinese, it became necessary to show how Singaporean they were. And apart from the more vicious Christian leaders, most embraced their Singaporean identity. That meant they were more favourably disposed to accept someone like Salim, who was a true-born and bred Singaporean.
Salim still felt like an outsider at times. But more and more this was because of his education and position in the force than because of his race. And that was not necessarily a bad thing. After all, creating the person you were meant to be day by day was all about making choices that defined you as an individual. It was only on statistic reports that people could be lumped together in masses and their actions predicted.
‘I worry about you, you know,’ Salim’s mother had said to him after the last big case had been wrapped up. His name had been mentioned in the newspaper report, and the neighbours had come round to congratulate his mother and flatter him … and introduce him to their daughters and nieces and cousins. All of them seemed to be very pleasant girls who would fit right into his family and their circle. The problem was, Salim’s thoughts kept returning to a young woman who would not fit in with his family at all, and who was not being at all pleasant to him at the moment.
‘You should find a wife to look after you now. I will not be here to look after you forever. And you need children to look after you when you grow old. I hope your children will be as good to you as you are to me.’
Salim had not told his mother that he had already met the woman who he wanted to marry. And that she had turned him down.
But he would not push Nina to change her mind. Like every other survivor of the Singaporean school system, Salim knew how to keep his mouth shut and work towards producing quantifiable results. He had not given up. He would try again when he had something more concrete to offer her.
Salim had not been over to Aunty Lee’s Delights since Nina’s departure, but Aunty Lee had come by to drop off ‘extra’ food for the night shift at the station. She had not come into Salim’s office, only stopped in the main office to chat with SS Panchal about the recent housebreaking episodes.
Salim knew Aunty Lee had tried to change Nina’s mind on his behalf. And since there was nothing patient or subtle about Aunty Lee once she got her mind set on something, it seemed likely Nina had gone away to get some respite from Aunty Lee. It was not just him she had run away from.
Salim had not been able to resist texting Nina. He had taken her silence as an answer. But what if something terrible had happened to her? He tried Nina’s mobile phone again, calling this time instead of texting. Nina still did not answer.
Perhaps she recognized his caller ID and did not want to talk to him. Or perhaps she could not.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Beth Gets News
In the kopitiam, Aunty Lee stared at the television screen. It was a news brief. Though the sound was off a young woman reporter in a yellow rain jacket over a white shirt caught the attention of the diners as she mouthed her report to the camera against a backdrop of policemen who were standing around a dead body. There was a lot of yellow police tape and clusters of workmen and uniformed policemen standing around. ‘Dead Body discovered in construction site near the Yio Chu Kang flyover’ said the ‘Latest Updates’ panel at the bottom of the screen. Aunty Lee was not the only one staring at the screen in thrilled horror. Neither was she the only one calling for the sound to be put on. That didn’t happen, but no matter. All over the kopitiam people were calling up news updates and rumours on their mobile devices and sharing them in a variety of dialects.
‘That expressway sure to be haunted after this,’ the old cleaner remarked, eyes on the screen as she cleared their table. ‘Maybe already haunted, that’s why that woman died. Some of these expressways ah, they build through the old cemeteries, the spirits don’t like it.’
At once Aunty Lee thought of Nina – was that why she had not been answering her phone? It was the most impossible of coincidences, of course, but Aunty Lee was used to impossible things happening to her. She fumbled for her mobile phone.
‘Come on,’ Jonny Ho said. ‘Let’s go.’
He strode off in the direction of the multi-storey car park. There was no supporting arm for Aunty Lee this time. In fact, she almost had to trot to keep up with him, and he was already revving up the engine as she half crawled, half climbed into the passenger seat. The fancy car was so low it was like sitting down in a child’s toy car.
They had just turned left onto Clementi Road when Jonny’s phone rang. He had ignored several calls during their meeting at Cognate, but he glanced at the screen and answered this one.
‘You should use your hands-free kit. Police see, you sure kenah fined,’ Aunty Lee told him, hoping to listen in, but he ignored her.
Even without the advantage of a speakerphone Aunty Lee could hear a shrill, excited woman’s voice and she wondered if it was the Miss Wong they had seen earlier. Though she couldn’t be sure, she thought she heard the words ‘police’ and ‘body’.
‘Shut up,’ Jonny said. ‘Bring her phone with you.’
Completely abandoning her vague flutterings, Aunty Lee looked expectantly at Jonny when he clicked off the connection. ‘Did somebody tell you whose body was found?’
‘Look, something came up at work.’ Jonny was tense, his mind clearly on something other than Aunty Lee. ‘I have to go. I’m dropping you here. You can take a taxi home.’
He barely glanced into his rear-view mirror before cutting across two lanes of cars. Angry horns blared but without impact and, before she knew it, Aunty Lee found herself ejected onto the grass verge by the side of the road. It took her a few moments to get herself sorted out. Her knees especially did not like getting out of sporty low car seats any more than they had liked getting into them. And above all, Aunty Lee was taken aback. Of course she could get home on her own. This was Singapore, after all, where taxi drivers were known as much for their good hearts as for their bad tempers. But she couldn’t remember the last time s
he was so unceremoniously dumped. She could see a bus stop less than fifty metres away but it had been a long time since Aunty Lee had taken a bus without Nina.
She tried to phone Nina again. This time Nina’s mobile phone went directly to voicemail without ringing. A cold dread came upon Aunty Lee. Suppose Nina wasn’t safely at KidStarters working hard and ignoring phone calls … ?
But no. That was too ridiculous. Nina wasn’t missing, she was with Beth at Jalan Kakatua. If it was a maid’s body that had been found it was more likely to be the missing Julietta than Nina. Could the phone call have been from Beth? If Beth had seen the news, she might think so.
A blue comfort cab slowed down invitingly, and Aunty Lee hopped in and directed the driver to the Bukit Tinggi Police Post.
‘Aunty, if somebody robbed you and stole your purse there are other police stations closer than that.’
‘Nobody robbed me. I just got to go to that station to talk to somebody. Quick, quick go lah! What are you waiting for?’
Reassured, the driver signalled and pulled out into traffic. Of course, he would not have refused a passenger whose purse had just been stolen, but it was always good to know he was going to be paid for this trip. He even turned on the radio for her.
‘Did you hear about the dead body they found? They say it is Filipina maid, got pregnant and then her boyfriend killed her.’
‘What boyfriend?’ Aunty Lee asked, thinking of Salim. ‘Who said she was pregnant?’
‘Whatever boyfriend. If no boyfriend how to get pregnant?’ The driver cackled like a small boy at his own joke.
