Rich Kill. Poor Kill Read online

  “No, it’s OK, it’ll be fine,” Maxwell said.

  He tried to pull her towards him again, but she recoiled this time. She stood still in the minimalist apartment as blood seeped from her wound and trickled down her legs. A red streak snaked its way across the kitchen’s marble tiles towards Maxwell.

  “No, no, no, we can’t have that,” he whispered.

  Maxwell walked quickly along Spottiswoode Park Road. He adjusted the suit jacket he had thrown around Aini’s shoulders and buttoned across the front, covering her dark T-shirt and the stain beneath. Her tight, dark blue jeans absorbed most of the blood around the waist. Any patches were hard to see in the darkness. The drizzle helped. Chinatown was mostly deserted. But there were 24-hour coffee shops filled with dozing taxi drivers and a handful of bookies even at 3.30am. They were nearby, but not near enough. Maxwell paid $8,000-a-month rent for a reason. As he passed the deserted, silent restored houses of the private Blair Plain district, he cherished the exclusivity. Questions were rarely asked of anyone living in such neighbourhoods, not in Singapore.

  Aini’s head rolled towards her chest.

  “No, no, no, stay awake, Aini, it’s going to be fine.”

  Aini’s eyes were closing.

  “I’m tired Talek.”

  “No, you’re not tired. You’re fine. Everything is fine. We’ve just got to get you somewhere, somewhere nice.”

  Aini tumbled towards Maxwell. Her legs buckled like a new-born foal. Maxwell propped her up, ignoring the searing pain in his back. He knew his black T-shirt was sticking to his bloodied skin. He hoped the jean jacket offered enough cover.

  The distant streetlights of Kampong Bahru Road danced before Aini’s eyes.

  “I can’t see anything,” she whispered.

  “It’s dark, just dark.”

  Maxwell realised the scraping sound was from her stilettos. He was dragging her. Taxi drivers might assume she was drunk. The gallant white man had offered his suit jacket and was chaperoning her home.

  “I’m so tired.”

  Aini’s eyes closed.

  “No, it’s OK. Wake up, Aini. You must wake up now, it’s OK. You can’t go yet, not yet.”

  Maxwell heard the sound of a TV coming from the prata shop on the corner. Plates were being stacked. He also picked out voices. The lights were too bright. He dragged her towards an alley behind the prata shop.

  “This will be OK. This will be a good place to rest.”

  The odour of the dank alley stunned Maxwell. Cockroaches scattered as he pulled Aini’s failing body past fruit boxes filled with food scraps. He propped her against the wall of the prata shop and lowered her across an open drain. A rat scurried away through the foul, stagnant water.

  “Just wait here for a minute, just for a minute.”

  Maxwell stepped back, utterly exhausted. His breathing was laboured. He ran his fingers along the spine of his T-shirt. They were damp with sweat and blood. He examined his hands. Most of the blood wasn’t his. He bent down beside Aini and washed his hands and arms in the drain.

  She stirred.

  “My boy,” she whispered.

  Her voice unnerved Maxwell. He grabbed a nearby plastic barrel and hoisted himself up. His hand slipped into the barrel and he recoiled in disgust. The barrel was filled with the prata shop’s dirty crockery. Its cold water was curry red. Chicken bones and used tissues floated on the oily surface.

  “My beautiful boy,” Aini muttered.

  Maxwell watched her closely. Her head had rolled towards her left shoulder. She couldn’t move. She was almost certainly dying now.

  “He is a beautiful boy,” Maxwell agreed, examining her broken body.

  “So beautiful.”

  “He takes after his mother.”

  As Maxwell moved towards the plastic barrel, he thought he saw Aini smile.

  “Talek, can you?”

  “Of course. I have the address.”

  Maxwell crouched beside Aini and pulled her towards him. He took back his jacket and hung it on a crate. He dragged the plastic barrel away from Aini. The slop spilled over the sides and splashed onto his trainers. He jumped back to spare them.

  “Photo.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My boy, pocket.”

  Aini tried to lift her arm, but her strength had deserted her.

  “Yes, the photo in your pocket, of your boy, yes, I like that one.” Maxwell flicked a cockroach off the rim of the plastic barrel. “You want me to get that photo for you?”

  Aini said nothing. Maxwell grabbed the sides of the plastic barrel.

  “That’s the one with him holding his new football right, with his friends in the village. Lovely photo. Make sure you look after that one.”

  Maxwell pushed the plastic barrel over.

  The oily, curried water washed over the dying woman. The grubby plastic plates and cutlery clattered against her body. She slid along the wall until her right arm and shoulder wedged in the narrow drain. Maxwell picked up the plastic barrel and shook it over Aini’s body until the last half-eaten chicken wing had tumbled out.

  Satisfied, he rinsed his hands in the drain a second time, picked up his jacket and returned home to clean his apartment.

  Chapter 4

  “Why do they always leave them in alleyways,” Professor Chong said theatrically to the investigators squeezed around him in the confined space. “And why does the Major Crime Division always send too many men down an alleyway? Can I have some room please gentlemen?”

  Asia’s leading pathologist used his gloved hands to usher the crowding officers away. The white-shirted men moved back. In crime and punishment circles, Chong commanded reverence. From his earliest days as a cadet dealing with Toa Payoh’s cult killings, his professionalism demanded respect. His portly frame and avuncular personality made him every officer’s favourite uncle.

  “Thank you, boys. Let the old dog see the poor rabbit.”

  Chong was a happier man these days. Nearing retirement, he had found a cottage with his English partner in the East Sussex countryside, not too far from Brighton, where they had married a year earlier. After that wretched business at Marina Bay Sands, Chong was insistent that he scrubbed the stains away with a long vacation. His partner suggested a cottage in Kent and surprised him with a marriage proposal. They still couldn’t get married in Singapore of course. Technically, they still couldn’t have sex in Singapore. But the public mood was softening beyond the increasingly marginalised fundamentalists. Chong knew that. So did the fundamentalists, who tried to shame him by regurgitating old stories on vulgar blogs using uncouth language. But Chong’s civil partnership ceremony was covered, to his surprise, by all the major newspapers, including the Chinese and Malay press. The overwhelmingly positive response had privately reduced him to tears. And the archaic jokes had mostly dried up at crime scenes, at least to his face.

  With considerable effort, Chong kneeled beside Aini’s crumpled body and sighed. It never got any easier; more detached, yes, but never any easier. He gestured towards an assistant to take notes and photographs as he spoke into an iPhone.

  “A young Malay woman, presumably in her late 20s, maybe early 30s, slim, with no obvious wounds except the solitary wound in her chest. It’s a round puncture, rather than a slash, suggesting a sharp-tipped instrument, such as an ice pick or a screwdriver, rather than a knife, and it was pushed in far enough to catch her lung, resulting in heavy blood loss, more internal than external due to the size of the entry wound. She probably didn’t die immediately; she might have had some time while the pleural cavity filled up. There’s blood in the mouth and on the teeth. She probably spat out quite a bit before she died. Judging by the wound, she probably wasn’t attacked here. Even allowing for the waste-water washing away a lot of the blood, there’s still not enough either in the alley or out in the street. No. She wasn’t killed here.”

  Chong followed a voice in the background and found a familiar face. He rose slowly.

>   “Detective Sergeant Chan, I heard you were with the Major Crime Division now, the murder squad no less. How are you, young man?”

  Charles Chan was aware of the audience in the alley. He was also aware of his recent promotion. He had earned his stripes quicker than those around him.

  “It’s Inspector now, actually, Professor.”

  Chong smiled and patted his hand warmly.

  “For Marina Bay Sands?”

  “That and one or two smaller cases.”

  “You’re being modest. I read the papers. Working with that old scoundrel James Tan obviously helped in the end.”

  “It did, sir. Working with him and, you know, Stanley Low, I got, how to say ah?”

  “Both ends of the spectrum?”

  “Exactly. So you don’t think the girl died here either then?”

  “No, there’s not enough blood here.”

  “We found some spots out in the street. The killer washed down most of it around here, but missed a bit in the darkness. How long you think she’s been dead?”

  “Around four, maybe five hours now.”

  Detective Inspector Chan stepped back as Chong’s assistant took photographs. He folded his arms.

  “Yeah, table cleaner from the prata shop found her. From China. At first, scared to tell his boss, then scared to tell us, usual lah, over here on social visit pass, no work permit, no declared income. The prata shop staff said the victim never came into the shop, never seen her before.”

  “You believe them?”

  “Not really.”

  Only now did Chong notice the puffiness around Chan’s face. He was still attractive, but heavier, darker. The boyishness was fading.

  “So what do you think?”

  “Ah, same as everyone else here. There’s no CCTV in the prata shop or around here and we got no ID on her yet, just some photos in her pocket, but this is a very ulu side. Once you get away from the houses, it’s quiet streets and open fields until you reach Tiong Bahru, not many cars or witnesses, got privacy, empty streets, places to park cars. Why else would you come here? Go coffee shop first maybe. Argue over price. Fight. Dump her in the alley. Finish.”

  “I’m impressed, inspector. You don’t sound like the old Charlie Chan anymore.”

  He didn’t. Even being called Charlie Chan didn’t bother him anymore. The job had desensitised him. He was becoming immune to criticism and crime scenes. He had a second child on the way and his wife wanted their Punggol apartment renovated. She had told him to get his priorities sorted out. He needed to spend more time discussing nursery colour schemes than dead prostitutes. Something had to give.

  “In this job, no choice right. How long for the lab report?”

  “Ah, not too long, you need it in a hurry?”

  “Not really. If she’s a foreign prostitute, they won’t make her a priority.”

  Chan gently patted the pathologist’s shoulder. He stepped over the corpse and wandered out of the alley. He needed some air.

  Chapter 5

  Dr Tracy Lai nodded and thought about her next appointment, the pervert in denial. He still protested his innocence, even with her, despite two convictions for taking up-skirt photos on shopping mall escalators. He insisted the photos were accidental and his dutiful wife had stood by him. They had three children and had recently moved into a condo with a partial view of the Bedok Reservoir.

  But the up-skirter would offer a welcome reprieve after Detective Inspector Stanley Low.

  She took the longest showers before and after his sessions. She could never be clean enough. She had no qualms about wearing skirts for the up-skirter, but rarely on days when Low was scribbled in her diary. He undressed her psychologically and left her feeling unworthy and cheap. More than that, he made her feel unprofessional. Her doctorate, which she hung so proudly in her office withered away whenever he flopped into one of her leather armchairs. He penetrated her. He weakened her. Her affluent, sheltered background reeked of bullshit. She couldn’t wash it away. She was always left with a residue of phoniness. He was the real deal, a raw, natural intellect capable of understanding his own case file, blessed and cursed with the ability to harness his bipolar condition for his own ends. And it made him such a prick.

  “Have you slept yet?” Lai asked.

  Low rubbed his bloodshot eyes and slid further down the armchair.

  “What for?”

  “Have you been working all night?”

  “You know I have.”

  “Sleep deprivation can be a contributing factor in a manic episode.”

  “So can having a shit job, but you never ask me to quit.”

  “It’s not getting any better?”

  Low turned away slightly and smiled. “I work for the Technology Crime Division. The Technology Crime Division. Even the name is boring.”

  “A desk job may be less stressful for you right now. It’s a change of pace.”

  “It’d be a change of pace if I stuck a fucking chopstick in my eye.”

  “We talked about the language before, didn’t we?”

  “The what?”

  “You said the f-word again.”

  Low laughed loudly and clapped his hands. “Aiyoh, the great Asian hypocrisy strikes again. I know we’re all full of shit outside, but now we got to bring it in here? We keep half the country in poverty and the other half in denial, but we can’t say the word, ‘fuck’. Because that will be our downfall, right? That will be the moment when the sunny island sinks, when we all start saying ‘fuck’ to each other. How’s your up-skirter doing?”

  “I don’t talk about my other patients in here.”

  “He’s your patient. But he’s my case, remember? I caught him last time, thanks to my hard drive-cracking geeks in the office.”

  “He’s not your case anymore.”

  “No, he’s yours. You try to keep it clean in here, right? You don’t want to sully yourself with sick people saying sick words. You think you can spray nice words through the air like disinfectant and keep it clean, is it? My job is shit because it stops me from catching up-skirt, photo-taking bastards like your patient. Your job is to make them better, find their redemption, find their good side like Darth fucking Vader. I catch them. You make them feel good. And you want to give me shit for saying ‘fuck’?’”

  Lai considered her response carefully. “Feel better?”

  “No.” Low bit the inside of his cheek. “Do you really think there’s a point to all this? You think we can be cured?”

  “Not cured.”

  “Yah lah, yah lah, not cured, treated. I know the drill already.”

  “To a certain extent.”

  “Anyone? Like Adolf Hitler or the North Korean with the funny haircut?”

  “Those are extreme examples often cited when someone seeks to disparage the treatment of mental health, but that’s exactly what they are, extreme cases. You don’t think you are getting any better?”

  “It depends on the circumstances.”

  “Nurture over nature?”

  “Not so cheem, just a fucked-up life over a good life.” Low raised his hands in apology. “Sorry, a messed-up life over a good life. See? I feel better already.”

  Lai smiled. And then felt terrible for smiling.

  “What do you think?”

  “Please lah, the same as you when you put away the textbooks,” Low said, sitting up. “I’ve got this website now to monitor, The Singapore Truth, you heard of it?”

  “I’m familiar with it, can’t say I read it regularly.”

  “But you do. We all do. We say we don’t, but we do. My guys have the stats to prove it. The site gets more unique visitors than all other mainstream news sites combined. And it’s shit, right or not? Racist, sensationalised shit. Every day it’s the same. Send back the Indians, the Filipinos, the Indonesians buying our condos, the Bangladeshis scaring our women in the shopping centres, it’s all bullshit. But we read it. We check with the tech guys overseas and it’s the same ever
ywhere—blacks and whites in the US, asylum seekers in Australia, Eastern Europeans invading England and France, the Mainland Chinese taking over Hong Kong, the Islamic State taking over the world—same stories everywhere, right? Globalisation makes us all fear being swamped by the invader, right or not?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Please lah, we monitor. It’s the same all over. Almost overnight, we are all racist again, even in Singapore. You think that’s true?”

  “No.”

  “No. But The Singapore Truth website says we are. That blog says we must make Singapore for Singaporeans and take the country back before it collapses. And do you know why? Do you really know why one country is supposedly being overrun with racists?”

  “Go on.”

  “Because one Chinaman’s wife got shagged by a white man.”

  Chapter 6

  Harold Zhang sat on the side of his bed and watched his wife get dressed. Li Jing was still so beautiful. That’s what hurt the most. If she had gone to seed, he could channel his infuriating sense of impotence and fling it back in her fat, saggy face. He could make her understand how she had scooped out his insides in Australia and left him empty. She had disembowelled him. He didn’t think it was possible to loathe another person quite as much as he loathed his wife. But she was still so beautiful.

  The early-morning sun streaked through the grilles of their bedroom window and her face glowed. Zhang continued watching as his wife brushed her tousled hair, still damp from the shower. He wanted her, right now, with her damp hair and her clingy underwear and her tight thighs and her pink cheeks and her early-morning bloom.

  And he despised himself for it. He controlled Singapore from his laptop, but she still controlled his loins. He’d do anything to lose the puppy-dog adoration that emasculated him. Out there, he was the blog master. In here, he wasn’t even the master of his own bedroom.

  “Very nice,” he said.

  “Hmm?” Li Jing muttered, still brushing her hair in the mirror, not bothering with eye contact, reasserting the balance of power.