I GOT TO the coffee-shop well before five-thirty. I was glad I was early.

I had been in the office all day. A stroll, I felt, would do me good. It would let me brood about Vanita’s murder and think about my relationship with D’Cruz. It was just yesterday that the man was beating the shit out of me. The memory of that had to be removed, ugly pictures washed clean away. It needed something as big as the swing of the sea to do this: something that would rise, wash away the debris, smooth the sand. I would have to feel the tide, float naked in it, be washed in the current of events, as yet unknown, that was to carry the inspector and me towards a common destination. That was the only way I had of getting reconciled to what D’Cruz had done to me. That was the only way I had of capitalising on the unlikely conjunction of events that had brought us together.

It would be easy enough to persuade myself of this. I believed that contrariness is what design and purpose are about. If this were not the case, what would be so wonderful about a tree that opposed gravity to reach for the sun, a salmon swimming upstream to spawn in its birthplace, people smiling at each other instead of snarling, making love when it would be more rewarding to make war?

I began walking around. But, instead of dwelling on the connection between the policeman and myself, I looked around me and began thinking of other things.

Joo Chiat is older than the rest of Katong. Here roads are narrow and winding. Houses are still made of wood and have swing-doors and verandahs. In Joo Chiat one could still find grandparents minding babies, women gossiping behind fences, children playing games of their invention in lanes in which it was still safe to do so.

Vanita’s ghost joined me, its presence strong. So strong that once I reached out for her hand. I felt silly grabbing empty air and looked around me. No one noticed. On the verandahs overlooking the lane, the old dandled babies, housewives continued to gossip behind fences. I was glad. There were, perhaps, things which would never change. They would be my signposts, the marker-buoys around which a new course could be charted after the storm. I made my way back to the coffee-shop and D’Cruz.

The inspector had a glass of beer in front of him. The bottle from which it had come was empty. He too had been early. D’Cruz was relaxed. Even likeable now. Perhaps it was the atmosphere of the coffee-shop. Downmarket and friendly: humanised by the smell of food, sweat and cigarette-smoke. Perhaps it was the mood into which I had worked myself.

Jafri arrived the moment I did. We both ordered Cokes.

D’Cruz lit a cigarette, looked at Jafri over a cloud of smoke, and said, “Will I be doing the talking or will you?”

“You start, Ozzie. Begin, perhaps, by telling us how far you have got with the investigation.” His voice was firm as always. And comforting.

“I’ll do my best,” the inspector replied. “For starters I’ll tell you about the other couple who, at the moment, are just a thorn up my arse.”

“Are you telling us that the two crimes are not connected?”

“Except that the same fucking weapon was used in both.”

The hair on my neck began to bristle. Bits and pieces were coming together in my head. But the pattern was unacceptable, ugly in the extreme. I asked, “And what was this weapon?”

“A common kitchen knife. The kind housewives use. In this case it was Prestige brand, stainless steel, made in Sheffield, England. The kind that my mother, God rest her soul, used to swear by.”

And mine still does, I thought, rubbing my neck against my collar to reduce the tickle of hairs standing on end.

“And I understand from How Kum that the murder weapon has been found. You confirm this, Ozzie?”

“I sure can. In a garbage-bin near the spot where Tay Lip Bin and his fiancée, Esther Wong, found the Everlasting together. Believe you me, this Esther was sure one overheated lady.”

Jafri smiled. “I am certain you can justify that statement, Ozzie.”

“Sure as hell, I can,” the policeman retorted, drawing on his cigarette. “On the surface, our Miss Wong was a fire-breathing Christian Evangelist. But only on the surface.” He paused.

“Go on, Ozzie,” said Jafri, the slightest impatience detectable in his voice.

“I’ll start with the good lady’s blood group.” He nodded, pleased by the surprise on our faces. “Her blood type was B, rhesus positive. This is the commonest blood group found in Singapore. Her fiancé, the unfortunate Tay Lip Bin, also belonged to this blood group. The semen found in her vagina, however, came from a man who had type A rhesus positive blood.”

“So it wasn’t the fiancé’s semen,” I said, my voice rising.

“Good sir,” said the inspector turning on me, “one is humbled by your deductive genius.” He applauded silently. “The semen certainly didn’t come from the fiancé but where the cum came from we may never know. And there is more.” He sipped his beer. “The good revivalist lady was four months pregnant…”

“Well, she was engaged…” I began.

“Too true. And, pregnancy is hunky-dory if not mandatory in the about-to-be-married in the mind-boggling horseshit that passes for morality today. Yes, all would be fine except for one thing. The baby Esther was carrying was blood type O. So it couldn’t have belonged either to the fiancé or to the bloke who had just screwed her. Our pathologist tells me that there were more blood groups floating around in our Esther than you would find in a middle-sized blood-bank.”

I wanted to throw back my head and clap my hands. Laugh, not with amusement but with relief. There would be no need to rearrange my life. No need to start piecing together a fresh design. I was not obliged to find Vanita’s murderer, not obliged to understand how her killing fitted into the scheme of things. She had been a victim in a shootout, a casualty in a blood-bath brought about by the promiscuous Esther. If one is hit by a meteorite, there is no compulsion to believe that God threw it.

“So you think the killings came about as a result of this Esther Wong’s complex sex life,” I said.

“Not for a moment. In fact, I wouldn’t bet a prawn’s head-shit on it.”

I was silent, relief wiped out.

Jafri spoke. “Let me get this straight, Ozzie. You tell us that this Esther person spread her favours around a bit. That she was engaged to be married, was pregnant by someone other than her fiancé and that she had had sexual relations with some third person not long before she was killed. Despite this complex and, might I say, unsavoury sexual scenario you have painted, you do not believe that Esther was the murderer’s prime target. What, may I ask, makes you so sure that this woman, with her devious sexual arrangements, was not the murderer’s prime object? And why are you so confident that How Kum’s Vanita was not killed simply to confuse us as to what the motive for these murders truly was?”

Thank God for Jafri, I thought.

D’Cruz said, “I don’t think Esther or Lip Bin were the object of the exercise. They were killed after Vanita Sundram.” Our faces must have told him that this emphasis on something that was so obvious impressed neither Jafri nor me and he explained. “No murderer, however dimwitted, kills the decoy first then the person he is really after. That would be putting the fart before the arse.” He laughed.

Neither Jafri nor I joined him and he went on. “Let us start by assuming that there is a motive for the killings. In ninety-nine out of a hundred cases, murder is not a mindless business but has a definite purpose.

“We have been able to establish no connection between Miss Sundram and the engaged couple. It is therefore safe to conclude that the bloke was either after the Sundram girl or the couple. He could have been just after either Esther or Lip Bin but, when it came to it, had to kill both. In that case, as I have said, Esther and boyfriend would have been killed first.

“Most murders are purposeful acts and murderers tend to be economical in their killing. They might, if they have to kill again and again, become indiscriminate. That’s usually because they have panicked. When this happens, we have the phenomenon of the mad dog who kills for the slightest of reasons: fear of discovery, the belief that another murder would throw the police off his trail and, sometimes, just to prove to himself how powerful he is. When he reaches this point, I think, a murderer has some inner need to kill and finds all sorts of reasons for doing so.”

I knew nothing about the minds of murderers. But what D’Cruz said made sense. Yet I found myself saying, “It still seems to me that, with a person like this Esther, things like jealousy, revenge…”

“Listen — you,” snapped D’Cruz. “I know that, more than you want God doling justice from on high, you wish your girlie’s death to be some kind of accident. Then you can let it go. No need for looking into the killer’s motive, no need to try to understand how someone could hate her enough to want to kill her, no need to make big changes in your life.”

I was impressed by his intuition; even more by the fact that our minds seemed to be following the same path.

D’Cruz looked at my face and his voice softened. “There is one other thing which you had better get used to from the start. We uncover worms as fat as turds whenever we investigate the life of a murder victim. They need not have to be people like the evangelist with the flying twat. It would happen if the Pope got snuffed.

“We may be a bunch of ruffians, we policemen, but if we understand one thing, it’s this: the dead are defenceless and we are careful with what we find out, and we go out of our way to protect the memories of murder victims.” His voice became hard again. “But we are not so considerate that we don’t dig for the facts nor do we operate any kind of cover-up if the evidence we uncover offends this or that person.” His eyes locked on to mine.

Jafri intervened. “Let us assume that you are right. That Vanita was the killer’s primary target…” A thought struck him. “Why could How Kum not have been the one he was after? The girl was lying over him so he kills her, and…”

“… with her out of the way, he gets bored with the whole business and pushes off to kill two people in another part of the park.”

Jafri laughed. I did too, but a thought bothered me. “What makes you so sure that I am not the killer?”

D’Cruz looked deliberately mysterious. “My nose, twenty-five years experience on the Force, knowing that half-breeds like you don’t kill on the nights of the full moon … You can’t get out of what you have to do that way, my friend. But, if you want facts, I’ll tell you the facts. The kind of facts policemen are supposed to dish out all the time.

“Forensics are, for once, prepared to put their money where their mouth is and give us, to a matter of minutes, the times at which your lady and the loving couple were killed. We also know the time at which your call came in and the exact location of the box from which it was made. It would have been impossible for you to have killed your girlfriend, run four kilometres across the park, killed Esther and fiancé and then, in the time available, got back to the box from which you made your phone-call.

“As we say in criminological jargon, ‘no washee, no wipee’. So you can cut out all this self-doubt horseshit.” His voice had become nasty and shrill. It changed slightly when he added, “I understand quite well, big fella. You’re lost without this girl and all these bloody self-doubts that you keep coming back to are ways to hide from yourself what you are missing terribly. You are fooling yourself if you think that, if you pretend hard enough you won’t have to do something positive: like helping find out who killed the lady.” Then his manner became confidential, almost gentle. “I know young people today think that it’s not cool to be inexperienced but I suspect, my friend, that the dead girl was your first woman. Right?” He looked at me, got his answer from my face and continued. “First for you, but I guess you know that she’s been around a bit?”

I nodded. “How did you find out all this?”

“My nose and from the autopsy, fella. Forensics tell me that she’s been pregnant but never had a baby. Ditto she’s had an abortion. And you, my friend, seem, especially on second inspection, to be the kind of bloke who’d marry a girl rather than put her through the horrors of getting a pregnancy terminated.”

Jafri laughed. “I’ll say this for you, Oswald D’Cruz. You’ve got the facts and the psychoanalysis is dead right. But where is all this taking us in terms of solving these crimes?”

“As I see it Jaf, we have two scenarios. Both bad. Scenario one: we are dealing with a nut case. A crazy killer like Son of Sam or the Boston Strangler. With that kind of situation there’s no way of knowing where to start. I have no great experience with this sort of thing, but I am told that this kind of killer can kill just once or again and again.

“The trouble is, as with most of these psycho things, no one knows why he kills. Often we don’t even know if we are dealing with one person or a casebook of crazies. Even worse than the killers are the so-called psycho-detectives who claim to understand their minds. They’re the kind of con-men who would make you rush to consult the nearest calendar if they told you what day of the week it was.”

He drew on his cigarette. “Scenario two: we have a really clever killer. One who has thought the whole thing through, knows what he’s after and is trying to bury his real objective under a mountain of murders. This man … person, realises that, as far as the police are concerned, all murders are of equal importance. That is to say, we are obliged to investigate each and every one down to the last detail. This not only means a helluva lot of work, it also means that we could get snowed under with information that public-spirited people send us. We could get a pile of shit so high we don’t know where the stink is coming from.”

Jafri interrupted the inspector’s musings. “How do you plan to go about things, Ozzie?”

“First, we follow my policeman’s nose.” He put a finger on the organ in question. “This tells me that Vanita Sundram was the one the murderer was after. Then we ask ourselves who wants the girl dead and why. To answer these questions we need to have someone on the inside. We need someone who not only knows the girl but also knew the people around her. We need someone like our friend here.” He poked me in the chest.

“I think,” said Jafri, his voice even more controlled than ever, “that you two didn’t,” he raised his eyebrows, “hit it off the first time round.” D’Cruz choked on his cigarette and coughed violently. I shot Jafri a hurt look. “I am happy to help sort things out between you two and I am in an ideal position to do so. I have worked with you, Ozzie, for several years, and I know How Kum as well as I know anybody. What happened is over and done with and I am sure that How Kum is quite happy, now that the situation has been clarified, to…” he stopped to smile at what he had called the most preposterous expression in the world, “to help the police with their inquiries.”

“OK big guy,” said the inspector, his fit of coughing over, “you tell me if you heard or saw anything that you think might have any bearing on the murders.”

The noisy teenagers said nothing to me. Neither did the swinging of the ships at anchor, or the sounds that came to me from across the ocean. Apart from the moonrise, there was nothing that was alarming or terribly different. I recalled being surprised at Vanita’s hurry to make love a second time, being more sleepy than usual when we were done. Much more sleepy. I remembered being awakened by Vanita making noises in the night and thinking that she needed me again.

“I thought I heard Vanita cry out in her sleep. I was more sleepy than usual. I didn’t wake up to investigate. I thought they were just…”

“Dream comes I call them, but I am sure that sex manuals have discovered some highly technical explanation for what has been known from time immemorial.” He grinned and punched me in the chest. “Not surprising that she should dream about you having seen the kind of equipment you pack. Not surprising at all.”

I knew what the sounds were; the sounds I had heard and ignored on the night of the full moon. “I know what I heard, D’Cruz. I heard a cry of pain and was too sleepy … didn’t bother to investigate. The woman I loved was bleeding to death beside me and I did nothing.”

The inspector’s manner changed, became serious, bordered on the fatherly. He said, “I don’t know how often you, and your girlfriend actually spent nights together. I have been sleeping with my Philomena for nearly twenty-five years. Without thinking about it, I listen to her breathing and know she is there beside me. If for any reason this changes, if she stops breathing even for a moment, I am instantly awake.”

How could I have forgotten the comfort of feeling her breathe as she slept beside me? I often woke a little before Vanita did and put my hand on her breast to enjoy the feel of it moving. Up down, up down, up down. I would catch a long nipple in my thumb and forefinger and watch it thin and lengthen as she breathed out, grow tight and squat as she inhaled. Sometimes I leaned my head against her nose to feel her breath whistling past my ear telling me that she was alive. Telling me that I was alive. How could I have been unaware of it stopping?

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said. “I think of Vanita dying beside me in terrible pain and my sleeping on. I have horrible visions in my head. I can’t see things clearly nor can I get rid of them.”

“I guess I’d best tell everything,” said D’Cruz. “You’re smart enough to see through any lies I make up and, if I leave you guessing, you’ll only imagine worse than actually happened.”

Jafri nodded. “Tell How Kum all you know, Ozzie, and don’t spare him the details forensics gave you.”

“I won’t,” he said. “The autopsy report says the girl was stabbed just below the left shoulder blade. The knife passed into the left atrium…”

Jafri interrupted. “I am sure How Kum has forgotten the little biology he learnt at school, so it might be a good idea for you to explain the forensics as we go along.”

“The atrium is the collecting chamber, where all the blood in the body winds up before it is pumped out again. It has no muscle in its wall to seal off any hole that is made in it. Bleeding from a wound in the atrium is massive and uncontrollable, so death is rapid. As near as one can get to immediate. I would say that your girlfriend cried out when the blow was struck, then she must have become unconscious very quickly from loss of blood.” I thought of the blood-red moon, of clouds that looked like old bruises. Remembered feeling the wound on Vanita’s back, realised that I had not looked at it, wondered if there was a bruise around it. I said, “Oh God. I really cannot forgive myself. I’m sure I could…”

“There was nothing you could have done, big fella. Nothing anybody could have done. Only a cardiac surgeon equipped with a portable heart-lung machine and surgical equipment could have saved her life and these are difficult to find in East Coast Park at four in the morning.” His voice softened. “Listen, son. Die we all must and, when we do, haemorrhaging from the heart is as nice a way of going about it as any. There’s no great pain and you’re unconscious before you know what’s happening.”

He stopped, poured himself more beer and lit another cigarette.

Jafri wriggled around in his chair and fiddled with his glass of Coke. We were silent: trapped in the moment of Vanita’s death, wondering about our own.

Jafri broke the spell. “Let me try and understand the sequence of events you are postulating, Ozzie. Someone, for reasons as yet unknown, wants the girl dead. This person either follows How Kum and Vanita to the park or knows exactly where they will spend the night. He watches them make love and waits till they fall asleep. It is dark, but somehow our murderer is able to confirm that it is the girl who is on top and, though she is covered by a sleeping-bag, stabs her accurately through the left atrium so she bleeds quickly to death without disturbing her lover.” He drew a breath. “Surely we can do better than that, Inspector D’Cruz.”

“You’re a defence lawyer, Jaf, and it is your job to make policemen look like arseholes.” He added bitterly, “Don’t have to work up a sweat to do that with the types coming out of the Police Academy these days.

“But, I’ll tell you why I think things happened the way I say they did, and big guy here can tell us how right or wrong my reconstruction is.” He waved for more beer.

“First, it was the night of the full moon, and though the moon was low when the girl was killed, visibility wasn’t bad, especially if one kept one’s head at ground level.” He extended a finger. “Two. My policeman’s nose tells me that this is a carefully planned murder, not the work of some loony driven wild by the full moon. True, it looks like the work of a madman but that’s because whoever’s done it wants it to look that way. For my money, our murderer has overplayed his hand a bit. There’s too much drama. It’s too much like the work of a nutcase to actually be the work of a nutcase.

“Let us accept, for a moment, that this murder was committed by a rational person. This would mean that the killer has probably been watching these two for some time. He knew that they did things in just about the same way whenever they spent an evening in the park.” He looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

I nodded. “We did things the way we enjoyed them. Didn’t change our routine much…”

He held up a hand. “That’s all I was asking, son. Three. Our killer didn’t have to guess where the girl’s back was. She wasn’t stabbed through the sleeping-bag at all. It had slipped off her body and she had a naked back…”

“How on earth could you know that?” I remembered the bag tangled at Vanita’s feet as I tried to get out from under her.

“As with most things in detection, it was obvious.” D’Cruz filled his glass. “There were no holes in the sleeping-bag.”

“Since How Kum has not raised any objections,” Jafri said, “I guess that’s the way things could have happened.” He paused.

“But what about the other couple. Were they killed in the way that Vanita was?”

“Give or take a few minor details. They were both fully clothed. Perhaps they had no need to be otherwise for, as I said, our Esther had had her pussy fed elsewhere. Also, and for the aforesaid reason, they were not lying in each other’s arms. Both Esther and Lip Bin were stabbed in the chest. I think the boyfriend may have tried to fight or make a run for it for his body was found some distance from the girl’s.”

I knew what his answer would be, but still I asked, “And the same weapon was used in all three murders?”

The inspector’s head snapped round. “I thought I told you earlier that it was a stainless steel kitchen knife and that this was recovered from a garbage-bin.”

I should have told him, at that point, that a knife such as this was missing from Ma’s kitchen. I didn’t. Kitchen knives go missing often enough and Ma could not possibly have anything to do with the murders. “Yes, you did, but it slipped my mind.” I picked up my Coke.

“If there is one thing I know about murders it is this: the first victim is the one the killer was really after. Subsequent murders are usually committed because the killer has reason to fear discovery, has panicked, or wants to throw up a smokescreen. Sometimes murderers go on a killing binge. We don’t know why, but it serves to confuse the police.” He laughed. “I know I said all this before, but our friend here,” — he shot me a quizzical look — “seems to have developed some kind of a memory problem.”

Jafri, who had been following the inspector closely, said, “Let us assume that you are correct, that these killings were not the work of a madman.” He paused. “I am, mind you, not agreeing with you, but will, for the moment, view things the way you want us to. What do we do now?”

“We find out from big fella here who would want her dead.” He looked at me expectantly.

This was a point in my relationship with the inspector that I had foreseen, feared. It was one of the myriad of binary branchings which can determine the course of events.

What he was asking was simple enough. It was a request for information: the kind of thing the police routinely required. My agreeing to provide it was a different matter. What I said could supply that tiny shaft that altered the balance of things, the shake of the kaleidoscope that changed the pattern forever.

In agreeing to investigate Vanita’s death, I would find out more about her than I had known in life. I could uncover unspeakable details of her life, come upon questions that could hurt me terribly but could not be resolved with her dead. And I would have to share all that turned up with a man I had every reason to hate. I hesitated.

“I can’t think of anyone who would really want to kill her,” I said. “Vanita had, in many ways, a pretty unconventional lifestyle and she did rub it into the faces of those who hated the way she behaved.” I thought of Mary Magdalene Lourdes, dismissed the notion that her disapproval was strong enough to lead to murder, wondered about Mrs Loong, who may have wanted revenge for her husband’s infidelity. “Also, she may have hurt one or two people sufficiently for them to want revenge.”

D’Cruz noticed me hesitate. “Balls,” he said. “Revenge, disapproval and that kind of thing are only motives for murder in TV soaps. In the real world people kill for money. Especially in Singapore where they do everything for money. Tell me who stood to gain by her death or, better still, who stood to lose by her being alive.

“But tell it the way you see it. I want to see this case through your eyes.” His face hardened. “Spare me the bull about you yourself being the killer. Things are complicated enough without that kind of horseshit.” I looked doubtful as to where to begin and the inspector said, “Start with the folk in the office.”

I began with Mary Lourdes, the least likely of my suspects. I told him of her religiosity, her disapproval of Vanita, of the advances she made to me. He pursed his lips, rocked his head about but said nothing.

Then I told him about Symons and the passes he had made at me. I did not describe what had happened when I first joined Nats but did admit that my manager’s insistence that I was homosexual made me have doubts about my own inclinations.

What D’Cruz said wasn’t reassuring. “Sometimes you smile and toss your head in a way that makes you look as gay as an arsehole with wings. Even I thought you might be a fairy when we first met.” He shrugged apologetically. “Anyway, tell me more about this faggot, Symons.”

“He must be about fifty, Eurasian, good-looking…”

“Is he a fem-type or is he a macho bum jumper?”

“I don’t really know what you mean.”

“Aw, come on, fella. Is he all mass, muscle and moustache or is he a pansy like you?”

I ignored the insinuation and said, “He’s not thin but he’s not musclebound either. I don’t see him as a physically strong person.”

Jafri said, “I can’t help noticing that you were not interested in the girl Mary Lourdes, nor can I ignore the fact that you seem suddenly fascinated by the muscular development of potential suspects.”

“You are indeed perceptive, my learned friend,” said D’Cruz bowing slightly. “Muscular development may be of enormous relevance when we come to consider the identity of our murderer. In the case of the Sundram girl, the knife was slipped between the ribs. No great strength was needed for this. Esther and Lip Bin, however, were stabbed through the front of their chests, the blade cutting through ribs before it reached the heart. This required the kind of strength that your Mary Lourdes didn’t have. Neither, from your description, does the fairy, Symons, though I will look at him myself before I definitely make up my mind. What other offers do we have?”

I had kept him to the last. I hated him most. Wanted him to be guilty. The shapes moving around in my head told me I was wrong. I defied them, forced myself to think of him as the killer.

“There’s a bloke in the office who is strong enough to have done the kind of killing you describe.”

The inspector did not miss the change in my voice. “And you think or want to think that he is guilty.”

“He’s a shortish, muscular fellow who’s a great one for his martial arts.”

D’Cruz put down his cigarette, grasped my chin with his fingers and turned my face towards his. “Tell me, tell me eyeball to eyeball, why you so much want this man to be the killer?”

I told him about Loong’s affair with Vanita, about the afternoons spent at the Changi Meridien, of how painful the knowledge had been to me. I told him of how the duty roster had been fixed so Vanita worked nights and was free in the afternoons. I described Mrs Loong, prudish and unattractive, and their obnoxious children. As methodically as I could, I built up a case against the supervisor. The more I forced the pieces together, the less convincing did the picture become. I had to wind up saying, “All in all, I don’t think that he would murder to keep his affair from coming to light.”

For a while the policeman was intent on his cigarette. Then he said, “I am never quite sure with the traditional Chinkos, big fella. They put a great premium on keeping up appearances, ‘face’, as they call it. They do the darndest things on the quiet but nothing is out in the open. I know a towkay who has a yen for fucking children. But this tycoon, as is not uncommon with such types, also donates vast sums to orphanages.

“You may see this as hypocritical. But not John Chinaman. He honestly sees it as having a private face and a public face. They are quite separate things to him and public face does not know about private face. But God help anyone who shits on his public face. And that is what your girlie may have been threatening go do.”

I was not convinced. Vanita didn’t die to protect some bigot’s sense of respectability. The way I looked at the world would be meaningless if this was so. I could accept her being murdered by a madman. That would make it an accident. Part of the mindlessness that goes to make up so much of the universe. If her death was premeditated, if it was something that would in time become part of a pattern, there had to be better reasons for it than the ones I was offered.

So much did I want the supervisor to be guilty that I chose to ignore the voices in my head. I asked, “What are you going to do about Loong?” The inspector looked sharply at me and I rephrased my question. “What are you going to do about the two men, I mean?”

“Find out what our heroes were doing on the night of the murders.” He laughed. “I don’t go in much for alibis, though. In my experience a cast-iron alibi is almost proof of guilt. Who but a guilty person would go to the trouble of having one?” He shrugged. “My own feeling is that these two, with or without alibis, don’t seem to have enough motive for the murders.”

Jafri asked, “What happens when they turn out to be innocent, as I am certain they will be?”

“We look elsewhere,” the policeman replied.

“Like where?” Jafri persisted.

D’Cruz looked at me. “Like who gains moneywise by the girl’s death.”

“I don’t really know…” I began, not understanding till his next question the direction his interest was taking.

“What do you know about this Sundram family, big fella? I met the father and brother when they I-D’d the girl’s body. I made the usual sympathetic noises and asked routine questions. Didn’t get much out of them. Certainly didn’t get a feel of things and they didn’t do anything to offer me a backstage seat at the play.”

I told him as much as I knew about the Sundrams.

Vanita’s grandfather was a small time businessman who had migrated to Singapore from Sri Lanka before the second world war. He had in the fifties invested wisely in real estate. No one knew where his capital had come from. Gossip had it that he had been a spy for the kempeitai, the Japanese secret police, and that he had been responsible for the torture and death of several Chinese businessmen whose fortunes had been confiscated and given him. Nothing, however, was proven and he was not involved in the War Crimes Tribunals held immediately after the war. I added that, even if the rumour was true, it could not have no bearing on his granddaughter’s murder half a century later.

“I’m not sure about that,” said D’Cruz.

I was puzzled. “I thought you said that revenge was not a good motive for murder.”

“It is when money’s been lost,” he retorted. “But move on and tell me about the girl’s father.”

Vanita’s father, K.S. Sundram, had been a minor official in the Ministry of Labour. Sundram was a man of the utmost respectability and was highly regarded in the Hindu community in Singapore. He was a prudent soul who saw to it that his inheritance grew in the sixties and seventies. He had retired from the Civil Service in the mid-eighties a wealthy man.

“What about his wife?” the inspector asked.

“She died when Vanita was five.”

“And where’s the old geezer been sticking it all this while?”

“Nowhere I know of. Sundram is very much into religion and doesn’t have mind for that sort of thing. He does a lot of work for the temple and various charity organisations.”

“I’m not at all sure that stops a man from waving the wick. On the contrary…”

“If there had been anything like that, Vanita would not have hesitated to tell me about it. As I said, she was not a girl to hide things.”

D’Cruz shrugged. “OK, tell me about this brother then.”

Vanita’s brother Mohan was a bit of a mystery. He was twelve years older than she and, though into his thirties, remained unmarried. He taught A-level physics at a government school but his driving passion was yoga. His speciality was hatha yoga which taught mastery over the body and its processes. He had, from time to time, tried to engage me in a discussion of what he called “true Hinduism” but I had never been sufficiently interested to find out what he meant by the term. Whatever else, his interest seemed to distance him from his family and Vanita did not look on him as close.

“What’s the relationship between father and son?” D’Cruz snapped.

“Cool, at best,” I replied. “The old man thinks of himself as being quite religious but Mohan feels that all the observances that Sundram puts himself through have nothing to do with the kernel of the religion. He once told me that his father ‘lives on a diet of spiritual chaff, having thrown away the wheat’. The old man, for his part, has made it clear that all he wants from Mohan is for him to marry and settle down.”

The inspector snorted and examined his cigarette. “What happens to the dough, when the old man unites with the Godhead or whatever Hindus do when they snuff it?”

“I’m not sure. Sundram loved Vanita above anything else. If he was allowed his way, I think he would leave the money to her. I understand though that it is a custom, virtually unbreakable in the Hindu community, for the eldest son to inherit.” I considered brother and sister as dispassionately as I could and added, “Vanita took life as it was. Mohan was happy to contemplate the Infinite and practise yoga. Neither seemed to have a great use for their father’s money.”

D’Cruz looked as though he very much doubted this but said nothing. A change had come over the policeman and he seemed to be in two minds about speaking. “There’s something I gotta say, Menon. It’ll tear me apart to get it out but get it out I will.”

Jafri interrupted. “I called Ozzie after you phoned me. It seemed appropriate that you and he should straighten out the personal problems you had at the start of this investigation. I told Ozzie that you were an accommodating person with a forgiving disposition.” He raised a hand before I could interrupt. “I also stressed that no one, however good-natured, could remain unaffected by the kind of treatment that you had been subjected to.”

D’Cruz had screwed his eyes up tightly and bit his lip before speaking. “Jafri says that he told you something about Tessie…” His voice was strained, his face that of a child about to cry. I should have felt sorry for him. I didn’t.

I remembered the knotted rope around my penis, the same rope crushing my ankle. My face still burned at the thought of bending over and letting a man shove a finger up my arse. “I don’t care what the fuck made you do it, D’Cruz. You assaulted me, you humiliated me. I was innocent and you treated me like…”

Jafri cut in, holding together forces that tended to pull apart. “All you say is true, How Kum, and the inspector here is not going to deny it. It looks to me, however, that you two will have to see this thing through together and it might be a good idea for you to hear him out.”

“Why?”

“Because I have worked with Ozzie for several years. I have no doubt that he is the best investigator we have on the force.”

“I must solve this crime, Menon,” said D’Cruz, in a voice that shook slightly. “I kicked off wrong, fucked up before I got properly started. Which is all the more reason why you must give me a chance to get things right and hang the bastard who did it.”

“What does it matter to me whether or not Vanita’s murderer is caught? Will hanging her killer bring her back to life? Will his dangling from a rope make it possible for me to make love to her one more time?”

I asked the questions but I knew I had to find out who her murderer was. I had waited all my life for Vanita. When she came I recognised in her the missing piece to a picture. Now she had been snatched away, there was again the incompleteness. I needed more images, more facts, more fancies, if I was to put together a new picture.

My face must have betrayed what was going on in my head for D’Cruz’s voice had become a little more confident. “No, Menon. Nothing can bring her back. But unless we find out who and why, the girlie’s ghost will never rest. I am sure you get the feeling that she is still with you. Talking to you, seeming to get into the action as though she were still alive.”

He continued without acknowledging my nod. “It’s that way with my Tessie, though fifteen years have passed since she was raped and murdered.” He took a big sip of his beer and drew deeply on his cigarette. “She was my baby sister. Came to live with us when the old folks died. We can’t have kids, me and the wife. We thought that God had sent us the child we couldn’t have.

“Tessie was a happy little soul and popular with everybody. She sang, played the piano, made people laugh. Then, when she was sixteen, some animal raped and strangled her. The killer was never found. The Commissioner says that the case is closed. Thirty per cent of murder-rapes are unsolved, he tells me, so let the case rest. But the case stays open in my head. I think of the child’s terror as the brute ripped his way into her. I think of her screams choked off as he strangled her, strangled her with her panties.

“That is not all. Sometimes I come home and find the old piano open and a note hanging in the air. You see, my friend, the poor child can’t even die properly, because the bastard that killed her is still walking around.”

He finished the beer in his glass and lit a cigarette from the stub of the old one. I looked into his face. Beer and cigarette smoke make the eyes water terribly.