VANITA HAUNTED MY DREAMS. I awoke randy and the feeling stayed with me as I rode to work. Even the sight of Mary Lourdes waiting in my office did not rid me of it.

“Two men came very early,” she informed me, in a conspiratorial manner. “They questioned them, then took them away in a police car.”

“Took who away, Mary?’

“The supervisor, Loong, and that pervert Symons.”

“Were you waiting here to tell me this?” She nodded, and I added, “Why?’

“Because I think you’ll want to know who else was involved in whatever they were up to.”

“Who else was involved, Mary?”

“The Jezebel who corrupted you.”

A queasy feeling in the stomach all but replaced the randiness with which I had come into the room. Perhaps I shouldn’t have told the inspector about the meat tenders. The last thing in the world that I wanted was for the police to unearth scandals that affected Vanita. “Are you saying that Vanita was in with Loong and Symons in fixing the meat tenders?”

“She was sleeping with the supervisor.”

I let that pass and said, “But she was just a preset girl. How could she be of any help to them?”

She shrugged. “All I can say is that she knew what was going on and she kept quiet. She must have been getting something out of it.”

“Are you suggesting that she was blackmailing the two?”

“Who can say?” She shrugged again. “Maybe you. After all, you knew her very well too.” She paused to allow this to sink in. “I thought I’d tell you what I know to show you that I’m your true friend.”

As soon as Mary left, I called D’Cruz then Jafri. Neither was contactable. I had the afternoon off and left my office immediately after lunch. Vanita’s ghost rode the train with me and I began to feel randy again. She teased me about the state I was in and suggested several ways in which I could be relieved. Her suggestions only made matters worse.

When I reached Orchard Station I realised that, if Jafri wasn’t at work, he was probably at home, which was just round the corner from the station.

Zainah let me into the apartment. She was again alone. I looked around and wondered where Jafri was. Zainah noticed this and said, “Not in the office, not at home, but Zainah knows where her husband is.”

The lilt had gone out of her voice and her eyes were puffy. I wanted to put my arms around her and comfort her.

“Where is he, Zainah?”

“Where else. Like always nowadays he spends all his time with that Quincy. At home, too, he talks only of criminal psychology and abnormal sexual needs.” She made a sound between a laugh and a sob. “What about normal sexual needs, I ask, but he just tells me not to joke about serious matters.”

I followed her into the living-room watching, with the attention that sexual arousal produces, her bum moving inside the tight sheath of her sarong.

“What’s he doing with Quincy?”

“You ask me?” She shook her head and plonked down on the couch beside me. “Now somebody else comes too. Some Madam Zoroastris who does some borak with psychic forces. Any nonsense is good enough for my Jafri these days. I don’t know what’s happening.” She began to cry.

I put an arm around her. She sobbed violently and snuggled against me. I smelled the soap-and-water freshness of her body, felt its curves shuddering against mine. I put both my arms around her and pulled her against me. She turned her face up and pressed it against mine. Her lips tasted of tears. Her tongue had a clean, sweet flavour as it searched the back of my mouth and her nipples seemed to know their way into my fingers. She reached between my legs to touch the part of me that strained most urgently towards her. As I began to press her down on to the couch, I heard a key in the lock. I pushed Zainah away from me and crossed my legs.

Jafri seemed more relieved than surprised to find me in his home. “I’m glad you’re here. I tried your office and your home without effect. Quincy has asked me to bring you round to meet Zelda Zoroastris. We need to re-run our investigations in the presence of someone who is familiar with telepsychic phenomena.”

Again I thanked God that Jafri was so mesmerised by Quincy’s bullshit that he failed to notice the state that his wife and best friend were in. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Zainah discreetly arranging her blouse.

“Have you informed D’Cruz, Jafri?”

“I was with Quincy and Zelda.” I frowned at this familiarity but Jafri, who seemed to have become quite insensitive to the attitudes of the people around him, failed to notice my disapproval and continued blithely, “We have made contact with Ozzie…”

“Telepathically?” I asked.

“Try not to be frivolous, How Kum,” he snapped. “Some terrible murders have happened on our island, our police seem to have drawn a blank, and Zelda is here to see how she can help. I need not, I hope, remind you that your girlfriend was the first of the killer’s victims.”

“When is this meeting scheduled?” I pronounced the word the way the Americans do. It was a last-ditch effort to make Jafri smile. It failed.

“Right now,” he replied. “Ozzie has agreed to be there too. One would have thought that he would have jumped at the opportunity to get initiated into modern criminological techniques, but it took a lot of pressure to get him to agree to come at all.” He shook his head several times.

Before I could protest, Jafri had grabbed my arm and was hurrying me through the door. I noticed that neither look nor word had passed between husband and wife. I wondered if Jafri would mind my taking up with Zainah if he had no use for her.

Madam Zelda Zoroastris was an impressive woman by any standards. She was at least six foot tall and nearly as broad. Her bosom ballooned out well ahead of the rest of her and from its depths issued a rich contralto, which seemed somehow to be detached from her person. “Good to know you, Houk,” it said, resonating against my face.

“He likes to be called How Kum,” said Jafri, as though describing an allergy.

“Houk’s good enough for Zelda, and what’s good enough for Zelda…” She turned to Quincy and they said in chorus, “is good enough for the USA.”

“Mamma Zel likes things her own way,” Quincy explained.

I didn’t see any point in protesting.

“You lay things out the usual way, poppet,” she said to Quincy, “and Mamma Zel will get the show on the road.”

The psychiatrist Lum was fiddling with elaborate electronic apparatus in one corner of the room. Much of this was unfamiliar to me but I did recognise video cameras and the kind of microphones used in movie sets. Quincy noticed my interest and said, “Yes, siree. We encourage visual recording so all is clean and above board.” His cadences had begun to echo those of the large woman.

“Do we have a member short?” asked Zelda. “I understood there were to be three observers: the doctor, the lawyer and the police chief.”

“Not the chief, Jafri said apologetically. Just the inspector who…” he groped for a word, “who began investigations in this case.”

“He ain’t materialised,” said Zelda, rolling her eyes.

We heard a commotion outside and D’Cruz walked in closely followed by a tough-looking man in a white coat.

“You tell this gorilla that I am part of the investigating team,” he said to Quincy.

“My dear Watson, of course,” said Quincy, nodding in the direction of the tough.

The inspector looked terrible. He had shaved badly and his shirt looked slept in. His normally tiny eyes seemed to have grown in size but, instead of improving his appearance, this gave him a wild, haunted look. I noticed that his hands shook and his fingernails were dirty. He glanced in my direction and, avoiding eye contact, said, “I understand you’re going to perform, maestro.”

I nodded and said, “But I’m not sure how.”

“Hang loose, Houk,” Zelda commanded. “Technique’s been long established. All kinks have been ironed out. This investigation will go as smooth as oysters on ice.”

“How Kum,” Quincy informed her, “has already contacted two of the suspects. No objection to that, is there Mamma?”

“None as long as my baby is happy.” She reached out, grabbed Quincy and crushed him to her bosom. Her baby seemed happy to be where he found himself and stayed in her embrace till his breath ran out.

Zelda clapped her hands and shouted, “Documents.”

Computer print-outs were handed round.

I had read two of them and did not bother to read the other two.

Quincy noticed this and said, “Gotta do your homework, man.”

“I think I’ll take these two without knowing anything about them.”

He began to shake his head till Zelda boomed, “Houk may have a point, poppet. Just let him get the vibes without the words.”

“How do we go about things?” asked D’Cruz.

“Like so,” Zelda replied, in an authoritative voice. “We get the four suspects into the room. Houk’s the only one who knows the killer’s vibes, right?”

“I was close when the first murder was committed,” I said weakly.

“Close as into the skin of the victim, I understand,” said the large woman without the slightest change in her voice. “So here’s how we fix things. Houk sits on one side of the screen,” she indicated a plastic screen in one corner of the room, “our four suspects on the other. I ask them to contemplate the murders, refreshing their minds with details of the killings. Remember, these guys have soft limbic systems and get easily amnesic.

“Then I put my hand on their heads, one at a time. As I do, I ask Houk if he’s getting any vibes. Even if he doesn’t consciously feel anything, there will be frequencies oscillating between him and the murderer and I’ll recognise them.” She turned to Quincy. “Don’t I always, baby?”

“Never fail, Mamma,” he confirmed.

“But we’re not one of your Indian fakers…” Zelda began.

“Fakirs,” said Jafri, pronouncing the word correctly.

“Fuck who?” Zelda was genuinely puzzled.

“Fakirs,” Jafri explained. “Religious men.”

“Fuck whatever,” said Zelda impatiently. “We’re not one of them. We believe in science.” She turned to me and put her hands on my shoulders.

The smell of perfume was overpowering. This seemed to arise not from her body but from her face which was on the same level as mine. The tiny cracks visible in the heavy makeup didn’t change the fact that it was a striking face with large hypnotic eyes which were a surprising mauve. “We’re scientists, Quince and me. We don’t simply rely on my special gift. I will feel the reverberations between Houk and the killer as sure as I’m feeling his skinny shoulders, but that ain’t gonna be good enough for science.

“We gotta measure what’s happening in this bag of bones here and document our findings before we can think of ourselves as being scientific.” She released her hold on me.

Quincy bounced forward. “I got the polygraph and accessories right here, Mamma.”

“I know my baby never fails me,” said Zelda. This was occasion for a further prolonged embrace between the two. When this was done she said, “We’ll get Houk hooked up in the chair before calling in the suspects.”

I had, all along, looked on this unlikely pair as creatures to be ridiculed. I was prepared to play along with them as long as I was not involved in any discomfort or danger. Now I wasn’t so sure.

I looked nervously at the mass of electronic equipment. “I hadn’t realised that all this was going to be necessary,” I protested, doing my best to hide my anxiety. “No one told me anything about being connected to electric wires…”

“Not to worry, darling,” said Zelda. “We have to immobilise you so recording baselines remain steady. The seat may look like an electric chair but the juice flows out of you, not into you.”

With difficulty I caught Ozzie’s eye. “Don’t worry, How Kum,” he said. “If you get electrocuted I’ll make sure these two hang.”

Jafri made disapproving noises but did not stop the inspector saying, “And I’ll take great pleasure watching. Them hanging. Not you getting electrocuted.”

“Not a chance of that,” said Quincy. “The wires conduct tiny impulses out of How Kum’s body. These are amplified then synchronised before they are codified by the computer.”

I was placated but not completely. “What are you measuring?”

“The usual parameters,” said Quincy. “Pulse, blood pressure, EEG, EKG, galvanic skin response and that kind of thing. The genius is in how we link them together and correlate them with Mamma’s extrasensory perceptions.”

A collapsible chair was produced and my arms and legs were strapped to it. A metallic band was placed over my head. I caught the inspector’s eye. He gave me a tiny nod. For reasons of his own he wanted the show to go on.

The four suspects were brought into the room. In addition to Lenny and Oh Kwee, there were two others named Awang and Ah Sin. Their skins were rough and burnt a deep brown from long exposure to the sun. They were clearly convicts and I wondered how two men, already incarcerated, could be guilty of crimes outside their jails.

“Aren’t those two jailbirds?” I asked Quincy.

“Well done, How Kum,” he replied. “I can see that your extrasensory antennae are out and ready for action. It was good thinking your not wanting to see their data sheets.”

The plastic screen was pulled into place and the four men led behind it. Zelda, Quincy and Lum stayed on the far side of the screen as did the suspects. Ozzie and Jafri remained on my side of it.

“We are almost ready to begin, Houk,” Zelda boomed. “Just let your mind go slack so it is open to influences.”

“The parameters are steady,” said Lum.

“Now drift back, Houk,” Zelda instructed. “Drift back to the time of the murder. You and the victim are making love, faster, faster, faster…then the quiet. Now you are at peace, asleep beside the love object…”

“Pulse rate’s risen and there has been a slight fall in skin resis…” Lum said.

“Sharrup,” Zelda shouted. Then added in a quieter voice, “I was just making contact with the oscillations from Houk’s aura.” She addressed Quincy. “Now, baby, feed in the interference patterns I usually use. And you,” — this to Lum — “just observe the changes as they occur but keep your lip buttoned.”

“Sorry,” he apologised.

Zelda Zoroastris now began speaking slowly and rhythmically, her contralto expanding to fill the whole room. She was addressing the suspects.

“You are by the sea and it is dark. You have been watching the lovers all evening. They have made love many times and you can smell their juices. You have been hard for a long time. Too long. You know what you have to do. You have brought your weapon with you. The woman is asleep with her back to you. You know they are both naked. You raise your weapon and push it into her, just as the man was pushing his weapon into her. In-out, in-out and you feel yourself coming just as he did. The man is still asleep and you walk out to the beach. Your weapon is still in your hand.” The voice became louder. “I mean this weapon, the knife I now hold in my hand.”

“Christ and fucking spiders,” said Ozzie in an explosive whisper. “How on earth did she get hold of the murder weapon without my knowledge?”

“Couldn’t get hold of you,” Jafri replied, “So the DCP got forensics to release it for this experiment.”

Both men fell quiet as Zelda began speaking again. “You walk along the beach for a while. Then you feel you are getting hard again. You must find someone else. The couple are asleep, near each other and fully dressed. But you can smell love juices on the woman. You know that she has been making love.” Zelda’s voice rose the way an opera singer’s does at the end of an aria. “Yes, she has been making love … fucking, fucking, fucking, while you are hard and always by yourself. You creep up to her and raise your knife. You stick your weapon into her and you come. Your hand is wet with her blood. The man awakes. You want to go away and he stops you. You don’t want to fight but what can you do…? You raise your knife again.

“A week passes and you are calm. Not at peace but not troubled. You go back to your life. Then the urge begins to return. The hard-ons start again and sometimes they make walking difficult. People on the street are staring at you and you know what they are looking at. The whole world can see what’s going on between your legs. You touch yourself again and again, play with yourself but you can’t get rid of it. Then you buy yourself another kitchen knife.

“It is night in the park again. There are many groups around but no lonely couples. Your hard-on is now painful and the pain is increasing, moving up your chest, threatening to choke you. Then you find a couple by themselves. They are naked, rubbing against each other. The woman goes down on the man, kneeling between his legs. Her head is moving up and down and her naked back is facing you. The air is filled with a woman’s smell, a strong smell but there is no man’s smell to go with it. You want to wait till the man comes before you plunge your weapon into the girl giving the blowjob. Then suddenly you realise why you can’t smell a man. They are both girls.

“You are bursting with pain but you wait. You know you are most satisfied when you come at the first thrust. You wait, and the girl on the grass begins to groan as she comes. You plunge your weapon into the girl with her back to you. You can feel yourself squirting as her blood gushes on to your hands.

“You are at peace now. The only thing you want to do is to leave but the girl on the ground jumps up and attacks you. You try to explain that you are finished and you want to leave. But she won’t listen. She rushes at you, pinching, punching, trying to get her hand round your throat.

“You slash at her body with the knife but this doesn’t stop her. She kicks the knife out of your hands. You get behind her and put your arms round her waist. You just want to control her. You mean no harm. But she struggles. Without wanting to your hands slip under her armpits, your fingers lock behind her neck. Your knee is somehow in her back and you bend her forwards, down, down, down till suddenly you hear c-r-a-c-k and her body is as limp as your dick.”

From behind the screen came Quincy’s piping voice, “You have all seen how Madam Zoroastris has used her psychic powers to recreate the crimes from the killer’s point of view…”

“Psychic, my arse,” D’Cruz hissed. “The bloody DCP has probably given her photocopies of the investigation papers.”

Quincy continued, “She is now locked into the thought processes of all the five subjects involved in this experiment.”

“Five?” D’Cruz repeated in a soft voice.

Quincy heard him and said, “Yes, five. For the purpose of scientific study, How Kum is classified as a subject whom we like to call the recipient. Madam Zoroastris will be involved in his thought processes as well as those of the other four.”

“What should I do?” I asked.

Quincy replied, “Just let your mind go blank while the psychic makes physical contact one by one with the four subjects on this side of the screen.”

“What could I expect to feel?”

“A psychic thrill, not unlike fear. Very rarely, and only in subjects with very strong tele-psychic propensities, does this feeling amount to blind terror.”

I made my mind go blank as best I could. Nothing happened. Behind the screen I could hear Zelda moving slowly around.

“Say ‘yes’ as soon as you feel anything,” Quincy piped.

“Nothing,” I said, feeling slightly disappointed. “I feel nothing at all.”

Zelda spoke in a faraway voice. “The recipient is resistant. I’m aware of very strong oscillations from one person from this side of the screen.” She sighed. “Run the programme, Quince.”

“I will, Mamma. I will.”

“You, Dr Lum, watch the screen carefully for any alteration of the recipient’s parameters.”

“I will do that, madam,” said Lum dutifully.

“I have located agitatory vibrations in one of the subjects,” said Zelda. “I will now touch the person from whom these vibrations emanate and you watch the screen to see what happens to the recipient’s parameters.”

I examined myself very carefully as she did. I felt no fear or excitement, nor even a little flutter of expectation. The same could not be said for Dr Lum.

“This is really quite remarkable,” he said, his voice shrill with excitement. “As soon as the psychic makes contact with this one suspect, the recipient’s parameters show great turbulence. The main change is in the EEG, as expected.”

“Note,” said Quincy, “the concomitant change in his galvanic skin response and a slight but definite tachycardia.”

“This is most convincing,” said the psychiatrist.

“The objective signs are clear enough, though the recipient is unaware of anything happening, even the slight change in his heart-rate. I might add that this is due to the excellent interceptive faculties Madam Zoroastris possesses. She is interfacing with the oscillations between How Kum and the suspect but, such is her skill, that neither is aware of it.” Quincy’s voice was all admiration. “However, we are practitioners of science not witchcraft and, to make absolutely sure that this is not some random phenomenon or some glitch due to variations in your Singapore voltage, we will repeat the process and show that the disturbances in How Kum’s parameters only occur when contact is made between our psychic and one of the suspects.”

There was a murmur of admiration from Lum as the process was repeated. “Even Dr Freud couldn’t be more scientific than this. Every time Madam Zoroastris makes contact with this particular subject we record changes in the recipient’s heart-rate, blood pressure and EEG.”

“So we’ve got the murderer, have we?” asked D’Cruz in a matter-of-fact voice. “Because if we have, I’ll free How Kum from all these bloody gadgets.” He began undoing the straps and wires.

“We don’t approve of judgemental terms like ‘murderer’,” said Zelda as the screen separating us was removed. “We prefer to call this kind of person psychobiologically damaged rather than labelling him a criminal.”

“Psychobiologically damaged, my arsehole,” said Ozzie D’Cruz. He added, “And yours too for good measure, madam.” The inspector had clearly recovered his composure and was beginning to take command of the situation.

Zelda seemed exhausted by her performance and said, “Tell him, Quincy baby, that dirty talk is a definite sign of sociopsychopathic behaviour.”

The little man nodded. “It has clearly been demonstrated that aggressive language is a precursor to overt acts of sexual violence.”

The inspector was not impressed. “You can take your psychosociobiologico-sexual whatever and ram it up any hole from which you see shit coming.” He snapped his shoulders back several times as though spoiling for a fight. “I have come here to solve a murder…several murders, in fact. I was informed by a man I used to respect that these new-style criminologists would tell me who the murderer was. Perhaps they can.” He let out a breath as though it was cigarette smoke. “OK, you three scientific criminologists, which of these poor slobs is the killer?”

It was Lum who spoke. “From the data recorded on the polygraph it is clear the killer…”

“Dr Lum,” said Zelda sharply. “You are no doubt unfamiliar with our procedures. It has always been our practice to let the killer identify himself.”

Lenny Drigo was the only one who seemed interested in the proceedings.

Zelda stared at the four for several minutes before saying, “I have, of course, already made a positive identification of the killer. It is now up to the maniac, the sex maniac, to tell us who he is.”

“I’m the man, sir,” said Lenny in the general direction of D’Cruz.

“My God, Lenny,” said the inspector with a laugh. “You’re a wanker, son, not a murderer.”

“He’s the man though,” said Zelda, nodding her head slowly. “He was identified by my psychic sensibilities which the polygraph confirmed.”

Ozzie turned slowly to Jafri. “Ask them, my learned friend, to be quite sure of who they mean because in this country murder, whatever its psychosociological cause, is punished by hanging.”

“Listen, Ozzie,” said Jafri, irritated at last by the inspector’s baiting. “Not only have the newer techniques identified our man, he has himself confessed. What more do you want?”

“An explanation for this,” he replied, fishing from his pocket a sheaf of papers which he handed to Jafri. “These are the IPs, the investigation papers, concerning one very minor nuisance called Lenny Drigo.

“You can see from these papers that, on both nights when he was supposed to have been in the park murdering people, he was in the Central Police Station lockup.”

He turned to Zelda. “Perhaps he did it by telekinesis. Maybe the knife jumped up and killed people because of psychosexual impulses beyond his control.”

Jafri frowned at the papers and gradually his face went blank. Then he nodded and said, “I see.”

“What do you see, Jafri,” I asked. “What was Lenny locked up for?”

“For indecently exposing himself,” he replied. “Lenny, it appears, is a habitual offender. The police would not have done anything about it except for the fact that the lady who reported him on both occasions was a close friend of one of our Ministers.”

“Poor Lenny,” said D’Cruz. “He’s not even a flasher, he’s just a wanker. And if you saw his equipment you’d see that he hasn’t got much to flash.”

“But he confessed” said Jafri without conviction.

“Like eyes are balls he confessed. Lenny thought we were accusing him of being a sex maniac and in his eyes he is. He was brought up to believe that masturbators grow hair on their palms, that they go blind, that they become madmen. Of course, he confessed. And there is one other thing that needs to be considered.”

“Which is?”

“He’s the only one of that sad lot that speaks English.” He looked slowly round the room till his gaze rested on Jafri. “I rest my case.”