I DIDN’T SLEEP all night and at seven the next morning called Symons. It was Monday and he was in early. I told him that I wanted two weeks off work.

“It’s OK with me when you take your vacation, HK. You can fill in the necessary forms later,” he said. Then asked, “Are you ill?”

“Not really,” I replied. “Just a little depressed.”

Depression was something I resorted to when things got difficult. Right now, I felt that I had reason enough to remain locked up in my room. The love of my life was dead. I had let her murderer go free and by doing so had betrayed a policeman who trusted me. D’Cruz phoned in the afternoon. I told Ma to say that I was too ill to answer the phone. He called round in the evening but Ma stopped him at the door and informed him that I wasn’t seeing visitors. On Tuesday morning, I felt that I could no longer avoid the inspector and spoke to him on the phone.

“You OK, How Kum?” he asked. He sounded anxious.

“As well as I can be,” I replied.

“Finding the body was too much for you, uh?”

“Ozzie, I think I’ve seen more murders than my system can ever hope to deal with.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” he said. He paused for a while before adding, “I called to say that we have not been able to contact Mohan. I think he realises the game is up and has done a bunk.” Another pause. “Has he or any of his friends tried to get in touch?”

I took a while to say no, then added, “I don’t think he would contact me and I don’t know any of Mohan’s friends.”

“Well, you did meet a few when he took you to dinner and I thought he opened up a bit then.”

“I don’t know about opening up…”

“Enough for you to realise that he was the killer. Something a trained policeman failed to see.”

“That was just gut feeling…”

“I teach the young lads on the force that murder is always about money, and I myself screw it up by thinking of racial prejudice as a motive.”

I didn’t say anything and he went on. “It’s never sex or race, you know. It’s always cash, big dong. Cash is what makes people kill.”

The inspector’s intuition had served him well and I wondered how far it had taken him. “Why did he kill his father then?”

“Even if the old man changed the will in his favour, it could be several years before Mohan could get his hands on the dough, assuming father was allowed to die a natural death. Years in which he could give the money to somebody else, somebody like the crook Kishore. That would be reason to snuff the old bugger as fast as possible. Vanita would have inherited but she dies. Father dies soon after so the fortune winds up with Mohan who, in his eyes, should have inherited in the first place.”

I was impressed by the way the inspector had put the pieces together but wanted to test him more. “After going to the trouble of committing six murders, why is he not around to collect?”

“This bothers me, How Kum. This really bothers me.” He hesitated. “Murderers are usually arrogant. You have to be to take a life. They believe that all of us are arseholes who they can easily fool. What is more, we are dispensable and must not be allowed to get in the way of their grand design. From what you have told me about this bloke, I would say that he certainly holds all of us in contempt. Why then has he not believed that the fake suicide has not fooled the dumb police inspector?”

I seemed to have lost control of my tongue and I heard myself say, “Perhaps someone warned him.”

“No one could have, big dong, because, apart from the forensic boys, you are the only one who knows that it was not suicide but murder.” He waited for me to speak and, when I didn’t, said, “Therefore, I asked if Mohan had been in contact. If he had been, you could have said something that indicated I was on to him.”

“Like what?”

“Like forgetting to offer condolences at his father’s suicide or even just asking in a too anxious voice why he had not been in touch.”

I was relieved that Ozzie didn’t suspect me of treachery. I feared that if I continued talking, I would give myself away. “No. He’s not tried to contact me.”

“Call me at 2227534 as soon as he does. It’s a twenty-four-hour keep-in-touch number. Someone there will always know exactly where I am.”

“I will,” I said and hung up quickly.

He phoned several times over the next six days. I didn’t trust myself to take his calls and got Ma to say that I was asleep or too low to speak to him. I told her to assure him that Mohan had not been in touch.

After a few days I did, in fact, begin to feel depressed. I lay in bed all day and stared at the wall or the ceiling. Vanita’s ghost was no longer around and I knew she was truly gone forever.

Perhaps, I should have been relieved. Now I could relegate her to the kingdom of the dead and begin building memories of my beloved which I could keep for the rest of my life; begin to fashion pictures that would make the world mine again. I wanted very much to do so. But the ceiling-fan refused to become a merry-go-round that provided the coolness of movement, the voices I heard through thin walls were meaningless mumbles which told me no secrets. I listened to the tape again and again but my heart remained empty.

I heard Oscar talking to Ma. “It’s the realisation that the girl is really dead, Lili. That has only just hit the poor boy. Let him alone and he will in slow stages become himself again. Brandy helps but I don’t think he will use it.”

Poor Oscar, I thought, with the part of me that remained outside my depression. I wondered if he would still think kindly of me if he knew that I had allowed a mass murderer go free, and even assisted him by giving him information which only the police had? And Ma. What would she feel about her son, her little boy, who allowed the man who murdered the woman he loved to go free? She would, I suspect, have thought me as callous as my father. Perhaps I was like him, with the added advantage of being literally a bastard.

There was no one I could turn to for I had isolated myself from the world. A week went by, and the next. Then on the Sunday, exactly four weeks after Vanita’s death, Jafri phoned. “Ozzie says you’ve gone into purdah,” he said, laughing. His voice had its familiar, confident ring.

“I’m not a Muslim, I’m not a woman, and I don’t wear a veil. I’m just tired and sad, Jafri.”

“Too tired and sad to have tea with an old friend.”

Suddenly, I was afraid. Perhaps Zainah had told him what had happened on their living-room couch and Jafri wanted to have things out with me. “Zainah as well?”

“No. Zainah is having a little stomach trouble. Vomiting for the slightest thing.”

“Oh.”

“No need to ‘Oh’.” He laughed. “She’s just slightly pregnant.”

It wasn’t just relief that I felt. It was a wild happiness. The world was coming right again. I could feel my depression lifting. Vanita had loved me, had taught me to love, died for it and had done things that only she could do for love. What were justice and truth beside this?

I agreed to meet him a little after six that evening at a restaurant on Mount Faber.

Mount Faber is a low hill which, because of Singapore’s flatness, is looked upon as a mountain. It stands at the southern tip of the island and overlooks the harbour. From where we sat, I could see the ships, which came right up against the land and seemed close enough to touch. Looking to the east, towards East Coast Park, I could see dozens more, waiting their turn to dock, and, behind these, were the Indonesian islands. Further away was the horizon, the edge of the world from which ships came and over which they went.

In the west, the sun was beginning to settle, and it was cool enough for tea to be enjoyable.

“Ozzie is worried about you. Zainah too when she’s not busy vomiting. Ozzie fears you may go into a deep, irreversible depression.”

“I have been depressed, Jafri.”

“About Vanita not being around?”

“That and other things.”

“I’m a Muslim, How Kum. If nothing else, my religion teaches me to accept death and incorporate it into the fabric of life. I know it’s no use telling you that you will find someone else…and I hope very soon.” He looked sideways at me.

“Zainah says you are badly in need of a woman’s company.” He allowed himself a cryptic smile. “But you say that something else bothers you.”

“I’ve done a terrible thing, Jafri.”

“Do you think getting involved with Quincy was something of which I am excessively proud?”

“What I’ve done is more terrible. Much, much more terrible.”

“Tell a battle-scarred lawyer like me. Whatever it is, I’m sure I’ve seen worse.”

“I let Vanita’s murderer go free.”

“I am already relieved. I wondered what I would say if you told me that you were the murderer.” He smiled to let his worry lines relax before asking, “Was the murderer responsible for all the deaths?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I think you should start at the beginning and tell me everything.”

I did, with a growing sense of relief. Jafri didn’t interrupt to ask questions or obtain details. He merely tilted his head or raised an eyebrow. When I had finished he said, “Well, that makes you a criminal too.”

“Only morally.”

“I don’t know too much about morals. I do know about legality and you are a criminal in the eyes of the law. You are an accessory after the fact.”

“Oh God.”

He patted my shoulder. “There’s no need to think of it as a terrible crime. From what you have told me, Ozzie D’Cruz is, after a fashion, in the same boat as you, though in his case it was fifteen years after the event, whereas in yours,” he looked at the date on his watch, “it is exactly four weeks. Nevertheless, the crimes are legally very similar.”

“What can I do about it?”

“You could tell D’Cruz.” My face fell and he said, “I could tell him, though I suspect that he already knows. Our Oswald is nobody’s fool. You can be sure he’ll get the murdering swine in the end.”

I wasn’t sure. Mohan could disappear into the vagrant life and, however well policed Singapore was, it would be difficult to find him. He could also slip out of the island. The inspector had talked about watching the airport and the railway station, but he seemed to have forgotten one thing. Singapore is a diamond, forty-two kilometres wide and twenty-three long. Its area isn’t large but it has a coastline of a hundred and forty kilometres, too long to be guarded day and night.

From where I sat, I could see the islands of Indonesia. They were places in which a man could disappear completely and they were only an hour away by motor-launch.

I knew Mohan would get away. “I let a murderer escape, Jafri, a mass murderer. I don’t even know why.”

“I don’t either, but I can guess.” I looked puzzled and he continued, “When it comes to a murder trial, we all think of the judge saying, ‘you shall be taken to a place of execution and there hanged by the neck till you are dead’. It is a more premeditated, a more cold-blooded killing than any murder that one can imagine.”

I let what he said sink in before I remarked. “D’Cruz says that all murders are committed for money. I don’t think Mohan was money-minded, do you? He only wanted the money to advance his cause.”

Jafri shook his head. “I can’t allow you that, How Kum. We all want money to advance our cause, dharma or whatever. It usually transpires that our causes are ourselves. And, whatever your cause, it does not justify killing someone to advance it.”

In the west, the sun was slowly falling into the sea. The red ball stained the clouds blue and purple, colouring their edges with a mean yellow tinge. They looked like bruises growing old. As always at sunset, a light breeze begins to blow in from the sea. Breezes carry memories. I thought of my last evening with Vanita and how I woke to find her dead beside me. I remembered what had awakened me.

“You know, Jafri, Mohan maintained that things were only in the present. The evening Vanita died, I was telling her how difficult it was to tell moonrise from sunset just by looking.”

“Vanita was a sensible girl and I hope she told you how stupid you are. We identify things not by what they look like but by where they are taking us. There is a world of difference between sunset and moonrise. Sunset leads into the darkness, moonrise into the glorious light of love.”

Vanita hadn’t taught me that. All she had taught me was that there was love, that it was real. I realised that it could be, again. On the edge of the world, a full moon was beginning to rise.