Chapter XXVI

He thinks Zaiton killed her,’ Maryam told Osman as they walked back to her house. ‘That’s why he’s so angry.’

‘Really? How could he live with her?’

Maryam shrugged. ‘I’m just telling you that’s what I see there. Rubiah?’

Rubiah was adjusting her headscarf and pushed her glasses farther up her nose. ‘It’s very sad,’ she replied. ‘It feels like that to me, too. He’s lost his wife and doesn’t want to lose his daughter and grandchild now. It’s a terrible choice.’

Osman protested. ‘But how can he protect a child who’s killed her mother?’

‘I didn’t say she had,’ Maryam told him, kicking away a goose who was following her and getting ready to start making noise. ‘I just said Aziz thinks so, or is afraid so. That’s why he isn’t pushing anyone to hurry up the investigation.

‘Zainab may agree, because no one’s heard from her either, have they? You would think for something like this, the family wouldn’t leave you alone about finding the killer. It’s odd they’re just sitting quietly.’

‘No more coffee for me,’ Osman said, as he held up a restraining hand. ‘Please.’

‘You aren’t hungry?’ Rubiah asked, unwilling to send him home without a meal.

‘Oh no,’ he assured her. ‘We’ve been eating all day.’

‘Maybe you have,’ Rubiah chided him. ‘We’ve been talking.’

He laughed, something he never would have done with either Maryam or Rubiah before, where he would only have felt rebuked and then apologized. But his confidence had grown since his marriage, and he no longer interpreted every comment as a reprimand – even if it was.

‘Do you think we should talk to Zainab?’

Maryam thought about it. ‘Of course. We should speak to the whole family.’

*  *  *

Zainab’s story matched those of her sister and father. ‘You had to clean up the whole mess with Zaiton, didn’t you?’ Maryam asked sympathetically. ‘It must have been so hard on you, like taking over as the mother.’

Zainab agreed. ‘I just don’t know why Zaiton did what she did. Making me go all the way to Golok to find her, running away like that. At least everything worked out in the end. We had the kenduri, Mak Cik, and I think it went very well.’

‘An excellent idea,’ Maryam congratulated her. ‘I think you handled it beautifully. No one could have done any better.’

‘Thank you!’ Zainab seemed pleased. ‘I did try to get it all straightened out.’

‘Tell me,’ Maryam leaned forward confidentially, ‘did you think Rahim had anything to do with the enam sembilan? I’m just asking your opinion. He says he was on his way here and then saw what happened and ran. I like him, you know. He’s a nice boy.’

‘We thought he was a nice boy,’ Rubiah added.

‘I don’t know, Mak Cik. I know I should say “No, never!”, and I’m not accusing anyone, but that whole situation was so tense and mixed up, I don’t know what either of them were doing. I don’t think they were thinking clearly either. I mean, now they’re home and everything is quiet, and I don’t doubt it will stay that way. Zaiton and I are going to take over my mother’s stall in the market.’

‘Congratulations! We’ll be neighbours!’

Zainab smiled back at her. ‘I know. Things have already settled down. It was a crazy time.’

Maryam and Rubiah smiled pleasantly and thanked her.

‘She thinks it too,’ Rubiah said as they left. ‘She’s telling us it won’t happen again, so we should leave it alone.’

‘I can understand why they wouldn’t want to go through any more scandal. But a crime like that – it’s unnatural! It makes me shiver.’ She wrapped her arms around herself to demonstrate. ‘If they all think Zaiton killed her mother, than it’s most likely one of them who attacked me to make me stop investigating. But then, and this bothers me, what was Kamal doing climbing into my house?

Rubiah had no answer.

*  *  *

Osman could not understand Hamidah. Two female officers, assisted by Azrina, attempted to bathe her, which resulted in the three of them becoming soaked to the bone, while Hamidah’s hair remained untouched and most of her dirt still in place.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with her!’ Azrina exclaimed to Osman later. She fought like a tiger: seperti polong kena sembur, like a familiar spirit touched by water! She almost threw herself out of the room. And why? She wouldn’t put on clean clothes or comb her hair.’ Azrina gritted her teeth in frustration. ‘Unbelievable. She really must be crazy, you know. What grown person would act that way? She’s filthy!’

He watched as she stormed around the house shaking her head at the recalcitrance of the woman. He was completely content.

‘Let’s go to the night market,’ he suggested. ‘We can get some food there. Or eat by the river.’ She smiled at him, excited now at the thought of exploring Kota Bharu after dark. ‘Yes, I’ll get my bag.’ And she left him in the kitchen.

‘Look at this,’ she came back in, holding a small, shredded piece of yellow cloth with Thai writing on it. It had been balled up into the smallest size possible and was grubby with smeared black fingerprints.

‘What do you think it is?’ she asked him, trying to flatten it out so they could see what it said. Osman felt his back go cold. Azrina smoothed it out on the table; even out to its full length it was small, and he couldn’t read Thai anyway. But there was no mistaking the small drawing of a demon face in the corner, slightly obscured by dirt but clear enough if you were looking hard. He put his hand on his forehead, and carefully removed her hand from it. ‘Where did you get it?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’ She cocked her head to look at it from another angle. ‘It isn’t mine. Could Hamidah have stuck it into my clothes before? It looks like something she would have: dirty. Look at it.’

She looked up at him and her faced creased in concern. ‘What is it?’

‘I think it’s a spell, a jampi. And it must be from her. No one else would have one so smudged.’ He couldn’t take his eyes off it. ‘Let me take it, sayang. Don’t even think about it.’

He took the offending object and tried to look insouciant, but it unnerved him. ‘I don’t want it in the house,’ he said suddenly. ‘Let’s leave it in the office on our way out.’

He resolved to bring it to Pak Nik Lah first thing in the morning and find out what this family was trying to do to him. He kept a sharp eye out for grasshoppers, but saw none for the rest of the evening. Thankfully.

*  *  *

‘At least it isn’t poisonous,’ Maryam told him. She didn’t waste much time on the spell when Osman brought it to her. ‘Heaven only knows what else she’s got stuck into pockets and what-not. This is probably the cleanest thing on her.’

She kept her manner completely businesslike. ‘What do these little scribbles mean? It’s poison you worry about. Besides,’ she whipped a batik sarong open to show to a customer, ‘that woman is crazy.’

Osman was a bit insulted that Maryam made such short shrift of this jampi. After all, hadn’t she herself suffered under the curse of black magic?

‘It was the poison,’ she answered briefly. ‘Not yellow cloth. Anyway, you should be finding out what that family is up to. I can’t figure it out.’