Azrina trotted happily behind Maryam and Rubiah as they sauntered to Noriah’s house to see how business was doing. The widow had clearly been busy. Workmen were swarming over the old house, enlarging the parlour, adding electricity and running water, and a real stove in the kitchen. It was going to be a first-class institution when Noriah was finished, and they found her standing in front of it, keeping a keen eye on the job.
They greeted each other warmly, and though Maryam and Rubiah could not approve of the use to which the building would be put, as businesswomen they were impressed with the work being done and Noriah’s will to improve.
‘I’m going to charge them to come inside,’ she informed Maryam, gesturing with her cigarette. ‘No more deadbeats. I’m making something really nice here, people can come from all over and play, eat, whatever.’ Maryam picked up her ears at ‘whatever’, remembering what Khatijah had told them. Still Noriah chattered on, proud of her project.
‘You know, all those people who owed money to Yusuf, I’m not letting them in here. This is for people who can pay their debts. I’m not collecting.’ She thought for a moment.
‘So much trouble with that, and then, Kakak, I’d have to pay someone to get it from them.’ (Beat it out of them, more like, Maryam thought.) ‘So this is for people who have the money to gamble, not the ones who should never have started in the first place.’
This seemed to describe most of Yusuf’s clientele, but perhaps Noriah knew other, well-heeled gamblers whose custom she was targeting.
‘Will Khatijah be working here?’ Maryam asked casually.
Noriah shook her head. ‘I think it’s time Khatijah and I had some time apart,’ she said cryptically.
Azrina edged closer to the group, anxious not to miss a word if that were possible. ‘Who’s that?’ Noriah asked shortly.
Maryam introduced them. ‘Ah, this is Cik Azrina. Police Chief Osman’s wife. She’s come from Perak.’
Noriah grunted, not even bothering to feign interest when Azrina smiled eagerly. ‘So nice to meet you,’ Azrina said.
Noriah looked briefly at her, then looked away. ‘Perak?’ she said witheringly.
‘Yes,’ Azrina answered politely.
The corners of Noriah’s mouth turned down before she corrected them, and she looked back at the work. ‘Two weeks,’ she informed Maryam and Rubiah, ignoring Azrina. ‘Then it’s done.’
‘How about the debts Che Yusuf was collecting?’ Rubiah added. ‘Are you forgiving those?’
Noriah snorted. ‘Forgiving? No. They’ll have to pay me. Everything’s going to be settled up before I open this new place.’
‘How will you do it?’ Maryam asked.
Noriah looked at her, surprised at such an aggressive question. ‘I’ll just …’ She let the rest of her answer fade away as she sought to ignore the question altogether.
‘As part of our investigation,’ Rubiah reminded her. ‘That’s why we’re asking. Have you hired someone?’
‘I’m not doing it myself,’ she said, clearly annoyed. ‘I’m supervising this,’ she said, as though otherwise she’d be stopping by the houses of her debtors and physically threatening them. Maryam doubted it was really a job for a woman, unless it was a really frightening harridan. Noriah turned away from the worksite and began walking over to the village coffee stall. ‘Let’s have something to drink,’ she called to them.
The men came from Thailand, from Patani, and they were Thai, not Malay, and therefore difficult to talk to. Their Malay was basic at best, and for all Noriah knew, so was their Thai; they did not appear much given to, or perhaps even capable of, having a sustained conversation in any language. They were an unsavoury crew, perfectly happy to hurt someone to get what they wanted, not easily swayed by other people’s problems. They were difficult to control, understanding, as they did, only force, and if fear wasn’t in the mix of their emotions, its place was filled by contempt.
Just before he died, Yusuf had mentioned bringing them to Kota Bharu for a few days, to ‘clean up’ the outstanding debts owed to him. He knew them from his whiskey-buying trips, and though it would be greatly overstating the case to say they were friends, you could call them operators with parallel interests: Yusuf’s in procuring cheap whiskey, and theirs in making money without much effort. They meshed perfectly, and since their spheres of influence never overlapped, they never had cause to argue.
Noriah’s mistake had been inviting them to Kelantan to undertake the clean-up Yusuf had left undone, and she knew it was her decision alone that landed her in her current straits. Her contact in Patani, a Malay ‘entrepreneur’, had advised her not to do it. ‘Once they’re in,’ he told her, ‘you won’t get rid of them so easily, and you won’t be able to control them.’
When she didn’t take his advice, he shrugged, unwilling to really get involved. After all, what had he to gain by it? Any fool could see this would end badly, and if Noriah chose not to recognize it, what could he do? He did as she requested, pocketed his finder’s fee, and promptly forgot all about it. And three men, whose very names Noriah could neither pronounce nor remember, came to Kota Bharu to help her.
Bingong tengkat, cerdik begar: when stupid, quarrelsome; when clever, difficult. They were impossible to control, though they had only just arrived. Noriah could see her initial orientation talk to them was completely ignored and they treated her with little respect. She was now reluctant to give them any information on her debtors, lest they prove both overzealous in intimidating them and extremely lax in turning the funds over to her.
She had realized early on she would have a difficult time collecting, but now felt her solution was worse than her problem. The men would do as they pleased, and possibly walk away with her ill-gotten money, and her only recourse would be to set out a group of other ruffians to keep these in line. The money she would have to disburse to do this, lowlife after lowlife, would bankrupt her, and she wished Yusuf had never mentioned these people. In the end, she decided it was his fault for even starting her down this road and, in fact, he was the one who ‘bore responsibility for the sin’
In the face of Maryam’s questions, however, Noriah reverted to her first instinct: deny and hope it would all finally work out as she had planned. Although she had wanted them to find Yusuf’s killer – or if unable to do that, at least identify someone who could be blamed for it and therefore provide closure – she emphatically did not want them digging into her private business to do so. She had respected Maryam, perhaps even liked her in a disinterested sort of way, as she regarded everyone not directly involved in her business or her family. But now she was angry about Maryam’s questions, and began to feel crowded by her. Before Yusuf’s death, she would not have taken any action based on this. Perhaps she would mention it to him, and then remain happily ignorant of anything that might happen. Those days, lamentably, were over, and now Noriah had to take care of herself.
As they made themselves comfortable at the small, rickety counter of the local coffee stall, Noriah grandly ordered coffees all around and commandeered whatever cakes were available. Rubiah was reluctant to lower herself to eat substandard fare – by definition, any not made by her. She poked at the cakes with a doubtful forefinger, shaking her head ever so slightly in dismay at what she saw in front of her. She sighed, nearly silently, but Maryam caught it, as she was supposed to, and realized she, too, could not eat a cake such as this. Noriah did not notice any of this, and tucked happily into the cakes and coffee, while Maryam and Rubiah sipped their coffee in a controlled and refined manner.
‘So,’ began Maryam, not to be derailed by the promise of food and drink, ‘did you hire anyone? I ask because I think, you know, it would be very difficult for a woman to collect. They’d have to be a little afraid of you, wouldn’t they? People usually aren’t that afraid of women.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Noriah mused. ‘I think we can be … persuasive. I mean, it isn’t just threatening to hurt them, you know. They must understand there are consequences for not paying, and they don’t have to be a beating.’ She stirred the coffee in her cup slowly while watching it.
‘Then what?’ Maryam asked, truly interested.
‘Well, there are the courts.’
‘For a gambling debt? Gambling’s illegal. You’d get into more trouble than they would,’ Rubiah corrected her. ‘I don’t see the courts as a way. No, I think you have to be able to let them know they’ll be hurt,’ she concluded, as if considering a career in debt collection herself. Maryam looked at her with wonder, Noriah with something close to hatred.
‘You seem to be thinking a lot about it, Kakak,’ she said, barely controlling her voice. ‘Are you interested in taking it up?’ She tried for a light tone, but the undertone of anger seeped through.
Rubiah bit her lip to tamp down the flash of annoyance she felt. ‘I’m sorry, Kakak,’ she said, not bothering to make the sentiment believable. ‘It’s just … well, I was wondering,’ and she leaned forward, as if to impart some secret wisdom to her companions. ‘It’s very difficult trying to do this on your own, collect the old debts, that is. I’ve heard the late Che Yusuf sometimes had to resort to force, and that the people who owed him money knew he’d do that.
‘But we women? Who worries about that? And then, too, your debtors are all men, and so you see, I wonder if you’ll be forced to bring in people to collect for you, and then you’ll have these people here – not nice people, we all know that – and then what? They can collect the debt, but how do you get it from them, you see? It’s the same problem as before, but worse, because these men won’t care what you think.’ She leaned back in her chair, satisfied with her speech. Noriah was red in the face, and apparently rendered speechless.
Maryam smiled approvingly and took a dainty sip of her coffee, patted her lips with a tiny napkin, and prepared to leave. ‘Thank you for the coffee and your time, Cik Noriah,’ she said primly, as though she wasn’t speaking to someone from Kampong Penambang at all, but a stranger met at an official function. She took Azrina’s arm as they left, as if to guide her down a slippery path, when it was only a typical dirt lane of her village. As they left, Noriah considered whether Rubiah actually knew about the men from Thailand, or was it so obvious everyone would guess and not wonder at all when she reaped the whirlwind she had wrought. She wanted to moan and put her head in her hands, but instead glared at the owner of the stall, startling him, and stalked off back to her house, furious at everyone she knew.