If there is a polite way of saying You are wasting my time, Donita wants to learn it. She has tried everything, from hinting about her curfew to remarking that they should go indoors to escape the scorching sun. Sanjeev does not get it. Was he this obtuse when they exchanged messages? Or when they met two weeks ago, on Donita’s first day off? She remembers telling him about her run-in with the police, and the concern on his face. She’d sidled closer to him, inviting him to comfort her by stroking her hand or an embrace, but he’d just nodded sympathetically and said, “Please be careful on your days off.” At the end of the date, he did kiss her, and their flirty messages since then have indicated that he wants her.
He wants her. She wants him. So why the hell are they standing here looking at abandoned trains?
Beads of sweat are forming on Sanjeev’s brow. “This is the most peaceful place in Spottiswoode Park. We are right in the city, but this feels like I’m in a hill station in India. I always come here to clear my mind,” he tells her. As he launches into another lecture about the old railway station and the project to demolish it, Donita has to fight two conflicting urges: to slap him and to fuck him.
Maybe this is all Donita’s fault. This morning, after a walk on Sentosa Island, Donita told him she wanted to see where he lived, but she meant that in a flirtatious way. It was supposed to bring them closer together, not lead to this social studies lesson. He looked thrilled to show her around his neighbourhood, a small slice of tranquility in the city. Traditional shophouses, spruced up in cheery pastels and now home to yoga studios and art galleries, and luxury apartment buildings with sky gardens and gleaming infinity pools. Plumes of smoke billow from the roti prata stall on the corner of the main road. A roofed walkway leads to the older concrete high-rises, where Sanjeev rents a room.
“Sanjeev,” Donita says, tapping his arm playfully. “I only see you two times in one month.”
Sanjeev nods and wipes his brow. “It is so little time, yes.”
Donita waits for him to say more, but Sanjeev turns his attention back to the old railway line. A rusted track runs like a faded scar through overgrown weeds and tangled branches, and there is an overturned bin with plastic bags skirting the rim. When they first arrived at this lookout point, there was a huddle of elderly men and women shrouded in white cotton facing the train tracks. Their eyes were shut and they clasped their hands in prayer. “They are worshipping the old train?” Donita whispered to Sanjeev. She was impressed with their devotion. “No, there used to be a Hindu temple here,” Sanjeev said. “The government tore it down but they still consider this place holy, so they come back here.”
If Donita hadn’t been so eager to rip off Sanjeev’s clothes and run her tongue all over his body, she would have participated in the conversation. I know how they feel, she would have said, thinking about the way she used to collect little trinkets and tell stories about how they were gifts from the parents who had left her with relatives when she was too young to remember. She once stole a faded red T-shirt from the neighbour’s clothing line because it had the word Howdy! printed in cracking raised yellow letters across the jagged shape of the state of Texas, and she could pretend that her parents had ended up there somehow.
“Sanjeev,” Donita tries again. She twists a lock of hair between her fingers. The cloying scent of jasmine incense fills her nostrils. “I don’t know if I have off day next time. My ma’am is doing a project and she want my help.”
Sanjeev is supposed to understand from this that it could be a month before they see each other again. A month! Who waits that long to get down to business? She had texted Flor this question yesterday. One day off every two weeks. How am I supposed to have a life? She knew the answer: she wasn’t supposed to have a life. Flor sent three crying-face emojis to let her know that she sympathized.
Remember to use protection came another message from Flor after that. We get tested every six months for pregnancy, and if your test comes up positive, you will be deported.
It was better advice than the agents gave: avoid sex while working overseas. It did strike Donita earlier today that perhaps Sanjeev was abstaining. Like, as a religious thing? But he also told her that he wasn’t religious. He certainly isn’t like those pilgrims. His Sikh temple sits in the near distance, a plump golden dome atop a short white building. They passed it on the bus coming here and saw turbaned men slipping off their shoes, women tugging the sequined hems of their scarfs. Sanjeev had muttered a quick prayer, but his eyes also definitely lingered on Donita’s cleavage when she leaned towards the window and squeezed her shoulders together to make her breasts bubble up to her neckline.
“What project?” Sanjeev asks.
You are an idiot, Donita wants to say. “Something for her church,” she replies. “Anyway, we are standing here so long, it is so hot already.”
“Sure, let’s go,” Sanjeev says, nodding in the direction of the block of apartment buildings. “I’ll show you where I live.”
Now they’re getting somewhere. Donita ignores the pinch in her toes from her patent high heels and trots along with Sanjeev. “You go to church with your ma’am?” he asks.
She shakes her head. “Not for worshipping. They have meetings; last Sunday I went along to help.”
The church was like nothing Donita had ever seen before: Busloads of people streaming into a lobby, where ushers directed them to different sections of a massive auditorium with plush red seats. Long spotlights swung around the stage, on which a 3D hologram of a cross rotated slowly. An usher handed Donita a programme and said, “You can go to upstairs seating.” Women like Mrs. Fann were escorted to the front rows. “She won’t be joining the service,” Mrs. Fann explained to the usher before directing Donita down the hallway to a meeting room that ran deep into the end of the building. On a long mahogany table sat three cardboard boxes labelled appeal letter, new member registrations, and envelopes, respectively. “By the end of the service, I want all of these envelopes stuffed with one letter and one registration form each,” Mrs. Fann instructed. Donita did as she was told, tapping her feet to the music throbbing from the auditorium. The work was repetitive, like her job at the mushroom factory, but at least she was in an air-conditioned room and alone. When she was done, for the first time, Mrs. Fann actually looked impressed with her work. Three women entered the meeting room with her and filled canvas tote bags with the sealed envelopes. They talked excitedly about “starting a movement” and “having a strong presence on the big day.”
Mrs. Fann returned to her usual self on Thursday when she hosted Bible study. She was very anxious in the hours leading up to it, scolding Donita multiple times. She’d had to reschedule the meeting from two days before because the council had announced an extra round of cockroach fumigation due to unusually humid conditions, and after the monthly fogging, there were always large-winged roaches attempting to escape the poisonous fumes. They sometimes climbed up the rubbish chute and died in the kitchen, which was what had happened on Tuesday, prompting Mrs. Fann to call the council to ask them to please wash away the cockroach corpses from downstairs immediately. When it didn’t happen, she sent Donita down with a can of Baygon to finish off the survivors and a broom to sweep them into the gutter.
The leader of Mrs. Fann’s church group was a woman named Dr. Lena Teo; she sat at the head of the table and commanded everyone’s attention. Donita didn’t catch the other women’s names, but she noticed that everybody deferred to anything Dr. Lena Teo said.
“Poh Choo, you are a living example of good,” she said. “You have volunteered so much of your time to this project, and you readily opened up your home when the rest of us couldn’t.” Donita caught a few quick looks and smiles passing between the other women, but Mrs. Fann beamed like God Himself had touched her hand.
“Have you all heard that Swee Lin’s son, Justin, is engaged?” one woman asked as Donita went around the table pouring tea.
“To that Eurasian girlfriend of his from junior college days? What was her name?”
“I don’t remember her, but this is a different girl. Her name is Juli. Juli Ashraf.”
There was a chorus of teacups clattering to saucers. Donita stepped in to wipe a few drops that had spilled on the table. Even serene Dr. Lena Teo looked perturbed. “She’s Muslim?”
The woman who had announced the news took a sip of her tea. The pitying frown on her face did not match the glee in her voice. “Swee Lin was beside herself. He’s converting to Islam. He says it’s more compatible with living a moral life.”
As the women continued talking about the choices that children make, Mrs. Fann’s demeanour began to change, and her body seemed to shrink into her chair. “These boys, they just think in the short term about everything, especially when hormones and pretty girls cloud their judgment,” somebody said. Donita remembered Cora’s titbit of gossip: that Weston Fann and Ma’am Elizabeth’s daughter had been a couple.
“Speaking of falling in love, how was the media launch for Come Home?”
“Spectacular. It’s already getting some buzz online. The you-know-whos are finding fault with it, as usual. They say we’re co-opting their flag, as if they have sole ownership of the colour pink.”
“What do you think of it, Poh Choo?” Dr. Lena Teo asked.
The women turned to look at Mrs. Fann. A smile cracked across her face. “It was very good,” she said.
“Has your son seen it?”
Mrs. Fann shook her head. “You know how busy our children are,” she said apologetically. The women exchanged glances again, and this time Mrs. Fann was aware of the looks. Donita was feeling the slightest bit sorry for her until she snapped, “Donita, where are the lemon biscuits?”
Donita hurried to the kitchen and shook the box of lemon biscuits onto a rectangular plate. She brought it out, and Mrs. Fann began offering them fervently to the women. “Shall we return to the task at hand?” she asked. “We don’t have much time till the election.”
After the women left, Mrs. Fann cornered Donita and listed the things that she had done wrong. “The biscuits were soggy. Didn’t you store them in an airtight container? And did you have to put on the washing machine while they were here? So loud, they had to raise their voices to talk like we were in a hawker centre. If you managed your time properly, you would have finished all of this work early in the morning.”
By the time Donita finishes telling Sanjeev all of this, they have reached his apartment building. It sits on the end of the neighbourhood, adjacent to other identical towers that form a loose horseshoe opposite Keppel Shipyard. The land is tiered, and three sets of stairs are built into the hill so people can descend to the road. Brawny container ships nest on the glassy surface of the sea. The sun hasn’t begun to set yet but the ship lights are blinking, or maybe they just appear to twinkle because of the shimmering water.
“Your home is that way,” Sanjeev says, reading her mind. She was just wondering how long it would take to walk along the shore from Marine Terrace and reach here. One hour? Two? A tiny black cable car moves across the sky like a cursor between the sheer afternoon clouds. The deep green hills remind her of home, but only from a distance. This morning, she was disappointed to find that the man-made Sentosa Island was nothing like her province. The sandy beaches were cut out as if from paper, and a monorail packed with noisy tourists glided above the rooftops of resorts and restaurants.
“You have this view from your flat?” Donita asks. “From your bedroom?”
Sanjeev nods. “But we are eight people sharing one flat, so somebody is always blocking the window,” he jokes.
“Oh,” Donita says. “Even now, everybody is there?”
“A few. Some are working today; some have their day off, so they’re out.”
The pilgrims from earlier are wandering across the park between the high-rises. They look like a drifting cloud. Does everything move this slowly on Sundays in this neighbourhood? Even the stray cats are spilling like liquid across the first-floor steps. Sanjeev’s face is turned towards the sea; he closes his eyes, and, as he takes in a deep, calming breath, Donita decides she has to be direct.
“Sanjeev, can we go upstairs to your flat so we can be closer together?” she asks.
Sanjeev opens his eyes and smiles. “Aren’t we getting closer all the time? Aren’t we close now?”
“Yes, but . . .” Donita shakes her head. “Sanjeev,” she says firmly. “I want to be alone with you.”
Sanjeev looks around and Donita follows his gaze. There aren’t any people around except the shrouded pilgrims shuffling across the walkway. “This is so much more peaceful than my flat, believe me,” he says.
“Sanjeev, I want to have sex with you.” Donita’s announcement reverberates across the courtyard, bouncing from lift to stairs to concrete mah-jongg table to the wall of steel letterboxes. The pilgrims all look up, aghast, and they hurry away. Sanjeev begins sweating profusely.
“You do?” he asks.
“Yes!” Donita cries. “Why we go this building, that building, you show me Singapore whole history—for what?”
“I didn’t want to . . .” Sanjeev throws his hands up and seems to be making a shape in the air. Donita stares at him. “The first time we talked, you said you liked my message. The other men were all sending you messages about your body.”
“Yeah, of course I want to have respect first. But now I want to have sex.”
“Okay,” Sanjeev says. He swallows. “I also would like to have sex.”
“In your room?”
“No, no,” he says, and when Donita puffs her cheeks in exasperation, he says, “I can bring us somewhere better.”
“We must be quick,” Donita says. “My curfew is seven p.m.” It is now almost five p.m. Sanjeev springs into action. He takes Donita’s hand and leads her down the stairs to the empty, tree-lined road that divides the neighbourhood from the highways and harbour. The taxis parked along the kerb have their green lights on to signal they’re available, but the first driver in the line refuses to take them. “Uncle, I have money,” Sanjeev says, prying apart the mouth of his wallet to display his dollar bills.
“I’m not going there,” the driver says, winding up the window. They have not even told him where they’re going.
“Then we give our money to somebody else,” Donita says. Behind him, there is a driver leaning against his car and finishing a cigarette. He nods and tosses his cigarette into the grass when Donita waves at him.
As they pull away from the kerb, Sanjeev tells him they want to go to the nearest Hotel 81, and the driver says, “Nearest is Chinatown but sometimes on Sunday fully booked.” He grins sheepishly. “People tell me, ah, I never go inside one.”
“Okay, then where?” Donita asks.
“Got some hotels in Jalan Besar, but not so safe place,” the driver warns.
“It’s okay, Uncle, I will protect her,” Sanjeev says firmly. He puts an arm around Donita and she feels the heat coursing through her body. “Not safe?” she asks after the driver revs the engine and his radio begins playing. “What place in Singapore is not safe?”
“I think he means it’s old, that’s all. And a lot of foreigners like us.”
Donita has come to understand that there’s old and charming, like those preserved shophouses in Spottiswoode Park, with their original wooden shutters and intricate flower-design tiles bordering the porches, the cafés with complicated machinery and people tapping away at their laptops on high benches. There’s new and filled with foreigners, like Marina Bay Sands, with a boat suspended in the clouds atop three dizzyingly tall buildings, the Technicolor fireworks of electric Supertrees, and financial buildings raised like swords. Then there’s old and filled with foreigners like us, like these lanes they are starting to enter, with pavements shaved to ledges and used Fanta bottles and plastic bags strewn in the street corners. The disorder would repel the Mrs. Fanns of the country. Even so, there are families milling around and entering restaurants, women holding up apples and mangoes at street stalls. Sanjeev tells her that his friends arrange cricket games in these lanes sometimes. On one wall, a mural of a woman peering from her headscarf watches over the crowded intersection.
As they scoot out of the cab, the driver winks at Sanjeev and says, “Good luck!” which makes Sanjeev’s cheeks turn red. Donita feels a throb of tenderness that grows as she watches him ask the front-desk manager about the rates, then hands over his identification. The front-desk manager is a woman wearing a navy blazer that is too tight around the shoulders. The tips of her long sideswept fringe are dyed the colour of milky coffee. She gives Donita only the quickest glance before handing the key card to Sanjeev.
The bed fills up the tiny room, barely furnished but clean, with white sheets, white walls. Sanjeev looks sheepish. Maybe it’s because he works in some classy hotels and has been inside the ones where you can stand over the bay and hold the entire city in your hands. “If you don’t like this place . . .” he says. His words trail off as he watches Donita’s face. He thinks she’s having second thoughts, or she’s disappointed, but actually she’s surprised by her emotions. I like any place where you are, she thinks before they tumble onto the bed together.
Donita has some awareness of how much time has passed, and she knows she should leave in the next few minutes if she wants to make it home by curfew, but it’s so hard to part with the cool air and the crisp sheets and Sanjeev’s bare body next to hers. Both of them are bathed in a sheen of sweat, and Sanjeev’s chest is still heaving, as if he cannot believe what just happened. It is not the time to invoke Mrs. Fann, but she pops into Donita’s head nonetheless. This morning before Donita left the house, Mrs. Fann made her stand with her legs and arms spread as she ran her hands up and down to check if Donita had taken anything. With a hard jab at Donita’s inner thighs, she asked her to spread her legs wider, and then she rummaged through Donita’s bag.
Sanjeev’s touch healed all the places that Mrs. Fann pawed at, but now, as their time together is dwindling to its last minutes, dread mounts in Donita’s stomach. If only she could buy time somehow, the way they bought the hour in this hotel, she could learn more about Sanjeev in those whispered, lingering conversations that happen only in bed. His eyes follow her naked body as she gathers her clothes. She steals a bit of time for this, picking up her bra and tracing her fingers along the front hooks, giving him a chance to savour the sight of her breasts before she pulls the cups closed like shutters. Bending to pick up her shorts, she is aware that his vision is filled with the curves of her bottom. It is the opposite of a striptease, and it’s riveting to Sanjeev, who smiles as if they are speaking a secret language. When Donita is finally fully clothed, she checks the time on her phone. “Okay, I really have to go now,” she says. If she leaves now by bus, she’ll be able to get home before curfew.
Sanjeev is sitting at the edge of the bed, and his arms are resting on each side of her waist in a loose embrace. “Don’t go yet,” Sanjeev says, drawing her back to bed. “Never mind your curfew. Tell your boss you got stuck in traffic.”
“Ha!” Donita says, pushing Sanjeev away. “Mrs. Fann doesn’t believe anything I say, even when I tell the truth.”
“Then just tell the truth,” Sanjeev says. Mischief twinkles in his eyes. “Tell her what you were really doing.”
Donita mimics putting her phone to her ear. “Hello, Mrs. Fann? I am late because I am having fun in a hotel room with my boyfriend.”
The word boyfriend falls out of her mouth and hangs in the air between them. It startles Sanjeev a little bit—Donita sees the jolt in his shoulders and the way his mouth suddenly twitches as if he wants to say, Boyfriend? She can feel the flush rising in her cheeks. “Just as an example,” she mutters, swiping her purse off the nightstand. “I don’t say it seriously.”
“Boyfriend is fine,” Sanjeev says. “But I don’t see you very often.”
“That’s why when we see each other, you don’t take me on tour of Singapore,” Donita snaps. She’s angry all over again at how much useless information about the railroad she had to learn today.
“Okay, okay.” Sanjeev puts up his hands. “Maybe we just have to plan better. I want to keep seeing you.”
“But you don’t want anything serious? I understand,” Donita scoffs, trying to hide her hurt.
Sanjeev pushes himself off the bed and wraps his arms around her. She falls into his chest, which is bare and slightly damp. “Stay here with me a few more minutes. I’ll call you a taxi to go home.”
Donita shuts her eyes. She has never felt this safe with anybody before, and she can feel her whole body go limp against his. “Okay,” she whispers, and time doesn’t matter anymore. The moments stretch and shrink when she is as far away as possible from Mrs. Fann’s flat.
There are no windows in the room, so when Donita and Sanjeev step out of the hotel an hour after entering it, they are surprised that the island is roaring with rain. The potholes are overflowing with puddles, and storm water gushes along the gutters. The rain pelts Donita’s bare legs, and a rush of wind sprays Sanjeev in the face. Getting a taxi will be impossible now, even if Sanjeev tries to book it.
“This way,” Sanjeev calls over the crash of thunder. They duck into a back lane, go past a row of motorcycles slumped against a kerb, and huddle under an air-conditioning unit jutting out from a window. Other people are seeking shelter—under the awnings over fruit stands and at the entrances of thosai shops. The wind punches the plastic sheets draped over the newspaper racks. Donita peers at Sanjeev’s phone and sees him frowning; there is a cab available but the asking price has tripled “due to inclement weather.” He hesitates, but then presses the green button to book it.
Everything has become blurry and indistinct. A mural of roses blooming across the cracked wall of one shophouse has now turned a muddy imitation of pink, and the cars are wobbly shadows. Donita checks the time again: 6:43 p.m. She sighs and accepts that she will get in trouble for missing her curfew. The walls of the Marine Terrace flat will rock with Mrs. Fann’s fury, and she will probably check Donita again, poking and gripping her flesh just to humiliate her. Could she run away? Donita peeks around the corner at the cramped lanes and the strings of vegetable vendors and garment shops. For a moment, she pictures herself stepping behind a mannequin wearing a sari and disappearing.
A flash of colour draws Donita’s attention back to the main road. She is not the only person who notices it: a bright yellow umbrella. Three chuckling teenage boys sharing a plastic sheet see it too, and an elderly woman holding a newspaper over her thinning scalp pauses to watch as the umbrella bobs along in the storm. But Donita is the only one who recognizes the familiar shape beneath it. She squints through the sheets of rain while all the others return to their huddles. Flordeliza. She is alone and stepping gingerly around the puddles, and there is something about her slow, careful walk in all this chaos that makes Donita hesitate to call her name. A black leather backpack hangs from her shoulders.
“Flor!” Donita shouts, waving. Flordeliza keeps walking, gripping her umbrella. Donita calls her again and again, and finally she looks up but in the wrong direction. The wind must be carrying Donita’s voice and distorting it. “Flordeliza!” She hears the strain in her voice and the futility of shouting in this kind of storm. Flordeliza cocks her head and turns her face to the sky. There is a look of complete despair in her expression, and it comes through so clearly that Donita stops shouting. Flordeliza continues onward and disappears around the corner. On the main road, a passing double-decker bus smashes into a puddle, and the huge splash can be seen from the lane. Donita thinks about Flor’s painstaking steps and wonders if she bothered leaping out of the way.
All the lights are off in the flat when Donita gets home save for the one in Mr. Fann’s study. He is sitting on his rattan chair, flipping through the newspaper. A couple of private-property brochures are scattered on the floor in the doorway. “Sir, I am sorry,” Donita says. “The traffic, the rain is very bad.” The storm seemed to follow her across the highway.
Mr. Fann just nods. “Mrs. Fann is also held up at her church meeting. Don’t know what is going on out there.” He points out the window, and that is when Donita sees it for the first time. In the neighbourhood with the houses, a crowd has formed. It’s probably an otter-family sighting. People flock from all over the neighbourhood to take pictures every time the otters swim inland from Marina Bay.
Donita picks up the loose brochures and places them on Mr. Fann’s desk. He is staring out the window in the other direction, towards the sea. His stern face looks soft and woeful in the bluish evening light. When he turns to her, it is to say, “You can throw those away.” Donita hesitates. Last week when Mr. Fann made the same request, Mrs. Fann told her to keep the brochures. “Pastor says motivation is important. That’s how you start getting back on your feet, building confidence, going for a promotion. Not from sitting down and brooding all day,” she told him. It was the first time Donita heard anything like pleading in Mrs. Fann’s voice.
“Sir, what you like to eat for dinner tonight?” Donita asks.
“Just get me some chicken rice from downstairs,” Mr. Fann says. He reaches into his wallet and hands her a stack of coins. There is enough money for just one packet.
“And Mrs. Fann?” Donita asks.
Mr. Fann shakes his head. Donita checks the fridge and sees leftover porridge and some Teochew noodles from yesterday, just enough for Mrs. Fann. There aren’t even packs of instant noodles in the pantry because the Fanns don’t take into consideration that Donita also needs to eat.
“Okay, I go down now,” Donita says. She’ll have to use her own money to buy herself a packet of something. Mrs. Fann does this strategically, she knows. “You want Sundays off, you must pay for all of your own things on Sundays,” Mrs. Fann told her on her first day off. Even though she’s been back on the clock since returning home, she’s still somehow responsible for her own dinner.
Outside, the rain has subsided and the air is cool. Joggers pump their way down the pathway along the canal, which is so full that the water is sloshing along the walls with a powerful current. Behind Donita, the waves on the sea must be crashing onto the sand. She smiles at the memory of walking on the beach in Sentosa this afternoon with Sanjeev, the water tickling their toes.
The crowd across the road looks bigger from down here, and although it’s in the opposite direction of the food stalls, Donita makes her way there. Later, she’ll wonder why she did this—did some instinct tell her? Some current pushing her along, like the water surging through the canal? A short detour won’t cost her much time, and she can always tell Mr. Fann that there was a long queue at the food stall.
As Donita approaches, she notices that there are many people gathered, but the buzz of conversation is low and the air is tense. Something is going on in one of the houses along the row. Through a crack in the crowd, Donita sees a parked ambulance and the lights of a police car on the other side of the house. A hush falls over the crowd, then a girl shrieks. A person collapses, and the crowd folds in to help the person up. There are loud, ragged sobs as two grim-faced medics carry out a stretcher. The body on it is completely covered with a white sheet.
The sobs turn to howls, and from the whispering around her, Donita pieces together that the police were called after somebody heard a girl screaming. It must be this girl, the one that two men in uniform are helping to prop up. Her legs have given way beneath her and her cries have become hoarse. “Mum! Mummy! Mum! No! No!” The crowd rustles with excitement and some people turn away. “This is terrible. She was killed in her own home,” one woman says, her face pale with shock. Her husband ushers her away.
Donita watches the couple as they leave, her heart thumping. A murder? That would explain all the police. The girl’s gut-wrenching screams for her mother are making her feel queasy, and her ears are ringing. Around her, people begin to gasp and cry out once more. Donita turns around, expecting to see another body, but what she sees instead knocks the wind out of her.
Flor, in handcuffs.
Donita pushes back into the crowd, elbowing past the people who are clamouring to get a look at this woman. She can hear the roaring of a gathering storm, but it’s only a flash, a glimpse, and then Flor vanishes into the police car.
East Coast Murder—Filipina Maid Arrested
A foreign domestic worker from the Philippines has been taken into police custody for the alleged murder of her employer.
Mrs. Carolyn Hong’s body was found by her daughter in her Oldham Walk home on Sunday evening. Her husband, Dr. Peter Hong, was not at home at the time.
Police found no signs of forced entry but noted that a robbery was in progress, as Mrs. Hong’s jewellery box had been ransacked. There had also been multiple attempts to enter her safe.
The fifty-one-year-old marketing executive’s death has been ruled a murder due to injuries to her skull. Police have not commented on the weapons found at the scene.
Flordeliza Martinez, a domestic worker from the Philippines, is said to have been the only person on the property when the attack occurred around 6:30 p.m. If charged with murder, Martinez could face the death penalty. The embassy of the Philippines has not given any comment on the case.
For more updates, subscribe to the Straits Times.