Shadow Play (10 page)

“Can we go somewhere else? It's so noisy here.”

Maryam shrugged. “Upstairs? You can have some coffee.” Maryam had rarely witnessed a male activity which did not include copious cups of coffee.

Osman followed her upstairs to Rubiah's stall, which was
thankfully empty. Rubiah smiled at Osman and put out a selection of the house specialties and three cups of coffee.

Osman hovered over the plate of Kelantanese cakes. “Some of these don't look very familiar,” he said doubtfully.

“They're good, try them,” Rubiah encouraged him. “No one's died yet.”

“I didn't mean that,” he blushed. “What's this one?”

“
Tahi Itik
,” Rubiah laughed. “Go ahead,” she urged. “It's sweet!”

He put the rice cake topped with golden coconut cream in his mouth gingerly, and then smiled. “It's good, thanks!” He raised his head and looked both Maryam and Rubiah in the eye.

“Don't worry,” Maryam assured him, “Rubiah's my cousin. She's been with me on all our investigating.” Now she got down to business; neither she nor Rubiah had all day. “Anyway, you wanted to know what we found out.”

He nodded silently and brought out a small notebook and pencil. He composed his face into an expression of both industry and lofty authority, and nodded at Maryam to speak. She began to outline all that they'd done, all the places they'd been.

“But,” she wrapped up efficiently, “that still leaves us a lot of people with a decent motive to kill him: two wives, two parents- in-law and brothers, maybe ex-husbands … and there are probably more! And all because of getting married again.” She glared at Osman.

“
Mak Cik
, I'm not even married once. Don't look at me like that!”

“Just keep in mind, when you get older, what that can lead to,” she warned him. “Look where it got Ghani,” she warmed to her subject, but Osman held up a placating hand. She rolled her eyes, but changed the subject.

“Well, anyway,” she continued. “Faouda's back in Kuala Krai. She says she went home right away by taxi, but you should check that out.” Osman lifted his head from his notebook and looked at Maryam.

“Yes,” she nodded at him, “you should have your men check the taxi drivers who go to Kuala Krai and see if anyone can remember taking her, and when. That way we'll know if she stayed up here longer than she's admitted to.”

“It could be important,” Rubiah added, nodding at Osman and looking pointedly at the pad he held. He began writing furiously again.

“So, we're going to keep looking: I think tomorrow we'll go to see the musicians he played with. There's certain to be gossip.” She looked at Osman over the rim of her coffee cup.

“So,
Che
Osman, will you help us out here? Can you send someone to check the taxis? It's always going to be the same people going back and forth to Kuala Krai, heaven help them. What a trip! Have you ever been there?”

Osman shook his head. “No, I've only been in Kelantan for a month or so.”

“Well, take my word, you don't want to go. It's so far! And there's nothing there, just jungle and these rocks…” She stopped herself in mid-sentence. She began again, seeking a more diplomatic tone. “Though, of course, I'm sure the people from there really like it. But for someone from Kota Bharu, well, it's kind of … rough.”

Maryam stood up to indicate the interview was at an end. “Please excuse me,
Che
Osman; I must get back to work.”

“You can stay,” Rubiah invited him, “and finish your coffee.” And spill the details of your life, she forbore to add, such as why aren't you married yet? What does your mother think about that? She smiled
at him, and his defences began to drop. “Have some more cake,” she urged him. “Do you need a home-cooked meal? You look as though you might,” she said casually. “Here, sit for a minute, and eat.”

Maryam thanked Rubiah, and walked swiftly down the stairs to get back to work. Osman stayed with Rubiah and ended up sampling her wide variety of cakes and answering all her questions in commendable detail. He found himself so full, he could barely stagger back to the office.

Chapter X

Osman raged at himself. He
knew
he should ask the taxi drivers about when Faouda returned to Kuala Krai. He
knew
the wives and their families were the most likely suspects. He was, after all, a policeman, and so far, a successful one. He could have gone to talk to them all himself, but when Maryam informed him she was taking over, he simply nodded and took notes like a schoolboy. And now she was telling him what to do and to let her know when it was finished.

This might be his first major posting, but he was the police chief here and he intended to make it known. He would not be underestimated:
kecil, kecil anak harimau:
small like a tiger cub is small, but soon to be reckoned with. He slapped his hand on his desk for emphasis, and then called in one of his men and ordered him to check the taxi drivers going to Kuala Krai. He felt better. He had taken control of his own investigation.

Rahman was hot, tired and discouraged. He was the most junior policeman in Kota Bharu, and always chosen for the least thankful tasks. This morning he wandered amid the chaos of Kota Bharu's small taxi and bus station, looking for a driver plying the Kuala Krai-Kota Bharu route who might recognize the blurred black-and-white picture of Faouda he clutched in his increasingly sweaty hand.

Osman had handed him the fax of Faouda's identity card photo
with the flourish, proud of himself for getting it from the Kuala Krai police. “Here it is,” Osman crowed, waving it above his head before slapping it into Rahman's palm. “Go and find out who drove her down to Kuala Krai and what day they did it. And if you can't find a taxi driver, start on the bus drivers.”

Rahman nodded glumly and walked over to the open square. He looked at the picture himself and found it unidentifiable: at certain angles, it looked like nothing more than blotches of black and gray. He squinted at it, trying to form the shapes into animals or perhaps trees. Finally, he tore himself away from his game and plunged into the crowd.

He began with taxi drivers, identified by their routes painted on the side of their cars. He had found three so far, none of whom were anxious to talk to him and who took a long look at his damp paper and shook their heads. When he pressed them, they shrugged. Most of them were in their twenties and thirties, slightly older than Rahman himself, and they looked at him like amused older brothers watching him play pretend. This did not improve Rahman's mood, and he made several promises to himself to remember these faces and make their lives hell when he moved up in the department.

Finally, luck broke his way. Another driver was leaning back against his car, smoking a cigarette, looking bored and calling out without enthusiasm to passing passengers. “Kuala Krai, Kuala Krai, Kuala Krai: Jeram, Jeram, Kuala Krai.”

Rahman reflected that when heard it said that quickly and that often, the syllables stopped making sense and sounded like gibberish. He broke through a knot of people bargaining for another taxi and leaned next to the driver, passing him the picture. “Know her?” he
asked. He hoped the grainy photo would be more evocative to someone who'd actually seen her.

The driver looked at it, moving it closer and farther from his eyes to focus it. “Not much of a picture,” he commented.

“I know that. Do you recognize her, though?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“It could be.”

“What does that mean?”

“I took some people down to Kuala Krai a few days ago. This could be her.”

Rahman's heart leapt. “When?”

“Monday morning.”

He was disappointed. Faouda was supposed to have left on Friday. “Are you sure it wasn't Friday?” he pressed.

“Of course, I'm sure. It was first thing Monday morning. Really early, like 6:30. I was just about to go and get some coffee and they came over to me.”

“They?”

“She and a guy. They wanted to leave for Kuala Krai right away. That's why I remember them, otherwise I wouldn't. I don't pay much attention to passengers, but it was so early, so I did.”

“Did they say anything about what they were doing?”

He shook his head. “No, they slept most of the way. Tired, I guess.”

“The guy, an older guy?”

“No, like me maybe. Not old.”

“Were they married?”

“How would I know?” The driver was getting impatient now. “I
was just driving them. I'm not the religious police. Why are you asking about this, anyway?”

“We're trying to find her.”

“What's she done?”

“Nothing, we just want to find her.”

“You want to find her for nothing? Well, that's a change.”

“Never mind that. Thanks! You've been a great help.”

“Do I get a reward or something? I mean, I did help you.”

That was true enough: he should have known this was coming. He brought out his notebook and began copying the driver's name and address. “I'll ask my boss,” he said resignedly. “We'll see. Thanks.” They shook hands, and Rahman trotted back to the station.

Rahman burst into Osman's office, brimming with success. He'd found the driver, identified the suspect and already shredded her alibi.

“Great work!” Osman congratulated him. “This is a big break. Monday, huh? So right after the murder: that really changes the whole game, doesn't it? And another guy. This is a breakthrough.” He rose from behind his desk and clapped Rahman on the back. “I'm impressed!”

Rahman beamed. At last, he was being noticed. It would be, no doubt, the beginning of a storied career.

Osman walked straight to the market, but Maryam wasn't there. “She may be at home,” Ashikin told him, sitting on her mother's pile of batik. “She's working on your case. Try her there.” She was polite, but Osman felt she wanted him to leave: he wasn't good for business. He looked at her for a moment, without speaking. “Go to my mother's house,” she urged him, a bit less patiently. “Go on!”

“I'm going, thanks,” he said sulkily. Why were Kelantanese
women always telling him what to do? He didn't think his mother had much to worry about as far as the women here were concerned: all any of them had done so far was boss him around like a little boy. Even Maryam's beautiful daughter treated him like a raw recruit in a backward platoon. He'd positively welcome seduction and a brush with black magic, but no one seemed interested enough to be bothered.. He left the market looking downcast and commandeered a car to take him to Kampong Penambang.

Maryam and Rubiah had planned to go to Dollah Baju Hijau's house in Kubang Kerian on the other side of Kota Bharu, but instead, Dollah came to her.

He smiled at her from the bottom of the steps. “
Kak
!” he cried, “I'm here to help you.”

Mamat greeted him immediately on the porch. “Come on up! Have some coffee! So early for you to get over here!”

Dollah came up and sat down next to Mamat, while Maryam disappeared into the kitchen. “I just wanted to help,” he explained, accepting one of Mamat's cigarettes, listening for the welcome clink of china which meant coffee was on its way. “I know how hard you're working to find who did this, and I want to make sure I give as much help as I can.”

Mamat approved this praiseworthy hope and welcomed the opportunity to chat with Dollah before Maryam and Rubiah took over. He was fascinated by him: this small, unassuming, ever so soft-spoken man held audiences in the palm of his hand. Mamat didn't see it when speaking to him. A nice man, polite, but not magnetic. What happened when he started performing?

“How did you begin as a
dalang?”
he asked. He was looking for
some of the spark here in the house that he saw onstage.

“As a child,” Dollah began, not at all reluctant to talk about himself, “I just loved watching the plays. My father wasn't a
dalang:
he was just a farmer. But I'd go every night to watch, and make my own puppets out of banana leaves. You know, carved them into characters, put handles on them.” He laughed. “I played for my friends where older
dalang
were performing. One of them saw me: he was angry at me for trying to steal his audience. He told me ‘I'll train you. If you're going to play, you might as well do it right.' That was a great thing for me. I stayed with him for a few years and followed him back to Patani. I studied there.

“I play more Thai style, more modern. Sometimes I even add characters from TV. Like Lindsay Wagner. I have one of her as the bionic woman.” They both laughed. The Bionic Woman was wildly popular on Malaysian TV. “In colour,” Dollah added slyly. “When I came back to Kelantan, my troupe wore uniforms, green shirts, so we were a team, you know. That's why I'm called ‘Dollah Baju Hijau,' Dollah Green Shirt.

“There's a lot of competition between
dalang
, but whenever we have a performing contest, I always win. Why?” he asked rhetorically, “because people like my style. I try to be funny and entertaining and bring things in that are modern. Some people want to look back to the way things were, but in entertainment, you have to give people what they want.
Ya
, it can be a hard life,” he said philosophically, shaking his head slowly, “but I can't imagine doing anything else.”

“They say women always chase a
dalang,”
commented Mamat.

Dollah laughed, a huge laugh from a small body. “It's true!” he chortled, “It really is. Well, now of course, I'm older. I'm on my fourth
wife. Not all at once, though. I've met all my wives at performances. They all saw me and wanted me. Even the one I have now. She was just a girl and her father came to talk to me about marrying her. I never thought about it, just been divorced, you see. I thought to myself, here's a nice little girl. She wants me: what am I waiting for? I think I may be done with getting married all the time.
Ya
, getting older and settling down.” He seemed vastly amused by this.