Shadow Play (7 page)

“He was a good-looking kid, a nice boy always playing the drums and wanting to play with Dollah Baju Hijau, the famous
dalang.
He started travelling with him when he was still little. So cute, right?” He looked at his wife, who nodded once more. “Always a sweet kid, but a little girl-crazy. I thought that would stop once he got married, had children. You know, it often does.” They all nodded.

“And it did, really, for years. He and Aisha were happy together, she always liked
Wayang Siam
, and she'd go and watch him. She was really proud of him, I could tell.” He smiled briefly. “But this! I tell you,
Kak
, I was knocked over. I couldn't believe it! I felt as though I didn't know anything about him. I'm not naïve about the world, you know. I know what happens. But I didn't see it coming with Ghani.”

He pulled thoughtfully on his cigarette, tapping the ashes through a small gap in the porch flooring. “I have four daughters,” he told Maryam and Rubiah. “How do you think I felt to hear this from my
oldest? Well …” He nodded, looking over at Ali slumped in his chair, “I wouldn't want to hear one of my sons did it either, you know. I think it's wrong, it's selfish.” He frowned. “But …” He paused for a moment, “I don't think I'd want to kill him. A son-in-law …” He shrugged ruefully. “
Rambut sama hitam, hati lain-lain:
all our hair is black, but our hearts are all different.”

Maryam nervously approached her next question. “Did Aisha go to see him a lot?”

“Not so much since the kids were born. It's difficult. Sometimes, though, she'd have one of her sisters go and stay with the kids and she'd go over with her brother to see him. She liked watching it.” Her father took a sip of coffee and waved his hand at them, inviting them to drink.

“Did she go this week?”

He looked hard at her. Aisha's mother twisted her hands in her lap and looked down at them. “
Ya
, she went the next night, I think; I don't remember when exactly.” Maryam did not believe that. “Her brother took her. She went to see him since they made up.”

He'd told her only because he thought someone else would, and then it would seem even worse. Surely, if Aisha were there, the musicians – and Dollah himself – would have seen her. This was a much smarter way to deal with it: Maryam had to give Ramli credit for it.

She nodded politely. “Did you go with her?” she asked Ali.

He was silent for a moment, clearly willing his father to answer for him. Finally, grudgingly, he nodded. “I have a motorbike,” he mumbled.

“Did you go during the performance?”

He was very still for a moment. “Of course,” he said shortly. “She liked watching it.”

“Did she see Ghani? I mean, did both of you see him?”

Ali glared at her, not knowing what to answer. “Well, she must have,” his father came to his aid. “She went to see him.”

“Could she see him while they were performing?” Rubiah asked innocently.

Ali gave her a look of pure hatred. “Sure. She looked in the back of the
panggung.”

“Did you go with her?”

“No, I went to drink some coffee. I didn't need to see him.”

“Wouldn't it be easier to see him after the performance was over?” Rubiah asked.

All three stared daggers at her, but no one said a word. “I mean, if she wanted to talk to him, surely it would be easier …” She seemed to run out of steam.

Ramli stood up. “Thank you so much for coming here to see us,” he said. “You probably want to go home to make dinner and see your families, and we wouldn't want to keep you. You are very kind to look into this and bring the killer to justice, and we thank you for all that you are doing.”

This formal speech announced their departure: in the nicest possible way, they were being thrown out. Maryam and Rubiah smiled as best they could and thanked Azizah for her hospitality. They backed off the porch and walked quickly over the pot-holed path to the only slightly less pitted main road to find a taxi to take them home.

Chapter VI

Have you ever thought about taking a second wife?” Maryam asked Mamat as they readied for bed.

He laughed. “Don't I have enough to deal with now? How could I possibly deal with another wife?”

“No, really,” she said seriously. Although Maryam had no mean opinion about her own looks, especially when she was younger, Mamat had always been remarkably good-looking. Girls would turn to look at him as he walked down the
kampong
lanes coming home from school, and more than one of her friends had confessed a serious crush before her engagement was announced.

Mamat, unlike Ghani, didn't take much advantage of it as a boy; he was a sober youth with a great deal of responsibility. His father, a law clerk, had fallen into drink and gambled away the family's rice lands. His mother was a
songket
weaver, but found it difficult to support all nine of her children when her husband not only brought in very little money, but lost all they had at the mah jong table. As the eldest, Mamat went to work early to support the family and helped raise all his younger siblings. He'd won awards in grammar school, but couldn't afford to go on to high school and settled quickly into an early adulthood.

Maryam occasionally worried he would want to relive his youth
now that he had some time to relax. He was still, she believed, a very handsome man, even with his hair turning gray. Sometimes she'd see him walking into the
pasar besar
and she'd lose her breath and blush like a girl to see her husband of over thirty years. What if some younger woman took a shine to him, and chased him? Would he be able to resist, or would he take whatever he found on offer? She'd certainly thought about it before, but her full day hearing about the tragedy Ghani had brought upon himself made the possibility seem all the more real.

“
Sayang
, what's bothering you?” he asked her, putting his arm around her shoulder. She shook off her thoughts.

“I'm just worried. I've seen what happened here with him taking a second wife, and I sometimes wonder whether you'll want to do that: I mean, you know, you had to work so hard as a kid, will you want to … fool around now the way you couldn't before?” She buried her head in his shoulder, embarrassed to have said as much as she did, but wanting reassurance just the same.

He threw his head back and laughed. “Are you serious? You are!” He drew her hair back from her face. “Why? What's wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong, I'm just concerned. Are you getting … bored?”

He smiled again, as though he would burst into laughter at any moment. “Bored? You drive me crazy! What other woman would be out investigating a murder, and intimidated the whole police force into letting her do it? That's why I love you.” He leaned back on the bed, still holding her hair. “Come here,” he said softly. “I'll prove to you I'm not bored.”

The next morning she was shy in front of Mamat, though she scolded herself for unbecoming maidenly modesty. She was the
mother of four children, and had been married to Mamat nearly thirty years! Yet when she looked at him and remembered their lovemaking of last night, she felt like a girl again, as she did when they were first married, and her own passion surprised her. Now she tried to hide it by keeping her head down as she made
nasi kerabu:
wrapping blue-tinted rice, vegetables and bit of fish in a banana leaf as lunch for her two youngest children to take to school. Mamat seemed to know what she was thinking, and grinned at her; she lightly slapped his arm. “You can see I'm busy,” she reprimanded him. “What are you looking for?”

He smiled again and wandered off to find coffee and take some rice for his own breakfast. Ordinarily she would be leaving for the market around this time, but today she and Rubiah planned to visit Kuala Krai to see Faouda. Mamat announced he would go with them. “It's OK with me if you ignore me,” he said through a mouthful of rice, “but I'd feel better if I were there, just in case something happens”

Maryam agreed. “I'm leaving plenty of
nasi kerabu;
no one will starve if we don't get home for dinner.”

Osman had been prevailed upon, or rather, ordered, to have them driven to Kuala Krai: it was such a long trip, and difficult for them otherwise. The young police chief obeyed Maryam when she commanded him, but after she left, and he felt her spell lifting, he couldn't understand why he acted so spinelessly around her.

He railed at himself for allowing her to take over the investigation, and yet, he admitted to himself, he was relieved by it, too. He'd been ready for all kinds of robbery and domestic mayhem, but he hadn't counted on murder so soon! And Maryam at least seemed unfazed by it, while he was hourly becoming less sure of himself.

He longed to speak to his own mother. She'd tell him how to resist
the pull of a domineering older woman—as long as he continued to listen to her. Or she might read something into it, and take it as an indirect criticism. He winced at the thought, and decided not to risk it.

His lack of volition led directly to Rahman, his junior officer, sitting quietly behind the wheel of their one unmarked car (Maryam had been very specific about that) waiting to drive her wherever she wanted to go.

She and Rubiah bundled into the back seat, to enjoy the rare treat of a private car. Mamat sat up front with the driver in a fraternity of silence.

None of them had ever been so far as Ulu Kelantan. Maryam and Rubiah looked out the window with undisguised fascination, as the coastal plain began to disappear and the darker jungle began to close in on them. The road from Kota Bharu headed south, following the Kelantan River to its source in the central mountains of the peninsula.
Kampong
were now farther apart, and rice fields became oil palm plantations, which alternated with untamed forest. The blacktop shimmered in the heat, even though the tangled greenery formed deep shadows on either side of the road. The air seemed even more humid, heavier, and the land somehow sinister. There were fewer cars down here: Kuala Krai was the last real town in Kelantan before you entered the nature preserve in central Malaysia, and it was unfamiliar terrain to anyone brought up on the flat and crowded coast. It looked deserted to their eyes … and vaguely malevolent.

It was several hours before they arrived at the last railroad stop in Kelantan: the end of the line. The town of Kuala Krai itself was heavily Chinese, an anomaly in Kelantan. Most Malays lived in
kampong
surrounding the small, dilapidated town centre. The town
pushed up against a high limestone cliff which was visible everywhere; a menacing presence, it loomed over the horizon, closing in the view, trapping the light, rendering it all the more claustrophobic.

Maryam and Rubiah got out to make inquiries about Kampong Kedai Lalat and to freshen up before stalking their prey. They entered a small coffee shop half filled with Chinese merchants drinking coffee and eating savoury pastries. The two visitors drank cold soda out of the bottle, afraid to eat any of the food, lest it be made of pork. They felt uncomfortable. In Kota Bharu, they never went into Chinese “restaurants. (Actually, women rarely went into coffee shops at all; this was Mamat's turf.) But Kota Bharu was overwhelmingly Malay, and there were plenty of food shops to suit them. Maryam became aware that although she was still in Kelantan, it was not the Kelantan she knew. She was glad for the company of Mamat and Rahman, which somehow (she couldn't explain the particulars, even to herself) made her feel safer.

They left Rahman with the car, and walked towards Kampong Kedai Lalat: an unkempt village on the outskirts of town. The paved road gave out quickly after downtown, becoming cratered dirt. It would be hellish driving; even walking required a good deal of attention. They passed an anemic market selling small heaps of vegetables and fruit past their first blush of youth. A meat stall displayed a few joints of goat covered in flies, and some
ikan bilis
, dried anchovies, in a disorderly pile on a slab of wood. Maryam and Rubiah exchanged horrified glances.

Kedai Lalat was surrounded by vegetable plots, oil palm and rubber plantations. When they saw the mosque they peeked in to see a few older men relaxing in the forecourt. It was a small wooden building
painted white with green trim, with a hand painted sign in Jawi script announcing
‘Surau
(prayer room) Kedai Lalat.

“This must be it,” Rubiah said doubtfully.

Mamat walked in and began talking to the men, all of whom began explaining something with great enthusiasm. Maryam and Rubiah couldn't hear the discussion, but it was just as well. “It's weird here,” Maryam whispered to her cousin.

“I told you I didn't want to come,” Rubiah whispered back.

“You never want to go anywhere,” Maryam countered, and began examining the houses nearby. Most were small and unpainted, maintained as well as could be expected. There were pots of bright flowers set at the bottom of the stairs, and most had lace net curtains in the glassless windows. People tried to make things tidy and even pretty. Unlike Kampong Penambang, the houses were huddled together around a common yard, rather than each with its own. Perhaps there were snakes, and the houses crowded together for safety. Or perhaps they stood together to ward off the encroaching jungle. These were not pleasant thoughts.

Mamat emerged from the
surau
and pointed further down the dirt path. “Down this road.” The sun came between the leaves overhanging the alley, providing a bit of shade and flickering shadows when the breeze blew. They fetched up at a large house made of wood with a roof made of tile rather than thatch, which displayed some level of prosperity. They could hear a radio playing Malay pop songs inside. Chickens wandered around the yard, as did three goats who ambled over to examine them immediately, butting softly against Mamat.