to your houseboy,” Captain Singh says smoothly. Is it William’s imagination, or has the man been stringing him along? “When I looked up recent deaths in this area, I noticed that another patient of yours died not too long ago. A salesman—Mr. Chan Yew Cheung of Papan—who apparently dropped dead on the road.”
“I read about it in the newspapers. Poor chap.”
“According to his wife, you were the last doctor to see him.”
“That was for appendicitis, half a year ago.”
“Nothing to do with his subsequent heart failure or broken neck, of course.”
“Is that what happened to him?” It’s the first William has heard about the details behind the salesman’s death. The obituary had only said “suddenly,” but cardiac failure and a broken neck sounds literally like overkill.
“Apparently he’d been drinking and fell into a storm drain, breaking his neck. Though one eyewitness said he’d complained of chest pains shortly before that. There was no autopsy though.”
William supposes not, since there were more than enough plausible causes of death.
Captain Singh thanks him for his time and turns to leave. “You’ve had quite an affinity for deaths and accidents recently.”
* * *
After he’s gone, William sinks into a chair. So Nandani is dead. There’s a hollowness in his gut, a tight misery. Did she die for him? No, that doesn’t seem right. Still, the overwhelming emotion he feels is guilt, because didn’t he wish, fervently and irritably, on Saturday night that Nandani would just disappear?
What would cause an otherwise healthy young woman to drop dead? William puts his hands over his eyes. A terrible suspicion is growing in him that there’s a shadowy power that rearranges events to suit himself. That whole business with Iris, and Ambika, once she started asking for more money. Then the salesman, conveniently dying after stumbling upon his affair with Ambika. And finally Nandani. It’s the fickleness of events that frightens him, as though he only has to say, “I wish it weren’t so!” and the pattern reorders to suit him. Like a dark fairy tale, where all your wishes, however evil and stupid, are granted.
And perhaps, like fairy tales, there’s a price to be paid in blood.
33
Ipoh/Batu Gajah
Friday, June 26th
All week, I scanned the newspapers feverishly to see if there was any mention of a death in Batu Gajah, but there was nothing. Though perhaps an orphaned houseboy didn’t warrant a mention. When I looked at the little glass vial, I couldn’t help recalling Ren’s faint hoarse voice. “Put it back. In his grave,” he’d said.
Chinese sometimes exhumed a grave. Bone-picking, it was called, when remains were disinterred seven years after death to be sent back to an ancestral village. If you had no family and died in a foreign land, you’d become a hungry ghost, wandering and starving forever. To prevent that, the bones were carefully washed with wine and laid out on a yellow cloth, before being packed in a jar. If even the smallest bone was missing, a substitute must be made.
Incomplete sets and broken promises. Dark thoughts, like an eel twisting in my head. I was so preoccupied that on Friday, Mrs. Tham told me to take the rest of the day off.
“Worried about your mother, are you?” she said.
I thanked her guiltily, though I was less anxious about my mother’s health—which was improving—than her debts. Things had been a little too calm in the shophouse, no doubt because my stepfather had suddenly realized he could be widowed again. But all that goodwill might fly out of the window if a debt collector showed up. Clenching my hands, I tried to quell my rising apprehension. If Shin were around, it would have been some comfort. He was the one I most wanted to talk to about Ren getting shot and how the finger had returned to me, though I shuddered to think of Shin’s reaction if he discovered I’d been working as paid entertainment. A shadow lay between us; I couldn’t go running to confide in him. But the most pressing worry was Ren—whether he was alive or dead, and if my last-minute plea to Yi had made any difference. So when Mrs. Tham shooed me out of the dress shop, I headed straight down to Batu Gajah. I’d asked Kiong, after I’d given my notice to the Mama, for the address of the house that we’d gone to. He’d been reluctant.
“If the boy died,” I said, “I’d like to make a soul offering. He was an orphan, wasn’t he?”