Crime Scene: Singapore by Stephen Leather

Author:Stephen Leather
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789814358590
Publisher: Monsoon Books Pte. Ltd.

* * *

Zul wakes up as the guard beats on the iron bars of his prison door. A key turns in, the prison door is thrown open and the guard walks in. ‘Someone is here to see you,’ he says, poking him mildly with a baton.

He lifts his head, his hair dishevelled, the fuzz on his face forming a short beard. The guard appears like a ghost to him, blurry, a haloed figure, standing over him. He feels his shirt sleeves, starched by snot and drool, biting into his skin.

‘Who?’ He hears himself speak in a hoary voice.

The guard helps him stand up, without saying a word. Zul follows him like a zombie and guesses about the person who has come to see him.

Over the weeks or months—he has no idea of time—many people have visited him. Police officers, lawyers, prison guards. They have asked him questions to which he has no replies—educated man’s questions. How would he respond? He is not educated, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything that the police want to know from him. Conspiracy, opposition, communist, terrorist … What sort of words are these, he wonders.

Among his personal visitors, only his mother and brother Ali have come to see him. His mother did not say anything to him, only looked at him with tearful eyes, and ran her fingers on his hand. His brother had a snarl on his face. ‘You … ah … a disgrace to our family,’ he had growled. ‘You dead for us, you know. We don wan to see your face again, understand? So you better rot here and die!’

He didn’t feel any anger towards his brother. What anger could he feel for a man whose mind and soul were twisted? His reaction was expected: Ali never liked him anyway. Zul had refused to help him in selling contraband cigarettes from Malaysia—the source of his part-time income after his full-time job in a security company. Zul preferred cleaning tables to selling contraband cigarettes—and his impertinence infuriated Ali.

‘Now who is here to meet me?’ he wonders as he passes through the corridor to the visiting room. The corridor is flanked by many dark cells, a world of shadows. Is he in Changi Prison already? He has no idea.

Yousuf stands up from a chair when he sees Zul walking into the room. Zul gives him a faint smile. ‘I didn’t expect you would come here to see me,’ he says.

‘I had to come, brother,’ he says, helping Zul sit on a chair. ‘Melly has given me a letter for you.’

‘Melly!’ Zul’s eyes brighten up. ‘How is she? Why didn’t she come to see me?’

‘She went back to her country.’

‘Went back?’ he says, his fuzzy face a rampaged valley. ‘Just like that?’

The brightness of his eyes dies down, like a bulb suddenly losing its burning filament.

‘The government sent her back, Zul. She didn’t want to go.’

‘Didn’t want to go. Gahmen sent her back,’ he repeated after him, like a dazed parrot.

‘She came to me before she left for Indonesia,’ Yousuf said, putting his hand in his shirt pocket.

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