Rich Kill. Poor Kill by Neil Humphreys

Author:Neil Humphreys
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Muswell Press
Published: 2022-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 31

“They call it missing white woman syndrome.” Low was slumped back in the chair, his jaw resting on his chest. “Do you know what that is?”

“I’ve heard of it,” Dr Lai replied.

“Of course you have,” the inspector said. “You know exactly what it is. We have to go through this … this dance at every session, this ritual, with me playing the social leper, and you playing the healer. When deep down you know, you must know, that it’s all rubbish, that you need me to take care of them, because they are sicker than I’ll ever be. We both know that. But you can’t admit that. You must believe you can heal the sick with your lithium.”

“We don’t heal. We treat.”

“I’m sure that makes you feel better when the salary clears every month.”

The psychiatrist’s office was clean and mostly bare, with a vase of fresh flowers on the desk and a couple of neatly-folded newspapers beside her daily planner.

Low found the newspapers amusing. “You brought in the papers today?”

“They gave them to me at the MRT station.”

“No, they offered them to you outside the MRT station, but normally you don’t take them. I’ve never seen them here before. You don’t want the ink smudges on your fingers and clothes, not when you can read the latest news on your phone and avoid the risk of opening out a newspaper and brushing against a stranger on the busy train and blushing through your make-up, right or not?”

“I just picked up the papers to be polite.”

Low rubbed his hands along his jeans. His doctor had noted the absence of shorts and vest, his usual, antagonistic attire. The policeman was wearing his jeans and a smarter, almost clean, T-shirt, his work attire, ready to go into battle, reaching for another high. He was already probing and insulting her. His mania was taking hold again. There was nothing like a serial killer to make her incorrigible patient feel alive. Lai squeezed her thighs together. His interrogations felt like violations.

“No, you didn’t,” Low sneered, still rubbing his thighs. “You picked them up because two pretty white people stared back at you from the front pages. Their toothpaste smiles caught your gaze. They didn’t look like the usual faces on our front pages, right or not? People like them don’t get murdered, not in Asia, not in Singapore, not even in the movies. Those are the rules. The black guys get killed. The Latinos and the Chinese definitely get killed. We always get killed. We’re either the IT guy or the triad gangster and we’re lucky if we even get a name, let alone make it until the end of the show. But white women are angels.”

“That’s not why I took the newspaper, no.”

“Of course it was.”

“But there is research to suggest that the idea of a ‘damsel in distress’ is often Caucasian, and sometimes blonde,” Lai admitted. “The popular imagery is often fixed in childhood, coming from our exposure to predominately western folk stories and fairytales—Cinderella, Rapunzel and more recently with Frozen.

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