Authors: Kishore Modak
The police arrived
before the ambulance, but it was time enough for me to change into a
gown and tell David to be calm and stick to the story of ‘Accidental
Discharge’. We left the gun on the bedroom floor and made no
attempts to clean the blood from the floor and the walls.
The police in Singapore
come in deep navy blue, reassuring as they take charge of situations.
They locked me and David in separate rooms. With me was a policewoman
who started taking my statement. I stuck to my story – we had
been drinking and came home late, in the course of playing with the
gun, it went off accidentally while in David’s hand, we had no
idea about the injured maid or what might have caused it.
We - that was the
operative word in my statement, sticking on together through our
travails in this foreign city.
I avoided the bits
about sadomasochism altogether; it was irrelevant, wasn’t it?
David stayed calm,
sticking to the plan, not cracking under pressure and pretty much
gave the same account of events as me.
In a couple of hours we
were together again, sitting on the couch holding hands as the
detectives photographed and collected their evidence. The ambulance
had carried Mary away.
Inspector Tan
introduced himself and slapped a grey acrylic bracelet on David’s
wrist. ‘Please don’t leave the house till you hear from
us. We will be tracking your movements so don’t take this off.’
The inspector pointed at the bracelet. It had an electronic tracking
device. ‘If you do leave, we will have to arrest you and put
you behind bars,’ he added. ‘Also, your phones will be
tapped and no visitors will be allowed. One of my officers will wait
outside your house. If you need to reach us, just call me or speak to
the officer outside,’ Inspector Tan held out his cards, one for
each one of us. For good measure, he left a few near the phone as
well.
They left close to
dawn, leaving me to clean up all morning. I asked David to be with
Jay in the kid’s bedroom till I was done. Naturally, Jay was
distraught and full of questions; we tried our best to answer them,
evasively, since we did not have answers.
Afterwards, only the
white-police-tape remained on the floor, the one that the police had
stuck, marking the shape of Mary’s body where she had fallen. I
knew she was alive and breathing when the police arrived. We prayed
that she got well, for our sakes. I covered the white tape with a
rug, before letting Jay out of his room, into the living room, where
he turned on the tele.
At the guardhouse, I
saw a few photographers and journalists gathering, pointing up to our
apartment as they spoke to the guards and clicked pictures. I drew
the curtains and lay down.
Later that afternoon,
Inspector Tan called. Mary was out of danger but still at the
hospital. He did not say much more but promised he would call
regularly. The relief of her being alive allowed us to finally
entertain logical thinking.
‘David, did you
ever load the gun, accidentally or by mistake, forgetting that it was
loaded?’ I asked him, after the High Commissioner had called
and consoled us, ensuring that we would be protected to the best of
his abilities. We begged to be sent back as quickly as possible, back
to London. He could not promise but said he would try.
The police had been
through everything, not leaving an inch of our house un-swept.
‘No, I never
loaded the gun,’ he went up to the bag of toys and peered in,
the bullet was missing. He was calm and able to think rationally by
late afternoon. ‘Come, let us try to trace the bullet’s
path,’ he went to the window and mentally drew a line from the
chair where he had fired the gun to the empty space where the pane
had been hit, and beyond. About four metres from the missing pane was
the maid’s room, and in her flimsy door was a neat hole about
ten millimetres in diameter. A bit further on the wall of her room
was a pit, from where the cement had fallen off, only a little more
than ten millimetres in diameter. We tried to put our little finger
in, searching for the renegade bullet, there was nothing, obviously,
since the police would have been here and would have swept the place
clean, their geometry being far more precise than ours.
‘I think I shot
her,’ David had sunk to the floor, right next to the bloody
mattress, besides the very place he had taken her. He was crying
‘God, please forgive me, you know I did not intend to shoot
her. What have I done?’ a thin wail rose from his throat.
How does a man come to
grips with killing somebody? Like everything else, he ponders before
moving on, finally finding some excuse for the acts that he has
committed. What if he were to find no avenue of excuses? Then the
thought of giving up, on one’s own life, may enter the plot.
I consoled him ‘It
was an accident, a genuine accident, and luckily she is only injured
and not dead, so don’t be so harsh on yourself.’
The incident was
reported in the afternoon papers. It got reported as domestic
violence with undertones of upholding maid’s rights in
Singapore. It noted ‘violence indoors’ as an addition to
the more popular atrocity of high rise falls that maids suffered on
the island. How ignorant they were of what actually happens. In a
news box there was a photo of our apartment window, taken from below,
near the guardhouse, lens trained upwards, towards us.
Later, I took David
back to the maid’s room. ‘If the bullet hit the wall,
then it would have merely scraped her. She will be fine,’ I
said, pointing at the pit in the wall.
At night, Jay was too
scared to sleep by himself. We took him between us, caressing and
consoling the distraught child to sleep. We, too, were jangled, too
restless to fall asleep, images of blood and naked flesh flashed,
each time I shut my eyes. David tossed and turned, till we moved to
the dining table, sipping whisky. The alcohol did not induce its
usual exuberance; it simply dulled us.
‘Do you think I
will be jailed and caned?’ he asked me.
How could I tell? I was
not an expert at the land’s law, well not yet at least. Caning
in Singapore was a common sentence, delivered by a well-oiled rattan
on the lower back, scarring the recipient for life, for everyone to
see and recognize the consequence of criminal behaviour. But, I had
to answer with confidence. Poor David, as usual, he was the one
needing my help.
‘But you did no
intentional crime, your gun is licensed and you had no intention of
killing or injuring anyone, so what can they charge you with?’
I took his hand in mine.
‘If she is
pregnant, it will be motive enough for me to kill her, would it not?’
‘Not really,
because we already settled with her. She was to be sent off tomorrow,
back to Manila, so why should you want to kill her?’ I was the
answer to all his questions. ‘Remember, we don’t know for
sure if she is pregnant.’
‘Do you think her
husband will visit her here?’ David was scared of facing the
man he had cheated. The cheated woman, me, was his accomplice now,
but the thought of facing the husband whose wife he had fucked and
then shot, was making him paranoid.
‘Could be, but so
what? We will just take it in our stride. Don’t worry, I will
take care of everything,’ I took him to bed, gently patting him
to sleep.
Truth is, I felt I was
responsible for everything. It is a wife’s responsibility to
steer the family safely home through stormy waters. I was a failure,
first encouraging his sexual excesses, then accepting infidelity and
now harbouring crime. Then again, if I had not done what I had, my
family would be torn apart, so in some sense I was actually
dispensing my wifely duties, giving sexual satisfaction to my partner
and standing by, in his hour of need.
If he was a bad
husband, then that was his burden to bear.
In the morning,
Inspector Tan came visiting.
‘Inspector, how
is she?’ I asked, after offering him water and some biscuits.
‘She will be
fine. She is lucky. The doctors say it was just a graze. We have been
able to take her statement as well and prepare our preliminary
report. She is with child. The doctors were worried about her baby,
but now there is no danger.’ He could tell from my look, I was
surprised, a bit taken aback.
‘Oh, so you did
not know she was carrying? That is the main reason that the Ministry
of Manpower wants her deported, not the only one though. Her tickets
are booked for tomorrow. She should be fit enough for travel.’
The words released the tension that hung in the air. She was alive
and on her way out of our lives, but what about us?
I asked what was on all
our minds, ‘Is she pressing charges of any nature?’ She
could come after us on two counts—sexual exploitation or intent
to murder.
‘No. She says she
will be able to settle with you, outside the court,’ he looked
at David, who had joined us.
‘Who loaded the
gun? That is the question that we need to answer. Pulling the trigger
without the intent of killing or hurting someone is not a crime,’
he added, removing the bracelet from David’s wrist.
‘You mean, I am a
free man?’ David asked, gently massaging the wrist where the
bracelet had hung.
‘Yes, your
personal life, tastes et cetera, are not the object of our
investigation. In the eyes of the law, you have committed no crime,
since you had no intent of hurting or killing anyone,’ he
added, hooking the bracelet to his belt, adding it to the
accoutrements that policemen carry around their waist. He knew about
our bag of toys, obviously, just that it did not matter.
‘That is a
relief, but I don’t understand. After all I was the one who
shot her,’ David asked.
‘True. But, we
know that you were not the one who loaded the gun. Mary, your maid,
has confessed that she loaded the gun.’
‘Why should she
do that?’ I gasped, unable to fully comprehend what I had just
heard.
‘She suspected
that she was pregnant the minute the agent mentioned deportation. A
simple test, which she got done in a private clinic herself,
confirmed her predicament. She was not sure, but felt that the child
might be your husband’s.’ He knew everything; our little
secret was now a record in the police files of Singapore.
‘With you out of
the way,’ he pointed to me, ‘she felt she had a chance of
being with your husband, on a longer term basis, at least under his
long-term financial protection,’ he delivered her motive, in an
even but compassionate tone.
Mary, my maid, wanted
me dead so she could be with my husband, who may be the father of her
bastard child. Knowing well his ways, she simply loaded the gun,
waiting for him to the pull the trigger, and me to die.
‘As per the law,
she was the one who intended murder, so if there are charges, it will
be against her,’ he concluded.
How can you be charged
with the crime of intending to shoot yourself?. . . which was the
case in this instance. It was absurd but very real.
‘Inspector, can I
see her, before she is deported?’ I wanted to bid her goodbye,
not in spite, but strangely, in sympathy. We—me, she and David—
had to move on. After all, we were nearing the end of this chapter.
She may have tried to murder me, but I felt a pain for her sorry
state of life—fucked, then shot and incriminated in a failed
attempt on her own life. If she asked, I would forgive her, giving
her the money and wishing her the best.
I was sure the child
would be dark like the Bongla boys, no question about it, at least in
my head, because I knew for a fact—for impregnation, missionary
is the best position.
‘I am not sure,
but I can try. She will fly at 10 a.m., from Terminal-2 tomorrow. You
can come by and see her off if you like. My men will escort her. If
you want to give her any money, please be sure to inform the
officer,’ he stood up as if to leave. ‘As an aside, just
wanted to let you know that apart from being pregnant, she was also
found carrying sexually transmitted infections. Nothing serious, a
course of antibiotics should suffice,’ he added, before begging
leave.
What he meant
was—
Pleas
e
ge
t
checke
d
an
d
make
sur
e
yo
u
tw
o
don’
t
hav
e
it
,
an
d
i
f
yo
u
do
,
pleas
e
take
th
e
righ
t
medication
.
So, now we would have
to go to the doctor and detail our fears of Sexually Transmitted
Diseases, asking for tests and medication. Then we would be rid of
this whole incident, free to head back home and resume our lives.
Moving East, had not been a good idea. I should have defied gravity,
letting David take the package and perch around for a period of time.
If I did have it—the
infections—would it not be like me having sex with Mary, at
least indirectly, with germs spreading from her to him and then to
me.
At the door, the
inspector wavered, turning around. ‘I believe this is yours.
Maybe you should have it. We found it in her room.’ He passed
me a small Ziploc, inside which lay the sum total of bewilderment.
Mary had collected our nails, hair, buttons and such in the bag; I
could tell by the colour and type of enamel on the nails, they were
mine.
‘What is this,
Inspector? What did she have in mind?’ I asked him, sinking
back onto the divan.
‘Practicing the
occult, it is quite common in South-East Asian countries,
particularly the rural and tribal belts. They use these objects for
rituals back home in their villages and cities. I would just ignore
it, and I wouldn’t bother about them. Just that I wanted to
hand it back to you, so you know,’ he finally left.