SQ 04 - The English Concubine (27 page)

He rose as the English policeman came out of the leader’s meeting room.

‘Thank you, sir,’ Graves said. ‘The police work has been completed and, thanks to you, the culprit caught. The trial will take place when the Magistrate comes back from Penang.’

Zhen bowed. The peacock had been found a week after the murder, hiding out on Blakang Mati. He had surrendered because he was starving. As yet, no-one knew why he had killed Qian so brutally.

Zhen nodded at Wang who went through into his room. He held up the paper in his hand. ‘Thank you for being so cooperative with this. With your permission, the procession will be long but I will ensure it is peaceful.’

‘We are agreed on the number and on the route. No deviation please.’

Zhen held out his hand and Graves shook it. The man was, when you got to know him, really rather civilized. The business with the white woman seemed to have come to an end. Quite right. Graves departed and Zhen went to join Wang. He closed the door.

‘Everything is in place for the funeral the day after tomorrow. You will have the men in place and ensure security. I don’t want any trouble.’

Wang bowed. ‘I have news.’

Zhen sat and waited.

‘Informers tell me that Hong has organised a big delivery of chandu to Chioh Sua. Date is not yet sure but they will find out. The junk will come in to the west side of the island. The informer doesn’t know where the chandu is made but thinks its maybe one of the rivers on the east coast. Says it gets stored on the island and from there is smuggled up the Straits of Johor to the river settlements.’

Zhen nodded. Chioh Sua was known in Malay as Pulau Ubin, an island off the north coast of Singapore. It had been used as quarries by the British for the granite but was now disused and the western end was wild and untouched.

‘Good work. Pay them well.’

‘If we catch the ship, the captain will be induced to tell us who has hired him.’

‘Mmm. Better if we help the British catch this ship and its cargo. I don’t want the kongsi involved if possible. We can supply information and locate the ship but they must supply soldiers and the steamship for the actual arrest. I want this to be a British coup and their courts involved. I want, if possible, to see Hong prosecuted and stripped of his farm and for the British to realise the extent of the smuggling.’

‘Be careful, Shan Chu, Hong is a vindictive man. My informers in his camp tell me he already hates you because he sees that you support Cheng and Tay.’

Zhen dismissed this with a wave of his hand. ‘Hong hates everyone.’

Wang stood shuffling his feet for a moment.

‘What?’ Zhen said half-smiling.

‘Hong hears what we hear. That you will marry Cheng’s daughter. In Hong’s mind that is like treason. He is Hokkien, you are Hokkien. He hates Tay and now Cheng. They are Teochew. And such a union makes Cheng and you an even bigger threat to him.’

Zhen rose and Wang drew to attention.

‘This is no-one’s business. I will speak to the British policemen. You get hold of the date of the shipment.’

Zhen sent a message off with the boy to the police house on the other side of the river, requesting a meeting with Robert. This plan needed the agreement of the Commissioner of Police and at least the Resident Councillor. The governor was away in Penang. Zhen also wanted to include the Temenggong. If the information could be seen to come from him, it would improve relations between the young prince and the governor.

Zhen went to Ah Soon who, as the eldest son, must follow the catafalque. His reaction to his father’s death had been drugged indifference. He needed to get Ah Soon off the amount of opium he was smoking, at least for a couple of days, long enough to carry out the rites demanded of him. After the funeral would come the business. The passing of the houses to Ah Soon; if the boy didn’t want to be involved, they needed to be sold on. There would be plenty of willing buyers. Ah Soon might return to his studies, perhaps take up the law. He was wealthy enough to subsidise this and it would be an asset in the future and perhaps keep him off the opium.

He walked to Hong Kong Street to check on the funeral arrangements. The white banners announcing the death had been put up and blue lanterns hung before the house. Qian’s body lay inside the house in its coffin, attended by the Buddhist and Taoist priests. Zhen could hear the chanting for his soul and the wailing of the official mourners. The house was redolent of incense and the burnt offerings.

Ah Soon had gone to the river with him and they had paid the river god for water to cleanse Qian’s brutalised body. He had been dressed in the white garments he had worn on his wedding night and his coffin strewn with tea. Rice had been placed in his mouth to ward off hunger and a silver coin in his hand to bribe the judges of the underworld. A mirror to show Qian the way had been placed next to the body, the passport to identify him to the guardian of the underworld had been burnt and the ashes placed in the coffin then the corpse was packed around with hell money, talismans and personal items. Zhen himself had placed the blanket of gold over Qian’s body. All this and more had been done according to ritual. Ah Soon was supposed to attend the body, mourning, night and day but when Zhen entered the house and paid his respects to his friend, he found the son missing.

As a pregnant woman, Lian was not permitted to attend the wake or the funeral for foetuses were believed to be particularly vulnerable to the spirits and death airs that accompany the dead.

He went to China Street but neither Ah Soon nor Lian was there. He then turned his steps to Circular Road. Lian had not been, initially, very enthusiastic about his idea for a book on Chinese medicine. But recently she had warmed to the idea and begun to spend several hours a day at his shop. She was there, behind the counter and his apothecary was explaining the mixtures of certain herbs. She was making notes and he stood outside, looking in at her for a few moments.

She walked around the counter and took up a handful of herbs and put them to her nose. She looked as slender as always. The baby had not begun to show for she was only two months along. He was going to be a grandfather again. He had several grandchildren. Two boys in Bangkok and one girl in Batavia but he did not know them. Daughters married away and their children became the children of their husband’s family. But this one he would know and love, for Lian and Ah Soon would live in Singapore if he had anything to say about it.

She looked up and saw him and, for the first time in weeks, she smiled and his heart went to her. He liked to have women around him. And he liked to make love and that had not happened for many months. He missed it and his mind turned to Xia Lou. But she was not here and the inevitable happened. He dwelt on the supple and honey-coloured skin of Jia Wen and for the first time in a long while felt desire wrap its cloak around him. He shook it all away, pushed it aside. Such thoughts filled him with regret. He was not ready to give up Xia Lou yet.

* * *

Alex turned on his side. He had thought Amber might never go to sleep. She was insatiable, like a greedy girl who had discovered the delights of chocolate for the first time.

Their marriage had been a quiet affair carried out in the late afternoon when the air was cool. The Armenian priest had blessed them in the chapel where his mother had married his father. A small dinner had been prepared on the great terrace of the house. Then he had found himself alone with Amber. She was pretty, there was no doubt, and to any other man, it would be a fortunate night. She began to unbutton the fifty silk-covered buttons of the bodice of the white silk gown, run up in double-quick time by the tailors in the town.

He watched her and he saw the look of anxiety on her face. He knew he should go to her and kiss her, help her undress, caress her, put her at her ease and let her feel the growing excitement of her wedding night. But he could not. And as he sat in silence, she stopped undressing and sat on the chair.

‘I don’t want to act like a whore, Alex, but you must help me then.’

So he had risen, resigned to this act, and undressed her and kissed her and they had got into the big bed and, because she was nubile and soft and pretty and adored him and he was a man with natural appetites, he had consummated the marriage. He had hoped that would be enough for the night, but she, aroused, had kissed him again and again and finally, he had simply let his body take over his mind.

In a week or so he would depart for the auction at Semarang. That was a sufficient honeymoon. When he returned he would strictly control her access to him and his bedchamber.

Amber was breathing softly, fast asleep. Alex rose and went to the desk. From the drawer he took out the letter he had written to Ah Soon proposing employment at Brieswijk. He placed another piece of paper on the desk, took up his pen and began to write.

My love
,

I am married and it is a desolation. I am desperate for you to come. Here is the letter for Ah Soon. Tell him he must reply agreeing to the terms. Then I will send him the money for the passage. Tell him to write instantly and post it on the next packet for Batavia
.

Oh Lian, the voyage was a tyranny of pain, leaving you, pregnant with our child. Leaving you, a nightmare worse than anything I’ve ever experienced. They say love is a kind of madness and I know that is true. I am mad. I dream of your skin, your smile, your eyes. I dream of you and our baby. I love you and wait for you
.

Alex

He put the letters inside the envelope and closed it with the red wax and the seal of his father. Today he had become the master of this great estate and he went out onto the verandah, the long verandah which ran the length of the back of the house. He looked out in the half moonlight down over the grounds to the distant gleam of the Kali Krukut, the river which ran through the property.

He would build her a beautiful house of teak, down there where the old tumbledown pavilions now stood. There on the banks of the river, so they would always hear the rushing of water when they made love. And, after a time, when their child had been born and this great house restored to its former glory, he would demand that Amber divorce him for adultery and abandonment for she would surely wish to do so and they would seek the same from Ah Soon. Then Lian would be his to marry and become the true mistress of Brieswijk.

No other thought concerning the upheaval and misery this was likely to cause entered his mind. His heart was wilfully engaged in his own desires and he returned to the bed. Amber moved next to him, half asleep, and put her hand to his back. He fell instantly into a deep sleep.

36

The embroidered cloth swayed as the men carried the heavy coffin through the streets. The lanterns went before, the soul tablet was carried by the priest in front of the coffin and behind came Ah Soon, dressed in a hood and clothes of sackcloth, his face smeared with ashes. The drums and pipes kept up a great noise to warn people of the passage of the dead and, behind the coffin, stretching into the distance in a sea of banners and flags, were the mourners summoned from the brotherhood.

Zhen had got Ah Soon to smoke less by dint of having him locked in his house and guarded by the samsengs. The town had turned out to watch this procession. Zhen walked with Wang behind Ah Soon, the lone figure before him. One sister, heavily pregnant and in Malacca, had not come, the other had died in childbirth, so he, alone, represented his father. He was supposed to moan and cry, beat his chest and act grief stricken but he did none of those things. He shivered, his feet plodding side to side in a daze. He was in a bad way and Zhen saw he might never be able to rid Ah Soon of this habit.

To each side of the route up South Bridge Road, police peons stood lookout, simply a token presence. Zhen saw Graves in the crowd. Many of the European residents of the town had come out to watch this colourful scene.

At the junction with Sago Street, the procession slowed and turned to go up the hill to the cemetery. A low murmur began somewhere at the back of the line. Zhen glanced back but could see nothing. The rocks were a total surprise, raining down on the coffin and the mourners. The brotherhood following the coffin fell out of step and men crowded in on one another. More rocks hailed down and Ah Soon was hit and fell. Wang stepped up to Zhen and they looked around.

The brawl began in a flash. A gang of a hundred men rushed out and began bashing the flag bearers and the samsengs. Blood spurted from one man’s neck. A knife flew out of the crowd and thudded into the coffin. In an instant the coffin was abandoned and left lying on its side on the hillside. The bearers flew away or into the crowd which erupted in violent clashes.

Voices screamed and roared and a man stepped forward and raised a knife to Zhen. Wang turned and realising the danger stepped in front of Zhen. The knife struck him in the arm and he whirled in pain striking the attacker with a blow so strong the man went down, unconscious, to the ground. Wang drew his foot back and struck the man’s head. Blood erupted in a fountain from the cracked skull. Another knife flew out and missed Zhen by inches, landing in the dirt.

Zhen picked up the knife and went to Ah Soon. He helped him up and looked around. The street was in chaos. He pulled Ah Soon to safety by the upturned coffin of his father. Then he went back to Wang. Graves raised his gun and shot several volleys into the air over the crowed. The peons massed with Graves in solidarity. As the shots rang out the riot ended as suddenly as it had started. The attackers melted away down Sago Street or Smith Street or into the woods.

Graves came up to Zhen. ‘Are you all right?’ he said. Blood was coursing from Wang’s arm.

‘I am all right,’ Zhen said. He turned to Wang. ‘Go, get treatment for your arm.’

Zhen signalled to a samseng. ‘Help your master,’ he ordered. Wang made noises of protest but Zhen stopped him with a glance. ‘No. Go.’

Graves watched as this volley of Chinese flew back and forth. Finally the injured man moved away and Zhen turned to him.