Princess Play (2 page)

Zaiton picked up her head to look at Maryam. ‘In there,' she indicated the house with her chin. ‘He's sitting with her.' Maryam nodded, and walked toward the house, leaving them to each other.

Her neighbours milled about at the bottom of the stairs, clearly unwilling to go up into the house, but feeling they ought to do something. Maryam nodded to one, indicating she would go inside, when a firm hand clamped onto her shoulder. It was her cousin Rubiah: her best friend and colleague.

‘What happened?' Rubiah asked, guiding Maryam away from the house.

‘She died.'

‘Just like that?' Rubiah looked surprised.

‘I guess,' Maryam answered doubtfully. ‘I just heard. She didn't wake up this morning.'

‘But last night …' Rubiah trailed off. She looked a lot like Maryam, though her eyes were hidden now by her glasses. ‘People don't die just like that.'

Maryam shrugged: it felt as though she was doing a lot of that right now. ‘Zainab says they went to get the police.' Rubiah rolled her eyes; Maryam knew what she meant, but the police would just have to do.

‘Don't look at me,' she insisted. ‘I'm not getting involved here. I said never again!'

Rubiah nodded, and let out a long breath. ‘Good, I just wanted to be sure.'

The police arrived in three cars, lights flashing, going slowly over the rutted dirt
kampong
roads. Kota Bharu's Chief of Police Osman thought, certainly not for the first time, that they would make a far more dashing entrance on a paved road, where they could come in fast and squeal the tires to a dramatic halt before the crime scene. But village roads required very careful driving if you didn't want to break an axle, and the painstaking avoidance of many holes required a crawl up to the scene, which was quite unsatisfying.

Police chief Osman stepped down from the car, and looked around the crowd. He caught Maryam's eye, and it appeared to her he sighed with relief, although he had no reason to, since she wouldn't be drawn into this case. Nevertheless, he passed her as he approached the house and motioned her to join him. She wouldn't help, of course, but was very curious about what had happened and, ignoring Rubiah's frown, followed him up the stairs.

It was still dark in the house; not all the shutters had been opened. No one was in the living room, though two
tikar
, sleeping mats, still lay on the floor. In the bedroom, Aziz sat on the bed next to Jamillah, silent and bent, her hand in his. Osman cleared his throat as he entered the room.

‘I'm so sorry,
Pak Cik
,' he said quietly, walking to the other side of the bed. He bent over the body, looking at the neck and the wrists. Maryam craned her neck, to see it all. She could find no mark on the body at all, and nothing amiss on the bed.

‘What happened?' he asked Aziz.

He shook his head pitifully. ‘She just didn't wake up. She looked so good last night, so full of energy.'

‘At the
main puteri
?' Osman asked, just to be sure.

Aziz nodded. ‘Yes, she's been sick for a while. Very tired, not herself. But you should have seen her last night! Dancing! You saw it, right?' He turned to Maryam.

She agreed. ‘She danced beautifully. And so much energy! You could see she was cured.'

‘Could she have overdone it?' Osman asked, his eyes still on Jamillah. ‘Maybe coming out of her illness …?'

‘I don't know,' Maryam said shortly.

‘No!'Aziz's response surprised them. ‘She didn't overdo it. I think someone killed her. She wasn't ready to die.'

If Jamillah had died during the night, surrounded by people, it seemed likely the first suspect would be the person sleeping next to her, who could do it (or something) without having to climb over anyone to get to her. And Aziz would be that suspect – so it seemed odd that he would be the one insisting on murder. Or was this a clever ploy to be first to mention what other people might be thinking in order to deflect suspicion from himself?

Osman reflected that he might have been in this job too long, already thinking like this in the presence of a bereaved widower, with his wife so recently gone.

‘Look,' Aziz continued, pointing to her collarbone. ‘There are marks.'

Osman and Maryam both leaned in, following his pointing finger. There were faint blue marks on her neck, which, if you looked at them a certain way, might have been from a hand. From another perspective, they didn't seem to be there at all. Maryam cocked her head in different directions while squinting, trying to bring the marks into some kind of pattern. But instead, they glided in and out of sight.

‘
Pak Cik
, did you wake at all during the night?'

Aziz launched into an impassioned speech. ‘I didn't wake up. We hardly had time to sleep by the time everything was over. She was tired, I could see that, but excited too. I was happy for her. I wanted her to be healthy, so I was relieved. I never expected … well, who would ever expect? You never think, do you? My children are all here, it was crowded. Why would I think …?' He stopped suddenly, as though a battery had gone dead, and looked at Osman, waiting for a reply.

Osman, however, had not yet mastered the Kelantan dialect, though he had lived in Kota Bharu nearly two years now. He was from Perak, on the west coast, and Kelantan's colourful dialect completely eluded him. It remained a real stumbling block in his investigative process, since it precluded him from conducting many interviews without the help of an interpreter. Aziz's tumble of words went right by him.

Maryam calmly gave him a synopsis of what had been said; the look on Aziz's face as he heard the translation spoke volumes on his opinion of Malay police officers who couldn't understand what other Malays were saying to them.

‘Maybe ask a doctor to look at … her,' Maryam urged. ‘Otherwise you'll never know whether there are marks or not. I certainly couldn't tell you.'

Osman nodded, touching Jamillah's wrist as though searching for a pulse. ‘We'll need to know,' he agreed.

‘Not we,' Maryam quickly corrected him. ‘I'm not here. I can't do this again.'

Osman looked morose, but thought better of arguing. Now was not the time.

Chapter III

The doctor at Kota Bharu General Hospital duly opined that Jamillah probably died from asphyxiation. ‘I don't think strangled,' he explained, ‘because the prints are so faint. Strangling would have to exert far more strength. But she was kept from breathing.'

‘A pillow, maybe?' Osman ventured. ‘She was sleeping, so a pillow would be handy.'

The doctor agreed. ‘It certainly could be. We could do tests to see, but the family would have to postpone the funeral.'

Osman winced. They were most anxious to have the ceremony take place the day after she died, according to Muslim custom, and Osman did not want to disappoint them.

Even if tests proved conclusively it was a pillow which killed her, would it change anything? She was dead: it looked as though someone had killed her while she slept in a house full of people. He gave a desultory wave at the doctor, signifying the tests were unnecessary, and walked into the hospital hallway where Jamillah's family waited. ‘You can have the funeral tomorrow,' he informed Aziz.

‘And my mother?' asked Zainab. ‘How did she die?'

Osman considered how to say it gracefully. ‘It looks as though she might have been smothered,' he stumbled. ‘Asphyxiated.'

Zainab's eyes opened wide. ‘No! How could that happen? We were all there! How could anyone get in?'

Her husband put his arm around her shoulder and drew her away from Osman. ‘Wait!' she protested, over the growing noise of her relatives assimilating the information. ‘I don't understand. How can it be?'

Osman tried to look calm and professional, but he had no real answer for her.
It was her husband who killed her
kept pounding through his mind. Who else could have gotten so close and not woken anyone else? But he had no proof, and no intention to hint at such as conclusion right now, though he shot a long look at Aziz, who looked straight back at him, expressionless.

He knows I know
, thought Osman. It would be like a chess game, he thought, like the duel of wits he read about in the mysteries he devoured as a boy (and continued to do so even now), where the ace investigator and the criminal genius jousted, each anticipating the moves of the other. Justice always won in these contests, and Osman would not let down the side. He hoped Aziz knew what he would be up against.

Zainab still wanted to ask him how and why, but her husband and sister were trying hard to take her over to a side of the hall and calm her down. Osman went over to her as he prepared to leave, saying ‘I will find who did this, and we will solve this. I can't answer your questions now, but I will, and shortly.'

She said nothing, but looked at him imploringly, her eyes glistening, as Osman made his way down the hall.

Maryam and Mamat went to the funeral, as had all of Kampong Penambang. Maryam felt the loss keenly: not only a fellow villager, but a colleague, another market woman. She felt a kinship with all her fellow
mak cik
supporting their families, and felt this as a blow to the whole sorority of small businesswomen. Rubiah, standing nearby, clearly shared her feelings, squeezing her arm as they helped in Jamillah's kitchen, serving the funeral lunch to all the men gathered in the front room. The daughters were understandably unable to organize, and their female neighbours took over the kitchen and the catering.

There was a low hum of conversation deploring Jamillah's death, and speculating on who caused it. The family said little, but news somehow leaked out about how she died, and everyone seemed to have an opinion on who was behind it. Naturally, since they were in Aziz's house, no one mentioned any theories placing him at the scene of the crime, but it was easy to read into the comments that he was a leading suspect.

Others plumped for a wandering stranger who had somehow climbed in the window, but most saw that for the polite evasion that it was. How convenient it would be to find that murder in Kampong Penambang was, thank God, the work of someone from far away!

Maryam and Rubiah ostentatiously concentrated entirely on preparing
nasi dagang
, the ultimate Kelantan celebratory food: rice with coconut milk served with
ayam percik
, grilled chicken with a coconut-ginger paste. As famed sleuths, they could not afford to give an opinion, which could be interpreted as based upon privileged police knowledge. Instead, they politely discouraged questions, stating simply they were not working in any way with the police on this case.

‘We're through!' Rubiah insisted. ‘Maryam was almost killed on the last case. No more!'

Earlier in the day, Maryam had said to Rubiah, ‘You know know what Aziz looked like at the
main puteri? Masam muka macam nikah
tak suka:
as sour-faced as an unwilling bride. He wasn't happy about it.'

But that was then, and here at the house, Maryam said nothing which could be interpreted as an opinion, and offered no expression which could be read to decipher what she was thinking.

Aziz sat surrounded by his family, expressionless, silent and alone among all the crowd. Maryam thought he looked separate from everyone, unconnected, while his children and their husbands and wives sat close together, the sisters holding hands. His isolation was self-inflicted: no one looked to ignore him, but neither was he at all approachable. Although Maryam believed him to have killed his wife, for reasons unknown, his isolation moved her to pity.

*  *  *

Two days later Osman appeared at Maryam's stall in the market. She sat on her stool of batik, a well-deserved cigarette between her lips and a glass of iced coffee and several cakes in front of her. Rubiah lounged in front of the stall, and Maryam looked pleased and cheerful.

‘Osman!' she called to him, smiling widely. ‘Come, have some coffee!'

Rubiah rose immediately to bring more coffee and cakes down from her stall upstairs. She was always gratified to feed Osman, who ate satisfying amounts of her cakes at almost every opportunity. He was so skinny! It was her own private challenge to bulk him up; though she thought that when he turned 40, he might start doing it on his own. Nevertheless, now it was her game, and she was going for a personal best.

‘No, it isn't necessary, I've just eaten,' he began politely.

Rubiah snorted, having none of it. ‘You just sit there,' she ordered him. ‘I'll be right back.'

As she walked up the stairs, Maryam turned to him, ‘Are you here for
songket
? I've just sold a whole wedding's worth!' No wonder she looked so delighted. ‘Beautiful fabric, too,' she enthused. ‘Cream. You should think about it, your wedding's coming up soon, isn't it? You can bring the
songket
back to Perak.'

‘Well, my wife may want to choose it there.'

‘Choose it there? When it comes from here? And you'll pay double for it? Really, Osman, what are you thinking? I'd be insulted if you weren't wearing my
songket
. I'll choose the very best for you.'

It was an order more than an offer, and Osman squirmed a bit, trying to find a compromise between Maryam's offer (very generous, it was true) to give him the fabric, and his wife's desire to choose her own for her wedding. Moreover, he hadn't come here for a conference on his wedding theme.

‘
Mak Cik
,' he began, as Maryam examined the contents of the small box in which she kept her money, clearly admiring the amount now in there, ‘I need your help.'

Her head snapped up to attention, her eyes narrowed, her lips pursed, and she held her cigarette between her thumb and forefinger. ‘What?'

‘I need your help,' he repeated, shuffling a little. ‘I spoke to Aziz yesterday … and the family.'