Big Mole Read online

  Big Mole adjusted the dried flower crown. “Are you sure?” she asked uncertainly.

  “Definitely,” Margaret said. “Did you see the replica of our Makassar prahu?”

  “I have, and I was very touched by it,” Big Mole said, hand on her heart. “I would like to make one like that too.”

  “That’s wonderful! I have the blueprints. My husband can help you with the materials in detail. He should be back from work soon. Would you like to stay for dinner?”

  “Okay. I don’t have much to do at home.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Inside the Malay kampong in Geylang, but I will be moving out when I find a better place elsewhere. It is, ah, too far to walk in and out from the main road.” Big Mole didn’t want to talk about the real issue that had turned her life upside down.

  “What kind of place are you looking for?” Li Lian asked, glancing at her mother.

  “I don’t know yet,” Big Mole said. “I am thinking about a one-bedroom flat.”

  “Be careful,” Margaret warned. “The increasing crime rates in some areas are shocking.”

  “I will pay a bit more for somewhere safer. Do you have any idea what might be a good area?”

  “You could look at the advertisements in the newspaper,” Li Lian suggested.

  “I still can’t read very well, to be honest.”

  “I can look it up for you.” Margaret picked up the day’s Straits Times from the counter, but there was nothing there that Big Mole wanted. Most of the advertisements were for bungalows run by agents or people looking for flatmates.

  Li Lian stepped forward and said, “Why don’t you rent with us, Djalima? We have a spare room upstairs.”

  “Oh yes!” Margaret said and clapped her hands. “I am sure my husband wouldn’t mind. Plus, we can also show you how to make the replica of the Makassar prahu while you are here.”

  It was more than Big Mole could ever have expected. “Are you certain?”

  “Of course!” Margaret said. “Please say yes.”

  “That would help save me a lot of headaches,” Big Mole said. “Do you want the rent in advance now?”

  “The rent is not that important, and I don’t really know how much to charge you,” Margaret said. Her daughter suggested that Big Mole pay the same amount as she was currently spending on food and lodging, about $90 a month, which Big Mole was more than happy to pay.

  That evening, she had a curry dinner together with Li Lian and her family, talking in Malay. Li Lian’s Baba father was a youthful-looking electrical engineer with a high forehead.

  “I hope you like it here,” he told Big Mole.

  “You can move in whenever you are ready,” Li Lian told Big Mole. “I will show you your room before you go back to the kampong.”

  “Can I see it now?” Big Mole asked and Li Lian jumped up. The bedroom was self-contained with a high ceiling fan, a wardrobe, a drawer, a two-seater couch, a washbasin, a double bed, a chair and a writing table.

  “My room is right next door,” Li Lian said. “This used to be my brother’s room before he got married. We were thinking about using it as a guest room before you came.”

  “Today is my lucky day,” Big Mole said, thanking Kwan Yin in her head. “I don’t think I could get a better place than this.”

  “Do you have a lot of things to move? I can help you with my van.”

  “No, it’s okay. Cars can’t drive into the Malay kampong. I will come with my only bag of clothing if I can use the bed and furniture that’s in the room now.”

  “Of course, Djalima. This was meant to be!”

  •

  As she walked back to the Malay kampong under the bright moonlight, Big Mole’s mind raced at the unbelievable incidents that had just occurred. What a day! She sighed. I wish Sachee would come home soon, so I can tell him about everything, even if we have to say goodbye before we go our separate ways.

  And lo and behold, in her kitchen window could be seen the glow of the kerosene lamp inside her house. Big Mole froze for a moment, thinking that Hong might have returned, but then took a deep breath. Although frightened, she went up the creaky stairs and knocked loudly at the door to confront whoever was inside, just like anybody would do to defend their own property.

  “Who’s that?” replied the voice of Fearless Sachee. He must have come back from Malaya early, making her wish come true. She couldn’t believe her luck.

  She decided to play a joke on Sachee, and mimicked a rough male voice in Cantonese: “Hey! Open the door! Hey!”

  “Who the fuck is that?” Sachee swore from inside the house.

  “It’s me,” Big Mole said in her regular voice and opened the door. “You can’t recognise ah?”

  “Big Mole! I was so worried about you,” Sachee said, and sat back at the kitchen table with the kerosene lamp. “Where you been? You know, I have been waiting here for more than half a day?”

  “So?” she said. “I have been waiting for you for three months! Ah, how are you anyway?” She turned up the adjustable flame of the kerosene lamp.

  “Same-same lah. What about you?”

  “I am finish with Hong. He mention that to you?”

  “Yah lah,” Sachee admitted. “But I don’t want to take sides.”

  “Did you know he also bought my shop for $3,000?”

  “Yes, he tell me. You happy about the price?”

  “I didn’t bargain. What do you think?”

  “Not for me to say. It’s your shop.”

  “It’s good to know you think like that. I have not forgot how we start the shop together in the beginning. I want you to have half of what I got, to be fair.”

  “Are you sure?” Sachee asked. “I don’t expect anything like that.”

  “I am sure. You can use the money to find a nice place to live. I am moving out.”

  “Really ah? When?”

  “After you have move out, I do also.”

  “Can leave by tomorrow afternoon,” Sachee said. “Stay with my mates until I find a place. I only have the canvas bed and a bag of clothes.”

  “I get your $1,500 from the bank tomorrow,” she said. “I want to settle everything and start my new life soon as possible.”

  “Me too,” Sachee replied, thinking about Koon Thong. “You need help with anything?”

  “No need lah, I take care of it,” she said and yawned suddenly. It had been an unbelievably eventful day, and all her worries had been resolved. She slept soundly and dreamlessly that night.

  •

  The next morning, Big Mole withdrew $1,500 from her bank account and gave it to Sachee. He moved out that afternoon. She gave away her six egg-laying chickens to her next-door neighbour and contacted the second-hand dealer to take away all her household goods for free. Then she went to Arab Street and bought a sarong as a farewell present for her landlord. She insisted on paying the doctor another month’s rent to compensate for her moving out on such short notice.

  Then she left the Malay kampong on a trishaw with a small suitcase and a shoulder bag, the same way she had arrived some seven years before.

  9

  The Mass Arrest

  Fearless Sachee had turned 18 during his time in Malaya, and now qualified for a motorbike licence. He used part of the $1,500 that Big Mole had given him to buy a 250cc Norton, as suggested by Loose Cannon, who taught him to ride on a quiet road in Jurong.

  “When you going to buy a Norton bike like mine?” Sachee asked Loose Cannon when they stopped for a smoke under the shade of a roadside tree.

  “All depends on what Hong has for us at the meeting today. He is our wizard,” said Loose Cannon. He had overspent on girls in Malaya and couldn’t afford to buy a bike.

  “Might as well go now lor.” Sachee tossed his cigarette butt and kick-started the bike. He roared away with Loose Cannon on the back seat telling him to slow down, slow down, all the way to the pet fish shop for their first Koon Thong meeting since returning from Malaya.
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br />   Although the General had still not yet contacted the harbour rats about the canned abalone scheme, his potted plant idea was going exactly to plan. A well-established orchid grower from rural Sembawang was also using the land as a distribution centre to expand his wholesale business. Over a thousand plants in red clay pots from his Sembawang nurseries were already sitting in rows of six-inch-wide plank platforms. Hong sold an average of three hundred plants a day, at the wholesale price of $2.50 each, to his retailers in flower shops and market stalls, who resold them at $5 each to the public.

  “We get thirty cents for every orchid plant sold, and we make around $90 a day so far,” the General said proudly at their meeting around the long scaffolding table in the backyard, behind the repaired back door. “We just water the plants two times a day—in the morning and before we close, and help truck driver to load and unload his plants, that’s all. Easy enough, right?”

  “We all take turns to be in the shop for that,” Sachee said. “Easy lah.”

  “Better than doing nothing,” somebody else said, and the rest of them nodded their heads unanimously.

  “Only the beginning for Koon Thong,” Quiet One explained. “Hong’s potted plant business already making a lot more than the pet fish shop, over $2,500 a month on plants, $300 from the pet fish—around $2,800 altogether. Very good cash flow for our work.” All eighteen backdoor rats looked suitably impressed.

  “Hey, what is Big Mole up to these days?” Loose Cannon asked out of curiosity.

  “Don’t know, but she move out of the kampong,” Sachee answered.

  “Koon Thong is more important than Big Mole,” Quiet One said, uneasily saving the General’s face. “She don’t have to know what we doing—not her business any more.”

  “Let’s not talk about Big Mole,” Fly-by-Night said. “What’s the point?”

  “That’s right, no point,” Small-Time Thief added. “We should talk more about cash flow for Koon Thong and figure out where to go from here.”

  “Yah lah, that’s right,” somebody agreed. “That’s what we here for.”

  The General gestured with his Consulate menthol cigarette between two fingers. “Cash flow is enough to rent six three-bedroom bungalows like mine for you all to live. Good enough for a start?”

  Loose Cannon asked, “When we going to make that happen?”

  “Only a matter of looking at the advertisements in the newspaper,” said Quiet One. “We need to ring up the agents. I can organise.”

  Small-Time Thief said, “What’s the long run plan for Koon Thong?”

  “Too early to talk about that,” the General explained. “The timing is tight. The 08s and the 24s are jumping at each other due to us. Must wait and look before we leap. The doors open for us, if we wait. ‘One must learn to wait,’” he said, quoting from The Art of War.

  “First things first,” Quiet One advised. “Let’s look in the newspaper for proper place to live.”

  “I go and get it,” Sachee said, who was excited to live in a bungalow. When he came back with the newspaper, they saw the headline on the second page: “Another Murder Mystery”. The report featured the passport photos of three men whose bodies had been found strangled inside a black Vauxhall outside the Botanic Gardens.

  “You remember those guys?” Small-Time Thief asked his two surveillance mates, who had all seen them talking and drinking Guinness stout at the 24-hour food centre, the morning before Koon Thong had committed the mass murder.

  “Yah lah,” one of them replied. “This murder must be a fluke. I remember hearing them say they going to skin us.”

  “That fluke could backfire on us,” Small-Time Thief warned, considering the possible retribution.

  “Don’t worry lah,” the General said. “Just means their own people caught up with them for what we did, and help us out. That mean the cops will go after them, not us! We are in the clear!”

  “Right, you are damn right, Hong,” Sachee said. “We had gloves and masks on, so we leave no fingerprints.” Everybody nodded their heads. The General saw it as a sign of growing respect for him, and felt encouraged.

  Quiet One looked at the property advertisements in the newspaper and recommended the semi-detached bungalows in Bedok that had been built by developers for the middle class. “Other than having three big bedrooms, there is also a storage room might be useful.”

  “That’s handy,” the General said, raising his finger.

  Sachee suggested bluntly, “What about use our shop van for kidnapping as well?”

  “Main thing is to live quietly first,” the General said, and ended their meeting. Cunning as a fox, he knew that setting up his rats to live comfortably in bungalows for free would encourage their friends in the minor gangs to join Koon Thong, and their numbers would multiply quickly. They would soon be able to take on the established big secret societies, and one day the General would rule Singapore’s underworld.

  •

  However, as the winds of destiny blew, the “new murder mysteries” of the black Vauxhall at the Botanic Gardens were being investigated thoroughly by Sergeant Lim and Eng Hock, who was also now working full-time on the Spottiswoode murders. When Eng Hock showed the photos of the strangled men in the black Vauxhall to his informant, an old barber in Chinatown, the old man recognised them as senior members of the 24 gang who used to hang around with the now-dead tiger on Temple Street. Lim and Eng Hock matched the fingerprints found on the black Vauxhall with those at the redbrick house and found clear matches.

  “Looks like the 24s have killed their own people,” Eng Hock said. “They must have discovered the foul play their members were involved in, and then murdered the mass murderers. That has to be why the three of them were found like this.”

  “That’s what I thought too.” Lim folded his arms, stroked his chin thoughtfully and added, “I could close the Spottiswoode case right now!”

  “Is that how you see it?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  “But what about the murders in the black Vauxhall?”

  “That’s a separate case. The facts are that we have found the culprits of the mass murder, and they’re dead! Lucky for us!”

  “So what is there left for us to do then?” Eng Hock asked. “Does nobody get the $5,000 reward?”

  “That’s out of the question now, Eng Hock. We can’t publicly justify it to the newspapers. We have no case to present to the judges or the public prosecutor in this matter. I just can’t pull the strings for you on that.”

  “What about our work with you—is that going to end?”

  “As far as I am concerned, the automatic payment will continue according to our agreement, unless my white boss decides otherwise. I have to write my report and see what his instructions are. I can’t tell what is inside his mind. Between you and me, and I’m telling you as my old friend, people in my position will be taking the white man’s place sooner or later. But before they go, a good reference from my boss can make a big difference. I have followed his rules to the letter. He gave me his full support on the mass murder case because of all the publicity generated by the newspapers. Solving the case was not really about tackling gang problems.”

  “Well, why not? You can actually do a better job than he can.”

  “The reality is that there is not enough room in the prisons for all the gangs. Their numbers are increasing, and their members are getting younger. It is easy to tell from the constant clashes of late. It’s a growing problem. The British government would rather see them slaughtering each other than being locked up. Virtually all the gang killings are swept under the carpet. I can’t really do much now, I am still a small fly. I have to write my reports and see what my white boss says.”

  •

  “We have to forget the $5,000 reward,” Eng Hock said bleakly as he returned to Three Musketeers.

  “We still have our automatic payments,” Varasamy said, twiddling his thumbs. “Otherwise we’d have to sell our cars to cover the
rent.”

  “We are living in uncertain times,” Abdullah said, puffing on his cheroot.

  “We must depend on ourselves for business, and cannot afford to be complacent,” Eng Hock said.

  “Money is the Pied Piper in the rat race.” Abdullah smiled philosophically. “Life is only a sport, and pastime, and show, so says the Surah Al-Hadid in the noble Qur’an.”

  “Money is a good servant, but a bad master,” Eng Hock said. “That’s what the Bible says.”

  Varasamy avoided such religious aphorisms. “What about some constructive conversation instead? On something more practical, such as providing more information for Aunty Tan, about that girl’s boyfriend at the pet fish shop. Why not work on that—doing something is better than doing nothing.”

  “My source says that girl moved out to don’t know where,” Abdullah said. “Her former pet fish shop has different chaps there every day.”

  “We know she sold her shop to that small chap, her boyfriend,” said Eng Hock. “Who are the other guys?”

  “I have no idea,” Abdullah replied. “I have not seen them myself. Do you think it matters?”

  “Of course, especially if there is anything new,” Eng Hock said.

  “So, what are we waiting for?” Varasamy rubbed his hands. “We have plenty of time now.”

  “I will follow up on that,” Eng Hock said. “I have used the registration number of his van to get his home address from our friends at the Registry of Vehicles.”

  “It won’t take long to drive to the shop at this hour,” said Abdullah. “But hey, don’t forget that the manager has invited you to their fancy dress party.”

  “I could drum up some more business by meeting the right people there,” Eng Hock said. He wrote down the General’s home address and phone number in his notepad and then headed out.

  He drove to the General’s bungalow in Serangoon, and saw the van, painted with pictures of pet fish and potted plants, parked behind his 50cc bike in the carport. He went to the nearest phone booth and rang the General at the shop with the intention of pretending to enquire about the price of potted plants, but the phone was engaged. “Must be a busy boy,” Eng Hock guessed aloud and drove to Geylang to investigate further.