Princess Play (23 page)

‘Neither can I,' Kamal admitted. ‘It feels so good to get out of there.'

Maryam arranged her cigarettes and coffee in front of her and looked up at Kamal, who sat in his chair, half stupefied, his eyes heavy, his hair dishevelled.

‘Tell me, Kamal,' she began matter-of-factly, ‘was that the first time you climbed through a bedroom window?'

‘What?' He looked mystified.

‘When my husband caught you coming into our window – was it the first time you'd ever done it?'

‘I'd never been to your house before!' he protested.

‘That's not what I'm asking you. Had you ever done something similar? Climbed in through
other
windows, perhaps.'

He shook his head like a dog coming out of water. ‘No, why?'

‘Was that the first time you went on an expedition like that with your mother?'

He nodded, but seemed unsure of the answer.

‘Alright.' Maryam had four children, and was well-versed in the need to ask a particular question in just the right way so as to get to the heart of the matter. She honed in on specifics, in a way that any of the four children would immediately recognize as trouble.

‘With either of your parents, your mother or your father?'

He looked at Osman for assistance. Osman kept his eyes trained on Maryam.

‘Well, of course, I'd been in Kampong Penambang …'

‘Kamal!' He jumped. ‘You know what I'm asking you, so stop pretending you don't. Did you go with your father to
Mak Cik
Jamillah's house after the
main puteri
?'

‘No.'

‘No?'

‘No,' he said firmly, now sure of his answer. ‘I didn't.'

She backed up, sensing an opening. ‘Did you go to her house at the time?'

He was silent.

‘You did go, but not with your father,' she surmised. ‘You went with your mother. Your father never had anything to do with this. He didn't even know about it. I'm right, aren't I?'

His eyes cast anxiously between Osman and Maryam, as though trying to decide which was safer. He seemed to realize neither was safe, and he began squirming in his seat.

‘Your mother said your father killed
Mak Cik
Jamillah, but now I'm going to guess your
mother
went to her house that night. And you went with her, because she asked for your help.'

He looked terrified. ‘I didn't …'

‘Did your mother?'

‘Did she … what?'

Maryam let out a sigh of exasperation. ‘I don't mind telling you I'm getting tired of this,' she informed him. ‘You and your mother are driving me mad. Now answer me, or you can stay in that cell until you're an old man. It won't bother me.'

She gave him a minute to digest this threat. ‘Did your mother go to
Mak Cik
Jamillah's house after the
main puteri
? Yes or no?' They all waited.

‘She may have,' he admitted. No one moved or spoke.

He then amended that testimony: ‘I think so.' The silence not only continued, it grew more ominous.

‘You know, she got ideas into her head, and you couldn't talk her out of them. I had to go to see what she was doing, to protect her from herself, you might say.' He now examined the plaid on his sarong. ‘I just followed her to make sure she didn't get into trouble.'

Maryam's expression plainly read ‘really?' Kamal gulped and continued.

‘I was behind her. There were so many people, I kind of lost her in the crowd. I walked around the house to see if she was there, and I saw her, she was walking away, on her way home already. So I jumped up onto the sill, just to look in.'

‘And?' Osman prompted?

‘And
Mak Cik
Jamillah was lying there facing the wall, and she was already dead. I touched her! That's how I knew she wasn't asleep.'

‘So it was your mother who killed her, then?' Osman asked, relieved at last to have come to the conclusion.

He shook his head. ‘She was already cold.'

Maryam and Osman exchanged dumbfounded looks. ‘How long had you been in the
kampong
by then?'

He shrugged. ‘Maybe fifteen minutes or so.'

‘And your mother?'

‘Maybe five minutes more.'

‘Now, were you at home when she left so you could follow her?'

‘I was in Kampong Tikat, at my house.' He then adjusted this statement. No, at
Mak Su
Noriah's house.'

‘And your mother stopped by?'

He shook his head. ‘She didn't like
Mak Su
Noriah.' This was one of the first truly sane things Maryam had heard about Hamidah.

‘So how did you know she was going?'

‘She'd talked about it before. About watching the
main puteri
. She didn't think
Mak Cik
Jamillah had anything to be sick about. She was kind of angry about it.'

‘Angry?'

‘She thought
Mak Cik
Jamillah had a pretty good life, much happier than her own. So she envied her, you see, and didn't, or couldn't, understand why she wasn't happy. I knew that; she'd talked about it before.'

‘For a long time?'

He shook his head. ‘Well, a lot more in the last couple of years, I guess. Before I got married and moved away.'

‘And that was the reason you went to Kampong Penambang? Because you thought you might find your mother there? So really, you didn't follow her so much as went to find her there.'

He shrugged. ‘I followed her there. I got there when the
main puteri
had just ended.'

‘How do you know?'

‘The musicians were still putting their things away. So it couldn't have been too long, right?'

Now it was Maryam's turn to shrug.

Perhaps she shouldn't have spoken with
Pak
Nik Lah about the case, he was a civilian (though to be fair, so was she) and not privy to the details of crime in Kelantan. But she was impressed with his knowledge of people, and his shrewd assessment of them, and decided that his role as a
bomoh
offered some privilege of confidentiality.

She watched him on the porch with Mamat and Aliza from inside the house, how his mere presence seemed to put everyone at ease. More than anyone else, he might have the insight to cut through this knot of lies, half-lies and delusions.

‘I've just come to check on my patients,' he told her with a grin when he arrived. ‘But I see they're hardly patients any more. Aliza! Look at you!'

Aliza smiled shyly, but with her old spark, and Mamat felt his eyes tear when he thought how close he had come to losing her.

By this point, Maryam had stepped out on the porch to join them.

‘
Kakak
,'
Pak
Nik Lah continued, ‘why are you still wearing that scarf? Is the mark really still there?'

Maryam mumbled something unintelligible even to herself, then backed into the house for the obligatory coffee. She still hated to be reminded of the scar, and refused to let anyone look at her forehead. But when she returned,
Pak
Nik Lah reached over, after apologizing, and lifted the scarf as Maryam froze. ‘There's nothing here,' he told her gently. ‘It's all gone.' He smiled. ‘You can take it off now.'

She thought to argue, or make excuses to leave it where it was, but then took heart and untied it. Mamat brightened up and laughed with pleasure seeing her without it, and Aliza assured her there was nothing to see.

‘You look so much better this way,' Yi concurred. ‘You look like yourself again.' She smiled modestly, and reflexively put her hand to her head.

‘Don't do that,
Mak
,' Aliza chided her. ‘There isn't anything there.'

She asked
Pak
Nik Lah if she could discuss the case with him, since he had cured Jamillah as well as herself, and would naturally have an interest.

The three adults drew closer, and Maryam explained about their flock of confessed felons.

The
bomoh
was startled, having understood the problem was more commonly the opposite – much suspicion and no one coming forward, rather than many coming forward but none, somehow, looking guilty enough. Yet he thought he understood the motivations of each one.

Zaiton could not forgive herself for her pregnancy, and believed it worsened her mother's condition. Fighting with her mother made it so much the worse.

Hamidah, well, she wanted only to kill Murad, and once he was dead, why not blame him for any other convenient crime? All of these made sense, he announced.

As for Aziz attacking her, it was shameful, but as he had said many times, Aziz was a troubled man. However – and he would not want this misconstrued – Aziz may improve now, with Murad gone. Perhaps he would make peace with his losses, and stop brooding.

Pak
Nik Lah's opinion was that his brooding was detrimental to his health overall; weren't they all familiar with
amok
? It began with brooding, deep and incessant, and then developed into indiscriminate killing.

They all nodded sagely. Of course, they knew about that phenonenon, but hadn't thought about Aziz as being on the cusp of any such outburst.

That was the horror of
amok, Pak
Nik Lah explained, no one knew it was coming until havoc had already been wreaked. Aziz's foray into wielding the
enam sembilan
was, in his professional opinion, a minor eruption of the state, one in which the sufferer lost control over his impulses and became murderous.

Maryam and Mamat were sobered by this diagnosis, wondering if Aziz might have had the same problem with Jamillah. As though he read their minds,
Pak
Nik Lah advised that he thought not. The hallmark of amok was uncontrolled violence; whoever killed Jamillah was controlled, careful and cautious. It had been planned, with a great deal of nerve, he thought, not blundered into in a rage. Therefore, he added, it was far more frightening.

Maryam considered the description just given – it sounded like Hamidah. She ticked off the attributes
Pak
Nik Lah had listed: nerve? Absolutely. Hamidah was fearless when she was on a mission.

Cautious? Life with Murad had made her cautious and cunning, planning for the long term without giving away any clues.
Cencaru makan petang:
the horse mackerel feeds late in the day, but it eats well in the end. Of course, that could also describe Murad, another impassive face on a simmering temper.

But as Maryam believed, Murad channelled his venom through his familiar, to keep his own hands clean. Hamidah wouldn't mind getting her hands dirty.
Pak
Nik Lah nodded, and concurred. It made sense.

‘Then do you think Hamidah killed her?'

‘She's certainly capable of it.'

‘Would she have put the plan together and had Kamal actually carry it out.'

Pak
Nik Lah sighed, and leaned back against the porch railing. ‘She might. But she'd never admit it.'

‘Kamal might, if he was involved.'

‘Would it be so terrible,' Mamat asked diffidently, ‘if Hamidah was guilty? Whether she did it herself or asked someone else to actually do it for her, she was the planner behind it. She admits it. Why not just leave it at that?'

Maryam looked at him sadly. ‘It would be nice if we could just decide who would be the least … destructive. But I can't.'

‘Kamal makes the most sense,'
Pak
Nik Lah suggested gently. ‘He'd do what his mother told him, no matter how odd it might seem. I don't know how he is now with his wife, but at heart, he's easily led.'

‘You've met his wife,' Maryam said when she could trust herself not to giggle. ‘I think it's safe to say he's easily led there too. I hope his wife isn't advising him to kill anyone.'

*  *  *

Maryam and Rubiah were escorted into the Kota Bharu prison by Osman and Rahman. And a good thing, too, since it allowed them to avoid the visitors' line. The women waiting to visit were much poorer, more ragged than Maryam and Rubiah. Most were painfully thin, wrapped in torn and faded sarongs, with T-shirts rather than
baju kurung
. They stood with their arms folded, their feet placed far apart in worn plastic flip-flops. Many chewed betel quids, with teeth black and lips stained bright red, leaning over every so often to spit. Indeed, the ground beside the wall where they stood was mottled with old betel stains. A few smoked home-rolled cigarettes. All looked resigned, even hopeless, and shuffled slowly forward as the line moved in infinitesimal increments.

A cottage industry selling snack and drinks to the lines of visitors waiting there had grown up, mostly on the back of three-wheeled bicycles, whose riders plied their trade up and down the line. The two
mak cik
drew stares from the rest of the women, but none commented or spoke to them; they remained silent, save for the occasional sound of spit and the shuffling of feet.

The room they were placed in was as horrible as the rest of the prison, and exuded despair and defeat. It was dark, and dreadfully hot, with a thick layer of grime over the stained grey walls and floors. Yet when she was brought in, Hamidah fairly glowed with contentment and smiled as graciously as if she were overseeing a party in her own home.

‘How nice to see you!' She beamed around the room and patted Maryam's arm. ‘So thoughtful of you to come to visit. And in this heat!'

Maryam forced a smile. ‘How are you feeling?'

‘Oh fine. Not as nice as being home, of course, but I'm happy enough.' She certainly looked serene. She lowered her voice. ‘Do you have a cigarette? There are so few little luxuries here! Not that I'm complaining.'

Maryam slid her home-rolled cigarettes across the table, and Hamidah gratefully took one before speaking again. ‘How can I help you? You look like you came here for a reason.'

She may have been crazy, but she wasn't simple; she could be a formidable opponent, as her husband discovered too late. Maryam tried to tread carefully, and not give too much away. ‘Just seeing how you are,' she replied. She looked benign, but Hamidah was not fooled.