Princess Play (24 page)

She smiled at her cigarette, not looking up. ‘Ah, still looking for someone to blame for Jamillah's death, are you? You don't like Murad as the murderer? Why not?'

Maryam was flustered to be called out so bluntly. Rubiah answered for her. ‘
Kakak
, like it or not, I just wonder whether Murad actually was involved in that crime. Not that I'm disagreeing …'

‘But you are,' she answered sweetly. ‘And he did do it, you know, so I'm wondering why.'

‘No one actually saw him in our
kampong
when Jamillah died.'

‘It must have been such a crowd! And as I told you before, he was clever. Mean, though.' She looked thoughtful and leaned back in her chair, enjoying her cigarette.

‘Someone saw you, though.'

‘Me?' She laughed. ‘I wasn't there.'

‘I understand you were.'

‘
Kakak
, how can it be?'

‘Kamal says you were. He said he followed you.' Hamidah fell silent, considering how to respond.

‘
Kakak
?' Maryam asked, prodding her for an answer.

She lifted up her head. ‘Kamal is mistaken.'

Rubiah shook her head. ‘I don't think so.'

‘Kamal is confused.'

‘No.'

‘I know my own boy. He's confused.'

‘I don't want to keep arguing this all day. He says you were there, and he followed you there, and he saw you come down from the sill.'

‘
Me
?' She laughed again, a little more forced this time. ‘An old woman like me climbing into windows? It doesn't seem very likely, does it?'

‘However unlikely, that's what he says.'

‘Poor boy,' Hamidah crooned. ‘You must have done some terrible things to him to make him say that.'

‘I did not!' Maryam was offended.

‘Maybe not you,
Kakak
,' she replied, unimpressed by Maryam's high dudgeon, ‘but someone did.' She skewed her eyes towards Osman, startled to suddenly find himself in the role of Grand Inquisitor.

‘He didn't either,' Maryam retorted. ‘
Kakak
, if we aren't getting anywhere …'

‘You mean we aren't getting where you want to go. However, I understand your frustration. It seems too easy to have Murad be guilty. He is though, more than you know.'

She paused, and smoothed her sarong over he knee. ‘Well, I'm in here for murder already, aren't I? So, you're right, it was me. I killed her. I jumped in, smothered her, jumped out and went home. You've caught me.' She looked satisfied with her confession.

‘Well now,
Kakak
, that wasn't so hard, was it? You've got your murderer.' And to Osman: ‘Can I have a few packs of your cigarettes to take back with me? I'd be grateful.'

Osman opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Hamidah stood up. ‘Thank you all for coming,' she said, going to each one to formally shake hands. ‘I enjoyed our talk, but now, I think I'd like to go and lie down. Don't forget the cigarettes, please! Would it be too rude, do you think, if I asked you to give me the cigarettes you have with you now? You must think I've totally lost my manners here. I haven't, really, but I want them!'

With a bright smile, she stood in front of Osman, her hands outstretched to receive the bounty, and he gave her the two packs he had with him.

After she left them, they sat in silence. ‘I can't understand how we have so many confessions and still aren't sure about the murderer.' Maryam was bemused. ‘Soon, people who weren't even there will start confessing.'

‘I've never seen anything like it,' Osman commented.

‘You haven't been on the job that long,' Rubiah reminded him. ‘Maybe that's why.'

Maryam sat silent, smoking. She dared not ask for tea or coffee; whatever they had here would be undrinkable, she was sure of it.

‘You know,' she finally said after several minutes, ‘she thinks Kamal did it. And she's protecting him. She's right, she's already killed Murad, so what's one more murder charge to her?'

‘So? Isn't it possible she did it?' Osman asked.

Maryam conceded it was. ‘It's possible Murad did it too. But she'll do anything to protect her son. Do we let her?'

‘But, Yam,' Rubiah protested, ‘we came here thinking it would be her, and now she's said it was. Why have you changed your mind about it?' Rubiah would have been happy with Murad, but she was ready to accept Hamidah. Why look further?

Maryam struggled to explain. ‘I thought she'd deny it, but I could see in her eyes when she decided to admit to it that she calculated what her confession would be worth. So, I thought, it isn't so much a confession, but a strategy, and why is that? Because she's protecting someone else.'

Chapter XXXII

Sometime after midnight, a commotion in the
kampong
cracked the silence. There was screaming for help and incoherent shouting. Mamat woke immediately, but Maryam's dreams incorporated the sounds, which became more like nightmares.

While the sounds were louder, they didn't get closer, but other voices cried out, and there were men calling to each other. Mamat ran out through the yard and down the path, squinting to see in the darkness. Three men were wrestling someone to the ground – it looked like an indeterminate blur of arms and legs, all flailing.

One man, suddenly recognizable as a neighbour, leapt away with black liquid streaming down his arm, and the man on the bottom was somehow now free again, running like a drunk, out of balance, without direction. With his eyes adjusting to the night, he recognized Aziz, wielding a
keris
, a wavy-bladed dagger. It was the traditional Malay weapon, but was rarely used anymore; it must have been in his family for years. He was shouting, but Mamat could not make out what exactly, and he realized with a start that the black liquid was blood in the moonlight. Aziz was
amok
!

Maryam came running up behind him and gasped. Both Zainab and Zaiton lay on the ground, unmoving and bloody. Several women were trying to get to them, but Aziz careened around the clearing, ready to kill anyone who came forward. The men tried to corner him, as they would an angry buffalo, careful not to get too close. He was wild-eyed yet unseeing; in the grip of a frenzy. He whirled towards Mamat and Maryam. Mamat stepped back, hoping to draw him in where someone else could grab him from behind.

Dancing back, Aziz followed him, then sliced through the air with his
keris
, nicking Mamat slightly. With a cry, Maryam moved towards him, and Aziz plunged the
keris
into her shoulder, burying up to the hilt. She screamed and fell, and Aziz grabbed another woman and stabbed her in the arm. He then stood suddenly still, turned the
keris
toward himself and fell on it.

The
kampong
was in chaos. The ground seemed muddy with blood, and the wounded lay where they fell. Osman arrived with three cars and the ambulance. It looked like a war zone, with dazed survivors wandering around, and others tending to the wounded. He saw Mamat with a clean sarong wrapped around his arm, and hailed him. ‘What happened?' He could not take in the scene before him.

‘Maryam,' Mamat half sobbed, pointing down at her. Osman called for the doctor to come over immediately and get her to the hospital.

‘It's my fault,' the police chief moaned. ‘I never should have asked her …'

Mamat, who at any other time would have comforted him and told him not to feel guilty, sat in shocked silence, as though insensible to all else going on around him.

Rubiah and her family had come out, as had almost everyone in the village, to help those hurt and try to save them. Both Zainab and Zaiton were hurried off to the hospital, with great concern about their condition.

‘How are they?' Osman asked anxiously. The doctor merely shook his head sadly, and went to care for others, hurt but still conscious. ‘Why did he do it?' he asked Mamat, but once again, Mamat sat silent and unmoving.

Maryam had been stitched up, the wound in her shoulder deep and painful, but thankfully, not affecting her vital organs. She was pale, and frightened, and relieved to find herself alive at the hospital rather than dead on the ground in Kampong Penambang. She still could not clearly make out what had occurred, or why, though Rubiah sat with her and tried to clarify it.

‘He was
amok
,' she told her while plumping the pillows and wiping her face with a cold cloth. ‘I don't know what pushed him.'

‘Guilt, shame,' Maryam listed smartly. ‘He thinks Zaiton killed her mother, he attacked me, it's all too much for him. And
Pak
Nik Lah did say he could do this.'

‘But he didn't think it would actually happen.'

Maryam could not shrug, but made an eloquent face which was just as expressive. ‘These are things you can never know for sure,' she said with a certainly she could not possibly possess. However, in the past several hours she found herself a newly minted expert on the syndrome of
amok
, from a much more intimate perspective than she had ever wanted. ‘I imagine he'd been brooding (remember how dangerous that can be!) and decided he couldn't take it anymore. What about his girls?'

Rubiah sighed. ‘I don't know yet. They lost such a lot of blood, Yam. They didn't look real anymore, so white. Lying there, it seemed they had no blood left.'

Maryam nearly burst into tears. ‘I saw. I don't know about the baby, how it could survive something like this …' She plucked at the sheet covering her. ‘Tell me,' she said slowly, fearing the answer, ‘Were Zainab's children there?'

‘No,
Alhamdulillah
,' Rubiah said thankfully. ‘Zainab was just visiting. The kids were home with their father.'

‘So she's not divorced yet?'

Rubiah shook her head. ‘No, it doesn't look like that's going to happen. Good for her husband, I say. He's doing the right thing.'

Maryam nodded. ‘And Zaiton's husband?'

Rubiah shook her head. ‘No sign of him. Not that I'm surprised. He's gone, that's all.'

‘Is she …?'

‘I don't know. But it can't be good for the baby, her losing that much blood. Even if she's alright.'

‘I wonder why he isn't coming back?'

‘He's a coward,' Rubiah sniffed. ‘And to think I thought he was such a nice boy.'

‘Not anymore?'

‘Nice boys don't leave their wives in this kind of situation. Look what's happened in the end. I know,' she held up her hand to forestall any comments. ‘No one knew Aziz was about to snap. But a husband shouldn't just leave his wife like that.'

‘Unless he had a reason.'

‘What kind of reason? How can you justify it?'

‘I don't know. Maybe I'm confused.'

‘You certainly have a right to be!' Rubiah declared. ‘Maybe you need to rest.'

‘I don't know,' Maryam said fretfully. She turned to her side, wincing. ‘It hurts when I move.'

‘No surprise about that. Look what you've just survived.'

‘Wake me when you find out how the others are.' And almost as soon as she closed her eyes, she was asleep.

The hallway of Kota Bharu General Hospital had become a makeshift triage staging point and pandemonium reigned. Osman tried to cut through the crowd and reach the doctor in charge to get some kind of report. He found him in the emergency room, stitching up the neighbour who had first been stabbed. ‘You'll be alright,' he assured him tiredly. He turned to give the nurse some instructions, then turned and found Osman.

‘The police, right?'

Osman nodded. ‘What's the summary here?'

The doctor blotted his forehead with his sleeve. ‘It's unbelievable. I've never seen anything like it. Let's see, I have a middle-aged woman admitted, with wounds in the shoulder and arm. She's got stitches, but seems stable.' That would be Maryam, Osman guessed.

‘I have a young woman with a blood transfusion, she's lost a lot and I don't know the prognosis. Her husband is in with her. I can't even operate until she stabilizes.' Zainab.

‘Two other women with cuts to the arm; the wounds have been closed, they'll be alright. A man admitted, nasty cut to the arm, just missed killing him. He's getting blood, and I think, I hope, he'll be alright. The man with the
keris
? He killed himself. Fell on it. He's dead.' The doctor was silent.

‘And one young woman lost too much blood, she died a few minutes ago, poor thing. Never regained consciousness.' He shook his head slowly.

‘Zaiton?' Osman asked with a slight quaver in his voice.

He shrugged. ‘I don't remember her name. She's in there,' he pointed to a room at the end of the hallway.

Osman took the long walk down the corridor, not wanting to find what was at the end. Rahman joined him on the march. ‘Any dead?' he asked.

Osman nodded, suddenly too dejected to speak, and Rahman maintained a discreet silence. In the room were the two bodies, father and daughter. Zaiton looked like a wax doll, so white and bloodless.

Osman stood over her, and began to cry, making no noise, tears falling out of his eyes. Such a waste of two lives, both so very young. It was more than he could bear. Rahman stood quietly next to him, a solid presence. ‘What drove him to it?' he finally asked, but Rahman had no answers.

*  *  *

After several days, the uproar died down. Injured villagers returned to their homes, wounds began to heal, the first, overwhelming shock of the disaster ebbed, leaving Kampong Penambang to interpret what had happened, able to consider it now rather than freezing into immobility.

Maryam was back at the market, unable to move her arm, but comforted by the noise and the bustle which formed the background to her daily life. Ashikin sat next to her, with Nuraini on her lap, helping show the fabrics and keeping her mother occupied with the baby.