Murder Comes To Friendly Week

By Ann Morven

Be careful who you offend when weird beliefs prevail. The theft of fabulous jewels pulls bumbling sleuth Sheil B Wright to mystic paths and murder. She is amused, then alarmed, by the suggestion she is a popular deity reborn. As Singapore's Great Detective steps in, Sheil's most pressing challenge is to stay alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Darling Newspaper Press
• Release date: Jan 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370965908

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MURDER COMES TO

FRIENDLY WEEK

A thrilling whodunit by Ann Morven

The Singapore Island Republic exists, and so does its busy hangman, but all the characters and the temple in this story are fictitious and created solely in the author’s imagination.

© Darling Newspaper Press [e-mail]

http://www.booktaste.com

PO box 176, Kalamunda, Western Australia 6926

***

The warring gods exploded into supernova,

becoming the omnipotent female goddess Chandi.

—THE DEVI MAHATMYA

*

He that maketh haste to be rich

shalt not be innocent,

-- OLD TESTAMENT, Proverbs 28:20

*

The Song of the Hangman, by Sheil B Wright, gold winner at the Tamworth Country Music Festival:

We’re a small island state

to the north of Australia:

Prosperous people

and welcoming hugs.

Singapore is our name and

we’ve made crime a failure;

Death sentence for sure when

we nick you for drugs

Part One:

THE GIRL WHO

LIVED BEFORE

IN a past life, smiled the large gent in an orange robe, that little girl was a song thrush.

His expression suggested he may have been there with her, a wise Uncle Owl benignly perched in a peaceful glade, perhaps savouring the prospect of his own rebirth in human form.

I did not believe him; who would? We had only recently met at the Singapore Concert Hall, fellow performers sharing a teabreak during Asia Friendly Week. His stage lurk had been to claim familiarity with divine riddles. Mine was singing Australian bush ballads as ‘Sheil B Wright, folk artiste’.

Her name is Huamei.

The child from China, primary school age, was the youngest in her choir, a happy and melodious squad in white military uniforms.

Affably, the holyman wagged his forefinger like that Dalai Lama bloke I’ve seen interviewed on telly. Similar dress too, although of the Hindu faith and not Buddhist, with one shoulder bared and his sturdy frame sheeted. His drapes descended to thick-soled leather sandals -- for feet that were made for walking. His forehead bore a white horizontal stripe with a red dot below. Cheap wire-rimmed spectacles held thick lenses that magnified his stare, assertive and twinkling.

Huamei used to have a feathered soul. She is a songbird reborn, I know this.

How can you possibly know?

My challenge expressed my amazement, not so much at his silly statement as for his confidence in asserting the idea.

Communion with the Cosmos, that is how I know. The answer to everything is there for those who seek. Definitely a song thrush. Why don’t you come to the temple. He smiled again, softly yet knowingly. You will learn many things.

He was right, but the things I learned give me nightmares.

Merrily I had flown to Singapore, with lyrics in my heart and not a thought about murder. Murder? Make that plural, and for me a guaranteed death sentence.

I never felt more scared. I never felt less welcome. Looking back, it was an ironic stew of emotions, considering that my purpose for visiting the island republic was to bring a banjo and some catchy tunes to a musical jamboree of nations.

We’re part of Asia, Sheil, my Melbourne agent gushed. Canberra says so, and the Australian Ministry of Culture is paying you top bucks, plus five-star hotel and all expenses.

This was the clincher. My bank overdraft, like my bathroom scales, was overstressed and I was nudging forty (not kilos, alas, but years), and my career needed rapid financial pumping.

In any case, it was also an opportunity to visit the scene of my grandad’s war yarns. Like many an old soldier, his Singapore memories were grim, yet thankfully those ugly times are long past. To me this foreign gig sounded marvellous: high pay for a holiday singsong. Now, however, I am convinced there is a mischievous deity who cheats on the human chequerboard.

The friendly priest who was a Master Swami, born and bred in India, explained about Destiny. He had been many years a Singapore citizen, yet came from the mountainous Northwest Frontier. In multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-religious Singapore he managed a Hindu monastery temple. A few minutes before our chinwag in the canteen, he had appeared before the mixed-race audience.

The concert hall’s Victorian facade, proudly patriarchal in a cultural melting pot, squats amid the city’s flashy towers of concrete and glass. It faces the Padang, a green expanse of sports fields beside the mouth of the Singapore River. Its ornate bulk reflects the nation’s British heritage in the Asian social mix we were all celebrating on stage.

Ambitious in delivery, yet boring to my ears, the Master Swami’s Vedic Hindu Origins Of Buddhism had been a one-man exposition accompanied by finger-bells, perfumed smoke, throaty chants and much reference to weird deities. The other concert acts, likewise, offered their own alien content in tribute to Singapore’s ethnic variety.

Apart from my Australian Outback Renditions, performances included string music from Vietnam, Thai gongs, Korean drumming, Japanese opera, Malay shadow plays, a Bengali conjuror and so on. Here we all were, chummy as kittens in a basket, and even the two Chinas were swapping grins.

It was one of the girls from Beijing my companion had identified as a songbird reborn. I had praised her solo vocal while, sipping green tea, we listened from the cafeteria. She was the star of a children’s choir that had been drilled and trilled to perfection.

They are boarding at the monastery all week, my tea mate informed me. Their government disallows swank hotels. Too many five-star temptations for the children. You come to the temple, you can meet her, you’ll be surprised. He leaned closer, lowering his voice. She is a miracle, that one. Only yesterday she had no voice at all.

My squint of doubt moved him to clarify:

Heavy cold. Sore throat. We all prayed, and Huamei was restored overnight to total health. You heard her, you heard the miracle. It is thanks to the saviour of the Cosmos, known as Chandi, the Omnipotent Holy Mother.

A cosmic miracle, a bird reincarnated as a girl? I’m all for showbiz flair but this seemed an excess to embody within one preteen lass. My wary grunt bothered the Master Swami.

You do not believe. And so you must visit us. Yes, you must. Tomorrow. You can ask the child what it was like being a song thrush. Does she remember? I don’t know.

Then the big bloke released one of his hearty chuckles. Talk to their choir mistress too. I think that, in a past life, she must have been a hornet.

I still haven’t decided whether, this time, he was joking. The berobed smiler was like no other wag I had ever encountered, whether in holy orders or fellow entertainers. When not laughing or chuckling or quipping, his countenance had a beatified smirk of peace, amused by human antics, as if aware I had forgotten to pay my Visa Card and a penalty was in the mail.

Dipping into his drapes he gave me a slim staple-bound book.

For you. This describes Goddess Chandi’s sacred mission. Come for breakfast. You will hear our music too, from the ancients, from a time before history, before there were temples or churches or mosques.

I glanced at the cover. A cheap print job, only one colour, lurid pink. It displayed a strange logo, like a Number 3 with a tail, and the title in heavy black text, like this:

OM

Omnipotent

Holy Mother

Next morning I took a taxi to the temple beyond the city. It was extremely early, as the Master Swami had advised me to arrive ‘before the day begins’. The sun had yet to disperse chill mist that swathed the city’s highrise shopping malls and palatial hotels. Being late in the year, the monsoon was playing tricky weather games which, my guidebook assured, would ease after Christmas.

Unfortunately, I had dressed in anticipation of the furnace heat greeting my arrival at Changi Airport two days earlier. My flared skirt was lightweight and worn with a loose blouse of linen. Cool moccasins on my feet. No matter, the day must soon return to Singapore warmth and I was happy to lose, temporarily, my yodelling uniform of RM Williams boots, ragged jillaroo jeans, checked shirt and wide-brimmed hat of bunny fur.

This morning the 15-rabbit Akubra was replaced by a large straw titfer purchased at my hotel, where the five-star foyer was baited with shops five times more expensive than elsewhere.

Matching handbag? No thanks, not today. All I carried was a notebook for jotting details of anything of use to my career as a songster. Lipstick and hanky were consigned to a deep pocket along with a mini Sony recorder. This device had good pick-up to capture whatever new sounds might be encountered. Rather than learning the ‘many things’ promised by Master Swami, this visit was for my career. The only thing I hoped to learn was a batch of ancient melodies for future professional use. Give me a tune, any tune, and I dress it with rhyme.

Through canyons of architectural fantasy and beyond, the taxi sped north. I had assumed the driver would head for Little India, a section of the city I imagined would accommodate the Hindu complex of worship. As we passed through this ethnic oasis, I saw a large mosque but no temple. A few early rising men, dark of face, were wrapped in sarongs. An occasional sari-clad woman strode busily in the shade of roofed sidewalks.

The driver kept going.

How far is it? I called, not having thought to ask him earlier.

His white turban bobbed. Not far. Few miles only.

Quite a few, I reflected when we passed a roadsign indicating the airport. Then we abandoned the expressway for a narrower thoroughfare. I knew the Sikh at the wheel had to be correct in telling me ‘not far’, because Singapore island is no bigger than a good sized Aussie farm, 72,000 hectares or, if you use a different measure, a total 178,000 acres.

Squeezed for space, here lives a population of 5.3 million, equal to that of Scotland. And yet, surprisingly, we were soon in unpeopled jungle. Not much of it, yet enough to add an away-from-it-all sensation to the serenity of flat lakelands.

As the island measures only 42 by 23 kilometres (or 26 x 14 miles), we eventually ran out of land when the Johore Strait spread its silvery seascape fronting the dark distant swamps of Malaysia. I had only a vague idea of our location. If shown a map, my finger would point unsurely northeast to somewhere between the Seletar River and the Causeway across to Malaysia’s mainland town of Johore Bahru.

Just offshore the smooth water showed a sampan propelled slowly by a fisherman standing at the stern, his silhouetted frame dipping gently to a single oar that held the rural rhythm of a thousand years.

It was a panorama breathing out tranquillity, the calm of Nature undisturbed, and soothing to behold. You would conclude this to be a chunk of Eden left from wayback. You would be wrong.

This coast was a place of horrendous battle in 1942 when Japanese armies sneaked through Malaya's jungle, swarmed over the Strait and captured Britain’s supposedly impregnable Far East bastion. According to my grandpa, it was also a slaughter hell for 100,000 civilians.

After the British surrender, the Kempeitai rounded up Chinese men as if they were cattle and freighted them in lorries to machine-gun execution. By formal decree the purge applied to males aged 18 to 50, and to any women or children troublesome to Singapore’s new masters.

It was an unhappy thought to have as my taxi negotiated a sandy track now twisting through coconut palms and weedy groundcover. So many human souls had perished nearby, and here I was enroute to meet the single soul of a little bird, allegedly reborn in human guise.

A mystic interview with the choirgirl Huamei was not uppermost in my mind, however, nor was a breakfast of monastic gruel. In addition to spiritual and bodily nurturing, Master Swami had offered to supply me with some prehistoric Dravidian dirges. These ditties I could hopefully use or emend for my own gigs. Therefore, it was with cosy anticipation that I shivered on the cab’s rear seat while we passed the former killing grounds and their many ghosts.

I concentrated my thoughts on the promise of rare hymns concerning our world in its infancy, and perhaps touching transcendental mind paths as well. Who can really tell where music begins or how it affects human genes?

I began to remember Christian hymns. Not that I ever sing them on stage, but they linger in memories of Sunday School and I knew the popular ones. I reckoned it would be only polite to offer the generous jolly priest some of this sacred Western music in return for his Vedic jingles. But just what might be suitable in this respect had me inwardly debating.

For instance . . .

Onward Christian Soldiers was a rousing melody by Sir Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert & Sullivan comic-opera fame, but when I silently voiced the words I spotted their imperialism. There’s trouble enough these days from Islam without the added alarm of Christ’s battalions 'marching as to war'.

What could I offer my Hindu host without risking offence?

The Lord Is My Shepherd might appeal to anyone hoping to be a sheep in the next life, but it held a major snag. Reincarnation must surely lead the other way, rising from inferior life forms to the supremely human. From thrush to girl, as I had last night been informed. No person would seek to go the other way.

There was O God Our Help In Ages Past. No doubt it could apply to a reborn soul praying for something better next time. It might do at a pinch, but then it occurred to me that words were not really that important when one heard a beautiful tune. Like me, the performing priest could surely put his own words to any unfamiliar airs I taught him.

Tunes, then. Which were the best?

There was doleful Abide With Me, composed by Henry Lyte 1847 a few days before he died of tuberculosis. Or the plaintive Amazing Grace, a slave melody adapted by Captain John Newton after he switched his philosophy from slave trader to abolitionist.

You’ll gather I have some knowledge of song origins, avidly studied. It is a career gimmick I voice on stage to enlighten my audience in between warbling, plucking or tooting.

What I needed that day while heading for the temple was a refrain to please Hindu hearts. One with good tempo that came to mind was What A Friend We Have In Jesus. It's a lively tune and, as just explained, my temple host could easily reword it to suit.

Contemplation like this kept me comfortable as the driver wended into a hamlet of palm huts. Here an unruffled sow and alarmed chickens were the only other road users. He halted at one of the attap shanties to receive a large parcel which he stowed under the passenger seat beside him.

What’s that? I asked.

Laundry, he grunted. Please forgive. It is a favour for my brother.

His shifty expression suggested a lie, but the morning was pleasantly cool and the scenery beautiful, a combination that lulled any premonition.

Bumpy miles later, the temple topped a long gentle hill which rose from green flatlands.

In addition to delineation by coconut palms, the gravel approach displayed knee-high stone monkeys on either verge, uniformed in red and bearing swords like military guards.

The building’s double-storey pink frontage was topped by three fat cones that looked like space rockets ready for blast-off. The central one was taller. All were slim and pointed, and their tips bright red.

My taxi overtook people who were walking up the same hill. Malay and Chinese. This was strange, because the Malays of Singapore are mostly Muslim and the island’s Chinese largely Buddhist, yet their obvious destination was the Hindu edifice beyond the weaponed monkeys.

It seemed to me these particular locals were showing that the island's renown for multi-cultural harmony was more than wishful theory, but this conclusion faded before a more striking question. Why so many people in such a remote area?

They did not look like sports enthusiasts, yet the plain surrounding the rise was a statement in multi-sport. Goalposts told me the flat greens served rugby, soccer and hockey, but the fields were empty and the people were ambling past them.

Then I spotted a broad and busy tarmac highway. It stretched alongside the playing fields while, beyond these, were office blocks and shops. The rogue cabby had taken a roundabout crosscountry route.

Hey! Leaning forward, I pointed to the meter showing $60. You went all that long way round to bump up the fare.

Like sunlight at dawn, a toothy grin I can only describe as saintly gleamed out from his magnificent black beard.

No, mem, I do not cheat. For my brother please. I do him a favour only. Dhobi service, I take and pay for his laundry you see. He is a poor man, as are these good people you see walking to receive breakfast. Praise be to God, madam, it is virtuous to help the poor. I shall give you a ten-dollar discount.

My honour satisfied, yet miffed he had possibly classified me with the poor, I sat back to observe the ‘good people’. They all seemed dowdy of dress, some in rags.

Supposedly they came from humble palm-frond huts grouped where a brick wall stretched near the foot of the rise.

Looking back as the taxi climbed, I saw that the wall shielded a large stonebuilt premises with a smoking chimney. Maybe a crematorium. A sign on the wall was beyond my vision. A half-seen flag drooped anonymously on its flat roof.

The Sikh interrupted my squinting a few moments later. Here you are, good madam.

We were before the temple. I paid him, deducting ten dollars from the metered fare.

Hoozah, madam, he exclaimed. They sure hungry for breakfast today. God be with you.

He sped away even as I viewed a riot at the entry and doubted the wisdom of my journey.

The walkers were merging into a mob which besieged the temple gate. Extending on either side of it was an arc-de-triomphe of pink stone plus tall fences, while a heavy metal portal barred thoroughfare. More than hungry and far from good, this horde sounded just angry.

Half a hundred beggars beleaguered the holy compound, demanding admission. It was a wild and startling sight. The throng heaved, forcing me towards the square-arched gateway even as I attempted my own pushing in useless self defence.

Storming the Bastille must have been like this, a surge of penurious French peasants, and today I was caught in such a tide. This Singapore assault, however, was a mix of human variety — all skin colours and every facial type. Up ahead, to my glimpsed horror, an orangutan stood out from the rabble.

Pressed against the barred entry, its ginger shoulders humped violently and its growls held an American accent.

Then I was alongside and recognised a waist-length pelisse, not an ape at all. Her fur was just a high-fashion choice against the chill of early morning and a perfect match for the short ginger curls that crowned her scalp.

She wore a deep-pink blouse, scarlet slacks and, from red leather sandals, her painted toenails thrust like bloodied claws.

A squarish shopping bag, looped on her shoulder, was also red. It looked like a chiller bag, the kind I use back home to protect my supermarket purchases on a hot day. Maybe she had brought her own yoghurt to the breakfast.

She was a thick-fleshed woman but not fat, and well past 50. Her weird hairdo curved down and across her over-rouged cheeks to meet near her blunt chin, thus framing energised features, flashing eyes and the sparkle of diamond earrings. She was arguing with a glowering policeman who, on the safe side of the barrier, stood in his own stylised apparel — dark-blue shirt and trousers and black clompy boots.

She turned as my momentum bumped the shoulder bag, her ferocity refocused on me in a twist of ugly carmine lips and her eyes blazed at the notebook in my hand.

No comment. Frig off!

Sharp-curved eyebrows gave her the sort of expression that queries or dislikes everything in this world, me in particular.

I’m not a press reporter, I blurted. What’s going on?

I don’t care what kind of reporter you are, this is private stuff. Go away.

She raised jewelled knuckles to ward me off but I got a weighty elbow in front of her stomach and pleaded to the sturdy brown constable.

Let me in please. The head priest invited me.

He switched from glower to a beam of great broad teeth. No entry.

He was shorter than me but much wider and he asserted authority by twitching his dark-blue beret to a slantier angle while I grasped the steel bars.

Road closed, he guffawed, as if the riot was some kind of picnic fun. No brekfaz for you today.

Amicably, the back of his fingers waved me away to the malnourished melee of the poor.

Business, I yelled. The Master Swami is expecting me. I am from Australia. Biznez. Ozzie-Ozzie.

He doesn’t speak English, growled Ranga Woman.

The cube-shaped cop studied my wide boater, white face, and slender footwear in that order, then renewed his big Malay grin.

No entry. Road closed.

Holy friggin cow, said the redhead, then her accent broadened to world leadership level. Four official languages in Singapore and this guy’s a chump in all of them.

The subject of her derision was now cautiously pulling open the gate, but not for us.

There was a white van emerging slowly while other constables moved to prevent anyone from sneaking in. When the vehicle was barely clear the gate cop slammed the metal shut again. Crawling, the van honked a not too careful passage through the frenzy of people.

I could see on its side a purple logo that seemed familiar: a huge number three with a curling tail. There was a name painted above in big letters.

OM CATERERS