“I might as well show you. Hold on.” Ket Hau got up and went to their bedroom. They heard him moving around, mysterious creaks and thuds issuing from the room, before he emerged and sat back down at the table.
He was holding a small silver USB drive. He put it on the table.
“What’s that?” said Ma.
“This thing is in my dreams every night,” said Ket Hau. He was gazing at the USB drive, his expression sombre.
Somehow Ket Siong knew what he was going to say. “Stephen gave it to you.”
“The night before they took him,” said Ket Hau. “Yes.”
Then
Malaysia
“Don’t get up,” said Stephen, as he rose from the dining table. He picked up the mug Ma had given him, with her old firm’s name emblazoned on the side:KHALID AND BALASUBRAMANIAM. The mug was empty now, a brown ring of Milo at the base. “Eat your dinner.”
Ket Siong nodded, his mouth full of rice. He had that pale overstretched look again. They wouldn’t be getting anything more than monosyllables out of him this evening. It wasn’t the late nights he found taxing so much as the long days of social interaction teaching involved.
Siong’s reluctance to pass on any opportunity was understandable. It wasn’t easy, trying to make a living as a classical musician in Malaysia. But Ket Hau wondered if it was time for another little chat about taking it easier.
Maybe he should force another family holiday on the three of them. If he said it was for Ma’s sake, Ket Siong would make the time.
Ma came in, bearing a bowl of soup for Ket Siong.
“Don’t wash!” she said, when she saw the mug in Stephen’s hand. “Leave it there.”
Ket Hau took the mug from Stephen and put it on the table, giving him a pointed look. Eleven years since Ket Hau had first introduced Stephen to the family and he was still trying to impress.
“Thank you, auntie,” said Stephen. “Good night.”
“No, no, thanks to you,” said Ma. “Safe journey home, yeah? I’ll see you when?”
“Maybe at the weekend,” said Ket Hau. “Stephen wants to go to IKEA, so he might come along on Saturday.”
He followed Stephen through their small living room to the door, unlocking the grille for him. Outside was what they called the porch, though this was somewhat overselling it—it was just a narrow tiled area beneath the eaves, where they kept the shoe rack and an assortment of umbrellas.
Stephen’s Myvi was parked in the drive, next to the small front garden Ma had crowded with ferns, herbs, bougainvilleas, and birds-of-paradise.
Ket Hau leaned against the wall as Stephen bent down, pulling on his one decent pair of black shoes. They’d come straight from work earlier.
The air was finally cool now it was nighttime. A faint smoky scent lingered, harsh on the throat, though it had rained in the afternoon—a relief, after days of haze. Pleasanter smells exhaled from the garden, of moist earth and green growing things, underlaid by the stink of the drain on the other side of the fence.
Ket Hau observed all of these familiar things without noticing he noticed them. He was preoccupied with the back of Stephen’s head.
“Thanks for coming over,” said Ket Hau. “That was definitely a two-man job.”
Stephen didn’t answer. He’d been a little off all day.
It was a strange time, of course. Stephen had dodged the question when Ket Hau asked, but he was pretty sure Stephen was still being followed. That was enough to make anyone jumpy, given the magnitude of the secret Stephen was sitting on.
He’d only started looking into Freshview Industries’ links to the Sarawak state government in hope of finding ammunition for the Ensengei campaign. He’d tapped his networks for information and eventually struck gold with a guy he’d hooked up with a couple of times at uni, now the disgruntled employee of agovernment-linked company. But Stephen hadn’t been prepared for the scale of what his contact had revealed.
Corruption was nothing new in Malaysia. Everyone expected politicians to skim a moderate amount off the public purse. But there was nothing moderate about the scandal Stephen had stumbled upon. It was theft on a dizzying scale, implicating not only the Sarawak state premier, but people even more powerful, up to the highest levels of government.
“This stuff is red hot,” Stephen had said, as they strolled around the dilapidated playground in a neighbourhood park. The park happened to be near a North Indian restaurant where they’d had a nice meal three years ago. They’d chosen it because it had no connections to their daily routine, or to where they lived and worked. “Regime-changing. If you could get it in the right hands.”
“What are you going to do?”
