Singapore Noir

Saiful knows Woodlands well, having grown up in nearby Mandai village. He knows, for example, that it has a higher proportion of unsolved murders than anywhere else in Singapore. A few years ago, a schoolgirl from Si Ling Primary School was found near the train tracks, raped and strangled. The perpetrator was never caught. Several months later, the body of an Indonesian maid was discovered decomposing in a water tank atop one of the HDB apartment blocks along Woodlands Street 73. Even though a Bangladeshi worker was quickly arrested, Saiful heard rumors that the murderer was in fact some rich Singaporean who paid the worker off to take the rap. And what about the famous case of the char kway teow hawker who was found dead in a pool of blood at Old Woodlands Town Centre?

In all fairness, it isn’t surprising that there is a preponderance of unsavory activities here. After all, this is as far away from downtown Singapore as one can get, and here at the fringe, marginal characters find a home. A quick escape to Malaysia is always an option. And if you cannot take the causeway for whatever reason, a brisk swim across the Johor Strait is not impossible.

Saiful’s troubles started when he accepted an offer to work for Madame Zhang, who runs a small fruit stall midway between Marsiling and Kranji. Madame Zhang likes to hire Malays, for she knows they hardly ever complain, work hard, and pretty much keep to themselves. And even though she can only muster a few words of bahasa (her English is equally deficient), she quickly developed a liking for the quiet and dependable Saiful, and groomed him to be one of her top runners.

Apart from selling pineapples and papayas, Madame Zhang makes much of her income peddling forged passports and visas. And with Saiful’s help, she has been making a killing distributing traditional medicines to her wide network of mostly mainland Chinese customers. Be they tiger penises from Burma or human placentas from Vietnam, she has a steady stream of cash buyers for her smuggled goods. Her specialty is rhino horn from South Africa, which, because it is banned, can often fetch up to two thousand dollars per ounce. As the horn is widely considered an aphrodisiac, it is not unheard of for a syndicate of buyers to make an order in the tens of thousands of dollars. Once bought, the prized item is shaved into delicate ribbons of cartilage, boiled in water, and presto, the result is liquid Viagra.

But Saiful is far from thinking about aphrodisiacs. Babu has stopped his car in front of an ugly 1970s-style warehouse somewhere in the concrete maze of Woodlands Industrial Park. Leela signals Saiful to get out and leads him over to a bolted steel door. Babu waits in the Lancer, playing to the hilt the role he knows like the back of his hand.

In the dim moonlight, Saiful can just make out the words: Sri Vinayagar Temple. It certainly doesn’t look like a temple to him, but what does he know?

“First, you have to agree to everything Mr. Rao says,” Leela pipes up. “That being understood, you have to kiss his elephant.”

“Elephant?”

“Just fucking do it, all right?” Without waiting for an answer, Leela rings the doorbell. After several seconds, the door cranks open and a temple guard who is no more than four feet tall shows them in. The midget bows and quickly disappears.

The interior of the warehouse is unexpectedly opulent. Saiful feels like he has stepped into a mini — Taj Mahal, with incense and patchouli candles burning at various corners. Rich silken fabric adorns all four walls, and the dropped ceiling is covered with hammered gold leaves. Everything is cast in a soft, deceptively reassuring glow.

Then Saiful notices the elephant. Almost as big as a real specimen, this is the Hindu god Ganesh, carved out of a single block of blue-green granite and inlaid with bands of moonstone and red garnet. It stands toward the rear of the room, glittering surreptitiously. The animal’s scowl tells all worshippers it is something not to be trifled with.

“Kiss it,” a high-pitched male voice rings out, and from the shadows Mr. Rao appears, looking like a cross between Fat Albert and Salman Rushdie. Mr. Rao is a fleshy, effeminate man. Once he sees Saiful, he begins to examine the thin ex-rocker with undisguised sexual interest.

Mr. Rao appears to be carrying a white mink stole in his left arm, until it opens its eyes and purrs.

“Fernando, say hello to our guests,” Mr. Rao prompts his snowy Persian cat. The animal stares around the room lethargically with its blue crystalline eyes. All at once Saiful feels much more at ease, for cats are by far his favorite animal. As a child, he collected feral tomcats and mated them with the village tabbies in Mandai, and then sold the kittens as purebreds to rich townsfolk. To him, the cat is the ultimate symbol of resourcefulness.