The Mimosa Tree Mystery

Book 4: Su Lin Series

by Ovidia Yu

Genres: Historical Mysteries; International Crime & Mystery; Amateur Sleuth; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

LONGLISTED FOR THE CWA HISTORICAL DAGGER

'Simply glorious. Every nook and cranny of 1930s Singapore is brought richly to life' CATRIONA MCPHERSON

'Charming' RHYS BOWEN

'One of the most likeable heroines in modern literature' SCOTSMAN
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Mirza, a secretive neighbour of the Chens in Japanese Occupied Singapore, is a known collaborator and blackmailer. So when he is murdered in his garden, clutching a branch of mimosa, the suspects include local acquaintances, Japanese officials -- and his own daughters.

Su Lin's Uncle Chen is among those rounded up by the Japanese as reprisal. Hideki Tagawa, a former spy expelled by police officer Le Froy and a power in the new regime, offers Su Lin her uncle's life in exchange for using her fluency in languages and knowledge of locals to find the real killer.

Su Lin soon discovers Hideki has an ulterior motive. Friends, enemies and even the victim are not what they seem. There is more at stake here than one man's life. Su Lin must find out who killed Mirza and why, before Le Froy and other former colleagues detained or working with the resistance suffer the consequences of Mirza's last secret.
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Praise for Ovidia Yu:

'One of Singapore's finest living authors' South China Morning Post

'Chen Su Lin is a true gem. Her slyly witty voice and her admirable, sometimes heartbreaking, practicality make her the most beguiling narrator heroine I've met in a long while' Catriona McPherson

'Charming and fascinating with great authentic feel. Ovidia Yu's teenage Chinese sleuth gives us an insight into a very different culture and time. This book is exactly why I love historical novels' Rhys Bowen

'A wonderful detective novel . . . a book that introduces one of the most likeable heroines in modern literature and should be on everyone's Must Read list' Scotsman

'Unassuming, brilliantly observant' SCMP

Release date: June 4, 2020

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

‘Do you see the Mirzas?’

‘Mind your own business!’ my grandmother hissed at me. Japanese soldiers had banged on the doors of Chen Mansion before dawn, ordering our entire household to report immediately to the Gakuen school field. Now, with our neighbours, we were shivering in rows in pre-dawn dark, surrounded by soldiers armed with bayonets.

‘There were soldiers outside the Mirza gate when we went past. And I don’t see them now.’

‘Keep quiet!’ Shen Shen, my uncle Chen’s wife, hissed. Uncle Chen, his arms around Little Ling, their daughter, said nothing.

The Chinese way is to keep quiet and try to stay unnoticed and out of trouble. It doesn’t always work. After the Fall of Singapore, ethnic Chinese like us were picked out and massacred during the Sook Ching, or ‘purging through purification’.

I had dared hope the worst was over. Colonel Fujiwara had announced that Singapore, now Syonan, was an important part of the great Japanese Empire. He said that all who co-operated would be rewarded. Under his administration, factories, businesses and schools had reopened. Trams and buses were running again. There were even taxis on the roads. I had been thinking of taking a job in a Japanese factory. The work would be tough, but my family was less likely to be marked as anti-Japanese.

‘They’re coming!’

‘Ssh! Don’t look!’

The informer was walking towards our part of the field. That he could walk meant he had not been tortured so he was probably collaborating for profit. The Japanese paid well for information, and if you turned in enough people, you were less likely to be executed yourself.

‘Who is it?’

‘Can’t see.’

The informer wore a loose dark blue shirt and khaki trousers, rough workman’s clothes, and a hood with an eye-slit cut into it to keep his identity secret. People were known to take revenge on informers.

‘Su Lin, don’t stare!’ My grandmother’s grip was painful on my arm. At some level, she probably believed that if she hurt me enough the gods would leave me alone. On her other side, Shen Shen’s face was pressed against her daughter in her husband’s arms. Over her head I met my uncle’s eyes. I was most afraid for him. The Japanese targeted Chinese men. But here in the east of Singapore, we had got off relatively lightly. So far.

What was this about?

The informer moved closer to us, pointing at people without speaking. When the kempeitai pulled them out of line and dragged them away, the sound rose of desperate protests and begging. But quietly: no one dared protest too loudly. A woman on her knees begging to be spared was hit on the head with a rifle butt and dragged off. All those selected were Chinese.

I wondered again why I hadn’t seen Mr Mirza and his daughters. Theirs was the next house but one to ours.

Was it black-marketeers who were being picked up this time? Or people who had been overheard speaking out against the Japanese at a private gathering?

My brain automatically looks for patterns in things. It’s why I learn languages and solve puzzles so fast. But at times like this it was a pointless distraction. Who cares if someone is walking funny when that someone holds the power of life or death over you?

I stared at my toes, showing through the holes in long-worn-out shoes, and tried to calm my breathing. The best way to survive was not to draw attention to yourself. I was small and skinny, with a polio limp, so it was easy for me not to look threatening.

But something about the informer drew my eyes back to him. Something about the way he moved was wrong – or, rather, familiar in an unexpected way.

Ah Ma was muttering prayers to my dead grandfather, my father and assorted gods, interspersed with curses on the Japanese. She might look like a feeble old woman, but she had managed the family businesses after the deaths of her husband and eldest son, my father. She had also kept me alive and in the family, despite the fortune-tellers who warned that I was a bad-luck girl. Everything I was I owed to Ah Ma. In the old days, she was a force in the local black market. Those who knew her feared her, and those who underestimated her didn’t last long.

Everything had changed after the British surrender.

The soldiers walked past us, but the hooded figure paused. The eyes behind the slit slid over us. Then the hooded informer pointed at Uncle Chen.

One of the soldiers gestured for him to put Little Ling down. This was generous of him. In the early days they would have taken the child too. Shen Shen threw her arms around Uncle Chen and Little Ling, wailing. ‘You mustn’t take him! He hasn’t done anything!’

‘Don’t be a fool!’ Ah Ma grabbed Shen Shen and held her back.

‘Take Little Ling!’ she hissed to me.

But I had just realised why the hooded figure was so familiar.

I stepped out of line and bowed low to the soldiers.

‘Respected sirs. I must humbly inform you that the informer, Madam Koh, is married to my uncle’s former charcoal supplier,’ I said, in my best formal Japanese. ‘My uncle stopped buying from him because he soaked his charcoal in seawater to make it weigh more. My uncle has done nothing wrong. Madam Koh is calling him out from spite.’

The soldiers glanced at each other uncertainly. I don’t know whether my low bow or their surprise saved me from being bayoneted to death. If I hadn’t been speaking Japanese they would probably have knocked me down at least, to teach me a lesson.

The hooded figure looked between me and the military police, clearly not understanding me. It jabbed a finger at Uncle Chen saying, ‘Him! Him! Him!’ in Teochew, in Madam Koh’s voice.

‘No business of yours!’ a soldier told me. ‘Get back in line! You,’ this to Uncle Chen, ‘hurry up!’

‘Well done, Miss Chen.’

The small, thin Japanese man who came out from behind the military truck was dressed in Western-style civilian clothes. Immediately all of the others snapped to attention. He was someone important.

I was short-sighted and had to squint to make him out. The man wore round sunglasses clipped over his spectacles and what the British called a ‘coolie hat’ and the Japanese called jingasa, a light waterproof straw hat.

‘Your Japanese has improved,’ Hideki Tagawa said, in fluent Oxford-accented English.

Years ago, when war was still considered a distant domestic issue in Poland and China, I had met Hideki Tagawa in the Singapore home of his cousin Mrs Maki, my first Japanese teacher.

‘Hideki Tagawa is a Japanese spy and one of the most dangerous men in Japan’s military secret service,’ Chief Inspector Le Froy, my boss and mentor had said.

Later I had learned that Hideki Tagawa was part of the Blood Brotherhood that had assassinated Japanese prime minister Hamaguchi, finance minister Junnosuke Inoue, Baron Takuma Dan, and others who had spoken out against Japanese military aggression.

The Home Office in London had always mocked Le Froy’s ‘obsession’ with Japanese spies. I guessed they weren’t laughing now.

‘Miss Chen, it is a pleasant surprise to see you again. You are looking well,’ Hideki Tagawa said.

So he was still a liar. I knew I looked terrible.

‘Ohayō gozaimasu,’ I responded, bowing even lower in his direction with my hands clasped. ‘Hajimemashite.’

These were the most formal greetings I knew, and I needed time to think.

I had heard Hideki Tagawa was back in Singapore as a ‘special adviser’ to the Japanese Military Administration. But what was he doing in a death-selection field far from the city centre so early in the day? Had he set this up? Had he ordered Uncle Chen’s arrest?

And why?

‘I am impressed. Your accent has very much improved. You speak very good traditional Japanese,’ he said. ‘My cousin will be very proud of you.’ Hideki Tagawa also switched to Japanese.

I guessed this was for the benefit of the soldiers, who watched us with open curiosity. Though not in uniform, he clearly outranked them. If only I could get him to give the order, they might let Uncle Chen go.

Hideki Tagawa studied me. I could almost see him updating the file in his head. I remembered him keeping detailed notes in the black book that was always in his pocket. He was calm, like a tiger: eyes fixed on its prey – me – but picking up everything going on around it at the tiniest movement of air.

‘My uncle has done nothing wrong. Please let him go.’

‘Your boss, Thomas Le Froy, have you heard from him? How is he?’

‘You should know better than I!’ He had caught me off guard. I had worried so much about Le Froy that just hearing his name from this man had triggered an unfortunate response. I had no idea what had happened to Le Froy since he was taken away after the official surrender. There were rumours of beatings and questionings under torture. One good thing: I had not heard that he was dead. Now my brusque words hung in the air between us but Hideki Tagawa seemed not to have taken offence. A soldier grinned, then quickly hid it.

‘He is in prison.’

Just be nice to him, I told myself. ‘Thank you, sir, for your interest,’ I bowed low. Don’t give him an excuse to burn down Chen Mansion with all of us in it.

‘Sir, we must proceed. May we take the suspects?’ a soldier asked.

‘Please, sir,’ I said, using konsei, the formal Japanese term for entreaty and appeal. ‘Please, help us, I beg you. Onegai shimasu, I humbly request your honourable lordship to help us.’

I had memorised those phrases from books he had once lent me – perhaps that helped. Or maybe it was the refined Tokyo accent I had picked up from his cousin, especially when his soldiers were speaking a crude army patois.

Hideki Tagawa turned from me and barked orders in Japanese, too fast for me to follow. One of the military policemen pulled the hood off the informer to reveal Madam Koh, as I had predicted.

She looked taken aback but smug. After all, the Japanese were paying and protecting her.

‘Her also.’ Madam Koh pointed to me. She had nothing to lose now that her identity was revealed. ‘She is also involved with the Chinese triads. That whole family is involved. You should take the whole family. For years they have been cheating us. That girl works for the British. You should shoot them all!’ Madam Koh spoke in Teochew to one of the kempeitai, clearly the translator.

But instead of translating her words, the man looked to Hideki Tagawa for instructions.

‘You worked for the British?’ Hideki Tagawa said to me, in Japanese.

He knew very well I had, and that was dangerous: most local civil servants had been rounded up and shot for their assumed loyalty to the British. ‘Play the game,’ he added in English.

It was for the soldiers’ benefit, then.

‘Many years ago,’ I said. Somehow my voice sounded calm, though my heart was thumping so hard that it hurt. ‘Just before the war, I was an apprentice hairdresser, working for Oshima Yukimoto.’

My grandmother had found me the job. Working for a Japanese business had probably saved my life.

‘Ah, yes. Oshima Yukimoto. He was not eager to return to Japan so Japan came to him.’

‘Take the whole family! They are all anti-Japanese!’ Madam Koh shouted, in a shaky voice. Clearly she was sensing that things were not going her way.

The kempeitai holding Uncle Chen looked between her and Hideki Tagawa, waiting for directions.

Hideki Tagawa waved at Madam Koh, without looking at her. ‘Take her in with the others and deal with them,’ he said. ‘Except this man.’ He pointed an elegantly manicured finger at Uncle Chen. ‘Take him to the detention centre. Under my charge. No one is to question him till I come.’

Madam Koh struggled and shouted as they dragged her away to the trucks with the people she had picked out. ‘I’m doing what you told me to do! Tell them!’ She was appealing to someone among the Japanese officers, but no one responded.

Hideki Tagawa lifted Little Ling from Uncle Chen’s grasp and looked at her. Shen Shen, sobbing on the ground, clutching at Uncle Chen’s legs as his wrists were chained behind him, seemed not to notice.

‘Your cousin?’

I couldn’t breathe. All the stories of soldiers slashing children came back to me. Little Ling looked terrified but didn’t cry. ‘Please,’ I said again. ‘Please don’t hurt her.’

Hideki Tagawa handed Little Ling to me. She buried her face in my shoulder. She was trembling violently.

‘Come with me.’ Hideki Tagawa’s soft voice was more threatening than a shouted threat.

I squeezed Little Ling, then passed her to Ah Ma.

‘Don’t go with him. Don’t go,’ Ah Ma said.

‘Go home. Uncle Chen and I will be back later,’ I told her.

As I followed Hideki Tagawa, I hoped I would keep that promise.



‘You were always good at learning languages, also at solving crimes,’ Hideki Tagawa said. ‘I should have known you would come out of this all right.’

His car, a battered Ford Eifel, stood on the mud track at the edge of the field. He opened the front passenger door and indicated that I should sit. He stood by the back door so we were looking out at the field. It had been the football pitch shared by the Telok Kurau English and Malay Schools: we had come here for festivals and kite-flying before the Japanese turned it into a killing field.

The sun was coming up. The military police were herding prisoners into the back of trucks. Everyone else stood around, trying not to attract attention, daring to hope they would be allowed to go.

‘Do you know what this is all about?’

‘Someone robbed the Mirza house last night,’ I guessed.

‘What makes you say so?’

‘I saw military police outside the gates when we walked here. The Mirza house is two lots down from ours.’

‘Mirza Ali Hasnain was killed last night,’ Hideki Tagawa said.

‘Oh!’ I was taken aback, not by the death but by the fuss the Japanese were making about it. After all, so many locals were killed daily.

‘Mirza was murdered in his garden. It happened very near to your home. Didn’t you hear about it?’

I shook my head. ‘We were asleep when the military police arrived at our house and made us come here. They didn’t tell us anything.’

My thoughts sped on: their interest suggested that the dead man had been a collaborator and the Japanese hadn’t been responsible for his death – or they had, and were looking for someone else to blame.

‘He had two daughters. Their mother is dead. Now they are orphans. Don’t you want to help them?’

I didn’t see how I could. ‘I didn’t kill him and I don’t know who did.’

‘So, how do you think Chief Inspector Le Froy would solve this murder?’

‘Why don’t you ask him?’

Speaking in English, I had dropped the formalities but, even so, that was rude.

To my surprise, Hideki Tagawa laughed. ‘We all have choice in any situation. We can do our best or do nothing.’

I had no choice in this situation. Except to do what I could to stay alive. I nodded.

‘Did you know that Chief Inspector Le Froy accused me of being a spy and tried to get me deported?’

Why did he keep bringing up Le Froy? I wondered if he meant to torture me to make Le Froy talk.

I decided that if he took me to Le Froy, I would shout that he was not to say anything on my account, regardless of what I might admit later. I was strong for a small, thin girl with a polio limp, but I was under no illusion that I could hold up under Japanese torture. Just thinking of the stories of what they did to their victims made my bladder twist and suddenly I needed the WC. I was also desperately thirsty, but I knew better than to say so. I had heard terrible things about Japanese water torture …

‘He hunted me, like a shiba inu, following me through all the twists and turns. I knew what he was doing, of course.’ Hideki Tagawa chuckled. His train of thought had run far from mine. ‘I tried to make it interesting for him. Do you know what a shiba inu is?’

‘A kind of dog?’

‘A very tough, very small Japanese hunting dog. It is not aware it is a small dog so it tackles enemies much larger than itself. And it generally scores low marks for obedience.’

He might have been describing Le Froy as his superiors in London saw him. I pushed away the thought.

‘He was doing his job, of course. If he was here, he would expect you to do your job and help to solve this murder. Don’t you agree?’

‘What?’

‘Mirza’s killer must be caught and publicly punished or people will think it is all right to kill informers. Or those they suspect of being informers. Or they will just kill anyone they don’t like and accuse them of being an informer. There will be chaos. Everything we have done up to now to establish peace and order will have been for nothing.’

‘My uncle had nothing to do with it,’ I risked saying. ‘He did not leave the house last night. Besides, why would he?’

‘Mirza feared local Chinese triads would attack him. Your uncle has connections with them, does he not?’

‘There’s no triad activity here. There hasn’t been in years!’

That was not quite true. Yes, fewer gang-related clashes had been recorded. Largely because – and Le Froy had been aware of this – a working peace had been enforced by the Chen family triad. My family.

‘Some believe Mirza was the informer who blamed Operation Jaywick on local triads. They were angry with him.’

‘The Japanese no longer believe local triads responsible?’

‘We now have sources confirming that the Australian marines were behind Operation Jaywick. They sent soldiers over by boat, in the night, to plant explosives on our ships.’

‘That doesn’t seem likely.’ Australia was far away. But I felt a spark of hope deep inside me. Though distant, Australia was much closer than Britain. If the Australians had not given up on us, maybe there was hope after all.

‘It would not do to make it public,’ he said.

Of course not. It would make the Japanese look stupid.

I was angry about that raid too. The sabotage of seven Japanese warships and one cargo ship in Singapore harbour had resulted in the worst reprisal killing of locals since the invasion.

‘But if Mirza gave the Japanese the wrong information, maybe the Japanese killed him for making you look bad.’

‘Sir.’

It was one of the military policemen.

‘What do you want?’

‘Sir, Colonel Fujiwara wants the investigation completed as soon as possible. Heicho Han wishes to know if he can proceed with the executions.’

‘Tell Heicho Han I am taking over this investigation.’

‘Sir,’ the kempeitai looked scared, ‘he must make the report. Colonel Fujiwara is waiting.’

‘I will make the report myself,’ Hideki Tagawa said. And to me, ‘Get into the car.’



Hideki Tagawa drove us to a huge mansion in Shori Estate. It was a long time since I had been in a car. The fact that Hideki Tagawa had one and petrol to put into it showed he was Somebody in the Japanese hierarchy. The way he drove – recklessly fast, hardly slowing to wave a pass and shout at security checkpoints – showed he probably hadn’t got where he was by slavishly following the rules. He probably hadn’t been given a dented car, which would have been a sign of disrespect, but had caused the dents himself: a clear sign of his impatience.

And it was possible that, having survived war and a year of occupation, I was about to die in a car accident. I braced myself against the dashboard and dared ask, ‘Where are you taking me?’

‘Centre of Operations. Victoria Avenue.’

He had used the old British name for the smart residential area. The Japanese had commandeered rows of big colonial houses in Victoria and Albert Estate, which had formerly been occupied by high-ranking British administrators and Westernised Christian converts, who had been rich enough for the British to accept them as civilised. In the old days there had been glittering parties here. Now that the Japanese had requisitioned the houses and grounds, there were guards outside the gates.

‘Why?’

‘I have an idea.’

The way he drove, maybe his idea was suicide by car accident.

I swore to myself that if, by some miracle, I ended the journey alive, I’d get us all – Ah Ma, Uncle Chen, Shen Shen, Little Ling and myself – out of Singapore. Never mind where we ended up or how we’d survive, nothing could be worse than clinging to life as we were, like crabs in a bucket waiting to be picked out and lowered into boiling oil.

After such a narrow escape, even Ah Ma couldn’t insist on us waiting till the British came to rescue us. She believed the way to survive was to stay unn. . .