The Paper Bark Tree Mystery

Book 3: Su Lin Series

by Ovidia Yu

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Su Lin is doing her dream job: assistant at Singapore's brand new detective agency. Until Bald Bernie replaces her with a new secretary who is pretty, privileged, and white. When Bernie is found dead in the filing room and her best friend's dad is accused, she gets up to some sleuthing work of her own in a bid to clear his name. Su Lin finds out that Bernie may have been working undercover, trading stolen diamonds for explosives from enemy troops. Meanwhile, a famous assassin commits his worst crime yet, and disappears. Rumours spread that he may be dangerously close to home, while beneath the stifling, cloudless Singaporean summer, earthquakes of chaos and political unrest are breaking out.

Release date: June 27, 2019

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 352

Sample

‘There’s just so much stuff. The men keep dumping papers on the desk and rushing away without telling me what I’m supposed to do with them,’ Dolly Darling wailed. ‘And then they ask for reports and itemised records, and they look at me like I’m an idiot when I don’t know what they’re talking about – and the filing system is such a mess. It’s not even alphabetical!’

It was a good thing she wasn’t watching me because I probably had the exact same expression on my face.

It was I, Chen Su Lin, who had set up the Detective Unit’s exhaustive cross-reference card filing system, and even my Chinese never-tempt-fate-with-self-praise self was damned proud of it.

Starting with any suspect or piece of information, you could trace connections through all the data the local police force had on family background, associates and previous convictions of a suspect. But, apparently, it was beyond Miss Dolly Darling, who had replaced me because she was ‘more suitable for the job’ (in other words, white).

I wondered if my former colleagues at the Detective Shack were deliberately giving Dolly Darling a hard time. I couldn’t believe that of huge, good-natured Sergeant Ferdinand de Souza, though, and Constable Kwok Kan Seng was too new and shy. Sergeant Prakesh Pillay? Possibly. But Prakesh was more likely to flirt with Dolly than make life hard for her. He had even flirted with small skinny me at first, despite my polio limp. Why not pretty, buxom Dolly, with her pale freckled skin, curly ginger hair and ready smiles?

Thinking of my early days at the Detective Shack was depressing. Working with Chief Inspector Le Froy – unofficially at first, then officially – had been the best eighteen months in my life, but it seemed our collaboration was over now for ever, thanks to newly arrived operations adviser Bernard ‘Bald Bernie’ Hemsworth, who had declared it unfitting to have a local girl in the post and replaced me with Dolly. Of course the man was always ‘Mr Hemsworth’ or ‘sir’ to us. Even calling him ‘Bernard’ would have got me into serious trouble for disrespect. Still, we referred to our supposed superior as ‘Bald Bernie’ among ourselves: he was like a spoiled brat of a child who thinks he’s king of the world.

In her way, Dolly was smart enough. She was girlishly sly, and good at getting people to do what she wanted, which was one of the reasons I was there with her that Friday morning, long before the work day started, to sort out the accounts and filing system. The main reason I had agreed to help was that I wanted to find out the truth about Amelia Earhart’s missing plane. The aviatrix had disappeared almost a month ago and officially there was still no news, not even of wreckage from her plane.

There had been rumours of wires from India and Japan about searches for and sightings of the missing plane but, so far, nothing had been officially confirmed. But even if the authorities ordered information withheld from the press, details would be in the Detective Shack. More precisely, on Sergeant de Souza’s desk. As Le Froy’s second in command, de Souza had carbons of all official communications. They piled up on his desk, towering dangerously till he passed them to me for filing. All I wanted now was a quick look through before I put them away.

‘You brought the key?’ I made for the front door of the Detective Shack.

‘Oh, we’re not going in there,’ Dolly said. ‘I brought the accounts books over to the Dungeon since that’s where the cross-reference card files are. I thought it would be much easier to have everything in one place.’

That was true. It also meant I wouldn’t get a chance to look through the papers on de Souza’s desk.

‘And I thought you’d have more privacy there,’ Dolly added.

‘Privacy from whom?’ The Detective Shack wasn’t manned at night, unlike the Police Headquarters across the road. ‘The men won’t be here till the first tram arrives at eight thirty and we’ll be gone by then.’

‘In case it takes you longer than you expect to get through all the filing. There’s a lot, you know. It’s been piling up since you left.’

She made it sound as though I had irresponsibly walked out on the job and she was giving me a chance to make amends. I almost turned around and went home to bed right then. Instead I stopped walking and stood still until Dolly looked back at me.

‘I’m only going to show you how the system works,’ I said. ‘I’m not doing your work for you.’

‘Come on, you know it doesn’t really matter who does it. We’re just there for show. Don’t you want to make it easier for the poor chaps? They get so cross when I can’t dig up their old reports. You’d think if they wrote ’em they’d know what’s in ’em, wouldn’t you?’

‘What do you mean we’re there for show?’

‘They need a female employee on the staff to keep the Royal Commission happy.’

I knew about the Royal Commission’s recommended ‘it’s a fair field and no favour’ policy towards women employees because Le Froy had used it to take me on. ‘That just means we have to do the job better than a male employee could.’

‘Oh, come on now. You sound just like one of those suffragists!’

‘Mr Hemsworth said a local girl couldn’t be trusted to work in the Detective Unit because it was too important.’

‘Well, there’s that. He did tell me to watch out for any news about that missing plane.’ Dolly frowned. ‘I’d forgotten all about it. He said it was very important. I supposed he needed someone who could understand English.’

‘I understand English.’

‘Oh, yes. You’ve learned it very well, Su Lin, but it’s not the same thing.’

I knew that only too well. But going into native and non-native language skills with Dolly wouldn’t have done any good. Besides, I wanted to find out more about the plane. ‘Is it news of Miss Earhart’s plane he’s looking out for?’ I asked.

‘Oh, no!’ Dolly laughed at the idea. ‘He says her disappearing just proves women shouldn’t be allowed to pilot planes. He thinks women shouldn’t drive cars either – machines cause too much stress on the female brain and system. But it’s really her husband’s fault for not keeping her safe at home. It’s the other plane that disappeared. The one from India. He wants them to put out warnings that any surviving passengers are dangerous and should be shot on sight, but the local authorities aren’t passing the word on.’

‘That’s terrible!’ I said.

‘Yes. He says it’s a job making people understand anything here.’

The high melodious notes of the morning call to prayer floated over us. That meant it was almost six a.m. The sky was still dark and the streetlamps would be on for another hour, but a lighter grey at the horizon promised dawn was almost with us. This was the only time the air was chilly in Singapore and I shivered, enjoying the sensation. Sparkling dewdrops highlighted beautiful cobweb patterns on the roadside grass and the smell of night jasmine was sweet in the air. I breathed in the promise of a new day.

It felt good to be alive. Better to be living with fools than dead in the company of sages, as my grandmother always said.

‘We’ll work out a way to simplify the filing system,’ I said.

It wasn’t Dolly’s fault she had replaced me at the Detective Shack. That was all Bernard Hemsworth’s doing. ‘We’ll set up a new central index and connect everything else back to it alphabetically. Then, when they ask you for something, you just find the card in the central file and that will show you where to find everything else.’

It would be fun. There was nothing I liked more than analysing, classifying and organising things.

Dolly looked miserable. ‘Mr Hemsworth told me all I’d have to do was make coffee and post letters. He never mentioned filing and typewriting. Oh, sometimes I just hate that man!’

So did I. In fact, if I’d known how to put a gong tau on him, I might have done it. Black magic curses are risky because they release dark energy, which always has consequences. But if it got rid of Bald Bernie Hemsworth it would be worth it.

It was as though I unleashed the curse on the man just by thinking about it. And of course there were consequences.



‘I took the office keys and unlocked the door yesterday before I left,’ Dolly said, as we walked around the Detective Shack to the Dungeon, as the building that stood behind it was known. She looked pleased with her cleverness.

‘You shouldn’t have! It’s dangerous. Anyone could have come in.’ I couldn’t believe this walking security risk now had my job.

‘Who on earth would want to? There’s nothing in here except papers. I didn’t want anyone to see the key wasn’t on the hook if they came in while we were still here.’

Before it had been turned into a storeroom for files, the Dungeon had housed the police holding cells. From the doorway there were three cells on the ground floor with three more stacked on top, reached by the narrow metal staircase that led up to a narrow railed walkway. One guard stationed at the desk by the door could keep an eye on all six cells. In the old days, especially after racial riots or football matches, they overflowed and drunks had been chained outside until they sobered up. Now the cells were crammed with metal shelves holding box files. But years of piss and vomit had left an odour overlaid by the stink of rat powder. As Dolly turned the handle and pulled open the heavy door, though, I smelt a new stench over the old familiar odours.

‘Wait, Dolly!’ It was the smell of recent death. A rat, I thought. A rat must have come in through the drains after cockroaches and eaten one of the poison pellets left along the walls. Or a crow had got in through the roof and died.

Dolly stood in the open doorway, blocking my view. ‘I hate coming in here. It’s so stuffy and dusty,’ she said, over her shoulder, as she groped for the electric light pull by the door. ‘And Sergeant Pillay keeps telling me there are ghosts of prisoners here. I don’t believe him, but when I’m inside here alone, I keep hearing things—’

Then she started screaming.

‘Oh, my God, there’s someone here! And I think he’s dead!’ Dolly flapped her hands, like a child in a panic. ‘Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go! Su Lin, what are you doing? Don’t touch him!’

Despite the smell, I knew we should confirm he was dead.

‘It’s Bald Bernie. He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Dolly squealed.

Bernard Hemsworth was slumped on the narrow wooden table to the left of the door with something tied tightly around his neck. He was facing us, and the tuft of hair normally pomaded to the bald patch on top of his head had fallen forward, covering his nose and one eye. The other eye bulged horribly out of a face that looked like a huge swelling bruise. A small patch on the back of his shirt suggested he had also been stabbed. There was not much blood.

Feeling light-headed, I put a hand on the wooden table for balance, felt a damp patch and jerked away. It was not blood, just the damp from a ring of condensation where a glass of something cold had stood for a while. There were two rings, so there had been two glasses, but they had gone.

‘Let’s just go! Nobody knows we’re here! We shouldn’t be here! Oh, the Indians are here! They’ve come here and killed him too!’

I must admit I was tempted to turn and leave. But there’s no point in running unless you have a chance of getting away. And I knew there was no way Dolly could keep quiet about finding Bernie Hemsworth’s body. Things would be much worse if it came out later that we had found the wretched man and done nothing.

I grabbed Dolly and pulled her out of the building, pushing the door shut behind us. ‘What Indians are you talking about? Who killed him? Who else did they kill?’

‘I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know!’ Her voice grew louder and shriller with each repetition.

‘Dolly, calm down. Go over to the HQ building. There’ll be a corporal on duty. Tell him what happened and to send someone over. I’ll wait here.’

There was always a corporal on duty at the twenty-four-hour desk in the Robinson Road Police Headquarters across the street.

‘I can’t! I can’t! I won’t know what to say! What if the Indians are hiding in there? This is so awful, Su Lin. How can Mr Hemsworth be dead?’

‘Then you stay here with the body while I go and report it.’

‘No! Don’t make me stop here with him! I can’t!’

Dolly was frighteningly easy to manipulate.

‘Just tell whoever is at the desk that you found a dead man. They’ll know what to do.’

‘Can’t you come with me, Su? I’m scared. What if they don’t speak English?’

‘It’s quite safe. It won’t take you five minutes. And they’ll speak English.’

I watched her cross the street. Sometimes I wondered if Dolly was smarter than all of us and laughing inside at how well she was fooling us. She always seemed to be hugging a secret to herself, and I knew she had managed to convince the late Bernie Hemsworth she had feelings for him, even as she laughed at him behind his back. It had been Sergeant Prakesh Pillay, with his sharp sense for people’s weaknesses, who had nicknamed him ‘Bald Bernie’. And Dolly had used it in her first panic.

My stomach heaved – I tasted bile – but luckily it was empty. I shut my eyes. I could still see the horror of that swollen dark red face. But my dislike of the man remained undiminished by his death. Bald Bernie had cost me my job at the Detective Shack.

Bernard Hemsworth had come to Singapore’s Detective and Intelligence Unit as an adviser from the Home Office, appointed by Colonel Mosley-Partington. I was introduced as Chief Inspector Le Froy’s secretarial assistant and cultural liaison, and he questioned me extensively on what I did. He would have made a good administrator. He was almost as particular about details and precision as I was, and I was impressed by what he knew of filing and cross-referencing systems. At first, I actually liked him. Then he’d said that an unqualified local girl should not have access to sensitive police documents, and I’d suspected he wanted my job for himself.

At first Bernie announced a Miss Radley would take over my post, but Dolly Darling had turned up instead. According to Sergeant Pillay, Bald Bernie hung around in the Detective Shack with Dolly all day, the two of them chatting as the work piled up.

I had stayed close by, asking Prakesh for updates, because back then I naively thought Bernie was trying to show Dolly how the work should be done. And that, once he realised no one (certainly not Dolly Darling!) could manage the accounts and filing as well as I could, he would apologise to me and give me my job back. Yes, I am incredibly stupid at times.

Dolly being stupid didn’t really matter. She was a pretty girl with reddish hair and brown eyes, who frankly admitted, ‘I’m thick!’ Her gaiety and high spirits made her an agreeable office decoration because, of course, she was white.

But I liked Dolly. She had come to suggest that, since she now had my job, I might be interested in taking over the freelance typing and shorthand she had been doing for Mrs Lexington, with whom she boarded. Catherine Lexington ran a freelance secretarial service for offices and businessmen who didn’t have their own assistants in Singapore.

When we’d first met, Mrs Lexington was so agreeable that I guessed the suggestion had originated with her. If so, she definitely got the better deal when she exchanged Dolly for me. I was probably the fastest, most accurate typist and shorthand stenographer in Singapore and Johor. Dolly might be earnest and willing to please but, try as she might, she was never competent at anything she undertook, probably because she was so easily distracted.

It benefited me, too, because Mrs Lexington was soon paying me double what I had earned at the Detective Shack.

But if all I’d wanted to do was make money, I would have asked my grandmother, Chen Tai, to arrange for me to marry into a business I could expand. With her backing, Uncle Chen’s black-market connections and the ability they had cultivated in me to assess people and investments, I could have made a success of any husband or business. Or I could have gone back to Chen Mansion and helped Chen Tai run her own businesses. After all, that was why she had sent me to English school.

And my newly launched writing career was taking off.

During the Great Depression, advertising revenue had decreased and many newspapers and magazines survived only by firing reporters. So hiring freelancers, especially out east, made sense. Recently I had been a regular contributor to several syndicated columns, writing as ‘Ascanio in Alba’, after the Mozart opera on scratchy vinyl records in the Mission Centre. As Ascanio, I had developed a small but faithful following. Being based in the Far East, I could express myself more freely than British writers on politics and such sensitive topics as government relief efforts and unemployment, provided I made clear I was talking about the situation in Singapore. Of course, what happened in the far reaches of the British Empire reflected what was happening in Britain.

To make things even more promising, Henry R. Luce, founder of the American news magazine Time, had just founded Life, a magazine devoted to photojournalism. And I could use a camera.

But working for Chief Inspector Le Froy had felt a step closer to my dream of becoming an investigative reporter, like Henrietta Stackpole, the American journalist in Henry James’s novel, The Portrait of a Lady. It wasn’t the same, writing political and sociological pieces. And there was no guarantee the work would last. Pip’s Squeaks, the previous column I’d submitted pieces to, had been cancelled after one of the other ‘Pips’ was arrested in Germany for spreading false propaganda.

‘But Daniel Eisen is an Englishman writing for an American paper!’ I had protested in disbelief.

‘He is an Englishman with a Jewish surname,’ Le Froy pointed out, ‘These days, that’s as dangerous as attending the secret meeting of the wrong clan association.’

I knew Le Froy had gatecrashed more than one clan association and survived, though he never spoke of it. He was the reason why the underground triads in Singapore coexisted relatively peacefully. But it was true things were getting worse in the world beyond us.

It shouldn’t have been surprising. Never believe things are getting better, my grandmother always said. Modern innovations only make industrialists and bankers rich. Poor people traded the land that supported them for money and promises, but no guarantees, of paid employment. An old farmer can still rear freshwater prawns and catfish, and grow enough vegetables to eat and exchange for charcoal, cigarettes and rice wine. Trees on his land will produce even more bananas, mangoes and rambutans for his grandchildren than they did for his children. But the old factory worker? She is kicked out of the door once she can no longer keep up with the assembly line.

It was these things I wrote about, as well as Amelia Earhart trying to fly around the world, and the Japanese Army marching into China. And, yes, now I wanted to write about what had happened to Bernard Hemsworth.

I took out my notebook and sat on the stone step. I didn’t lean against the door because the knowledge of what was on the other side twisted my guts. My back and hip hurt – childhood polio had left me with one leg shorter than the other so walking or standing for any length of time hurts.

I took out the little glass bottle of Tiger Balm lotion I always carried and rubbed it on my aching muscles, reaching under the thin cotton of my samfoo. The soothing heat brought relief and I took out my notebook to record what I had seen in the Dungeon.

It’s no use seeing without taking notes, or your brain adjusts your memories to match your beliefs, and you may as well be a bug on a tree shifting around to follow your shadow. Once I observe my movement and the passage of sunlight, though, I’m an observer and a scientist: a human being reporting, if only to myself, my observations and deductions. Even if, despite the appreciation of Mrs Lexington and her clients, they saw me as no more than a crippled native who could type.

I looked across the street to the police building. Dolly had disappeared inside. Surely someone would be over soon. The sky was lightening to grey and I could see people walking and cycling to work between the cars, trishaws and road-sweepers.

Why was it taking so long? What was Dolly doing?

‘Miss Chen?’

A voice cut into my thoughts. I yelped, startled, and tried to struggle to my feet, scattering my notebook and pencil.

I hadn’t seen Constable Kwok Kan Seng coming across the street. He must have circled around from the side door of the main police building and crossed further up to come around the back of the Dungeon in case anyone was lurking there.

That was smart of him. I was annoyed that the thought hadn’t occurred to me. If someone had been hiding behind the Dungeon watching us, I could have been dead now.

‘Bald Bernie’s dead? You must be joking. Don’t raise my hopes!’ Constable Kwok said lightly, as he helped me up and handed me my things. I saw his eyes darting around, taking in the shadows surrounding us. And his right hand remained on the hilt of his revolver.

‘Inside there,’ I said. ‘He is.’

I didn’t follow him in.

The sole pride and joy of a widowed mother and grandmother, Constable Kwok was the sweetest-natured and sweetest-looking young man you can imagine. Even hardened gangsters teasingly addressed him as leng zai or ‘pretty boy’ and told him to marry their daughters so they would have grandchildren as cute as he was.

It said something for Bald Bernie that he had managed to antagonise even Constable Kwok.



‘The address on my registration papers is my grandmother’s house in East Coast Road, but right now I’m staying at my uncle’s shop in town,’ I explained. ‘Eighty-one South Canal Road.’

I didn’t add that until three months ago I had been living in the little attic-storeroom above Le Froy’s office, where Dolly and I were now being interviewed.

Le Froy knew, of course, but said nothing. It was Colonel Mosley-Partington who was questioning Dolly and me over the discovery of Bernie Hemsworth’s body that morning. . .