Chapter 29
29
Renee insisted on walking Ket Siong to the station in the morning. He put up some resistance, but not much. He wasn’t ready to say goodbye to her yet.
Their route took them down a street lined with elegant nineteenth-century buildings. There weren’t many other people around, early on a Friday morning, so Ket Siong took note of the guy walking behind them. He was in a light grey puffer jacket and jeans, with a bulky cross-body bag slung over a shoulder. Asian, but what kind of Asian was hard to tell, thanks to the cap pulled low over his face.
Ket Siong wasn’t in a temper to pay attention to anything that wasn’t Renee, but it struck him that there was something vaguely familiar about the man. They’d passed the Zambian High Commission and the Korean Consulate when he worked out where he’d seen the guy before.
There had been a man in a light-coloured puffer and a cap, with a cross-body bag, in Hyde Park yesterday. Ket Siong had passed him just before he’d seen what had turned out to be Renee, hunkered down on the path.
There began to be, in Ket Siong’s mind, something that was not quite suspicion, but the hazy outline of a question mark.
He turned his head to slide a look at the man out of the corner of his eye. The man sped up, overtaking Ket Siong and Renee on the pavement.
Something about this, and the way the man was holding his shoulders, solidified Ket Siong’s growing suspicion.
“Excuse me,” he said.
Renee glanced up at him, surprised.
The man’s pace quickened.
Ket Siong raised his voice. “Excuse me.” He let go of Renee’s hand, taking a step towards the man.
The man broke into a run.
Ket Siong did not pause to think about what he should do next. He lunged after him. But the man had about a yard on Ket Siong, and he was fast, despite the bag bumping on his back. He pelted down the street, running flat out.
Ket Siong was at risk of losing him, when a van pulled out of a driveway ahead of them. The man checked, stumbling. That delayed him just enough for Ket Siong to get close. He threw himself at the man and they went down together.
The man jarred his shoulder against the pavement, swearing fruitily in Cantonese. His accent sounded Malaysian, but Ket Siong had assumed it would.
“Why were you following me?” he said, in the same language. “Who are you?”
“Motherfucker! Are you crazy or what?” said the man. “I’m not following you. Who the hell are you? Get off me!”
He tried to throw Ket Siong off. Ket Siong slammed him back to the ground and said, “I saw you last night, at Hyde Park.”
“So what if I was at Hyde Park?” said the man belligerently. “Are you the only person who’s allowed to go to Hyde Park?”
Renee caught up with them, looking alarmed. “Are you OK? What’s going on?”
Ket Siong switched to English for her benefit.
“If you weren’t following me,” he said, “why run away when I called after you?”
The man glowered. “Let go!”
“I’ll let you go if you answer me,” said Ket Siong. “Who told you to follow me?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Was it Low Teck Wee?” Another possibility occurred to Ket Siong, far more disturbing. “Are you Special Branch?”
Ket Siong would have expected this to elicit a furious denial, if it was anywhere near to the truth. The man’s expression was reassuring: he merely looked baffled.
“Special Branch?” he said. His eyes flicked to Renee. “Special Branch also wants to follow you? For what?”
“What’s in your bag?” said Renee.
The bag was under the man’s body. Ket Siong hadn’t thought to look in it. There was a minor scuffle while he remedied the oversight.
“Don’t break!” said the man. “It’s expensive!”
“Camera,” said Ket Siong. It was a serious one, too. Ket Siong could imagine it would record decent footage, even in a park at night.
“Thought so,” said Renee. She folded her arms, turning on the man a coolly assessing gaze, like that of a gardener who has come across a particularly unpleasant slug.
Ket Siong had seen versions of this look on Renee’s face before, mostly when she was discussing Andrew or her brothers. He found himself disturbingly into it.
“Who was it who hired you?” said Renee. “Goh Su Beng, or Goh Su Khoon?”
“Who are you?” said the man. “Why so many people want to follow you? Are you famous or what?”
“Tell us, and he’ll let you go,” said Renee. “Otherwise, we can all go to the police station together. Stalking is a crime, you know.”
The man opened his mouth. Renee said, “And if we have a look at what’s on that camera, it might be hard for you to argue you haven’t been following us.”
“The client won’t give me their name,” said the man sulkily. “You think they’re so stupid?”
“Somebody has to be making the arrangements,” said Renee. “Is it a lady called Jessie Chan?”
The man scoffed. “You really think everybody wants to know your business—”
“Or Penny Ooi?”
The man’s expression froze. After a moment, he said, “I won’t tell you anything. You let me go, or I’ll call the police.”
“It’s OK,” said Renee to Ket Siong. “You can let him up. I know who it is now.”
“Who’s Penny Ooi?”
“Su Khoon’s PA,” said Renee. She passed a hand over her face, sighing. “Here I was, thinking we were getting along better.”
Ket Siong considered the situation. “Should I take the camera?”
“It’s fine,” said Renee. “It’s not like there’s going to be anything on there that’s going to make a difference to anything.” She shook her head, wry. “My brother’s problem is he can never predict what I’m going to do. What I’m planning is going to piss Dad off more than any blackmail material he could come up with.”
Ket Siong got off their follower. The guy stood up, shook himself, glared at Ket Siong and stomped off, back the way they came.
“I’ll have to tell Dragan to keep an eye out for him,” said Renee.
“Do you think…” Ket Siong hesitated. “Your brother wouldn’t do anything worse.”
“Oh, he wouldn’t hire someone to hurt me. Not physically,” said Renee. “Not unless I really pissed him off. Don’t worry.”
Ket Siong did not find this reassuring. He wished he hadn’t let her come out with him.
“I can hear you worrying,” said Renee. “That’s a direct contradiction of orders.”
When he didn’t smile back, she said, “Look, I’ll take a cab home from the station if it really bothers you. Are you sure you’re OK?”
She checked him over, brushing his shoulders to rid them of some microscopic contamination, visible only to her. He found himself relaxing under her touch, despite himself.
“Are you OK?” he said.
Renee shrugged. “I’m fine.” She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “It makes me feel better, in a way. I was feeling bad about what I’m going to do—you know, with the Freshview deal. My brother agreed to work with me in good faith, and I’m about to turn around and blow that all up.”
It was important not to criticise Renee’s family to her. She would only feel obliged to defend them.
But Ket Siong couldn’t let this pass.
“As I recall,” he said, “he agreed to work with you after it turned out he couldn’t blackmail you. After you caught him with his mistress.”
“I think she was just a hookup,” said Renee. “It’s OK. Really. I’ve always known what my brothers are like. It’s not a shock, like if your brother did something like this to you. You guys actually trust each other.”
A woman in running gear jogged past them, her face pink and set. Across the road, two men got out of a van and started extracting a ladder and buckets of paint from the back. Ket Siong put his arms around Renee, slightly tentative. He wasn’t sure yet how she felt about public displays of affection.
She was stiff at first, her shoulders locked with tension. Ket Siong was about to release her, step back to give her space. But all of a sudden Renee melted into the embrace, turning her face into his chest.
“I’m so stupid,” she said, in a low voice. He had to strain to catch the words. “I don’t know why I keep setting myself up for this, every time.”
Ket Siong wished they were somewhere private. He needed to go home. Before falling asleep the night before, he’d remembered to text Ket Hau not to expect him back, but he hadn’t supplied a reason. Ma would be worrying. And he had classes to teach, later that day.
But left to himself, he would have turned around and gone back to Renee’s flat with her. He didn’t want to let her go. The appearance of Su Khoon’s hired man had broken the unthinking optimism to which he had woken that morning. It seemed now all too likely that something would go wrong, that someone would snatch Renee away from him, shatter this extraordinary happiness.
“Why don’t I walk you home?” said Ket Siong. “It would only take a few minutes.”
Renee shook her head. “I said I’d walk you to the station and I’m going to.” She drew back, wiping her eyes. “If I let my family stop me from living my life, I might as well give up now. They’re never going to change. I can’t let them intimidate me.”
This was admirable, in principle. In practice, Ket Siong would have liked to pack Renee up and keep her somewhere safe.
Renee slipped her hand into his. “Come on, let’s keep walking. I’ve got a call at half nine. Trying to resolve this supplier nightmare we’ve got.”
Ket Siong wavered, but the reference to her work got him moving, as Renee had probably known it would.
“Tell me,” she said, “what’s up with all this chasing people down? Seems a strange hobby for a classical pianist. Did you do a stint at a police academy or something?”
“I got into martial arts after I went back home. I used to go with Stephen.”
“What kind of martial arts?” Renee brightened. “Could you teach me? I’ve always fancied being able to kill someone with my bare hands.”
Ket Siong frowned. “It’s not really about that.”
Renee glanced at her phone.
“We’ve got ten minutes before we get there,” she said. “Tell me what it’s about.”