Chapter Eleven

Day Four: Tuesday Evening

MEI

I phoned Eugene to ask him if he knew who might have framed Andy. "When Andy was drunk, did he ever do anything to upset anyone? Something he might not remember doing?"

"Well you know Andy can be a bit xiao when he’s drunk, but most of the time he’s sort of idiot-xiao rather than violent-xiao. Most of the time, people just laugh at him. Nobody really gets angry with him or anything. I don’t think he upset anyone."

"What about the punters? Did any of them have something against Andy?"

"No. Andy didn’t even talk to them very much."

"Eugene, why you so stupid? How come you let Andy get involved with those type of people in the first place?"

"What sort of people?"

"Bookies. Criminals."

"I don’t know. Maybe because it was illegal. Singapore is just so boring. You know how it’s like. Remember when we were young, we were always out looking for crime, playing detectives. We were so desperate to get involved in something illegal, something thrilling. You know, crime equals excitement. I thought, maybe if I hung out with the bookies, they’d be loads of macho stuff. You know, I’d get to carry a switchblade in my back pocket and run down alleyways, chase cars, escape through secret trap doors. They’d be secret society rites, blood vows, tattoos, passwords, the works."

"And did you get to do any of that?"

"No. Being a bookie is just like… business. You know, you make phone calls, count money, do sums, it was like being an accountant, it was like work. And so I thought, why get thrown in jail for this? If I’m in Holland, helping out my family’s restaurant business, I’ll get the car, the Rolex, the terrace house with the pond and the swans. I’ll be making more money than I know what to do with. There’s no point in staying in Singapore, running this betting business, running the risk of getting arrested. It’s not worth it. It’s not even interesting. But how did the police arrest Andy? Tell me. It must have been quite exciting."

I sighed.

"But how come the police go and catch Andy?" Eugene said, "He didn’t go and write anything down right? If you’ve got nothing written down, they can’t catch you. I told him so many times not to write anything down, but he never listens to me."

"Andy didn’t write any of his bets down." I told him about the filofax.

"Are the police going after the people in the filofax as well?"

"I don’t know."

"How come Andy had the filofax?"

"He has no idea. He says he’d never seen the filofax before in his life. Someone must have planted it."

"Why didn’t they arrest the other bookies? How come they only arrested Andy?"

"When the police raided his flat, Andy was the only one there."

"How come? The punters always go and meet at his flat every Saturday night. Why yesterday they suddenly didn’t go?"

"Andy called off the betting house."

"Why?"

"He’s been born again."

"No. As in ‘born-again Christian’?"

"Yes."

"No."

I didn’t say anything.

"Since when?" Eugene said.

"Last week."

"Shit. How did that happen?"

"I took Andy to Haw Par Villa. We had a long talk and he decided to become a Christian. I told him that he couldn’t be a Christian and gamble at the same time, so he shut the betting house."

"But how do the police know that the filofax belongs to Andy? Didn’t they dust the filofax for fingerprints?"

"No."

"Why the police so stupid? Isn’t that like normal police procedure, dusting for prints?" Eugene said, "Even we thought of dusting for prints when we were detectives."

I remembered Eugene throwing the lead powder all over Mrs Lam’s furniture.

"Dusting for fingerprints might be really important in Enid Blyton books, but in real life, they don’t actually do it that often. There wasn’t any reason why they should have dusted for prints. Andy was the only one in the flat, the police found the filofax in his flat, and so they thought it belonged to Andy," I said, "Who would benefit if Andy was arrested? Would some bookie make more money if they set up the betting house at his place?"

"No."

"Why would anyone want to frame Andy then?"

Eugene thought hard for a while. "Uh, maybe one of the punters was arrested by the police. Maybe on another charge. Maybe he cut a deal with the police - you know, set Andy up in exchange for a lighter sentence."

"Do you have anyone in mind?"

"Loong. He got arrested in a raid along with a couple of other bookies."

"When was that?"

"About a month ago."

"I’ll go to my office and see if I can dig up any clippings on his arrest. See if he got off with an unusually light sentence. If he did, then we’ll have something to work on."