Kappa Quartet Read online

  “Who was in the taxi at the time?” asked Madam Lim.

  “No passengers,” I said. “Just the driver, a Mr Yong. I managed to make a few calls and obtain his details, his home address included.”

  “What for?” asked Ms Neo. “Did you pay him a visit?”

  I nodded. “Yes I did, Ms Neo.”

  Her eyebrows were raised. “But why, Mr Haruhito? Do you actually think the driver might have something to do with Mr Lim?”

  I shifted in my seat.

  “No, to be honest. I did not. By the time Mr Lim entered the tunnel that day and saw the taxi with his own two eyes, the driver, of course, was long gone. If anything, the connection between Mr Lim and Mr Yong was a tenuous one. But it was a connection I still had to establish and enquire into.

  “According to the driver’s details, he lives in a public housing estate situated along Sengkang East Way, about a hundred metres or so from the nearest train station. His apartment is located on the ninth floor. When I went there I found him and his son-in-law hoisting a brand new flat-screen television through the door.

  “I asked the middle-aged man if he was Mr Yong. He said that he was. He then asked me in turn who I was, and what business I wanted with him, and I told him I was there to investigate how his taxi had caught fire. His son-in-law then asked if I was a representative from the taxi company. I told him I wasn’t; I was a private consultant, hired by both the management and the taxi manufacturers to get to the bottom of the case, so that no incidents of this nature might occur again. I then showed them my card.

  “‘Your name,’ said Mr Yong. ‘Haruhito Daisuke. So you’re Japanese?’ I then bowed, and told him that I was. Mr Yong then rushed his son-in-law into the apartment and told me to follow him inside. I did.

  “At first glance, Mr Yong’s apartment didn’t seem to possess anything particularly remarkable—that is, until he led me to a modest-looking piano, where a number of framed photographs had been arranged across the top in a neat row. He said to me, ‘Come, come, Mr Haruhito. I need to show you something. There,’ he explained, ‘are pictures of my hiking trip last year. Eighteenth of November.’

  “‘I see,’ I said to him. A closer look told me that the hiking trip seemed to have taken place in a rainforest of some sort, and that he wasn’t the only one involved in the trip. Among the faces, I discovered, was the face of his son-in-law, who at the time was busy unplugging the television that was to be replaced. I asked Mr Yong why he felt compelled to show me these pictures.

  “‘Because,’ Mr Yong explained, ‘we were in the very middle of MacRitchie Reservoir, in search of a lost shrine.’ A shrine? I asked him, and he told me that it wasn’t any old shrine: it was a shrine built by the Japanese in 1942, during their occupation in the Second World War. The Japanese demolished it in 1945, following their surrender to the British forces, but its remains still stand in the middle of the reservoir. The name of the shrine was Syonan Jinja.” I turned to Ms Neo. “Have you ever heard of this shrine, Ms Neo?”

  She didn’t answer for a while. “Yes, Mr Haruhito,” she said. “I have. Unfortunately the place is now in ruins. There remains nothing special about the shrine.”

  “I see. And you, Madam Lim?” I asked. “Have you heard of this shrine before?”

  “No,” said Madam Lim, shaking her head. “This is the first time I’ve ever heard of such a thing. Frankly I’m surprised the government hasn’t turned it into a tourist spot or something.”

  “Hmm.” I had ordered iced lemon tea for the three of us, and took a quick sip from my glass. “It appears that Mr Yong agreed with Ms Neo’s sentiment. In spite of the sensationalism that might surround the existence of a ‘lost shrine’, it was nothing but a few steps on a stairway, terraced into the side of a small hill, leading up to the foundation of what had once been the shrine itself. He then showed me photos of what used to be a wide bridge, spanning a river, and how they had to circumnavigate it in order to access the ruins. There was another photo of Mr Yong’s son-in-law, washing his face in the pool of a small bath by the side of the shrine. The only remarkable thing about the place was how moss had covered everything, and how, in spite of the mosquitoes, there was a freshness to the air he could never quite breathe outside of the reservoir. ‘It’s the trees,’ said Mr Yong: ‘Nature’s lungs.’ But that is all there was to the shrine.”

  Madam Lim blinked. “Nothing more?”

  “Nothing more,” I replied. “Nothing but a blank slate, where a building used to stand.”

  She turned to Ms Neo. “Do you sense that there could be more to this shrine thing?”

  Ms Neo shook her head. “I doubt it. Even the connection between Mr Yong and the shrine is, to use your word, tenuous. If he had gone there in the third week of November, that would mean there was, what, five months between the shrine visit and the explosion?”

  “It wasn’t an explosion, Ms Neo. The taxi merely caught fire,” I said.

  “Well, it certainly was dramatic, Mr Haruhito,” said Ms Neo. “I’ve seen a video of it. There was black smoke everywhere; nobody could see a thing from inside their cars. Did you ask the driver how he felt about the accident?”

  “I did,” I said. “Till this day, Mr Yong still doesn’t fully understand how it happened. One moment he was driving, the next he realised that the hood was on fire.”

  “Was he frightened?”

  “At first. On hindsight, however, he felt relieved. He felt very glad it happened.”

  Madam Lim frowned. “Why?”

  “He said that compared to his hiking adventures, driving a taxi was horrible. There was no life in it whatsoever. All he did was go through the motions; day in and day out, driving down the same roads in the hope that somebody might flag him down for a trip to who-knows-where. Whenever he was stuck in a jam he’d look at the cars beside him, and see that their drivers were just as numb and bored and witless as he was. And whenever he drove down a tunnel in an expressway, he felt as though he had lost all control over himself, all sense of his limbs and his motions and his actions.”

  “Why’s that?” asked Madam Lim.

  “Do you drive?” I asked her.

  “I do,” she said. “As a single parent, I have no choice.”

  “What do you do when you drive through a tunnel, Madam Lim?”

  She blinked. “You just—drive.”

  “And what can you not do?”

  A look of realisation came over her face. “You can’t stop.”

  I nodded. “Every time Mr Yong drives into a tunnel, he imagines the tunnel as something that never stops, as though the tunnel is longer than it actually is. Every time he comes out of a tunnel he feels a sense of release.”

  “Are those his exact words?” Ms Neo asked.

  “More or less,” I said.

  For the next minute or so, the conversation came to a halt. I had nothing more to say. I took a sip from my glass of iced tea, which seemed to prompt a sigh from Madam Lim. She was pinching the bridge of her nose once more when she asked what my next step was.

  “My next step, Madam Lim? I might have to conduct a second interview with your son.”

  “That’s fine,” she said. “I’ll let him know when I get back home.” She stood up from her chair, and slung her leather handbag over her shoulder. “I have to be home for dinner anyway; Kevin texted me during the afternoon to say he had a half-day off.” She turned to her companion. “Would you like me to drive you to the nearest station?”

  “It’s fine,” said Ms Neo. She gave me a look. “I’d like to have a few more words with Mr Haruhito, if you don’t mind.”

  “All right then,” said Madam Lim. She placed two ten-dollar notes on the table. “Thanks for the meeting. And for everything you’ve done, as well.” Madam Lim then turned and left the bakery.

  I took another sip of iced lemon tea and placed the glass back down. Now that it was just me and Ms Neo, I felt more inclined to express what I really thought about the case of Mr Lim’s s
oul. But I also felt it was important, especially in cases like these, not to utter the first word. I interlaced my fingers on my lap and merely waited for Ms Neo to say something. Ms Neo, in return, got up from her seat and sat in Madam Lim’s chair.

  We were now seated directly opposite one another. One person’s gaze became inevitably locked into the other’s. In an exceptionally calm and even voice, she said, “I suppose the most interesting thing about the cab driver is the parallel he drew between the reservoir and the tunnel. Wouldn’t you agree, Mr Haruhito?”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “It is a rather subtle link, Ms Neo.”

  There was a brief pause of a few seconds. She then said to me, “You know that Mr Lim couldn’t possibly have lost his soul on the twenty-fourth of April.”

  “No, he could not,” I said in return. “To my knowledge, it’s possible to have your soul stolen, extracted, even disposed of. It’s impossible, however, to lose it. No loss of autonomy or self-control will ever be enough to lose something so precious.”

  “But you know his soul couldn’t have been stolen or extracted either,” said Ms Neo. “Disposal is possible, yes—but theft, no. Petty crimes of that sort don’t happen in Singapore, Mr Haruhito.”

  “So why would you say, Ms Neo, that Mr Lim had lost his soul? Was it to appease the mother?”

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “And what about me, Ms Neo? Why lie?”

  “I wasn’t sure of the truth.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “And yet a part of me believes you are certain of what has happened to this young man. The only thing holding you back right now is fear.”

  She looked away. She shifted her gaze to a corner of the table. “It is my belief,” said Ms Neo, “that he never had a soul in the first place.”

  “Indeed.” I reached for my glass. With my straw, I quickly tipped an ice cube into my mouth, and began to crush it between my teeth. I leant back in my chair. After I was done with the ice, I told her I was fifty-eight years old, and went on to ask Ms Neo how old she was this year. “Twenty-seven,” came her reply.

  “And how long have you been in the profession?”

  “Three years.”

  “Three years!” I said. “You’ve learnt more in three than I have in ten, Ms Neo. And you’re merely a year younger than my own daughter.”

  A small smile played on her lips. “Thank you, Mr Haruhito.”

  I leant my body forward. “You must understand that this is a very Singaporean situation,” I said to Ms Neo. “Where I come from, people don’t last very long after they have had their souls stolen or extracted. What begins is a process of decay, and whether it takes a day, a month, or even a year depends entirely on the person’s constitution. The same goes for suicide: in some cases, the disposal of one’s soul causes instantaneous death, while in others the body never goes away completely—but even then, the damage to one’s soul is permanent. But tell me, Ms Neo: what happens when a person is born without a soul? What would you call that person?”

  “There’s no name for that kind of person,” Ms Neo replied. “Such persons tend to result in stillbirths, or miscarriages.”

  “Alas,” I said. “And yet in Singapore, it appears that if one is born without a soul, one manages to live, nevertheless. One continues to live in spite of its absence.”

  “Hmm. That certainly seems to be the case, Mr Haruhito.” She then redirected her gaze to my eyes. I looked back into hers and did not waver. “You probably think I shouldn’t have had to enlist the help of a Japanese specialist,” she said. “But I believe you already know the reason why.”

  I merely maintained my smile. “I do, Ms Neo. It appears that Mr Lim might have caught something during his recent trip to Japan last December. Something only a person without a soul could catch.”

  Ms Neo tilted her head to the side. “What did he catch?” she asked.

  “The seed of a desire,” I replied. “Do you know what a shirikodama is, Ms Neo?”

  “I think so,” she said.

  “It is said to contain the essence of one’s soul. It is also said to resemble a small bead, nestled deep in one’s anus. This,” I stressed to her, “is a particular belief held amongst a subset of Japanese people: that the anus is the centre of the soul.”

  “And thus the taxi.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It is possible, Ms Neo, that when Mr Lim saw the burnt remains of Mr Yong’s taxi inside the Kampong Java tunnel, a part of his subconscious flared into being, like an animal approaching a surface of water, encountering its own reflection for the first time. A part of him thus became self-aware, allowing that seed he had caught in Japan to take root and grow. And now he is on a hunt.”

  “For a soul?” she asked.

  “Not now,” I said, “not necessarily. But eventually.”

  Ms Neo nodded. She looked away again. At that point I felt a deep sense of satisfaction, as though my work here was more or less done; there were no solutions, but at least there was an understanding. I reached over to my glass of iced tea in one final attempt to drain it down. Ms Neo let out a sigh.

  “Mr Haruhito,” she said. “Would you like to grab a drink with me? I believe the both of us could do with a break.”

  I set my glass down and smiled. “It would be my honour, Ms Neo.”

  She took me to Holland Village, where we each ordered a beer at a bar. There were many other bars there, crowded along a single street, but the atmosphere was nice. It reminded me of the Shinsen area, but bigger. Ms Neo and I shared a single table on the sidewalk, and we sat on upholstered wooden stools. In the middle of a table was an ashtray full of cigarette butts.

  “So,” said Ms Neo, her voice raised over the volume of the bar’s music. “You said something about a daughter?”

  I nodded. “Her name is Kawako,” I said, keeping my voice low.

  “And how is she? How is she doing?”

  I smiled. “I don’t know, Ms Neo. I honestly don’t know. She perplexes me, sometimes.”

  Ms Neo frowned. “Why’s that?”

  I shook my head. I thought it would take me a lot longer to reply to Ms Neo’s question, but the truth was that I’d had my answer ready for a while now. “All of us are bound to go down our own separate paths,” I said. “It took too long for me to realise that my daughter and I were never on the same one to begin with. She strayed away from me a long time ago.”

  Ms Neo grimaced. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “It’s fine,” I replied. “She lost her mother when she was very young; they barely even got to know each other. Since then, I’ve realised that her mother was always the better parent.”

  Ms Neo asked how old she was. I said, “Kawako, or her mother?” and Ms Neo shrugged. “Both?”

  I rubbed my hands together. “Her mother was twenty-nine when she passed away. Kawako was around three or four at the time.”

  Ms Neo took a drink from her beer. She asked me what had happened, and I continued staring at my hands.

  “Her mother had something very precious, embedded deep inside her being. It was a very rare thing—it was terribly, terribly bright—and someone came and took it away.”

  Ms Neo looked confused. “‘Someone’?”

  I nodded. “You know of kappas, don’t you?”

  She nodded back.

  “Then I have nothing more to add,” I said. I then decided to switch the topic. “Tell me about yourself, please.”

  She smiled. It was a sad kind of smile.

  “Me?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “You.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr Haruhito,” she said. “But there’s nothing special about me.”

  I didn’t dare to believe her. “Are you sure, Ms Neo? Everybody has a story.”

  She shook her head. Ms Neo had a pained look in her eyes; it was the same look Kawako had given me, during that visit to my office. She said to me, “My story was over a long time ago, Mr Haruhito. Somewhere there is a b
ook, and in it I am a character. A few pages later I am nowhere to be seen.”

  •

  It was half past one in the morning when I received a call from Madam Lim. “Kevin’s gone,” she said. I asked her to tell me what had happened—but all she said was that he’d disappeared. “All of his things are still in his room—even his keys, his wallet, his phone. But he’s gone, Mr Haruhito. Completely.”

  Madam Lim picked us up at Holland Village, and drove under our directions. Ms Neo knew the quickest way to the Kampong Java tunnel, and got Madam Lim to pull over to the side. It was just like what her son had described to me: the vastness of space, the empty roads, as well as the sheer incredulity of the situation. I couldn’t help but sway on the balls of my feet as the hot wind buffeted around us, whipping us about. I held on to Madam Lim, and she held on to me.

  We didn’t exactly know what we were searching for. All we could do was keep walking, keeping our eyes peeled for the smallest of details. Eventually we came upon a door, carved into the tunnel wall; it seemed to be designed for emergency purposes, like a fire access of sorts, although none of us knew where the door really led. Was it a storage shed? Power control? It was perfectly camouflaged, coated in the same yellow-grey colour of the concrete. We would never have found it, if it hadn’t been left ever so slightly ajar. We prised the door open.

  The young man was seated on a chair, in what seemed to be a perfectly empty room. A single light bulb hung over his figure. A desk might have been here before, even shelves. All I could see were the traces of things that could have been, furniture that might have once existed. Now the only thing left in the room was Mr Lim, his eyes staring straight ahead. There was just a slight flicker in his eyes as he registered the three of us, standing uncertainly before him.

  To say that he was different would be an understatement. It would be more accurate to say that he had transformed into something else altogether. He was still noticeably Mr Lim, with his slight figure and shaggy dark hair—but his skin was now perfectly white and flecked, very curiously, by spots of black. A number of things began to connect in my mind as I spotted a pair of gills, flapping at the sides of his neck, as well as a small set of whiskers, hanging from his cheeks. As his mother stepped forward, not quite believing what was seated before her eyes, I caught a slight twitch in his lips. I realised that the strange clicking sound in the room was, in fact, a quiet, sucking noise.