Waiting for Venus - A Novel , livre ebook

Marshall Cavendish International - Robert Cooper

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179 pages

English

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Singapore University Campus, 1980. Professor Bernard Fox is found hanging from his overhead fan. Everything points to suicide except for one thing: if Bernard hanged himself, how did he turn on the fan? The autopsy shows the professor had consumed enough tranquillizers to sedate but not to kill. But if he were sedated and murdered, why would his murderer turn on the fan? The turning fan prompts an investigation takes us into the turbulent history of Singapore's birth as a nation, uncovers a search for World War II treasure and exposes a second-generation thirst for revenge. A murder mystery wrapped in history and unfolded within a love story.

Informations

Publié par	Marshall Cavendish International
Date de parution	11 mars 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789814974271
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0450€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Tom Haddock, the story s main character, is the hilarious English equivalent of Agatha Christie s Poirot, as he stumbles through each twist and turn of the murder investigation. Witty, intriguing, with a tongue-in-cheek caricature of life in 1980s Singapore, Waiting for Venus is a page-turner. Beneath it runs a parallel story of the country s history and its people.
- CHAN LING YAP, author of Where the Sunrise is Red and the Sweet Offerings quadrilogy
Vengeance and Love are merely items on Tom s anthropology curriculum until the deceptively cosy covers of campus life are drawn back to reveal dormant hostilities fermenting since WWII and ripe for resolution ... and love must wait. Great interplay between realistic characters, episodes of laugh-out-loud humour, well paced and so well written the pages seem to turn themselves.
- COLIN COTTERILL, author of the Dr Siri series of murder mysteries
It s David Lodge meets J.G. Farrell: a dead professor, a guileless narrator, and a compelling window into wartime and postcolonial Singapore. University politics were rarely more entertaining - or deadly. Robert Cooper s book will keep you guessing (and reading) to the very end.
- SIMON CHESTERMAN, author of I, Huckleberry and the Raising Arcadia trilogy
WAITING FOR VENUS

2021 Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte Ltd
Text Robert Cooper
Published in 2021 by Marshall Cavendish Editions
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International

All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Requests for permission should be addressed to the Publisher, Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited, 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196. Tel: (65) 6213 9300. E-mail: genref@sg.marshallcavendish.com Website: www.marshallcavendish.com
The publisher makes no representation or warranties with respect to the contents of this book, and specifically disclaims any implied warranties or merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose, and shall in no event be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
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National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data
Name(s): Cooper, Robert George.
Title: Waiting for Venus / Robert Cooper.
Description: Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2021.
Identifier(s): OCN 1236386447 | E-ISBN 978 981 4974 27 1
Subject(s): LCSH: Murder-Investigation-Fiction. | Revenge-Fiction. |
Singapore-History-20th century-Fiction.
Classification: DDC 823.92-dc23
Printed in Singapore
To my 5 Ts
Tess, Tintin, Tip, Toby Top
1
Waiting
I LIVE IN A cosy little vein between two arteries; my evenings are quiet as the grave, or they were until the night Uncle Bernard got hanged. Truth be told, the vein, Evans Road, is more a capillary than a vein, more a lane than a road, but don t tell Evans, whoever Evans is or was. In 1980, it sneaks across the university from Tanglin-side to Bukit Timah Road. Anybody crossing the campus at night, unless they skulk through the grass and bushes, uses Evans Road and I see them - if I m looking. Not that many make the crossing, so the normal pulse of my Evans Road evenings, once the girls in the dormitory opposite switch off their lights at ten, is almost imperceptible - a deathlike silence. Well, silence broken by the episodic shrill of male cicadas trying to attract a mate. When on, they fill my mind; when they snap off, my mind floats, free, empty, waiting for Venus.
As I hang on in hope, waiting for Venus to show up, Professor Bernard Fox, my best friend in the world or by this time out of it, is just up the road hanging by his neck from a rope. I do nothing to save him. Uncle Bernard is dying and I m doing nothing. I m not heartless; I m really quite sensitive. And it s not quite true I m doing nothing; I m waiting for Venus to call by. Well, to call by maybe . Venus only half-promised. I ll try to call by, Tom, after work. She s done that before. Lucky I m good at waiting.
Tonight, it s pretty much waiting as usual: still life with whisky. Nothing suggests the world is turning turtle on me; I m the same tiny speck I always was - in the same enormous place it always has been since the Empire built it in 1924 and since I moved in a couple of years back - in 1980 a young man full of dreams and nothing in the bank. A place defined by its nos : no aircon, no TV, no telephone, no hot water, no glass in the windows. Just Hard Furnishings : chairs with no cushion, beds with no mattress, cold water, and overhead fans that wobble on long stems from a high ceiling. My flat s a bit of a desert island. I love it.
Outside my space, suicidal flying insects explode soundlessly on dimly-lit old-fashioned street lamps. Same most nights; why do they do that?
I go into the kitchen to get a tub of ice cubes from the second-hand fridge I bought for a song because its door won t close right and the seller delivered and installed it, saving me the bother. I don t think this simple journey from window to fridge has significance but it does, although at the time it doesn t. I notice the dirty shirt I tossed in the basket last night is still there and still dirty; Norsiah has not been in to clean today, hope she s not sick or something.
I return to sit by my glassless window, looking through open shutters to the deep outside. I semi-focus on the old wind-up clock with luminous hands beside me as my eyelids close 9 o clock and already the whisky s taking over. I m not thinking, just being. I don t think, therefore I am not; no, that s not right, but never mind. My mind is somewhere, I don t know where. Is that important? I suppose it is. Everything on that night is important.
* * *
Professor ? A whisper from outside. My eyes open. Inches away, a silhouette. It doesn t startle me. I am beyond startling.
I wish. I sigh.
Bitte ?
Bitter? The whisky talking, trying to be funny. Not much. This is my first teaching job. Can t become professor overnight. There s still time.
It is five minutes past the 10 o clock.
I look at the clock; he s right. An hour has gone by and I didn t notice it go; lost time, not waiting, not wasted, not killed, just lost. Yes, I know. Most of the lights have gone out in the girls dorm.
Bitte ?
This brief encounter with a Germanic shadow I recall because I remember everything that happened that night - well not quite everything, there s the lost hour. Then the cicada starts again and the black shape at my window shouts to be heard above the insect s scream. I don t answer; I ve just noticed what s behind him.
Professor Haddock? The voice is accented. Must be German.
Behind him waits a black Citro n of the large-bonneted World War II type with double chevrons on its grill and its engine ticking over, ready for a quick getaway. It must have come onto campus from the Bukit Timah side; I d have noticed had it turned the corner from Dalvey - but maybe not if I d been transported back forty years during the lost hour; doubtful I suppose, time transmogrification, but after half a bottle of whisky, and with a German at the window saying bitte and a WWII Citro n in the driveway, I can t be completely sure. The silhouette glances back at the car. The owl-eye headlamps light up its face. Blond, bronzed, square-jawed and built to last a thousand years; can t get more stereotype than that - although I suppose you can if you pop in a WWII backdrop. Now I know what it feels like to be invaded by Olympian sculptures from old war movies.
Haddock, yes, professor, no, I say. I am Doctor Tom Haddock. What do you want?
I vant to see Professor Fox, but he does not answer his door. I knock very hard. May I call him from your telephone? VW-problem. Definitely German. Definitely stereotype; although I tend to stereotype too readily. I ll never be a novelist.
No. Don t have telephone.
I must sound brusque; he leaves without a thank you. I could call out and tell him there s a public phone at Guild House a hundred metres down the road just opposite Bernard s front door but I don t - he didn t say thank you . Doesn t he know there s a courtesy campaign on? An unseen hand inside the Citro n opens the passenger door for him and off he goes Tanglin way. I wonder why on earth a German in a WWII Citro n would visit Bernard after lights-out in the girls dorm, but I don t wonder hard enough to go and check on him; I could, I have the key, but I don t.
I sit on in the room we call the living room, as if all the other rooms are dead. Funny language, English. Still, it is my language; my mother tongue as they say. Well, I suppose it is, my mother spoke English, though when I started to talk, I probably spoke more Malay; the amah was Malay and I loved her as only a very young boy can love the woman who washes behind his ears and foreskin. Most of the other kids in the kampong were Malay, except for some Chinese in the market and a few Tamils from the rubber plantation and I would speak Malay with them all; it was the language of fun and games and sandwic ais krim dan kek . I didn t distinguish the two languages much back then; Mum and Dad spoke English but everybody else in my world spoke Malay - so Mum and Dad were the odd ones out. I grew into English and Mala