Monday, 19 September 2016
Dada 141
He was then asked how did he come to know why the dead boys were murdered and what were his relations with the perpetrator? Iskra took this opportunity of explaining it was he, not I, that had asked the European men to first sit down and be quiet in the club.
‘This was not what I meant’ The prosecutor’s eyes narrowed again
‘So what of this letter that led to this train of events?’ He waved some papers over his head.
‘That was nothing’ Iskra said. Some Indonesians had a grudge for me because I beat up the guy’s sister.’
‘How is it then that this letter led directly to the tragedy and was the work of the accused’ The prosecutor asked.
‘By pure chance,’ Iskra said.
‘He did me a favour. I took him and his friend to the beach. There was a bit of a scuffle and I got stabbed. We only took the drugs as a diversion because it had been a fidgety, troublesome sort of day, the rains came after the sun and we all came back to the city by car. The music was good. We were good. It was only by chance that we ended up at that part of the city and then at the club and then at the waterfront bar. We meant to stay at the beach. We didn’t know where we would be or who we would argue with. T hose who shouted and slapped us took us away from our party. It was only a chance thing.’ He shrugged his wide shoulders.
The prosecuting Barrister said ‘ Chance or mere coincidence plays an awfully remarkable large part in this farrago of lies .Was it by chance that the prisoner had not intervened when Iskra assaulted the girl who was his mistress. Did this convenient term ‘chance’ account for the prisoner’s actions at the police station when he was summoned? Did chance make statements extravagantly favourable to him and now we find that ‘chance’ again led to the night club and to the knife and the killing of these two poor white boys..’
‘What do you do for a living ‘ the prosecutor asked.
On describing himself as a warehouseman who was temporarily out of work, the prosecutor informed the jury that it was common knowledge that the witness lived off the immoral earnings of young illegal Indonesian girls and that he supplied drugs around the district which he procured from the Thai fishing boats, eighty per cent of which were equally illegal.
‘The accused prisoner’ he said as if throwing a card down on the table. ’ Was this man’s close friend and confidant. In fact the whole background to this crime was of the most squalid form of disreputable association, demeaned illegal women bought and sold for sex, drugs, liquor, parties and finally the extinguishing of two bright European lives who came from the land of the Queen; lives which had soared like stars and were cruelly terminated by a fish dock worker with a knife used by a pimp.’
He wiped a bead of sweat away from his clammy forehead and continued.
‘ What has made this crime more malicious and odious was the personality of the prisoner, an inhuman monster in that small frame, who exists solely without any sense of morals. What chance was there for repentance in that’.
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