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at least, what little money she could get her hands on wouldn’t be thrown away on cards and liquor. All in all, she was inclined towards the side of divorce: maybe Puteh was luckier than she knew in getting rid of Suleiman, though it no doubt rankled to have lost him to such a specimen as Khatijah.
    Maryam sat ruminating on her front porch, leaning against one of the posts, cataloguing her stock of kain songket and local batik made by her older brother, Malek. She sorted the songket by colour, so that she could easily reach for the right fabric when told the colour scheme for any particular wedding. It was early morning, and the sun had just come up, so it was still relatively cool. Maryam’s cousin and best friend, Rubiah, sauntered over from her own home nearby, and comfortably deposited herself on the top step, unwrapping a bundle of newly baked cakes from her stock ready for market. Maryam leaned over to examine the merchandise, deliberately choosing two different cakes and eating them before speaking.
    â€˜What’s new?’
    Rubiah shook her head absentmindedly. ‘Nothing.’
    â€˜Sad,’ Maryam commented on Yusuf’s funeral, which they had both attended the day before. ‘Do you think Noriah will close it now?’
    Rubiah considered this as though it had not previously occurred to her. ‘I don’t think she wants to. They make a lot of money from it.’
    Maryam sniffed. ‘It isn’t a good way to do it. There are better ways.’
    â€˜I know. But they’re used to this. I think she’ll want to keep going if she can. Have you heard anything about the investigation?’ she asked innocently.
    Maryam gave her a sharp look. ‘Not yet. But you know, I’m interested.’
    Rubiah gasped. ‘No!’
    â€˜Well, yes,’ she admitted. ‘You know, it seems that so many people might have a reason to want Che Yusuf … out of the way,’ she finished primly, unwilling to say ‘dead’. ‘All these gamblers, you know, already on the wrong path …’
    â€˜So murder wouldn’t be much of a stretch for them, is that what you mean?’
    Maryam shrugged, and ran her hands over the pile of songket in front of her. ‘ Kerana pijat mati tuma ’, she said finally – the louse dies because of the bug. ‘He must have been killed because of the people he mixed with. That kind of company can’t lead to anything good. No one,’ she continued, warming to her topic, ‘meets decent people while gambling like that. So it stands to reason, doesn’t it, that one of them killed him. For running a place like that.’ She seemed satisfied with her logic.
    Rubiah did not look as though she entirely agreed, but said nothing for a moment. ‘Has Osman been to see you?’
    â€˜Not yet,’ Maryam said. ‘But I expect him at any time.’
    She was prophetic. Once she was ensconced in her stall in the market, centrally located in the fabric section on the ground floor – a truly premier site inherited from her mother – a hand-rolled cigarette, unlit, between her lips and several pieces of songket unfurled on the counter to be admired by the customer in front of her, Osman appeared.
    He always looked diffident when he entered the market. For all the status of his position outside the market, in here he was at a disadvantage, being a man and a West Coast Malay and, most important, not a trader. He knew his only hope for a fair price was the pity of the seller, a disinclination to fleece an especially woolly sheep, and this irritated him. He wanted to be respected, not coddled like a child, but that was not about to happen within the confines of the pasar besar .
    On this day, he moved sideways, crab-like, through the crowded aisles, followed by Rahman, who felt no such qualms or inferiority, since he had female relatives working here and was confident in their ability to protect