The cool early morning mists were swirling in from the Labuk River. My new secretary, Zainuddin, popped his head round my office door: “Harun wants to know if he can come in and see you sir,” he said. “He says he wants to report a murder.”
“Not again,” I groaned. “All right. Show him in.” Harun came in and sat down in front of my desk. “Now what is all this about?” I asked.
“I have just killed your amah, Maria,” he replied. “No you haven’t,” I said. “Yes, I have,” Harun persisted.
“Harun, don’t you remember only last month you reported that you had killed Titi’s daughter and we found that she only had a nose bleed?”
Harun was a good-natured amiable character, but a bit tiga-suku. He was a compulsive confessor but otherwise, we thought, quite harmless. He was short and slightly built. He came from Balikpapan in Indonesian Borneo.
He was some sort of distant relative either of Maria or of her husband Lasiman. Now they were no longer running the coffee shop, Lasiman was working in the field and Maria was working part-time helping Olive in our house. Harun lodged with them and they kept an eye on him.
“Yes Tuan,” he persisted cheerfully, “but this time, I cut off Maria’s head. You should ring the police and tell them so they can come up and punish me.”
“Nonsense! Right now, Maria will be on her way up to our house to start doing the laundry,” I said. “You haven’t killed anyone.” Harun cheered up. “Haven’t I?” he asked. “No,” I said. “It’s all in your mind.”
Harun stood up. “That’s good Tuan. Terima kaseh,” he said and turned to go. Suddenly, I noticed a large red stain down the side of his shirt. “What’s that?” I asked, “Have you cut yourself?”
“No, it’s only Maria’s blood,” he replied politely. “Come back! You haven’t really hurt Maria, have you?” “Yes, I cut off her head,” he insisted.
Obviously, something must have happened. I’d better have a look, I thought. I put Harun in the passenger seat of my little Volkswagen Beetle, and we drove the mile and a half to Maria and Lasiman’s house on the riverside.
There, at the bottom of the front steps, was the body of Maria lying in a pool of blood. She looked like a rag doll. Her head had been severed from her body. A macabre feature which I noticed when I got closer, was that she had been wearing her hair down her back, and it had been cut through with the same blow. She had obviously been sweeping the path in front of her house, and her broom lay partly under her body.
Harun giggled: “There you are, Tuan. You didn’t believe me, did you?” He picked up a vicious looking parang with a long curving blade, which was lying on the path. “Look, here is the parang I did it with, Tuan. I was sharpening it all day yesterday.”
Bryson Middleton was driving past in his Land Rover. I hailed him. “You’ll have to send for Lasiman,” I told him “But before he gets here, get Maria carried up the steps. Put her head on straight and cover her neck with a scarf. Another thing, get someone to go round and collect all the dangerous weapons in the house before Lasiman gets back. He is bound to be upset and he might turn violent.”
“If we are to move her,” said Bryson, briskly, “we’d better take some photographs for the police. I’ll arrange it.”
In the midst of all this activity we had almost forgotten Harun. He was sitting quietly under the house with his blood-encrusted parang in his hands. “Go and sit in the Volkswagen,” I told him. “And please sit in the back seat.”
I followed him a minute or two later leaving the murder scene in Bryson’s capable hands. As instructed, Harun had sat himself in the back seat. I had some vague idea that this might prevent him jumping out and running away, although this seemed to be the very last thing on his mind. As I drove off we hit a pothole. There was a clanking noise from behind me. I realised that all the parangs, axes and knives from the house had for some reason been deposited in the back seat.
I became uncomfortably aware that Harun, fresh from beheading Maria, was sitting with a collection of dangerous weapons, looking at the back of my neck. I applied the brakes sharply. “It might be more comfortable if you sat in front after all,” I suggested.
As we drove off again, Harun giggled. “You were worried that I might cut off your head too, weren’t you, Tuan? Don’t worry, I’m not gila, like that Dyak last month. I don’t kill just anyone: only people who upset me. I like you, Tuan.”
For once I managed to get through to Sandakan Police Station right away. I spoke to Superintendent Swan. “This is Leslie Davidson from Tungud Estate,” I began.
“Stop!” he said. “Let me guess. You are going to report a murder.”
“That’s amazing. How did you deduce that?”
“Well, the last time you rang you reported 14 murders. How many are dead this time?”
“Only one,” I said reassuringly. “Hang on, I’ll put you through to the murderer. He is sitting here in front of me, and he is longing to confess.”
When I got home for breakfast that morning, Mahid my cook presented me with a glass of tomato juice. It was one of the few occasions when I had to admit that I wasn’t hungry. The police launch arrived up the river eight hours later, and Harun was carted off to Sandakan. There was no mention of any inquest, and we buried Maria the next day.
As I stood at Maria’s graveside I reflected that, over the past 15 years, I must have been directly involved in more violent deaths than Hercule Poirot. I tried to remember if Maria made the 24th or 25th. Of course, some of the deaths had occurred as a result of Communist activity during my early years in Kluang.
Worst incident in Sabah
Undoubtedly the worst case was the Lubuk Durian massacre, which Superintendent Swan had referred to on the phone. It was indeed one of the worst single incidents in the history of Sabah. It had taken place only a few weeks before Maria’s murder, in June 1965.
It had been a Sunday morning. I had just finished a leisurely breakfast with Olive and the girls. We were preparing to go up the Tungud River for a picnic, when a messenger arrived from Bayok.
He reported that several people had been murdered at the small kampong of Lubuk Durian on the Klagan River, on the eastern boundary of the estate. Some others were wounded. Could I come down and could I bring Mr Mathen our medical orderly with me? I phoned the police in Sandakan, collected Mathen and his assistant, and we sped off downstream in a canoe.
Just before we reached Lubuk Durian, we met an Orang Sungai smallholder paddling away from the scene. He had the bodies of his wife and a child in his canoe. He lifted the sheet which covered them.
He told us that he and his family had been staying at Opel’s house for a few days. His wife had been having fits of some sort, and they were hoping that Opel could lift the spell. They had awakened in the night to see a Dyak running in a frenzy from room to room, a parang in one hand and a torch in the other, slashing at anyone he could find.
We tied up our canoe at Opel’s jetty. I was dreading what we would find, but it was worse than my imagining. There were pools of blood everywhere. Women were wandering around wailing. There were hideously mutilated bodies everywhere, under the hut, and in the rooms above. A few men were carrying bodies down the steps and laying them out on the grass.
Some survivors were nursing minor cuts and wounds. Mathen promptly started to deal with the worst cases. He was extremely competent and level-headed. He immediately despatched the canoe back to our dispensary for more bandages and medical supplies. I gave him and his assistant what little help I could, in patching up some of the worst cases. One little girl died whilst she was being treated.
As we started to get things organised, we found that there were in all 12 dead, including the two already removed by the Orang Sungai. Opel, and his family were all dead.
Three adults were suffering from minor cuts, which Mathen was able to patch up. However, another four were in a serious condition, with deep slashes around their heads and shoulders. Mathen thought that they needed blood transfusions.
It was fortunate that the government anti-malarial launch came by on its way back from the estate. We got them into the launch and sent them off to Sandakan, with our hospital assistant in attendance. He told us on his return that, sadly, two of the wounded had died during the journey.
There was no sign of the killer. I organised a quick search of the Lubuk Durian area, but we did not find him. When Superintendent Swan and his policemen arrived that afternoon, he carried out a more intensive search with over a hundred of our workers. However we never saw the killer alive again.
The Superintendent eventually pieced together what had happened. He reported that the killer, Pusoh, was a Dyak from Sarawak who had been working as a felling worker on our estate. He had developed some sort of rheumatic problem which he had, of course, attributed to witchcraft.
He had come to Opel to get him to lift the spell. It seemed that Opel’s house, on Lubuk Durian was a sort of bush-hospital for people who were suffering from complaints such as evil charms and spells, which were not responsive to European medicines.
Pusoh’s health had apparently not been improved by Opel’s treatment. In addition, there had been some sort of involvement with Opel’s daughter. Pusoh had, it seemed, brooded over this for a day or two and then had run amok.
In all there had been over 20 men, women and children in the house on the night in question. Of these, 14 had died, including the two en route to Sandakan Hospital, while three more were wounded.
After the killings, Pusoh had apparently taken Opel’s shotgun, some shells and a bag of rice and disappeared, perhaps in an attempt to return to Sarawak overland. For a few weeks afterwards our workers and their families were on edge in case Pusoh re-appeared and started killing again. It was not a comforting thought that he might be hanging around the estate.
I myself was rather worried that our house might be a tempting target for him in his disturbed state. We made sure that the children played close to the house for a week or two.
Some years later our workers came across a skeleton in the jungle with a rusted shotgun lying beside it. I realised that if this was the body of Pusoh, as seemed fairly certain, he must have travelled right past our house to get to the spot where he died. I never told Olive.
Datuk Leslie Davidson
Author, East of Kinabalu
Former Chairman, Unilever Plantations International
The second part will be published in the next issue. This is an edited chapter from the book published in 2007. It can be purchased from the Incorporated Society of Planters; email: isph@tm.net.my
