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Ket Hau’s head whipped around. “You didwhat?”

So much for counting to ten. Ket Siong hunched his shoulders, curling in on himself.

“What were you thinking?” said Ket Hau. “We know what happened to Stephen. They got rid of him! What, you want the same thing to happen to you?”

“No,” said Ket Siong. “But we’re in the UK—”

“Where we only came because those bastards murdered Stephen!”

“They never found a body,” said Ket Siong. “Ko, don’t you want to know what really happened?”

Ket Hau had always looked young for his age, but this had changed after their move to the UK. Now, three years after Stephen had stepped into his car and never come back again, there was silver hair at Ket Hau’s temples, wrinkles around his eyes and mouth.

“Don’t I want to know what happened?” he echoed. He sounded old, too. “I wish I knew less. Siong, learn from my mistakes. Hasn’t Ma been through enough? Because I got involved in that dodgy business, she lost her home. She’s spending her old age in this shitty flat thousands of miles away from her work, her relatives, everything she cares about.”

“It’s not your fault,” said Ket Siong.

But Ket Hau shook his head. “The fact is, if I took a decent job at some law firm when I graduated, none of this would have happened. We’d be in Malaysia. You’d be performing with the MPO. Ma would be gardening, playing mahjong with her friends, volunteering with her church…”

“You were trying to make a difference.”

“Well.” Ket Hau blew out a breath. “I did that.”

“If Stephen’s family had a chance to talk to Low Teck Wee,” said Ket Siong. “If they could ask…”

But mentioning Stephen’s family was a bad move. Stephen hadn’t got along with his family. They’d been more or less estranged by the time Ket Hau had met him. The family had been vocal about the inadequacies of the police investigation of his disappearance, but even that hadn’t inclined his friends to forgive them.

“I’m sure they’d love to question Low Teck Wee. They’d be the first to call a press conference, ask everybody to take photos,” said Ket Hau. “Pity they couldn’t be bothered to talk to Stephen when he was alive.”

“Ko…”

“Stephen’s family is not my business,” said Ket Hau. “If they want to pester Low Teck Wee, they can ambush him at his golfcourse. We have to look after ourselves. How do you think Ma would feel if she knew what you did?”

Despite the reproach, the tension in Ket Siong’s chest eased. If Ket Hau was asking the question, that meant he hadn’t decided to tell Ma.

“It’s not like I could actually make trouble for Low Teck Wee,” said Ket Siong. “Freshview won their case. And he doesn’t know who I am. I didn’t say my name.”

“You think it’d be hard for him to find out?” said Ket Hau. “What were you trying to achieve?”

Ket Siong stared at his feet. It was true confronting Low Teck Wee was never likely to result in any clarity about Stephen’s fate. It had simply seemed, when Ket Siong had seen “Freshview Industries” in that list of donors on the invitation, that he was meant to do something about it.

“I wanted to see what he looked like,” he muttered. “Hear what he said.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. He walked off.”

Ket Hau scrubbed his face, sighing, but he seemed to be calming down.

“Do you think Low Teck Wee was involved?” said Ket Siong.

He wasn’t sure if his brother would engage, or if he’d get up and storm off. There was a long, fraught silence.

Finally, Ket Hau shrugged.

“Who knows?” he said. “He could have hired the guys who did it. Or it could have been a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ situation. The order came from the politicians, and Low looked the other way. One way or another, there’s no way he didn’t know. He’s complicit. That means he’s dangerous.”

He looked Ket Siong in the eye, serious as he rarely ever was. “We came here to get away from all that stuff. You should know better than to get mixed up in it again.”