I looked at Omar in a panic, our eyes locked for a second. He gripped my hand tightly. I turned and saw OCPD Baljit walk towards us holding a paper file. He stood next to me and I shut my eyes so tight, I wished for momentary blindness to prevent me from seeing the image that he had put on the table. I heard Omar gasp as he wrenched his hand from mine. I opened my eyes.

I saw a large photograph in colour and I could make out the body of a small child curled in a foetal position inside a blue fabric suitcase. Flesh had been eaten away in parts and fat maggots were curled comfortably in both eyesockets, in the open mouth and the gaping nasal cavity. The child’s abdomen was bloated. There was no evidence of any kind of clothing. The child had hair, but it was short, and looked like it had been cut, carelessly. The thighs and calves were discoloured, a dark purple, blue, and the feet were tied by some kind of string. Raffia, I thought. Pink perhaps? And on one disfigured foot, there was a yellow jelly sandal. I screamed.

Omar hugged me with all his might and I felt his body heave, I felt a deep gurgle come from deep within him and I heard him say, I need the bathroom.

A strange calm came over me. I looked at Inspector Awang, OCPD Baljit and all the other police officers in the room and I said in a voice that I did not recognise as my own.

Alba had shoes like that, yellow ones… She loved those shoes. They were her favourite.

I stood up, turned around to look for Omar and when I saw him coming towards me, we found each other and I smelt the vomit on him, I reached for his face and mouth and eyes and there, we found each other.

We gave them the DNA samples that they needed and like two broken stone statues, we walked out into the harsh afternoon light.

* * *

That yellow jelly sandal. That dirty, maggot-infested yellow plastic sandal. There, in that suitcase, with a dead body of a child.

It stuck to him. He tried to make sense of it, he tried to reason with the fact that there were other children who wore that very same sandal, that surely there were other children in KL whose parents had bought the same shoes. That surely there had to be another child who wore the same coloured shoes who was also perhaps kidnapped, surely…no matter how hard he tried, Omar could not find reason for the fact that the yellow jelly sandal had appeared six months later after Alba’s disappearance.

OCPD Baljit had said, “The DNA testing will take anything from 24 hours to one week. Our forensics team at the Police College in Cheras will do their best to expedite this.”