Over the next few weeks, the problem compounded. Four other shopkeepers approached Nayagam and asked to offload their old stock. Nayagam pleaded with them; there was no way he could help them clear their stock at such a thin profit margin. Besides, he alone was shouldering the risk. In the end, the five of them held a closed-door conference and came to a compromise. The four of them would each gradually offload fifty per cent of their old stock through Nayagam over the next two months. But if anything went wrong, they had to rally around him.

Everything went well for the first few weeks. Then one night, a scuffle occurred at a void deck of a flat two streets away. The police arrived to find three Indian youths bruised, bleeding and drunk. The statements taken at the police station revealed that one of the youths had discovered that another had cheated on him with his girl and arranged for the third, a mutual friend, to help settle the score. Alcohol was brought along to lubricate the process but ended up fuelling the discord instead. It was captured in their statements that their beer had been purchased from Nayagam’s provision shop.

The next morning, the police showed up at the aforementioned shop and requisitioned the surveillance tapes. Although Nayagam complied, his countenance was so pallid and his temple perspiring so profusely that the police inspector became alarmed and asked if he needed an ambulance. The shaken man turned down the benevolent offer. It was cruel enough that his wife would have to bear the ignominy of visiting a husband in jail. He did not want a call from the hospital to send the poor woman into a cardiac arrest.

The same afternoon, the other four shopkeepers who were offloading their stocks of beer at Nayagam’s expense received a call from the man’s son. Kaustubh was adamant that they stand by his father in this critical time of need. He reminded them that the surveillance tapes had captured all four of them wheeling beer cartons in through the back door at ungodly hours. Every single one of them was tethered to the sinking ship.

A contingency meeting was arranged but no solution emerged. By midnight, the six of them decided to march down to Desker Road and ring the bell of a three-storey terrace house. It was rude to pay an unscheduled visit so late in the night, but who else could they turn to? After all, Sasukumar Sathiyaseelan was one of only four grassroots leaders serving in Jalan Besar who had been conferred the Public Service Medal. He alone had the MP’s ear.