The Singapore School of Villainy

by Shamini Flint

  Annie felt her steps slowing as she approached the door. There was a terrible feeling of déjà vu in her every action. The doorknob to Mark’s room was cool to the touch. The hairs on her arm jumped to attention. Annie stood stock still and took a full deep breath. She had to check, convince herself that the events of Friday night had been real.

  Mark’s room had been cleaned out. The original furniture was still there, but the books and files and other paraphernalia of practice had been cleared away. The contents that had made the office his own – the pictures of his two children building sandcastles on the beach, the still-life paintings that she had always disliked so heartily, even the stationery, including that blood-stained paperweight on his desk – were gone. The carpet bore no trace of blood. She could make out the faint outline where fresh squares of new carpet had replaced the old. Only a hint of disinfectant in the air suggested that the changes to the room were recent, that something as prosaic as hard scrubbing had gone into the transformation.

  Her absorption in her surroundings kept her from hearing a firm light tread along the corridor. Someone came up silently behind her and grabbed her arm. Annie gave a convulsive shudder and swung round, lashing out with a closed fist.

  Her wrist was caught in a firm grip. ‘Who are you?’ the man asked sternly. ‘What are you doing in here?’

  Not answering, Annie stared at the tall stranger, her eyes wide with sudden fright. She tried to pull free and was intimidated by the strength she sensed in the long thin fingers of her captor.

  He released her abruptly, leaving Annie rubbing her wrist absently. His fingers had gripped her hard enough to bruise.

  He spoke again, more gently this time, as he took in her pale face and expensive, conservative suit. ‘This room is off limits. Are you Mark’s secretary?’

  At this question, Annie recovered some of her equilibrium. She frowned at the man, parallel lines of irritation running along her forehead.

  ‘I think the proper question is, who the hell are you and what are you doing in this office?’ She shot out the questions like a machine gun firing on automatic.

  ‘I’m sorry. I should have introduced myself – David Sheringham.’ His reply was measured and she noted that his voice was an even tenor, fluid and soothing.

  Although she gave no hint of it, Annie recognised his name. David Sheringham was the law firm’s troubleshooter. Based in London, he was a partner with a thriving banking practice. He was also always first on the scene if there was trouble in the offing within Hutchinson & Rice. Angry clients, potential litigation, misbehaving partners, any hint of fraud or impropriety – if it affected the firm’s interests, David was sent out to solve the problem.

  ‘I didn’t know murder was within your remit,’ Annie said pointedly.

  ‘Only where the suspects include the entire partnership of an office,’ he replied. Only a slight curl of thin lips gave away his surprise that she knew who he was.

  ‘So London is concerned that one of us will turn out to be a murderer and has sent you to investigate,’ said Annie matter-of-factly.

  David shrugged.

  Annie was not sure whether he was shrugging off the accusation or acknowledging its accuracy. It was an elegant gesture, and perfectly obfuscatory. A memory of the policeman in charge of the investigation hopped, fully-formed and fat, into her mind. She wondered what the two men would make of each other. Both of them were, in their completely different ways, thoroughly intimidating.

  Ching, Annie’s excruciatingly cheerful secretary, called out, ‘Phone, line two for you.’

  Annie picked up the phone as a welcome distraction from her unnerving encounter with David Sheringham. ‘Hello, Hutchinson & Rice, Annie Nathan speaking.’

  ‘Annie! I am glad to reach you. I was wondering why I got no feedback from Mr Thompson. Maybe you can tell me?’

  The voice was familiar but she couldn’t place it. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know who this is,’ she said apologetically.

  ‘Tan Sri. Tan Sri Ibrahim,’ the man at the other end replied in his heavy Malay accent.

  Tan Sri was an honorary title bestowed in Malaysia. It was a rare honour and indicated that the bearer was a senior figure in political or business circles. Annie recognised the name immediately. It was the Managing Director of Trans-Malaya, the target company in her Malaysian takeover deal.

  ‘Tan Sri! Of course. I’m so sorry – I should have realised it was you.’

  The response was cheerful. ‘No problem. I’m calling because I haven’t heard anything from Mark. I spoke to him last Friday to explain my concerns.’

  He paused for a moment while Annie tried to make sense of his rambling tale. ‘I wasn’t making any accusations, but, you know, certain quarters drew my attention to the problem.’ He continued, ‘I have been calling his mobile phone. I just got back from Redang. My family and I were away for the weekend. My son is a very keen diver.’ The Tan Sri, met with silence from Annie, was becoming garrulous.

  Annie found her voice. ‘Tan Sri, I’m sorry to have to inform you that Mr Thompson is no longer with us.’

  ‘He’s gone back to London?’

  ‘No, I mean Mark’s dead!’

  ‘Dead! Ya’ Allah! When did this happen?’

  ‘Last Friday.’

  The old man’s voice was filled with genuine regret. ‘I didn’t mean to cause him stress – although it is a serious matter.’

  ‘I’m afraid that Mark did not have a chance to discuss the issues you raised with me, Tan Sri. Perhaps you could fill me in?’

  The Tan Sri hesitated. ‘I called him because I thought it would be better to discuss it with a senior person at your firm. Is there anyone else who has taken over?’

  ‘I am the most senior person on the file now, Tan Sri,’ Annie answered resolutely.

  The Tan Sri did not take much convincing. ‘You see, my analysts have told me that the share price of Trans-Malaya has been spiking from time to time in the last few months. It has always coincided with some important disclosure about the takeover. Someone has been insider dealing – you know, using his insider knowledge to trade the shares of the company. This is illegal in Malaysia.’

  ‘And most places, Tan Sri,’ said Annie automatically, her mind racing.

  The Tan Sri had not finished with his revelations. ‘Obviously, I was concerned by this,’ he said. ‘Insider dealing is not unheard of in Malaysia, but I will not have it in my company.’

  Annie pictured the Tan Sri – a soft-spoken, elderly man with snowy white hair and a wrinkled brown face – one of “nature’s gentlemen”. Her first impression that he was an honest man had been correct.

  ‘What did you do, Tan Sri?’ asked Annie politely, still unsure where he was going with this lengthy explanation.

  ‘Well, I had my senior staff carefully investigated. There was no sign that they were involved.’

  ‘What are you trying to say, Tan Sri?’ A cold fist had wrapped itself around her heart.

  ‘The only other people with the necessary information about the takeover are from Hutchinson & Rice. I think – and I told Mr Thompson – that one of your lawyers is insider dealing, and must have made a lot of money doing so.’

  Annie stared at her phone as if it was a hooded cobra poised to strike. The police would be quick to deduce that the insider would have had a cast-iron reason to kill Mark. Annie’s mind played over the various possibilities. Each time her thoughts led to the same inevitable conclusion. Inspector Singh would soon discover that there were only two people on the file, aside from Mark, who had access to the information at the root of the insider dealing. Quentin Holbrooke was one of them. She was the other.

  Singh sat in a generously proportioned chair at the head of a polished table. An intern in a short skirt walked in with a cup of coffee and a couple of cookies. He decided he liked the quiet, respectful tone the law firm had adopted. He understood now why most of his colleagues preferred dealing with white collar crime. He would wager they w
ere always treated like royalty by suspects. He, Singh, was more accustomed to standing knee deep in a monsoon drain peering at a bloated corpse or looking at the broken body of some domestic worker who had fallen to her death cleaning the external windows of an apartment block.

  A door opened and Quentin and Jagdesh walked in. It was clear that they had not expected the policeman to be ensconced in the room. The blood drained from Quentin’s face – it reminded Singh of the way he drained the dregs from the bottom of a beer glass. Jagdesh nodded a greeting, a concession to family ties perhaps.

  Annie was the next lawyer to make her way into the room. She was pale and her movements were jerky. Singh rested his chin in his palm and gazed at her curiously. This was a different woman from the confident creature who had welcomed him to her house the previous day. Quentin made his way around the table to where Annie was standing and gave her a tight hug which she returned. Singh perked up – was there something between them? Understanding the relationships between suspects was always crucial to a murder investigation. He noticed that David Sheringham, who had slipped into the room while he was staring at Annie, was watching them too, his expression thoughtful.

  Reggie and Ai Leen marched in next, breaking off their low conversation as they discovered the other occupants. Ai Leen was dressed in her favourite pastel. Today her shade of choice was a delicate pink. Despite her air of quiet reserve, there was something about the Chinese Singaporean female partner that suggested a tenuous control over her emotions. The veins in her neck were taut and prominent. She clasped and unclasped her hands in her lap as if debating an appeal for relief from some deity.

  People took seats round the conference table. Jagdesh and Quentin flanked Annie on one side and Reggie and Ai Leen were on the other. Singh wondered if these were battle lines. He could understand the younger lawyers sticking together. But he was puzzled by the apparent closeness of Ai Leen and Reggie – from what little he had seen of them they did not appear to have anything in common. Singh wrinkled his nose. He had a tendency to read too much into innocuous circumstances at the beginning of an investigation.

  Stephen strode into the room with the confidence of a senior partner. The desultory conversation between the lawyers petered out.

  ‘This meeting has been called to discuss the assistance we can provide to the police.’ Stephen’s deep voice managed to sound threatening.

  ‘We’ve done all we can. What else do they want?’ It was Reggie, quick to anger at the idea of further interaction with the police.

  Stephen ignored him. ‘Inspector Singh is here to outline what he requires of us. Inspector?’

  Singh saw Reggie run his finger around his collar. He suppressed a smirk. It served him right. The lawyer’s attitude was appalling, varying as it did between hostility and servility. He knew the type all too well; the expatriate who had become accustomed to being treated with groveling respect by natives of every stripe in Singapore – whether shopkeepers, bank tellers or waiters – and now expected it as his due. Well, Reggie Peters was in for a nasty surprise if he expected Inspector Singh of the Singapore police to kowtow to him.

  ‘As you know, my team and I are currently investigating the murder of Mark Thompson,’ began the inspector. ‘Death was the result of several blows to the head on Friday between seven and nine p.m. The actual cause of death was either an extensive skull fracture pushing fragments of bone into the brain or internal bleeding between the skull and the dura mater, the membrane covering the brain.’

  The inspector paused to let the import of his words sink in. The lawyers were pale – the details of death were too much for them.

  ‘Suspects…,’ Singh rotated his big head a hundred and eighty degrees to take in the full complement of partners, ‘…would ordinarily be required to present themselves at the police station for questioning.’

  Reggie’s brow was gleaming with a thin sheen of perspiration despite the cool of the air-conditioned room.

  ‘However, I have been instructed—’ the inspector paused. ‘I have been asked to conduct this investigation—’ again he paused, biting on his plump lower lip, apparently at a loss for the best form of words ‘—in a more “user-friendly” way. There are a number of reasons for this, one of them being that this case has attracted a great deal of media interest, including the foreign press.’

  ‘Meaning you can’t determine the content,’ remarked Quentin rudely, referring to the widely held perception that the authorities controlled the Singapore press.

  The inspector ignored him and continued. ‘So, I am going to hold interviews with the partners at these offices.’

  ‘Inspector Singh and his team will commence their interviews this morning,’ added Stephen hurriedly, no doubt to discourage his lawyers from making a beeline for the exits.

  The inspector rose to his feet by dint of pushing against the arms of his chair and using the momentum to propel him out of the seat. He looked around the table at the partners, all staring at him with expressions that ranged from sullen fear to anger. He pointed a stubby finger at Annie Nathan and said, ‘You’re first!’

  In his office, Quentin Holbrooke took off his glasses and wiped them carefully with the piece of satin cloth he kept in his desk drawer – he hated it when his vision was clouded with fingerprints or bits of lint. He pulled a tissue from the box on his desk, blew his nose hard and glanced at the mucus – the green slime was streaked with blood. He wiped his nose gingerly. It really hurt.

  Stretching his hands out in front of him, Quentin was not surprised to see that both hands were shaking. He really did not feel good this morning – he was out of breath and had a pounding headache. It felt as if some creature had crawled into his ear in the night and was now trying to escape by excavating through his forehead using power tools. What was worse, Stephen Thwaites had just announced that the fat inspector would be arriving shortly to interview them all. He explained the offices had been chosen rather than the police station in a bid to stem the tide of gossip in the tabloids. But it was a move hardly calculated to calm the nerves of the already rattled partners.

  Quentin thought about his conversation with Annie about the missing keycard. Panic-stricken about drawing attention to himself for any reason, he had felt a raw surge of pure anger when she mentioned telling the fat policeman about it. In retrospect, it was not a big deal. That policeman, Singh, was not naïve enough to think that he had used such a clumsy method to create the possibility of more suspects. Quentin knew that he had to try and get a grip on his emotions. The one sure way to present himself as a more likely suspect than the others was to behave erratically.

  Quentin stretched out a hand to his phone, noticing how slim his wrist had become. He was definitely losing weight – that morning he had buckled his belt a notch further in than before. He picked up the receiver and made a quick call to a mobile number – he knew the number by heart.

  ‘Ya?’

  ‘I need more.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘As much as you have.’

  There was a chuckle on the line. ‘Wah, you really know how to party, man!’

  Quentin was not interested in small talk. ‘Can you do it?’ he snapped.

  The Chinaman on the other end was all business. ‘No problem, boss. Usual place. Tomorrow – eleven a.m. – make sure you bring cash.’

  ‘You are Anikka Nathan, associate partner at Hutchinson & Rice?’

  Annie nodded.

  ‘Please speak your answers for the record,’ snapped Singh. The clicking sound of Corporal Fong commencing to type punctuated his remarks.

  ‘I am,’ said Annie clearly.

  ‘We are investigating the murder of Mr Mark Thompson. Would you please recount the events leading up to the discovery of the body?’

  ‘But I’ve told you all that already,’ protested Annie.

  ‘We might discover something that was missed previously,’ said Singh optimistically. He knew there was no point trying to catch Annie out i
n a contradiction. She would have fine-tuned her tale in the preliminary interviews on the night of the murder. But Singh never hesitated to make witnesses repeat themselves. Even the overly practised delivery of information might constitute a clue to his sensitive ear. He didn’t want his witnesses to recite the facts, he wanted them to paint him a picture – and he was prepared to ask the same questions over and over again until every brushstroke was complete.

  ‘I was in Kuala Lumpur for the day and got back to Singapore that evening.’

  ‘What time did you get home?’ he asked.

  ‘About six,’ she replied.

  ‘Your flight, SQ 118, landed at 5.15 that evening. That was a fairly quick trip,’ the inspector remarked.

  He could see from the way that she bit her bottom lip that she was dismayed he had been checking on her movements with such diligence but all she said was, ‘I travelled first class and without any check-in luggage.’

  ‘What did you do between the time you got home and when you took the call from Mr Thompson?’

  ‘I had a drink and fell asleep in the easy chair on the verandah.’

  ‘Your phone records show that you received a call from the office at exactly seven in the evening. Between that time and nine p.m. when Quentin Holbrooke found the body, Mark Thompson was murdered. What did you do after you received his call?’

  This is it, thought Singh, the moment to produce the alibi. Unsurprisingly, none was forthcoming.

  ‘I drove to the office,’ she replied.

  ‘That took an hour?’