THE GIRL IN THE WINDOW (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 4)

by Jake Needham

  “And yet every time I go through it all so I can come here and tell you something you need to know,” his mother continued, preventing Tay’s increasingly deranged meditations from getting entirely out of hand, “you act as if I’m imposing on you.”

  “You are imposing on me, Mother. This is been a very difficult day. I can’t remember a worse one. And I need to sleep. That was why I asked you very politely not to bother me tonight.”

  “Yes, I heard you, but I already had everything organized and it seemed such a shame to waste all that effort.”

  “Yes, well, thank you anyway, but—”

  “I’m sorry about Robbie Kang. He was a nice man.”

  “You didn’t know Robbie Kang, Mother.”

  “Of course I did. I never met him, but I knew him.”

  Tay’s mother uncrossed her legs and crossed them back in the opposite direction. When she did, the bed rocked slightly and Tay wondered about that, too.

  His mother was not a large person, and of course she was dead as well, there was that to consider, but she still weighed enough to move his mattress slightly when she shifted her weight. He had always assumed ghosts were spectral, or he would have assumed that if he believed in ghosts, which he didn’t, but when his mother sat on the end of his bed it made him think ghosts had weight just like living human beings. How could that be?

  “And I do want to tell you, Samuel, that girl seems very nice.”

  “What girl, Mother?”

  “The one you’re working with.”

  “Sergeant Lee?”

  “Yes. She’s very attractive. Does she cook?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You should find out. You’re not getting any younger, Samuel. You should be married. You may not have many more chances.”

  “Yes, Mother. Is there anything else? As much as I’m enjoying this conversation, I really do need to get back to sleep.”

  His mother’s figure seemed enveloped in light for an instant, then the light dimmed and she leaned toward him.

  “Listen to me, Samuel, I have something to tell you that is very important.”

  “What is it?”

  “Ah-ha! Got your attention now, don’t I?”

  Tay looked away and sighed. What good would it do him to get mad at his mother? She wasn’t there in the first place so getting angry wasn’t likely to make her go away.

  “Just tell me what you need to tell me, Mother.”

  “You are in great danger, Samuel.”

  “What kind of danger, Mother? Do you have another girl to introduce me to?”

  “Please stop making jokes and pay attention. Are you paying attention?”

  “Yes, Mother, I am paying attention.”

  “I know what you are going to do.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Oh for Pete’s sake, Samuel, I’ve told you over and over. I know everything. I have universal knowledge. It’s one of the few advantages of being dead.”

  “Do you know I’d rather sleep than have another one of these stupid conversations with you?”

  “Always with the jokes, huh? Always the jokes.”

  “That was not a joke, Mother.”

  “You know, Samuel, sometimes I think I’m just going to give up trying to help you and leave you to whatever happens.”

  “That’s what I wish you would do, Mother. At least that way I would get a hell of a lot more sleep.”

  All at once his mother began pacing up and down at the end of his bed with her arms folded tightly across her body.

  “I know you are going to try to find the man who killed Robbie Kang,” she said, “but everything is much more complicated than you think.”

  “Complicated in what way?”

  “There are things at stake you know nothing about, things so big that people will stop at nothing to prevent you from exposing them. Think about that poor man they pulled out of the Singapore River.”

  “What are you talking about, Mother? What does that have to do with Robbie's murder?”

  Tay’s mother ignored his question. “And what about the other body?”

  “What other body?”

  “You know, the man who…oh wait, never mind. You haven’t found that one yet.”

  “You’re scaring me, Mother.”

  “Don’t get involved. Did you hear me? Don’t get involved. It will only put you in danger.”

  “I am involved, Mother. I wish I weren’t, but I am.”

  “If you pursue this, your own life will be at risk.”

  “And why is that, Mother?”

  “That is not completely clear.”

  “I thought you knew everything.”

  “I know everything that can be known, but there are things which cannot yet be known.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Mother. You sound like a fucking fortune cookie.”

  “What language, Samuel. I didn’t raise you to use language like that.”

  Tay sighed again and rubbed his eyes. “You didn’t raise me at all.”

  “Such bitterness. It really doesn’t become you.”

  “Are we done here, Mother? Can you go back now to wherever it is you come from and let me go to sleep?”

  “Just heed my warning, Samuel. Promise me you won’t pursue Robbie Kang’s death. Will you do that?”

  “It wasn’t a death, Mother, it was a murder. And I investigate murders. It’s what I do. I find redress for the dead.”

  “Oh, that’s a fine phrase. Very high-sounding. Maybe a little pretentious, but quite grand really. I just hope you don’t start thinking you’re going to find redress for me.”

  “I wasn’t talking about you, Mother. You’re just a figment of my imagination anyway. I was talking about Robbie Kang. You cannot expect me to forget about a friend who was murdered and died right in front of me.”

  “Of course I can. Let someone else deal with him. You don’t have to solve every crime in Singapore, do you? You are not the only policeman in the country.”

  “May I go back to sleep now?”

  “You will thank me for my guidance someday, Samuel.”

  “Does that come from your universal knowledge, or are you just feeling optimistic?”

  “Now you are being tedious. And boring.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, Mother.

  “I do feel that way, Samuel. And I think I’ve had enough of you for tonight.”

  Then just like that she disappeared. Tay was left sitting in his bed in the dark with his arms folded staring at…well, at nothing at all.

  “Mother?” he called out. He felt stupid doing it, but he did it anyway. “Are you still there somewhere?”

  There was no reply, so Tay waited for what he thought was a sufficiently polite interval and then stretched out again. He closed his eyes and very quickly drifted off into a deep and blessedly dreamless sleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  TAY WOKE EARLY the next morning with a keen sense of unease about the dream he had in the night. If it had been a dream. Which, of course, he had no doubt that it was.

  The glowing red numerals of the clock on his bedside table told him it was not yet even seven. That was a ridiculous hour for him, but sleep always obstinately refused to take him back once he had looked at the clock and knew the time so he put on a robe and went downstairs.

  While the coffee maker ran, he stood and watched it and kept his mind as empty as possible. Eventually the coffee maker shut itself off and he took a heavy white ceramic mug out of the cabinet and filled it, then he went out into his garden and sat at the table and sipped his coffee.

  Mornings were usually the best part of the day in Singapore and this was a particularly fine morning, cloudless and sunny with low humidity and a sky as blue as a robin’s egg. There was a slight breeze from the south and he thought he could smell on it the salt of the ocean and a whiff of exotic lands, but he knew it was probably just his imagination.

  Tay finished his coffee. He placed
the empty mug on the table and then he leaned back and knitted his fingers together behind his head. Very deliberately he began in his mind to step back through his dream from the night before. He circled and probed at it with all the caution of the airport bomb squad scrutinizing an abandoned suitcase.

  What was his mother trying to tell him?

  Robbie Kang had been murdered. He died lying on the ground ten feet from Tay, and Tay could do nothing but watch him die. And his mother tells him not to get involved?

  What was all that other stuff she had said? A link between Robbie’s murder and the body pulled out of the Singapore River? A link between both of those killings and a body he hadn’t even discovered yet? Perhaps she was just trying to frighten him by spinning Robbie’s murder as part of some vast conspiracy he didn't see or understand.

  For God’s sake, why was he sitting here trying to interpret what his mother meant? She hadn’t meant anything. She was a figment of his imagination.

  Besides, there clearly was no vast conspiracy. He knew who killed Robbie, didn’t he? Abu Suparman killed Robbie. That was what the ISD man who looked like Bruce Willis told him, and he had no reason to think otherwise. Either Suparman had killed Robbie or one of the ISD men had killed him, and he simply didn’t believe that was possible.

  But why were the ISD people at the Fortuna Hotel with Suparman in the first place? If they really were there to protect him as they appeared to be, they had certainly done a crap job of it seeing that his sister managed to shoot him right under their noses.

  Tay didn’t know for sure Suparman’s sister really had shot him, of course. He didn’t even know for sure that the woman had been Suparman’s sister. He thought back to the man he had seen talking to her outside the Temple Street Inn. The man had given her something. At least Tay was pretty certain he had. Could it have been a gun? Of course it could have. But it could also have been a slip of paper with the address of the hotel or a piece of hard candy or…well, maybe it was nothing at all.

  And who was that man, anyway? Tay had followed him straight from the alleyway behind the Temple Street Inn to the Australian High Commission and he watched as he breezed inside through their security post. That still made no sense to Tay. Unless, of course, there actually was a vast conspiracy.

  Tay picked up his mug and took it back into the kitchen to get himself more coffee. He obviously needed it. After he filled his mug he stood leaning against the sink and tried to clear his increasingly muddled mind.

  Among all the things Samuel Tay didn’t know, there was one thing he knew very well. The universe operated in a kind of balance. It was a fundamental principle of science that for every action there was an equal and opposite reaction and all that. Long ago he had learned that a similar principle applied to his own profession: for every bad act there was an eventual reckoning. Sometimes the reckoning was immediate, and sometimes it did not come until much later, but it always came. He had also learned that it was his calling in life to be the agent of that reckoning.

  It felt now to Tay like it was now his sole responsibility to restore balance to the universe, to bring a reckoning for Robbie Kang. And he wasn’t going to let an imaginary conversation with his dead mother about an imaginary conspiracy stop him from doing it.

  Still, he had to concede the conversation, imaginary or otherwise, had raised a couple of points he needed to keep in mind. A lot of what he knew didn’t make much sense. ISD was right in the middle of everything, and everything he knew about who had been responsible for shooting had come from ISD. That made him hugely uncomfortable.

  Maybe Bruce Willis had been bullshitting him. Maybe ISD shot Suparman and then shot Robbie to cover it up. But what sense did that make? If ISD wanted to kill Suparman, they wouldn’t have grabbed him somewhere and taken him to a hotel in the middle of Singapore to do it. Bruce Willis claimed they took Suparman to that hotel to meet his sister, and that made more sense than any other explanation.

  But it also raised a baffling question: why was ISD protecting Suparman and organizing meetings for him with his sister? Wasn’t the point of this whole operation to grab Suparman using his sister as bait? If ISD already had Suparman, what in the world had all that been about?

  Perhaps that was the wrong question to ask, Tay told himself. At least, it was the wrong question to ask right now. He had some huge blank spaces in his understanding he needed to fill in before he even tried to work out what it all meant.

  The desk clerk at the hotel had seen everyone’s comings and goings. Maybe he ought to have another talk with him. Put together a better time line of who came and went and when they did. That would be a decent place to start.

  Then, too, there was something else that bothered him. Another person had been watching the Fortuna Hotel: the girl he saw in the window. Who was she? What was she watching, and who was she watching it for? Tay needed to find her. It meant something that she was there, he was sure of it, but he had no idea what it was.

  Yeah, he knew the voices in his head weren’t real, but sometimes they really did have good ideas.

  There was a lot to do. Perhaps Sergeant Lee would be willing to give him a hand. Perhaps he would even ask her if she could cook, just so he would have an answer for his mother the next time she came calling.

  Tay finished his coffee. He rinsed out his mug and put it in the sink. Then he climbed the stairs, got dressed, and went to work.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  TAY WAS IN his office at the Cantonment Complex by a little after eight. He hardly recognized the place at that hour.

  After he found the coffeepot and poured himself a cup, he went into his office, closed the door, and sat drumming his fingers on the desk while he sipped the coffee. Did a lot of people go to work at this ungodly hour? Yes, he concluded sadly, a great many probably did. Singaporeans were dutiful people. They obeyed their superiors and showed up when they were told. Most of the poor devils probably went to work at this hour every day, God help them all.

  Whatever the time was, he was here. So where to start?

  He supposed the first thing he ought to do was go upstairs to see the SAC. He would want to hear about what happened directly from Tay, and he would want to tell Tay he could have no part in the investigation of Kang’s death because of his personal connection to it. Tay would nod dutifully and say nothing, and the SAC would understand perfectly well Tay had no intention at all of following his instructions. After that, he would be asked to give a statement to the detectives assigned to the investigation and those detectives would warn him again about avoiding any direct involvement. He would nod a little more and ignore them, too.

  Yes, that was what he should do, go upstairs and see the SAC, but he couldn’t yet face the expressions of sympathy and concern he would have to wade through to get to the substance of the conversation. Better to stall. But what could he do to look busy enough to keep him from going upstairs for a while? He had no answer to that, but just then his telephone rang, which relieved him for the moment from the necessity of deciding.

  “God, Sam, what are you doing in the office?” Susan Hoi asked when Tay answered. “I thought I’d just leave you a message. I heard what happened. I’m so very sorry. I just don’t know what else to say. Are you okay?”

  Tay wondered briefly if some place in all those words was an actual question to which he was expected to provide an actual answer, but he decided there probably wasn’t. Asking if someone was all right was only a pleasantry like saying Please or Thank you. When people asked how you were, they didn’t really want you to tell them. They just wanted you to say you were fine.

  “I’m fine, Dr. Hoi,” Tay responded dutifully. Hoping that would end the sympathy portion of the conversation, he said nothing else.

  Susan Hoi hesitated, but it was clear to her Tay didn’t want to talk about Kang’s death and she didn’t want to press him. So she changed the subject.

  “I’m calling about the ID on your floater,” she said.

  “Y
ou found something?”

  “Well…”

  Tay waited. He wondering if this was going where he thought it might be going. Sure enough, after a moment Susan Hoi said exactly what Tay was afraid she would say.

  “Why don’t you come over to my office, Sam? It’s better if I show you.”

  “I’m awfully busy, Dr. Hoi. Couldn’t you just—”

  “My office in ten minutes, Sam. Bye-bye.”

  Then she hung up.

  Tay sat looking at the receiver for a long moment before he replaced it in the cradle. He rubbed his eyes and slapped his forehead with his palm a few times. He knew he was trapped.

  He had intended to call Dr. Hoi later because of his dream. Just to rule out any possible connection between the floater and Robbie’s murder, of course. Not because he was taking anything his mother had said seriously. But that would have only been a phone call. He would rather have a root canal than actually walk over to that place and meet that woman.

  On the other hand, it occurred to him there was at least one advantage to going. He could kill an hour or so doing it, and surely spending an hour in a morgue would make the whole idea of sitting down and talking to the SAC afterwards very much more appealing.

  The Centre for Forensic Medicine is in a building called Block Nine on the grounds of the Singapore General Hospital. The building itself is a nondescript, modern two-story structure that looks as if it might shelter almost any kind of activity. But of course Tay knew it didn’t shelter just any activity, and he understood all too well what took place in Block Nine. Equipped as he was with that knowledge, the otherwise unremarkable structure with the aluminum chimney pipes poking out of it took on a genuinely creepy appearance.

  Normally it would take Tay no more than ten minutes to walk from his office in the Cantonment Complex across to Block Nine on the other side of New Bridge Road. In spite of his best efforts to stretch that out considerably, even taking a break for a cigarette when he was halfway there, Tay arrived at Dr. Hoi’s office less than twenty minutes later.