by Jake Needham
“What’s really going on here, sir?”
“What do you mean?”
Tay said nothing. He simply sat and looked at the SAC and kept his face completely blank.
“Okay, Sam. It’s like this. They want you out of CID. Completely out.”
“They?”
The SAC waved his hand in the general direction of the Ministry of Home Affairs compound at New Phoenix Park.
“The Minister,” he said.
The SAC paused. Tay waited.
“And…ah, others.”
“You mean the Prime Minister, don’t you, sir?”
The SAC looked away and said nothing. That meant yes.
“My hands are tied here, Sam. You know the Minister has wanted you out for a long time, and after this…”
The SAC trailed off, flapping one hand in a way that could have meant almost anything.
“After what, sir?”
“Goddamn it, Sam, don’t be naive,” the SAC snapped. “You went off on your own. You embarrassed ISD and your sergeant ended up dead.”
“I didn’t kill him, sir.”
“I know you didn’t, but if you’d just done what you were told to do he would still be alive.”
Tay didn’t want to hear that. Particularly because it might be true.
“Here’s how I’m reading this, sir,” Tay said. “The politicians need a scapegoat for something they knew about and which should never have been allowed to happen. And I’ve been selected for the role. Isn’t that what you really mean?”
The SAC looked out the window for a while without saying anything, and then he leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together behind his head. The sweat rings in the armpits of his shirt looked to Tay like the rings of a freshly cut tree.
“What’s it going to be, Sam?”
Tay crossed his legs and studied his foot, but his foot appeared to have no useful suggestions to make. It remained studiously silent.
“How long do I have to decide?” Tay asked.
“I was hoping to get an answer right now.”
“How long do I have to decide, sir?” he repeated.
The SAC scratched at his ear and looked around the room as if he might find the answer written on one of the walls.
“I suppose I could leave it to the end of today,” he finally said, “but no later than that. Do I have your word you’ll call me by five o’clock this afternoon and tell me what you’re going to do?”
Tay felt boxed in, and he felt that way because he was boxed in.
“Yes, sir. I will call you by five o’clock today.”
“Okay, Sam, then that’s it. I’ll be waiting for your call.”
The two men stood and shook hands. It was an automatic gesture of civility with no substance to it. Tay walked out of the SAC’s office without looking back and closed the door behind him.
Instead of going back to his office, Tay took the elevator to the ground floor and went outside for a cigarette. It was almost midday and the sidewalk was already crowded with groups of people on their way to lunch. Singaporeans went to lunch in groups, and they went early. It was frequently the most exciting part of their day.
Tay walked far enough away from the main entrance to avoid the casual conversations that sometimes sprung up among huddled smokers, shook out a Marlboro, and lit it. He smoked the first cigarette rapidly and efficiently and thought about nothing at all while he did it. When he was done, he almost immediately lit another, but this time he smoked it slowly and ran his conversation with the SAC back and forth through his mind.
They really did seem determined to get him this time, didn’t they? Senior officers had tried to get him before, of course, more times than he could remember really, but he had always had a few friends among officers who were even more senior. If the word had come down this time from the Minister of Home Affairs or even the Prime Minister himself, he had clearly been outbid. He had no higher cards to play. Nobody did.
Maybe, he told himself, he even deserved to be put out to pasture this time. Robbie Kang’s death was ultimately his responsibility. He didn’t want to look at it that way, but he had to look at it that way because it was. Maybe this time things were different.
But a choice of retirement or being shuffled off into an administrative position where he was no longer involved in solving cases? What choice was that? He was an investigator, not an administrator. He didn’t even know what administrators did all day, other than shuffle papers and try hard not to offend anybody. He couldn’t do that. He simply couldn’t.
On the other hand, what would he do if he retired? He had no idea what retirees did either. He could stay home and read books and not have to talk to anybody, he supposed. That part seemed attractive enough right now, but he imagined the attractiveness would fade before long. Retirement was the beginning of a long slide that led nowhere but to total irrelevancy. Nobody took retired people seriously. Retired people were invisible.
Tay walked over to one of the sand-filled pedestals that had been placed here and there to entice smokers out of dropping the cigarette butts on the ground. He stubbed out what was left of his Marlboro, wiped his hands on a handkerchief, and headed back into the Cantonment Complex. He would give himself exactly one hour upstairs in his office to decide what he was going to do, and then he was going home.
Tay was waiting for the elevator when his telephone buzzed in his pocket.
Did he have another text message? He had gone most of life avoiding text messages and suddenly they were coming in almost faster than he could read them. He took out his telephone and looked at the screen.
Maybe you’re not really too old for me.
Was Claire trying to apologize for the message she sent him before, the one saying he wasn’t dull, just old? Before he could decide, his phone buzzed again.
How old are you anyway?
The elevator arrived and a crowd surged off on their way to lunch. Tay stepped away from the closing door and let it leave without him. He moved to a relatively quiet corner of the lobby and stared at the screen of his telephone.
Was Claire flirting with him? If she was, she had picked the lousiest possible day on which to do it. Bringing up the question of his age, even in a joking way, on the very day the SAC was trying to push him into retirement was like mashing on a bruise. It damn well hurt.
Of course, Claire didn’t know anything about that. Should he just tell her and be done with it? No, he couldn’t. Then he would have to explain the whole business about the Minister trying to get rid of him, and he didn’t want to talk about it. Worse, if Claire wasn’t flirting and was simply asking a genuine question, he would look like a complete fool.
Buzz.
Come on, Sam, how old are you really?
Tay stared at the screen of his telephone. Claire was flirting. He had no doubt about it now.
Nothing good could come of this. He had to find some way to cut it off right now, but he didn’t want to seem rude or make it appear he was casually brushing her off. When your life is resting in somebody’s hands, it was always good policy not to piss them off unnecessarily. He had absolutely no idea what to do.
The lunch rush was largely over and a degree of quiet had returned to the lobby. When the next elevator arrived, Tay saw it was empty and jumped in just as the doors closed. He punched the button for his floor, leaned against the back of the elevator, and folded his arms.
When in doubt do nothing at all. It was a policy that had served him well for most of his fifty years. Why look around now for a new approach?
He left the elevator and was no more than a dozen steps down the corridor toward his office when…
Buzz.
I’m sending you a picture I want you to see.
Christ, now what? They were right in the middle of a dangerous operation to trap one of the world’s most wanted terrorists and Claire wanted to send him a picture? What kind of picture could she be sending him? One possibility immediately popped into Tay�
�s mind and just as quickly he pushed it out again. Surely that wasn’t what she meant, was it?
He read back through the message in hopes of divining some further understanding, but he found none. Then he noticed something odd. The message had come from a different number than Claire’s other messages had, a number he didn’t recognize. Had Claire switched telephones for some reason?
Oh God, had she switched to a personal telephone because she wanted to send him a picture that was…well, personal? He still couldn’t believe that, but what else could switching telephones mean? Claire wouldn’t do that for no reason and the only reason he could think of was that she wanted to keep this picture just between the two of them. And if she wanted to keep this picture just between the two of them, Tay could think of only one reason that might be.
Buzz.
Tay shoved the phone back in his pocket without looking at the screen and walked into his office. He closed the door, sat behind his desk, and placed the phone face down on the blotter in front of him. He stared at the back of the phone for a bit, and then he took a deep breath and turned it over.
He thought he was completely prepared for whatever he might see.
He wasn’t.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
TAY SAT STARING at the screen of his telephone, but what he was looking at made no sense to him.
The photograph that had arrived by text message was one of Sergeant Lee seated in a straight wooden chair in front of a white wall. She was lashed to the chair with bands of silver duct tape around her legs, her arms, and her shoulders. Two more strips of duct tape covered her eyes and mouth. What the fuck?
The answer to Tay’s unspoken question arrived almost immediately.
Buzz.
You have thirty minutes.
Buzz.
If you’re not here by then, I’ll kill her.
Buzz.
If I see anybody but you, I’ll kill her.
Buzz.
Answer me right now or I’ll hurt her.
Tay could hardly bring himself to touch his telephone again. If he just ignored the messages, maybe nothing would happen. But of course he knew that was nonsense. Whoever sent the messages could easily see they had been read, couldn’t he?
He thought for a moment, took a deep breath, and picked up the telephone. He pecked out a message with his thumbs and hit Send.
Who is this?
Buzz.
You know who this is.
Buzz.
So you also know I will kill her.
Suparman had Linda. Tay didn’t know how that could be, but it was obviously true. Linda must have come back from Johor Bahru without telling him, and Suparman had somehow surprised her.
They hadn’t prepared for that. What he and August had talked about was Suparman coming after him. He thought Linda was safe, so they had given no thought to protecting her.
Now Suparman had Linda, and Tay had no idea what to do. He felt responsible for her, just as he felt responsible for what happened to Robbie Kang. If he had only done what they told him to do and let his suspicions go, none of this would have happened.
Tay pecked out another message and hit Send.
Where are you?
Buzz.
Her house.
Tay typed with his thumbs.
I don’t know where that is.
Buzz.
You’re the detective. Figure it out.
Buzz.
Thirty minutes. Or she’s dead.
Tay hesitated, then typed.
It will take me an hour.
He thought for a moment and added one more thing.
If you hurt her, I will kill you.
Buzz.
LOL
It took Tay only a minute to get Linda Lee’s home address from the CID operations center: Joo Chiat Avenue. It sounded familiar to him, but he wasn’t certain where it was so he pulled up a city map on his telephone.
Joo Chiat Avenue was in a middle-class neighborhood about halfway between the Cantonment Complex and Changi Airport. A pretty nice place to live on a sergeant’s pay. Was Linda married? No, he was pretty sure she wasn’t. Maybe it was family money. Tay pushed the thought away, annoyed to have had it. How she acquired the house hardly mattered now.
What did matter was that he needed to figure out how to keep Suparman from killing both of them and he had less than an hour to do it.
Tay knew Suparman wasn’t going to let Linda go just because he followed instructions and showed up at her house. If he went there, Suparman would kill them both. If he didn’t go there, Suparman would kill Linda and come after him later.
Should he call Claire? He had no doubt she would produce half a dozen hardened killers within the hour, surround Linda’s house, and take Suparman down.
No, that didn’t make any sense. If he called out August’s troops, they would get Suparman, he had no doubt they would, but Suparman would still kill Linda. Suparman wasn’t going to turn her loose just because a bunch of armed men showed up. He must have anticipated already that might happen and he had to be prepared for it.
Tay could only look at this one way: he was responsible for Linda being tied to that chair and he had to get her out of that chair unharmed. Whatever the risk to him. Whatever it might cost him. It was as simple as that. The only choices he could consider were ones that made that possible.
Which meant he was going. And he was going alone.
Anyway, what did he have to lose? Everybody he had ever been close to was already dead: his father, his mother, Robbie Kang. It was a short list, but they had all left him. He was at the front of the line now. His turn to leave would come soon enough. Why did it matter exactly when it came?
Tay knew he could make it to Joo Chiat Avenue in thirty minutes, a little more if traffic was bad. He ran for the elevator.
He would figure out what to do when he got there while he was driving.
Probably.
Down in the garage where they kept the pool vehicles, Tay found a fast response car that had been left for repairs and not yet returned to New Phoenix Park. It was a white Toyota Altis equipped with lights and siren.
Unlike most cars imported to Singapore, fast response cars had no speed governor, which made the fast response car exactly the right vehicle for the job. Tay was not a particularly good driver, but he had long ago discovered the faster he went the less that seemed to matter.
It took Tay fifteen minutes to get to Joo Chiat Avenue.
When he reached the general area, he cut the siren and lights and pulled to the curb to take a closer look at the map on his telephone. Joo Chiat Avenue and Joo Chiat Place formed a rectangular cul-de-sac in front of Telok Kurau Park. Both of the streets dead-ended into the park, but a narrow alleyway that ran along the front edge of the park connected the two streets and formed the base of the rectangle.
Tay punched in the house number he got from the CID operations center. Linda’s house was right at the end of the street. It was just across the alleyway from the Telok Kurau Park.
He switched to Google Street View and took a look around.
Joo Chiat Avenue and Joo Chiat Place were both narrow streets that appeared to carry very little traffic since they didn’t go through to anywhere. Linda’s house was the last unit on the end of a group of two-story row houses set back about twenty feet off the road. There must have been at least a dozen separate houses, but they were all joined in a straight line by common walls and a common red-tiled roof.
The houses were small and most had whitewashed front walls and narrow casement windows on both floors. Fences separated front parking areas from the houses on both sides and gates separated them from the road. The fences and gates were mostly made of open iron railings in various styles and provided no privacy for the houses. Worse, from Tay’s point of view, they exposed anyone on the street to full view from inside the house.
Telok Kurau Park was fairly large, but it didn’t amount to much. Some clumps of scrubby trees and a littl
e scruffy grass were about all it offered. On the opposite side of the park from Joo Chiat Avenue was some kind of canal or drainage ditch. Tay didn’t recall having seen it before so he wasn’t sure what it really was, but it looked fairly wide on the map. Nothing in the area crossed it other than a single pedestrian bridge. Suparman had chosen well. Vehicles could only approach Linda’s house from one direction.
Tay was momentarily stumped. He could hardly drive up and park right out front of Linda’s house. A fast response car with POLICE painted in blue on both sides would announce his presence long before he wanted it announced. So what to do?
He took a closer look at the park. That was a possibility. He could leave the car somewhere and approach the house on foot across the park. That would make his appearance about as stealthly as he could hope for it to be.
He worked out a route on the map he could drive to get to the other side of the park, one that would keep the fast response car out of sight of Linda’s house, and then he pulled away from the curb.
Lor Telok Kurau was a residential roadway that ran along the south side of Telok Kurau Park all the way down to the canal. Tay drove to the end and stopped. The canal turned out to be a twenty-foot wide stream with cemented walls and a chain-link fence on both sides. Other than the water being a surprisingly rich and cooling shade of blue, it looked like a miniature version of the Singapore River.
The park was walled with an ornamental iron fence painted in a shade of green that was apparently meant to blend in with its surroundings, but the park’s vegetation wasn’t up to the challenge. There were several small groves of twenty or thirty foot gum trees, although most of the park was bare other than for some scruffy looking grass burned brown by the relentless Singapore sun. Here and there small trees and bushes had been planted in what looked like an effort to increase the density of the vegetation, but the effort had clearly been a failure.
