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

by Jake Needham

  Claire looked around. The park was empty and the streets were empty. She didn’t hear a sound.

  “Where is everybody?” she asked.

  “Residential neighborhoods in Singapore are pretty quiet during the day. Everyone is at work.”

  “Quiet I can see. But this is comatose. It’s like a bomb went off and wiped out all human life.”

  “We should count ourselves lucky. The last thing we need is an audience.”

  The line of houses facing Joo Chiat Avenue backed up to a narrow alleyway not much more than a single car in width. On the other side of the alleyway was the back of another line of similar houses. Tay peered around the corner up the alleyway. The rear of Linda’s house had a tiny concrete pad separated from the alleyway by a black metal fence. Other than two green plastic trashcans and a stepladder leaning against the back wall, the area was empty.

  “Maybe I should cover the back door,” Claire said.

  “Remember, we want him to run. Boxing him into a corner is going to get people killed. Maybe us.”

  Claire stood next to Tay and studied the alleyway. “I don’t see how he thinks he can run. If people hit the front and the back doors at the same time, there’s nowhere for him to go. Not unless he’s got a tunnel in there.”

  Tay and Claire moved around to the front of the house and looked cautiously down Joo Chiat Avenue. The area between the house and the road at the front was bigger than in the back, but it didn’t look much more hospitable. It too was entirely concreted and separated from the road by an open metal fence. There was a double drive gate in the fence and one of the gates stood open by about three feet.

  Directly in front of the house’s front door was a car shelter made from a green plastic roof supported on four aluminum poles. Next to it was a rusty metal table with three chairs that looked even rustier. A single red Chinese lantern dangled from a gold cord right in the center of the car shelter, but otherwise it was empty.

  “As soon as I close the door behind me,” Tay said, “come in through the gate and stand up against the front wall. Suparman’s attention will be on me and he won’t see you. Remember, do absolutely nothing no matter what happens unless you hear a shot. If you do, use that shotgun to shoot into the roof of the car shelter. Just keep banging away at it and it will sound like we’ve got about twenty guys out here all shooting at once. Don’t fire into the house and don’t come inside. I want him to have plenty of opportunity to get away.”

  Tay pulled up his pants leg and checked that his .38 hadn’t become dislodged during the walk across the park. He bent down and wiggled it, but it appeared secure. When he straightened up, he shook down his pants leg and looked at Claire.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  She clicked off the safety on the Mossberg. “I think the right question is whether you’re ready.”

  “I guess I’m about to find out.”

  Tay took his telephone out of his pants pocket and pushed buttons until he found the thread of text messages he exchanged with Suparman. With one finger, he picked out a new message and hit Send.

  I’m here.

  Tay could feel Claire holding her breath as they both stared at the screen of his telephone waiting for an answer. Tay was holding his, too. Then…

  Buzz.

  Where?

  Tay tapped with one finger again.

  In front.

  Buzz.

  Door is open. Hands out to your sides.

  Buzz.

  You won’t see me. I’ll see you.

  Tay took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the corner of the house. Staying close to the fence, he walked quickly to the gate, turned sideways, and slipped through without touching it.

  He was in the open then. Twenty feet from the front door. If Suparman was going to ambush him, this was when he would do it.

  Tay walked slowly toward the front door, his hands just below his waist, palms out. His eyes flicked from the drapery-covered windows to the door and back again.

  No sign of movement.

  Nothing happened.

  When he got to the front door, he stopped. It stood open about two inches. He bent forward and listened, but he heard nothing.

  Tay put his fingertips against the door and pushed. It swung back without a sound. Through the open doorway he could see across the room to the back of a couch covered in what looked like imitation black leather and, beyond it, a low table with a television set. He saw no sign of either Linda or Suparman in the narrow section of room visible to him.

  Tay took a deep breath, lifted one foot onto the threshold, and stepped inside.

  Now he was all the way into the living room of Linda’s house, but he still saw no one. Not Linda, not Suparman. Reaching back with his left hand, he closed the door behind him.

  The living room was on the small side, but Tay’s first thought was that might be an advantage. The less space he had to deal with, the better it ought to be for him. If there was anything at all that could make this lousy idea better. Which he seriously doubted.

  Right in front of him was the couch he saw when he first pushed open the door. A love seat upholstered in the same fake leather sat at a ninety-degree angle to create an L-shaped configuration in front of the television set. On the right-hand side of the living room was a door, but Tay could only see a few feet of the hallway behind it and couldn’t tell what was back there. A kitchen probably, and maybe a dining room. On the left, a wooden staircase with a white metal railing led to the upper floor where he assumed the bedrooms were located.

  Tay still saw no one. He still heard no one. He stood motionless, holding his breath and straining his ears for any clue where Suparman and Linda were. Nothing.

  He shuffled a couple of steps to his right. He tried to make as little noise as possible although he supposed he didn’t really make any difference. His presence wasn’t exactly a surprise to Suparman.

  He needed to pin down where Suparman was and where Suparman had Linda. The whole idea of this stupid plan was to get between them. That obviously required him to have at least some idea where they were.

  Tay kept his hands at his waist, palms out, and continued to shuffle slowly in the direction of the hallway at the right side of the living room. He didn’t want to do anything to spook Suparman and cause him to start shooting, at least not yet. Until he knew where Linda was, that wouldn’t do any good.

  He reached the end of the couch, took a step past it, and stopped.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  TAY COULD SEE down the hallway now. He caught sight of the entrance to a kitchen area just past the doorway and he was willing to bet the space beyond the kitchen was a dining room. Was it possible Suparman had Linda in the dining room? Tay thought back to the picture of Linda taped to a straight wooden chair. A chair from a dining table? Maybe.

  Tay took another step and felt rather than saw someone watching him from the stairs. He shifted his eyes slowly in that direction, but he saw no one. He took another step toward the hallway.

  “Stop!”

  The voice came from the top of staircase.

  Tay stopped.

  White sneakers and jeans-clad legs appeared on the highest stair. The legs began to descend slowly and Tay watched transfixed as Suparman showed himself.

  Suparman was tall and very thin, but nothing else about him came anywhere close to matching the sketch ISD had passed out at their briefing. His hair was jet-black and shiny and it was brushed back in a kind of modified pompadour. He had a long, patrician nose, high cheekbones, and a small white scar above his right eyebrow. His eyes were almost black and his mouth was thin-lipped and turned slightly down at the corners.

  His languid face and slight build made Suparman appear curiously old fashioned. Tay was suddenly seized by the bizarre idea that he was staring at a 1940’s saloon singer, something like Frank Sinatra might look if he were reincarnated as an Indonesian terrorist. He wouldn’t even have been surprised to hear Suparman break into so
ng:

  “It’s a quarter to three,

  there’s no one in the place

  except you and me…”

  Tay shook his head to clear it. He was going mad from the stress. He had to hang in there.

  When Suparman reached the bottom of the stairs, he stood looking at Tay for a long while. His face was empty and he held a large, black semi-automatic pistol with what looked like a five-inch barrel.

  Oh shit, Tay thought. Maybe that’s not a nine. If it’s a .45, I’m screwed.

  “You by yourself?” Suparman finally asked.

  “Do you see somebody else with me?”

  Suparman didn’t say anything. He just looked at Tay some more.

  “Yes,” Tay said. “I’m by myself.”

  “That is either very brave or very foolish.”

  “I’m still trying to make up my mind about that myself.”

  “Take your gun out and place it on the floor,” Suparman instructed Tay.

  Tay raised his shirt and lifted the H&K he took from the fast response car out of his holster. He bent down and placed the gun on the floor at his feet.

  “Push it away. Toward the front door.”

  With his left foot Tay pushed the pistol past the end of the couch. It skidded about ten feet across the wooden floor and bumped to a stop against the wall.

  Tay kept his hands open at waist level. He didn’t move a muscle, but his eyes gave Suparman a thorough going over.

  “You look pretty good for a guy who got shot a few days ago,” Tay said.

  “I do, don’t I?”

  “Where is Linda?”

  “Here.”

  “I want to see her. I want to know she is all right.”

  Something that looked almost like a smile creased Suparman’s face.

  “You do understand that I am going to kill you, don’t you?”

  “I understand you are going to try.”

  Suparman looked at Tay for a long time. The smile, if that’s what it was, disappeared.

  “You are very strange man,” he said.

  “A lot of people say that,” Tay nodded.

  “I want to see Linda,” Tay told Suparman again after a moment, mostly just to keep him talking.

  “She’s all right. I had to keep her alive until I could be sure you would come.”

  “Where is she?”

  Suparman gestured with the muzzle of his gun toward the hallway that led back to the kitchen. “She is there.”

  So Linda was in the rear of the house and Suparman was at the bottom of the stairs in the front of the house. Tay was standing exactly between those two points. So far, so good.

  “I want to see her.”

  “No.”

  Tay began moving, but very slowly. He shuffled a few half steps toward Suparman, acting more like a man who was confused and frightened than one who was any threat. He found that a remarkably easy impression to create.

  “Stop!” Suparman snapped. “Get down on your knees.”

  “If you’re going to shoot me, you can shoot me standing right here. I’m not getting on my knees.”

  Tay shuffled another step toward Suparman and looked around the room as if he didn’t quite know where he was.

  Suparman raised his pistol. Tay’s watched Suparman’s trigger finger out of the corner of his eye. It didn’t whiten like a finger squeezing against a trigger so he risked sliding his feet a little closer.

  And he kept talking.

  “Why not let me see her? If you’re going to kill me anyway, what difference does it make?”

  Another small slide forward. Now Tay was about three feet behind the love seat. It was the only thing between him and Suparman.

  All at once, just outside the front door, there was the sound of a sneeze. Immediately after that, two things happened almost simultaneously.

  In an instinctive reaction to the sound, Suparman turned slightly toward the front door, which also pulled the muzzle of his pistol in that direction. Tay saw his opening and dived for the floor behind the love seat.

  Suparman brought the pistol quickly back to Tay and fired, but Tay was already on the floor behind the couch and he missed. Tay began ripping desperately at the tape holding the .38 to his ankle.

  When she heard the gunshot, Claire did just what she was supposed to. The noise of the shotgun firing into the plastic roof of the car shelter was deafening. Maybe it didn’t sound exactly like fifty guys were attacking the house, but it couldn’t have sounded to Suparman like anything good was about to happen to him.

  From where Tay was huddled on the floor, he couldn’t see how Suparman was reacting, but he figured he had to be at least a little unnerved. The boom-boom-boom of the Mossberg sure unnerved the hell out of him.

  Tay finally got his gun free from his ankle and he ripped away the strips of tape that had come off with it. Staying prone, he pushed himself along the floor with his free hand and peeked around the end of the couch. He wasn’t concerned about noise. The blasts from the Mossberg were so loud they would have drowned out a motorcycle starting up.

  When Tay’s eyes cleared the end of the couch, he saw Suparman in a crouch with his handgun pushed out in front of him in a two-handed grip, and he was concentrating on the front door. Tay extended his gun hand around the couch and braced his elbow on the floor. A sense of calm settled over him and all his training seemed to come back at once. He brought the front sight of his .38 up until it rested on what he could see of Suparman’s chest, took a breath, and let half of it out. Then he slowly squeezed the trigger.

  Right at that moment, Claire unleashed a furious series of blasts and Suparman jerked his body a little further toward the front door. The movement reduced the size of Tay’s target, but it was too late for Tay to hold back the shot.

  He missed.

  At the sound of Tay’s revolver, Suparman wrenched his head back in Tay’s direction and loosed off a wild shot. He hit nothing but the back of the couch. He hesitated briefly, and then he abruptly turned and ran up the steps.

  Tay came to his knees, led the running man up the stairs with his front sight, and fired a second time, then a third. Both shots missed. Just as Suparman got to the top of the stairs, he reached back with his pistol and fired in Tay’s direction once more.

  This time Suparman was lucky and Tay was not.

  The shot caught Tay high on the left side of his vest about halfway between his heart and the center of his chest. The impact drove Tay backwards onto the floor.

  His head slammed into the wood.

  He didn’t move.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  WHEN THE MOSSBERG was empty, Claire pulled shells from her pocket and slammed them into the magazine until it was full again. She racked the pump to push one into the chamber and then she stepped up and kicked the front door of Linda’s house.

  She was willing to follow Tay’s instructions, but only to a point. And wherever that point was, she figured they were now well past it.

  Leading with the Mossberg, she leaped through the door, dived, and rolled behind the couch. When nothing happened, she raised her head cautiously and glanced around. Tay was off to her left toward the staircase. He was down, but he was moving slightly, so she looked away and scanned the rest of the room for threats.

  The open doorway to her right worried her. It wouldn’t do Tay any good if she went to him only to have Suparman come out of there behind them and start shooting. She didn’t hesitate. She rose out of her crouch, took half a dozen quick steps to the doorway, and plunged through it.

  The small kitchen area to her left was clear, but she could hear a grunting sound coming from the room beyond it. With the Mossberg straight out in front of her, she followed the sound. Against the far wall of the next room a woman was duct-taped to a straight wooden chair.

  Claire went to her and ripped the tape off Linda’s mouth and eyes.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, but who—”

  “Tay is down in the
front room. I’ve got to check on him. Then I’ll come back and cut you loose.”

  “What do you mean down? Is he—”

  But before Linda could finish her sentence, Claire was gone.

  “Are you hit?” she asked Tay.

  “He got me in the vest,” Tay mumbled. “It knocked me backwards and I hit my head.”

  Tay was prone, but he was rolling his head tentatively with very small movements. He looked like he was checking to see if it was still attached.

  Claire was down on one knee next to him, but her head was up and she was scanning the room.

  “Relax,” Tay said. “He’s gone.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “He went upstairs, but he’s not there now.”

  “What are you talking about?” Claire asked, giving Tay a look. “How hard did you hit your head?”

  Tay ignored the question.

  “Where’s Linda?” he asked instead.

  “She’s in the back room. She says she’s fine, but I haven’t cut her loose yet. I’ve been a little busy.”

  Tay held out a hand. “Help me up.”

  Claire stood and reached down for Tay’s hand. He held it and pulled, but he only made it as far as a sitting position.

  “Son of a bitch, that hurts!”

  Tay’s hand automatically went to the spot where Suparman’s shot had hit his vest.

  “Shit!” he shouted again and jerked his hand away.

  “Let me take a look at that,” Claire said.

  Tay shook his head. Carefully, but he shook it.

  “It didn’t penetrate. Just get me up. Suparman is running.”

  “I thought you said he was upstairs.”

  “I said he went upstairs, but he’s sure as hell not up there now. He has some way of getting out on the roof. Nothing else makes any sense. There’s no other way out of here.”