The Ambassador's wife ist-1

by Jake Needham

  “And what if he doesn’t?”

  “Sir?”

  “I said what if he doesn’t take us to them? What if DeSouza just keeps going to work and back home again? What if he takes us to nobody? What would you do then? Just walk away and forget everything?”

  “We wouldn’t have much choice that I see, sir.”

  “Well, fuck that. I have a choice, Robbie, and I’ve made it.”

  “You just can’t-”

  “Elizabeth Munson was brutalized and murdered by somebody and we’ve done nothing since except try to avoid responsibility of finding out who it was. Ambassador Rooney was brutalized and murdered exactly the same way-”

  “But that’s not our case, sir.”

  “Dead is dead. After dead there is fucking nothing. Who stands with the dead if we don’t, Robbie?”

  “That isn’t our case, sir,” Kang repeated doggedly.

  “How about Cally Parks?”

  “That isn’t our case either, sir.”

  “Fine. You may be off the hook because she was murdered in Thailand, but I’m not. Cally Parks got a bullet in the head because I did nothing to help her.”

  “What could you have-”

  “And then, Robbie, while these women were being murdered, while I was doing fuck all about it, my mother up and dies on me. My own mother, Robbie. She dies while I’m still trying to make up my mind whether or not to go to see her again. She dies when I haven’t even found the resolve in myself to say good-bye. Bloody hell, I’m nearly fifty years old and I look at myself in the mirror and what do I see? A timid, fearful little man who can’t make up his mind about a fucking thing.”

  “Don’t make this about you, sir. Everybody dies.”

  “This is about me. I’m sick of doing nothing, Robbie. I’m sick of just showing up. I’m sick of myself.”

  “You keep talking about justice and fine ideas like that, sir, but that’s not what all this is about anymore, is it? It’s personal with you now.”

  “I hope so. I really do hope so.”

  Kang raked a hand through his hair.

  “It’s not going to work, sir.” He couldn’t look Tay in the eye. “And it’s not right.”

  “Look, Robbie, you asked me to tell you what I’m going to do because you deserve to know. You do deserve to know, so I told you. But you have not been invited to lecture me on what is right and what is wrong. Do I make myself clear?”

  Kang folded his arms tightly. “Completely, sir.”

  “I expect the surveillance on DeSouza to be withdrawn immediately. Do you have a problem with that?”

  “We’re only there because you asked us to be, sir.”

  “Right. And now you’re done.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant. That’s all.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kang stood for a moment in the doorway. He knew there was more to say, but he wasn’t entirely certain what it was and didn’t in any event know how to say it. After a few seconds, he gave up and left Tay alone in the office, closing the door softly behind him.

  AT about four, Tay went downstairs, checked out a car from the pool, and drove home. Slipping off his shoes, he stretched out on the couch and almost instantly fell into a deep and dreamless sleep from which he did not wake until nearly eleven that evening. When he did wake, he felt as refreshed as if he had just returned from a week’s vacation.

  He walked out into the garden in his stockinged feet and lit a Marlboro. He smoked quietly until the cigarette was finished and then flicked away the butt. Upstairs he went to the toilet and washed his face, and then he changed into a pair of khaki chinos and a blue denim work shirt and left the tails hanging out over his trousers.

  Tay kept his service revolver in the top drawer of the bedside table. It was an old-fashioned wheel gun, a Smith and Wesson.38, five shots with a two-inch barrel. Uniformed officers and some of the younger detectives these days mostly carried big Taurus revolvers chambered for a.44 magnum. Tay had never even bothered to qualify with one so he just stuck to his little.38. It’s a great weapon if you ever get into a gunfight in an elevator, his colleagues joked, but he almost never carried a gun anyway so it didn’t particularly matter to him what it was. To tell the truth, he was such a lousy shot he figured that one gun was pretty much as useless to him as another.

  He took the.38 from the drawer, unsnapped the safety strap on the holster, and slid it out. He lifted the hammer and spun the cylinder to make certain it was fully loaded, and then he carefully lowered the hammer and returned the gun to its holster. Snapping the strap and slipping the holster onto his belt, he slid it around until it was nestled in the small of his back. Then he pulled the tails of his shirt down and smoothed them over it.

  Tay stood there for a moment feeling the uncomfortable lump of the.38 against his back. Carrying a gun at all made him uneasy and the physical discomfort just made it worse. He hoped he would be able to keep the damned thing in its holster where it belonged, but he didn’t know whether he would or not.

  If it really did come to something like that, would he have the courage? He didn’t know. He would just have to see.

  There was nothing else to think about. It was time to go.

  Tay picked up the two pictures that Kang had printed out for him and was slipping them into a manila envelope when something in them that he had not noticed before caught his eye. He held the two photographs under his bedside reading lamp side-by-side to get a better look.

  The figure walking alongside the Hoover Hotel in both photographs was in such deep shadow it was unrecognizable. Tay could not even tell if it was a man or a woman. Still…what was there about it? Something tickled his memory. The figure reminded him of something, or someone. Tay pushed the photographs closer to the light, turning them first one way and then the other, but nothing came to him that made the slightest sense.

  Eventually he gave up. He pushed the photographs into the envelope. Then he picked up his cigarettes, put them in his shirt pocket, and turned out the reading light.

  Tay had parked the car he checked out from the Cantonment Complex up on Hullet Road and he walked the two blocks to it quickly, listening to his footsteps echo hollowly in the empty street. Lighting another Marlboro, he started the car and turned west.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Tay had never been to DeSouza’s house before, but from the surveillance reports he knew exactly how to find it. It was one of the classic old bungalows up Ridley Park Road just behind the Tanglin Park Condominiums.

  He also knew from the surveillance reports that DeSouza lived alone. It was a pretty ritzy address. What was a single man doing living all by himself in a big house in an expensive neighborhood instead of in a condominium? All at once it occurred to Tay that he was a single man and he too lived all by himself in a big house in an expensive neighborhood instead of in a condominium. Did that mean he was like DeSouza in some way? No, that was not possible. He was not like DeSouza in any way.

  The further Tay got from Orchard Road, the more traffic thinned and by the time he passed the darkened windows of the Tanglin Mall it pretty well disappeared altogether. Tanglin was not a neighborhood in which people drove around late at night. The tree-lined roadways, the neatly trimmed lawns, and the widely spaced street lamps gave the whole area an aura of order to the point of artificiality. He hoped Sergeant Kang had pulled the surveillance off DeSouza as he had told him to. If anyone were still watching DeSouza’s house, Tay would have a hard time explaining what he was doing driving by it in the middle of the night.

  Just beyond the British High Commission, Tay started watching the street signs. The Chinese embassy appeared and disappeared in the darkness and his headlights swept the neatly trimmed lawns of the elegant low-rise condominium complexes that lined Tanglin Road. When he saw the sign for Ridley Park Road, he turned right.

  A hundred yards beyond the Tanglin Park Condominiums, Ridley Park narrowed into two lanes. The trees closed in and the vege
tation thickened, but Tay could still see houses far up the circular driveways behind big iron gates. The houses all looked more or less alike: two stories tall with white walls, black-painted beams, red tile roofs, grassy green lawns, and wide front porticos. The area made Tay think of a deserted stage set for some play based on a Henry James novel.

  Tay knew from the surveillance reports that DeSouza’s house was on the corner just around the curve he was approaching. He slowed and scanned the road cautiously. To his relief, he saw no evidence of surveillance. When he made the curve, he spotted the house immediately.

  There was a black iron gate suspended between two white brick pillars and beyond the gate a short driveway crossed a tightly trimmed lawn to a covered portico at the front of the house. There was a light in the portico and lights in several upstairs windows. At a glance Tay thought all the downstairs windows were dark, but he couldn’t be certain without examining the house carefully. He didn’t want to make himself conspicuous, at least not yet, so he drove on.

  Just past DeSouza’s house, Ridley Park Road narrowed further and thick vegetation crowded in on both sides. Tay kept a close eye out for surveillance vehicles along the road or off to the sides of it, but he saw none.

  On the right side of the road, a high wire fence caught Tay’s eye. It was topped with coils of concertina wire, a sight that suited the Tanglin area about as well as a herd of grazing reindeer. He was just wondering what the significance of the fence could be when what looked like lines of military barracks appeared out of the night on the opposite side of the road. They were long, low whitewashed buildings with tile roofs and green shuttered windows and they looked ghostly and abandoned.

  He used a roadway between two of the barracks to turn his car around. He sat for a moment with his headlights illuminating the deserted buildings and half imagined armed sentries rushing to challenge him, demanding to know what he was doing there. If any had, he would have had difficulty giving them a coherent explanation. He was even having difficulty giving himself a coherent explanation. After a bit, he stopped thinking about it, reversed out into Ridley Park Road, and turned his car back toward DeSouza’s house.

  Tay parked on the grass at the side of the road. He chose a place where his car was screened by a thick stand of trees and would not be noticed if DeSouza happened to look out a window. He picked up the envelope with the photographs of the Hoover Hotel and got out, closing the car door quietly behind him.

  The night was almost unnaturally calm. There was no wind at all. Moisture hung in the air like globs of powdered sugar. Tay stood for a moment on the grass, listening. Hearing nothing, he walked to DeSouza’s gates and examined them in the dim light of a street lamp up the road. He was pleased to see that they were unlocked. He gave the right one a small push and it swung open.

  Tay hadn’t expected to encounter any security and he didn’t. He walked up the driveway, entered the portico, and climbed the three concrete steps to the front door.

  He rang the doorbell.

  FORTY-SIX

  “What the hell are you doing here, Tay?”

  DeSouza was backlit in the doorway, a chunky glass half full of amber liquid in his right hand.

  “You need to talk to me,” Tay said.

  “Do I now?” DeSouza chuckled and took a hit on his drink. “Why do I need to talk to you?”

  Tay held up the envelope with the photographs of the Hoover Hotel, but he didn’t give it to DeSouza.

  “What’s that?” DeSouza asked. His face was as flat as a dinner plate.

  Then DeSouza surprised Tay by stepping back away from the doorway without waiting for an answer and waving him inside.

  “I suppose you’ll want a drink,” he said.

  Tay stepped through the door and DeSouza pointed to a room to the right of the entrance hall. It was quite large and appeared to have been designed for use as a study although the floor-to-ceiling bookcases on two sides of the room were almost completely empty. At the place where Tay might have expected to find a desk was a scarred pool table with an orange felt surface and on the opposite side of the room by the windows two brown leather chairs faced each other across a low table. Next to the chairs was a mahogany cabinet with a collection of bottles and glasses on top of it.

  DeSouza walked straight to the cabinet. He chose a bottle that looked like Johnnie Walker and poured some into his glass. When he turned around, Tay noticed that the color of his drink had changed from straw to deep gold.

  “Did I offer you a drink?” DeSouza asked.

  “I don’t want anything.”

  “Then I guess you might as well sit down.”

  DeSouza gestured toward one of the leather chairs and took the one opposite it, his back toward the doorway. Crossing his legs he sipped at his drink and watched Tay carefully over the rim of the glass until he sat down, too. Then DeSouza put his drink down on the table between them.

  “So what’s this all about?” he asked.

  Tay fished a box of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket and lit one.

  He looked around for an ashtray to discard the spent match. When he couldn’t find one, he looked at DeSouza with a question mark on his face.

  DeSouza peered blankly back.

  Tay got up, stepped over to the bar, and selected a drinking glass.

  He dropped the match into it and returned to his chair. He put the glass down next to DeSouza’s drink.

  “I want some information from you,” Tay said. “And I’m willing to give you the photographs in this envelope in return for it.”

  “Photographs?”

  Tay inhaled deeply, tilted his head back, and blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. Then he handed DeSouza the brown envelope.

  DeSouza opened it and removed the contents. At first, Tay could see he was genuinely puzzled. DeSouza held one photograph in each hand and glanced back and forth between them. Then something seemed to catch his eye and he twisted toward a lamp and held the photographs under it. He leaned closer and studied them in the light.

  All at once DeSouza’s whole body went slack starting with his face and spreading downward. He tried to cover his reaction, but he couldn’t.

  “I have others,” Tay said. “Much better ones.”

  DeSouza slowly lowered his hands and put the two photographs on the table between them. In the silence, Tay could hear the sound the photographs made when they touched the tabletop.

  “That guy worked for us,” Tay said.

  “What guy?”

  “The one you thought was a woman. Or maybe you didn’t think he was a woman. It doesn’t matter. Either way, he was ours. I set you up.”

  DeSouza said nothing. He lifted his glass and sipped at his whiskey. Tay could see he was thinking about it.

  “I wanted to get something I could use against you. Now I’ve got it. It’s really just that simple.”

  “Spell it out, Tay. What do you want?”

  “You know why Elizabeth Munson was killed. You know who killed her. And you’re going to tell me in exchange for the pictures I have.”

  DeSouza swirled the whiskey absentmindedly for a moment.

  “You surprise me, Tay.”

  “Sometimes I surprise myself.”

  “I thought you were just a squirrelly little washout, and here it turns out you’re a big-time extortionist. Who would have thought it?”

  American idioms were generally a source of annoyance for Tay. What in God’s name was squirrelly supposed to mean? He certainly wasn’t about to ask DeSouza.

  “You don’t know shit, do you, pal?” DeSouza continued when Tay didn’t say anything.

  “We’ve got a witness who can put you at the Marriott when Mrs. Munson was killed.”

  That was stretching a point, Tay knew, but it was close enough for government work.

  “We’ve also got a witness who can place you at the apartment in Bangkok when Ambassador Rooney was killed,” Tay hurried on before DeSouza could ask any questions. “And I know you we
re with Cally when she was killed. That makes you the common link in all three murders.”

  “That’s bullshit, Tay.”

  “Are you telling me you weren’t in any of those places?”

  “I’m telling you that you haven’t got any witnesses.”

  Tay drew on his cigarette and exhaled slowly. DeSouza’s eyes lingered on him, gazing at him through the wisps of cigarette smoke. Then they flickered and shifted toward the darkness outside the windows.

  “Here’s the offer, DeSouza. You tell me what you know and I’ll give you the rest of the pictures and walk right out of here. You don’t tell me and I will make it my life’s work to burn your ass. And I don’t care what I have to do. I’ll make you hurt.”

  “You have the other pictures with you now?”

  “Of course not. They’re somewhere safe.”

  “Bullshit. You’re bluffing.”

  “Then call my bluff.”

  DeSouza took a breath and let it out again. “You don’t have any idea what you’re doing here, do you? You don’t have any idea what you really have.”

  Tay wasn’t sure what that meant, so he remained silent.

  DeSouza picked up his drink again and sat sipping at it, but his eyes stayed focused somewhere outside the windows. Tay finished his cigarette and stubbed it out in the drinking glass where he had dropped his match.

  “Stand up,” DeSouza abruptly snapped.

  “It won’t do you any good to throw me out.”

  “I’m not throwing you out. Stand up and take off your shirt.”

  “Take off my shirt?”

  “I want to be sure you’re not wired, you fucking dimwit.”

  Tay considered that briefly, then stood and unbuttoned his shirt. Pulling it open he held it out away from his body.

  “Satisfied?” he asked.

  “Damn, Tay,” DeSouza said with a low whistle. “You really could stand to lose some weight, man.”

  “Go to hell, DeSouza.”