Crime Scene: Singapore

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Now the look on Lampert’s face was one of fear—deep, choking fear. I could almost hear his mouth going dry. He had gone pale and started looking to the side as if to find a way out. But a few moments later, he turned back and glared at me with intense anger. “They didn’t have these photocopies back then. They didn’t exist. Certainly not there in Singapore. You made that up, you devious bastard.”

  ‘I then shot him one of the brightest smiles of my career. “Indeed, I did. But you’ve just confirmed the central truth of the whole matter for me.” With that, I turned and started strutting out without waiting for his “man” to guide me. I was afraid he might come running up behind me and try to strangle me. Or stick a dagger in my back. But he did nothing. I swear I could, however, feel the palpable sting of his glare in my back as I left.

  ‘So I had my traitor and everything else had come together. All that was missing was the identity of some Chinaman who had evidently sold incriminating documents to Lampert for either money or special privileges.

  ‘It’s probably too late for me to ever track down that Chinaman, but I hope somebody will someday pick up the torch from me. The one thing I’m bloody sure of is that our man got those documents off the dead body of the German diplomat that night in Chinatown. In other words, it was that third killer, whose existence the Singapore Detective Branch spent so much time and energy denying. Whoever this was, he was the last piece of the puzzle.’

  Kelvin Tan was absolutely beaming at this point. ‘So now we see how those hero’s citations were arranged: one very dirty hand washes the other.’

  ‘And this … Mr Haggerty?’ Bertram Koh asked.

  ‘Dead. He died a few years later. I think it was 1971, but that’s not the important thing. My partner got a lot of his information from those memoirs. And from me.’

  ‘From you? So how did you work your way into this anyway?’

  ‘He came after me, my partner. Wanted to know what I knew about my great-uncle.’

  ‘Your great-uncle?’

  ‘Tan Tong Hua.’ He paused for effect. ‘Once one of the richest men in Singapore?’

  Anson offered a cynical nod. ‘Of course.’

  ‘After he got killed, the business went all to hell. His sons, his nephews … my father one of them … couldn’t keep things going. Didn’t have his touch, I guess. Most of what was left of the company got sold off. Mainly to …’

  Bertram Koh nodded. ‘Blue Horizons.’

  Kelvin smiled broadly. ‘Oh yes; I knew I’ve heard that name somewhere before.’ He then stepped to the middle of the room, halfway between the two Kohs. ‘So now you see, gentlemen, why I feel I am well and truly entitled to a share of Blue Horizons. The money my great-uncle had on him the night he died, all his possessions that night, that all disappeared. But then it comes back as seed money for your family company. And money that came out of that was used to buy the rest of my family’s company.’

  Bertram Koh looked at him hard. ‘So you helped your partner find much of what he could regarding our company?’

  Tan shrugged. ‘As much as I could. But you can believe I got super interested in this case. Especially when I knew how much I could profit from it myself.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Any more startling revelations about our family?’

  ‘No, nothing that you can’t—oh wait, yes; thanks for reminding me.’ Tan now smiled like a ten-year-old about to tell a dirty joke. ‘Your family has this … uhh, foundation or something.’

  Bertram nodded, already suspicious of where this question was headed. ‘The Wan Tze Min Foundation. It makes grants to groups furthering the education of young girls from poor backgrounds.’

  ‘Right; yes; very, very humanitarian of your company. And that was started by …?’

  Anson scowled. ‘My grandfather. As if you didn’t know.’

  ‘Just wanted to be sure … partner. But one thing still not clear … who was this Wan Tze Min?’

  ‘A young girl in southern China. Where my family came from originally. She helped some cousins and an aunt escape just as the Communists were moving into that area. They got away to Malaysia and eventually made it to Canada.’

  ‘And that young girl? What did …?’

  ‘The Communists found out she was helping people from the area escape. And not just my family members. So they tortured her to get information and apparently she died while in their custody. Murdered probably.’

  Kelvin shook his head, feigning sorrow. ‘Sad story really. So sad.’ He looked up towards the ceiling, as if seeking advice.

  ‘And these relatives in Canada, do you see them often? Keep in touch with phone calls, letters?’

  Bertram Koh shifted uneasily in his wheelchair. ‘No. They … they never kept up contact after making it to North America. I’ve never really seen them or spoken to them … myself.’

  ‘Oh. What a lack of gratitude. After saving them from the Communists.’

  ‘It happens. Families are not always as tight or as loyal as they should.’

  ‘How true. How very true.’ Tan then reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a few well-folded pieces of paper. ‘Oh, before I forget. I have a present for you. Both of you.’ He tossed the pages across the floor, towards Anson.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked the younger Koh as he picked the papers up off the floor.

  ‘It’s a copy of a police report. From 1938. You can verify it yourself if you want. Go to the police headquarters, file a request, you have to wait about a month, but …’ He smiled. ‘Why go to all that trouble? I swear to you that these are genuine. And if you can’t trust your new partner, who can you trust?’

  ‘I’m sure they’re authentic,’ said the elder Koh.

  ‘It’s only part of the entire report. But it has the name of one of the victims and how she died. The girl they called ‘Agnes Slop-Mop’. They’ve got her there under her real name.’

  Anson slapped the papers in the palm of his left hand. ‘Thank you, Mr Tan. We’ll look at these later.’

  ‘You’ll find it very interesting reading.’

  Anson and Bertram exchanged long looks. Then Bertram pulled himself up slightly in his chair.

  ‘Mr Tan, can I speak to my son briefly? Just the two of us?’

  ‘Why? You think I can just—’

  ‘Sir … When you first accosted me downstairs, put that gun to my back, you said you just wanted to discuss something with us. Said you weren’t planning to rob us, you just needed that gun to assure that we would listen. Well, now we’ve listened. To everything we need to know, I think. So I would like to discuss the matter with my son. You are not a member of our company yet, Mr Tan. Not yet.’

  ‘Or were you maybe planning all along to stage a small replay of that St Lucy’s Massacre?’ Anson piped in. ‘Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of cash on us at the moment. And I didn’t wear my good watch today.’

  Kelvin Tan gave a sour laugh, then nodded. ‘OK, I’ll let you both discuss it. You need, what, fifteen minutes? Is that enough?’

  ‘Yes, I think that will be fine. You can come back in fifteen minutes and we’ll see what deal we can work out. Don’t worry, we won’t try to leave.’ He then turned and stared hard at his son. ‘Or call the authorities.’ He turned back to Tan. ‘We’ll be right here when you come back.’

  ‘OK, I guess I just have to trust my future business partners, isn’t it? Oh, by the way: we have like ten copies of this manuscript. Most of them are with this solicitor we hired. If anything happens to me, like getting arrested or falling down the steps here and breaking my neck, our solicitor turns those copies over to The Straits Times, Business Times, Today newspaper, Mediacorp TV … well, you know, all of them. Some overseas newspapers too.’

  Bertram shook his head. ‘You don’t have to worry about anything unpleasant happening to you, Mr Tan.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure I don’t. But I just thought I’d mention it.’ He made a salute, tapping the gun lightly on his forehead, then backed up s
lowly, opened the door and stepped out.

  Bertram Koh turned, his head held down. Even so, Anson detected a sickly look on his father’s face as he crossed over to him. ‘Dad, are you alright?’ Bertram nodded slightly, but didn’t look up. ‘You don’t believe all this idiotic drivel, do you? None of this would stand up for a minute in a court of law.’

  ‘Probably not, but …’

  ‘Dad. What is it? You can’t believe this crap?’

  ‘When your grandfather was in the hospital that last time …’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I was in to see him this one time. I caught a glint of something like tears in his eyes. I thought it was just, you know, natural fear, so I reached over, took his hand. He was staring straight out into space … like he was focused on something. Then he half-turned and told me that when he was gone, I had to be sure to keep giving those regular donations to charity. If I didn’t, he said, the company would probably collapse, or something else terrible would happen. He then said the reason for this … is that there was some terrible crime committed at the very beginning. I asked him what he meant, he just shook his head and said, “Very bad. Something very bad …”

  ‘After your grandfather’s funeral, I asked your uncle what grandpa might have meant. He said it was probably something that went on during the Occupation. He said that almost everyone did something to survive during those days that they are deeply ashamed of now. I thought that was it, just dealing in the black market, something like that. Something everyone did.

  ‘Then when your uncle himself became seriously ill, I was sitting with him. I felt bad about asking him again, but I couldn’t let it rest. I asked what happened during the Occupation. He said that your grandfather and him, they passed information to the Japanese, to the Kempeitai. Information about other Chinese, small business people mainly. And then, when these people disappeared, the Japanese rewarded grandpa and Uncle Lim by letting them take over most of those businesses. That’s why Blue Horizons was able to grow like that during the war years.’

  ‘Oh God. I can’t believe this.’

  Bertram reached over and took his son’s hand. Anson clutched Bertram’s hand more firmly. ‘I didn’t want to tell you until I thought it was the right time. Now our friend Mr Tan has forced me to make a very bad time the right time.’

  ‘But all this drivel about the St Lucy’s Massacre, that’s all … bullshit, right?’

  Bertram shook his head sadly. ‘Two days later, I went to see your uncle again. He told me there was one other thing I had to know. About the founding of Blue Horizons. That your grandfather had come into a lot of money suddenly and that was the money they used to get started. I asked him where the money came from, and he said it was not good how your grandfather got that money. I pleaded with him to tell me more, but he was very bad that day, and he promised he’d tell me some other time. But he was gone soon after that, so I never found out.’ The elder Koh sat staring off into space for a few moments, then looked up at his son. ‘Until today.’

  ‘Dad, I still don’t—’

  Bertram didn’t hear this; his gaze was fixed on the sheets in his son’s hand. ‘Those papers he just gave us. He said it was the police report?’

  Anson reacted as if he’d forgotten about them. He cautiously unfolded two sheets stapled together and started looking through them. ‘It’s … like he said, some official document … from the police.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘Dad, we don’t need to know. Really. This has all been enough for one day. Let’s just—’

  ‘Anson, what does it say?’

  He turned back to the sheets. ‘It describes the shootings, where the victims were found …’ He suddenly stopped cold and clenched his lips tightly.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘They have her name here. Her real name.’ Anson looked at his father. A painful silence filled the air. Now, Anson had the glint of tears in his eyes. Finally, Bertam turned and looked towards the door, the one through which Kelvin Tan had departed. He turned back, looked intensely at his son, then spoke.

  ‘It’s Wan Tze Min, isn’t it? That’s her real name?’

  ‘You didn’t know, did you, Dad? You really didn’t know?’

  ‘I swear on everything precious to me, I didn’t. But I knew, just then, why Mr Tan gave that thing to us.’

  ‘Look, Dad, this still doesn’t prove anything. So many Chinese names are similar, or the same. It could just be coincidence.’

  ‘Coincidence has a narrow frame. All this doesn’t fit in there.’ He took a deep sigh. ‘There are no relatives in Canada. The lives that girl saved were ours.’

  ‘So … so what do we do?’

  Betram buried the lower part of his face in cupped hands and considered for about thirty seconds. When he spoke, there was a sharp note of resolve in his voice. ‘We have to protect the memories of your grandfather and great-uncle. Also, the reputation of the company. This all has to stay hidden. All these shadows, they have to stay buried. When Mr Tan returns, we’ll discuss the matter with him.’

  ‘Are you kidding me?’

  ‘We have to. We’ll ask him to meet with our lawyers and work out a deal. I don’t like some of the numbers he was throwing out there, but I think we have room to negotiate. But we have to reach some deal with him. Quickly. There are too many shadows coming back now. We have to put them back in their box. Otherwise, we could all be swallowed by these shadows.’

  ‘You realise, Dad, that we’re bringing an unqualified asshole in as partner.’

  ‘I won’t argue with you there, but that asshole seems to know more about the beginnings of this company than both of us did. That’s worth a lot.’ He swallowed hard. ‘It’s worth a lot to me. We just have to make sure that this Mr Tan stays a silent partner.’

  Anson was taken aback. ‘Do you mean …’

  Bertram shook his head. ‘We stuff his mouth with money. That’s all it will take with him. Just money. I know his type. Give them a chance, they’ll choke themselves to death on the money. They can’t appreciate anything else.’

  ‘So?’

  Bertram Koh nodded. ‘So we let him choke.’

  * * *

  The 70th anniversary celebration of the Blue Horizons company ended up much toned down from the original plans. There was only a single evening with a slide show of the company history and a small event with drinks and food two days later—at the company headquarters, not the hotel as originally planned.

  Press releases and other official announcements put it down to the poor health of company president Bertram Koh, who had stepped down in late March. He then became the head of the Wan Tze Min Foundation. One of his last acts as Blue Horizon’s chief was to make a substantial increase in the company’s contribution to the foundation.

  Anson Koh took over as Blue Horizons president and announced some substantial changes. By the time of the anniversary celebration, there was a more sombre mood running through the company. Some observers attributed the problems to internal turmoil and poor judgement by the new CEO. Bertram Koh remained neutral, saying he was now retired and out of the trenches: his son had to lead the company into the future.

  * * *

  At the National University of Singapore, a junior faculty member by the name of Rajesh Datt abruptly announced that he would be taking an extended leave due to personal matters. He wanted to do more research on a special project.

  At the end of term, he left Singapore to do some travelling. He left no forwarding address with university officials, but a month later, he turned up at Eccles Cemetery in Salford, England. It was almost closing time when he arrived. With some difficulty, and a bit of a bribe, he found the grave of one Paul Haggerty.

  The young historian stood over the grave, staring in silence for several minutes, then pulled out a bottle of Irish whiskey and poured the contents onto the sod facing the tombstone. He saved one swallow for himself, which he downed after raising the bottle in a toast. He also pull
ed out two sheets of paper, which he stuck into the ground, just below the tombstone.

  Then, as evening shadows were gathering heavily all around him, Rajesh turned and walked away, a sad smile on his face. He, too, had a long way back.

  AARON ANG is a Singapore-based writer with a passion for both Literature and History. He has published a number of short pieces, many on historical topics, including sports history. His short story A Perfect Exit (first published in Monsoon Books’ Best of Singapore Erotica) was adapted for TV and aired on Mediacorp’s Arts Central channel in Singapore.

  ‘Nostalgia’ by Ng Yi-Sheng

  If this is recording, I need to tell everyone this. There was no other way. You may call me a monster, but the city is hungry and must be fed.

  You have seen the consequences. Here in my hospital ward lie the results of our neglect: a plague that has brought Singapore to its knees in the last ten months.

  Remember the children? I remember the children. There were so many of them. Filing into my clinic like ants. Girls in pinafores, boys in tank tops. Walking like sleepwalkers, faces printed with the same blank, impenetrable stare.

  There was an Indian man who told me his daughter heard voices. What kind of voices? I said.

  No idea, he told me. Like someone teaching school. Only everything in Chinese.

  Then there was that little boy who told me how he dreamed of crocodiles and tourists and huge glass tanks. I’m full of fish, he said.

  I’m full of books, a schoolgirl told me.

  I’m full of old people, said another.

  There was a six-year-old who said, I’m full of Japanese soldiers. Then she went, Pew pew pew pew pew pew.

  Those were the talkative ones. We were grateful for the talkative ones, as the nation had begun its downward slide into panic. The Ministry was closing the schools to contain the epidemic … as if it struck with any kind of pattern.