by Jake Needham
“Are you saying she was strangled with a towel?”
“Possibly, but my guess is something even softer. Perhaps a cotton or silk shawl.”
“She was strangled by a woman?”
“I said nothing of the sort, Inspector. I’m a pathologist, not a psychic. I can tell you about the instrument that was used to strangle her, but not who used it.”
“Isn’t the use of a shawl as an instrument of strangulation odd?”
“Yes, it would be. Frankly, I’d never seen it before, and seeing it twice now in two cases so close together is particularly odd.”
For a moment, Tay wasn’t certain he had heard that right.
“What are you talking about?” he asked. “What’s the other case?”
“The American, of course. Tyler Bartlett.”
“He was strangled with a shawl?”
“Not necessarily. But he was strangled with something soft enough not to leave much of a mark, and what mark there was, was mostly obliterated by the post-mortem application of the rope.”
“Wait a minute. Are you saying that you knew Tyler Bartlett didn’t commit suicide? That he was strangled and then hung up to make it look like a suicide?”
“Yes, of course. Ligature marks produced after death do not show bruising. They simply leave a grooved impression in the skin and a yellow or brown abrasion without any signs of vital reaction. The noose was unquestionably placed around his neck following ligature strangulation with some relatively soft fabric and then he was hung post-mortem.”
Tay was very nearly speechless.
“Why wasn’t that in your report to the police?”
“It was. But they rejected my conclusion as inconsistent with the physical evidence.”
“You told the police that Tyler Bartlett was strangled with a ligature and then hung after he was already dead and they ignored you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a copy of that report?”
“It doesn’t exist anymore. The director of the Centre for Forensic Medicine rewrote it to indicate suicide by hanging.”
Now Tay was speechless.
Dr. Hoi talked on for a bit after that and Tay tried to inject listening noises now and then out of courtesy, but he registered little of what she was saying. His mind was racing.
He just couldn’t yet see where it was racing to.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
WHEN TAY FINALLY managed to get off the telephone, he decided to walk over to the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf on Orchard Road and get a sugar fix. If he stayed home, he knew he would just end up sitting in his garden smoking one cigarette after another, and what was worse for him: a whole pack of Marlboros, or a couple of apple fritters and a cup of black coffee? That was a fine justification, Tay thought. He liked it a lot.
He considered leaving his gun at home, then he thought about the two people who had been killed so far and he went upstairs and put on a suit coat that was cut generously enough to cover the holster clipped to his belt. The coat didn’t match his trousers, but he couldn’t be bothered to change. After all, he was going to a Coffee Bean in the middle of the afternoon, not to Raffles for dinner.
There were two Coffee Beans within a short walk of Tay’s house. Sometimes the most interesting thing he did all day was to decide which one he was going to. Today he chose the one across Orchard Road and a bit to the east. He was pretty sure the last time he had gone to the one across Orchard Road and a bit to the west, so it seemed only fair.
Tay ran his conversation with Susan Hoi back and forth through his mind while he walked. Could it be a coincidence that Emma had been murdered exactly the same way Tyler Bartlett had been murdered, when the only thing they had in common was that Emma was trying to find out who killed Tyler and why? No, of course it couldn’t be a coincidence. The note Emma had left him said she had found out something significant. And whoever killed Tyler Bartlett must have killed Emma Lazar to make sure she didn’t tell anyone what she had found. What else could explain them both being killed in exactly the same way?
Tay bought his apple fritters and black coffee at the counter and took them over to a table by the window. As he sat down he had a sudden recollection of ending his telephone conversation with Susan Hoi with a vague promise they would have dinner one night soon. The thought caused him to spill part of his coffee, and he had to go back to the counter and get a handful of paper napkins to sop it up. The napkins were brown, of course, so you would know they were made out of recycled paper.
Tay chewed deliberately at his apple fritters and sipped at his coffee and tried to keep his mind as empty as possible. When his telephone began buzzing in his pocket, he thought it might be Dr. Hoi calling to tell him something she had forgotten so he fished it out and looked at the screen. He was surprised to see the main number for Singapore CID.
“Hello?”
“Good afternoon, Inspector. This is Nora Zaini.”
When Tay said nothing, she added, “The Senior Assistant Commissioner’s secretary.”
“Yes, of course,” he said quickly. “I was just swallowing. My mouth was full of coffee.”
“Oh, sorry. The SAC just wonders if you might have time to come in for a quick word?”
Tay wasn’t sure what that meant. The last time he had been invited in by the SAC for what he called a quick word, he had been suspended. Since that was no longer on the table, he could only think of two possibilities that remained. Either they were going to return him to duty, or they were going to fire him. Of the two, he had no doubt which one was more likely.
“When does he have in mind?” Tay asked.
“Could you come right away?”
Uh-oh, Tay thought. He’s going to fire me. He wouldn’t be in that big a hurry if he were going to return me to duty.
“Say, four o’clock?” she prompted.
Tay thought about the .38 clipped to his belt. Carrying it to a meeting with the SAC didn’t seem particularly prudent. Four o’clock would give him enough time to walk home and put it away before he went to the Cantonment Complex. It would even give him time to change his trousers. There was something about getting fired in mismatched clothes that seemed to him profoundly depressing.
“Four o’clock will be fine,” Tay said.
When Tay arrived in the Senior Assistant Commissioner’s office he was shown in without delay, which only deepened his already cavernous sense of foreboding.
The SAC stood up behind his desk and they shook hands.
“How are you, Sam? You’re looking well, I must say.”
“Right as rain, fit as a fiddle, bold as brass,” Tay said, stealing John August’s answer to the same question. “Take your pick, Chief.”
Tay had always thought the SAC looked more like a math professor at a not very prosperous college than he did a policeman. He was small and slim and altogether unremarkable in appearance, and he wore a plain short-sleeved white shirt and dark wash-and-wear slacks. His glasses were black-plastic framed and inexpensive looking.
“Glad to hear that, Sam. Really glad to hear that. Sit down, please.”
Tay took a chair in front of the desk and the SAC fell silent. Tay watched him fidget with a stack of papers, and he thought, Uh-oh, here it comes. Tay braced himself. Being a policeman was all he had ever known. He could not imagine what would become of him if he could not be a policeman.
“Look, Sam, how would you feel about returning to duty?”
Tay stared at the SAC. He was too dumbfounded to speak.
“Or you could take another week or two if you want, but we’d like to have you back as soon as possible.”
“I’m ready to return any time, Chief,” Tay said when he had regained his voice.
“Good, good. Say, the first day of next month, then? That would be… what, next Tuesday? Bright and early.”
“Tuesday would be fine, Chief.”
Tay wasn’t so sure about the ‘bright and early’ part, but if that was the price of getting his job ba
ck he figured he could fake it for a few days.
“There’s just one other thing, Sam.”
The SAC’s eyes drifted away from Tay’s and he started fiddling with that stack of papers again. This can’t be good, Tay thought.
“You do understand, don’t you, Sam, that you’re going to have to drop this private investigation into the suicide of Tyler Bartlett, the one you are doing with that woman—”
“Emma Lazar is dead, Chief. Apparently she was murdered.”
“Yes, well, that hasn’t been established yet.”
Tay raised his eyebrows. Not established yet? It was going to be pretty hard to classify a woman found strangled in an alleyway as a suicide.
“Regardless, Sam, I will need your assurance that you will drop whatever inquiries you are making about the death of Tyler Bartlett when you return to active duty.”
Tay cleared his throat. “Why is that, sir?”
“I would have thought that’s obvious, Sam. We can’t have a serving police officer attempting to undermine a decision that has already made by senior officers. It just wouldn’t be right.”
Tay nodded his head slowly and shaped his face into a thoughtful expression.
“I see what you mean, Chief,” he said.
He did indeed see what the SAC meant. He meant there were people far up the chain of command who wanted Tay to stop looking into the death of Tyler Bartlett so badly they would let him back into CID as a payoff to keep him from doing it. If this thing was big enough for those people to swallow their pride and give him his job back just to shut him up, it had to be really big.
Tuesday, huh? Today was only Thursday, so that gave him a good four days. If that turned out not to be enough time, when Tuesday came he could always tell the SAC to stick his job. Although he knew he wouldn’t do that. At least he probably wouldn’t.
“I understand, Chief. I’ll see you Tuesday.”
The SAC bounced to his feet as if his ass were spring-loaded and thrust out his hand. “Good, Sam. Just great. See you Tuesday.”
Indeed you will, Tay thought as they shook hands. One way or another.
Tay left the Cantonment Complex and walked north on New Bridge Road in the direction of the Singapore River. He had no particular destination in mind, so when he came to a local bar on the corner of Temple Street he went in, took a stool facing the door, and ordered a Tiger beer. The bartender poured it into a glass without asking. It was the kind of bar in which Tay had a strong urge to wipe the rim of the glass with his handkerchief before he drank from it, but he resisted. And for the next half hour he sat and sipped at the beer while he thought about everything that was swirling around him.
When Philip Goh had pulled him into New Phoenix Park and leaned on him not to help Emma, he really hadn’t thought that much about it. Everyone knew ISD was paranoid, and leaning on people was what they did. At the time, Tay just figured there was something out there that might be mildly embarrassing to ISD and Goh was trying to protect his people. The idea that a fully-fledged cover-up of the murder of Tyler Bartlett was underway hadn't even occurred to him.
The moment Dr. Hoi told him the director of the Center for Forensic Medicine had disregarded her findings and rewritten the autopsy report to support a finding of suicide, Tay realized how big this whole thing really was. And now the SAC offers him his job back if he’ll only shut up and go away? Tay had no idea yet what was at the bottom of this pile of shit, but he had no doubt it was going to turn out to be something extraordinary.
Why was half the government of Singapore apparently determined to keep the secret of Tyler Bartlett’s murder? Was it just that Goodnight-Jones had powerful friends? Or was it going to be something worse than that? Yes, Tay told himself, it was going to be something worse than that.
Tay took out his Marlboros and placed the box on the bar. He had barely removed his hand from it when the bartender quickstepped over.
“No smoking in here, sir. It’s the law. Absolutely no smoking.”
Tay nodded, but he didn’t say anything. And he left the box of Marlboros where it was. That was a small and futile gesture, he knew, but he felt like a gesture was required. Singapore, he realized now, was being governed by men more interested in stopping smoking than they were in stopping murder.
The thought brought him face to face with a more troublesome question, one he had no idea how to answer.
Two people had been murdered to cover up whatever secret was at stake here. Did he really think that the government of Singapore would murder two foreigners just to make certain a secret was kept? They might well threaten, as Philip Goh had, or they might offer a bribe, as the SAC had. He could believe all that easily enough because it had happened to him. But would his government order two innocent people murdered? However little Tay might think of the men who governed Singapore, he did not believe that could be.
Regardless, the fact was that two innocent people had been murdered. Which meant that somebody did it. And if it hadn’t been the same people in the Singapore government who seemed determined to keep him from looking into the death of Tyler Bartlett, who the hell was it? And why had it happened?
Tay still had four days, and by Christ he was going to know both things by the time those four days were over.
He pulled out his cell phone, scrolled through the address book, and called Robbie Kang.
“Can you meet me in an hour?”
“An hour, sir? Couldn’t we make it—”
“An hour, Robbie. Meet me at place you took me for my birthday.”
“You mean—”
“You don’t have to say the name, Sergeant. Just tell me you know where I mean.”
“I know where you mean, sir.”
“Fine. One hour.”
Tay dropped a ten-dollar bill on the bar and went outside to look for a taxi.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
TAY ASKED THE cab driver to drop him in front of Centrepoint on Orchard Road, and he walked home up Emerald Hill Road past Number 5 the way he usually did. He checked the street as he approached his gate, but he saw no signs of surveillance. Well… he wouldn’t, would he?
The technology of surveillance had been developed to the point that fat guys pretending to read a newspaper were as obsolete as buggy whips, and Tay knew he probably didn’t understand even the half of it. Whenever he thought about the technology today that he really had no clue about, he always started wondering if the time for him to retire wasn’t almost here.
Inside his house he went straight back upstairs, retrieved his .38, and clipped it to his belt underneath his suit coat. Then he went into the kitchen and took a small stepladder out of the pantry and walked out to his garden. He unfolded the stepladder in front of the wall at the very back of his garden, climbed up, swung himself onto the wall, and jumped down into his neighbor’s garden.
He felt like an idiot, but he did it anyway.
Leaving his neighbor’s garden through a gate into an alleyway that led out to Hullett Road, he walked quickly up to Cairnhill Road and found a taxi. Less than ten minutes after walking through the front door to his house, Tay was hurtling down Grange Road headed for Clarke Quay and the Highlander.
He didn’t care how slick their surveillance technology might be.
Let them suck on that.
Tay got out of the cab at Robertson Quay and walked from there. He strolled east along the river walk, passed underneath the Clemenceau Avenue Bridge, and entered Clarke Quay from the Singapore River side rather than from the main entrance on River Valley Road. He didn’t expect to see anything that would give him pause, and he didn’t, but he had the time and he liked walking along the river. Tonight the haze had gone to wherever the haze went when it wasn’t making Singapore miserable, the temperature was balmy, and a breeze from the Singapore Strait carried the smell of salt and hinted at far away romance.
When Sergeant Kang had taken him to the Highlander for his birthday, he had been impressed. The bar was quiet and comfort
ably woody, a perfect place for a conversation. But when he walked in tonight, he was astonished to see the Highlander was wall-to-wall with the over-privileged and overdressed. European labels, French champagne, and local girls. The Highlander was a rogues’ gallery of the intellectually vacuous and the socially grasping, all wallowing in a Eurotrash sea of greed and desire.
What the hell has happened to Singapore? Tay muttered to himself. He turned on his heel and walked back outside.
Tay found a bench from which he could watch the entrance to the Highlander. He lit a cigarette and smoked quietly until he saw Sergeant Kang coming from the taxi rank at the main entrance. Then he dropped his cigarette on the ground, rubbed it out with the toe of his shoe, and got to his feet. He moved out into the middle of the walkway and stood with his arms folded until Kang ran right into him.
“Sir, you startled me!”
“Let’s walk, Robbie.”
“But, sir, I thought we were going to have a—”
“I’ve already been inside. I’m not going back.”
Kang cast a curious glance in the direction of the Highlander, and he followed Tay as he walked toward the river.
“I need to know what’s on that disk drive, Robbie.”
“According to the Wangster, it’s all encrypted, sir. He said they’d call me if they could get anything out of it, but I haven’t—”
“They? Who’s they? I thought you gave the drive to this geek who owes you a favor.”
“The Wangster and his sister have a computer security company. He told me what they do, but I don’t really understand much about that stuff. I’m not sure I can explain it to you, sir.”
“The Wangster has a sister?”
Kang nodded.
“And she’s a geek, too?”
Kang nodded again.
“What do you call her? The Wangsterina?”
Kang looked puzzled. He started to say something, but stopped.
