For The Death Of Me

by Jardine, Quintin

  ‘So, what’s your name?’ I asked him. ‘You know me,’ I nodded to Dylan, ‘and this is Benny.’

  ‘Sammy,’ he announced. ‘Sammy Grant, frae Maryhill . . . or East Bearsden, as my maw prefers tae call it.’ He frowned suddenly, and I saw that he was looking at my left ear, where it’s a bit chewed up. ‘What happened tae that?’ he asked, pointing indelicately, as if I was a zoo monkey with the power of speech.

  ‘I took a gun off a guy last year in San Francisco . . . not quite quickly enough.’

  The Weegie laughed. ‘Aye, sure. You’re takin’ the pish, right?’

  ‘No, it’s true. He was a bag-snatcher, I chased him and when I caught him he pulled a gun on me.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  I smiled cheerfully at the memory. ‘After he’d recovered from a bad case of concussion, he did a plea bargain that got him off with only ten to fifteen years.’

  Sammy was impressed. ‘Ooyah!’ He whistled. ‘Ma man Oz.’

  So was Dylan: he glanced at me as if to make quite certain I wasn’t kidding. I gave him a quick nod.

  ‘What’s it like, getting shot?’ our gallus friend asked.

  ‘It’s not something you want to try,’ Mike murmured.

  Sammy looked at him, at the supporting cast. ‘Are you tellin’ me you’ve been shot an all, Benny? That’ll be right.’

  ‘I’m telling you it’s much better to be the one doing the shooting.’

  ‘What, are you a hitman, like? Aye, you really are kidding me now, eh?’

  ‘He’s a writer,’ I said, to steer him away from the topic. ‘He’s always doing research into stuff like that. That’s what we’re doing here, planning a new movie. Isn’t that right, Benny?’

  Dylan nodded dutifully.

  ‘Hey, that’s great,’ said Sammy.

  ‘So, what’s your story?’ I asked him. ‘What brings you here? Holiday? A stag trip with your mates?’ I nodded towards the guys he seemed to have been with, who had decided to ignore him, and us.

  He shook his tousled head. ‘No, I work here,’ he said, ‘for the DRZ Bank, over in Change Alley. I’m a dealer; I specialise in Japanese stocks.’ All of a sudden he looked a lot more sober, and a little embarrassed. It occurred to me that the spectre of Nick Leeson might be taking some time to blow away.

  ‘I’ve got some of them,’ I said, to put him at his ease. ‘My wife and I have an offshore investment portfolio; it’s spread around the world, but quite a chunk’s in Far East markets. We’re thinking about backing off a bit, though: it’s just a wee bit unstable politically for our liking.’

  ‘That might not be a daft move,’ Sammy suggested. I made a mental note to talk it through with Susie and our broker when I got back.

  ‘So what’s to do in Singapore?’ I asked. ‘We’ve only just got here.’

  ‘Ah could tell by the eyes. Guys that have just got here all look a wee bit like it’s still yesterday. First time here?’ We both nodded. ‘Well, you’re pretty much doin’ what there is tae do in Sing, partyin’. No’ that this bar here is the end-all. It depends what you’re lookin’ for. If it’s women, no problem here: there’s a hell of a lot of them pass through this place.’

  ‘That’s not on my agenda, thanks. How big is the city in population terms?’

  ‘Four million plus, they reckon, and growin’. The island’s probably smaller than Glasgow, but it’ll soon have more people than Scotland. That doesnae count the tourists either. Ah reckon there’s more of them, especially Aussies, since the Bali bomb and the tsunami. If the casino happens, Christ knows how many there’ll be.’

  ‘Casino?’

  ‘Aye, the Yanks want to build one, if they can persuade the government to let them.’

  ‘And will they?’

  ‘Hard to say. There’s resistance, but they’re talking about three billion US. It’s hard to turn that doon, even here, in the richest place in South East Asia.’

  ‘What’s the cultural side like? I’m an actor, remember, so how’s the theatre side of things?’

  ‘Loads of it. There’s big visitin’ shows, like The Sound of Music, and there’s local outfits that are producing here all the time, mostly in English but sometimes in Chinese. This place is Chinese, Ah mean the whole culture is Chinese, don’t make any mistake about it; that’s why it’s no’ in Malaysia.’

  Sammy seemed to be an interesting guy, now that we’d got over the initial nonsense, and not nearly as pissed as I’d thought at first. I’ve observed that sometimes the Jock abroad feels he has to act out the stereotype.

  ‘Ever heard of an outfit called the Heritage Theatre Company?’ I asked him.

  ‘Heritage? Heritage? Heritage?’ He scratched his head hard, as if he was shaking up its contents. ‘The name’s familiar. I’ve seen it on posters advertising things on the Esplanade, I’m sure.’

  ‘The Esplanade?’

  ‘Big new complex down on Marina Bay, across frae where Ah work. They have all sorts of venues there.’

  ‘Mmm, I must check it out.’ I waved at a waitress. ‘Eric’ (or maybe it really was him: the voice said it might be) was taking a break and glasses were being refilled all over the place. ‘Two more pints of Tiger, please. Sammy, want another Heineken?’

  He beamed. ‘Aye, thanks, Oz.’ You’d have thought I’d offered him another Rolex.

  I gave the girl fifty dollars. She came back two minutes later with three beers and not a lot of change, then she asked for my autograph. Great, I thought, as I signed. Word will get around: not what I wanted.

  ‘Are there many of us here, Sammy?’ I asked.

  ‘Us?’

  ‘British people.’

  ‘Not just Jocks, you mean? Aye, lots. Most of that crowd at the bar for a start. Half the guys Ah work wi’ are Brits, and there’s others in advertising and construction. The truth is they need us to make this place tick. It’s a good deal for us: the money’s good and the tax is a lot less than in Britain. Then there’s the weather.’

  The humidity had kicked in with nightfall, even on the riverfront. ‘Does it ever change?’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ said Sammy. ‘Sometimes we get monsoons.’

  19

  We chucked it after another couple of beers; Sammy insisted on getting another round in so he could tell his pals at the office that he’d bought Oz Blackstone and his mate a Tiger.

  Before we gave in to the need for sleep and went off to kidnap a taxi, we arranged to meet Sammy next day, for a walking tour of the city centre. He suggested the Long Bar in Raffles, but I reckoned it would be a lot harder to get out of there than to get in, so I told him instead to meet us in the foyer of the Stamford. That prompted him to suggest that, there and then, we should all go to the New Asia disco on the seventieth floor, but I got out of that one by telling him that it sounded like no place for a thirty-eight-year-old father of three to be found.

  (We didn’t tell Sammy afterwards, but we did sneak a look when we got back to the hotel. I left quickly, though: all we could see were long legs in black dresses, and I realised straight away that I could have got into serious trouble there. Normally that wouldn’t have stopped Dylan, but by then he was too dazed and confused to remember which name he was using, so he bailed out too.)

  The melatonin did its stuff: I popped another couple and was asleep by one and awake by eight. The hotel gym opened early, so I went down there again and did a quick aerobic circuit topped off by some sets of serious weights, then swam a few widths of the circular pool, which was deserted, save for a couple of British Airways flight attendants in bikinis. I had just come out of the water and was towelling myself down when one of them came over and asked me to sign her trip schedule. I might as well have issued a press release, I thought.

  It got worse. I was barely back in my room before the phone rang: a programme assistant from a local television station was put straight through by the hotel operator to ask me if I’d do a drop-in on a chat show at seven that evening. I lied again (I w
as becoming uncomfortably good at that) and told her I couldn’t be certain that I’d be in Singapore by then. She sounded so crestfallen that I gave in and agreed to do it. I figured that if it was general knowledge that I was on the island there was no point in trying to hide.

  When I hung up, I noticed that a red light was flashing on the phone, signifying a message. I called it up, and heard Primavera; she’d phoned the night before when Dylan and I were out on the town.

  ‘Oz,’ she began, ‘I hope to God they’ve put me through to the right room. I’m at Dad’s and I’ve spoken to my sister and brother-in-law about the surprising development with Mr Luker. As you can imagine it came as a hell of a shock to them both, but I’ve managed to persuade him that Benny wasn’t personally involved in the difficulty they had and that the other man was almost completely responsible. They’re okay to go on with the project, on the basis that they don’t have to see Mr Luker at any time. Give me a call to confirm that you’ve received this, and get in touch with them whenever you can.’

  It was better than I’d expected: I’d envisaged having to weigh in with Miles myself at the end of the day, to win him over. Prim had done a good job. I called her mobile to tell her as much. It was the middle of the night in Auchterarder, and it was switched off, so I left her a voice message saying, ‘Well done, Benny owes you one,’ and hung up. Then I rang Mike’s room to give him the good news, but when he answered he sounded like a Martian, so I told him I’d see him downstairs at midday, and went off to the club room for breakfast.

  Once I had eaten, I picked up a map of the city centre. It told me that the Esplanade theatre complex was located in two hedgehog-shaped buildings I could see from the club windows. I asked the concierge, a pleasant girl whose name-tag said she was called Polly, whether they were easy to reach. She told me that there was a walkway which led straight there from more or less under the hotel.

  I found it easily enough, at the foot of the escalator leading to the City Hall MRT station. (The MRT is Singapore’s subway; it is to the London Underground as the classic Cadillac in the Monaco motor museum is to the nearby East German Trabant.) The walkway turned out to be a shopping mall. I hadn’t sussed this out at that time, but Sing is a very, very serious retail place. Eventually I was glad that Susie didn’t make the trip, because there wouldn’t have been enough suitcases on the island to carry back the stuff she’d have bought.

  It took me ten leisurely minutes to reach the Esplanade, and when I did I found that the walkway led me into an underground car park from which another escalator raised me up into a vast modern marble foyer.

  Bear in mind that it was still well short of eleven on a Sunday morning, but there were other visitors, sightseers in the place, and there were two blue-suited receptionists on duty. One of them looked like an even further upmarket version of one of the tall Chinese waitresses we had seen briefly (at least I had seen them: Dylan’s eyes had been crossing by that time) in the New Asia the night before.

  She approached me and welcomed me, with a smile that said she meant it, to the Theatres on the Bay. She gave me a rundown on some of their recent performances, including the Sadlers Wells ballet (Ali, my irreverent grocer pal in Edinburgh, used to call ballet ‘poofs’ football’, and may well still do so) and on some of their forthcoming attractions. She told me that the following night there would be a performance by the University of Florida Wind Symphony. You know me well enough by now to read my mind: I tried to keep the smile off my face, but I failed. We both wound up laughing; I liked this girl.

  The burst of early visitors had come to an end, so we were able to talk. She told me that her name was Marie Lin, and that she was an actress, supplementing her income by doing shifts in the complex. She was Singapore-born, but she had the ambition to leave the island and work either in Britain or America.

  ‘Not Australia?’ I asked her.

  ‘Fewer opportunities for Chinese people,’ she replied.

  She hadn’t appeared to recognise me, so I told her that I was an actor too. She asked my name, and I gave her one of the cards I carry, with my personal contact details. She was a little embarrassed when she read it, but in an attractive way. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Blackstone,’ she said. ‘I should have . . .’

  ‘I’ve had a long flight and a hard night in the Crazy Elephant,’ I replied. ‘My wife wouldn’t have recognised me this morning.’

  I handed her another card and told her to note her mobile number on the back, then I had her write down Roscoe Brown’s address and invited her to drop him a line with my endorsement; I gave her another card to include with it as proof we’d actually met, to make sure that Roscoe’s secretary didn’t bin it.

  I’m sure she must have wondered whether there would be strings attached. There weren’t, as it happened, and even if there had been, Marie Lin seemed like the sort of girl who’d have cut them off with a very sharp knife. In fact, I was thinking ahead: Blue Star Falling had a part for a Chinese girl and she looked as if she’d be perfect for it.

  I reckoned that I could rely on her. ‘While I’m here,’ I said, ‘I’m trying to track someone down. Are you familiar with a theatre group called Heritage?’

  ‘I’ve worked with them,’ she told me, ‘not recently, but last year I had a part in one of their productions.’

  Direct hit: well done, Oz. ‘Do you know the director, Tony Lee?’

  ‘No, I don’t. The man who was there then, he left or, rather, was fired by the Arts Ministry. But his replacement’s name is Lee Kan Tong.’

  ‘Yeah, but he was Tony Lee in London.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me. It’s quite usual for young Singaporeans to adopt English names; not just actors, all people. Me, I am Lin May Wee; you see why I change it for the stage.’

  I smiled at her. ‘Nice one. Do you know where I could find Lee Kan Tong?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Blackstone.’

  ‘Oz.’

  She gave a little bow of acknowledgement. God, but she was attractive; I made a mental note not to tell Dylan about her. ‘I’m sorry, Oz. The Heritage Theatre Company had an office behind Boat Quay, but they moved early this year. I think it’s in Riverside Point now. It won’t be open today, though.’ That was a bit of a bugger: I wanted to pin down Maddy January as quickly as I could, and preferably that day.

  ‘I don’t suppose it will, Marie,’ I agreed. ‘Still, I can always take a run out there just to check where it is.’

  ‘Take a water taxi,’ she suggested.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A water taxi. You go out to the front of the building, past the open-air theatre and you’ll find a jetty. You talk to the man there and he’ll call you a boat.’ She paused. ‘Wait,’ she said, then turned to her colleague. I heard them speaking quietly in Chinese, then the other woman glanced at me and her brown eyes widened; she smiled and nodded.

  ‘I’ll take you there,’ Marie announced. ‘Anna says you’re a VIP, so we have to look after you. She’s the front-of-house manager, so if she says it’s okay, it’s okay. Come on.’

  She went behind her counter and picked something up. I assumed it was a handbag, but when I looked I saw that it was a collapsible umbrella. ‘Are we due a storm?’ I asked.

  She smiled. ‘We don’t use umbrellas for rain here: usually it goes straight through them. This is for the sun.’

  As it transpired, when we went outside, she found she didn’t need it. A layer of light cloud hung over the city, killing the glare that had welcomed the day: the humidity was full blast, though. There were several people waiting at the jetty on the esplanade, but Marie had a word with the man, I gave him ten dollars and, as if by magic, within three minutes a boat cruised towards us.

  It was a long wooden craft, one of many on the river, with an open-sided cabin hung with red lights. The night before, from Clarke Quay, they’d all looked like floating brothels, but by day, this one at least was revealed as an ancient craft that must have seen and survived invasion, restoration and a
million tourist bums in the sixty years since. Marie gave me the river tour as we went, past the statue of the Merlion, a mythical beast (which I suspect, although I can’t prove it, was invented by an advertising agency), the former GPO building, which is now the Fullerton Hotel, the bars and restaurants of old Boat Quay, bustling as they got ready to open for the day, and Clarke Quay itself, which, by the light of day, I saw was much newer and purpose-built.

  Finally we pulled up at the Riverside Point jetty. The boatman had a simple approach: he didn’t tie up, he simply jammed the prow of the vessel into the landing-stage, and revved the engine to keep it steady as we jumped off.

  We didn’t have far to walk. Riverside Point was a complex of offices and restaurants, which also seemed to be the temporary home of the Singapore History Museum. (It wasn’t very big, but I don’t suppose Singapore’s had a hell of a lot of history.) One of the restaurants included a micro-brewery . . . something else Dylan would be avoiding; we stepped past it and into the foyer, looking for the usual list of tenants.

  The Heritage Theatre Company was there, all right, one floor up. ‘Wait here, Marie,’ I told my escort. ‘I’ll go up, on the off-chance that there is somebody there.’ I confess that I hadn’t thought this through properly. I was supposed to be the guiding genius in the background with Mike doing the legwork, so what was I doing heading for an office where my presence might have tipped off Maddy, through her boyfriend, that I was looking for her? God knows, but I did it.

  The office was in a narrow corridor lined with glass-walled suites. It was distinguishable from the rest by the posters which were plastered all over it, advertising performances past and some that were still to come. I couldn’t see inside, for the glass was opaque, but it appeared that Heritage had all the space on the left of the corridor as I walked down it.

  A Chinese face beamed at me from the entrance door; it was on yet another poster, but this one carried only that smile and the name, ‘Lee Kan Tong, Director’. Other than that there was nothing, no list of office hours to say whether they were open or closed. What the hell? I thought, and turned the handle.