For The Death Of Me

by Jardine, Quintin

  ‘I’m fine, honest.’

  ‘What happened?’

  I had hoped not to get into that with her. ‘A man died there. We had to wait for the police to come.’

  She frowned. It was the first time I had seen her without a smile on her face; it didn’t make her any less beautiful. ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘The policeman who came said it looked like a heart-attack. ’ I hoped that Sammy Grant hadn’t told her anything different.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she murmured. ‘What a pity. Who was he? Do you know?’

  ‘It was the man I was looking for this morning at Riverside, Lee Kan Tong.’

  ‘Ah, did you go there to meet him?’

  ‘No. I was surprised to see him there.’ I gazed around, the place was virtually deserted. ‘I guess the City Space will be closing soon,’ I said.

  ‘I think midnight,’ Marie replied.

  ‘I have my own bar, and it’s almost as high. Would you like to come up?’ I had to go up anyway: I was still carrying fifty grand US in a knapsack.

  ‘That depends,’ she murmured, ‘on what I’m coming up for.’

  I dug out my wallet from my pocket and showed her the photo of Susie and the children. ‘Does that answer your question?’

  The smile was back. ‘Not really, but I’ll come.’

  The suite wasn’t as gaudy as some I’ve had, but it was pretty comfortable. The evening chambermaid had been in, the lighting was dimmed, the folding doors that led to the sleeping area were open, and the cover on the Olympic-size bed had been turned down. Marie took a seat on the sofa in the sitting room, while I put the cash back into the safe, poured two glasses of dry white wine and pulled back the thin gauze curtain to give us an uninterrupted view of the city.

  ‘Where do you live?’ she asked, as I sat beside her.

  ‘I live in a few places; at the moment my family are in our house in Monaco.’

  ‘Monaco?’

  ‘Monte Carlo.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I have heard of it: the fairy-tale kingdom, the place where Grace Kelly went.’

  ‘The place where Grace Kelly died. I saw their graves a few days ago, hers and Prince Rainier’s. They’re in the cathedral, near the Grimaldi palace.’

  ‘My mother loved Hollywood movies,’ she said. ‘I think that’s why I’m an actress. She told me the story of the beautiful American actress who became a princess. I thought it was wonderful . . . that they lived happily ever after.’

  ‘But they didn’t,’ I had to point out. ‘Nobody lives happily ever after. She died in a car accident and he spent the rest of his rich and powerful fairy-tale life grieving for her. Now their bones are under two slabs behind the altar. Where their spirits are . . . well, that’s the part we hope for, that’s what faith and religion and all that stuff is about. Forget about ever after, Marie, just live happily when you can.’

  ‘You sound cynical.’

  ‘I’m not a cynic, I’m a realist. Up until six years ago, I was a dreamer; I accepted all that romantic stuff too. Now I know the truth: in life there are more horror stories than fairy-tales.’

  She slid her hand into mine; I don’t remember ever feeling the touch of softer skin. ‘What happened to make you believe that?’ she murmured.

  ‘I can’t talk about that, not any more. I’ve had a second chance, though, and I’m going to protect it. Anyone who tries to threaten my family will have to deal with me and, when I’m away, with a man called Conrad. They shouldn’t, though; either one of us would kill them if we had to.’

  ‘It must be very scary to be loved by you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re so intense. You aren’t a bit like they make you seem in the movies.’

  ‘But scary?’

  ‘What you feel is so strong. For a moment, I had a flash of what it would be like to be your enemy; it wasn’t nice.’

  I gave her hand a gentle squeeze. ‘I’m sorry,’ I told her. ‘I shouldn’t let you think of me that way. I saw someone die tonight, just three hours ago; I guess it’s affected me.’

  ‘Then stop thinking about it.’ She touched my face gently, turned it towards her and kissed me. It was very gentle, and very tender, and it went on for quite a long time. When she broke off, I felt soothed, softened, my hard, jagged edges rubbed away, and the night didn’t feel quite so dark.

  She laid her head on my shoulder and we looked at the lights of Singapore; there were still monsters out there, I knew. One of them had shoved a blade through Tony Lee’s heart, and would get away with it, because that’s the way things are sometimes. But with Marie, in that room, I felt as if I was in a beast-free zone. There was something about her that seemed to build around me the same kind of invisible security forcefield that being with Susie and the kids gives me. They’re my island of tranquillity and at that moment I needed them badly: they were far away, but Marie was there, and her goodness was hauling me back from the places I’d been since I’d met Maddy January in Fort Siloso.

  Without her being aware of it, she was reminding me of something I knew, that monsters threaten us on two levels: first, because they are what they are, but also, because when we get down there where they live and tackle them on their own terms, as sometimes we must, then all too easily, without realising it, we can become like them.

  27

  She stayed with me until after two. I think I dozed off for part of the time, and maybe she did too; eventually I asked her if she wanted to go home. Maybe I was really asking her if she wanted to sleep with me, although honestly, I don’t think I was. In any event, she said that she should, so I saw her to the elevator and down into the lobby.

  There were no taxis at the rank outside, not unreasonably since it was the middle of the night, so we walked round to North Bridge Road, where I could flag one down. ‘Are you working tomorrow?’ I asked, as we waited. ‘Will I find you at the theatre if I’m free for lunch?’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’m never there on Mondays. Tomorrow I have to see about auditions: there are some productions coming up and I hope to get work.’

  ‘I’ll have a part for you,’ I said, ‘once I get back to work. I’ve bought the rights to a book; I don’t know for sure when we’ll make the movie, not this year, but probably next. Meantime, if you really want to leave Singapore and can sort out a US visa, I can find you some other work.’

  ‘But you’ve never seen me act, Oz.’

  ‘Miles Grayson had never seen me act either, before he cast me in my first movie. He took a chance and it paid off. I’ll do the same with you.’

  She looked me dead in the eye. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I like you.’

  ‘You don’t just want to get into my pants?’

  ‘No, but could I, if I did?’

  She smiled. ‘Could I get into yours, if I did?’

  I grinned back at her. ‘Maybe you just had a chance. We’ll never know.’

  ‘Let’s just say now is too soon,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t know you well enough.’

  ‘Only one person ever really knew me.’ There was something about the girl that had me saying things without even thinking about them.

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘My sister: half-sister.’ I said it naturally: I’d never think of Jan as a wife again. Our marriage was never legal, in the eyes of the law, at any rate. No, what we had was much more complex, much deeper than a marriage, even if I hadn’t known it at the time.

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Her bones are in a cemetery in Scotland. Her spirit’s never far away.’

  ‘That’s what you didn’t want to talk about earlier?’ I nodded. ‘What happened?’

  ‘She was murdered.’

  ‘Aah.’ She sighed. ‘That’s why you can seem scary inside. And the man who did it?’

  ‘People. The man who did it was under orders. They’re dead; all dead.’

  ‘Did you . . .?’

  ‘Ssh!’ I whispered. ‘Let’s not go there. It’
s better that you don’t know about the feelings you have in your heart when something like that happens.’

  ‘Maybe not.’ She looked up at me again, as if she had closed one chapter and moved on to the next. ‘Do you leave Singapore, now that this Lee Kan Tong man is dead?’

  ‘Not yet. I didn’t come to find him, but the woman who’s with him. She has something that I need.’

  ‘Do you know where she is?’

  ‘No. But if I find out, I’ll go after her. I’ll know better tomorrow morning . . . this morning.’ In a corner of my eye, I saw the traffic-lights change. A taxi with an illuminated sign came towards us: I flagged it down.

  ‘He’ll think I’m a prostitute,’ Marie said, laughingly, as it drew to a halt.

  ‘You’re too good-looking to be a hooker.’

  ‘You don’t know Singapore; I’m not good-looking enough.’

  I raised an eyebrow as she slid into the cab. ‘Maybe I’d better check those guide-book ads again.’ Impulsively, I bent and kissed her. ‘I’ll call you later,’ I promised, ‘even if it’s only to tell you I’m leaving.’

  28

  I slept late next morning, late for me, that is. It was nine o’clock when I was wakened from a troubled sleep by a knock on the door of the suite, followed by the sound of it opening and a shrill cry of ‘Housekeeping!’

  ‘Later!’ I yelled. I’d hung out the privacy sign when I’d got back from seeing off Marie, but often that means nothing. Rita Rudner, the comedienne, who’s big in Vegas and spends a lot of her life in hotel rooms, once claimed that she was driven to creating her own ‘Do not disturb’ sign to get the message across. It showed a maid with her neck in a noose.

  I’d probably have been more polite if it hadn’t been for the dreams. Several times that night I’d seen Tony Lee sitting across from me in the Next Page booth, then toppling forwards. On each occasion even more blood came my way, until finally I was drenched in the stuff. But that wasn’t the only vision I’d had in my sleep. I saw Maddy January’s darting, frightened eyes. I saw Jan, lying dead on our kitchen floor from a massive electric shock; I wasn’t there when it happened, but that doesn’t shield me from its full horror. I saw Susie and Prim, in the pool in Monaco, both of them naked and swimming towards me. I saw Jack Gantry’s maniacal, evil face lose all its colour as he realised he was going to die. And I saw Marie Lin, black hair spread on the pillow, long legs apart and stretched out as she lay beside me in another bed, in another room, in a place I couldn’t recognise. That was where I was when the maid opened the door and shouted. If she’d looked round the corner into the sleeping area she’d have seen the duvet on the floor and me with an erection that would have made Shergar feel inadequate.

  I swung out of bed, feeling incredibly guilty, and snarled my way to the bathroom, where I took a long, cold shower, until I was back to something approaching my normal temper and size. I was shaved and dressed when I heard another knock at the door. I opened it, ready to apologise to the chambermaid for the delay, only to see Dylan standing there.

  ‘Who bit your arse?’ he asked, cheerfully. Clearly my temper still didn’t look as normal as I’d thought. ‘She’s not still here, is she?’

  ‘Don’t be a fuckwit,’ I growled. ‘It’s not like that, I told you. What do you want anyway? We haven’t missed breakfast, have we?’

  ‘Relax, we’ve still got half an hour before it closes. I’ve had Jimmy Tan on the phone; he’s found out where the late Mr Lee lived, and he’s willing to let us join him to look it over.’

  I took a fresh look at him as he stepped into the room. Sometimes you don’t see people at all, no matter how well you think you know them. In Glasgow, my boiled-down opinion of Mike was that he was an amiable clown. (Come to think of it, that’s how I wanted people to regard me.)

  ‘You’re in deep with him, aren’t you?’ I asked.

  He nodded. ‘When I was under cover, only four people out here knew who I was. Jimmy was one of them, but even he didn’t find out until the last operation, the big one in Thailand, was ready to go down. The DEA and Interpol set me up with an escape route through Singapore, so he had to know then. But that was a phoney: they pulled the Amsterdam thing again, and when the police and troops moved in to take down the drug runners they shot me too, only they didn’t use real bullets on me the second time. There were only two survivors from the gang; they both thought they saw me die. We know this because they spoke about it in jail, and they never did twig that I was an agent. When it was all done, Interpol told everybody that Martin Dyer was dead, including Jimmy. They flew me out to India on a freight plane and on to Europe from there, on a new passport.’

  ‘Was the Singapore Triad part of the network you brought down?’

  ‘They had people involved; not the top guy, though, he stayed out of the picture. I got the impression that everybody deferred to him, except maybe the Burmese warriors who control the poppy production.’

  ‘Tan’s right, Mike. You should not be around here. Why the hell did you agree to come with me?’

  He grinned. ‘I never did make it to Singapore. I wanted to see the place.’

  ‘Is that right? It never occurred to you that I might get caught in the cross-fire?’

  ‘That’s what friends are for. Come on, let’s see if there’s any breakfast left, then go and meet Jimmy. He’s expecting us at ten thirty.’

  As it turned out, the buffet had been devoured by an invasion of gluttonous Americans, who compounded the felony by commandeering the centre of the room and discussing, twice as loudly as was appropriate, their tactics for maximising the grant payable by the Singapore government towards whatever project had brought them there.

  After the phrases ‘bottom line’, ‘hidden inducements’ and ‘participating bonus’ had been mentioned for the fourth or fifth time, Dylan leaned over the apparent ring-leader as we left the room and said, in what appeared to be a perfectly honed New York accent, ‘What makes America great, guys, is that the fucking IRS is everywhere.’

  Having planted that seed of terror, we were grateful when a lift opened at the first touch of a button and took us down to the foyer. We pulled a taxi; as we got in Mike leaned towards the driver and said, ‘Makena Condo, Meyer Road, Katong.’

  ‘You know number Meyer Road?’ the driver enquired.

  ‘Afraid not.’

  ‘No worries, I find it. Meyer Road pretty straight.’ By this time I had discerned that there are two kinds of taxi drivers in Singapore, the Chinese (helpful and talkative) and the rest (neither). Ours headed west, out of the crowded heart of the city, past the enormous Suntec complex, then turned on to East Coast Parkway.

  He didn’t fanny about: he took the first available turn-off for Katong, which wasn’t very far, then found Meyer Road. As he’d said, it was straight, but straight for a long way. He cruised along it, slowly, until finally he spotted a group of high-rise buildings, set within a secure boundary fence. ‘Ah, yes, I remember now,’ he chirped. ‘That the Makena.’

  He swung through a gate, nodded his way past the security guys in a booth to the left, and dropped us in front of the first building. He got a respectable tip. He glanced at it and said, ‘Thanks. I hope I get you guys again.’

  I waved him goodbye, then glanced upwards. The Makena towers weren’t in the same league as the Stamford when it came to height, but they were taller than anything I’d seen in my home country, even in Glasgow, where for a while the city fathers seemed to be conducting an experiment to determine how many unhappy people they could cram into a single structure. There seemed to be nothing unhappy about this place, though, as Mike, who seemed to know where he was going, led us along the entrance driveway and round a corner.

  Jimmy Tan was waiting for us, standing in the shade of the building. The black gear from the night before had been replaced by a white linen suit. The jacket was loose-fitting, the sign, once you learn to read it, of the plain-clothes policeman everywhere. Behind him, unconcerned by the fact that th
ey were in the morning sunlight, stood half a dozen dark-uniformed troopers, wearing flak jackets, Kevlar hard hats and carrying automatic weapons. I looked beyond them to a central courtyard area surrounded by five apartment blocks. Most of it seemed to be taken up by the biggest swimming-pool I had ever seen, but since the community probably contained, at first glance, more individual residences than my home town of Anstruther, maybe that wasn’t surprising. For all that it was vast, it was almost deserted: this wasn’t a tourist hang-out but a working community, so the parents were at work and the kids were at school. I could see maybe half a dozen people in and around the pool, but only a couple of them were aware of what was going on.

  ‘What the fuck is this, Jimmy?’ Mike barked, as we approached. ‘Why the SWAT team?’

  ‘This is a Triad house we go into,’ Tan replied. ‘Best these boys in first.’ I had no objection to that.

  ‘What about Lee?’ I asked.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He was murdered, remember?’

  Tan shook his head. ‘He had heart-attack, like I said last night.’ The look on my face must have merited some further explanation, for he continued: ‘Listen, Lee was Triad member, that wasn’t just a story. My sources confirm it. He was senior guy, quite near the top, involved with drug distribution and prostitution, as he was in London. He the sort of guy we never catch with anything on them; the boys and girls on Death Row are all mules, well down the chain. I’m not going waste time investigating; we never catch who did it anyway. Fuck him.’

  I nodded: it made sense, in a cynical sort of way, and he was the guy with the local knowledge.

  We rode the lift together to the seventh floor. When we got out, Tan told us to stay where we were until he called to us, then led his batter squad round a corner to the left. A few minutes later we heard some shouts; whatever the Chinese is for ‘Armed police!’ I guess that’s what it probably was.

  It didn’t take long, only a couple of minutes, before one of the squad, a corporal, returned and signalled to us to follow. Tony Lee’s apartment was quite something: the floors were marble, and the main living space was split level, with dining furniture topside, and a couple of steps down to a sitting area with two leather chairs facing a big plasma television, and a unit which housed the best music system that Mr Bang and Mr Olufsen produce. The main attraction of the upper level was an aquarium, which seemed to cover most of the wall opposite the door. Jimmy Tan stood in front of it, with his hand on the shoulder of a very frightened woman in a black tunic.