THE GIRL IN THE WINDOW (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 4) (22 page)

“No, sir, I guess I don’t.”

“ISD is protecting Suparman. You saw them and I saw them.”

“Yes, I saw them, sir. But I still don’t understand why they would be doing it.”

“Neither do I, but the woman they claimed was Suparman’s sister saw they were protecting him, and she’s dead. Robbie Kang saw they were protecting him, and he’s dead. And the hotel manager saw they were protecting him, and now he’s dead, too.”

“The woman’s death was an accident.”

“Maybe,” Tay shrugged. “Maybe not.”

“Are you telling me what I think you’re telling me, sir?”

Tay just looked at Lee.

“My God, sir, you can’t seriously believe the Internal Security Department is going around murdering people to cover up whatever it is they’re doing.”

“Somebody is, Linda. You believe all this is just a coincidence?”

“No, sir, but—”

“Think it through. Only five people know ISD was at the Fortuna Hotel with Suparman. And now three of them are dead.”

Lee stared at Tay.

“Listen to yourself, sir. You sound crazy.”

“It’s not crazy at all. We’ve got four people murdered—”

“Four? You said three: Sergeant Kang, Suparman’s sister, and the hotel manager. Who else?”

“A floater that Robbie and I caught just before all this started. Dr. Hoi says he’s probably an Indonesian. He was killed with a shot to the back of the head, and the shooter used a nine. Just like Robbie and just like Wang.”

Lee just stared.

“It’s all tied together somehow. If ISD is protecting Suparman, and if somebody is cutting off the connections between ISD and Suparman, we’re the only two connections left.”

“You can’t really believe ISD would kill two Singapore Police officers, can you, sir?”

“I didn’t think so about an hour ago, Linda, but why kill Wang and let us walk away? That’s why you’re waiting until tomorrow to call this in, and that’s why you’re going to do it anonymously. Until Wang’s body is discovered, they’re not going to be in any hurry and we’ll still have a chance to get in front of this.”

It was the most optimistic thing Tay could say to Lee.

Whether he believed it or not was another story altogether.

They took the Bukit Timah Expressway back to the city. The rain had stopped and they drove in silence. Tay listened to the hissing sound the tires made on the wet pavement and thought about what to do now.

Did he really believe he and Lee were in danger? Did he honestly think ISD would kill two Singapore policemen because they could tie ISD to Suparman? He still couldn’t bring himself to believe an agency of the government of Singapore was going around killing people.

On the other hand, if ISD wasn’t trying to protect itself from being tied to Suparman, who killed the hotel manager? And who the hell was that Indonesian they pulled out of the Singapore River with a bullet in the back of his head? What did he have to do with Suparman and ISD and all the rest of this?

Tay was just going around in circles and he knew it. It came as a welcome relief when Lee broke the silence.

“How long do you want me to wait, sir, before I make the anonymous call?”

“Not very long, Linda. Right now we know the hotel manager was murdered. Except for whoever killed him, nobody else does.”

“I still don’t see why that matters, sir.”

“Honestly?” Tay shrugged. “Maybe it doesn’t matter, but it’s the only thing we’ve got going for us. I don’t want to give it up until I know for sure what it tells us about the other killings.”

Tay took a packet of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket, shook one out, and lit it. He lowered the passenger window a few inches and the sound of rushing air filled the car. Tay smoked quietly and listened to the rumble of the slipstream.

Several minutes passed like that, then Lee cleared her throat.

“Where are we going, sir?”

“Drop me on Orchard Road and you head on home.”

Lee shot Tay a surprised look. “There must be something else we can do, sir.”

“There is. We know a lot. We just don’t know what any of it means. We need to stop running all over the city and sit down and think.”

AFTER SERGEANT LEE dropped Tay off on Orchard Road, he walked home and he did what he always did when he needed to think. He sat in his garden with his shoes off and smoked one cigarette after another. He really was going to have to quit. He understood that. He just wasn’t going to do it right now.

He and Lee didn’t have much time before ISD found out they knew about Robert Wang. The problem was he had absolutely no idea yet what to do with the time they did have.

After a while, the light softened and dusk began to settle over the city, and Tay realized he was hungry since he hadn’t eaten any lunch. Before they discovered Wang’s body, he didn’t wanted to take time to eat. After they discovered Wang’s body, he hadn’t felt like eating anymore. But now he did. Maybe that was a good sign.

Tay stood up and put on his shoes. Then he went inside, washed his hands, and headed out his front door without any particular destination in mind.

He turned right and walked in the direction of Orchard Road, but as he was passing through Preranakan Place he glanced into the Alley Bar and was surprised to see it wasn’t very busy. Tay liked the Alley Bar. It was high-ceilinged and pleasingly dim, and the long bar with the big mirrors behind it stretched for what must have been fifty feet until it almost disappeared into the cool interior shadows. Somehow the scarred wooden bar and hazy mirrors and under-lit interior of the place all combined to make Tay think of what he was sure had been better times, although more and more he wondered if those times had ever really existed.

He took a stool at a section of the bar that was completely deserted and ordered a medium-rare burger and an Irish whiskey. They didn’t have any Powers so he settled for Bushmills. It wasn’t the same, not nearly, but he could live with it.

While he waited for his order he had the choice of watching himself in the cloudy mirror behind the bar or reading something on his phone. He decided to read the Asian edition of the
Wall Street Journal
on his phone, but he only half registered the words as they scrolled by since his mind was still focused on what he and Sergeant Lee could do to get on top of what he knew would be coming at them all too soon.

Tay was dimly aware of a man wearing a baseball cap walking up to the bar and sitting one stool away. It annoyed him that the guy chose that particular place to sit. There were plenty of empty stools further down the bar. Why did anyone have to pick one so close to him? He didn’t want to do anything to suggest he might be open to conversation, so he kept his eyes on his telephone and didn’t look up.

At least not until the man spoke to him.

“Just keep your eyes on your phone, Tay. Don’t look at me.”

So, of course, Tay immediately looked at him. He didn’t turn his head, at least he was that subtle, but he did his best to focus on the man’s features out of the corner of his eye. He seemed familiar, but the blue baseball cap and sunglasses made it hard to get a fix on his face using only his peripheral vision.

“You looked at me, Tay. I knew you would, you contrary son of a bitch.”

The voice was familiar, too, and Tay started clicking through his memory trying to match it to somebody.

“Do you remember,” the man went on, “where we met to talk about that kid who was found hanged in his apartment?”

Now Tay
did
turn his head. “Goh? Is that you?”

“My God, Tay, you’re the original fucking bull in the fucking china shop. Even the simplest tradecraft is too much for you, isn’t it?”

“Tradecraft?” Tay rolled his eyes. “For Christ’s sake, Goh, do you have any idea how silly you sound? Grow up, man.”

“Do you remember where we met, or don’t you, Tay?”

“Of course I remember. We met at—”

“For fuck’s sake, don’t say it out loud.”

Tay just shook his head and looked away.

“Meet me there in half an hour.”

Tay sighed and said nothing. He just went back to reading the
Wall Street Journal
.

“Well, are you coming or aren’t you?”

“Make it an hour, Goh. I want to finish my burger.”

Tay could only think of one good thing about meeting on a bench in Fort Canning Park rather than having a normal conversation back at the Alley Bar like most people would. At least he could smoke there.

Fort Canning Park was one of Singapore’s major landmarks. It had seen much of what passed for history there and had been everything from a resort for the Malay kingdoms in the fourteenth century, to the site of the residences of the colonial governors, to the place where the British surrendered to the Japanese in World War II. Now it was a lush, green public garden in the center of the city crisscrossed with meandering walkways shaded by long rows of tall, broad-leafed mahogany trees.

Tay got out of the taxi at the Hill Street entrance to the park and walked west on a winding, brick-paved walk. The glow from the city cast the park in shades of gray, and a warm breeze rattled the trees.

The bench where he and Goh had met before was behind the old Hill Street Police Station. The British built the station back in the thirties and for some reason designed it in the Italianate style. That made it a bit of an oddity in tropical Singapore, but Tay thought its balconies and arcades and courtyards were lovely. Considerably less lovely was the history of the place.

In the thirties, when Singapore was still a British colony, the British fought a nasty little war against the anti-colonialist guerrillas trying to drive them off the Malaysian Peninsula. A good deal of that war had been run out of the Hill Street Station. When the Japanese defeated the British in World War II and took over Singapore, they turned the Hill Street Station into an interrogation center for prisoners. And in the sixties, Singapore’s fledgling government dominated by ethnic Chinese made the building the heart of its bloody battle against the Muslim insurgents in Malaysia.

The Hill Street Station was abandoned as a police facility in the eighties and converted into what the government called an arts center. Tay saw that less as a genuine effort to create a public facility of civic worth than it was another fumbling attempt by the faceless men who ran Singapore to sanitize its past. He supposed the truth was it didn’t really matter what anyone said the building was now. Singaporeans knew what it had been before.

A lot of Singaporeans even believed the building was haunted. They avoided being anywhere near it, averting their eyes if they were forced to drive past it on Hill Street. Tay knew people who swore that late at night you could hear screams coming from the basement where prisoners had been tortured by first one conqueror and then the next. He had never heard the screams himself, but he had no difficulty imagining them.

Some cities were proud of their past. Others talked mostly about their future. Tay knew Singapore liked to think of itself as being all about the future, but he had always believed Singapore was mostly about the past.

Tay had no difficulty finding the right bench. The first time he and Goh had met there he had wondered whether Goh’s choice of a bench right behind the Hill Street Police Station was meant as a subtle touch of irony or if it was only coincidence. He still wasn’t certain.

The park was dim and quiet. Off in the distance Tay could hear the traffic on Hill Street. No one else was in sight, not even the occasional dog walker. He was just starting to wonder how wise he was to be meeting an ISD man in a lonely, darkened park when he saw Goh coming up the path from the opposite direction.

Did he really think that Goh might do him harm? No, of course he didn’t. At most, Goh would toss out a few threats and that would be that. It might almost be fun. Tay lit a cigarette, shook out the match, and dropped it on the ground.

“You’re littering,” Goh said after he sat down. “Just like the last time we were here. You’re really an anti-social prick, aren’t you?”

“I’m not a big fan of yours either, Goh. So can we cut the bullshit? Why am I here?”

“I was sorry to hear about your sergeant.”

“I’m sorry to hear about anyone being murdered. I’m even sorrier when he leaves behind a pregnant wife. That he happened to be a friend of mine doesn’t really make it any worse.”

“I’m not the villain here, Tay.”

“You’re not?”

“I just want you to know that.”

“Then who is?”

Goh chewed at his lip and looked away. “I could guess.”

“Guess.”

So Goh did.

“THE SURVEILLANCE OPERATION at the Temple Street Inn was bullshit,” Goh said.

“No kidding.”

“They wanted to keep our attention there because something they didn’t want us to know about was happening someplace else.”

“
Our
attention?”

“Yeah, Tay,
our
attention. They were running me around just as much as they were running you around.”

“Who is this
they
you keep talking about?”

Goh bobbed his head and appeared to think about the question, but Tay doubted he really was. He was certain Goh had already decided exactly what he was going to tell him, and what he was not going to tell him.

“My instructions to set up the surveillance operation on the Temple Street Inn came from the top,” Goh said after a moment.

“The top of ISD?”

“The
very
top.”

Tay thought Goh looked a little uneasy saying that. Goh was not a nervous man, and his uneasiness got Tay’s full attention.

“You’re saying that—”

“For Christ’s sake, Tay, you’re going to have to let me tell this my way. I’m not going to sit here and be interrogated by you.”

Tay raised both hands, palms out.

“I didn’t know what to make of it when I got a call from the Minister’s office telling me to include CID in the operation, not at first,” Goh went on, “but now I’m guessing they wanted to keep you focused on the Temple Street Inn, too.”

Goh looked at Tay and raised one eyebrow. “I should’ve known you would go off on your own and fuck everything up.”