The Singapore School of Villainy (3 page)

‘Damn, can't find my card. Do you have yours?' Quentin asked.

Annie rummaged in her handbag and found it. They started up to the sixty-eighth floor. Beating her to the main entrance, Quentin typed in his four-digit personal code and they walked into the reception area. Annie fumbled for the light switches just inside the door and a few discreet lights in the ceiling and a lamp behind the reception desk came on.

The décor in the reception area was designed to suggest both tradition and discretion. Leather-bound law reports lined one wall, although none of the lawyers who worked at the firm consulted them, not in an era of online statutes and case law. Three Oriental paintings, fine brush strokes depicting songbirds, adorned the opposite wall. The air smelt faintly of lilies. A vase of fresh white flowers, yellow stamens trimmed, stood tall on the receptionist's table. So late on a Friday evening, the office was silent and deserted. A few rooms had their lights on. It didn't indicate that anyone was at work. The junior lawyers did not switch off their lights in the evenings. It was a practice developed to suggest to inquisitive partners that work was still being done long after the lawyer had left for the day.

At the end of the corridor was the office of Mark Thompson, Senior Partner. His door was closed.

‘You go ahead,' said Annie, disappearing into her own office.

Quentin nodded absently and carried on towards Mark's room. A quick tap on the door was met with silence. He knocked again, this time louder, and received no response. Quentin shrugged and tried the handle. The door opened easily. He poked his head into the room apologetically and said, ‘Mark? Annie and I are here for the meeting.'

Annie heard Quentin scream for help, the sound muffled by the heavy doors. She stood stock still, the hairs on her arms standing to attention like soldiers on parade, left her office at a run and burst into the room at the far end of the corridor. Quentin was standing by Mark's desk, his hands cupped firmly around his mouth and his protuberant eyes popping with shock.

Mark was sitting in his chair apparently oblivious to the presence of the two lawyers. His head was resting against the table, his cheek flat against the surface. There was complete silence except for a regular muffled tone. It sounded familiar but she couldn't pinpoint its origin. As she sidled up to Quentin, Annie realised with a horrid sinking feeling – as if she was in an aeroplane that had just hit a nasty patch of turbulence – that the background noise which had puzzled her was the telephone receiver lying on its side, a few inches away from Mark Thompson's outstretched hand.

And then she saw what Quentin had seen – a dark rivulet of blood matting Mark's hair, turning it almost black, running from a gash on his head down the side of his face. Annie gagged, and swallowed the taste of her early dinner. She could smell the cold rusty iron scent of blood.

Quentin edged forward, every small step betraying his reluctance to approach the body. He gingerly put his hand to Mark's wrist.

Annie guessed he could not bring himself to feel for a pulse on the neck – it was too close to the blood.

He shook his head at Annie.

Annie was as pale as the corpse. She gulped, ‘Is he dead?'

‘I think so.' Quentin's voice cracked, like a boy on the cusp of adolescence. ‘I can't find a pulse,' he continued, rubbing his hands on his trousers, unconsciously trying to erase the lingering feel of death.

‘I'll call an ambulance and the police,' she said weakly, reaching into her pocket for her mobile phone. She dialled 999, realising as she did so that it was the first time in her life that she had resorted to the emergency services. She explained quickly that they had found a body, ignoring the sceptical tone of the officer.

Quentin was shuffling from foot to foot, unable to stand still in the presence of the dead.

Annie, hanging up at last, noticed how wan he was. ‘Maybe we should wait outside. The police won't want us in here.'

She left unspoken that it was the last place she wanted to be, closeted in a room with a dead man whose blood dripped from his head to the floor like water from a leaky faucet.

Quentin led the way out with alacrity but having made their escape, inspiration left them and they stood outside the door like undisciplined sentries, watching the minutes tick by on the office wall clock.

‘Good evening, you two. Am I late for the meeting?' A cheerful voice that betrayed its Indian origins struck a discordant note. A tall, broad-shouldered man with jet-black hair swept away from a high forehead and soulful brown eyes wandered towards them.

‘What's going on? You two look like you've seen a ghost!'

Quentin winced at his choice of words and, to her embarrassment, hot tears rolled down Annie's cheeks.

‘What is it?' Jagdesh sounded worried now. He came towards them and patted Annie awkwardly on the shoulder.

‘Mark's in there – we think he's dead,' Quentin answered.

‘You're pulling my leg, right? That's just not funny, chaps!' Jagdesh's Delhi accent, more pronounced in times of stress, contrasted oddly with his public school idioms.

He continued, taking in their expressions and Annie's tears, ‘Heart attack? Just goes to show, doesn't it?'

What exactly Jagdesh thought it showed was never to become clear. Annie said, her voice high-pitched with anxiety, ‘He's been murdered!'

The prolonged sound of a buzzer held down by an impatient finger interrupted Jagdesh's response.

 

At the entrance, Annie and Quentin found a short, rotund Sikh man who flashed a badge at them. The policeman marched in like an irate client who had just received the firm's bill for services rendered. A number of uniformed policemen trailed in his wake.

Jagdesh had answered a ringing telephone on the way to the door.

‘Who's this?' asked the Sikh policeman tersely.

‘One of our colleagues, Jagdesh Singh,' answered Annie promptly.

Inspector Singh's brow wrinkled. He said, ‘Mr Singh, do not communicate the situation here to anyone,' and then, assuming compliance, he asked Quentin, ‘Where's the victim?'

The young lawyer silently indicated Mark's closed door, and the turbaned man, using a handkerchief, pushed the door open and went in.

Jagdesh, who had fallen silent during this exchange, now spoke into the phone again. ‘Ai Leen? I think you'd better come in with Reggie. Come as soon as you can.' Then, ‘Who's the towel-head?' he demanded, hanging up.

Annie thought this was a bit rich coming from Jagdesh. He too was a Sikh like the policeman. He shared the same surname, Singh – which meant “lion” – as the inspector and all other men of Sikh origin. Jagdesh merely eschewed the other overt trappings of Sikhism, like the turban he was ridiculing.

Quentin silently handed over a card.

Jagdesh read it out loud, ‘Inspector Singh, Central Police Division. No wonder they got here so quick – the station's just down the road. I wonder…'

He was not given a chance to finish as the policeman stepped out of Mark's room. Annie wondered if he had heard Jagdesh mock his headdress; he gave no sign of having done so although he did shoot a glance at the Indian lawyer. His thickset face remained expressionless but his dark eyes were alive with interest. Annie guessed he wasn't often called in for murders in one of the high-rise offices in Singapore. Murder in Singapore was exceedingly rare. And when it did occur, it tended to be an ill-fated lovers' quarrel or a foreign maid driven by desperation to kill an abusive employer. However experienced this policeman was, this present situation – a murdered expatriate – would be something new.

She stared at the inspector, unable to hide her curiosity. His turban added at least two inches to his height. It was neatly tied and a dark colour. A triangle of white formed a contrast just above the middle of his broad forehead. He had a salt-and-pepper moustache and a beard that hedged a wide mouth. A full pink lower lip suggested a pout. A sagging breast pocket on the inspector's white shirt contained more pens than could reasonably be required of one person, however prolific a writer. The policeman's dark trousers, worn over rather than under his stomach, were held in place with an old leather belt that was marked with the creases of his slimmer days.

The policeman ignored Annie's scrutiny, beckoned to his men and issued a few quick instructions. Two of them set off down the corridor and started peering into individual rooms. A third took up position outside Mark's door.

‘Is there anywhere these men can wait?' Inspector Singh asked Annie, gesturing at the two men in white. ‘Ambulance personnel. We won't need them for a while.'

Annie led them to a conference room and, as an afterthought, invited them to sit down. Jagdesh and Quentin trailed after her, unsure of what to do and glad of a temporary purpose.

‘Wait here, all of you.' Inspector Singh issued commands with the calm certainty of one accustomed to being obeyed.

‘Where are you going now?' asked Jagdesh as the inspector headed for the door.

‘None of your business,' was the inspector's offhand response.

‘What about his family? Should we notify them?' This time it was Quentin with the question.

‘You haven't called them yet?' asked the inspector.

‘No,' said Annie, wondering why they had not done so. That should have been their first instinct after phoning 999. What had held them back? The reluctance to be the bearers of bad news?

‘We haven't had time – we were waiting for you,' Quentin clarified.

It was a plausible explanation, thought Annie, but not accurate. There had been time if they had wished. But individually and collectively, consciously or unconsciously, they had chosen to ignore the immediately bereaved.

Inspector Singh did not cavil at their explanation. He merely inclined his head briefly in agreement. A man of few words apparently. ‘I will see to it. There's a wife?'

‘And two kids, both in school in England. His address is #15-04, Tanglin Vista Apartments,' explained Jagdesh and gave him the telephone number from memory. Jagdesh had phenomenal recall that assisted his performance as an outstanding commercial lawyer and was the envy of his less gifted colleagues.

‘She's his second wife,' blurted out Annie.

The inspector gave no sign of having heard. He did not inquire further and left the room.

‘Why'd you tell him that?' asked Jagdesh, frown lines chasing his hairline across a broad forehead.

‘Prepare him for the surprise, I guess.'

The next few hours took on the unreal quality of a waking nightmare for Annie; one of those dreams where the circumstances are too unlikely to be real and there is a measure of subconscious scepticism. But here there was to be no relief upon awakening. Men in white bubble suits wandered up and down the corridor. Blue-uniformed personnel stood around. There were sharp barks of command. Light bulbs flashed as photos were taken. Voices were heard on the telephones. Strips of yellow tape were used to cordon off parts of the office. Annie felt as if she was a bit-part actress in a television crime series.

A turban appeared around the door and a crooked finger summoned the lawyers. They glanced nervously at each other and traipsed out of the room obediently. As Singh led the way down the corridor, Annie noted again his peculiar shape – pointy head and small feet in white sneakers with a massive girth in between. He looked like a character from a children's cartoon – one of the Teletubbies. She suppressed a slightly hysterical giggle.

She noted that Jagdesh, his fellow Sikh, towered over the inspector, but it was the shorter man who was the band leader. Jagdesh trailed in his wake like a ten-year-old being led to the headmaster's office. Quentin might as well have been invisible. His shoulders were hunched and his gaze lowered. His aftershave failed to mask a faint smell of dried sweat.

Singh waved them into chairs and Annie's two colleagues sat down on either side of her. Her index finger went to her mouth and she chewed on the end vigorously. When it came away, a red droplet of blood oozed out of the tip. Her mind replayed the picture of Mark Thompson lying dead in his office. She gritted her teeth – the nausea was almost overwhelming.

 

Inspector Singh looked at them in turn, his expression enigmatic. At last, he asked, ‘So, any guesses who killed your boss?'

He noted the young female lawyer, Annie Nathan, steal a quick glance at the other two and filed away her reaction.

‘He had no enemies that we were aware of, sir,' Jagdesh answered calmly. His physical stature gave his words a convincing air of credibility.

‘Business rivalries?'

Quentin spoke up. ‘Sure – we all have those! It was just professional. No one
hated
Mark. Not enough to kill him.'

Singh eyed the lawyer who spoke with certainty but whose voice was shaking with doubt. What he had said was patently absurd. Mark's body was a tangible contradiction of Quentin's insistence that he had no enemies.

Jagdesh said aggressively, ‘If he had any enemies, we certainly didn't know of them.'

The other two lawyers maintained a determined silence. Singh deduced that this was the unspoken consensus. No one wanted to be the first to break ranks and start naming suspects. They knew full well that any omissions would hinder the policeman in forming an accurate picture of the dead man. But for now they were keeping their secrets.

Jagdesh wondered aloud, ‘Reggie and Ai Leen haven't turned up. That's strange – they said they were on their way.'

‘And what about the others?' asked Quentin. ‘Presumably all the partners were invited to this mysterious meeting.'

‘Some of them are here, in another room,' was Inspector Singh's deadpan response.

He was pleased with the widening eyes and sudden inhalation of breath that this remark produced. The lawyers were smart – short of clapping them in irons, he could not have emphasised his authority over them more clearly. He was the policeman. Information was in his gift, to be distributed or withheld at his discretion. And now they knew it.

‘Why are you keeping them away from us?' asked Quentin, his tone betraying a fear that the murder was going to embroil them in an experience going well beyond the immediate horror of sudden death.

He did not receive a response from the taciturn policeman.

Jagdesh's well-shaped lips were pursed with displeasure. ‘I don't understand why you're hassling us anyway. It must have been some stranger who killed Mark!'

‘That's your honest opinion – that some
stranger
killed your boss?' asked Singh.

Jagdesh and Quentin both nodded immediately. Again, the policeman noted that Annie was not so quick to assert a position. She opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again.

Inspector Singh pounced like an overweight cat on a rubber ball. ‘What do you know?'

She bit her lip.

‘I'm bound to find out – you don't want me to think that I don't have your full cooperation.' His manner was quietly authoritative – more effective than mere insistence.

Singh noted out of the corner of his eye that Quentin's Adam's apple was bobbing like a rubber duck in a bath.

The silence grew until it filled the room. Singh had been in the same position many times before. His witnesses were hiding something – within each of the three lawyers an internal debate raged. It was visible in their eyes; each one of them wore a slightly fixed stare, desperately trying to keep their features from hinting at any unpleasant truths.