The Singapore School of Villainy (9 page)

‘Meaning you can't determine the content,' remarked Quentin rudely, referring to the widely held perception that the authorities controlled the Singapore press.

The inspector ignored him and continued. ‘So, I am going to hold interviews with the partners at
these
offices.'

‘Inspector Singh and his team will commence their interviews this morning,' added Stephen hurriedly, no doubt to discourage his lawyers from making a beeline for the exits.

The inspector rose to his feet by dint of pushing against the arms of his chair and using the momentum to propel him out of the seat. He looked around the table at the partners, all staring at him with expressions that ranged from sullen fear to anger. He pointed a stubby finger at Annie Nathan and said, ‘You're first!'

 

In his office, Quentin Holbrooke took off his glasses and wiped them carefully with the piece of satin cloth he kept in his desk drawer – he hated it when his vision was clouded with fingerprints or bits of lint. He pulled a tissue from the box on his desk, blew his nose hard and glanced at the mucus – the green slime was streaked with blood. He wiped his nose gingerly. It really hurt.

Stretching his hands out in front of him, Quentin was not surprised to see that both hands were shaking. He really did not feel good this morning – he was out of breath and had a pounding headache. It felt as if some creature had crawled into his ear in the night and was now trying to escape by excavating through his forehead using power tools. What was worse, Stephen Thwaites had just announced that the fat inspector would be arriving shortly to interview them all. He explained the offices had been chosen rather than the police station in a bid to stem the tide of gossip in the tabloids. But it was a move hardly calculated to calm the nerves of the already rattled partners.

Quentin thought about his conversation with Annie about the missing keycard. Panic-stricken about drawing attention to himself for any reason, he had felt a raw surge of pure anger when she mentioned telling the fat policeman about it. In retrospect, it was not a big deal. That policeman, Singh, was not naïve enough to think that he had used such a clumsy method to create the possibility of more suspects. Quentin knew that he had to try and get a grip on his emotions. The one sure way to present himself as a more likely suspect than the others was to behave erratically.

Quentin stretched out a hand to his phone, noticing how slim his wrist had become. He was definitely losing weight – that morning he had buckled his belt a notch further in than before. He picked up the receiver and made a quick call to a mobile number – he knew the number by heart.

‘Ya?'

‘I need more.'

‘How much?'

‘As much as you have.'

There was a chuckle on the line. ‘
Wah
, you really know how to party, man!'

Quentin was not interested in small talk. ‘Can you do it?' he snapped.

The Chinaman on the other end was all business. ‘No problem, boss. Usual place. Tomorrow – eleven a.m. – make sure you bring cash.'

 

‘You are Anikka Nathan, associate partner at Hutchinson & Rice?'

Annie nodded.

‘Please speak your answers for the record,' snapped Singh. The clicking sound of Corporal Fong commencing to type punctuated his remarks.

‘I am,' said Annie clearly.

‘We are investigating the murder of Mr Mark Thompson. Would you please recount the events leading up to the discovery of the body?'

‘But I've told you all that already,' protested Annie.

‘We might discover something that was missed previously,' said Singh optimistically. He knew there was no point trying to catch Annie out in a contradiction. She would have fine-tuned her tale in the preliminary interviews on the night of the murder. But Singh never hesitated to make witnesses repeat themselves. Even the overly practised delivery of information might constitute a clue to his sensitive ear. He didn't want his witnesses to recite the facts, he wanted them to paint him a picture – and he was prepared to ask the same questions over and over again until every brushstroke was complete.

‘I was in Kuala Lumpur for the day and got back to Singapore that evening.'

‘What time did you get home?' he asked.

‘About six,' she replied.

‘Your flight, SQ 118, landed at 5.15 that evening. That was a fairly quick trip,' the inspector remarked.

He could see from the way that she bit her bottom lip that she was dismayed he had been checking on her movements with such diligence but all she said was, ‘I travelled first class and without any check-in luggage.'

‘What did you do between the time you got home and when you took the call from Mr Thompson?'

‘I had a drink and fell asleep in the easy chair on the verandah.'

‘Your phone records show that you received a call from the office at exactly seven in the evening. Between that time and nine p.m. when Quentin Holbrooke found the body, Mark Thompson was murdered. What did you do after you received his call?'

This is it, thought Singh, the moment to produce the alibi. Unsurprisingly, none was forthcoming.

‘I drove to the office,' she replied.

‘That took an
hour
?'

‘Well, I had a shower and watched the eight o'clock news before setting out,' Annie responded, a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

‘It is best to be precise in a murder investigation,' said the inspector heavily, ignoring her fit of pique. ‘What happened once you got to the office?'

‘I bumped into Quentin in the car park.'

‘When did he first mention that he had lost his swipe card?'

‘He was rummaging in his wallet in the lobby…'

‘Did his actions seem contrived?'

‘No,' snapped Annie.

Singh remembered the embrace she had exchanged with Quentin that morning. He wondered whether she was in some sort of relationship with him and that was at the root of her defensiveness. In his experience, protecting lovers was one of the main reasons that witness testimony became unreliable.

‘What happened next?' asked Singh, filing away his suspicions for later consideration.

‘We went upstairs. Everything seemed normal. I stopped by my office while Quentin went ahead to Mark's room.'

‘Wasn't that odd?' demanded Singh.

‘What do you mean?'

‘You said that it was unusual for a meeting to be called late on a Friday evening, demanding the presence of the partners. Isn't it a bit strange that you, having rushed to the office, should take your time about actually going in to
see
Mr Thompson?'

‘What are you suggesting?' asked Annie truculently. A wall of hair fell across her face and she pushed it away. She slipped a scrunchie off her wrist and tied her long dark hair away from her face.

Singh was impressed. This was a witness who did not fear exposing her face, and every expression, to scrutiny. If she was a liar, she was confident that she was an expert.

‘I'm asking you why you decided to go to your office instead of going directly to see Mark Thompson?' growled the inspector. His voice had taken on an aggressive tone, a prosecutor now rather than an investigator.

‘Hindsight is a wonderful thing,' said Annie angrily.

Singh was pleased to have provoked her.

She continued, ‘It seemed a perfectly natural thing to do at the time. I had been out of the office all day in KL.' She shrugged. ‘I just wanted to see whether anything had come up during the day – that's all!'

The inspector did not press her. He was satisfied that she was rattled.

‘When did
you
realise he was dead?'

‘I thought Mark was sleeping – I wondered how he'd slept through Quentin's yells. Then I saw the blood in his hair…and down the side of his face. His eyes were sort of open and staring.' Annie shuddered.

‘Then what happened?'

‘Quentin checked for a pulse and confirmed that he was dead.'

‘Very cool behaviour,' remarked Singh.

Annie scowled but did not leap to Quentin's defence. Perhaps they weren't in a relationship after all.

‘Mr Jagdesh Singh joined you at this point?'

‘Yes,' replied Annie. ‘We had come out of Mark's room and were trying to decide what to do when he turned up.'

‘Was there anything odd in Mr Singh's reaction?'

‘No, not really,' Annie said. ‘Jagdesh only seems to get worked up over cricket.'

Inspector Singh smiled happily. ‘I myself watch cricket. In fact, I used to open the batting for my school in my younger days.'

The inspector noted Annie staring at his portly figure from across the desk. He supposed it was difficult to imagine him as having once been a sportsman.

He dragged himself back to the present with difficulty. ‘Why do you think that Mark Thompson called a meeting of the partners just before someone beat him to death?'

Annie winced at his choice of words but Singh had no qualms about being graphic in his descriptions. He had noticed in the past that even murderers preferred not to be reminded of the colourful details of their crime. It always struck him as oxymoronic that a human being could take the life of another and then feel queasy about a description of death.

‘I have no idea,' she insisted.

Singh looked disbelieving. ‘Doesn't it seem likely that Mark Thompson discovered something about one of the partners, called a meeting to discuss it, and was killed to keep a secret?'

Annie remained silent. Apparently, she was not going to be provoked into agreeing with a hypothesis that placed any of the lawyers in the firing line.

Singh altered his strategy to take her caginess into account.

‘I believe that you are currently working on a Malaysian takeover?'

‘Yes.'

‘I noticed the deceased was the designated senior partner on the Malaysian deal?'

‘Yes, he was,' said Annie. ‘That's just a cosmetic exercise, to reassure clients that someone senior is involved. I sometimes find that useful. Being young, a woman and Asian, it's like three strikes and you're out. I have to prove myself to doubtful clients.'

‘And to some of your colleagues, I'm sure,' said Singh.

‘
You
must know what it's like…'

‘Tell me anyway.'

‘I turn up for a meeting and the clients look past me for the “real” lawyers. They never actually say so but for four hundred dollars an hour, they expect a
white
face at least.'

Singh nodded. As a Sikh in Singapore, he had battled the same prejudice against minorities – only his error was not to have been born Chinese. This girl had a chip on her shoulder; she had not been able to keep the bitter edge out of her voice.

‘But the firm promoted you to partner anyway?'

‘It was an uphill battle!'

Singh was not surprised. In many ways, they were in the same boat – good at their jobs but otherwise square pegs in professions that only valued uniformity.

‘Did Mark Thompson play any role at all in this transaction?' the inspector continued. He drummed his fingers on top of the thick file to indicate his subject.

‘He attended the kick-off meeting. The senior people at the company, Trans-Malaya, were present as well as a few Government bigwigs. It seemed a good idea to have him along.'

‘And was it?'

‘Yes. Mark was very good with people.'

‘So a client may have approached him directly – gone over your head?'

‘I guess so,' she conceded grudgingly.

‘
Were
there any issues?'

‘Like what?'

‘You tell me.'

‘No!'

Singh, looking down at the files in front of him, glanced up at this vehemence.

Forewarned and forearmed by David Sheringham he asked, ‘What about the insider dealing?'

Her face was bloodless. For a brief moment she looked like the cadaver of Mark Thompson. Her next words were confident, aggressive even, but the slightly unsteady voice reinforced Singh's opinion that she had just received a fright. ‘What about it?' she asked.

He said nothing, curious to see what she would say next.

His witness made a quick recovery – she muttered, sounding petulant now, ‘I don't see what relevance insider dealing by a Malaysian director has to Mark's death.'

‘My dear child, every little bit of information helps us form a picture of the victim.
I
will decide what is important.'

He ignored her grimace at his choice of address and looked at his notes again – were there any loose ends to tie up?

‘I see you received a call just before Mark's from an Indonesian number?'

‘My Dad rang. He lives in Bali.'

The policeman nodded approvingly. ‘You are close?'

‘He's all the family I have left.'

‘And you called Mark back that evening?'

‘Yes, just to find out what the meeting was about. He refused to tell me.'

Singh leaned back in his chair, folded his arms neatly over his belly like an undertaker arranging the limbs of the dead, and barked, ‘Fong, I like my coffee milky and sweet!'

 

Fong returned and placed the mug of coffee at the senior man's elbow. He noted that the inspector had a cigarette clamped between his teeth. He wondered whether he was obliged to remind him that smoking indoors was illegal in Singapore.

Singh took the fag out of his mouth, exhaled a cloud of white smoke through his nostrils and smiled broadly – a man without a care in the world. ‘We can begin the next interview now.'

Cigarettes apparently had a calming effect on the policeman. In the circumstances, Fong decided, it was best to allow him his bad habits.

‘Perhaps you would be so good as to fetch Mr Thwaites.'

The corporal, correctly interpreting this as a command despite the polite form of words, leapt to his feet and knocked a sheaf of papers to the floor. He hesitated painfully, unable to decide whether to clear up first or hurry out in search of Stephen Thwaites.