Umbrella Man (9786167611204) (42 page)

Tay had gone twenty-nine days without smoking
a cigarette. That was his longest streak to date by a good bit, but
he had no doubt it was over now. He had a headache and he would
have given a month’s pay for a cigarette right that minute. Just
one fucking cigarette. Was that too much to ask? He didn’t even
care what brand it was. He’d take anything.

Kang didn’t smoke, so he wasn’t going to be
any help, and leaving the crime scene to go and buy a pack of
cigarettes was too unseemly an act to contemplate seriously. Or
maybe it wasn’t.

Tay was still trying to decide when he saw
the Officer in Charge of CID-SIS coming down the corridor. Deputy
Superintendent of Police Goh Kim Leng stopped directly in front of
Tay and looked him over carefully.

“Is it that bad?” he asked.

Tay didn’t reply.

“Yes, sir,” Kang responded instead. “It
is.”

Goh had a full head of thick, silver hair
that men half his age regarded with envy, and he habitually wore
dark, gold-rimmed sunglasses. He was of medium height, but looked
shorter because of his broad shoulders, barrel chest, and thick,
heavily muscled neck.

“You sure you’re okay, Sam?” he asked
again.

“Yes, sir,” Tay nodded carefully, trying not
to make his headache any worse. “I’m just great, sir.”

“You don’t look so great.”

“Thank you, Chief.”

The OC didn’t smoke or Tay would have goddamn
well asked him for a cigarette. He doubted any policeman in the
history of the Singapore Police Force had ever before asked a
senior officer for a cigarette, but the truth of it was that he
really didn’t give a rat’s ass right at that moment. Christ, was he
the only man in Singapore who still smoked? Yes, he thought he
probably was.

“I’d better have a look,” the OC said as he
leaned into the hotel room and glanced around. “You coming,
Sam?”

“I’ll be right out here, Chief,” Tay
said.

Tay and Kang waited in the corridor while the
OC went into room 2608. Kang chewed absentmindedly at a hangnail
while Tay passed the time envisioning himself smoking a Marlboro.
He sharpened his memory as much as he could and tried to conjure up
the taste of the nicotine and the edge he felt as it entered
hisbloodstream and rushed to his brain. It didn’t work.

Fuck this zen shit,
Tay thought. He
didn’t care what anyone said. He was going downstairs to buy some
cigarettes and he was going to do it right now.

But before Tay could will himself into
motion, a grim-faced OC emerged from the room, leaned against the
wall, and folded his arms.

“Do we know who she is?” he asked.

“Not yet.” Tay struggled to control his
nicotine fit by studying the swirling patterns in the wine-red
carpet. “The hotel doesn’t have anyone registered in the room.
According to their records, it ought to be empty.”

The OC’s mouth tightened into a thin, hard
line. “The FMB says they got clean prints. If she’s local, we’ll
know who she is within a half-hour. If she’s not, we’ll compare the
visitor entry records with the exits and see who’s unaccounted for.
We should get an ID pretty quickly.”

Tay’s eyes shifted slightly at that and the
OC caught it.

“What is it, Sam?”

“Somehow I have the feeling it isn’t going to
be that easy, Chief.”

“No,” the OC shook his head slowly, “maybe it
won’t be.”

Tay looked off to his left as if a repository
of constructive thought lay somewhere down the corridor, but he
didn’t say anything else.

“What about the security cameras?” the OC
asked.

“I’ve asked for copies of the tapes from all
the hotel’s cameras for the last three days,” Kang answered.

That was news to Tay, so he listened
carefully.

“We’ll look at them,” Kang continued, “but I
think finding anything useful is a long shot, sir. The state of the
deceased leaves us without an identifiable face to look for, and
there’s an international electronics trade fair going on now. The
traffic in and out of the hotel would have been very heavy. Unless
this woman really stands out for some reason, I doubt we’ll see
anything that might help us.”

The OC let out a long, tired sigh. “I want
you to stay with this until it’s done, Sam. It’s going to scare the
hell out of a lot of people.”

“It certainly scares the hell out of me,
Chief.”

“You and Sergeant Kang drop everything else
until this case is cleared. Tell me what you need and you’ll get
it. Just wrap it up and do it quickly.”

“What about the press, sir?” Kang asked.

The OC looked momentarily puzzled. “What
press?”

“At least two hotel employees have seen the
body. Rumors are probably spreading already.”

The OC looked at Tay. “What do you think,
Sam?”

Tay made a vague movement with his head that
could have meant anything. “I’ll take care of it,” he said. “I’ll
have a word with Public Affairs and get them to put out something
vague. If they handle it right, we can probably keep
The Straits
Times
out of it until we have something concrete.”

“What about the other papers?”

“They won’t be a problem,” Tay said. “They
never are.”

Kang grunted and both the OC and Tay looked
at him.

“You disagree, Sergeant?” the OC asked.

“Not exactly, sir. I was just thinking…well,
what about the foreign press? It seems to me this is the kind of
thing that could easily be blown out of proportion.”

“And what would you say the proper proportion
is
, Sergeant?” Tay snapped before the OC could respond.
“When you find a woman with her face beaten in who’s been stripped
naked and had a flashlight jammed up her private parts, how would
you fix the proper proportions for that, Sergeant? I’d really like
to know.”

“What I meant, sir, was—”

“That murdered women in five-star hotels
might damage the tourist trade?”

“No, sir.” Kang cleared his throat. “That
something like this might damage the country’s image in general,
sir. Foreigners being killed in luxury hotels here in Singapore and
all. It makes us look like some Third World shithole.”

“Why do you think the woman’s a
foreigner?”

“Well, because…”

Kang saw the trap he was falling into and
trailed off into an embarrassed silence. He looked down at his
hands as if he wanted to make certain that none of his fingers were
missing.

“You didn’t mean to say foreigner at all, did
you, Sergeant?”

Kang had hoped Tay would let it go. Clearly
he wasn’t.

“You meant to say ‘white,’ didn’t you? You
meant to say white people being killed in luxury hotels isn’t good
for Singapore’s image, didn’t you, Sergeant?”

Kang shifted his weight and jammed his hands
deep into his pockets. He didn’t even try to answer Tay’s question.
He had said far too much already.

“Don’t worry about it, Sergeant,” the OC said
after a few moments passed in an uncomfortable silence. “Go on
downstairs and finish the interviews.”

Kang nodded and walked quickly away. The OC
pushed himself off the wall.

“Fix this, Sam,” he said. “I’m depending on
you.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll do my best.”

“Do better than that. Do whatever you have
to. Just fucking fix it.”

SERGEANT KANG COMPLETED the interviews in
less than half an hour because nobody had anything useful to add to
what little he and Tay already knew. Kang left the hotel’s
executive offices and found Tay waiting for him in the coffee
shop.

Tay was at a table in the outside section at
the front of the hotel, the part that was supposed to look like a
Parisian sidewalk café but didn’t. On his table were a small box of
aspirin, a water glass, an espresso cup, two packs of Marlboro
Reds, a purple plastic disposable lighter, and an ashtray. The
aspirin box was open, the espresso cup and water glass were empty,
and Tay was just finishing a cigarette, clearly not his first from
the look of the ashtray.

“Hotel shops are wonderful places, Sergeant.
They sell nearly everything a man could possibly want.”

“Apparently, sir.”

Kang pulled out a chair and sat down. He
pointed at the red Marlboro box.

“Thoe are the strong ones, aren’t they,
sir?”

“Don’t start, Sergeant.”

“If you’re going to begin smoking again, sir,
don’t you at least think the light ones would—”

“Are we all done here?” Tay interrupted. “Do
they need us upstairs for anything else?”

Kang shook his head. “The FMB guys will be a
while yet, but I don’t think there’s anything more for us to do.
Not unless you want to have another look at the scene before they
move the body.”

Tay gave Kang a long look.

“I didn’t think so,” Sergeant Kang said.

Tay shook another Marlboro out of the pack
and lit it. He exhaled a thick cloud of smoke and leaned forward,
resting his elbows on the table.

“Do we have all the statements?”

“Statements from the manager, the security
chief, and the maid—”

“You mean the housekeeping supervisor.”

“Right, sir, the housekeeping supervisor.
I’ll type them up later and you can look at them all if you want,
but I don’t think you’ll find anything in them.”

“What about the other guests on the
floor?”

“Patrolmen have talked to three who were on
the twenty-sixth floor last night, one who was on the
twenty-seventh, and three who were on the twenty-fifth. We’re
tracking the others down along with all of yesterday’s checkouts on
those three floors, but so far no one seems to have heard anything
unusual.”

“Somebody must have heard something. You
can’t beat anybody that badly without making a hell of a lot of
noise.”

“Unless she was tied up and gagged.”

Tay looked at Kang and raised his
eyebrows.

“The FMB supervisor says there are marks on
the woman’s wrists and ankles,” Kang went on. “He says he’s not
sure yet, but they appear to be consistent with restraints of some
kind.”

“Restraints?”

“You know, sir … ah, like she was—”

“Having kinky sex?”

“Yes, sir. Exactly.”

“Wonderful,” Tay muttered as he stubbed out
his cigarette. “Sex and death. My favorite subjects.”

Two Japanese-looking men carrying black
leather briefcases passed close to the table and Tay watched them
until they were gone.

“Is there any evidence the woman had
intercourse before she died?” he asked when the men were out of
earshot.

“We won’t know for sure until the
autopsy.”

Tay grunted.

“Even then,” Kang went on, “if it was normal
vaginal intercourse, it may be difficult to tell for sure whether
it was forced.”

“Why would it be difficult … oh, the
flashlight.”

“Yes, sir. The flashlight.”

“Maybe we can at least find out where that
came from.”

“We already know, sir.”

“We do?”

“There’s one in every room. The hotel has
them in the closet for emergencies.”

Tay picked up the empty espresso cup and
slipped his forefinger through the handle. Letting the cup drop, he
watched it swing back and forth.

“What did they find in the room?” Tay asked
after the cup stopped swinging.

“That’s what’s strange, sir. It’s not what
they found; it’s what they didn’t find. No suitcases, no toilet
articles, no clothing. She certainly wasn’t staying there.”

“What about the clothes she was wearing?”

“Nothing, sir.”

Tay blinked at that. “Her clothes were
gone?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, even if there is an electronics trade
fair in town, she sure as hell didn’t walk into the Marriott
completely naked.”

“No, sir. Probably not.”

“What about her jewelry? Rings? A watch?”

“No, sir. Nothing like that. Both her hands
show marks from rings, but they’re gone now.”

“Somebody cleaned up. And they made a
thorough job of it.”

“Yes, sir. A guy takes everything, packs it
into a suitcase or maybe a laundry bag, and walks out. Who notices
a man walking out of a hotel with a bag?”

Tay leaned back, knitted his fingers together
behind his head, and thought for a moment.

“What makes you think it was a man?” he
asked.

“Oh come on, sir. No woman could have done
that.”

“Why not?”

“A woman just couldn’t do something like
that, sir.”

“Don’t be naive, Sergeant. You need to get
out more.”

“Well, sir, at the very least you have to
admit no woman’s strong enough to beat another woman that
badly.”

“Really? You obviously haven’t met any of the
women my friends have been fixing me up with recently.”

Tay thought about what Kang had just told him
for a second, maybe two.

“There won’t be any prints in the room,” he
said. “Not the woman’s. Not the killer’s. He was too careful for
that.”

“Probably not, sir. FMB says the whole room’s
been wiped down. But they’re still checking everything anyway.
Maybe there’s something that didn’t get wiped.”

“Have they found anything at all that would
help identify her?”

“No, sir.”

“Do they know what was used to beat her face
in?”

“Not yet.”

“Can they tell if the beating was the cause
of death?”

“They’re not sure.”

“Are they at least certain she’s dead?”

“Pardon me, sir?”

“Never mind.”

Tay drummed his fingers on the table. He
picked up the half empty box of Marlboros and then put it down
again.

“Have our esteemed colleagues even managed to
come up with a time of death?” he asked.

“They say she’s still in rigor, but the air
conditioning was turned down so much it might have delayed the time
it took her to reach it. They’re just guessing, but they figure it
was something like twelve to twenty-four hours ago.”