Singapore Sling Shot (2 page)

One of the gunmen made a decision. He rushed towards Loh and squatted beside him. Loh, barely conscious now, felt the man's hands searching his pockets. To an observer it would have seemed that the man was perhaps a colleague of the stricken man and that he was searching for Loh's inhaler, because the distressed wheezing indicated that an asthma attack was in full flight. With a grunt of triumph, the gunman removed the cellphone from Loh's pocket. His momentary triumph turned into a snarl of frustration when he realised that he was holding a ruined cellphone and not the digital recorder. He dropped the remains of the Nokia onto Loh's thighs and stood.

Loh was conscious enough to see the cold, hateful look in the man's eyes. He knew that without the presence of the tourists, the gunman would be breaking his fingers or worse.

“I'm a doctor, let me see him!” The voice belonged to a tall, overweight European in long, voluminous khaki shorts. From his position on the floor Loh noticed, almost distractedly, that the man's legs were fat, white and very hairy. The man knelt beside Loh. There was a wide-brimmed hat and a startlingly red, bushy moustache. The face was sunburnt but the eyes, behind their rimless glasses, were kind. “Asthma attack?”

Loh nodded. The accent he recognised as Australian. The gunman, still standing nearby, reluctantly moved away.

“No inhaler on you?”

The stricken man managed to shake his head.

“Fortunately, or rather unfortunately, my wife is asthmatic,” the doctor said. He held out a large hand and the woman standing behind him, plump and bleached-blonde, also wearing baggy shorts, rummaged in her large shoulder bag. She found an object and put it into the doctor's hand.

“Terbutaline, is this what you take?” The doctor held the puffer for his newest patient to see. Loh nodded and reached for the inhaler. He took it from the doctor's palm and gratefully sucked the life-saving drug into his lungs. He wanted more, but the doctor gently took the inhaler back. “No, that will allow you to get to hospital. Technically what I've just done is illegal,” he said as he straightened. “However, sometimes we need to break the law to save lives.”

“Thank you,” Loh said. As the doctor stood, he could see that the gunman who'd searched him had withdrawn only as far as the end of the room. There he was standing with his accomplice, waiting, watching. The guide who had run downstairs to call for help pushed past them and came rushing back to where Loh was sitting.

“The ambulance is on its way,” she said.

Stanley Loh nodded his thanks and closed his eyes. Even if he had the energy to move, he couldn't retrieve the recorder with all the people present, particularly Lu's henchmen. He would go to hospital and get control of his asthma. Later he could arrange to return to collect it and present it to his associates. Before that, however, he would call his brother in Bangkok from the hospital and tell him everything that had taken place. Stanley Loh was his brother's emissary in Singapore. He was the smiling public face for a man who preferred to remain in the shadows.

Standing on the terrace outside The QuarterMaster Store, Lu's gunmen, along with a handful of tourists and fort staff, watched as the ambulance attendants loaded Loh into their vehicle. A few seconds later, as it roared away under flashing sirens and lights, the pair made their way back to the larger of the surrender rooms. They knew the recorder was hidden somewhere in the long room and they intended to retrieve it if they could.

Luck was against them. The constant stream of visitors through the surrender rooms didn't allow the gunmen to do anything other than stand helplessly behind the barriers and vainly try to guess where the recorder might be hidden. To find it, they knew they would have to get into the display area and rummage through it, a section at a time.

Eventually, the guides started to become suspicious of the pair's continued presence. Lu's two thugs left the fort. One kept watch at the main entrance while the other returned to the hotel to face the wrath of their master.

2

In Singapore General Hospital, Stanley Loh was given sedatives and steroids which gradually got his asthma under control. Despite the admonishment from the attending physician, he managed to get a telephone brought to his bed. He made the call to his brother, but encountered only the computerised voice of the answer service. Loh quickly detailed everything that had happened.

At a few minutes to four that afternoon, Stanley Loh left Singapore General Hospital by taxi. Still under the influence of strong sedatives, he was not tempted to return to Sentosa to attempt to retrieve his car. He would have someone do that for him.

On the ride back to his home on Goodwood Hill, Loh went over the events of the day and those leading up to it. The one fact that kept coming back to him, and the one he silently cursed himself for, was that he knew he should have seen it coming. The final attempt at bribery and the attempt on his life. Perhaps if Thomas Lu had not seen the recording device, he may have managed to stall his answer and perhaps even walk free from the hotel. However, once Lu had seen the recorder, knowing full well what was on it, there was no way that he, Stanley Loh, would be able to leave the deserted hotel alive—other than by doing what he had done and thrown himself off the patio.

At the ornate iron gate leading into his house, Loh paid the cab driver, giving him a generous tip. As the taxi pulled away, he fumbled to key in the gate's digital combination. Normally, when he was in one of his three cars, a remote sensor opened the gate as the vehicle approached it.

The van was parked thirty metres down the road. The vehicle was dark in colour and almost invisible in the shade of the late afternoon sun and the dense jungle fringe.

Whether it was the sedatives still at work in his system, combined with his distraction at trying to recall his gate combination, or not, Stanley Loh did not register the alien vehicle. He did not recognise it as the same van that had been parked in the Silver Sands Hotel car park.

On legs that were still a little unsteady, and with the grinding pain in his right hip, dulled only slightly by the painkillers he had been given, Stanley Loh walked through the double gate. The heavy metal leaves automatically clanged shut behind him as he started down the driveway.

The wide asphalt vehicle access curved away down the gentle slope to the four-car garage set between the house and the servant's quarters beyond. Rather than follow the driveway, Loh chose the more direct route. He started down the path that ran through the beautifully tended shrubs and flowers of the formal garden.

He was part way down the concrete path when he saw the boot lying in a bed of flowers. Loh frowned. The boot was made of green rubber. It was the sort of boot that his gardener Cheah Kah Hin usually wore. Moving further down the pathway, he then saw Cheah. The old man, with one foot bare and one wearing a green rubber boot, was lying on his back behind a small hedge.

Loh's first thought was that perhaps his gardener had succumbed to a heart attack. But as he stooped stiffly over the body, he saw a trickle of blood that had escaped from the black hole between the old man's eyes. He knew this had been no heart attack.

“Of course it's not a heart attack,” Loh snarled to himself as he desperately tried to shake off the drug-induced fog he had been wallowing in. “My family!” He said aloud as he started towards the house at a run. His tired and painful limbs were uncoordinated from the strong sedatives and further unbalanced by the pure terror that had begun to well up inside him.

Loh was almost at the steps leading to the patio when he heard a noise. It was not something he could identify. There were four distinct sounds, spaced a fraction of a second apart. They were loud but at the same time they were muffled and indistinct. Loh shook his head in denial. No matter what caused the unfamiliar noise, he knew he must see to his family.

Stanley Loh crossed the patio and pressed his face against the glass of the French doors. He shaded the window with his hand so he could see into the room beyond. Helen, his wife, was sitting on one of the couches. Beside her was Arthur, their son, and next to Arthur sat Amy, their daughter. All three of them had their mouths covered by shiny silver tape. Their hands and feet were also taped.

There was a noise to Loh's left. A man was coming onto the terrace walking from the direction of the staff bungalow. This was one of the pair from the surrender room. This was the man who had searched him. The man with the cold eyes!

The gunman was carrying an automatic pistol and attached to the barrel was a long fat tube. Stanley Loh had seen similar guns in dozens of movies. Drugged state or not, he knew its purpose and he knew now what had caused the muffled sounds he had just heard. Along with Cheah, the gardener, there were four other staff living on the estate. They were, in all probability, dead, Loh knew this without a doubt. To kill one or five, it made no difference to men like this.

The gunman saw Loh standing at the French doors. He smiled and raised his gun as the door opened. Stanley Loh had been expected.

The man in the doorway was Thomas Lu.

Tall for a Singaporean, Lu was also skeletally thin. As always, including when he and Loh had met just hours before, he was dressed in his uniform, comprising a sober black suit with a crisp white shirt and a dark tie. With his artificially darkened hair worn overlong at the back, and with his high cheekbones, Lu, who at all times kept his eyes hidden behind dark-tinted glasses, was known in Singapore business circles as The Undertaker. He had a reputation for sheer ruthlessness, but until today that ruthlessness had been more by reputation than reality to Stanley Loh. Now he was about to live or die by that reality.

“So pleased you could drop in, Stanley,” Lu said as he stepped aside to allow his gunman to usher Loh into his own home. The eyes of the three people most dear to Stanley Loh were wide and totally terrified. The eyes silently implored him to save them. But Loh knew he would die here with them. He had no doubt that would be the way it was going to happen.

“Now, Stanley, you know what I need. Tell me where to find it and you and your family can live happily ever after.” Lu smiled as he spoke. However, the smile carried no warmth whatsoever. Loh knew that the eyes behind the dark glasses were as cold as the ice that was sliding down his spine.

What Thomas Lu didn't know was that Loh, having discovered the corpse of his gardener and heard the sounds of the other members of his staff being killed, knew that no matter what, he and his family would be killed. There was simply no way that Lu could let them live. Not now. The stakes were simply too big and blood had already been spilt.

Loh knew he had one chance and one chance only to save his family. The gunman who had escorted him into the room was standing to his right, his weapon pointed at his captive's belly. Lu was also holding an automatic loosely in his right hand. Its muzzle was directed at the richly polished parquet floor. There was a second gunman standing at the far end of the couch on which the Loh family were sitting. This man's automatic was pointed at Helen.

“I …” Loh stuttered. He swayed unsteadily on his feet, acting now. “I'll tell you, please, just don't hurt them.” Lu smiled in response as he watched the seemingly dazed and stricken man cave in. The Undertaker knew he had won and began to gloat.

The gunman nearest Loh relaxed slightly; the old man swaying in front of him was finished. The muzzle of his gun drifted away from its target.

The drugs in Stanley Loh's system had been washed away by the surge of adrenaline that now coursed through him. Seeing his family sitting there awaiting their inevitable execution had given him a strength far beyond his physical limits.

In his youth Loh had trained in kung fu. Now, as he staggered again, seemingly holding out a hand for support, he was the very picture of a man in great distress. The nearest gunman put out a hand to steady the stricken man. As he did so, Loh suddenly stepped into him. The hard heel of his left shoe ground into the gunman's instep as the sword edge of his left hand connected with the man's nose. Simultaneously, Loh's right hand tore the gun from the man's loosened grip.

Unfortunately, Stanley Loh was unfamiliar with firearms. He fumbled with the weapon, almost dropping it. The gunman standing at the end of the couch, however, was very familiar with the weapon he held. He switched his aim from Helen Loh to her husband's head.

The last thing Stanley Loh heard before eternal blackness claimed him was the sound of Thomas Lu screaming “No!”

3

“Daniel, I need you.”

“Where and when?”

“Singapore, as soon as you can get there.”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Use another identity. What's good?”

I had to think for a moment. I have a near photographic memory, which is a blessing at times and a curse at others, especially in the dark of a sleepless night when certain images come to haunt me.

“Edward Davidson, Australian. Old Ed hasn't seen the light of day for a year or two.”

“I'm in Bangkok. It'll take me two days to get there. Be a tourist. There'll be a reservation at the Carlton under Davidson. Smoking or non-smoking?”

“Smoking.”

“Still killing yourself by degrees, my old friend?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Do the innocent tourist thing. Get a pair of those stupid shorts, a flowery shirt, a camera and a hat.”

“Fucking thanks.”

“Just don't draw any attention to yourself.”

“Dressed like that people will think I'm Jo Jo the fucking clown,” I grumbled. Sami almost chuckled.

“I'll see you in a day or so. By the way, get tomorrow's
Straits Times
and everything will become clear. Stanley Loh was my half-brother. Ciao!”

“Ciao!” I responded as the phone went dead.

You're probably wondering why I didn't ask Sami what it was all about. That's the thing in our relationship. Like the musketeers, Sami Somsak and I are there for each other. We always have been and always will be. He needed me and that was all I needed to know. I put my bourbon glass down on the bedside cabinet and lay back against my pillows.