THE DEAD AMERICAN (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 3) (6 page)

TAY ANSWERED THE
door at three o’clock the next afternoon and saw a white OCS Courier Service van parked at the curb in front of his house. The young man standing at his gate in a blue uniform asked if he was Samuel Tay. Tay confessed that he was, and he signed for the large envelope the man pushed between the bars. He checked the envelope for a shipper’s name and return address, but he found neither. He was anything but surprised.

Tay carried the envelope out to the garden and sat down at the table. He tore it open and took out a copy of CID’s final investigative report on the death of Tyler Bartlett. Sergeant Kang had wasted no time.
 

Tay lit a Marl
boro and started reading the report. The type was small and he had to hold the pages out away from his face at an unnatural distance to keep them in focus. He didn’t remember ever having to do anything like that before. Did that mean he needed glasses?
My God
, Tay thought to himself,
I turn fifty on one day and on the very next day I start going blind
.

In spite of the awkward way he had to hold the pages, it didn’t take Tay very long to read the report. It was only six pages long and included neither photographs nor an autopsy report. The text of the report was unequivocal in its conclusion that Tyler Bartlett had committed suicide by hanging himself in his apartment. It left no room for doubt. The report was signed by Inspector Eddie Chin. Not Edward Chin. Eddie.

When Tay finished reading, he tapped the six sheets of paper into a neat stack and slid them back into the envelope. He finished his cigarette and thought about what he had read and what Sergeant Kang had told him yesterday about the case.

Tay had to admit that none of it looked exactly right, that was true enough, but he didn’t detect any obvious odor either. The inconsistencies between the report and what Sergeant Kang had seen could be explained simply as mediocre police work. Stupidity and laziness were common enough in the Singapore police force, as Tay suspected they were in police forces all over the world. Stupidity and laziness were real life. Government plots to cover up crimes were mostly fiction. What possible reason did the Singaporean police have to present Tyler Bartlett’s death as a suicide if it really
was
a murder? Tay certainly wasn’t naïve enough to doubt that such a thing was possible. He just didn’t think it was likely in this case.

The face Singapore showed the world was that of a modern democratic state. For the people who lived there, however, the reality of it was quite different. Singapore was an authoritarian society in which most of the citizenry had willingly exchanged personal freedom for material prosperity. Westerners had difficulty understanding that such a bargain existed because, by and large, they already had both.

Singapore held elections, at least they looked like real elections, but they never changed anything. The same party always stayed in power and more or less the same tiny group of men who had ruled absolutely over the country from its very beginnings continued to rule without challenge. It was simply accepted now. It was the way life was.

If one of those men had decided that Tyler Bartlett’s death was a suicide, whatever his reasons for wanting that to be true, then a suicide it would be. Tay just couldn’t see how Tyler’s death could possibly be significant enough to any of those men for one of them to get involved in this case. He had seen nothing in the police report about Tyler being connected with political dissent or any other activities that could be considered a threat to the government, but then he wouldn’t, would he? Still, that seemed unlikely. Foreigners didn’t get involved in politics in Singapore. The only reason foreigners came to Singapore was to work and make money. They were there temporarily, and they were well paid for being there. Rocking the political boat didn’t come into it.

What Emma had said about Tyler’s job still bothered Tay. According to her, Tyler had told his parents he learned something that frightened him and that he had learned it through his job. Tay hadn’t pursued her comment at the time. He hadn’t even gotten a clear picture of exactly what Tyler’s job was because he had been so busy at the time trying to think of a way to ease Emma out of his house.

Now Tay was annoyed with himself for not asking enough questions to understand what Tyler was doing in Singapore. Could it have had something to do with politics, after all, something that might explain why the government could be interested in him? That seemed unlikely but, whatever it was Tyler was doing in Singapore, that was the missing piece of the narrative. He would at least like to know what that piece
was
before he extracted himself from all this. Purely to satisfy his curiosity. Absolutely nothing more than that, of course.

His musings overtaken by a sudden craving for caffeine, Tay stubbed out his cigarette and went inside to make coffee.

By the time Tay came back outside with a mug of coffee, he was thinking about getting in touch with Emma and asking her about Tyler’s job. He didn’t want to give her false hope that he was going to get involved in the case, but he did want to fill in the narrative a bit before he let this go completely.

He could always just telephone her at the Ritz-Carlton, of course, but he had never much liked asking people questions over the telephone. Tay understood very well that almost no one ever gave him a complete answer without a little probing. Some people simply lied, but almost everyone at least rearranged the truth a bit to make it prettier. Tay liked to look people in
the eyes when he asked them questions. Over the years, he had become confident that he could get to the truth when he did that. There was really no other way to be sure.

He would telephone Emma and ask her to come around again at her convenience. That was the best way to handle it.

Tay went into the house, found a telephone book, and looked up the number for the Ritz-Carlton. Was he the last man on earth who used a telephone book rather than getting phone numbers off the internet? Yes, he thought he probably was, but he didn’t particularly care. He would keep using telephone books as long as they existed, and that was that.

He was about to punch the number into his cell phone when he stopped. What Sergeant Kang had told him about meeting at the Highlander yesterday came to mind, and he stood and held the telephone and thought about that.

Was it really possible that ISD was watching who came and went at his house? His guess was that a Wall Street Journal reporter sent to Singapore to investigate Tyler Bartlett’s death would be on ISD’s radar. And Emma had come to his gate so, if ISD
were
watching his house, they would already know he had talked to her, wouldn’t they?

Thinking about that also brought to mind the hole he had found running from Tyler Bartlett’s apartment to the apartment next door. Could that have been ISD’s work? Was it possible that Tyler Bartlett was under ISD surveillance and that they had planted cameras or other electronic devices in his apartment? The hole struck Tay as a little crude for ISD work, but he supposed it was possible. And if ISD had been watching Tyler, maybe
that
was what tied all this together. ISD had an interest in Tyler Bartlett for some reason and, when Emma had visited Tay as part of her investigation, alarm bells had gone off out at New Phoenix Park and they started watching him, too.

That was when it occurred to Tay that Emma had been wearing a white-gauze breathing mask that covered most of her face when she came to his gate, and she had put it on again when she left. It seemed to him that she would have been unrecognizable even if the watchers had known her face, so maybe they didn’t know she had come to see him after all.

Either way, what was he going to do now? Call Emma and ask her to come back to his house. Then say,
By the way, don’t forget to wear your mask
?

No, if he wanted to ask Emma about what Tyler was doing in Singapore in person rather than over the telephone, it would be better to go to her. Just in case.

The Ritz-Carlton was part of a massive shopping complex on Marina Bay that boasted a half-dozen large international hotels and another half-dozen office towers studding more acres of retail space than Tay could walk in his lifetime. It was a stretch to think that he might personally be under surveillance even if his house was being watched, but he guessed it was at least possible. He’d had his problems with ISD before, and they were relentless in rooting out anything and anyone who might threaten the government in Singapore. Tay was hardly an enemy of the state but, as far as ISD was concerned, asking embarrassing questions of the wrong people amounted to more or less the same thing.

If somebody
were
following him, Marina Bay would be a nightmare for them. He could enter it through any of several hundred entrances, walk through the lobbies of one huge hotel after another, go up and down elevators of a dozen different office towers, and lose himself in the crowds at Millenia Walk before crossing the pedestrian bridge over Raffles Boulevard and slipping into the back door of the Ritz-Carlton. ISD would need at least a dozen bodies to cover him there, even more to be certain they did it right, and there was no chance he was important enough to merit anything like that much manpower.

Should he call first and make sure Emma was at the hotel? Tay thought about that for a moment, but decided not to. The idea of surprising her appealed to him. Sometimes he learned entirely unexpected things when he surprised people. And so what if she wasn’t there? It wasn’t as if his dance card was all that full, was it? What else did he have to do today that was important?

Tay slapped the table and jumped to his feet.

This might even be fun
, he thought.

Then he went inside to change into something appropriate for strolling the high-priced corridors of the Ritz-Carlton.

WHEN TAY LEFT
his house, he glanced around as unobtrusively as possible, but he didn’t see any obvious signs of surveillance. Then again, if ISD were watching him, he wouldn’t, would he?

He still didn’t really believe ISD was cataloging his comings and goings, but he supposed it was at least possible. ISD was interested enough at least to talk to Robbie Kang about him, and he didn’t believe for a moment they would do nothing more than ask Kang a couple of questions and be done with it. That wasn’t how they worked. Tay had attracted their attention for some reason, and he knew he needed to be cautious until he worked out what that reason was.

Out on Orchard Road he rai
sed a hand and
a taxi stopped right away. He had it drive him to the main entrance of the Pan Pacific Hotel on Raffles Boulevard. He walked across the hotel’s lobby and took the staircase down the first level where there was access from the hotel into the vast Millenia Walk shopping mall. Using an escalator to get up to the second floor of the mall, he paused for a minute at the top and then took another escalator back down again. He felt silly doing it, but he did it anyway.

Back on the main floor he followed the crowds through the pedestrian walkway above Raffles Boulevard and into the Marina Square Mall on the other side of the street. As soon as he reached it, he reversed directions, crossed behind the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, headed in the direction of the food stalls, and slipped in the back door of the Ritz-Carlton.

He had seen nothing unusual during his meanderings around the shopping malls and hotels, and he was as certain as he could be that no one was watching him. The problem was that most of what Tay knew about detecting surveillance came from reading spy novels, and he had no doubt his attempts were pretty amateurish. It was possible he had missed something. If he had, then he had. He had done the best he could.

Tay found a house phone in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton and asked the operator to call Emma Lazar’s room. He was in luck. Emma answered the phone on the first ring. It was almost as if she were standing over it waiting for him to call.

“Inspector! What a nice surprise. Are you calling to say you will help me look into Tyler’s death?”

The straightforwardness of American women frequently made Tay uncomfortable. He personally preferred a bit of subtlety, maybe even some good old-fashioned beating around the bush.

“I’m simply calling to say I would like to talk to you again, Emma. I’d like to ask you a few more questions.”

“Of course, Inspector. Back at your house? When would you like me to come?”

“Could we talk right now? I’m downstairs in the lobby.”

There was a small silence. Tay fancied he could hear things in silences if he listened hard enough, but this silence told him nothing at all.

“You surprise me, Inspector, but now is fine. Why don’t you come up to the club lounge? It’s on the top floor. Shall we say ten minutes?”

“Ten minutes in the club lounge. I’ll be there.”

Tay hung up the house phone and crossed the vast, high-ceilinged lobby to the elevators. As he walked, he tilted back his head and examined the massive sculpture suspended high above him. It was at least fifty feet long and made of some sort of grayish-white material that spiraled off in all directions like an undulating mass of tentacles. It looked to Tay like a giant squid, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t. Why would a Singapore luxury hotel hang a sculpture of a giant squid over its lobby?

Tay stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the top floor. Nothing happened. He squinted at the elevator panel to work out what he was doing wrong and noticed the little sign that said a key card coded to permit access to the upper floors of the hotel was necessary to activate the elevator.

He stepped out again, crossed back under the giant squid, and walked over to the reception desk. A middle-aged woman who looked to Tay to be Malaysian started beaming at him when he was still a good thirty feet away so he walked directly to her and explained that Emma Lazar was expecting him in the club lounge. The woman tapped briefly at a computer keyboard and bent forward to peer at a screen.

Tay hadn’t decided yet what to tell the receptionist if she asked for his name. Giving her a fake name would make him feel ridiculous, but he thought it was probably the right thing to do since it was better for his visit to be kept anonymous. Whatever name he used, he certainly wasn’t going to say he was a detective with Singapore CID. He knew what hotbeds of gossip hotels were, no matter how dignified they might appear to their guests, and a Singapore police inspector calling on a writer for a prominent international newspaper would be too good a tale not to retell. If it were, that wouldn’t be helpful either to him or to Emma.

Tay started thinking about what name he would give the receptionist. He had always wanted to tell someone his name was Sigmund Freud, but perhaps that was a little too eccentric under the circumstances. Perhaps he could say he was… well, how about Robbie Kang? That would be fun.

But the receptionist didn’t ask his name. She merely walked around the desk, gestured Tay toward the elevators, and escorted him up to the club lounge on the thirty-first floor without another word. He was almost disappointed.

The Ritz-Carlton club lounge was decorated with exactly the bland good taste Tay had expected. It was all done out in blond wood and beige upholstered modern furnishings organized in groupings spread across a thick, blue and gold carpet. Floor-to-ceiling windows made up the two outside walls of the long, narrow room.

Even with a light layer of haze still hanging over the city, the view from there on the thirty-second floor dominated everything else about the lounge. To the right, the narrow channel of the Singapore River emptied into Marina Bay beside the pillared Greco-Roman structure that had once been the general post office but was now the luxurious Fullerton Hotel. Directly in front, the towers of the Central
District faced the bay arranged in a series of concentric arcs like a chorus about to burst into song. To the left, the triple towers of the Marina Bay Hotel were tied together by the huge Sky Garden that always made Tay think of an enormous surfboard laid out on top of three skyscrapers. Beyond the Marina Bay Hotel, out in the Singapore Straits, he saw hundreds of ships of all descriptions riding at anchor, waiting to load or unload cargo.

Tay’s escort showed him to a small table with two upholstered chairs and left him there with a polite nod.

“Good afternoon, Inspector.”

Tay stood and turned, and then he froze. He hoped he wasn’t gaping, but he was pretty sure he was.

Emma Lazar was dressed all in white. White blouse, white pencil skirt, white jacket, and white ankle-strap high-heeled shoes. The only thing that wasn’t white was an oversized pair of round-lensed glasses with heavy black frames, the temples of which disappeared under her tight helmet of very short blonde hair. She looked smart, tough, and sexy.

When she offered her hand, Tay couldn’t take it quickly enough. He didn’t trust himself to try to say something charming or, God willing, even witty, so he merely stammered out a good afternoon and gestured toward the table. As soon as they seated themselves, a young Chinese-looking woman wearing a yellow sarong materialized beside them and asked what they would like to drink.

“It’s nearly five, Inspector, so I hope you don’t think me having a glass of wine is too outrageous.”

“Of course not. I’ll have one, too.”

Tay didn’t drink wine very often because he didn’t much like it, but under the circumstances it seemed the gracious thing to do.

“Two glasses of wine then,” she said to the young woman with the Chinese face. “White, I think.”

Tay smiled and nodded. He hated white wine.

“So, Inspector, are you satisfied now?”

“Satisfied about what?”

“That Tyler was murdered, of course.”

Tay took a deep breath and let his gaze drift back to the view. This woman certainly got straight to the point, didn’t she? American women were like that, he knew, but he still didn’t much care for it.

“I’ve seen a copy of what I’m told is the final police report,” he said, looking back at Emma. “There are several inconsistencies in it, but none of those inconsistencies prove that Tyler was murdered, even if the police work was not as carefully done as it should have been.”

Emma smiled. “Are you always so circumspect, Inspector?”

“I think a certain amount of circumspection is usually a good thing.”

“And now you sound defensive.”

Tay was losing control of the conversation, if he had ever
had
control of the conversation. So he went straight to the first question he wanted answered before things got any more out of hand.

“Why would anyone want to kill Tyler?” he asked.

“It seems to me that’s obvious.”

“It’s not obvious to me.”

“Then let me make it obvious. They wanted to shut him up.”

Just then the young woman with the Chinese face returned with white wine in two very long-stemmed glasses and arranged the glasses on the table in front of them. Tay was glad for the interruption since it gave him time to regroup. When she had gone, he cleared his throat.

“Who wanted to shut Tyler up, Emma? And about what?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out. That’s what I want
you
to help me find out.”

Tay took a sip of his wine. It tasted awful, thin and bitter. Did all white wine taste like this? If it did, he couldn’t imagine why anyone drank it.

“You said Tyler told his parents he had discovered something through his job. Do you have any idea what it was?”

She shook her head slowly. “He just said it was something that had made him afraid.”

“Afraid of who? Or what?”

Another slow shake of her head. “I’d like a cigarette, Inspector. Wouldn’t you like a cigarette?”

Tay studied the woman. He wondered if she was avoiding his question. Or maybe she did just want a cigarette.

She stood up and smoothed her skirt with her hands. “Since we can’t smoke in here, let’s take a walk.”

Tay read spy novels now and then. He knew it was a plot convention in many of them when two characters were about to talk about something particularly sensitive for somebody to say,
Let’s take a walk
.

Emma using exactly that phrase right now was probably a coincidence. Or maybe it wasn’t.

Either way, Tay didn’t mind at all having a cigarette, so he stood, followed Emma to the elevator, and awaited developments.

He didn’t have to wait very long.