Umbrella Man (9786167611204) (10 page)

To Tay’s surprise, Dr. Hoi answered on the
second ring. Somehow when he called people on their mobile phones,
he always expected to get their voicemail. To end up actually
talking to someone was slightly disconcerting.

“How
are
you, Sam? I’ve often wondered
how you were surviving.”

“I’ve been wondering the same thing.”

There was a pause.

“I’m not sure I understand,” Dr. Hoi
said.

Tay mentally kicked himself. Two lines of
conversation with an attractive woman and he had already caused her
to lose the plot.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I’m not making
much sense today.”

“None of us are these days, Sam. The bombings
have done us all in. How’s your investigation going?”

“Uh…I’m not—”

“You must be working twenty-four hours a day.
I’ll bet they’ve put you in charge of the whole bombing
investigation, haven’t they?”

“Look,” Tay hastily put in before this went
any further, “that’s not why I’m calling. It’s the autopsy report
you sent me. The Caucasian male we found in the apartment at the
Woodlands? You put a note on it and asked me to call you.”

“I was surprised to see your name on that
case. Is it really yours?”

“Yes, I’m afraid it is.”

“Oh, you poor dear. The bombing investigation
and now they give you this one, too. Don’t they have anybody else
over there they can trust?”

“Almost everyone but me, apparently,” Tay
mumbled.

“I’m sorry, Sam, what did you say?

“I said apparently not.”

“Well, you should tell them not to work you
so hard, Sam.”

Tay said nothing.

“Look, Sam, I have something here that’s a
little odd.”

“From the Woodland’s autopsy?”

“Yes, exactly. When I saw you were the
investigating officer, I thought maybe it would be better to leave
it out of my report, at least for now, and just tell you about it.
I’m not sure what it means, but it is very strange.”

“The last time you told me something like
that, you had found a gunshot wound hidden inside an ear.”

Dr. Hoi laughed merrily. Tay wondered what
kind of personality a woman had to have in order to laugh at the
idea of a gunshot wound hidden inside an ear.

“This is even stranger, Sam.”

Tay just waited. He assumed, if he waited
long enough, Dr. Hoi might even get to the point.

“I think it would be better if we did this in
person,” she finally said when the silence had stretched close to
the point of embarrassment. “I need to show you something.”

Tay had heard that from Dr. Hoi before, too,
back when she was doing the autopsy on the woman from the Marriott.
She had asked him to meet her so she could tell him something about
the autopsy. He had met her after work at a pub called the Penny
Black only to discover she had simply made up the whole story to
entice him into having a drink with her. Tay was flattered a woman
would do something like that to show her interest in him — of
course he was — but he was also embarrassed and a little put off
and—

“I know what you’re thinking, Sam,” Dr. Hoi
interrupted before Tay had figured out what to say. “But I really
do have something important to show you. Can you come to my office?
Right now? Does that sound safe enough for you?”

Tay didn’t know what to say to that last part
so he ignored it.

“Fifteen minutes?” he asked.

“Fifteen minutes,” Dr. Hoi agreed, and then
she hung up.

***

Tay had been to Dr. Hoi’s office only once
before, back when she had just completed the autopsy of the
American woman found at the Marriott and wanted to show him the
gunshot wound in the ear. Her office was at the Centre for Forensic
Medicine which was located in a building called Block Nine at the
Singapore General Hospital. It was right on the other side of New
Bridge Road from the Cantonment Complex, behind the National Heart
Centre and no more than a ten-minute walk from Tay’s office.

The building itself was a nondescript, modern
two-story structure that looked to Tay like it could shelter almost
any kind of commercial activity. But of course he knew all too well
what actually took place inside Block Nine. Equipped as he was with
that knowledge, the otherwise unremarkable structure with the
aluminum chimney pipes poking out here and there had always looked
genuinely creepy to him.

Creepy building or not, Tay supposed he had
no choice but to make the trek across the street to Dr. Hoi’s
autopsy laboratory. He took a deep breath, made sure he had plenty
of cigarettes and matches, and shut the door behind him when he
left.

DR. HOI WAS waiting in Block Nine’s tiny
reception area when Tay came through the door. He had walked as
slowly as he could, but he still got there in fifteen minutes. She
was wearing a short white lab coat and Tay had to admit it looked
good on her.

“Let’s do this outside,” she said. “You’re
going to need a cigarette when you hear what I’ve got to tell you
and you can’t smoke in here.”

That obviously meant at least Tay wasn’t
going to be asked to contemplate a collection of disassembled body
parts. He liked that. He just didn’t much like the rest of what Dr.
Hoi seemed to be suggesting. He wasn’t ready for another surprise.
He was already up to his ass in surprises and he had never much
liked them anyway.

They left the reception area and took a path
that curved across a lawn mowed as neat and tight as a putting
green. The day was hot, and the air was so thick and heavy you
could almost feel the moisture draining out of it. A dome of gray
clouds hung so low over the city they looked like fog. The morning
light, frail and wispy, suddenly seemed to Tay to be filled with
foreboding.

***

Dr. Hoi headed straight for a grove of palm
trees that rippled and swayed in the light breeze. There was a
bench at its center constructed of green wooden slats over a black
iron frame. It didn’t look very comfortable, but even from thirty
feet away Tay could see the cigarette butts scattered on the ground
all around it so he supposed, comfortable or not, the bench served
its purpose as a center for social rebellion.

As soon as they sat down, Dr. Hoi pulled her
phone out of the side pocket of her lab coat. She fiddled with it
for a moment, pushing buttons, and when she apparently had what she
wanted on the screen she handed it to Tay.

Tay took it and studied the photograph but it
meant nothing to him. It looked like a piece of malformed white
china, but he didn’t see why Dr. Hoi was showing him a picture of a
plate.

“Your deceased had a depressed fracture of
the
squama occipitalis
,” Dr. Hoi said, “the large bone the
forms the base of the anterior portion of the skull. And you’re
looking at it.”

Tay nodded,

“That was in my report,” she said.

Tay nodded again.

“The fracture was caused by a significant
blunt force trauma which most likely rendered the deceased
unconscious.”

Tay remembered that much at least. Sergeant
Kang had told him the autopsy report identified the cause of death
as blunt force trauma and a broken neck. He probably should have
read the report for himself before he came to see Dr. Hoi, but he
hadn’t and that couldn’t be helped now.

“So this plate is what was used to break the
dead man’s neck?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?” Dr. Hoi looked
irritated. “What plate?”

It was coming back clearly to Tay now why he
found doctors so annoying. Why couldn’t they just say what they
meant in words he could understand? Why did every conversation with
a doctor have to turn into an extended game of Twenty Questions
that seemed designed primarily to prove how smart they were and, by
contrast, how dumb he was?

“That picture is a close-up of the anterior
portion of the skull of the deceased,” Dr. Hoi continued pointing
at the phone Tay was holding. “His neck was broken manually after
he was rendered unconscious by the blow that caused the fracture
you’re looking at. Obviously by someone who was very strong and who
knew exactly how to break a man’s neck.”

“Obviously,” Tay muttered, feeling ridiculous
for just having mistaken the dead man’s skull for a china
plate.

“That’s not why I’m showing you this.” Dr.
Hoi waved a hand dismissively and Tay felt another stab of
annoyance. “I thought you might be interested in what caused the
blunt force trauma.”

“Do you know?”

“Well…not exactly, of course. But I have a
theory.”

Now Tay saw where this was going. Dr. Hoi
wanted to play detective and naturally she wanted to do it off the
record. Normally that would have annoyed him, but since he didn’t
have much going for him right then anyway, he was more than happy
to let her speculate as much as she wanted.

“You see how nicely shaped that compression
is?”

Tay looked back at the color photograph
displayed on Dr. Hoi’s iPhone. Now that he knew what he was looking
at he didn’t see anything about it he would consider describing as
nice, but he nodded anyway and waited for Dr. Hoi to get to the
point.

“I think he was struck with something round
and heavy, an inch and a half to two inches in diameter. It would
have been swung upward in a tight arc…”

Dr. Hoi shaped her hands as if they were
gripping a pole, twisted her torso, and mimed a swing at the back
of Tay’s head.

“Which would explain the point at which the
blow landed and the direction of impact.”

She lifted one hand and tapped her forefinger
on the base of Tay’s skull about three inches above his neck.

“So what was it?” Tay asked. “Something like
a hammer?”

“No, not a hammer. Have you ever seen an
American baseball bat?”

Tay nodded. “But that seems pretty unlikely
to me,” he said. “There can’t be all that many American baseball
bats in Singapore.”

“I agree. Pretty unlikely. And that’s where
my theory comes in. I thought about what was
like
an
American baseball bat: round, heavy, long enough to be gripped with
two hands and swung with force. And you know what occurred to
me?”

Tay didn’t, of course, so he waited for Dr.
Hoi to tell him.

“A flashlight,” she said. “One of those big
black ones that—”

“Patrolmen carry in the back of their fast
response cars,” Tay finished. “Maglites, they’re called.”

“Exactly.”

“You’re saying a
policeman
killed this
man?”

“No, of course not, Sam. I’m saying a heavy
flashlight like a Maglite
might
have been the source of the
original trauma. I’ve done a little research and there’s a six-cell
model that’s almost two feet long and weighs over three pounds. The
barrel is almost exactly two inches in diameter.”

Dr. Hoi reached over and tapped the
photograph on her phone.

“That’s a perfect fit for that fracture.”

“So you
are
saying a policeman might
have killed this man.”

“How would I know who swung the Maglite? It
might have been a policeman. It might even have been you. I just do
autopsies and come up with possibilities. You’re the
detective.”

Tay thought about that for a moment. “You
didn’t put this in your autopsy report, did you?”

Dr. Hoi smiled. “I knew you hadn’t read
it.”

Tay didn’t know what to say to that so he
said nothing.

“No, it’s not in my report. I’m not
completely stupid. This is just for your ears, Sam.”

Dr. Hoi leaned forward and retrieved her
phone with one hand. With the other, she rubbed Tay’s right knee as
if it were a small animal of which she was exceptionally fond.

***

Tay reached for his cigarettes and
automatically tipped the pack toward Dr. Hoi. He was surprised when
she nodded and took one. His movement had been a reflexive gesture
of courtesy as deeply engrained in Tay’s muscle memory as opening a
door for a woman. Gestures like that seemed old-fashioned now,
stodgy even. Tay couldn’t remember the last time a woman had
actually accepted a cigarette from him.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” he said.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

That was true enough, but Tay figured the
conversation could go nowhere good if he responded, so he didn’t.
Instead he lit both their cigarettes and they sat quietly on the
bench together and smoked.

“Do you have an ID on the deceased yet?” Dr.
Hoi eventually asked, breaking the silence.

“No. Nothing.”

“The fingerprints didn’t get a hit?”

“Not locally. We’ve sent them to Interpol,
but God knows how long it will take to hear from them.”

“Nobody in the area knew him?”

“The apartment is owned by an old man who’s
gone to live with his daughter in LA. Nobody was supposed to be in
it.”

Dr. Hoi said nothing, but she shook her head
slightly.

“So I’m looking for anything, really,” Tay
continued. “Anything at all that might point me in the right
direction. I’m not sure if this business about the Maglite helps,
or if it just makes everything more complicated.”

“Well…” Dr. Hoi began, then trailed off.

“Yes?”

“There is something else.”

“Something else you didn’t put in the
report?”

“Well…” she trailed off again.

This time Tay just waited.

After a moment or two of silence, Dr. Hoi
removed a clear plastic envelope from the pocket of her lab coat
and handed it to Tay. Inside the envelope was a silver key. The key
was narrow and flat on both sides with big, rectangular teeth and
no grooves. Tay didn’t have a bank safety deposit box, but he had
opened bank boxes before when they were connected with an
investigation and he knew immediately that this was almost
certainly the key to one.