Umbrella Man (9786167611204) (12 page)

Neither of Tay’s visitors had anything to say
to that, so Tay gave it a moment and went on.

“Let’s try it again, shall we? Why is ISD
interested in a simple homicide, particularly one in which the
victim is a foreigner?”

Goh looked annoyed, which was good because
Tay really wanted to annoy him. Annoying people was about the only
real fun he had anymore, and having the opportunity to annoy an ISD
man scored bonus points. Tay flicked his eyes at the muscle and saw
that Ferrero was expressionless. It would be fun to think of some
way to annoy him, too.

Goh cleared his throat. “Your investigation
may be connected to another investigation we’re running.”

Since there was only one investigation in
Singapore that anyone gave a damn about right at that moment, Tay
had no trouble now working out where this was going.

“My case has something to do with the
bombings?”

“I can’t answer that.”

Which, of course, meant
Yes, it has
something to do with to the bombings
.

Christ, maybe he
hadn’t
been
hallucinating
.
His mother’s ghost had told him there was a
connection between the dead man at the Woodlands and the bombings.
Or at least what he had imagined his mother’s ghost had told him.
He had to keep in mind here that there was no such thing as a
ghost.

“My guy was a Caucasian. How could he
possibly be connected to your investigation of the bombings?
Everyone seems to think that was a JI operation.”

Neither Goh nor Ferrero said a word. They
both acted as if Tay hadn’t even spoken.

“If I tell you what I’ve got,” Tay said when
he got bored with waiting for them to say something, “are you going
to tell me what the connection between my case and the bombings
is?”

“We’re not negotiating here, Inspector,” the
ISD man said. “I’ll tell you as much as I can simply as a matter of
professional courtesy, but that’s all I can promise.”

Which, of course, meant,
No, I’m not going
to tell you shit, you insignificant little policeman.

Tay concocted a quick narrative of his
examination of the corpse and the apartment and tried — he thought
with admirable success — to make it as useless and free of
information as possible. Somehow it slipped his mind altogether to
include Dr. Hoi’s theory about the blow from behind having come
from a Maglite. It did not slip his mind to mention the safety
deposit box key the dead man had in his ass. He just decided not to
tell Phil about that.

“You don’t even know who he is, do you?”

The question came from Ferrero, which was the
first sign of actual life he had shown.

“Do
you
?” Tay snapped.

But that was apparently the end of his
meaningful dialogue with the spook. Ferrero said nothing else.

Which, of course, meant,
Obviously I do,
tiny policeman, and I just wanted to see if you did.

“Inspector,” the ISD man continued, “I’d like
to be kept informed of the progress of your investigation. It is a
matter of national security even if I’m not permitted to tell you
exactly what the circumstances are.”

Goh removed a business card from his shirt
pocket and laid it on the edge of Tay’s desk. Then he stood up and
offered his hand. The CIA man stood up, too, but he did not offer
his hand.

“Will you give me a call if you get an ID on
the dead man, or if anything else turns up in connection with your
investigation that you think is unusual?”

“Of course, Phil. I’d be more than happy
to.”

Which, of course, meant,
No, you can go
fuck yourself, you arrogant prick.

***

When the two men had gone, Tay sat back down
behind his desk. He swung his feet up, crossed them at the ankles,
and knitted his hands together behind his head.

Did he know something now that he hadn’t
known fifteen minutes ago?

Yes, of course he did.

For starters, he knew for certain there was a
link of some kind between his dead guy at the Woodlands and the
bombings.

That’s what his mother’s ghost had said.
Exactly
what she had said.

Had he really been talking to his mother’s
ghost that night in the garden of his house? Surely not. Ghosts
weren’t real. They didn’t exist. And yet…if he hadn’t been talking
to his mother’s ghost, if the conversation had all been just a
hallucination, how in the world had he managed to hallucinate
something that later turned out to be true?

Tay didn’t want to think too hard about that.
It might take him to all sorts of places he would just as soon not
go.

So he turned his attention to the second
thing he knew now that he hadn’t known fifteen minutes ago.

Both ISD and the CIA knew exactly who his
dead guy was. And they weren’t telling him. Tay didn’t much like
the sound of that either.

Then his thoughts drifted back to his mother
again. Somehow, unconnected with anything in his life for ten years
and dead for two, she had come to occupy center stage in the drama
that was now swirling around him. She would have loved that, Tay
thought. Center stage was where she loved to be. Even as a child he
could remember how she had loved attention and how she knew so many
people who…

And just like that Tay remembered something
useful.

TAY HAD KNOWN Henry Lee ever since he was a
boy, although not particularly well. Mr. Lee had been a friend of
his mother’s and Tay remembered meeting him several times during
his mother’s increasingly infrequent trips to Singapore after she
moved to New York. Tay only realized years later that Lee and his
mother had been doing far more together than going to art galleries
and restaurants. But as a child, of course, that had never occurred
to him, and as an adult he hadn’t cared one way or another.

Mr. Lee was an executive with the Hong Kong
and Shanghai Bank, which was where Tay’s mother had kept her local
accounts. And the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank had safety deposit
boxes, didn’t it? So Henry Lee would probably know something about
safety deposit boxes, or at the very least he would know someone
who did.

Tay hadn’t seen him in years, but his own
bank accounts were also at HSBC and he had a vague memory of
calling Mr. Lee — he still called him Mr. Lee since that was what
he had called him as a child and such habits, once engrained, were
hard to break later in life — to straighten out some screw-up with
his own accounts about eight or ten years back. Mr. Lee had done so
willingly and had urged Tay to join him for lunch one day, but Tay
had never bothered.

If Lee hadn’t retired by now, he would
probably be pretty high up in HSBC. Surely he wouldn’t mind telling
Tay something about safety deposit boxes and how you matched up
keys to the boxes they opened, even if Tay had ignored his lunch
invitation once upon a time. What was more important, he probably
wouldn’t ask too many questions. Tay was both a customer of the
bank and a detective with CID. Taken together, that should earn him
enough deference to get some answers about his safety deposit box
key without too much being asked of him in return.

Tay telephoned HSBC and was pleased to
discover Mr. Lee was still working for them. He asked for Mr. Lee’s
title and was told something he promptly forgot, but it sounded
very important and offered no clue at all to what Lee’s actual
function might be. That was pretty typical of most corporate titles
as far as Tay was concerned. It was easy to give out titles based
more on connections than competence, and far cheaper than giving
out money which, come to think of it, was pretty much the same way
the Singapore police force worked, too.

He also established that Mr. Lee’s office was
at the main HSBC branch on Collyer Quay and got his direct
telephone number. He telephoned and asked for an immediate
appointment. When he identified himself as a CID detective, Mr.
Lee’s secretary gave him one without hesitation. That was exactly
what Tay was counting on. The traditional response of Singaporeans
to any show of authority: strict obedience.

It was a start.

***

It took Tay less than twenty minutes to find
a taxi and get himself to the HSBC Collyer Quay office, then
another five minutes to go inside and present himself to Mr. Lee’s
secretary. He was sent straight in.

The two men shook hands and Tay got the
impression Mr. Lee hardly remembered him. Which was fine with Tay
since he wasn’t looking to start up a conversation about the old
days. He just needed some information. Lee was a small, very
elderly man in a rumpled suit and he smelled funny. Tay wasn’t one
to condemn any man for an occasional episode of flatulence, but Lee
was pushing the envelope.

Tay quickly sketched out why he was there,
saying only that a safety deposit box key had come into his
possession and that he needed to find the box the key opened.

“I am engaged in a national security
investigation of the highest priority. We may not have much more
time before…well, I really can’t say any more than that, Mr. Lee.
I’m sure you understand.”

Lee’s eyes grew wide. “Are you
investigating—”

“I can’t tell you specifically what I’m
investigating, Mr. Lee, but I assure you it involves the greatest
threat to Singapore in the history of our country.”

Suddenly Tay had a mad impulse to fling both
arms into the air and scream
BOOM!
Fortunately, he fought it
down.

Lee was already nodding. Singaporeans were
good at that, nodding when they were given authoritative-sounding
instructions.

Still, Tay’s hopes fell as fast as they had
risen when Lee spoke again.

“Do you have the envelope?” he asked.

“Envelope?”

Lee’s fingers formed a small rectangle to
illustrate the size and shape of an envelope just in case Tay was
unfamiliar with the word.

“Most safety box keys come in small envelopes
of some kind,” he said, “and both the name of the bank and the box
number are usually on the envelope, not on the key itself.”

Tay shook his head. “I just have the
key.”

“Pity,” Lee said. “Then I doubt I can help
you.”

Tay pulled the key out of his trouser pocket
and gave it to Lee anyway, who turned it in his fingers and
inspected it. Then suddenly he stopped turning it and looked up at
Tay.

“May I ask where—”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I’m not at liberty to
give you any details.”

At least that much was true enough, Tay
thought. He couldn’t very well give anybody any details about the
key without wedging his own ass firmly in a crack from which he
might never be able to extract it.

“Well, regardless, I’m happy to tell you I
can
help you. This is one of ours.”

Lee bent toward Tay and held out the key, one
finger pointing to its head.

“See that?” he asked. “The small letter D in
front of the number?”

Tay nodded, although he wasn’t sure he did
see it. It was engraved in such tiny lettering that he could hardly
make it out under a strong light let alone in the dim light of the
office and with Lee’s finger covering up half of it.

“That indicates the key is to a box
manufactured by a company called Diebold. This must be your lucky
day, Sam. HSBC is the only bank in Singapore that uses Diebold
boxes.”

“Then you can tell me what box this key
opens?”

Lee swiveled toward his computer and tapped
out something on the keyboard. Then he reached back, picked up the
key, peered at the number engraved on its head, and tapped some
more.

“Good Lord, Sam, this really
is
your
lucky day. The box is A386, and it’s right here at this
branch.”

“Who rents it?”

Lee hit a key and scrolled down.

“A company called…” Lee squinted at the
screen. “Paraguas Ltd. That’s spelled P-A-R-A-G-U-A-S.”

That name meant nothing to Tay, of course,
but he nodded thoughtfully as if that made perfect sense, took out
his notebook, and wrote it down.

“Do you have an address for them?”

Lee read out an address in Hong Kong that
meant as little to Tay as the name of the company, but he wrote
that down, too.

“Has the box been accessed regularly?”

“Yes, regularly.” Lee glanced up from the
screen. “I can print out a list of the recent accesses for you, if
you like.”

“Can you go back, say, three years? And
better give me whatever you have on Paraguas Ltd, too.”

Tay sat silently until Lee had finished,
taken several sheets of paper from a printer, and handed them
across the desk.

“We’re always ready to cooperate with the
police, Sam, but…well, you understand this is all a little
irregular.”

“I want to open the box, too.”

“Oh my,” Lee said, rubbing at his forehead
with one hand. “That’s going to be difficult. Couldn’t you get a
court order, and then of course we’d be happy—”

“You know what I’m investigating, Mr. Lee.
And I’ve already told you we don’t have much time before…well,
let’s just say we don’t have much time.” Tay accompanied the lie
with a facial expression he hoped conveyed the right sense of
urgency. “The contents of that safety deposit box could be the key
to stopping it.”

Lee shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
“You’re putting me in a difficult position here, Sam.”

Good, Tay thought. That was exactly what he
intended to do.

“Well…under the circumstances, I suppose I
can overlook normal protocol, but naturally I cannot allow you to
remove anything from the box without proper authorization to
protect the bank.”

Tay nodded and immediately stood up. He
wanted Lee to open that box before he had any more time to think
about it.

***

The safety box room was less impressive than
Tay had expected. It was just a rectangular room, really, one lined
on three sides with stainless steel boxes rising in even ranks all
the way to the ceiling. On the fourth side, where the entry door
was, there was a long steel table with a computer terminal at one
end.