In the anteroom to the OC’s office, Tay stopped and stared in amazement. What in the world was going on here?
As long as Tay could remember, the room had been furnished with two metal chairs, a table piled high with old magazines, and a gray metal desk, inevitably cluttered and unoccupied. There were still two chairs, but now they were upholstered in a rich blue fabric and looked stylishly uncomfortable. The table between them was glass and chrome and on it was nothing but a single white vase filled with fresh flowers, maybe chrysanthemums. Tay really didn’t know much about flowers.
The secretary’s desk, also glass and chrome with a blue upholstered swivel chair behind it, was decked out with a white flatpanel computer monitor and a matching laser printer. It was also decked out with a new secretary which, when Tay stopped to think about it, might well explain everything else.
“May I help you?” the woman asked.
She seemed quite young, although recently Tay noticed everyone seemed quite young to him, and she was undeniably very attractive. Her skin was cafe au lait brown and her hair was cut in bangs from under which darker brown eyes sparkled from a full, open face.
“Do you work here?” he asked.
“I’m Nora Zaini, sir. I started last week. I’m the OC’s new secretary.”
His boss had never had his own secretary before as far as Tay knew. He had always answered his own phone, or not answered it depending on his mood, and used somebody from the secretarial pool when he needed typing done. Was it possible the sudden appearance of this beautiful young Malay woman in the Chief ‘s outer office portended big changes in the wind?
“Is he in?” Tay asked, inclining his head toward the door leading to the inner office. Before the young woman could answer, the door opened and the OC appeared.
“It’s very nice, Chief,” Tay said, waving his hand at the newly decorated room. “I like it.”
The boss looked mildly embarrassed. “The whole thing was mostly…” he nodded toward his secretary, “Nora’s idea. She thought, well-”
“Absolutely about time to do something like this, Chief,” Tay cut in, taking the OC off the hook. “Look, I’m sorry to barge in without calling first, but I need to see you for a minute.”
“The woman at the Marriott?”
Tay nodded slowly and the OC nodded back. They went into his office and closed the door.
The OC sat listening in silence while Tay told him about DeSouza’s visit on Sunday afternoon and the identification of the murdered woman as Elizabeth Munson, wife of the American ambassador to Singapore. The OC leaned back in his chair and sighed, but before he could say anything Tay quickly moved on to Dr. Hoi’s discovery of the gunshot wound in Mrs. Munson’s ear. When Tay finished telling both stories, the OC closed his eyes and rubbed them with the heels of his hands.
“Oh boy,” he said.
The OC opened his eyes again and looked at Tay. Tay got the distinct impression the OC was hoping that he might be gone, but of course he wasn’t.
“Well,” the OC said after a small silence. “The American ambassador’s wife, huh? Shot in the head.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I met her once. At some damn party. Nice woman as I recall.”
“I wouldn’t know, sir.”
“You don’t have any reason to suspect the husband, do you?”
“Why would you ask, sir? Have you heard something that suggests we ought to?”
“No, no.” The OC waved his hands like he was shooing away flies. “It’s just that when a wife is murdered, the first person you always look at is…” he hesitated as if he was unwilling to voice the thought out loud. “Well, you know.”
“As we understand it now, sir, the ambassador was out of town when his wife was murdered.”
“Well, thank God for that at least. Having to investigate the American ambassador for the murder of his wife is a problem we can damn well do without.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you sent a copy of our file to this FBI guy yet?”
“I wanted to talk to you first.”
“Well, send it right now. Maybe if we’re lucky they’ll take over the whole damned case.”
Tay hesitated. “Sir?”
“Look, Sam, the FBI is better equipped than we are to deal with some terrorist shooting the wife of an American ambassador.”
“DeSouza doesn’t know about the gunshot.”
“Why not?”
“Because I didn’t tell him.”
“You didn’t tell him about the gunshot?”
“No, sir. I didn’t tell him.”
“Why on earth not?”
Tay considered, if only briefly, giving the OC the same explanation he had given Sergeant Kang, but thought better of it.
“I didn’t want to give up everything we had until you and I talked about it, Chief.”
“I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.”
“Sir, we don’t even know for sure yet that the deceased woman really is Elizabeth Munson. All I can tell you for certain is that some guy carrying what looked like FBI credentials came to my house on Sunday and told me the Americans had identified the prints we sent to Interpol as hers.”
“You doubt that for some reason?”
“I think we should go slowly here, sir. Either way, this case is going to get a lot of attention and there will be a lot of people second-guessing everything we do. At least some of them will be trying to make us look like a bunch of local clowns. If something goes bad in the investigation, you can bet the FBI will blame us.”
“What are you saying, Sam?”
“Until we receive a formal notification of the ID from Interpol, let’s just continue to conduct our own investigation in the way we normally would. We’ll check all the available surveillance tapes carefully and see if we can find anyone at the Marriott who saw Elizabeth Munson there. Then I’ll do some very discreet digging into her background and see if we can identify a possible motive that might not be obvious. If we can place Elizabeth Munson at the Marriott and develop something on a motive by the time we receive notification of the fingerprint ID, our investigation ought to survive whatever scrutiny it gets.”
The OC looked at Tay for a long time in silence, pinching his lower lip gently between his thumb and his forefinger.
“I see what you mean,” he said after a while. “Okay, do it that way.”
“And I’d like to interview the ambassador,” Tay added quickly.
“Why? I thought you told me he was in the clear.”
“What I said, sir, was that as far as we know now the ambassador was out of town. We have to confirm that.”
The OC looked at Tay some more and scratched his chin.
“Do you really have to interview the man? Couldn’t you confirm where he was in some other way?”
“Well, sir, his wife was brutally murdered. If we don’t interview her husband at all, that wouldn’t look very good for us, would it?”
“I suppose not.”
“No, sir.”
“Do you think DeSouza would be willing to arrange it?”
“If we offer to give him a copy of our case file, it might be hard for him to say no. Getting cooperation from us ought to justify him giving cooperation in return.”
The OC snorted. “You mean cooperation like you hiding the real cause of death from him?”
Tay cleared his throat. “I’ll give DeSouza a copy of the autopsy report as soon as I get it, sir. He doesn’t need to know about a personal conversation I may or may not have had with Dr. Hoi before her report was provided to us. I’m sure if we seem to be acting open-handedly with him, then he’ll respond to us in the same spirit.”
“You don’t know the Americans very well, do you, Sam?”
“Not really, sir, no.”
The OC snorted again, this time putting some real feeling into it. “You’ll learn. This kind of thing is never a two-way street for them, not unless they’re sure they’re getting the best of it.”
“Then I won’t give him the files and the autopsy report.”
“Don’t climb too far up that tree, Sam. You’ll just end up getting hurt when you have to jump. Assuming the deceased really is who they say she is, we’ll have to give them everything eventually and you know it would be the right thing to do.”
“Let me call him about the file and ask if he’ll arrange the interview. Maybe there won’t be any problem.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that. Governments can get awfully sensitive about matters of protocol, whether or not there’s any good reason for it. And don’t forget about diplomatic immunity.”
“I thought diplomatic immunity only applied to charging someone with a crime, not conducting an interview.”
“It means whatever the country invoking it wants it to mean. You remember that.”
“Yes, sir.”
The OC stood up and stretched. “Get out of here, Sam. I’ve got to call a few people and give them a heads up on this one. I agree with you that we don’t have to know anything, at least not officially, until we get a formal reply from Interpol, but it’s all going to hit the fan then. We need to be ready for it.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll get someone onto the surveillance tapes and the background stuff right away.”
“Good. Do it.”
“What about the press, sir?”
The OC already had one hand on the telephone, but he quickly took it away again.
“What about the press?”
“I mean, if we haven’t told them and they find out-”
“It wouldn’t be responsible of us to tell the press anything on the basis of what we know now, would it, Sam? We’ll deal with that when we get a formal response from Interpol.”
“Right, sir.”
The OC thought for a moment. “One other thing, Sam.”
“Yes, sir?”
“You sure you’re up to this one?”
Tay paused, now genuinely puzzled rather than just feigning it. “I don’t understand what you mean, sir.”
“I thought I was being pretty clear. Are you sure you’re up to handling this case? To deal with something this…” the OC hesitated, looking for the right words, “high profile.”
“Why wouldn’t I be, sir?”
“Well, Sam…” The OC hesitated again. “You’re not getting any younger, you know. There’s no telling where something like this is going to take you. You’ve got to have the energy for…well, you know.”
Tay looked away and made a show out of weighing the OC’s question, but he was doing nothing of the sort. He was furious and he knew if he looked the OC in the eye that the Chief would see it.
“I think I can handle it, sir.”
“Okay, I just wanted to let you off the hook if you wanted off.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Watch your back on this one, Sam. God knows what you’re walking into.”
Tay consulted his shoes, but they told him nothing. Then, not able on his own to think of anything particularly constructive to say to that, he only nodded.
BACK downstairs in his office Tay sat for a long time and watched a white-faced clock hanging high on his wall as it advanced steadily toward midday. When he grew sufficiently bored with staring at the clock, he pulled a yellow pad toward him to make a list of things to do. He had written nothing on it when the telephone rang.
“Tay,” he said when he picked it up.
“Ah, Inspector. I’m so glad I caught you.”
It was a woman’s voice, one that sounded familiar, although Tay couldn’t immediately place it.
“This is Susan Hoi,” the woman continued, bailing him out.
“Dr. Hoi, yes.” Tay cleared his throat. “Of course.”
“I just wanted to tell you the full autopsy report on your deceased from the Marriott will be on your desk by three today.”
“Thank you for letting me know.”
Tay wondered if he should tell her about the identification they had, tentative or not, but with the completion of the autopsy report her job was done and there really wasn’t any reason to tell her so he said nothing more.
Then again, neither did she.
“Was there something else, Doctor?” Tay finally asked when the silence had stretched almost to the point of embarrassment.
“Well…”
Tay heard the hesitation in her voice and wondered what it meant.
“Actually there was,” she said. “Is this a bad time for you? You sound as if you may be busy.”
“No, it’s fine. Go ahead.”
“I was thinking about the case over the weekend. I might have something for you.”
“Yes?”
“It might be better if we met to talk about it.”
“You mean now?” Tay asked.
“No, not now. How about…”
That hesitation again.
“Look, let me buy you a drink at the end of the day,” Dr. Hoi said. “Will that work for you?”
The invitation was so unexpected Tay didn’t immediately know what to say.
“You do drink, don’t you?” she asked when he said nothing at all. “You’re not one of those boring people who go to meetings and devote their lives communing with some higher power are you?”
“No, it’s not that.”
“Then is there a problem with today?” Dr. Hoi continued. “If there is, just say so. We can meet another time.”
“No, sorry. I just suddenly thought of something else. Today’s fine. Did you have a place in mind?”
“How about Harry’s Bar in Boat Quay? Six o’clock?”
Tay hated Harry’s Bar.
“Fine,” he said. “I love Harry’s Bar.”
Harry’s Bar was all dark wood and ceiling fans, a place that Tay figured was some local entrepreneur’s idea of what an American bar was supposed to look like but didn’t. Why would anyone think building such a place in Singapore was a good idea? Tay didn’t have a clue. Worse, it was usually full of Australian tourists. Either that or it was full of self-important local yuppies doing something or another in the financial district and wearing suspenders they thought looked classic but were actually twenty years out of date. He loathed the place.
“Harry’s Bar at six it is then,” Dr. Hoi said.
“Right,” Tay said. “I’m looking forward to it.”
After Dr. Hoi hung up, Tay thought about what it was she might want to tell him while he sat staring out the window at a British Airways 747 drifting over the towers of the city in the direction of Changi Airport. All at once he thought of a day twenty or more years earlier when he had stood on a street not far from where he was now and watched a supersonic Concorde, looking like a colossal prehistoric falcon, on almost exactly the same flight path. Back then, supersonic air travel had seemed a glorious vision of the future, but time passed and all thought of it ceased, and now the Concorde was nothing more than a vague historical oddity.
Could it have really been only that short a time ago that mankind had dreamed so extravagantly of taming time itself and bending it to our will? And why in God’s name had we given it all up so meekly, surrendering such huge dreams with so slight a struggle?
The thought caused Tay to wonder for a moment if he hadn’t surrendered his own dreams exactly the same way, so quickly and completely that he could hardly remember them now. If he had, like the Concorde, he supposed it really didn’t matter that much to anyone anymore.
He took a notebook out of a desk drawer and put it in his shirt pocket. Then, after a moment of hesitation, he took an unopened box of Marlboros and some matches, too, tucking them into his pocket with the notebook.
Tay stood up, slapped his open palm against his desk, and went to lunch.