THE GIRL IN THE WINDOW (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 4) (26 page)

No, he had it right the first time. The fix here was to get everything out in the open. He and Lee were a threat to ISD because they knew ISD was protecting Suparman, even if they had no idea why. Once it was public knowledge ISD was protecting Suparman, he and Lee would no longer be a threat. But to make it public knowledge Tay knew he needed some kind of evidence, something to corroborate his claim. Without that, no one would believe him.

He needed to talk to August. He had to find out whether August had something that might help him. He could call him, of course, but the only way he had to reach August by telephone was so awkward it wasn’t particularly useful when you were in a hurry.

His passport was in a desk drawer at his office, so maybe he should get it, go straight out to the airport, and grab the next flight to Thailand. He could be in Pattaya in four or five hours, and he didn’t remember August ever returning a call in less time than that.

The problem there was Tay had never been a keen traveler. He thought all that business about how you broaden your mind when you visited other countries was nonsense. When you went to other countries mostly what you discovered was how good you had it at home. He would just telephone August and hope for the best. At least that way he didn’t have to leave Singapore and go blundering around some third world shithole.

A few moments later Tay heard the sound of the van’s sliding door again and he peeked cautiously out from behind the tree. The smoker must have gone inside and shut the door because now the van once again sat closed up and silent. If he was going to make a move, this was the time to do it.

So he did.

Tay retraced his steps back to the end of Emerald Hill Road and climbed the concrete stairs up to Clemenceau. Traffic was still running heavy and it took only a moment to find a cab driver hungry enough for a fare to be willing to stop on a double-yellow line.

He told the driver to take him to the Cantonment Complex and pulled out his telephone. His first call was to the switchboard at New Phoenix Park where he identified himself with his warrant card number and got Sergeant Lee’s number. Then he dialed Sergeant Lee.

“Where are you, Linda?”

“At the Cantonment Complex, sir.” Lee hesitated. “Is everything okay?”

“Listen to me very carefully. Do not leave the building for any reason until I get there. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir. But why—”

Tay broke the connection without another word and scrolled through his contacts list until he found the number he had for August. When he called it, of course nothing happened. The number just rang until Tay hung up. Maybe John August would call him back, maybe he wouldn’t, but Tay wasn’t sure what to do if August didn’t call. The advertising card for Baby Dolls sure hadn’t gotten into that apartment’s mailbox by accident. August was trying to tell him something. Tay didn’t have any idea what it was, but he knew it was important. August didn’t do anything that wasn’t important.

The rain Tay smelled coming a while ago began falling and he sat watching the big drops roll down the taxi’s windows. There was something comforting about rain. It dampened the noise of the world and hid the misery of it.

Maybe it would rain forever.

TAY PAID OFF the cab driver and was showing his warrant card at the security post in the lobby of the Cantonment Complex when his telephone buzzed.

He stopped in front of the elevators and looked at the screen. He saw an unfamiliar number and a text message.

Almost no one ever sent him a text message. He couldn’t even remember the last one he had gotten so he figured it had to be from John August. Who else? All this cloak and dagger crap really drove him mad.

Fortunately, the phone’s software displayed a box right below the message and invited him to type a reply into it. Otherwise he wouldn’t have had any idea how to do it.

Tay laborious picked out his response on the keyboard using one finger.

An elevator opened and the passengers flooded out. Tay stepped to the side, stared at the screen of his telephone, and waited for another message. None came.

Tay had never really understood the whole concept of text messages. If you had something to say to someone, why didn’t you simply telephone and say what you had to say and then hang up? What was the point of sending words and phrases back and forth in staccato bursts until everyone figured out what the hell the conversation was really about? More and more things about modern life utterly eluded him.

When he got tired of waiting for what would probably be another cryptic question from August to appear on his screen, Tay jammed the telephone in his pocket and got on the next elevator that opened. Unfortunately, he discovered it was going down, not up. All the way to the garage and back up to the lobby, Tay berated himself for not noticing before he got on. That was one more thing for which he could blame the whole ridiculous concept of text messages.

Tay was at his desk contemplating the piles of paper that had accumulated since the last time he had been in the office when Sergeant Lee’s head appeared around his door.

“Good day, sir. Am I interrupting anything?”

Tay waved her in and was pleased to see her carrying two mugs of coffee. She placed one in front of him and settled into a chair facing his desk. While Lee drank her coffee, Tay told her about going home, walking up his street from a different direction than usual, and discovering the men waiting for him in the van.

“Are you sure they were ISD, sir?”

“It was the same van we saw outside the Fortuna Hotel, and the man who got out to smoke was one of the men we saw there. If those guys were ISD, so were these.”

“So that’s why you were so weird on the telephone. You think they’re watching me, too?”

Tay said nothing, but saying nothing answered Lee’s question.

“That really does sound a little crazy, sir.”

“We’re the only two people left who can tie ISD to Suparman. And there are people who don’t want us to be able to do that. It’s just that simple, Linda.”

“So you’re saying ISD might kill two cops in the Criminal Investigation Department to keep us quiet? You can’t be serious.”

Tay didn’t say anything. He just looked at Lee.

“Oh shit,” Lee said. “You
are
serious.”

“Somebody is killing the people who can expose all this. If it’s not ISD, it’s Suparman. I suppose he wouldn’t want his cozy arrangement with ISD to be public information either.”

“But you think it could be ISD?”

“We’re targets either way,” Tay shrugged. “Is there someplace you can lie low for a few days?”

“You mean, not go home? Not go to work?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

Lee took a deep breath and looked away.

“I’m working on something, Linda. I need to know you’re safe for the next couple of days. I can't be worrying about you along with everything else.”

“Are you going to tell me what you're doing, sir?”

Tay hesitated. He didn’t want to tell Lee about the girl in the window, partly because he wasn’t sure why that mattered yet and partly because he had absolutely no intention of telling her anything about John August. So Tay just shook his head.

Lee looked a little annoyed, but she didn’t say anything.

“Is there some place, Linda?” Tay pressed. “Some place you can go?”

“I have a friend I can stay with. She and her husband recently moved to JB, and she’s always after me to come out and visit them.”

JB was Johor Bahru, the Malaysian city right across the Straits of Johor. Getting Lee completely out of the country was even better than Tay had hoped for.

“When do you want me to go, sir?”

“Right now. This afternoon. Turn your phone off and keep it off. Do not turn it on under any circumstances. Is it one of those you can take the battery out of?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do that, too.”

“But shouldn’t you be able to reach me?”

“When you get to JB buy yourself a prepaid cell phone. Text the number to me. Just the number and nothing else, but type it backwards. Last number first and so on.”

“You’re scaring me, sir.”

“Good. Stay scared. You’ll be safer that way.”

“Where are you going to be, sir?”

Tay said nothing.

Lee held up both hands, palms out. “Okay, never mind. Forget I asked. How about that call? Are you ready for me to make it yet?”

For a moment Tay had no idea what Lee was talking about, but then he remembered he told her he wanted her to make an anonymous call about the body of the hotel manager. So much had happened since they found it that he had completely forgotten.

“Make it this afternoon on your way home to pack.” Then all at once something occurred to Tay. “Do pay telephones still exist? They do, don’t they?”

“I was thinking of going to the airport, sir. They have them there and the location won’t help to identify who made the call.”

Tay nodded. It was a good idea. He should have thought of it himself.

“Fine,” he said. “Go home, get your passport and pack a bag. Take a cab to the airport and kill about an hour. Then make your telephone call and right away take another cab from there straight to JB. If anybody’s watching, they’ll assume you’re on an airplane. By the time they figure out you aren’t, you’ll be in Malaysia.”

“I really don’t understand any of this, sir. What’s really going on here?”

“I don’t know, Linda. Not yet. But when I do, I’ll tell you. Besides, it’s probably better that you don’t know too much right now anyway.”

“Then everything must be peachy keen, sir, because right now what I know is fuck all.”

A minute or two after Lee left Tay’s office his telephone buzzed. He took it out of his pocket and looked at the screen.

Sure enough, there was another stranger number and another message.

Why the hell couldn’t August say left and right like everybody else? Tay was still sitting there picturing a city map in his mind and trying to turn August’s text into directions he could follow when his phone buzzed again.

Tay had to admit August knew him pretty well.

TAY LIKED WALKING in Singapore, although most people avoided it unless it was absolutely necessary. The city was generally so hot and muggy that any exposure to air that hadn’t been comprehensively cooled and thoroughly dehydrated by industrial strength machinery was pure misery.

If Singaporeans were absolutely forced into the streets for some reason, they ducked and dodged from one tiny patch of shade to the next like soldiers picking their way through a minefield. When there was no shade, he had even seen women holding their purses in front of their faces to keep the sun off. Did that do any good? It seemed a bit silly to Tay, but what did he know about such things?

For Tay, one of the things he liked most about walking in Singapore was that it usually constituted an almost solitary pursuit. He frequently had the sidewalks more or less to himself and he could soak in the unique feel of every neighborhood and tune in to its sounds and smells without battling other people. Even so, Tay very much preferred walking when he had at least a rough idea where he was going and why he was going there. And right then he had no fucking clue about either of those things.

Tay turned right outside the Cantonment Complex and walked along Cantonment Road. The blue and silver glass of the high-rise towers shimmered in the bright sun and Tay felt like most of the heat was being focused directly onto him. By the time he got to Neil Road, he was already sweating. He turned right and walked along in front of one of those massive, soulless apartment complexes that had taken over most of Singapore.

It wasn’t an especially interesting neighborhood for walking. If Tay had chosen his own route, he would have gone north up New Bridge Road toward Chinatown where the streets were still lined with the little shophouses of another era. But he had not chosen his route, of course. John August had. Tay assumed August had some specific reason for sending him this way, and he hoped to hell August would reveal it before he died from either heatstroke or boredom.

When Tay got to Everton Road, he turned left, exactly as he had been instructed. He still didn’t see why he was there. On one side of the road more bland and nondescript apartment buildings were grouped behind an arched gateway that said
Everton Park
at the top, and on the other side a line of two-story shophouses had been converted into modest private residences. Tay warily examined the shophouses as he passed. He peered into the shadows cast by the overhangs of the upper levels and looked for anything that seemed off. He saw nothing.

All at once in his peripheral vision he caught sight of a silver-blue van. It came out of a side street, turned into Everton Road about a hundred yards in front of him, and drove straight toward him. ISD had found him and here he was stranded out in the open.

Crap
.

Tay glanced around, but he couldn’t see any obvious refuge. Unless he forced his way into one of the shophouses there was no safety on this side of the street. But even if he could, what would he do after he got inside? He was pretty sure there were no back entrances to any of the little houses so he would be trapped.

More by default than because of any clear idea why he was doing it, Tay jogged across the road toward the entrance arch to Everton Park. Maybe he could somehow lose himself among the apartment buildings inside. It felt like a forlorn hope, but he had no other ideas.

The silver-blue van suddenly accelerated. It bounced over the sidewalk, roared up a driveway, and slammed to a stop right in front of him. The sliding door on the side flew open.

“What the
fuck
are you doing, Sam?”

John August was comfortably slumped in a black leather captain’s chair in the back of the van. His legs were stretched out and crossed at the ankle, and his arms were folded. He was swiveling the chair briskly left and right and looked downright annoyed.