The Diamond Queen of Singapore

by Ian Hamilton

  “And then an old friend of mine phoned to say that Tommy Tiu was going around asking a lot of questions about Jasmine,” the aunt said.

  “I figured that Tommy and the caller were one and the same,” Jasmine said. “I spoke to him an hour ago, and he told me about you.”

  “Loyalties run very deep here. Jasmine’s father and my husband did business with Tommy for years. He couldn’t lie to us when we confronted him — not that he’s ever been a very good liar,” the aunt said.

  “Are you Mrs. Lam?” Ava asked.

  “I am, but what’s it to you?”

  “Nothing,” Ava said, turning back to Jasmine. “It is true I’ve been looking for you. Now that I’ve found you, why don’t you give me ten or fifteen minutes of your time, and then I’ll be on my way. There’s no reason to get violent.”

  “Throw her out,” Jasmine said.

  The room was so crowded with people and furniture that Ava didn’t have much room to manoeuvre. She began to back up towards the hallway, where there was some open space.

  The man smiled as he walked towards her. Ava figured he was about six feet, but he looked taller in the cramped surroundings. He stopped just short of her and extended his hands with the palms up. “Why don’t you just turn around and leave?” he said. “I really don’t want to get rough with you.”

  “I’ll leave after I’ve spoken to Jasmine.”

  “I hate stubborn women,” he said as he reached for her.

  Ava took a step back as his hand grabbed for her arm. He missed, and his foot slipped on a rug. He collected himself, his face turning an angry red. “The games are over,” he said, balling up his right fist.

  “Yes, they are,” Ava said, as she lunged forward to drive a phoenix-eye fist into his belly. The phoenix eye was the most powerful strike in bak mei, and it had taken Ava years to perfect. It concentrated all the power her body could generate into the middle knuckle of the first finger of her right hand. It wreaked havoc on whatever it hit — in this case a cluster of nerves in the upper belly, at the base of the sternum.

  The man collapsed on the floor, his knees pulled up in a fetal position as he gasped desperately for air. Ava checked him for weapons, and when she found none, she said loudly into his ear, “Stay down. The pain will start to ease in a few minutes. I don’t want to hurt you again, but if you get up, I promise you that I will.”

  “That man is a goddamn useless idiot,” a woman’s voice said. “It takes a woman to handle a woman.” Ava turned and saw Mrs. Lam advancing towards her with a long knife in her hand.

  “You’re joking, right?” Ava said.

  “Leave before I cut you to ribbons,” Mrs. Lam said. “I know how to use this thing.”

  “This is madness. I don’t want to hurt you. Please put down the knife.”

  “Leave.”

  “Will you talk some sense into your aunt?” Ava said to Jasmine.

  “She never listens to me,” Jasmine said, a small smile on her face.

  Ava looked at the way she was carrying the knife. Will she try to stab me or slice me? Slice, I think.

  Mrs. Lam was now close enough that Ava could see beads of sweat glistening on top of her makeup. Then her top teeth bit into her lower lip, and she swung the knife in the direction of Ava’s right arm. Ava spun, the knife flashed by, and before Mrs. Lam could regroup, Ava had a grip on her elbow. She pressed two fingers into the soft flesh on the inside of the elbow until she found the nerve, then squeezed as hard as she could. The knife dropped, and then the screaming started. Ava held on, angry that the woman had dared to attack her; a paralyzed arm was the only way to ensure she wouldn’t try again.

  “Let her go,” Jasmine’s mother pleaded.

  Jasmine and her mother were by the sofa. Ava stared at them as she continued to squeeze Mrs. Lam’s arm. She counted to thirty for extra effect and then released her grip. The aunt stumbled backwards, tears coursing down her cheeks, her arm limp. Jasmine reached for her and pulled her down onto the sofa.

  “None of this was necessary. All I wanted to do was talk,” Ava said, picking up the knife from the floor.

  “Except you want to talk about things that I’ve been told are not to be discussed.”

  “Told by whom?”

  Jasmine glared at her.

  “Let me make something very clear,” Ava said. “The money you used to buy diamonds in Antwerp was stolen from friends of mine, and I’m determined to get it back. People are going to pay. And when I say pay, Jasmine, I don’t simply mean that money is going to change hands. Ask Tommy Tiu about the kind of friends I have. Ask him about the ones in Shanghai. I don’t care how afraid you are of the people you’re conducting business with in Amsterdam and Chengdu. My friends are a whole lot scarier.”

  “Tommy told Auntie Nan that she has strong connections,” Jasmine`s mother said, and then looked at Ava. “You aren’t a cop, are you?”

  How far should I take this? she thought. What the hell. These are people who’ll understand who Xu is and what he can do to them. “Tommy was referring to my ge ge. He’s the Mountain Master, the head of the triads, in Shanghai. If you have any doubts about the truth of that, I suggest you call Tommy right now.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Jasmine’s mother said, touching her daughter lightly on the arm. “Jasmine, I think you should talk to this woman. We don’t want any trouble with triads.”

  Jasmine had lowered her head, and now she looked up. “You know about Chengdu?” she asked, her voice shaking.

  “I know some. I need to know more.”

  “I can’t help you.”

  “You won’t know that until you hear my questions.”

  “I think you should listen to her,” her mother said. “You haven’t done anything wrong, and if she’s right about it ending badly, then you should get out before you make new enemies.”

  Ava sat down, separated from the other women by the circular table. She place the knife in front of her. “Your mother makes a lot of sense. Do you want me to tell you what I think your role was in this?” she asked Jasmine.

  “No, but I’m sure you’ll do it anyway.”

  Ava ignored her sarcasm. “I believe you were hired to launder the money in Amsterdam. Someone knew about your father’s business and knew that you had helped him. You had contacts in Antwerp and knew enough about the diamond trade to find buyers in Guangzhou. So cash turned into diamonds and then diamonds turned back into cash, which was deposited in Chengdu and used to buy drugs from Golden Emperor MicroLab. How am I doing so far?”

  Jasmine mumbled, “I don’t know anything about any drugs.”

  “Do you mean you weren’t involved in buying drugs or you didn’t know drugs were being bought?”

  “No one told me anything.”

  “But you had dealings with Golden Emperor, yes?”

  “I transferred money to them when I was told to, but I never asked what it was being used for,” Jasmine said. “I thought it was the final step in the laundering process.”

  “I’ll come back to those transfers,” Ava said. “How much were you paid for laundering the money?”

  “I worked for a commission. Five to ten percent, depending on the amount of money involved.”

  “That’s odd. I didn’t see any payments directed to you in the Chengdu bank statements.”

  “I took my commissions in diamonds.”

  “What about the money being transferred to Golden Emperor? You don’t get paid for that?”

  “I get a small set fee that’s sent to my mother’s account.”

  Ava nodded. “And the diamonds you took as commission, do you keep them here?” She saw Jasmine’s hand tighten on her mother’s and a fleeting look of panic cross her face.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not interested in them.”

  “My father never believed in k
eeping cash in a bank. He sold diamonds whenever he needed money. I’ve followed his example.”

  “Where do you sell them?”

  “Sometimes in Shenzhen, other times in Mumbai. I put most of the cash into my mother’s bank account.”

  “How did you pay for your BMW?”

  “Out of my mother’s account.”

  “Is that true?” Ava asked the mother.

  The older woman nodded.

  Ava leaned forward and asked as evenly as she could, “Who hired you to launder the money in the Amsterdam bank?”

  Jasmine lowered her head again.

  “Tell her,” her mother said. “You have no reason to protect him.”

  “A man named Malcolm Muir,” Jasmine said.

  Ava’s pulse quickened, but she said calmly, “How did Muir know what you could do, and how did he know how to contact you?”

  Jasmine turned to her mother. “Mummy, are you sure you want me to get into this?”

  “I don’t see any harm in it.”

  “What will Auntie Nan think?”

  “Right now Auntie Nan can’t think about anything other than her arm,” Yip’s mother said, glancing at her sister. “Tell the woman what she wants to know.”

  Jasmine looked at Ava. “My cousin Essie called me to say she had a friend who had money that needed to find a safe home. She asked me if I was willing to help him do it in the way my father taught me. I said yes, and a few days later I heard from Malcolm Muir.”

  “How did your cousin know Muir?”

  “Muir knows her husband.”

  Go slowly, Ava told herself. “Can I assume that Essie’s husband also knows about your expertise?”

  “He lived in Singapore for a few years — that’s how he and Essie met. So he knew the family and what we did for a living,” Jasmine said.

  “Did Essie retain her family name when she married or did she take her husband’s?”

  “She took his.”

  “So what does she call herself now?”

  “She’s Essie Lam here but Esther Cunningham over there.”

  “Where is ‘over there’?” Ava asked as blandly as she could manage.

  “Canada.”

  “And what is her husband’s first name?”

  “Patrick.”

  (24)

  Ava’s heart leapt. There were so many questions bouncing around in her head that she longed for her notebook. But this wasn’t the time to start writing, or to overreact to the mention of Patrick Cunningham.

  “I’d like to go back to the man Malcolm Muir,” Ava said calmly to Jasmine.

  “What would you like to know?”

  “Did he call all the shots?”

  “He’s a control freak. He told me what to do and when to do it. And he wanted copies of every transaction. I didn’t do a thing without his say-so. ”

  “Did all the money from the diamond sales find its way to Chengdu?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who decided it should go to Chengdu, and who established the bank account?”

  “Muir chose the city and the bank and sent me there to open the account.”

  “Did you do it alone?”

  “No. I needed a local reference, and he provided that as well. Her name is Su Na. She came with me to the bank to provide local cover, and then I never heard from her again.”

  “Who is Su Na?”

  “I guess someone Muir knows.”

  “Your family doesn’t know her? She’s not your cousin who married someone in China?”

  “My other daughter is named Miriam,” Mrs. Lam said weakly. “She’s married to a Communist party official in Shenzhen.”

  “Thank you, Auntie,” Ava said, then turned back to Jasmine. “The money in the Chengdu account is being used to buy drugs. But you say you weren’t aware of that?”

  “That’s true. All I’ve done is transfer money to the Golden Emperor account.”

  “And you had no idea what the money was buying?”

  “I never deal with the company directly. I arrange the transfers, and that’s it.”

  “How do you know how much to send and when to send it?”

  “Muir phones me.”

  “Does he ask for confirmation that the transfer has been made?”

  “Yes. What’s strange is that he doesn’t want me to do it electronically, even though I could. He insists that I send written instructions to the bank under my company letterhead and that the bank confirms to me that they received them in writing,” Jasmine said.

  “It gives him a written record.”

  “He’s only doing that to cover his ass. He has access to the account and can trace the transfers.”

  “He knows the account password?”

  “Su Na set the account password and gave it to me. I assume she gave it to Muir as well.”

  “I already have the account number. Will you give me the password?” Ava asked.

  Jasmine hesitated, then looked at her mother and aunt. Both women nodded. “Okay,” she said.

  “Will you also give me copies of the written transfer requests to the bank and the bank’s confirmations?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you,” Ava said. “Now, when did money start arriving in the account from the Evans Trust Company in Vanuatu?”

  “You know about Vanuatu too?”

  “Obviously.”

  “It started a few years ago. Muir told me he had a new business partner and that money would be deposited into the Chengdu account on a regular basis. He didn’t want me asking any questions about the account balance.”

  “Did you ever communicate with Evans Trust?”

  “No.”

  “My understanding is that the amounts Evans deposits have increased substantially over time.”

  “They have.”

  “After a deposit is made by Evans, how long before it’s transferred to Golden Emperor?”

  “No more than a day or two.”

  “You’re certain of that?”

  “Yes. I never go more than a day or two without checking the account balance. I’m too paranoid.”

  “What’s made you paranoid?”

  “I don’t trust Muir. If there were ever an issue with the cops or the PLA, I know he’d dump everything on me. It wouldn’t be hard, since my name is on every transaction.”

  “But I thought Muir was recommended to you by your cousin Essie.”

  “Essie was told what to do by her husband,” Jasmine said.

  “How do you know that?”

  Jasmine looked at her aunt. “You should answer that question.”

  “My daughter isn’t always her own person,” Mrs. Lam said. “Since she met Patrick, she’s forgotten her roots.”

  “Is he that controlling?” Ava asked.

  “She doesn’t fart without his permission,” Mrs. Lam said. “There’s no way she would have called Jasmine without Patrick telling her to do it.”

  “How did Essie meet him?”

  “They worked at the same bank. They started dating, and, before we knew it, she was going to his church and spouting all their half-baked nonsense about sin and repentance,” Mrs. Lam said. “When I told my daughter I was worried about her, she laughed. She said that Patrick was the most considerate man she’d ever dated. In fact, she bragged that he wouldn’t sleep with her until they were married. I told her that was foolish of both of them. I mean, what woman in her right mind would marry a man without giving him a trial run in bed?”

  Ava smiled. Despite the fact the woman had attacked her with a knife, she rather liked her. “But Essie did marry him.”

  “Yes, and then she had four kids in five years, one of them here and three in Canada. Patrick doesn’t believe in birth control. Essie developed problems aft
er the fourth pregnancy. I think she miscarried three times before a doctor finally tied her tubes.”

  “Tell me, Mrs. Lam, when did Essie and Patrick move to Canada?”

  “Seven or eight years ago. He got a well-paying job with a finance company but left after a year to work full-time for the church.”

  “Have you seen her since then?”

  “I visited them once in Canada. I was supposed to stay three weeks but came home after two. I couldn’t stand the way he treated her and the kids, and I knew if I stayed any longer I’d blow up at him. Everything had to be done his way. If it wasn’t, he’d yell at Essie until she cried, and he’d spank the kids if they did something wrong,” Mrs. Lam said. She pointed to Jasmine’s mother. “My sister and I never raised a hand to any of our children, and there isn’t a man alive who could make us cry.”

  “Our husbands wouldn’t have dared yell at us or hit our girls,” Mrs. Yip said. “Why are you so interested in Patrick?”

  The question caught Ava by surprise. She had been so caught up with talking to Mrs. Lam that she’d almost forgotten the other woman was there. “There’s a connection between Patrick and Muir that goes beyond Jasmine. They know each other from Harvest Table Bible Chapel.”

  “Are you saying that Patrick is in business with Muir?” Jasmine asked.

  “It’s a connection I need to explore.”

  “As much as I don’t like Patrick, I don’t think he’d ever get involved with drugs,” Mrs. Lam said.

  “I’m not suggesting that he is involved,” Ava said, and then stood up. “I think I should get going now. You’ve been very generous with your time, and I thank you for that. Jasmine, can you give me the password for the Chengdu bank account and copies of the transfers?”

  “The transfers are in a box in my bedroom,” Jasmine replied.

  “I’ll wait.”

  “Do you need us to call a taxi?” Mrs. Lam asked after Jasmine left the room.

  “No, I’ll walk to the corner and catch something there,” Ava said.

  There was a loud groan, and all three women looked at the man on the floor.

  “He’s starting to recover,” Ava said.

  “So am I,” Mrs. Lam said, shaking her arm. “That hurt like hell.”