The Singapore School of Villainy

by Shamini Flint

  Her mobile rang again and she groaned at the phone number flashing on the screen. It was the office. She remembered her conviction in the taxi that this high-flying corporate lifestyle suited her down to the ground – she was not so sure any more. She earned money only to hand it to her father like sweets to a spoilt child. And now someone was looking for her late on a Friday evening. She was really not in the mood for some imaginary crisis from a client who thought her charge-out rates meant that she was part-lawyer and part-nanny. Annie picked up the phone.

  ‘Yes?’ she said curtly.

  ‘Annie, is that you?’

  This time her groan was heartfelt but silent.

  ‘Yes, it is.’ She injected a measure of politeness into her voice. Mark Thompson was her boss, after all.

  ‘Are you back in Singapore?’ he asked.

  ‘Just got in,’ she replied, and then mentally kicked herself for wasting a gilt-edged opportunity to pretend she was out of town.

  ‘Come into the office for a meeting at half past eight,’ Mark continued, unconscious of her reluctance or ignoring it.

  ‘What’s it about, Mark?’

  There was no answer. He had hung up.

  Annie stared at her phone. Mark, for all his faults, was unfailingly polite. Something must have annoyed or upset him considerably. She really hoped it had nothing to do with her. She wondered whether to call him back – her hand hovered uncertainly over the dial.

  Inspector Singh glanced covertly at his watch, the leather strap of which was embedded uncomfortably into his plump wrist. It did not keep time particularly well but it was sufficiently accurate for him to be quite certain that he was toast as far as his wife was concerned. It was late evening already. She had been adamant that he be on time to play Cupid to this unfortunate young man that she had invited for dinner at the behest of his interfering relations.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’

  Singh glanced up, straightened his back – realised that this was a mistake as it only drew attention to his beer gut – and slumped back down. He said, ‘Of course, sir,’ hoping he hadn’t missed anything important. It was unlikely. This was his monthly “you’re a disgrace to the Force” lecture – it was just unlucky that his superintendent had found a spare moment when he, Singh, had a dinner engagement.

  ‘You’re a disgrace to the Force,’ shouted his superior. His face, ordinarily the smooth calm mask of a career politician, was mottled with anger.

  ‘Yessir!’ said Singh, who knew the routine.

  The fact of the matter was that they couldn’t get rid of him because of his success rate. Even in Singapore, where there was limited accountability for those at the high end of the food chain, there would be questions asked. The press, cowed as they were, liked him. He was splash of colour that was visible even in newsprint. He would have to screw up big time to give the Force an excuse to sack him. Being overweight, wearing white sneakers, smelling faintly of curry, beer and old-fashioned cologne – Old Spice in the bottle with the sailing ship – just wasn’t enough.

  He said again, ‘Yessir,’ in case he had merely imagined the response rather than uttered it. He was finding that, as he grew older, the thought was not so much the father of the deed as in lieu of it.

  ‘Look at you!’

  Singh refrained from pointing out that this was not possible without a mirror. Besides, the parts that offended his superiors – the excess weight, the white sneakers and the outline of a packet of cigarettes in his pocket – were visible to him.

  ‘I’d put you back in uniform – but we couldn’t find one to fit you!’

  Singh bit off a smile. This was a new line and actually quite a good one. The old man had probably thought of it in the shower. That would explain why he had been called in this particular evening. He knew Superintendent Chen all too well. His boss wouldn’t want to waste such a pithy insult.

  Music played quietly in the background, the soundtrack from Shah Rukh Khan’s latest movie. A platter of vegetable samosas, smelling faintly of cardamom and cloves, sat on the front table. Mrs Singh intended them as a starter to whet the young man’s appetite. She wandered into the kitchen and sniffed at the dishes she had painstakingly cooked for dinner that evening. She was quite sure that Jagdesh Singh, a young man far from his home in Delhi, would be missing his mother’s cooking. A feast of curries and chutneys was hidden under food covers, ready to be served when Jagdesh arrived. She was convinced that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. If she reminded him of the importance of good authentic home cooking, he was bound to see the value of a pretty Sikh girl. Certainly, he was that much less likely to hook up with some slip of a Chinese thing who would stuff him with greasy fried noodles every evening from the nearest hawker stall.

  It was eight in the evening and her husband had not put in an appearance yet. At this rate, he would arrive after her guest – the height of bad manners. She would not put it past him to be intentionally tardy just because she had specifically asked him to turn up on time. He had a peculiar sense of humour and a complete disdain for the family and community obligations she took so seriously.

  Besides, he seemed to think that the entire police force would collapse without his efforts – or at the very least that half a dozen murderers would elude justice for every hour he was not at work. She shuddered. When she had married Singh, he had been a junior policeman with a bright future. He had been smart, fit and ambitious. She had imagined him as the commissioner of police, attending functions at the Istana, the palace residence of the President – wife by his side, of course. Instead, Singh had been assigned to his first murder case and never looked back. He had abandoned his bright future to devote his life to the business of hunting down killers. It was all so sordid. People didn’t get killed without good reason. She, Mrs Singh, didn’t condone murder, of course. But there was no doubt in her mind that the victims were at least partly to blame. One just didn’t see that sort of excessive behaviour in good families. As far as she was aware, there had never been a murder in the Sikh community in Singapore – unless you counted that time when Balwant Singh reversed over his wife in their driveway. But he had been eighty and as blind as a bat. She had to assume that he hadn’t meant to do it.

  She gripped the table edge with work-roughened knuckles. She could not understand her husband’s fascination for death. It was very peculiar, and quite unhealthy. It meant that he fraternised with some very odd people and his chances of progress within the force had been hamstrung. Murder was not a path to promotion, that much had been evident as her husband slowly crawled his way to the rank of inspector.

  She thought of this young unmarried man, Jagdesh Singh, who was coming for dinner: young, handsome – if his probably prejudiced mother was to be believed – with a lucrative career. She devoutly hoped that he would not disappoint the Sikh wife she would eventually find for him.

  The phone rang, its shrill tone penetrating her melancholy contemplation of the untouched dinner spread, and she answered it with a curt “hello”.

  ‘Aunty, I’m very sorry but something has come up at work. I can’t make it tonight.’

  ‘Who is this?’ She knew full well but the young man was being presumptuous.

  ‘It’s me, Jagdesh – Jagdesh Singh. I was supposed to come for dinner but now I’ve been called back to the office.’

  She liked his voice. It was rich and deep with the lilting cadences of a North Indian – so much more pleasing to her ears than the rolling “r”s of the South Indian. She liked that he called her “Aunty”. She wasn’t his aunt, of course. They were distant relatives by marriage. But she couldn’t stand these modern manners where men and women young enough to be her children addressed her by her first name. It was so rude – it felt like a slap in the face every single time.

  She said, ‘OK. Another time then.’

  ‘Thank you, Aunty. I’m really sorry.’

  Mrs Singh replaced the receiver. There was no need for further chit-chat.
She didn’t like spending time on the phone unless it was to gossip to one of her three sisters about the shortcomings of her husband.

  Mrs Singh spooned some long-grained basmati rice onto a plate. She added tiny helpings of each dish – there was a reason she was stick thin – but she did want to sample her cooking and make certain she hadn’t lost the skill for which she was justly famed. She sat down at the table and, unfazed by the plastic table cloth that so bothered her husband, tucked in.

  Quentin Holbrooke pulled into his reserved parking lot in the brightly-lit basement of Republic Tower in a black four-wheel-drive vehicle. He was a youngish man of medium height, with grey-speckled hair and protuberant pale blue eyes in a thin face. He smelt strongly of expensive men’s aftershave. He noticed his colleague, Annie Nathan, pull into the adjoining lot in her convertible BMW.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Annie asked. Quentin hardly ever allowed work to interfere with his Friday night pub-crawls along the old warehouses-turned-trendy-nightspots of Clarke Quay.

  ‘I got a call from Mark. Do you know what it’s about?’

  ‘Haven’t the foggiest.’

  ‘Not my idea of the way to spend a Friday evening!’

  Annie nodded her agreement, her bangs escaping a plain black hairclip and falling over her eyes.

  He noticed that his colleague looked tired – her eyes were buried deep in dark hollows and her golden skin was sallow. Her hair, usually worn loose and curling past her shoulders, was drawn back in a tight, damp bun. She must have hurried to get to the meeting on time.

  They made their way to the lift lobby together. She walked with long, even, mannish strides. He matched her pace but had a curious rolling gait, feet splayed and legs slightly bowed, that seemed more appropriate for a ship deck. In the lobby, Quentin hunted for his swipe card amongst the array of gold and platinum credit cards in his wallet.

  ‘Damn, can’t find my card. Do you have yours?’ Quentin asked.

  Annie rummaged in her handbag and found it. They started up to the sixty-eighth floor. Beating her to the main entrance, Quentin typed in his four-digit personal code and they walked into the reception area. Annie fumbled for the light switches just inside the door and a few discreet lights in the ceiling and a lamp behind the reception desk came on.

  The décor in the reception area was designed to suggest both tradition and discretion. Leather-bound law reports lined one wall, although none of the lawyers who worked at the firm consulted them, not in an era of online statutes and case law. Three Oriental paintings, fine brush strokes depicting songbirds, adorned the opposite wall. The air smelt faintly of lilies. A vase of fresh white flowers, yellow stamens trimmed, stood tall on the receptionist’s table. So late on a Friday evening, the office was silent and deserted. A few rooms had their lights on. It didn’t indicate that anyone was at work. The junior lawyers did not switch off their lights in the evenings. It was a practice developed to suggest to inquisitive partners that work was still being done long after the lawyer had left for the day.

  At the end of the corridor was the office of Mark Thompson, Senior Partner. His door was closed.

  ‘You go ahead,’ said Annie, disappearing into her own office.

  Quentin nodded absently and carried on towards Mark’s room. A quick tap on the door was met with silence. He knocked again, this time louder, and received no response. Quentin shrugged and tried the handle. The door opened easily. He poked his head into the room apologetically and said, ‘Mark? Annie and I are here for the meeting.’

  Three

  Annie heard Quentin scream for help, the sound muffled by the heavy doors. She stood stock still, the hairs on her arms standing to attention like soldiers on parade, left her office at a run and burst into the room at the far end of the corridor. Quentin was standing by Mark’s desk, his hands cupped firmly around his mouth and his protuberant eyes popping with shock.

  Mark was sitting in his chair apparently oblivious to the presence of the two lawyers. His head was resting against the table, his cheek flat against the surface. There was complete silence except for a regular muffled tone. It sounded familiar but she couldn’t pinpoint its origin. As she sidled up to Quentin, Annie realised with a horrid sinking feeling – as if she was in an aeroplane that had just hit a nasty patch of turbulence – that the background noise which had puzzled her was the telephone receiver lying on its side, a few inches away from Mark Thompson’s outstretched hand.

  And then she saw what Quentin had seen – a dark rivulet of blood matting Mark’s hair, turning it almost black, running from a gash on his head down the side of his face. Annie gagged, and swallowed the taste of her early dinner. She could smell the cold rusty iron scent of blood.

  Quentin edged forward, every small step betraying his reluctance to approach the body. He gingerly put his hand to Mark’s wrist.

  Annie guessed he could not bring himself to feel for a pulse on the neck – it was too close to the blood.

  He shook his head at Annie.

  Annie was as pale as the corpse. She gulped, ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘I think so.’ Quentin’s voice cracked, like a boy on the cusp of adolescence. ‘I can’t find a pulse,’ he continued, rubbing his hands on his trousers, unconsciously trying to erase the lingering feel of death.

  ‘I’ll call an ambulance and the police,’ she said weakly, reaching into her pocket for her mobile phone. She dialled 999, realising as she did so that it was the first time in her life that she had resorted to the emergency services. She explained quickly that they had found a body, ignoring the sceptical tone of the officer.

  Quentin was shuffling from foot to foot, unable to stand still in the presence of the dead.

  Annie, hanging up at last, noticed how wan he was. ‘Maybe we should wait outside. The police won’t want us in here.’

  She left unspoken that it was the last place she wanted to be, closeted in a room with a dead man whose blood dripped from his head to the floor like water from a leaky faucet.

  Quentin led the way out with alacrity but having made their escape, inspiration left them and they stood outside the door like undisciplined sentries, watching the minutes tick by on the office wall clock.

  ‘Good evening, you two. Am I late for the meeting?’ A cheerful voice that betrayed its Indian origins struck a discordant note. A tall, broad-shouldered man with jet-black hair swept away from a high forehead and soulful brown eyes wandered towards them.

  ‘What’s going on? You two look like you’ve seen a ghost!’

  Quentin winced at his choice of words and, to her embarrassment, hot tears rolled down Annie’s cheeks.

  ‘What is it?’ Jagdesh sounded worried now. He came towards them and patted Annie awkwardly on the shoulder.

  ‘Mark’s in there – we think he’s dead,’ Quentin answered.

  ‘You’re pulling my leg, right? That’s just not funny, chaps!’ Jagdesh’s Delhi accent, more pronounced in times of stress, contrasted oddly with his public school idioms.

  He continued, taking in their expressions and Annie’s tears, ‘Heart attack? Just goes to show, doesn’t it?’

  What exactly Jagdesh thought it showed was never to become clear. Annie said, her voice high-pitched with anxiety, ‘He’s been murdered!’

  The prolonged sound of a buzzer held down by an impatient finger interrupted Jagdesh’s response.

  At the entrance, Annie and Quentin found a short, rotund Sikh man who flashed a badge at them. The policeman marched in like an irate client who had just received the firm’s bill for services rendered. A number of uniformed policemen trailed in his wake.

  Jagdesh had answered a ringing telephone on the way to the door.

  ‘Who’s this?’ asked the Sikh policeman tersely.

  ‘One of our colleagues, Jagdesh Singh,’ answered Annie promptly.

  Inspector Singh’s brow wrinkled. He said, ‘Mr Singh, do not communicate the situation here to anyone,’ and then, assuming compliance, he asked Quenti
n, ‘Where’s the victim?’

  The young lawyer silently indicated Mark’s closed door, and the turbaned man, using a handkerchief, pushed the door open and went in.

  Jagdesh, who had fallen silent during this exchange, now spoke into the phone again. ‘Ai Leen? I think you’d better come in with Reggie. Come as soon as you can.’ Then, ‘Who’s the towel-head?’ he demanded, hanging up.

  Annie thought this was a bit rich coming from Jagdesh. He too was a Sikh like the policeman. He shared the same surname, Singh – which meant “lion” – as the inspector and all other men of Sikh origin. Jagdesh merely eschewed the other overt trappings of Sikhism, like the turban he was ridiculing.

  Quentin silently handed over a card.

  Jagdesh read it out loud, ‘Inspector Singh, Central Police Division. No wonder they got here so quick – the station’s just down the road. I wonder…’

  He was not given a chance to finish as the policeman stepped out of Mark’s room. Annie wondered if he had heard Jagdesh mock his headdress; he gave no sign of having done so although he did shoot a glance at the Indian lawyer. His thickset face remained expressionless but his dark eyes were alive with interest. Annie guessed he wasn’t often called in for murders in one of the high-rise offices in Singapore. Murder in Singapore was exceedingly rare. And when it did occur, it tended to be an ill-fated lovers’ quarrel or a foreign maid driven by desperation to kill an abusive employer. However experienced this policeman was, this present situation – a murdered expatriate – would be something new.

  She stared at the inspector, unable to hide her curiosity. His turban added at least two inches to his height. It was neatly tied and a dark colour. A triangle of white formed a contrast just above the middle of his broad forehead. He had a salt-and-pepper moustache and a beard that hedged a wide mouth. A full pink lower lip suggested a pout. A sagging breast pocket on the inspector’s white shirt contained more pens than could reasonably be required of one person, however prolific a writer. The policeman’s dark trousers, worn over rather than under his stomach, were held in place with an old leather belt that was marked with the creases of his slimmer days.