Reggie said in a low voice, ‘I have some information for you.’
‘Who is this?’
‘That’s not important…’
‘What’s it about? I don’t have time to waste, you know.’
‘The Mark Thompson murder,’ said Reggie. He could almost sense the journalist at the other end sit straighter in his chair. He had not doubted for a moment that this impatient press man would be all ears when he dropped Mark’s name into the conversation.
‘Well, go on.’ The tone was still hasty but this time it reflected the reporter’s interest in getting to the bottom of the story.
‘Quentin Holbrooke was arrested.’
‘For the murder? We haven’t had any information like that from the newswires.’
‘He was arrested for drug trafficking – a large bag of cocaine, enough for the death sentence was found on him,’ explained Reggie.
‘Well, go on!’
‘They let him go without charging him. He’s back at work.’
‘Why would they do that?’ asked the newspaper man.
‘Too embarrassing for the authorities to hang an expat so soon after one is murdered at his desk.’
‘I see,’ muttered the journalist. ‘Typical double standards.’
‘Exactly,’ agreed Reggie. He knew that what he was doing was unconscionable. But he needed the police, especially the ubiquitous Inspector Singh, to focus their attention on his colleagues – he didn’t care which ones as long as it wasn’t Ai Leen or himself. And after all, he rationalised quickly, Quentin was only getting what was coming to him. It was not as if he, Reggie, had planted the bag of cocaine on him or anything like that.
The voice at the other end of the line was suddenly suspicious. ‘What has this got to do with you anyway? Why are you telling me this?’
‘Oh! I just want to see justice done,’ said Reggie Peters in a voice of genuine good cheer.
Ching, Annie’s secretary, came into the room. She usually drifted in, bearing messages or documents, tidying shelves or putting away files. Today she paused, equidistant between Annie and the exit, as if she wanted to consider her options again before passing the point of no return. Annie felt a surge of impatience.
‘What do you want?’ It came out more harshly than Annie had intended. She asked, in a more reasonable tone, ‘Is anything the matter?’
The woman made up her mind and took another step towards Annie. This generated unexpected momentum, and she rushed forward saying breathlessly, ‘I didn’t realise it was personal or I wouldn’t have read it!’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I thought it might be important.’
Annie said through gritted teeth, ‘Ching, just tell me what this is about.’
‘I was in the printer room, hunting for something of yours. I was going through a stack of papers…’
Annie knew that all the secretaries rifled through the printed documents – their curiosity about their wealthy bosses was insatiable. She played along. ‘All right, you accidentally read something private but important in the printer room. What has it to do with me?’
Ching looked uncomfortable. ‘I didn’t know who else to tell!’
Annie gave up any hope of getting to the root of the matter without invading the privacy of the author of this mysterious note.
‘What did it say?’
Her secretary took a piece of paper from the file she was carrying.
‘You took it?’ exclaimed Annie.
‘Photocopy!’
Annie held out her hand and her secretary handed her the single sheet of paper and then stepped away from the desk hurriedly, as if the document was a ticking time bomb.
‘I will leave it with you,’ she muttered and almost ran from the room.
Annie looked down at the letter and began to read.
Corporal Fong hurried through the fluorescent-lit hospital corridors, trying to ignore the antiseptic smells that assailed him. He overtook an old woman being wheeled gently through the corridors by three generations of family. Her husband kept pace next to her with the help of a three-pronged cane, a daughter-in-law did the actual pushing, and her grandchildren skipped ahead, indifferent to the pall of mortality that hung over the place.
As he approached Jagdesh’s ward, he continued to guess at the reason for his urgent summons. He found Inspector Singh waiting for him at the nurses’ station, one elbow on the desk, dark eyes staring off into the distance.
‘What is it, sir?’
He had to repeat himself to attract the attention of the Sikh inspector but when he did, Inspector Singh didn’t mince his words. ‘Jagdesh is dead,’ he said.
Fong gasped, he felt winded. He had known, of course, that the young man was in a coma – nearer death than most human beings could imagine. And yet, there had been something semi-permanent about the figure lying, immobile and silent, on the bed. The even features, the vicissitudes of his recent experiences smoothed from his face, had reminded Fong of a bronze sculpture.
The boss beckoned him into the room that had been Jagdesh’s until so recently. Of Jagdesh, there was no trace. The bed was empty, stripped of its bedding. The flowers that had been wilting in two vases on his bedside table were no longer there. Corporal Fong felt a wave of compassion for the loss of the confused, unhappy young man.
‘Such a waste, sir,’ he said to the inspector. He did not expect a reply. The inspector would probably be quite tetchy that he was wasting words on emotions rather than facts but he felt that he owed it to Jagdesh to acknowledge his passing before being taken up in the details of death rather than the life that had gone before. Still the inspector remained silent. Fong sensed that this was not his typical impassivity. There was turbulence within the senior policeman that was discernible in the deep hollows of his eyes.
‘What is it, sir? What’s the matter?’
The inspector gave a small sigh. ‘It might have been murder.’
A short while later, Inspector Singh, Corporal Fong and the doctor who had been in charge of Jagdesh’s care were sitting in the hospital canteen drinking coffee.
The doctor was young and diffident, expressing himself with frequent throat clearings, a bobbing Adam’s apple and much hesitation, but his underlying competence carried a weight of conviction. ‘You see, although the patient’s central nervous system activity had been depressed to the extent that he had lost all cognitive function, possibly permanently, and there was some liver and kidney damage, we did not believe he was at immediate risk of death.’
Singh pondered this information. Jagdesh had not been in any immediate danger of death although there had also been very little hope of a complete recovery. Exactly like his murder investigation, thought Singh irritably, Jagdesh too had been trapped in limbo.
‘Fine, Jagdesh was going to live forever except for being out for the count – then why is he dead?’
The doctor’s eyes blinked rapidly behind his thick glasses. Perhaps he did not understand boxing metaphors, thought Singh. ‘Well?’ he demanded.
‘Well, you see—’ Singh suppressed an urge to yell that he did not see anything ‘—a preliminary investigation into cause of death…it bears all the hallmarks of asphyxia.’
‘Suffocation?’ asked Singh in a querulous tone.
‘Well, to be precise there were clear signs of petechial haemorrhage on the conjunctiva.’ In response to the bewildered expression on Corporal Fong’s face, he explained, ‘Tiny pinpoints of blood on the whites of the eyes from ruptured capillaries.’ He continued, ‘And further examination of the deceased led to the finding of a few strands of white fluff about Jagdesh’s nostrils that matched the fabric of the white cotton hospital pillow covers.’ The young doctor seemed capable of speaking in full sentences only when he sounded like a medical text or an autopsy report.
‘So you’re saying that someone killed Jagdesh Singh by holding a pillow over his face?’
‘Yes,’ said the doctor baldly. And then pe
rhaps regretting his certainty, he muttered, ‘The preliminary findings will have to be confirmed by a post-mortem, of course.’
Singh leaned his chin on interlocking fingers. A person or persons unknown, as the coroner would undoubtedly say, had murdered Jagdesh Singh. In a coma, Jagdesh would not have known, understood or struggled against what was happening. He had simply crossed the border between dreamless sleep and easeful death. Perhaps he had made the journey without pain or fear or doubt, but Singh was damned if the murderer would have it so easy. The killing of an innocent, defenceless man on his watch had hit the policeman hard.
The doctor rose to his feet, nodded his goodbyes and hurried away, white coat flapping on his bony frame.
‘Well, call the station and find out whether any of those coppers trailing the lawyers ended up at this hospital in the last twenty-four hours. That should give us a clear indication of guilt!’
Fong turned pale, almost waxy.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Didn’t you know, sir? Superintendent Chen pulled them off the job. I thought you must have agreed!’
‘But why?’
Fong was clearly quoting verbatim: ‘“We have the murderer – that gay foreigner. We don’t want the rest of the expats to think that Singapore is a police state.”’
The irony was almost too much to bear, thought Singh. He took a deep breath – he would spell out his thoughts on unwarranted interference to Superintendent Chen later. Right now, he had a double murder on his hands.
‘Perhaps the two murders are unrelated,’ the inspector suggested tentatively.
Fong shook his head and Singh sighed gustily. His sidekick was right – the murders had to be linked, which meant that his failure to find the killer of Mark Thompson had probably cost Jagdesh Singh his life.
‘It really wasn’t your fault, you know,’ said Corporal Fong.
‘Only to the extent that I didn’t hold the pillow over his face.’
Fong was silent – unable or unwilling to provide his superior further absolution.
Finally, Singh said, ‘Ok, how about this for a hypothesis? Whoever killed Mark thinks that we all suspect Jagdesh. It’s all over the newspapers. Superintendent Chen has been dropping hints at every press conference. The murderer knows that there is only one real danger – that Jagdesh wakes up and insists he is innocent. No one would guess that Jagdesh would hide a perfectly good alibi.’
‘So he, or she, killed Jagdesh?’ suggested Corporal Fong. ‘And now Jagdesh can’t wake up and plead not guilty.’
‘Only the murderer would think that the measure of doubt left by Jagdesh’s death was better than the certainty of being found out,’ Singh added reflectively.
They nodded in unison. It was guesswork but it fitted neatly with the facts at their disposal.
‘Unfortunately,’ said Singh with a pensive sigh, ‘we’re no closer to knowing who killed Mark, and now Jagdesh.’
Twenty-One
Singh was in the staff canteen drinking sweetened watermelon juice through a striped bendy straw. He pondered the fact that there were people in the world who devoted their time to the betterment of straws. Did they feel a frisson of pleasure every time they saw a state-of-the-art straw, like he did when he was able to write “case closed” on a file? He ignored his corporal who sat patiently across from him waiting for instructions, insights, abuse…he had no idea what the young fellow was seeking from his superior officer.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Superintendent Chen enter the cafeteria, a pile of papers under one arm. Chen’s head swivelled in a semi-circle as he scanned the room carefully. Singh paused to regret that his turban would always single him out in a crowd. The superintendent spotted him and made a beeline for his reluctant inspector. As he got closer, his mottled face and bloodshot eyes reminded Singh of the symptoms of death by suffocation as described by the doctor earlier in the day. His boss wouldn’t appreciate it but he looked more like Jagdesh Singh dead than when the handsome young lawyer had been alive.
Chen arrived at the table and dropped the pile of papers – the afternoon tabloid was on top, noticed Singh – in a heap on the table. He yelled, oblivious to the stares of the other diners, ‘Now see what you’ve done!’
The inspector glanced at the headlines. ‘POLICE RELEASE DRUG TRAFFICKER WITHOUT CHARGE.’ He turned the front page over and scanned the article quickly. It was all there: Quentin Holbrooke’s arrest and subsequent release without charge. The newspapers had maintained a factual approach to the case. The blogosphere – Superintendent Chen had printed out some choice articles – had been less restrained. Various writers had gone to town on the apparent double standards in law enforcement. ‘One law for Singaporeans, another for so-called foreign talent?’ thundered “Angry Singaporean” in one piece.
‘Did you leak this to the press?’ demanded Chen.
Singh was genuinely confounded by the accusation. ‘Me, sir? Of course not. I was quite happy to see Quentin Holbrooke walk.’
The superintendent pointed an accusing finger at Fong who shook his head mutely, too shocked to speak.
Singh ignored the literal and metaphorical finger pointing and asked, ‘What are you going to do, sir?’
‘What choice do I have? We’re probably going to have to hang him after all. My God, this has made us look like fools.’
Singh nodded his vigorous agreement and received an angry glare for his conciliatory gesture.
‘Are you going to re-arrest him?’ asked Singh.
‘Not yet. We can’t look like we’re reacting in a panic to the press reports. I’ve put out a statement saying that investigations are still ongoing into the matter.’
Singh nodded.
‘You’d better find the murderer pronto, Singh. We need a breakthrough to restore our reputation,’ growled Superintendent Chen before storming out of the canteen.
‘Who do you think did it, sir?’ asked Fong.
‘Leaked this?’ Singh gestured at the papers between them and then shook his great head. ‘I’m not sure. Someone who wanted our attention on Quentin Holbrooke?’
The inspector sucked in the last of the juice – his efforts were accompanied by a snorting, gurgling sound as he moved the straw around the base of the glass like a vacuum cleaner. A pip made its way up the tube and provoked a hoarse coughing fit. ‘All I can say is that we have enough bloody red herrings to fill an aquarium.’
‘Maybe Quentin Holbrooke is the murderer, sir?’
Singh glared at his colleague.
‘The case against him is watertight!’ insisted Fong.
‘A couple of days ago you told me that the widow was definitely the murderer,’ pointed out Singh.
Fong flushed, his pale face suffused with a shade of pink that Singh had previously assumed only appeared in nineteenth-century novels, but he stuck to his guns. Ticking off his points on thin fingers, the corporal said, ‘Quentin needed money badly, he was insider dealing, Mark Thompson found out about it, Mark Thompson was murdered!’
‘We still haven’t been able to find hard evidence that he was insider dealing…Inspector Mohammed hasn’t called back. And besides, I just can’t believe that Quentin killed Jagdesh.’
The older man massaged his fingers. Clutching the cold drink had provoked an arthritic ache in each knuckle. He remembered the gaping wound in Mark Thompson’s head. He found it easy to imagine that Quentin Holbrooke had clubbed Mark to death in a drug-induced frenzy. But he had a second corpse on his hands now. Singh paused for a moment and scratched the crease between neck and chin. He thought of the smiling young Sikh tucking into his wife’s home-cooked dinner with relish. He was struck by the belated realisation that Jagdesh Singh had been a decent young man in an impossible situation.
‘Can you really imagine a weak-jawed young man like Quentin Holbrooke committing a cynical cold-blooded murder in order to pin the blame on someone else?’
‘Maybe his murder has nothing to do with the law firm. It coul
d be an old boyfriend…or something like that, you know…who killed Jagdesh.’
Singh could feel his head beginning to throb. ‘You’re right – that’s possible…but unlikely.’
The young policeman was determined to press home his point about Quentin. ‘Who else could it be?’
‘Jagdesh had an alibi. Stephen Thwaites and Annie have no motive – but what about the rest? You said yourself that Maria had a great motive and she was with Mark just before he was killed. A woman like that would not hesitate to kill a defenceless man if it suited her purposes. When it comes to those children, her maternal instinct is almost feral.’
Fong nodded.
‘We need more on Reggie and Ai Leen as well. They’re the two most unpleasant people in the office. Surely we can find something on them?’ said Singh grouchily.
He could see that the rookie was biting back sharp words. He supposed it was ridiculous to try and pin the murder on someone just because he disliked them. Still, nothing else had worked so far – he had followed the evidence diligently and it had led him up the garden path.
Back in Singh’s office, Fong asked, ‘What now, sir?’
‘Get Holbrooke on the phone. We’d better warn him that the vultures are circling.’
Quentin Holbrooke, when they reached him at the office, had already seen the newspapers. His voice was barely audible as he asked, ‘What does this mean?’
‘It’s not good,’ said Singh brusquely. ‘The big shots don’t like egg on their faces. There’s a real possibility that they’ll charge you with the drug trafficking after all.’
He didn’t need to see the thin lawyer to imagine his drawn, frightened face. To have offered Quentin his freedom and then, at the last moment, to lasso him with a noose, that surely constituted cruel and unusual punishment. Singh said, trying to sound reassuring, knowing that he was not being honest, ‘It might not come to that. Once we track down the murderer, the press will have other stories to run. And the bosses will be too busy resting on their laurels to remember you.’
The Singapore School of Villainy Page 22