The Singapore School of Villainy

by Shamini Flint

  ‘You must be feeling terrible,’ remarked Singh. Her face was scrubbed clean of make-up and an older-looking, careworn woman glared at him. Despite this, thought Singh, she was more attractive now. In the absence of her customary paint job, the delicacy of her features and the character in her face were more clearly visible. She reminded him of Chelsea Liew, the ageing supermodel in his last major case.

  Maria propped herself up on an elbow and said angrily, ‘I just want to go home to my children.’

  ‘That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Unfortunately, you’re going to be sent to prison for a long time. Blackmail just isn’t very popular with sentencing judges.’

  Maria collapsed back down onto her pillow. Singh remembered that Jagdesh Singh’s life had been snuffed out no more than a hundred yards down the corridor in this same hospital. He knew he was being cruel to threaten this woman with separation from her children. But he had to find out what had happened in that apartment. Besides, if he didn’t get to the root of things pretty soon, Superintendent Chen would kick him off the case and this woman would have a far less sympathetic audience.

  He continued, watching her face carefully, ‘In fact, I believe the prosecution services are looking at charging you with Reggie’s killing too.’

  ‘Ai Leen shot him!’

  ‘Only because you were trying to blackmail them. A charge of “culpable homicide not amounting to murder” might stick.’

  Her eyes were closed and he noticed that her lids were bluish with fatigue.

  ‘I guess you’re used to being away from the children.’

  There was still no response from the woman in the bed.

  Singh’s tone was almost pleading. ‘Look, Maria. I need to find out what happened. If you tell me, I’ll do my best to protect you. I can’t promise you anything. There’s nothing my superiors would like better than to pin the murder of Mark Thompson on you or put you on the first plane out of the country. I don’t believe you killed him. I don’t think you’d have taken the risk of being put away for murder – you love your kids too much. But I need to know the truth.’

  For a long moment, there was absolute silence in the room except for the wheezing of the air conditioning. Singh held his breath, hoping that Maria Thompson would see that he was her last hope to avoid jail, and perhaps even the death sentence, if a jury found the circumstantial evidence against her for the death of her husband compelling.

  ‘I needed money,’ she said quietly. ‘The insurance people – they say they cannot pay me yet.’

  Singh nodded his big head but did not interrupt her.

  ‘Ai Leen is a slut. She sleep with Reggie so that they make her a partner. I call him and ask for money or I tell the whole world what they do.’

  ‘How did you know about it?’ asked Singh.

  She looked surprised at his lack of reaction to her incendiary information. ‘Mark told me – I think he hear them talking about it.’

  ‘Was that what the meeting was about? You know, the partners’ meeting just before he was killed?’

  Maria was sitting up in bed now, the blankets tucked up to her waist. She shook her head, her brow creased with puzzlement. ‘I don’t know, I don’t think so. Mark said he was going to ask them both to resign quietly because he did not want to spoil the law firm’s reputation.’

  Singh scowled – that was actually plausible. Mark might well have preferred to keep a lid on the bedroom shenanigans of two of his partners while quietly turfing them out.

  Maria looked sheepish. ‘I also told Reggie I saw him at the office the night of the murder.’

  ‘Did you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I just wanted to frighten him.’

  ‘Do you think Reggie or Ai Leen – or both of them – killed Mark?’

  He watched her eyes. He could see the internal debate raging as she weighed her options, trying to decide where her interests lay.

  At last, she said, meeting his eyes, her voice regretful but determined – and, Singh thought, honest, ‘Ai Leen said that she not kill Mark. Reggie also said the same thing.’

  ‘And you believed them?’

  ‘She was going to shoot me – what for they lie?’

  What for they lie indeed, wondered Singh.

  ‘Reggie Peters was such a close friend of yours – and you put a bullet through him. It must be devastating for you.’ There was a heavy thread of sarcasm in Singh’s voice.

  She turned her head away and stared at the white walls of the interview room at the police station, refusing to look at the Sikh inspector. ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘A very convenient “accident”!’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Her tone was wary.

  ‘We know about you and Reggie,’ said Singh cheerfully.

  ‘You’ve already made your unwarranted insinuations about our relationship. I’ve told you that we are – we were – just friends.’

  ‘Then how do you explain this?’ Singh pulled a photocopy of Ai Leen’s resignation letter out of his pocket with the flourish of a magician producing a rabbit out of a hat. He grinned at her broadly, as if he expected admiring applause.

  She practically snatched the document from his hands. She held it between her thumb and forefinger as if she was handling something unclean – and in a sense she was, thought Singh. It was evidence of such thoroughly reprehensible behaviour that it had shocked even a jaded old policeman like himself.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘It’s a fake…’

  Singh had to admire this woman. She was as hard as the nails gripping the handle of her handbag. He would get nothing from her that he did not prise loose.

  ‘Our technical staff have already found the original on the hard drive of your desktop computer.’ Corporal Fong did have his uses, thought Singh. That was the sort of evidence he might have missed.

  She decided to brazen it out. ‘So? I made a mistake. I’ll probably lose my job over it. What does it have to do with the police?’

  ‘A man with whom you were having an illicit relationship dies by your hand – I think the police have every right to be interested.’

  She sighed. ‘It really was an accident.’

  ‘You actually intended to kill Maria?’

  Her head snapped up – she was not going to be trapped that easily. ‘Of course not, I just wanted to scare her, so that she would abandon the blackmail attempt.’

  ‘How did Maria know about your plan to sleep your way to the top?’

  She grimaced but did not bother to argue with his characterisation of her behaviour. ‘Mark told her, apparently he overheard a conversation between Reggie and me.’

  ‘That’s not really important, is it? The key point is that he knew. And you, or Reggie, killed him to protect your reputations and your jobs.’

  She looked at him through hooded eyes. ‘There’s no way you’re going to pin Mark’s murder on me.’

  Singh’s phone rang. ‘Saved by the bell,’ he remarked and stepped out of the room.

  The number had the prefix that indicated the call was from Kuala Lumpur.

  ‘Singh here,’ he answered curtly.

  ‘As good-tempered as ever, I see.’

  Singh grinned. ‘Inspector Mohammed, what can I do for you?’

  ‘Have you been kicked off the Force yet?’

  ‘Not yet…’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure it’s in the best interests of our two countries but I might be able to keep you in gainful employment for a little while longer!’

  Twenty-Five

  Annie’s hair was tied away from her face. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She looked much younger than Singh had ever noticed before, shorn of the uniform, make-up and manner of a corporate lawyer. Stephen had told him, when he had gone to the office looking for her, that Annie had resigned from Hutchinson & Rice – apparently unwilling to be associated with the tainted reputation of the law offices any more. He had
finally tracked her down at home, having coffee on the verandah with David Sheringham, their sunny mood dampened by the unexpected presence of the fat policeman. Annie sat across from Singh and clutched David’s hand possessively. The contrast between her brown hand – a product of her parentage – and his tanned one was less a matter of colour than of tone, Singh noted with interest.

  She said, after she had served them all steaming cappuccinos, ‘I heard that you arrested Ai Leen for Mark’s murder!’

  He nodded. ‘I’m guessing it was some sort of conspiracy between the two of them – Ai Leen and Reggie – when they realised Mark knew their secret. She’s denying it, of course.’

  Annie gazed at the inspector with friendly brown eyes. ‘She’d be bound to do that,’ she pointed out. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

  Frown lines appeared in neat parallels on David’s forehead as if someone had drawn them in with a dark felt pen. ‘Are you sure it was them?’

  ‘I agree with Annie,’ said Singh comfortably. ‘Ai Leen will still be protesting her innocence to the gallows. She’s not the sort to give up or give in.’ He tapped his forehead with his forefinger. ‘After all, who else could it be?’

  ‘Quentin?’ asked Annie doubtfully. Her wrinkled nose lent her the air of someone reluctantly pointing out an alternative.

  ‘No motive,’ explained Singh.

  ‘What do you mean?’ demanded Annie. ‘What about the insider dealing to fund his drug habit?’

  ‘That wasn’t him,’ said Singh cheerfully, the curve of his lip matching the curve of his belly.

  Annie asked, and her voice was as calm as a windless day, ‘It was someone from Trans-Malaya then?’

  The girl had courage, thought Singh. She was trying to brazen it out – only a sudden rigidity in her body suggested that she was afraid.

  He said, ‘No – it was you.’

  Annie’s bruises from her altercation with Quentin were fading but they were thrown into stark relief by her sudden pallor. David’s hand tightened around Annie’s convulsively but Singh noted with interest that he did not look surprised.

  She faced the inspector with her jaw thrust out. ‘How dare you accuse me of such a thing?’

  ‘The Malaysian police tracked down a brokerage account in the name of one Colonel Nathan – your father,’ he added unnecessarily. ‘And it seems that he was very lucky, very clever or well furnished with inside information when it came to trading shares in Trans-Malaya.’

  Her head was bowed.

  Singh waited patiently for her next gambit. He had the greatest admiration for this woman’s ability to finesse the truth.

  ‘I had nothing to do with it. My father must have based his trades on our conversations. My God – I trusted him!’

  ‘Curiously, that’s exactly what he said. He tried very hard to protect you, you know.’

  She looked up at this, eyes wide. Her father’s willingness to sacrifice himself for her had caught her by surprise.

  ‘But there is no way that any supposed casual conversations would have contained the detailed information needed for the insider dealing,’ pointed out Singh. ‘You have, very carefully and very systematically, been using your inside knowledge to instruct your father to carry out various trades in the shares of Trans-Malaya for personal, illegal profit.’

  Annie’s head had dropped, a curtain of hair obscuring her features.

  The policeman added, ‘I won’t charge you with that crime. It’s not my remit. I just want to know for my own peace of mind.’ He sighed – a fat man with troubles. ‘You know how I hate loose ends.’

  Annie relaxed on hearing this and her hunched shoulders straightened slightly. But she still did not respond to the accusation.

  Inspector Singh asked, turning his attention to David, ‘How did you know?’ His voice had a petulant edge, as if they were schoolboy friends and one of them was keeping secrets.

  David held his gaze for a moment and then his eyes dropped. It was not an unexpected response. Singh had seen many a decent man discover that they could not – when push finally came to shove – lie to the authorities. At most, they could maintain an unhappy silence while regretting the chain of events that had led them to a place where extemporising or evasion were their only viable alternatives. Singh’s back curved like a bow. Extra folds emerged between his chest and stomach. It never ceased to amaze him what an honest man was prepared to do for a woman. And in the end, they were the only ones who got hurt.

  David addressed his answer, when he could finally find the words, to Annie. ‘I heard the end of your conversation with Quentin that night he attacked you…and if it wasn’t him insider dealing, it had to be you.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ Singh guessed that she knew the answer but wanted to hear it directly from David.

  David held up his hand so that they could both see their interlocking fingers. He smiled at her a little sadly. ‘I wanted to protect you.’

  ‘There’s more, isn’t there?’ Singh asked the question gently, his tone that of a kindly, elderly relative.

  Annie’s face was impassive, but Singh knew it was a mask so fragile that any hint of pressure would crack it like an eggshell – if he could find the right pressure point.

  She asked, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Murder!’

  David sat up, his movements wooden with distress. ‘What are you trying to say?’ he demanded.

  ‘That your girlfriend here killed Mark Thompson, and Jagdesh Singh.’

  Annie’s voice, however, was as close to normal as Singh had ever heard from a suspect accused of murder. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she snapped.

  David spoke, and his voice was the embodiment of fear. Fear for Annie? Fear of the truth? Singh was not sure. ‘But Annie wouldn’t kill anyone! That’s just nonsense.’

  If Singh noticed that the denials were being issued by David, not the woman who stood accused, he did not point it out.

  Instead he turned to Annie. ‘Tell us what happened,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  Singh sighed. It was a gentle sound tinged with genuine regret. He felt truly sorry that it was this girl; he would so much rather it had turned out to be one of the others. He knew he was being sentimental because Annie was female and young and beautiful and had her whole life ahead of her. But Singh was not about to shirk his duty. He understood what had led Annie to such terrible deeds but he could not excuse it.

  He said, ‘I can appreciate why you killed Mark – you were in a complete panic that the insider dealing had been found out. Mark insisted that the partnership had to know. It must have seemed, in that instant, that murder was the only solution. But I can’t forgive you for holding a pillow over Jagdesh Singh’s face. That was a cold-blooded, pre-meditated, cruel murder.’ He spat out the adjectives like an angry English teacher.

  She shook her head, unable to form words.

  ‘He was defenceless! In a coma.’

  The memory of the big man lying as still as the dead was crystal clear in his mind’s eye. Singh knew he would carry the burden of Jagdesh’s death for a long, long time.

  David removed his hand from Annie’s. Perhaps he too was remembering the young homosexual lawyer who had died to keep a secret. It was a small gesture of rejection that Singh suspected would be the final straw to break this young woman’s defiance. Annie did not seek his hand again. She tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear. Her forefinger went to her mouth and she began to nibble on a nail. Singh recognised the gesture – he had seen it so many times over the last couple of weeks.

  He said evenly, ‘It hasn’t been that hard to find evidence, once we knew what we were looking for. Corporal Fong has been busy since we found out about the insider dealing. It seems you rang for a taxi from the phone box down the road from your home to take you to the office. You took another cab back, the driver has been traced – apparently you were agitated and wouldn’t respond to his overtures
of conversation. I’m not surprised, you had just killed a man. But then you pulled yourself together, had a shower, drove your car into the office and sent Quentin Holbrooke ahead to discover your dirty work.’

  There was no response from either Annie or David.

  ‘I suspected you at the beginning, you know. It was just that so many of your colleagues were determined to draw my attention to their own shortcomings, I started to doubt my own mind.’ Singh could not keep the complacent note out of his voice at his own genuine, albeit ignored, foresight.

  ‘What do you mean? How did you know?’ David was trying to create reasonable doubt. But his voice was too hesitant, it revealed his own reservations.

  ‘The log of Mark’s phone calls from the office the evening he was killed…’

  ‘What about them?’ demanded Annie, finally finding her voice.

  ‘Mark called you last.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It’s human nature to put off to the last the most unpleasant thing we have to do. When I saw the list of calls, I knew you must have murdered Mark. But there didn’t seem to be any motive. Your colleagues were competing for my attention – determined, it seemed, to prove themselves capable of murder. I wish I had arrested you then, not doubted my own conclusions. It would have saved Jagdesh Singh’s life.’

  Annie didn’t need to be an expert on human nature to know that David Sheringham believed she was a murderer. Singh had been convincing. The unlikely rotund self-proclaimed expert on human nature had persuaded a man she was beginning to care for deeply that she was a killer. He was sitting back in the chair, staring at her, the worry lines on his face underlining his dismay.

  He asked, and his voice was a whisper – as if he had to force the words out, did not really want an answer to his question – ‘You killed Jagdesh? My God! Annie, why?’

  She remembered how he had held her in his arms the afternoon of Jagdesh’s attempted suicide. She had known at that moment that she could not risk losing him, that she needed the murder investigation to be resolved quickly.