For The Death Of Me ob-9

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Nothing. I sat down beside him and spoke to him, till I realised something was up. Then he fell forward and gobbed blood all over me.’

  ‘Don’t go and look or anything, but there’s a long-bladed knife on the floor under the table. You didn’t touch it when you fell off the bench, did you?’

  ‘No. At least I don’t remember touching it. I was too busy hauling ass out of that booth, just like Jackie out of the car in Dallas.’

  ‘I’ll leave it there in that case. If your prints do show up on it we can explain them away by saying you grabbed it by accident when you hit the floor. If they don’t, someone else’s might; although I doubt it. This is a real pro job. Someone just slid into the booth beside him, spiked him, dropped the blade and slid out again without anyone noticing.’ He glanced at the crowd. ‘He could still be here. She for that matter, this didn’t need strength, just skill and the ability to get a blade past the doormen. . and as we’ve seen it isn’t too difficult to get something past them.’

  He stopped, as a commotion at the door indicated the arrival of the police. ‘Go along with what I say here, Oz,’ he hissed, ‘no messing.’

  There were three of them, a sergeant and two corporals, one a woman. The manager stepped forward, but Dylan beat him to it. ‘Are you guys Criminal Investigation Branch?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ the three-striper replied. ‘We’re Patrol: we were told this was a sudden death.’

  ‘It’s that all right, but it’s murder; a Triad hit, I would say.’ He didn’t pause, didn’t give the man time to think about anything. ‘Call your CI people at once, and keep that area of the bar sterile.’ The sergeant nodded, then opened his mouth as if to ask who was giving the fucking orders. But Dylan cut him off again. ‘One more thing, and this is very important. Have someone contact Superintendent Tan, wherever he is, and tell him that Martin Dyer is here. That’s Martin Dyer,’ he spelled it out, ‘and tell him that he’s here, looking after Mr Oz Blackstone.’

  The copper looked at me for the first time, and his eyes widened; the female corporal had already clocked me, knew who I was. ‘Sah!’ he barked, and reached for his radio.

  I pulled Dylan to one side. ‘Who is Superintendent Tan?’ I hissed at him. ‘And who, the fuck, is Martin Dyer?’

  25

  He was, of course. It was the name, the new identity, they had given him after the Amsterdam debacle, when he had come back from the dead and had been more or less conscripted as an Interpol agent. He reckoned that calling him Dyer had been someone’s idea of a joke.

  Superintendent Tan Keng Seng (known universally as Jimmy) was, he told me, the head of the state-security section of the Singapore Police, the sort that every force has but doesn’t like to talk about. He worked in association with his opposite numbers in the neighbouring countries and with various international agencies. He reeled off a list that made my eyes water: Interpol, the American DEA, the CIA, occasionally the FBI, (apparently the Americans didn’t share information with each other unless ordered to), our own Secret Intelligence Service and the Russian SVR.

  Wherever the superintendent had been, getting word to him must have been given top priority for he arrived before the detectives. He walked in like God; he had a presence that parted crowds like the bow of a ship cuts through water. He was aged somewhere in his fifties, with baggy eyes and a yellow complexion. His grey-flecked brown hair was parted roughly on one side, and he was dressed all in black, a collarless silk shirt with slacks and slip-on shoes.

  He stared at Dylan for a long time, then ushered both of us ahead of him into the area that had been sealed off. ‘Jesus, Martin,’ he said, when we were out of earshot, ‘they told me you were dead for real, that you’d been wasted in that big drug operation in Bangkok. What for the hell you show yourself here? It’s crazy, man. If these Triad boys find out you’re alive, they’ll work out who set them up. They chop you to pieces. What you do now, private security for Mr Blackstone here?’

  ‘I’m a friend of Mr Blackstone, Jimmy. My name is Benedict Luker now, and I’m an author. I’m here because Oz has private business, and he’s asked me to come along to help him.’

  ‘Tell me rest later.’ He looked towards the booth. ‘What is this? Mr Blackstone’s shirt tells me that you know.’

  ‘His name is Lee Kan Tong,’ Dylan replied, ‘known as Tony Lee, when he was in London. He’s the head of a theatre company called the Heritage, but our information is that he’s a member of a Triad society, in Singapore.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Tan. ‘I get it. He saw you and recognised you, so you killed him. Don’t worry, son. The autopsy will say it’s a heart-attack.’

  ‘No, Jimmy, that’s not what happened. Oz, tell him the story.’

  And so I explained to the most powerful secret policeman in South East Asia, that I, one of the most recognisable faces in the Western world, had come to his country on a fool’s mission to get my brother-in-law out of a situation which now, in the light of all that had happened, looked very trivial indeed. I told him I had come to meet Lee’s girlfriend, not him, and I showed him the fifty grand in the knapsack. ‘But he turned up instead. He’s probably killed her already, and thought he’d collect fifty grand from me for Harvey’s photographs. The big problem for him is that the Triads had him under observation instead. My guess is that they thought he’d come to sell me Maddy’s pictures of their top guy, and they got to him first, maybe in a way they hoped would incriminate me.’

  ‘And they fucking would do that,’ Jimmy Tan exclaimed. ‘We know just about everything about Triad in Singapore, but for one thing. We don’t know who top man is, not his name, not what he looks like, not nothing. These boys don’t ride in Popemobile waving to crowds, although they have same influence in Chinese communities; they ride in cars with windows blacked out. This one, this Lee Kan Tong, I don’t know, but if he’s new back from London, that would explain why. Let’s see what he’s got on him.’

  Two more police had arrived; I guessed they were the detectives. Tan shouted to them, ‘Clear the place. Get everybody outside, take names and addresses, and see ID, then let them go. Quick now.’ He watched as his orders were obeyed.

  As soon as the bar was cleared, he turned. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got,’ he exclaimed, then walked over to the booth, reached in and grabbed the body under the armpits. ‘Wait,’ he muttered, as if he was talking to it, then looked over his shoulder at me. ‘Mr Blackstone, you a big guy and you got blood on you already. Can you do this?’

  ‘You mean haul him out?’ What about scene-of-crime technicians and such? I used to be a copper too, I should tell you.’

  ‘But now you a movie star you don’t want to get your hands dirty?’

  Mockery has always got to me. ‘Shift,’ I told him, then leaned over and pulled Tony Lee’s body out from the bench seat, awkwardly, because I really didn’t want to get any more of the gore on me. The trouble with blood is that you never know where it’s been, or what’s in it. He hadn’t been a big man; even dead and flopping he didn’t weigh all that much, so I didn’t have any trouble holding him up. ‘What do you want me to do with him?’ I asked.

  ‘Put him on the pool table.’

  I hefted him across to the blue baize; it wasn’t full size but it looked to be just about big enough. It was racked for a game and Mike had to sweep the balls into the pockets before I could lay him out. As soon as I had, Jimmy Tan stepped past me and began to search him. He found keys, to a BMW, and I guessed to his home, in the right trouser pocket, and some change in the left. The inside pockets of the jacket held a wallet, stuffed with Sing dollars and Malaysian ringit, and a Singaporean passport. A compact Beretta Cheetah automatic sat in a holster strapped to his right ankle. But nowhere did the superintendent find any film or prints.

  ‘Whoever killed him came for pictures and he got them. He’s in for big surprise when he looks at them.’ Tan laughed. ‘He expect top man in Triad, he get Scotsman’s bollocks. You no worry now,’ he said to me. ‘Y
our brother-in-law is okay. They won’t understand those, they’ll throw them away.’

  But I was worried, and I’d continue to be worried until I knew for certain what had happened to Maddy January. It worked on two levels: I didn’t trust that lady as long as there was breath in her body, and yet, having met her, I found that I wanted to reassure myself that there still was.

  ‘I need more assurance than that,’ I replied. ‘I still need to know what happened to the woman.’

  Tan shrugged. ‘What matter? Fuck her, she’s in the sea.’

  ‘The Triads will want to make sure as well,’ I pointed out. ‘If she’s still alive, and maybe still has the pictures, she’s a threat.’

  ‘Then let them have her, and for sure she won’t be a problem any more.’

  ‘And you still won’t have identified the top banana.’

  ‘True,’ he conceded. ‘What you wanna do? Got any ideas?’

  ‘I want to see where this guy lived. If we find her there, dead, okay; if not, maybe there’ll be something that’ll give us a pointer to where she might have gone.’

  Jimmy Tan picked up the keys from the pool table. . that cover was never going to be the same again. . and tossed them in the air. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I can find out his address no problem. . and we have no problem getting in either.’

  He grinned at me. ‘Now I take you back to your hotel, but first we better fit you into one of those T-shirts on show behind bar. You can’t turn up for your girl in that one.’

  I stared at him: secret fucking policemen. ‘How did you know about that?’ I demanded.

  He laughed out loud. ‘Mr Blackstone, you forget: you made your date on television.’

  26

  Fuck! Live television! That stuff gets everywhere these days; no bookie in the world was going to give me odds against Susie switching on Chris Tarrant one night, and looking at footage of me trashing Mai Bong and his show, and picking up the beauty in the front row into the bargain.

  Confession may or may not be good for the soul, but it can be a wise precaution. I decided that as soon as I got back I’d phone Susie and fill her in on every detail of my exciting evening, including my fixing up a meet with Marie Lin to talk a deal about a part in the movie of Blue Star Falling.

  That’s what I’d planned, honest; Susie would believe me. . of course she would.

  It was eleven thirty by the time Mike and I got back to the Stamford. It hadn’t occurred to me for a moment that Marie would still be there, but she was, at a table in the foyer bar, close to the waitress station. I nodded good night to Dylan and headed towards her.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, as I approached, ‘what are you doing? A woman on her own at this time of night? There’s flight crew coming in and out of this place all the time. You don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.’

  She laughed quietly, as if she was amused by my concern. ‘They only get the wrong idea if I give it to them, and I won’t do that. I waited because your friend said there had been trouble at the Next Page.’ She looked me up and down, as if she was checking that I had no bits missing. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine, honest.’

  ‘What happened?’

  I had hoped not to get into that with her. ‘A man died there. We had to wait for the police to come.’

  She frowned. It was the first time I had seen her without a smile on her face; it didn’t make her any less beautiful. ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘The policeman who came said it looked like a heart-attack. ’ I hoped that Sammy Grant hadn’t told her anything different.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she murmured. ‘What a pity. Who was he? Do you know?’

  ‘It was the man I was looking for this morning at Riverside, Lee Kan Tong.’

  ‘Ah, did you go there to meet him?’

  ‘No. I was surprised to see him there.’ I gazed around, the place was virtually deserted. ‘I guess the City Space will be closing soon,’ I said.

  ‘I think midnight,’ Marie replied.

  ‘I have my own bar, and it’s almost as high. Would you like to come up?’ I had to go up anyway: I was still carrying fifty grand US in a knapsack.

  ‘That depends,’ she murmured, ‘on what I’m coming up for.’

  I dug out my wallet from my pocket and showed her the photo of Susie and the children. ‘Does that answer your question?’

  The smile was back. ‘Not really, but I’ll come.’

  The suite wasn’t as gaudy as some I’ve had, but it was pretty comfortable. The evening chambermaid had been in, the lighting was dimmed, the folding doors that led to the sleeping area were open, and the cover on the Olympic-size bed had been turned down. Marie took a seat on the sofa in the sitting room, while I put the cash back into the safe, poured two glasses of dry white wine and pulled back the thin gauze curtain to give us an uninterrupted view of the city.

  ‘Where do you live?’ she asked, as I sat beside her.

  ‘I live in a few places; at the moment my family are in our house in Monaco.’

  ‘Monaco?’

  ‘Monte Carlo.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I have heard of it: the fairy-tale kingdom, the place where Grace Kelly went.’

  ‘The place where Grace Kelly died. I saw their graves a few days ago, hers and Prince Rainier’s. They’re in the cathedral, near the Grimaldi palace.’

  ‘My mother loved Hollywood movies,’ she said. ‘I think that’s why I’m an actress. She told me the story of the beautiful American actress who became a princess. I thought it was wonderful. . that they lived happily ever after.’

  ‘But they didn’t,’ I had to point out. ‘Nobody lives happily ever after. She died in a car accident and he spent the rest of his rich and powerful fairy-tale life grieving for her. Now their bones are under two slabs behind the altar. Where their spirits are. . well, that’s the part we hope for, that’s what faith and religion and all that stuff is about. Forget about ever after, Marie, just live happily when you can.’

  ‘You sound cynical.’

  ‘I’m not a cynic, I’m a realist. Up until six years ago, I was a dreamer; I accepted all that romantic stuff too. Now I know the truth: in life there are more horror stories than fairy-tales.’

  She slid her hand into mine; I don’t remember ever feeling the touch of softer skin. ‘What happened to make you believe that?’ she murmured.

  ‘I can’t talk about that, not any more. I’ve had a second chance, though, and I’m going to protect it. Anyone who tries to threaten my family will have to deal with me and, when I’m away, with a man called Conrad. They shouldn’t, though; either one of us would kill them if we had to.’

  ‘It must be very scary to be loved by you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re so intense. You aren’t a bit like they make you seem in the movies.’

  ‘But scary?’

  ‘What you feel is so strong. For a moment, I had a flash of what it would be like to be your enemy; it wasn’t nice.’

  I gave her hand a gentle squeeze. ‘I’m sorry,’ I told her. ‘I shouldn’t let you think of me that way. I saw someone die tonight, just three hours ago; I guess it’s affected me.’

  ‘Then stop thinking about it.’ She touched my face gently, turned it towards her and kissed me. It was very gentle, and very tender, and it went on for quite a long time. When she broke off, I felt soothed, softened, my hard, jagged edges rubbed away, and the night didn’t feel quite so dark.

  She laid her head on my shoulder and we looked at the lights of Singapore; there were still monsters out there, I knew. One of them had shoved a blade through Tony Lee’s heart, and would get away with it, because that’s the way things are sometimes. But with Marie, in that room, I felt as if I was in a beast-free zone. There was something about her that seemed to build around me the same kind of invisible security forcefield that being with Susie and the kids gives me. They’re my island of tranquillity and at that moment I needed them badly: they were far away, but Marie was
there, and her goodness was hauling me back from the places I’d been since I’d met Maddy January in Fort Siloso.

  Without her being aware of it, she was reminding me of something I knew, that monsters threaten us on two levels: first, because they are what they are, but also, because when we get down there where they live and tackle them on their own terms, as sometimes we must, then all too easily, without realising it, we can become like them.

  27

  She stayed with me until after two. I think I dozed off for part of the time, and maybe she did too; eventually I asked her if she wanted to go home. Maybe I was really asking her if she wanted to sleep with me, although honestly, I don’t think I was. In any event, she said that she should, so I saw her to the elevator and down into the lobby.

  There were no taxis at the rank outside, not unreasonably since it was the middle of the night, so we walked round to North Bridge Road, where I could flag one down. ‘Are you working tomorrow?’ I asked, as we waited. ‘Will I find you at the theatre if I’m free for lunch?’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’m never there on Mondays. Tomorrow I have to see about auditions: there are some productions coming up and I hope to get work.’

  ‘I’ll have a part for you,’ I said, ‘once I get back to work. I’ve bought the rights to a book; I don’t know for sure when we’ll make the movie, not this year, but probably next. Meantime, if you really want to leave Singapore and can sort out a US visa, I can find you some other work.’

  ‘But you’ve never seen me act, Oz.’

  ‘Miles Grayson had never seen me act either, before he cast me in my first movie. He took a chance and it paid off. I’ll do the same with you.’

  She looked me dead in the eye. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I like you.’

  ‘You don’t just want to get into my pants?’

  ‘No, but could I, if I did?’