THE GIRL IN THE WINDOW (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 4)

by Jake Needham

  “If you had been where you were supposed to be, he would probably still be alive. Does that mean you’re to blame?”

  The SAC’s shoulders rose and fell in a very small shrug.

  Tay looked away and studied a spot on the wall. For a long time, no one said anything, but then Tay did.

  “That’s not fair, sir.”

  The SAC took a deep breath and blew it out. “Yeah, I know it isn’t fair, but you ought to get used to hearing it. I’m not going to be the last person to say it to you.”

  Tay continued to stare at the wall, but he nodded slowly.

  “Let’s set that aside for the moment, Sam. The immediate problem is the investigation of Robbie’s death since we can’t find anybody who remembers the men you described being at the Fortuna Hotel.”

  “The desk clerk says he doesn’t remember them?”

  “He doesn’t say anything. He had some kind of family issue and isn’t in Singapore.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “The man we talked to at the hotel doesn’t know.”

  “And you believe that?”

  “We have no reason not to.”

  Tay stood up and walked to the window. He folded his arms and looked at the city.

  “ISD was there, sir. ISD has Suparman.”

  “We can’t find anybody who has seen Suparman or has any idea where he is.”

  “God dammit, yes, you can. You know two people. Sergeant Lee and I both told you we saw him there and that ISD took him away.”

  The SAC pursed his lips. “This is difficult for me, Sam. It isn’t a question of whether I believe you–”

  “That’s exactly how it sounds to me.”

  “It isn’t a question of whether I believe you,” the SAC repeated with exaggerated patience,” but you can’t ask me to accuse ISD of something like this without corroborating evidence. You’ve made your views about them well known. If we accused them of protecting Suparman on nothing more than your word, it would look like a personal vendetta and nothing more.”

  “You have Sergeant Lee’s word as well.”

  “I don’t think anyone would see that as genuine corroboration.”

  “If ISD wasn’t there, and Suparman wasn’t there, then who the hell shot Robbie Kang?”

  “I said we had a problem with the investigation of Kang’s death and, in your usual way, Sam, you have put your finger right on it.”

  “Either Suparman shot Robbie, or ISD shot him. Or hell, sir, maybe you think I shot him.”

  “Don’t even joke about that, Sam.”

  Tay shook his head and looked away.

  “To have any chance to put Suparman in the frame,” the SAC said, “you need at least one credible witness. Somebody not connected with you who saw pretty much the same thing you did.”

  “Nobody else saw what happened in the hotel but the desk clerk and the five ISD guys.”

  “ISD says none of their people were there, and the desk clerk is on leave.”

  “Don’t you think that’s awfully convenient?”

  “People do take vacation time when they have family issues, Sam. That’s not evidence of some vast conspiracy.”

  The SAC rose to his feet. He stood there awkwardly for a moment waiting for Tay to say something, but Tay remained silent. Finally he sighed and walked to the door. Putting his hand on the knob, he looked back over his shoulder.

  “Will you think about it, Sam?”

  “Think about what?”

  “Retirement. Or at the very least, taking that promotion I suggested.”

  “You want me out of CID, don’t you, sir?”

  “I want to avoid any embarrassment to this department, Sam. I don’t know how we’re going to conclude this investigation. If you’re going to continue to insist one of the world’s most wanted terrorists killed Robbie Kang, and say without a shred of evidence to support you that ISD is protecting him and knows where he is, it is going to embarrass this department.”

  “That’s what’s happened, chief.”

  “Then find yourself a witness. Or take one of my suggestions.”

  “And what are you going to do if I don’t do either of those things?”

  The SAC stood quietly for a moment looking at Tay. Eventually his eyes drifted to the window and he appeared to contemplate the city beyond it.

  “Please don’t make me decide, Sam.”

  The SAC turned and left Tay’s office without another word.

  When Sergeant Lee came into Tay’s office, Tay was sitting at his desk with a pensive expression on his face. He was leaning forward, his elbow resting on the desktop, and his chin propped on his fist. He made Lee think of a slightly overweight version of Rodin’s The Thinker.

  Lee sat in one of the chairs in front of Tay’s desk and waited. After a moment, Tay leaned back in his chair and gave Lee the condensed book version of what the SAC had told him.

  “I don’t understand, sir.” Lee shifted her weight in the chair. “The SAC is saying he doesn’t believe that Suparman was at that hotel?”

  “He’s saying he’s not going to say Suparman was there and accuse ISD of protecting him without having something other than our word for it.”

  “Then who shot Robbie Kang?”

  Tay shrugged.

  “But we saw what happened, sir.”

  “Not really. We saw a man we think was Suparman who appeared to be wounded, and we saw Sergeant Kang’s body. We didn’t see the shots fired. All we really know is what that ISD guy who seemed to be in charge told us.”

  “Oh, come on, sir. There’s no other reasonable explanation.”

  “The SAC says there’s no evidence that ISD has Suparman. They say they don’t.”

  “My God!” Lee snapped. “We’ve told him they have Suparman and that ought to be good enough for him.”

  “Maybe it ought to be, but it isn’t.” Tay folded his arms. “What we need is a witness.”

  “You think somebody saw the shooting, sir?”

  Tay had been thinking off and on about the girl in the window for days. He still didn’t have any idea what she had been doing there, but he was convinced it hadn’t been a coincidence she was watching the Fortuna Hotel that day. He knew she hadn’t seen the shooting, but she had seen everything else. After they ran down the hotel clerk, they would look for her as well, but he thought it might be too soon to go into that with Lee.

  “Other than the ISD guys and us,” Tay said instead, “there were only three people in that hotel who saw anything: Suparman, his sister, and the hotel clerk. Suparman is in the wind, his sister was run over by a truck in the middle of Serangoon Road, and the hotel clerk is supposedly on leave.”

  “So what? We just get the hotel clerk back. When he tells the SAC those guys brought Suparman into the hotel and claimed to be cops, everybody will know ISD is lying.”

  Tay leaned forward and rested his forearms on his desk.

  “The hotel doesn’t know where the desk clerk is.”

  Lee looked confused. Tay knew exactly how she felt.

  “The desk clerk told the hotel he had some kind of family issue. He might not even be in Singapore now.”

  “What? Bullshit.” Lee shook her head. “Just ask Immigration to check their exit records. That will tell us where he went.”

  “And then what? Say, he flew to Los Angeles. What do we do then?”

  Sergeant Lee shook her head and looked away. “This stinks, sir.”

  “Can you bring your car in tomorrow?”

  “My car? Yes, sir. But why do you want me to?”

  “We’ve got things to do and I don’t want to use a pool car. Some of them have GPS trackers, and right now I don’t trust anybody.”

  “Where are we going, sir?”

  “We’re going to find ourselves a witness, Sergeant. Or we’re going to die trying.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t put it that way, sir.”

  Tay nodded. He could see why Lee thought it had been a poor choice of wor
ds on his part, but he couldn’t think of a better description of exactly where they stood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  WHEN TAY AND Lee walked into the lobby of the Fortuna Hotel the next morning, they didn’t recognize the man behind the registration desk. The clerk on the day Robbie Kang had been killed had been an elderly Chinese-looking man who was almost bald and wore rimless glasses with thick lenses. This man appeared to be in his thirties and looked vaguely Indian. He was very thin and had long, greasy-looking hair down to his shoulders.

  The man turned his head back and forth from Tay to Lee and his lower lip curled into a slight but unmistakable leer. “You want a room?”

  Tay took out his warrant card and held it a few inches in front of the man’s face. The leer vanished and was quickly replaced by a look of apprehension.

  Singaporeans didn’t like talking to the police. Growing up in Singapore, no one told you the policeman was your friend. Mostly you were told to obey the police without question and to avoid them whenever possible. When two cops, one of whom was holding his warrant card right in front of your face, confronted you, nothing good could possibly come of it.

  “I am so sorry,” the man stammered. “I saw you come into the lobby together and I thought…well, I suppose I shouldn’t have, but—”

  “Shut up,” Tay said in a quiet voice.

  The man shut up.

  “Who are you?”

  “Rajeev, sir. Rajeev Chandran.”

  “Are you the manager?”

  “No, sir. I am just the desk clerk.”

  “How long have you worked here, Mr. Chandran?”

  “Oh please, sir. Please call me Rajeev.”

  “How long have you worked here, Mr. Chandran?”

  The desk clerk swallowed and looked down. “Almost a year, sir.”

  “Were you on duty three days ago?”

  “No, sir. I had a week off. Yesterday was my first day back.”

  “Did you hear about what happened here three days ago?”

  The clerk hesitated. His eyes flicked back and forth between Tay and Lee as if it would somehow help him to divine the meaning behind Tay’s question.

  “Three days ago?” the clerk stammered. “I wasn’t here three days ago and I don’t—”

  “Two men were shot here three days ago,” Tay snapped. “Are you telling me you know nothing about it?”

  “Men shot? Here?” The clerk drew back and his eyes widened. “Oh no, you must be mistaken, sir.”

  The clerk’s surprise appeared genuine to Tay, but how could that be? Surely that had to be the most exciting thing that ever happened at the Fortuna Hotel, and the desk clerk, even if he hadn’t been on duty then, hadn’t heard anything about it?

  “Is the manager here?” Tay asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “I do not know, sir.”

  “When is he usually here?”

  “He only comes in now and then, sir. Mostly when one of us is not here. Like last week. Mr. Wang worked for me when I was away.”

  “Mr. Wang?” Tay asked.

  “Yes, sir. Mr. Robert Wang. He is the manager.”

  “You’re saying Mr. Wang was here three days ago working in your place?”

  The desk clerk nodded eagerly, happy to have at last provided Tay with an answer he seemed to like.

  “Does Mr. Wang wear glasses?” Tay asked the clerk.

  “Why, yes, he does. With very thick lenses.”

  The clerk made circles with the thumbs and forefingers of both hands and held them in front of his eyes as if Tay might not be familiar with the concept of glasses.

  “And he’s a rather elderly Chinese man?”

  “Oh yes, sir. That is him. You have met Mr. Wang?”

  “I think we have.”

  “How can we contact Mr. Wang?” Lee asked the clerk.

  The man slowly shook his head. “I do not know, ma’am.”

  “Oh come on. Are you telling us you have no way to reach the manager of this hotel? What would you do in an emergency?”

  “I would telephone Mr. Wang.”

  “So telephone him.”

  The clerk went back to slowly shaking his head. “I fear I cannot. When I came back to work, Mr. Wang told me he was going away. He said he could not be reached for at least two weeks.” The clerk seemed to stand a little straighter. “He told me I was in charge until he got back.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “I do not know, ma’am. He said there had been a death in his family. I thought his family was here in Singapore, but perhaps not.”

  “Give me the telephone number you have for him,” Lee said.

  The clerk pulled out a drawer and hunted through it. He found a white card and read a telephone number from it. Lee punched the number into her mobile phone, and Tay and the clerk watched Lee in silence until she took the phone away from her ear and pushed the disconnect button.

  “No answer, sir.”

  “Do you have a home address for Mr. Wang?” Tay asked the clerk.

  “Uh…perhaps I can find one somewhere.”

  The clerk bent down, and Tay and Lee listened as he opened and closed drawers underneath the reception desk and poked through their contents. Finally he straightened up, waving a sheet of paper. Lee reached out, plucked it from his fingers, and scanned the contents.

  “It’s a letter about vacation pay,” she said. “It’s addressed to an apartment in the Woodlands HDB estate.”

  Tay looked back at the clerk. “Is this Mr. Wang’s home address?”

  The clerk nodded.

  Tay took a business card from his shirt pocket and found a pen on the check-in desk. He wrote on the back of the card and then pushed it across the desk to the clerk.

  “That’s the number for my mobile phone. If you hear from Mr. Wang, I expect you to call me at once.”

  The clerk picked up the card and began nodding so vigorously he made Tay think of a bobblehead doll.

  “Yes, sir, I will call if I hear from Mr. Wang. You can count on me, sir.”

  “If you do not call, I will come back here and arrest you and you will go to prison for the rest of your life. Do you understand?”

  The clerk increased the velocity of his nodding to the point that Lee thought his head might pop off his neck. She turned around and pushed out through the lobby doors before she laughed out loud. Tay pointed his index finger at the clerk and followed. As the door swung closed, they could hear the clerk frantically promising them undying cooperation.

  “Oh yes, sir, I will call. You can be certain of that, sir. I will not let you down. I am a most reliable man who is loyal to our country and I know that—”

  When the closing door finally cut the clerk off, Tay allowed himself a small smile. Sometimes it was good to be a policeman in Singapore.

  The Woodlands HDB estate is almost all the way out to the narrow Straits of Johor that separates Singapore from Malaysia. Lee drove and Tay sat looking out the window. It took less than an hour to drive to the Woodlands from the part of Singapore in which he lived, but as far as he was concerned they might as well have been traveling to another planet.

  Singaporeans had a particular expression for those parts of their tiny island state that, like the Woodlands, were far removed from the tourist and financial districts most of the world thought of when they thought of Singapore. It was called the heartland, and that was an expression Tay loathed. He thought it was sad to have to come up with a meaningless platitude to make people feel better about places that were cheerless and sometimes even downright creepy.

  A government agency called the Housing Development Board had been relentlessly throwing up pre-packaged villages all over Singapore for as long as Tay could remember. Now something like eighty percent of the country’s population lived in government-built housing. Every one of the HDB estates looked more or less the same. They were immaculate, of course. Since this was Singapore, the buildings were a
ll in good repair, the walls were all freshly painted, and the landscaping was in perfect order thanks to an army of Indian and Bangladeshi workers permitted into the country on short-term work visas to do the manual labor Singaporeans wouldn’t do.

  No matter how hard the bureaucrats worked to dress up the HDB estates, however, they still amounted to nothing more than clumps of nearly identical apartment towers pushed together around some community facilities. Every estate had a mosque, a Chinese temple, a Christian church, a community club, a coffee shop, a mini-mart, and a school. What the estates did not have was the feeling that any real, actual life was lived in them. They were not places where the daily stuff of bona fide human existence thrived. The make-believe villages of the heartland had nearly everything, Tay thought, except a heart. He hated them.

  The dreary monotony of the Woodlands HDB estate even extended to its street names. Sergeant Lee turned off Woodlands Avenue at a Shell Station and followed Woodlands Street to Woodlands Drive.

  They passed building after building, each about a dozen stories tall and all absolutely identical in color and design. In what Tay assumed was a desperate effort to introduce some degree of novelty, the balconies of the buildings had been painted in varying shades of gray, yellow, and green, but if the idea behind either the colors or the apparent randomness of their distribution was to make the buildings appear more cheerful, the effort had been an abysmal failure. There was nothing cheerful about the relentless ranks of buildings that lined both sides of the road.

  When they passed Woodlands Circle, Tay pointed into the cul-de-sac. “Robbie and I had a case down there once.”

  Lee didn’t know what Tay was talking about, but she nodded politely.

  Once he had brought up the subject, Tay wished he hadn’t.

  “It wasn’t important, Sergeant,” Tay muttered. “Never mind.”

  Even now it was difficult for him to think about that case. When he and Kang had entered the apartment and found the body of a man stretched out on the floor, almost immediately Tay had been seized by a conviction he was somehow connected to the man. He had never met him, he was certain of that, but the sense of some link was overwhelming.

  Finding that man’s body eventually spun Tay off on a journey of memory that had led him all the way back to a father who had died almost forty years before, a father Tay hardly remembered. It was not a trip he wanted to make again. Ever.