Crime Scene: Singapore

by Stephen Leather

  Conspiracy theories abounded. A police cover-up was a foregone conclusion. One batch of theories argued that some of the local police were actually themselves involved in the crime. Working with the two career criminals, they pulled off a nearly perfect crime—except for the witnesses who happened to see an undercover cop fleeing with his two cohorts.

  The police then decided to turn the two full-time criminals into sacrificial lambs and when they were comfortably eliminated, they declared the case solved. The missing money and valuables were then duly distributed amongst all the police involved in the conspiracy.

  But another popular theory had the police involved only on the margins of the crime. In this version, some high people in the British colonial administration were behind the killings, and planning and responsibility possibly stretched all the way back to the Colonial Office in London.

  This theory turned upon the most baffling of the five main victims, Hant von Herzberg. What was a German diplomat from a refined East Prussian background doing in a sleazy Chinatown club with three petty criminals and a Singapore mogul?

  As this narrative went on, it had the German travelling to Singapore with a tidy sum of money to buy cooperation. He was there to form a Fifth Column of paid traitors who would carry out acts of sabotage or organise an armed uprising against the British in the event of a war between Europe’s two superpowers. Any serious attacks or disruptions against the Empire in this important colony with its vital port would have to be a major distraction for the British and help the German military campaign in Europe.

  Hant von Herzberg arranged a meeting with the respected, well-connected Tan and the businessman brought in the three hoodlums who would actually organise and help carry out any attacks. The Nazi attaché came ready to provide a hefty down payment to Tan and his associates, but that money disappeared into the hands of the three government agents who abruptly ended the deal.

  There was one big stumbling block for this theory: there was clear evidence that Tan had himself withdrawn a substantial amount of cash earlier that day and this money had also disappeared. Why did he need all that cash? Was he making his own, parallel deal with the Nazis? There was no explanation for what happened to this money either. Those who favoured the British government conspiracy theory argued that this was just a windfall profit for those involved.

  Soon after the murders, the British authorities ordered the police to stymie all real investigations, find a couple of scapegoats, plant evidence on one of them and stamp ‘Solved’ on the crime. Or so the theory ran. But those who didn’t like this version had an inconvenient question for its proponents: Why didn’t the police find three scapegoats and close the case even more neatly?

  As Paul Haggerty wrote in one of his columns after the official police report was issued, ‘How fortunate we all are that our defenders of public safety can close a messy case like the St Lucy’s Day so neatly. Of course, they had some kind assistance from the second and ostensibly final killer, Mr Chang.

  ‘This Mr Chang was obviously so upset about the death of his mentor at the hands of the police that he made his way to a secluded area by the river, put a bullet through his own head, and then managed to cleverly dispose of the suicide weapon. Other than the fact that the gun he used to kill himself has not yet been found, the case has a perfectly neat and symmetrical solution. Bravo to our boys in the police department.’

  The case remained a hot topic of whispers and rumours over the next half year or so. Then war broke out in Europe, and people’s attention, even in Singapore, turned to other matters. Not long after that, the Japanese armies started sweeping down the Southeast Asian corridor towards Singapore. In February ’42, the colony itself fell to the Japanese and the St Lucy’s Day Massacre faded far into the background. By the end of the war, the killing of six innocent people seemed mild, even niggling, in comparison to what most people had seen during the war years. Before long, it was about as burning an issue as the mythical Bukit Merah killing. And much less well-known.

  * * *

  It might be safe to say that almost nobody thought about or talked about the St Lucy’s Massacre again for the next half century or so. That was when Rajesh Datt, a graduate student at the National University of Singapore, happened to come upon the story.

  Datt was grinding out his Ph.D. in History, with the subject of his dissertation Singapore’s social and cultural life in the run-up to the Second World War. The working title was ‘The Last Silly Seasons in Tropical Babylon’. His thesis adviser was, not surprisingly, unhappy with the title.

  In the course of his research, Datt started ploughing his way through contemporary news accounts of the massacre that night in Chinatown. As happened to so many of those who had actually lived through the period, Datt quickly became engrossed. Within a few weeks, the Massacre had grown from a footnote in his thesis to two paragraphs and then to several pages. And that was just from gleaning the newspapers, including the obituaries. But this was late 2006, and there were still large portions missing from the story.

  Despite the intervening decades, so many unanswered questions remained about the case, especially the first five victims and the twisted forces that had brought them together on that night. Reading every newspaper account he could dig up, Rajesh Datt started giving the case more attention than was advisable for his academic work.

  Two years into his dissertation, Datt was knotted in stress, a common ailment for doctoral candidates. He was having trouble sleeping. He had adopted a steady routine of drinking too much alcohol to slide him into some form of sleep and then too much caffeine to get him awake and alert the next day. Weekends were a kind of reprieve where he tried to make up his sleep debt. But that had become a rather huge debt.

  And what sleep he managed would often be racked by harsh dreams. Many of them found him on Keong Saik Road back in 1938. (Though, as will happen in dreams, the spectral landscapes were filled with a lot of ringing handphones, flat-screen TV monitors and other toys of our time.) In these dreams, he started seeing some of the victims, Rajesh’s friends would show up as witnesses or police officers, and he’d receive desperate phone calls from one of the victims during the shootings. In one dire dream, he walked into the club the morning after the Massacre and made his way through the rooms, all thickly coated with semi-dried blood. His shoes got stuck in the layers of blood and he had trouble moving.

  Even his graduate school friends, no slouches at overwork themselves, had started to get concerned. Datt had become edgy, easily distracted. Finally, his thesis advisor had called him into the office and ordered him to take a two-week break. He was to do no work on the dissertation, no work at all, until the end of that month.

  This was actually exactly what Rajesh wanted to hear. He needed someone, someone with authority, telling him to slow down, to put on the brakes for awhile. Still, his strange dreams continued even though he had suspended the actual studies.

  At this point, one of Datt’s grad school friends returned from a short stay in London. He’d brought back a number of classic DVDs with him, and he invited a coven of his closest mates, Rajesh included, to a Saturday night Classic Film Marathon.

  Bernard, the DVD man, carefully selected the order of the films and then proceeded to get up and give a short intro before each one. Early in the marathon, he planted himself in front of the screen and held up a DVD with a noirish cover.

  As he started speaking, Bernard had to swat pieces of popcorn tossed by two of the friends who kept barking, ‘Show the film! Show the film!’ Undeterred, he chuckled and proclaimed that a poll of scholars and critics had chosen this next film as Number One, the best British film of the twentieth-century. ‘As opposed to the best British film of the eighteenth-century?’ Mark Chan quipped.

  ‘I guess so,’ Bernard replied as he slid the film into the slot and they all sat back to enjoy Carol Reed’s The Third Man.

  About halfway through, just after the major plot twist when Harry Lime reappears, Rajesh leaned
forward, his eyes doggedly fixed on the screen. He then grabbed the remote control from the coffee table and squeezed the Pause button. The others all turned to him, irritated. He looked possessed.

  ‘Yes!’ he said. ‘Yes. The third man! There really was a third man!’

  ‘Yeah, thanks for the profound insight there, Raj. It was that Harry Lime guy. Now can we get back to the movie?’

  But Rajesh didn’t quite hear what he was saying; he was off into his own private orbit. ‘Of course.’ He turned to his friends. ‘Eight witnesses. They couldn’t all be that wrong. Not all of them.’

  ‘What eight witnesses? It was just that one guy, the concierge. OK? But he was the one who was right.’ David Quan then snatched the remote from Rajesh’s hand and pushed the Play button.

  Rajesh slid back into his nook on the couch and stared at the screen. But he found it difficult to concentrate on the film. His mind kept on darting off elsewhere. When he did start paying attention, he was caught up in the idea of the quest for the truth. Like Holly Martins, he wanted to get to the bottom of the thing. And there, that evening, the subject of Rajesh Datt’s dissertation had just shifted dramatically.

  * * *

  ‘Any more questions?’

  At this, the assembled guests exchanged taut, nervous smiles, looking around at the others in attendance, hoping no one would raise a hand. The heads turned back to the stage and waited expectantly for several moments. Finally, the main speaker nodded. If there were no more questions, he said, they could break for lunch.

  The official announcements safely over, most of the invited guests had made their way over to the lunch buffet with mildly restrained haste.

  It was February 2009, a week after Chinese New Year, when the Royal Sonesta Hotel in downtown Singapore hosted this small press conference-cum-free buffet. The occasion was to announce the real event: a week-long series of festivities to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of Blue Horizons Pte Ltd. Blue Horizons was one of the Republic’s premier success stories, a company with its steady fork in quite a few juicy pies.

  The company had been founded by two youngish brothers who had arrived as toddlers in Singapore, then slowly clawed their way up. After a shaky start, Blue Horizons was one of the local firms that actually prospered during the Japanese occupation, then took off dramatically in the postwar years. By the time of independence, it had risen to ‘pride of the nation’ status: here was an example of what Singapore’s people, especially recent immigrants, were capable of. It was the story of modern Singapore writ small.

  There for the announcement of the anniversary were Blue Horizon’s CEO Bertram Koh and his son, Anson Koh, company vice-president and heir apparent. At sixty-four, the elder Koh had actually been taking a less and less active role in running company affairs since a serious attack of spinal muscular atrophy had confined him to a wheelchair three years earlier. He and Anson had been working closely ever since, as Bertram carefully groomed the younger man to take over the reins completely. A flurry of rumours claimed Bertram Koh was preparing to announce his premature retirement at the 70th anniversary festivities.

  Bertram Koh was now working one side of the room while his son worked the other. After moving from a brief exchange with a small investor, Anson turned to see who his father was schmoozing just then, but the older man had disappeared. Not to worry, Anson thought; he’d probably slipped out to go to the toilet.

  Anson himself soon found himself talking to two of the company’s long-time customers and a new but important supplier. He was trying his best to avoid the journalists in the room, a not too difficult task as most of them were so involved with the free buffet that he felt safe from the scattered spray of their dumb questions.

  Just as he was dismissing the impact of some labour action in Jakarta on Blue Horizons’s retail arm, Anson’s phone rang. He apologised with a nod and a half-smile as he pulled the phone from his jacket pocket. It was his father.

  ‘I’m sorry; I have to take this. My father,’ he said with another, longer smile. His two companions smiled back and nodded as he stepped off slightly to the side.

  ‘Anson, I need to see you.’

  ‘Why, what’s wrong, Dad?’

  ‘Nothing … wrong. It’s just there’s someone here I want you to meet. We’re up in Room 316.’

  ‘Room 316? You took a room?’

  ‘He did. Look, please just get up here as quickly as you can. Everything will be very clear when you meet this gentleman.’

  ‘Uh, OK … I’ll be right there. 316, right?’

  ‘That’s right. Turn left just out of the lift, it’s halfway down the hall.’

  ‘OK, I’ll be right there.’ He excused himself once more and with a promise that he’d be back shortly, Anson Koh headed to the ballroom exit.

  Out of the lift, he forgot his father’s advice and started scanning the room numbers on both sides. Still, it took him less than a minute to orient himself and find Room 316. When he reached it, he found a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign slung over the knob and wasn’t sure that he had the right room. Nonetheless, he gave a light, cautious knock.

  ‘Come in, Anson,’ shouted a voice he didn’t recognise. ‘It’s open.’

  An uncomfortable feeling gripped Anson, but he opened the door nonetheless. As he did so, he saw his father in the wheelchair, facing the door, about ten metres in. Standing behind him, slightly to his left, was a man he’d never seen before—holding a handgun to the back of his father’s head. It was clear the man had placed himself a bit to the left so that Anson wouldn’t miss that gun and its ominous position.

  ‘Come in, please. Quickly. And close the door behind you.’ Anson, stunned by what he saw, did as he was told.

  ‘Now lock it, please.’ Anson hesitated for just a moment, but then he read the nervous impatience in the man’s face as he twisted his lips. Exchanging a quick, fearful glance with his father, Anson clicked the lock, then stared at the stranger for further instructions.

  ‘Good. Thank you. I see you can be as cooperative as your father. That’s good for all of us.’ Anson nodded, then started speaking as quickly as he could.

  ‘Look, whatever it is you want, we’ll give it to you. Or we’ll get it for you. But please leave my father alone. As you can see, he’s an invalid and he needs—’

  The man with the gun ignored his near panic. ‘Why don’t you sit down, Anson. I want you to be very relaxed while I’m telling you the purpose of this little meeting.’

  ‘Relaxed?’ Anson replied, in a tightly wrapped tone. The man with the gun smiled.

  ‘As relaxed as you can get. But don’t fall asleep on us or anything.’

  Anson again nodded and settled into a large, functional chair near the door. It felt like something you’d throw a small bag or clothing onto rather than something you’d want to sit in for very long.

  ‘But please … like I said, whatever it is you want …’

  The man had now stepped a fist’s length away from Bertram, though the gun was still pointed persuasively at his head. Anson kept looking intently at the man, examining that face, wondering whether he had ever seen him before.

  His look must have revealed more than he cared to: the man with the gun offered him a condescending smile and said, ‘You’re wondering if we have ever met before.’ Anson nodded stiffly. ‘Well, not met the way you probably mean “met”. But our paths have crossed.’

  Bertram Koh now swallowed deeply and spoke for the first time. ‘Our … host tells me that our families have a shared history. He says he’s been at a couple of our functions so that he could get to know more about where that history has brought us.’

  The gunman now smiled and nodded several times, like a bobblehead doll. ‘That’s right. Yeah, so true. And the key facts about that history is right over there.’ He pointed with the gun to a writing table across the room. Anson turned and noticed for the first time a thick manuscript sitting on that table, spread open as if someone had just been leafing thr
ough it.

  ‘I’m going to ask you to read from that book in a few minutes, Anson. But since we’re all such busy men these days, I decided to save some time. Let me give a quick background to the parts I want you to read.’ He then looked insistently at his two ‘guests’, as if asking permission to tell his tale. Bertram nodded in agreement.

  The man with the gun then recounted the major details of the St Lucy’s Day Massacre, being careful not to jump over any of the messier parts. When he asked if the two Kohs had ever heard any of this before, they both said no, earnestly. After he’d finished, he repeated the names and salient details about three of the victims, including the thirteen-year-old Agnes Slop-Mop.

  ‘Now, Anson, I think you should get up and walk slowly over to the table. Keep it a straight line, though: don’t try to get clever. This gun is quite loaded, I assure you.’

  ‘That’s a serious crime here in Singapore, in case you didn’t know. The law does not look lightly on people who point loaded guns at other people.’

  ‘You know, I think I’ve heard that somewhere before. But that’s OK. By the time our heart-to-heart is over, I think we’ll all be willing to keep that little mistake between ourselves.’ He smiled again and, with an anxious wave of his hand, indicated that Anson should not waste any more time getting over to that manuscript. Anson nodded, rose from the chair and moved quickly. As he reached the table, the stranger spoke again.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten to introduce myself; my name is Kelvin Tan. I think we should all get to know each other better.’ Anson and Bertram exchanged looks and Anson squeezed out something between a frown and a smile. ‘The pleasure is all mine,’ Kelvin said with a dry snicker.

  Anson stared at the book curiously, touching the double open pages as if they were some delicate object. He started to turn the page, at which Kelvin Tan cleared his throat in warning.

  ‘You don’t need to browse anywhere, Anson. I went to all that trouble to set the pages for you, so don’t make it all confused. The story you want starts right there. Second paragraph on page 107.’