Crime Scene: Singapore

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I see it. So you want me to just … read?’

  ‘Out loud. Share it with all of us. It involves all three of us.’

  Anson cleared his throat. He found the spot again and began reading. ‘So, for all the foregoing reasons, I think we have fully established that there was indeed a third gunman that evening. And my further research from that point established almost as firmly that the third man in the robbery-murder that night was …’ Anson stopped and just stared at the page, his eyes seized by the next words.

  ‘Having trouble with the name, Anson? Want me to give you some help?’

  ‘No. I think I can manage this name myself.’ He then turned and stared at his father. He continued. ‘ … the third man in the robbery-murder that night was Koh Kai-Sung.’ Bertram Koh sat up, shocked.

  ‘Your grandfather??’

  Anson read on a bit. ‘Within six months, Koh had founded a small company with his brother, Koh Tai-Win. That company was later renamed Blue Horizons and went on to become one of Singapore’s most successful companies, with a wide range of activities and interests.’

  Here Anson stopped and looked up. Kelvin Tan was looking back at him, a self-satisfied smile on his face. He then turned to Bertram Koh to irritate him with that same smile.

  ‘So what the hell is this thing, this shit book?’ Though it seemed hardly possible, Kelvin’s smile broadened at that question.

  ‘Believe it or not, it started out a Ph.D. thesis. But now it’s a key to the Blue Horizons bank vault, I think.’

  Bertram Koh turned to him at this point. ‘Who’s responsible for this thing? Who put this rubbish together?’

  ‘My partner. My silent partner.’

  The elder Koh’s eyebrows lifted skeptically. ‘A silent partner. As in …’

  ‘He wants to keep out of this part of the deal. He’s … respectable. But he’s also brilliant, believe me.’ He looked from one of the Kohs to the other, gesticulating as if he were trying to sell his partner to them. ‘You call it shit? I’ve been told this guy is a very respected researcher and scholar, whatever. He’s really good. And obsessed! You spend a hour or two with him, you can’t keep up with him. He’s amazing: can’t sit still, always looking for something, thinking three jumps ahead of you.’

  Anson choked on a bitter laugh. ‘Well, you can tell your partner he’s completely wrong this time. This is nothing but wild accusations. Crazy stuff. With no evidence at all.’

  ‘Oh no? Keep reading, Anson. Just keep reading.’

  Anson read on. ‘This may sound a rather dubious claim, maybe even an outrageous claim, especially coming sixty-nine years after the police declared the case closed.’ Anson gave his own nod to that. ‘But I strongly believe it to be a claim supported by all the evidence I have collected in over two years of research.’

  ‘I have now established that Koh Kai-Sung was an associate of the notorious criminal Zhou Wei Tong. He was learning the trade from Zhou. I have spoken with a number of people who knew Koh and examined letters from others. I will just give some samples here.’

  At this point, Kelvin Tan raised his gun. ‘You can skip over to page 109. There at the bottom, I’ve got it marked in red. You’ll have time to read all those testimonies later, don’t worry.’ Anson stared at him coldly, though with a twitch of fear still in his face. ‘Turn the page. Please. We’re all busy and I want to get through this part of the programme quickly.’

  Anson turned the page, found the marked passage and began reading again. ‘As the nearly blind man told me, Zhou Wei Tong was more than a teacher to Koh; he was more like a father. He spoke of young Koh the way a father speaks of a son, with warmth and pride.’

  Anson turned the page and started reading from the top. ‘I now have strong evidence that Koh Kai-Sung himself was arrested twice while carrying out petty crimes for Zhou. But at both arrests, he produced false I.D. that we can assume had been provided by Zhou, as this was another of the older man’s sidelines. The colonial police did not expend much energy checking out the details of Asians booked for minor crimes here, so Koh’s false papers were accepted. The two mug shots which I include in the appendix both bear strong resemblance to Koh, although two different names were used by the same man in those photos.’

  Kelvin then told Anson to skip over to page 113 as the next two pages were rather heavy with details. Anson found the passage Kelvin was referring to and started reading again.

  ‘Through this friend, Koh secured a job working for Tan Tong Hua. He’d been working for Tan for just over four months at the time of the killings. It is more than reasonable to assume that Koh, smelling all that money swirling around Mr Tan, contacted his mentor and father-figure, Zhou, and suggested they could find some way of using this connection to make some quick money.

  ‘He then learned, presumably from the chauffeur, that Tan had an unusual, late-night meeting in Chinatown on that evening. Also that he had withdrawn a large amount of money earlier in the day. Zhou would have quickly contacted his other young trainee, the strong-arm Chang, and arranged for the robbery. Whether they had planned right from the start to kill the robbery victims cannot be proven at this late date. But the seasoned criminal Zhou would have realised that there was a real danger of Tan somehow recognising Koh and the whole caper getting unravelled.

  ‘On the other hand, it is likely that the murder of the thirteen-year-old cleaning girl was fully spontaneous as one of the three criminals, probably Koh himself, panicked when she ran out during their escape and shot her without thinking. This, as we shall see, was probably the only part of the massacre that actually stirred deep feelings of guilt in the young criminal.

  ‘The money and other valuables would have been secreted away somewhere, with Zhou and his two ‘interns’ taking just a small portion to play with at first. Koh was more than willing to take Zhou’s lead on this and other matters related to the crime.

  ‘We can well imagine Koh’s sense of loss, of despair even, when he heard about Zhou’s demise. Without his mentor, how was he to go on?

  ‘We can further assume that Koh, being quite bright if uneducated except in the basics of crime, saw himself faced with a major choice. He could continue pursuing his life of crime with the excellent prospect of more arrests, and at the end of that road, a good possibility of ending up like his mentor—a bloody bulk in a filthy alleyway. Or he could choose to go straight; more or less straight anyway. With a much larger than expected gain from the Keong Saik robbery, he now had the wherewithal to seek to make it in the world of legitimate business. Which is the path he ultimately chose.

  ‘But Koh still faced one large obstacle blocking that legitimate path he now wanted to take: his other cohort in the robbery-murder. Chang Ten Li not only had a rough idea of how much they got away with that night, but he could always blackmail Koh in the future with what he knew. In fact, the more successful Koh became in the legitimate world, the more likely it was that his former accomplice would attempt to blackmail him. And plunge deeper into his wealth with each act of blackmail.

  ‘With several cold-blooded murders already on his hands, Koh would have had no trouble pulling off just one more, especially as he felt this last one would lift him out of the morass of crime he was then stuck in.

  ‘It is a safe surmise, then, that Koh Kai-Sung arranged to meet his only remaining accomplice there by the Kallang River to remove this last threat to his escape. We’re on the far edge of speculation now, but it’s not unreasonable that Zhou had told this young trainee where the money and other booty was hidden, but not Chang. So Koh most likely lured Chang to his fate by promising to divvy up the remaining wealth with him.

  ‘We can picture the two of them meeting down by the river, remorse at the death of their mutual mentor darkening the moods, but those moods then lifted by thoughts of dividing Zhou’s hefty share of the takings.

  ‘We can also imagine Koh pointing upriver and asking Chang to look, so as to better see what he was pointing at. As the
brutal but not too bright criminal turned to view the object, Koh swiftly pulled out his revolver, put it right up to Chang’s head, the muzzle a little west of the ear (1.8 inches according to the police autopsy report), and fired a bullet cleanly through his former colleague’s brain. As the Christian doctor who signed the autopsy said, before the body hit the ground, Mr Chang was already facing his Maker.

  ‘We can even imagine Koh Kai-Sung lingering over the corpse of his former partner, staring at the body with blood spurting out of that neat hole, a certain note of nostalgia playing counterpoint to the more dominant notes of relief and joy. With that sprawled body in front of him, he could imagine himself looking at the end of his own former life, that life of crime that had become so central to his existence. And now it was over. He turned and walked away quickly, feeling he had turned his back on that former life and was now striding into the life of the respectable Chinese Singaporean business class.

  ‘He didn’t look back. It now seems fairly clear that soon thereafter, Koh made his way to the hiding place Zhou had shown him and removed all the money as well as the remaining jewelry and other valuables. He traded in the latter with those people who serviced this type of criminal and suddenly found himself a somewhat wealthy young man. And he evidently believed that he had captured all of his shadows and squeezed them into a safe-box.

  ‘Less than half a year later, he founded a trading company with his brother, a company they originally called K,K&Z, later changing the name to … Blue Horizons Pte. Ltd.’

  Anson Koh stopped there. ‘Alright; you’ve got one of those thick red lines scrawled under that.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Kelvin Tan. ‘That means you’ve covered all the really essential parts of the story up till there. Those other bits, you can read later. They’re good too.’

  He turned to Bertram Koh, whose stare had been fixed on his son and the all too visible pain in his face as he read. ‘That’s your copy there. I’ve actually got you each your own copy. Other one’s in the bag over there.’ He swung the gun upwards and to the right to indicate a bulky plastic Border’s bag slumped next to a chair. He looked back at Anson. ‘Some great eye-opening stuff there, isn’t it?’

  ‘Eye-opening? I prefer calling it bullshit. Total, libelous bullshit. No, that demeans bullshit; it’s worse than that. It’s toxic’

  ‘I can understand why you’d like to believe that, Anson Koh. It would save you a lot of shame … and even more money.’

  ‘You obviously got inspired by that part about blackmail in this fantasy. But this stuff’, he flipped a few pages, ‘is worthless. What does this shit mean: “we can assume”, “it’s reasonable to believe”, “we can just imagine”?

  Kelvin shrugged. ‘He has a lot of hard facts … from there, he just connects the dots.’

  ‘He has wild rumours and then he goes haywire. Sorry, but it is reasonable to believe that this thesis is more like faeces, and we can just imagine that the guy who wrote this was desperate to support a very weak theory and maybe to make some easy money through intimidation and throwing garbage on a very decent man.

  ‘And we can further assume the reason you came here is to try and blackmail us. Well, we can just imagine that you’re facing a long spell in jail and many strokes of the cane for kidnapping, blackmail and carrying a deadly weapon.

  ‘Tell you what: You put that gun somewhere safe and let my father and me leave right now, then you follow and never contact us ever again, and we can pretend all this never happened. And that’s about the best offer you can expect out of this charade.’

  Kelvin Tan nodded, then broke into a rasping laugh. ‘You want to hear my counter-offer? It’s pretty good, actually. First, you make a one-time, strictly cash payment of 1.5 million. Most of that goes to my partner, but I get a little finder’s fee. Very reasonable. Right?’

  Anson turned to Bertram. ‘Dad, can you believe this guy? He’s not only deaf, he’s obviously insane.’

  Kelvin ignored him. ‘And then I get my fair share.’

  Anson threw up his hands and looked to the ceiling. ‘Oh, I can’t wait for this!’

  ‘You make me a partner. Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be a nice, silent partner. But I get a 20% share of Blue Horizons, with all profits and bonuses, and everything that’s fair.’

  ‘Fair? You have the guts to talk to us about fair. Look, you asshole, my grandfather and uncle worked really hard to build this company out of nothing. And then my father worked almost as hard to keep it right up there at the top. And that’s the work I’m continuing right now.

  ‘Then you come along with some rubbish story and try to grab a piece of what my family has been building and holding for seventy years, and you think that’s fair?’

  Kelvin Tan gave another laugh at this, which made Anson want to punch him. This asshole was very lucky he had a gun in his fist, Anson thought.

  ‘So your grandfather and uncle built up the company all fair and honest, is it? You think making deals with the Japanese during the Occupation is fair? And what was so fair about reporting other small Chinese businessmen to the Japanese for some stupid remark or minor offence? And when those guys suddenly disappear, Blue Horizons gets a little bigger, a little more successful. Their reward for helping the Japanese kill innocent men.’

  Anson looked like he’d just been punched in the face. ‘What, you’re saying my family ratted out other Singaporeans so they could grab their businesses?’ Tan flashed a self-satisfied smile and nodded.

  ‘You’re as ignorant as you are arrogant. And for your information, Mr Tan, my grandfather was a hero in the war. So was my uncle. They even got these … what, these citations from the British.’ He turned to Bertram and pointed. ‘My father has them framed and hanging up in his office.’

  ‘No, no, wait; my partner has that one covered too.’ He reached into his left pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. ‘Page …’ He opened the paper and turned it around to read. ‘Sorry; I can’t keep everything up here in my head. Page 154. The paragraphs are marked.’

  Anson turned to page 154. He found the marked passages.

  ‘The man who arranged for the Koh brothers to get that citation was a man called …’ Tan tried to remember.

  ‘He was some very high official. Very high.’ Anson turned to his father for confirmation. Bertram nodded, then turned to Kelvin Tan.

  ‘His name was Terrence Lampert. First secretary to the Governor here. To both Shenton Thomas and Sir Franklin … Gibson.’

  ‘Yah, that’s right.’ Kelvin snapped his fingers in concurrence. ‘Lampert. That’s the one they talk about. Why don’t you read it out for us, Anson.’

  Anson turned to page 154 and started reading from the top. He first read the annotation that these passages were from the still unpublished memoirs of the late journalist Paul Haggerty.

  ‘I guess I should consider myself damned lucky that I was kicked out of Singapore just as the war was getting started in Europe. I managed to make my way back to England in early 1940, a couple of years before the Japs took control in Singapore. If I’d stayed around, I would have certainly landed up in one of their POW camps. And from what I’ve heard, the drinking opportunities in those camps were rather meagre.

  ‘Be that as it may, it stung to get tossed out of my second consecutive country, and this time with no just cause really. I was always convinced the real reason was that I was getting a little too close to the jugular of the power establishment with my investigations into that St Lucy’s Day mess.

  ‘Before I left, I’d scavenged together a pile of evidence pointing to someone high in the colonial administration who was working with the Nazis. I had narrowed it down to just a handful of names by the time I got the boot, and continued pursuing the matter as much as I could back in England.

  ‘I finally managed to get it down to two prime suspects, and then my journalistic instincts and a chat with one of his nephews convinced me it was this fellow, Terrence Lampert. Lampert was apparently a virulent anti
-Semite and someone who felt the Soviets were the real threat to Western civilisation, while the Nazis were simply the last reliable bulwark against Bolshevik barbarism.

  ‘In 1967, I finally managed to meet Lampert. Using a false name, I arranged an interview on the pretext of writing a book about the defeat of the Japanese in the region and how the British had re-established order in Malaya after the war.

  ‘I drove to Lampert’s home in Luton and pulled up early on a crisp but lovely autumn afternoon. Mr Lampert proved to be a gracious host, as I have always found Nazi sympathisers to be. We were both into our second glass of port when I started easing some questions his way.

  ‘Lampert answered all the innocuous, pablum queries in a relaxed manner. It was obvious he’d spoken about these matters many times before. Then I tossed the firebomb into our conversation.

  “You know, it’s really a shame you never got to raise a wassail with your old pal Hant von Herzberg when he came to see you there in 1938.”

  ‘Lampert looked stunned. I could see from the quiver in his lips and the cold stare that I’d found my man. I smiled at him, but he just coldly replied, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The way he said it, I knew that he knew exactly what I was talking about.

  ‘I pressed on a little bit about him and his relationship with Hant von Herzberg. His only response was to call his wife. “Ruth, our guest has to leave. He’s not feeling all that clever suddenly.” He then turned to me. “I’ll call my man; he’ll see you to the door.”

  ‘I replied with a caustic smile. I had a lot, but it wasn’t quite the proverbial smoking gun. So I decided to pull one of the tricks all great investigative journalists use: I would play a hunch and pretend it was established fact.

  “Sorry, Mr Lampert, but I’ve seen those documents. The ones Hant von Herzberg was carrying that night he was killed. The wily Chinese gentleman who sold them to you was just clever enough to make copies before he handed the originals over. They’re with my publisher right now. It’s got your name on them, your signature and your nasty role in betraying the government you were meant to be serving.”