‘You mean, my husband then?’
‘He’s the only one who makes sense here, isn’t it?’ She clenched her gorgeous lips and, after a few moments, nodded. I then went through the ramifications of all this. The primary one was that our programme to get rid of Stanley had to be put on indefinite hold. She was not at all happy to hear that.
‘So when do you think you can do it?’
I gave an enormous shrug, then looked at her sympathetically. ‘Not for a long time anyway. Maybe ever. But look, we probably have enough to hold up in a divorce court; I think you should just settle for getting out through the divorce loop and pulling in a nice windfall from that.’
She shook her head, angrily. ‘No, I want you to get rid of him entirely. I want you to do what you promised to do.’
‘Glenda, what are you not understanding here? He has me tailed. That means I probably wouldn’t even be able to get close enough to pull off that nice, neat murder we planned. And even if I could kill the bastard, they would know it was me. I would hang. And you would too, probably.’
I then offered to give back most of the retainer she’d paid me, after deducting additional expenses and a little bit for the time I’d spent. If nothing else, she had gained some valuable information: that her husband was a fairly clever bastard and he knew how to protect himself.
Her immediate response? ‘You’re a failure. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you. I probably should have gone to this guy Damien Ong right from the start. Then I’d most likely be free of Stanley right now.’
I started to point out all the holes in that theory, but she turned her back to me and asked me to leave.
‘Glenda, look: maybe there’s still some way we can—’
She wouldn’t even turn around. ‘Please go now,’ she repeated. ‘I need to be alone for awhile.’
I’m well aware that there are times you just can’t reason with clients, and this was certainly one of them. I nodded and walked out. She never once turned to see me as I left. I felt like waffled shit. To make things even worse, it had started raining during my visit.
Back in my car, I decided the safest thing was to drive straight home and get thoroughly drunk. I’d try to call her sometime the next morning and see how she was feeling. Maybe she could get over her disappointment a little quicker than I suspected it would take.
After I’d driven a few streets away from her office, my mobile started ringing. It had stopped by the time I managed to pull over and see who was calling. I felt really lifted when I read an unidentified number and realised it came from Glenda. Maybe it was just a sudden surge of pique back there and now she was ready to try to work things out reasonably.
I called her back, but there was no answer. So I decided the best thing to do was to drive back and see what she wanted. Hopefully, she would still be there.
When I reached her door, I gave a knock. There was no answer, so I knocked again and called out, ‘Glenda, are you still there? Come on, it’s Robert.’
At that, the door opened slowly. But it wasn’t Glenda who opened it. Glenda was lying flat on the floor, her legs splayed, her head flush against the heavy desk. I bolted towards her. As I did, the door slapped closed behind me.
I spun around, my hand ready to grab a heavy paperweight sitting on top of the desk which I had once admired on a previous visit; only now did I realise the basis for my admiration.
It was Damien Ong there. I should have known, right? He looked at me sympathetically, which I did not really appreciate. ‘Don’t leave too many fingerprints,’ he cautioned. ‘It’s made to look like a perfect accident, but you never know how the Singapore police will respond. They can be damned clever, as we know.’
I was now clutching the paperweight, getting a sense of its shape and its heft. I decided I should smash his face in with it. But I did want to ask him a few questions while he could still speak.
‘You did this? You’re responsible for this?’
‘No, I didn’t do it. And you know who’s responsible for it.’
‘The same bastard who was paying you to tail me?’
He nodded, then added, with just the right subtle twist of irony, ‘The bereaved widower.’
Hearing that word ‘widower’, it suddenly sunk it: she was not just injured, unconscious … she was dead. They’d killed her.
‘How did he do it?’
Ong took a few cautious steps in my direction. ‘He hired two experts in the field. A business associate of his up in KL recommended them. The two apes are themselves on their way back to Malaysia right now.’
‘I hope they get front-ended on the expressway.’
He nodded. ‘I wouldn’t shed any tears.’
I spun around harshly. ‘Hey, don’t think that you’re some innocent bystander on this. You’ve got your own claw dipped into the blood here.’
‘You look at it a certain way, all of us do.’ He then stared at me in a way he would have never have dared to before.
Just then, I heard this irritating sound coming from Damien. OK, I often hear lots of irritating sounds coming from him, but this was something I never heard before. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a mobile phone. Its ringtone was one of those obnoxious, taunting laughs. I winced. Actually, I wanted to strangle the thing.
Without even looking at the display, he said, ‘It’s for you.’
‘For me?’ He nodded and held out the phone.
I took it and clicked it on. I wasn’t going to say anything until I knew what this was all about. As I nestled the phone against my ear, a raspy voice came on. ‘Hello, Mr Lozario. I’d ask “How are you this evening”, but I don’t think it a good question right now.’ I didn’t need any introduction; I knew after the first few words that I was finally hearing the voice of Mr Stanley Wee.
I asked him why he was calling me. He said we still had a few things to straighten out before we could put everything to rest. ‘We’ve all got enough here to put us in prison for a long time. Maybe even send us to the hangman’s noose. I don’t think you would want to go to the police now and tell them how you and my wife came to know each other so well.’
‘So you think you’ll get away with this thing, not pay at all?’
‘Well, that’s the whole point here, isn’t it? It’s what you were planning on. Besides, let’s be honest here: you of all people who are still with us know that what I did could just be seen as self-defence. The deceased was trying to kill me; I just did what I had to do to save myself.’
‘You could have just reported us to the police and stopped it right there.’
‘Oh, but what would be the fun in that? Come on, Mr Lozario, you’ve got to appreciate the element of sport in all this.’ I winced, realising that what he was talking about was akin to that adrenaline rush I got from the project.
‘Anyway, I’m sure it would be best for all of us involved if we just leave things as they are—a terrible accident claims the life of a somewhat young and so beautiful woman. Any refinement on that could just sink us all.’ He paused for a moment, and I swear I could hear a supercilious smile on his face. ‘Don’t you agree?’
I can’t remember when I had ever felt like such a shit. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I agree.’
‘Splendid. By the way, in a few days, your friend Damien will drop by your office with a little something from me. A nice little sum of money.’
‘Keep your money. I didn’t do anything for you.’
‘Oh, let’s call it a finder’s fee then. You helped us find Glenda this evening so that we could finish everything off quickly and cleanly. And, in a certain way, you helped me find the solution to my problem. Anyway, you did save me a lot of money, Mr Lozario. I don’t even want to think what a divorce from that bloodsucker would have cost me. I just want to express my gratitude. And I always express best with money. Good evening, Mr Lozario.’
And right there, he hung up. I gritted my teeth. Just from having that three-minute conversation with Wee, I felt like I needed
to climb into the shower and stay there for about a week to get all the slime off me.
I also found myself getting nauseous from the sight of Glenda lying there. I was just getting comfortable feeling very sorry for myself when the phone rang again. ‘This one’s for me,’ Damien said, and held out his hand. I handed him the thing as if it were a radioactive turd.
‘Yeah. That’s right. Yeah, he … seems to be fine with all that. I know. Of course, of course; I know. Yes. Right after I hang up here.’ He hung up, then held up the phone.
‘Got to trash this thing. Totally. No trace it ever existed.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s only been used a few days, maybe four or five calls, and I’ve got to destroy it. And that was planned right from the start. The same with that phone he just called us on. But look at his thing: top of the line model. You know how much one of these things costs? To use four or five times, then trash?’ He shook his head and gave that rodent-like laugh he has. ‘Some people in this world just have too much money.’
I shook my head. ‘Can’t buy them happiness.’
‘Maybe not. But it can flush away a lot of misery.’ He put the phone back into his pocket. ‘Anyway, that’s a world you and me will never squeeze into. Or ever really understand.’
I smirked and started to think that’s what makes me a much better detective than Damien Ong. I could understand that world. But then I stopped … and wondered if I really could. Maybe that’s why Damien had topped me this time: he understood what he couldn’t understand.’
I turned to look back at Glenda. This time, I noticed that one of her shoes was off, the heal broken loose. A few inches away there was this long, shiny cylindrical object. I bent down to check it out.
‘It’s her mascara. Don’t touch it, it’s clean at the moment.’ I rose and gave him a weary scowl. ‘So there you’ve got it: a gorgeous women slips on her own make-up stick, hits her head on her designer desk and kills herself.’ Here he took a sniff of the chilled air. ‘Oh, the horrible irony of it all.’
I stared, wondering where this O-level washout had suddenly managed to pick up a sense of irony. Reading the same books I did?
I turned back and started to move towards her again. I wanted to touch her once more while there was still a little bit of warm there. Damien grabbed my arm and tugged. ‘Come on, Robert. You can’t do anything more for her. And the longer we stay here, the bigger the chance we’ll get caught at the scene. It’s over; he won.’
He tugged again and this time, I let him pull me away. But just after I stepped outside, I turned once more and took another look. She seemed to be rested, almost contented. I felt sad, sick and useless.
Wearing a glove, Damien pulled the door shut. I breathed deeply a few times, and then we started down the corridor to the stairs. (There was a CCTV camera facing the lifts downstairs.) We said nothing to each other all the way down to the ground floor. Then he turned to me. ‘Sorry it had to end this way. I swear I had no idea he was going to kill her till he called and told me she was finished. I handled this like just another pre-divorce thing.’
I nodded, not really believing him. ‘So when did you start tailing me, Ong?’
‘She stayed the night at your place. About a month ago. I don’t know if that was the first time, but it was the first time I was watching you.’
‘You must be getting much better. I had no idea you were on me.’ He shrugged, a smug little smile on his face. Right at the side door of the building, he spoke again.
‘Did you have feelings for her?’
I stared out straight; his was not the face I wanted to see just then. ‘Having feelings for a client violates the second rule of being a private detective.’
‘You know it.’
We stepped out of the building and started walking down the street. He walked me all the way to my car, though his was around the corner, in the other direction. Just as we got to my car, he spoke again.
‘What’s the first?’
He’d caught me off guard. ‘First what?’
‘First rule of the private detective?’
‘Never think you really know too much about this business. Never.’
I nodded, pushed him aside gently, and climbed into my car. He waved goodbye as I started to drive off and I gave him a limp wave in return.
As I drove through the slick, calm streets of Bukit Timah, fighting back what some sentimentalists might see as tears, I told myself it was all just a part of the job. You never win, you never lose in this field. You just do what the clients want you to do and hope that you can still wake up half-sane the next morning. And the whole thing defies understanding.
I guess you could say private investigation’s a metaphor for life. You do it because you don’t want to spend too long dwelling on the alternatives. We all get to those soon enough. Quite soon enough.
RICHARD LORD is the author or co-author of eighteen published books, both fiction and nonfiction. He has published ten short stories in different anthologies and edited more than a dozen books, including anthologies, novels and memoirs. Also a playwright, Lord has seen a dozen of his plays and over fifty sketches professionally produced.
Copyright Notices
Inspector Zhang Gets His Wish by Stephen Leather©Stephen Leather, 2010.
Lead Balloon by Lee Ee Leen©Lee Ee Leen, 2010.
Decree Absolute by Dawn Farnham©Dawn Farnham, 2010.
The Corporate Wolf by Pranav S. Joshi ©Pranav S. Joshi, 2010.
The Murder Blog of Wilde Diabolito by Chris Mooney-Singh©Chris
Mooney-Singh, 2010.
A Sticky Situation by Alaric Leong©Alaric Leong, 2010.
The Madman of Geylang by Zafar Anjum©Zafar Anjum, 2010.
The Lost History of Shadows by Aaron Ang©Aaron Ang, 2010.
Nostalgia by Ng Yi-Sheng©Ng Yi-Sheng, 2010.
The House on Tomb Lane by Dawn Farnham©Dawn Farnham, 2010.
The First Time by Carolyn Camoens©Carolyn Camoens, 2010.
Unnatural Causes by Richard Lord©Richard Lord, 2010.
Explore Singapore Nonfiction
The following nonfiction titles, all published by Monsoon Books, are set in Singapore.
• Country Madness: An English Country Diary of a Singaporean Psychiatrist by Ong Yong Lock
• Gone Troppo by Stu Lloyd
• In the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles by Nigel Barley
• Indiscreet Memories: 1901 Singapore through the eyes of a colonial Englishman by Edwin A. Brown
• Invisible Trade (I & II) by Gerrie Lim
• Pairing Wine with Asian Food by Edwin Soon
• Rice Wine & Dancing Girls: The real-life drama of a roving cinema manager in Fifties Malaysia & Singapore by Wong Seng Chow
• Singapore Girl: A true story of sex, drugs and love on the wild side in 1970s Bugis Street by James Eckardt
• Sold for Silver: An autobiography of a girl sold into slavery in Southeast Asia by Janet Lim
• Stif-fried and not Shaken: A nostalgic trip down Singapore’s memory lane by Terry Tan
• The Boat: Singapore Escape—Cannibalism at Sea by Walter Gibson
• The Golden Chersonese: A 19th-century Englishwoman’s travels in Singapore and the Malay Peninsula by Isabella Bird
• The Great Singapore Quiz
• You’ll Die in Singapore: The true account of one of the most amazing POW escapes in WWII by Charles McCormac
Explore Singapore Fiction
The following fiction titles, all published by Monsoon Books, are set in Singapore.
• And the Rain my Drink by Han Suyin
• Best of Singapore Erotica by LQ Pan & Richard Lord (eds)
• Best of Southeast Asian Erotica by Richard Lord (ed)
• Locked Out by Alison Lester
• Love and Lust in Singapore by Goodwin, Tewari & Hoye (eds)
• Malayan Life of Ferdach O’Haney by Frederick Lees
• Paranormal Singapore (Vols. 1, 2 & 3) by Andrew Lim
• Singapore Sling Shot by Andrew Grant
• Straits & Narrow by Grace McClurg
• The Hills of Singapore by Dawn Farnham
• The Lies That Build A Marriage by Suchen Christine Lim
• The Red Thread by Dawn Farnham
• The Rose of Singapore by Peter Neville
• The Shallow Seas by Dawn Farnham
Copyright
First published in print in 2010 by Monsoon Books.
This electronic edition first published in 2011 by Monsoon Books
ISBN (ebook): 978-981-4358-59-0
ISBN (paperback): 978-981-08-5437-9
Collection and editorial material©2010, Richard Lord
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The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
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Crime Scene: Singapore Page 23