SINGAPORE GIRL
Also by Murray Bailey
Singapore 52
Map of the Dead
Black Creek White Lies
I Dare You
Dare You Twice
SINGAPORE GIRL
Murray Bailey
Heritage Books
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Heritage Books
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copyright © Murray Bailey 2018
The moral right of Murray Bailey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Paperback ISBN 978-1-9997954-3-6
e-book ISBN 978-1-9997954-4-3
Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
Heritage Books, Truro, Cornwall
For Kerry—my wife, my girl.
ONE
In my experience, many soldiers like to show off their war wounds like badges of honour. I suspect the psychology is about the relief of survival. Something akin to: look how close I came to death.
But I was no longer in the army and my injury was nothing to be proud about. I had been shot in the leg. A bullet had passed through my right calf muscle. It wasn’t life-threatening; it was merely an annoyance.
It was early morning but the sun was a purple haze against the ominous clouds. I sat on my porch and watched the lightning far out at sea. The timing of the rumbles told me it was coming this way.
My apartment was on Beach Road, just down from the famous Raffles Hotel. I’d enjoyed staying at the swanky hotel for a couple of nights, but my meagre government pay packet forced me to find this place. It was simple and clean and the views out to the South China Sea made it worth every penny.
When I did my training regime every morning, I finished with a run along the coast, usually out towards Changi in the east.
Early morning, with the air still cool and the breeze from the ocean, was a great time to run. But of course I hadn’t run for almost a week. I still trained though. It was in my blood, having been an amateur boxer for almost half my life.
Forked lightning danced on the horizon and I breathed in electrically charged ozone.
I leaned back in my chair and opened my book. The Art of War. The English translation. It had been delivered to my home on the day after the incident at Singorah airfield, where I’d been shot. There was no accompanying note, no suggestion of the sender. But I knew.
I’d already read the book twice and each time found more insight in the words. I wondered whether anything was lost in the translation, because one thing I had learned, in almost eight months here, was that the Chinese loved double meanings. Words and numbers on their own meant one thing, but read in combination could mean something totally different.
“Morning, boss!”
A voice I recognized called from the road below. Sergeant Dave Hegarty, better known as Hedge, on account of his bushy eyebrows, leaned against a military police Land Rover and waved.
I pushed up and stood at the balcony railing. “Good morning. Everything all right?”
“Something’s happened.”
I waited for him to tell me more. I’d already guessed this wasn’t a social visit.
He said, “Are you back at work?”
“Depends.” I wasn’t officially. The doctor had signed me off from work for ten days and I was halfway through. I was also supposed to use a walking stick, but the wound was healing nicely and, providing I took it slowly, I could walk just fine.
“Could do with your experience,” Hedge said, leaving the jeep and coming closer.
“What’s happened?”
He lowered his voice. “An incident.”
It was always an incident. He was being deliberately vague and I wondered why. Probably because he’d been told to pick me up.
I shook my head and smiled. “You’ll have to tell me more, Sergeant.”
“There’s a body.”
“A body?”
“At Woodlands Crossing.”
“And you need me because…?”
“Can I update you in the jeep?”
I shook my head again. “Tell me first. Like I said, it depends. I’m supposed to be resting and keeping an eye on the thunderstorm.”
Hedge laughed. It sounded like relief, and I figured he was allowed to explain if I wasn’t immediately persuaded.
He said, “Can I come up and talk?”
“Meet me at the top of the stairs.”
“The body,” he said a few minutes later outside my door, “it’s on the causeway.”
“Civilian?”
“Don’t know. Could be army. Could be anyone.”
“Anyone?”
“Male anyway. That’s the point. He’s dead. He’s naked and we have no idea who it is.” He paused and took an awkward breath. “Boss, it’s not a pretty sight.”
Now he had my interest. “Tell me more.”
“The body… the hands have been cut off… and there’s no head.”
TWO
Sergeant Hegarty drove me towards Woodlands Crossing, the northern tip of the island.
“I haven’t seen you for a few months,” he said after we had left the city. Once in the jungle, red laterite stones flicked up under the Land Rover’s wheels. We bounced and splashed through ruts and puddles from last night’s rain.
“The wet season—don’t you just love it?”
He was being ironic. Although, with his Welsh accent that rose in pitch at the end of sentences, most things sounded ironic.
It rains a lot in north-west England. I’d grown up in Manchester, so I know. However, Singapore’s wet season was a different kind of rain. Heavy, unrelenting, merciless downpours. The temperature varied between hot and very hot and the humidity could make your clothes damp even without the rain.
So why was I still here? The answer was complicated. I was working for the government secretary responsible for internal security for two reasons. The first was due to my past activities in the Middle East. I didn’t believe the secretary would use the information he had against me, but there was always a risk.
The second reason was more compelling. Singapore was a colourful city of many facets, surrounded by exotic jungle and the sea. Of course, the beautiful women had a part to play in the allure of this tropical paradise.
Probably because I hadn’t responded, a few minutes later he tried again: “What’s it like, boss?”
I was thinking and didn’t answer straight away. I figured he was angling for information about police operations. The sergeant was a talker, and I knew his boss, Major Vernon, would love to know what I was up to.
I said, “Wet.”
He laughed. “I don’t mean the weather. What’s it like… being shot, I mean?”
“Painful.”
“It was a Chinese gang, right? You were on a drugs case?”
“Something like that.” I paused and half turned towards him as he fought with the wheel. “Look, sorry, Hedge, it was just a police matter.” In other words, it wasn’t a military issue so I wouldn’t be sharing. My job working for the secretary was intelligence, particularly about anything that was a threat against the state.
It meant working with the civilian police and military police but I wasn’t a liaison officer. They had their own people for that and Secretary Coates believed in sharing only what was necessary. He’d used the old Second World War expression: “Loose lips sink ships.” It was unlikely to be true, but he was in charge. What I did understand was that my job required trust, so I only shared information judiciously. I never gossiped about work and I remembered who I’d told what.
“I get it,” he said. “Don’t let the cat out of the bag.”
“Not really…” I started to say and then realized Hedge was doing his old trick of dropping clichés into conversation just so he could explain them.
“Is that a new one?” I asked.
“In medieval times people would go to market to buy a piglet. The vendor would let them select the animal and put it in a bag for them to take home. Only, con artists would switch the bag for one with a cat inside.”
“So the expression literally means finding out there’s really a cat in the bag. Discovering the truth.”
Hegarty grinned. “Good, isn’t it?”
“One of your better ones.”
“I have more.”
“I’m sure you have, but let’s save them for another almost appropriate expression.”
We drove in silence for a while except for the rattle and bump of the suspension. After Bukit Timah, we passed through a particularly waterlogged region where water ran across the road.
“You didn’t ask me a critical question,” Hegarty said.
“What was that?”
“Nationality.”
I laughed. “He’s dead.”
“I mean colour. You know, Chink, Malay…”
“He’s white.”
Now it was the sergeant’s turn to take his eyes off the road. “How did you…?”
“Deduction. Could be army, you said. Many British soldiers are white and most of the whites are army. Plus, I don’t think you’d be so excited if he wasn’t white.” I’d also wondered why Hegarty had been sent to get me. Why did they want me involved?
As we approached Woodlands I realized there was no traffic coming the other way. We overtook a long queue of vehicles and saw why. The crossing barrier was down with four sentries blocking the way, clearly signalling that the causeway was closed.
One thing I’d learned about Singaporeans is their patience. Yes, they worked hard and for long hours—often frenetically so—but when confronted with something they could do nothing about, they waited. Men leaned against their vehicles and smoked or chatted.
They paused, watched us pass, and then returned to their business.
When we reached the front of the queue, the soldiers stepped aside and the barrier was raised.
Forty yards wide and a thousand yards long, the crossing to Malaya was a busy trade route. A rail track ran alongside, but since there was no train held at the border I figured they weren’t impacted by the closure.
At the far end of the causeway I could make out people and vehicles queuing to enter Singapore. About halfway along were two vehicles, both Land Rovers, both military police. One was just parking.
Hedge drove cautiously. In places there were sections missing and I knew pedestrians had to walk in the road. There were also potholes and the repairs were constant. The bridge had been destroyed in 1942 to slow the Japanese advance, and although it was now fully operational, there was always work being done to reinforce the stone thread that connected Singapore to the peninsular mainland.
As we approached the parked Land Rovers, the officer in charge greeted us. I recognized him: Lieutenant Cole from 200 Provost at Gillman Barracks. He had unfortunate features with small eyes that earned him the name Polecat Cole behind his back. However, despite the appearance he seemed to be a good MP.
“Sir!” he said as I got out. I discouraged the men from referring to my old status. Hedge got away with calling me boss, but otherwise I preferred Ash or Mr Carter.
Behind Cole stood two more MPs, both wearing gloves, and another man I recognized: Doctor Kishan Thobhani from Alexandra Hospital.
I shook the lieutenant’s hand and waved to Thobhani.
“How are you, Doc?”
I wasn’t sure of his heritage. His usual swarthy skin looked grey but it may have been the light. The thunderstorm would have reached landfall by now and the clouds danced with violet and grey.
“Just got here myself,” Thobhani said, grunting, and then pointed to the roughhewn boulders beside the road. Beyond them was the choppy dark water of the straits.
We left the road and stepped onto the rocks.
Just as Hegarty had described: a naked male body, white, but with a tan except for where his underwear would have been. He was face up, or at least would have been if his head was still attached. The hands had also been removed.
“Has it been moved?”
Cole responded, “Just from the edge of the water. He was partially in.”
There was no sign of blood on the rocks. “He didn’t die here,” I said.
“Nope,” the doctor said. He was squatting beside the body looking at the exposed meat and bone of the neck. He stood up.
“Did he wash up?” I asked.
“Dumped in the water, you mean?” Thobhani pursed his lips. “No, I would say decomposition hasn’t gone far enough. It’s unlikely he’d float yet.”
Cole said, “So he was dumped here.”
The doctor said, “He didn’t fall from a train. Too far to roll.” The body was on the opposite side of the causeway to the rail track. “Nor could someone have thrown him this far.”
Cole shook his head. “No scrapes on the body either, so wasn’t dragged far.”
I noted that comment but turned to the doctor. “Time of death?”
He shrugged. “It’s hard enough in these temperatures, but this level of exsanguination…”
“Best guess?”
“More than a day. Not more than two. I’ll have a better idea when we look at the level of decomposition.”
I bent down, careful not to stretch my right calf, and looked at the body. The cuts were clean.
“Axe?”
Thobhani grunted, “I don’t know. Almost looks surgical. Perhaps garrotted or a guillotine, no?”
“Any guillotines around here?”
The doctor shook his head and shrugged at the same time.
Back to the lieutenant I said, “When was it discovered?”
“First thing. First truck across reported it to the guys on the Singapore side. They closed the crossing straight away.”
“And you were here first?”
“Not me. Major Vernon was the one to close the crossing. He arrived soon after the body was discovered.”
Major Tony Vernon. I knew he regularly went to Johor Bahru on the other side of the straits so wasn’t surprised. It also explained why I’d been picked up so soon after the body had been found.
Hegarty was probably reading my mind. “It was the major who asked me to fetch you.” Then to Cole he said, “Could they have dumped the body and then reported it, sir? The first truck to cross, I mean.”
Cole shook his head. “Unlikely. Once the barriers were raised there will have been a stream of vehicles.”
“Then too many witnesses and too risky,” I said. “What time was the causeway closed last night?”
“Nine o’clock.”
That was earlier than it used to be but I knew concerns over smuggling had tightened customs regulations and increased checks.
“Heavy cloud cover, so it would have been pitch-black,” I said. “It’s unlikely to have been the last vehicle because it’s too obvious, but you should find which vehicles crossed after nightfall.”
“That’ll be hundreds.”
I shrugged. “Focus on the last hour and any covered trucks travelling from Malaya. Work back from the last to cross.”
He frowned at me.
The body was lying with its toes pointing to Singapore, which mig
ht suggest a vehicle travelling to Malaya. Maybe subconsciously laid it the same way. But this was well planned. The blood had been drained, the identity surgically removed. My gut told me the direction of the body was no accident. I figured it had been laid the opposite way around.
The sky lit up and it felt like the rain was imminent.
The doctor beckoned to the soldiers, who lay a stretcher on the ground.
“Before you take him,” I said, “what else can you tell us, Doc? Now or later, I’m keen to know what he died of.”
Hegarty laughed. “His head was chopped off.”
“Unlikely to be the cause, no?” Thobhani said. “Hard to saw someone’s head off if they’re alive—unless they’re unconscious, of course. I’ll have a better idea after the autopsy.”
“How long?” I asked.
“To get results? Depends what else I’ve got on. Maybe a couple of days.”
Undeterred by the previous put-down, Hegarty said, “One thing we know for sure.”
We all looked at him and then the body, where he was pointing. “He wasn’t a Jew.”
“Thanks,” Thobhani said with sarcasm. He said something else but his words were lost in the thunder.
Cole said, “All right, let’s roll him over—if that’s OK, Doc?”
Thobhani nodded. “Onto a stretcher. And carefully.”
Cole waved to the two soldiers. “Go ahead,” he said.
I stood back and the two men placed a stretcher on the ground and walked around to the far side of the body.
I heard one mutter, “Again. And always us that gets the dirty work.”
“Get a move on,” Cole said, and the two men put their hands under the body, lifted and rolled it onto the stretcher. There were dark marks on the skin, about four inches long between the shoulder blades. Writing maybe.
The doctor and I crouched to take a better look.
Singapore Girl_An edge of your seat thriller that will have you hooked Page 1