by Jake Needham
“You make good coffee, Inspector.”
“I don’t think anyone has ever complimented my coffee before.”
“Maybe you don’t have a lot of visitors to whom you serve coffee.”
Tay wasn’t sure what to say since she had him dead to rights there. Was it really so obvious? He cleared his throat and moved the conversation to safer ground.
“May I ask now why you’re here, Mrs.—”
“Call me Emma, please, Inspector.”
The practice of flinging around first names at the even slightest acquaintance was one of a long list of American characteristics Tay thought truly annoying. What possible purpose did such phony familiarity serve? Tay was much more comfortable with the dignity surnames brought to a conversation between strangers, but then he didn’t want to insult the woman by refusing to use her first name either. So he just nodded, decided not to call her anything, and gestured for her to continue.
“I am here about a young American whose name is Tyler Bartlett.”
Tay nodded, considerably relieved, and lifted his coffee mug to take a sip. He didn’t think he had ever heard of anybody named Tyler Bartlett but, whoever he was, Tay would much rather talk about Tyler Bartlett than about his suspension from Singapore CID. Surely he could avoid getting into trouble talking to a journalist for a few minutes about someone who was a perfect stranger to him.
“The Singapore police claim Tyler committed suicide,” the woman said. “But I think he was murdered and the police are covering it up.”
Or maybe he couldn’t.
Tay returned his mug to the table without tasting the coffee. An American who committed suicide here in Singapore? Tay felt the memory of something he had heard or read stirring in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t quite bring it into focus. He seldom read the local paper. He thought of the Singapore Straits Times as one of the few bits of toxic waste Singapore didn’t pay somebody to bury in Africa. Maybe they should.
“If you haven’t read about it,” the woman said, “you’re the only person in Singapore who hasn’t.”
Was it something he had seen on one of those occasions he had found an abandoned copy of the Straits Times in the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, and he had nothing better to do while he drank his coffee than to flip through it? Tay tried to focus in on whatever dim recollection he had, but it continued to elude him.
“I know this might sounds strange to you,” he finally said, “but I don’t read the papers much.”
“Tyler Bartlett’s body was discovered in his apartment here in Singapore a little over four months ago.”
“I know I’ve heard that name,” Tay said, “but I just can’t –”
“The police say Tyler hanged himself.”
And that was when Tay remembered…
Tyler Bartlett was an American in his late twenties who worked for some kind of high-tech company in Singapore. As Tay recalled the story, the young man had left his job and was planning to return to the United States, although Tay couldn’t recall whether he had quit or was fired. Either way, a few days before he was to leave Singapore, his girlfriend found him hanging from a rope in his apartment. The police quickly closed the case as an obvious suicide, but the boy’s parents refused to accept that and began a campaign to get a coroner’s inquest into the cause of death. They insisted their son had been murdered and the crime scene had been faked, but Tay couldn’t recall whether there had ever been an inquest or not.
Emma Lazar caught the look on Tay’s face.
“You just remembered, didn’t you?” she said.
“Yes.”
“How much do you know about the case?”
“I know nothing at all about the case. I’m on leave.”
“So I understand. And that’s why I’m here. I want to hire you.”
“I’m sorry… what?”
“I’m writing a major piece for the Wall Street Journal on the death of Tyler Bartlett. I need an investigator who knows his way around Singapore and has good contacts in law enforcement. My source says you’re the right man for the job.”
“I’m not a private investigator, Mrs. Lazar, and I’m not—”
“Please, Inspector, I asked you to call me Emma. Anyway, I’m not married.”
Tay considered that. He wasn’t sure he should, but he did.
“Emma, then,” he went on after a moment. “I’m very flattered you would ask me, but I’m not interested in a job. When I’m called back from leave, I will return to CID.”
“If you’re called back from leave. I know the story.”
“The story?”
“I know why you’re on leave. I know what happened.”
“How do you know?”
“My source told me.”
“What did he tell you?”
“I didn’t say my source was a man.”
“What did he, or she, tell you?”
“That you shot someone.”
“I did.”
“And that you shot him to save the life of another police officer.”
Tay said nothing to that.
“My source also said you have a lot of enemies in the senior ranks of the police force and at the Ministry of Home Affairs. They’re using what would otherwise be an open and shut investigation to try to get rid of you.”
“Did your source also tell you that he, or she, talks too damned much?”
Emma Lazar smiled and for a moment Tay felt a frisson of pride to have raised a smile in a beautiful woman.
“Look, Emma, I’m flattered you would ask me, really I am, but—”
“I’ll need you for a week, maybe two at the most, and I can promise you’ll be well paid for your time.”
“I’m not looking for a job, Emma. Not even for a week or two.”
“I’m surprised you’re not interested in the case.”
“I don’t know anything about the case. What I’m not interested in is a job.”
“I can do this with you or without you. I’d rather do it with you, but either way I’m going to find out the truth about what happened and about why Tyler Bartlett died.”
“You sound very determined.”
“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”
“Not in Singapore. In Singapore, it's usually just the other way around.”
CHAPTER THREE
“DO YOU STILL smoke?” the woman asked.
Tay must have looked puzzled because she pointed to the heavy crystal ashtray sitting on the table between them.
“You were a smoker once or you wouldn’t have that,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”
Tay nodded, but he didn’t say anything.
“Pipe?” she asked. “Cigars?”
Tay reached in his pocket, produced his pack of Marlboro Reds, and laid them on the table next to the ashtray.
The woman smiled. “I don’t know anyone who still smokes cigarettes.”
“I do. I figure someone has to do it.”
She laughed, and it was a nice laugh. Mellow, honeyed, and Tay thought just husky enough to trigger all sorts of fantasies in a man. If he were a man inclined to fantasies. Which, of course, he wasn’t.
“I used to smoke,” she said, “but I quit years ago.”
“I’m going to quit, too.”
“When?”
“Not today.”
The woman leaned forward and picked up Tay’s pack of Marlboros. “May I?”
“You’re going to start smoking again?”
“I can’t think of a better time.”
Tay didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing.
She shook a cigarette out of the pack and placed it between her lips. Tay took a box of matches out of his pocket, struck one, and lit it for her.
“Oh my, not only do you still light women’s cigarettes, you use wooden matches to do it.”
“I’m an old fashioned guy.”
“Yes, I think you probably are.”
The woman drew deepl
y on the cigarette and Tay watched in amazement as she tilted back her head and puffed three perfect smoke rings across his living room. She was full of surprises. Tay could imagine men fighting over her, and her just sitting and smiling as if she hadn’t even noticed.
“Can I tell you a little more about the case, Inspector?”
“You can tell me whatever you like, Emma. I just don’t see how I can help you.”
“I first learned about Tyler’s death from his parents. When the Singapore police classified Tyler’s death as a suicide, his parents tried to get the American press to support a campaign to get the Ministry of Home Affairs to order a full inquest into the cause of death. I was one of the reporters they approached, and I started looking into Tyler’s death to see if there was a story there. I’ve decided there probably is.”
“From what little I remember reading, the evidence was pretty clear. It was a suicide.”
“I’ve studied the case very carefully, Inspector. I’ve become convinced very little of the evidence the Singapore police say they have that points to suicide makes sense. I think somebody killed Tyler and tried to make it look like suicide. What’s more, I think the Singapore police know that, and they are covering it up.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know, but the orders would have had to come from very high up. That suggests to me there may be a bigger story here than the death of one young man.”
“And you want to write that story.”
“Of course I do.”
“Do you have any idea why someone might want to kill Tyler?”
“I’m certain it had something to do with his work.”
“What kind of work did Tyler do?”
“He wrote software. He used to work for a company in California that produced games for the Xbox, but then Google hired him to work on the development of the software for their driverless car.”
Tay was dimly aware of something called the Xbox. He wasn’t entirely ignorant of modern life and he did know that children these days spent inordinate amounts of time slumped in front of television sets banging away at buttons and pretending to run through elaborate landscapes and shoot zombies. But a driverless car? What in God’s name was that?
“That’s quite an expression you have on your face right now, Inspector. Have you heard about the Google driverless car project?”
Tay didn’t have a clue what the woman was talking about, but nodding seemed the polite thing to do and it had the additional advantage of not making him look completely stupid in front of a beautiful woman. So he nodded, then he changed the subject as quickly as possible.
“Why did Tyler come to Singapore?” he asked.
“A company here recruited him. They were undertaking their own driverless car project and they offered him the opportunity to be a senior software developer.”
“Did he have any connection with Singapore before—”
“None. He’d never even been here. He had lived in California all his life, but they offered him a lot of money to come to Singapore and I guess he was ready for an adventure.”
It was difficult for Tay to think of living in Singapore as an adventure. For someone to see Singapore as an adventure, Tay figured they had to be living a shockingly dull life.
“What was the name of the company that hired Tyler?” he asked.
“It’s called The Future.”
“The Future? The name of the company is The Future?”
The woman nodded.
Tay tried to imagine shaking hands with someone who had just introduced himself by saying Hello, I’m from The Future. He could imagine it, but not without laughing.
“What does The Future do?” Tay asked, struggling to keep a straight face. No matter how much silly wordplay on the company name he could think of, he would be embarrassed under the circumstances to start snickering.
“As I understand it, they’re building a driverless car for Singapore. That’s why they recruited Tyler from Google. I’m told Singapore is the ideal laboratory for such a project since it’s small enough to be easily mapped in the detail the technology requires. That’s one of the limitations Google has discovered in California. The United States is so big that mapping it at the necessary level of detail is an almost unimaginable undertaking.”
Tay wasn’t sure he understood, but he nodded all the same.
“How long had Tyler been in Singapore when he…” Tay trailed off, trying to think of a sympathetic way to put it. He couldn’t. “When he died,” Tay finished quickly.
“About eight months. He had quit his job just before it happened, and he told his parents he was coming back to California.”
“Do you know why he quit?”
“His mother says he said he was afraid.”
“Afraid? Afraid of something in Singapore?”
The idea sounded ridiculous to Tay. Singapore had to be one of the least scary places on earth.
“That’s what he said.”
“What was he afraid of?” Tay asked.
“His mother doesn’t know. Tyler didn’t tell her. But she got the impression it had some connection to his job. That it was the reason he quit.”
“Did she tell the police this?”
“Yes, but she said they didn’t appear to care. All they said was that she must have misunderstood Tyler.”
“I can tell you from my own personal experience, Emma, the Singapore police don’t generally ignore—”
“I don’t know what they generally do. I only know what they did this time. They made a determination of suicide, then they ignored everything that didn’t fit into that determination.”
Tay said nothing. He wished he could tell Emma that was impossible, but he couldn’t. In fact he had very little difficulty imagining how something like that could have happened.
“That’s why I need somebody who understands how things work here to help me,” Emma continued. “If we go back over the evidence, I think I can build a case that someone murdered Tyler and find out why they did it. Then the police won’t be able to ignore me.”
In Tay’s experience, there was no one the Singapore police couldn’t ignore if it was politically expedient to do so. But he didn’t see any reason to say that right then, so he said nothing at all.
“I’ll be happy to pay you whatever you ask, Inspector, within reason of course. I’ve been told you’re the best possible man to help me and now that we’ve met I’m convinced it’s true.”
“It’s very kind of you to say so, Emma, but I still don’t—”
“There’s something else, too.”
Tay waited politely for the woman to go on.
“There’s something very odd about this company Tyler was working for.”
“The Future?”
“Yes. I don’t think it’s what it appears to be.”
“You mean they’re not really working on this car thing you told me about?”
“Yes, they are. But I’m certain there’s something else going on there, too.”
“Such as what?”
“I don’t know yet, but something about that company just doesn’t feel right to me.”
Tay wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he went back to nodding.
“And another thing. Since I’ve started looking into The Future, a lot of strange stuff has been happening.”
“Strange stuff?”
“I think my emails and telephone calls are being monitored. I may even be under surveillance. It feels like I’ve stumbled into a spy movie.”
Tay was beginning to think there was only one sensible thing for him to do here. Keep nodding his head a lot, murmur whatever platitudes might be necessary, and get this woman the hell out of his house as quickly as he could.
“I guess that all sounds a little crazy,” she added.
“A bit.”
“I don’t blame you for thinking that, but it’s still true.”
Tay didn’t know what to say. Even if he set aside th
e woman’s sudden confession of delusions about being caught up in a spy movie, Tay wasn’t about to get involved in a case that had been very publicly closed by the Singapore police. He had enough enemies among the senior ranks now. If he wanted to get his job back, which he most certainly did, making more enemies wasn’t going to help his cause. A police detective was what he was. It was who he was. If he couldn’t go back to CID, he didn’t know what would become of him.
“I’m not a private investigator, Emma. And I don’t know anything about spies.”
That wasn’t completely true, Tay thought to himself. He knew a few spies, and several more people he thought might be. The whole truth was he knew a lot more about spies than he wanted to. Probably more than was good for him.
“I need your help, Inspector. If I’m going to write this story, I need the whole truth, and I’m convinced you’re the man to help me find it.”
Tay cleared his throat. “I appreciate your confidence in me, Emma, but —”
“Please, Inspector, don’t say no. At least promise me you’ll think about it.”
Tay wasn’t sure he wanted to promise this woman anything, but it seemed cruel to say that so he remained silent. He hoped she would tell herself that his silence was agreement and let it go at that. She didn’t.
“Will you think about it?” she asked again. “Then call me?”
What would it hurt to say he would think about it? At least then this woman might go away. Tay had a vision of her bursting into tears right there in his living room, and he didn’t know how in the world he would deal with that if it happened.
“Okay,” he said, “I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all I ask,” the woman said. “I’m at the Ritz-Carlton.”
A really expensive hotel, Tay thought, but of course he didn’t say that. “How long are you in Singapore for?” he asked instead.
The woman lifted her chin and stared at Tay with such single-mindedness that Tay drew back.
“As long as it takes.”
Tay nodded quickly and stood up, hoping to put an end to the conversation before it became any more awkward for him than it already was. To his immense relief, the woman stood up too, and he walked her out. When they reached Tay’s front gate he opened it, but she stopped before passing through it.