by Jake Needham
A food runner appeared with their plates of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and Tay and Kang fell silent until she had arranged everything on the bar. Then they both turned their attention to the food and whiskey and chatted inconsequentially until they finished eating. Neither one seemed to want to be the first to revisit the subject of Tyler Bartlett but, when the coffee was served, Kang did anyway.
“Are you going to help this woman with her investigation, sir?”
“I don’t see why I should.”
Tay’s thoughts flicked for a second to the dream he’d had about his mother and her instruction that he take Emma Lazar up on her proposal, but then he firmly put the recollection out of his mind.
“Well, sir, maybe….”
Kang trailed off and turned his full attention to studying the little whiskey that remained in his glass.
“What is it, Robbie?”
“Look, sir, here’s the truth of it. I went through the final investigative papers before I briefed the boy’s parents, and I read Chin and Rajah’s final report. According to them, there was no doubt about the finding of suicide, but… well, the report seemed all wrong to me.”
“Wrong?”
“I couldn’t believe what was in it. It was embarrassing to have to use it to tell the parents what happened to their son when I didn’t believe half of what I was saying.”
“Are you telling me the report that closed the case as a suicide was inaccurate?”
“Not inaccurate, sir. That’s the wrong word for it. Could be it was only sloppy work. But, either way, some of the details in the report were different from the way I remembered the scene when I was there. And there were things left out.”
“What things?”
“Well, sir, fingerprints for one. There was no mention at all in the report about dusting the boy’s apartment for prints. You know we always dust for prints at the scene of any suspicious death, but why would they have left the fingerprint findings out of the investigative report?”
Tay thought about that, but he said nothing. Yes, if no fingerprints had been taken that would have been odd, and it would have been even odder if they had been taken and nothing about them was mentioned in the report. Still, it was hardly that big a deal. Not really.
“That’s why I went back to the apartment again.”
“Went back to the apartment? I thought you had been taken off the investigation.”
Kang nodded.
“Then how did you get in? Wasn’t the apartment sealed?”
“There were so many people in and out they had left a key in the mailbox for us to use. I thought it might still be there.”
Kang grinned.
“It was.”
Tay waited. Sometimes it took Kang a while to get to the point. Tay was used to waiting on him.
“Well, sir, I put the key back in the mailbox when I left and as far as I know the place is still empty. So my guess is the key’s still sitting right there. If it is, I thought you might want to have a look around the apartment for yourself.”
“You can’t let a civilian with no official standing into a crime scene, Robbie.”
“That’s just it, sir. It’s not a crime scene. It’s only an empty apartment where an American hung himself a few months ago. Or maybe he was murdered, depending on how you look at it.”
Tay hesitated. He was growing increasingly curious about the case, that was true enough, but he had to weigh satisfying his curiosity against the possibly that his presence in the apartment would somehow end up reported back to CID. If it were, that certainly wouldn’t do anything to speed up his reinstatement. It could even be used against him to slow it down.
Kang sipped at his coffee and let Tay think about it for a while.
“We could go over after dinner, sir. My car’s right down the street.”
Tay knew he ought to say no thank you to Kang. That would be the smart move.
But who was he kidding?
First Emma Lazar shows up with a cockamamie sounding story about a police cover up of a murder, then Kang tells him he thinks there is something off about the investigative papers which closed the case as a suicide. Under those circumstances, was there the slightest chance he would refuse to let Robbie show him the crime scene because somebody might tell teacher on him? Forget it.
“Drink up, Sergeant, and pay the bill. It’s a nice night for a drive.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEY TOOK NEW Bridge Road across the Coleman Bridge over the Singapore River and drove through Chinatown. Tay often wondered why Singapore, which was a Chinese city whether anyone wanted to admit it or not, had a neighborhood called Chinatown. What seemed even stranger to him was that no one else appeared to see any irony in the name. It was only one of many things about the country in which he had spent his entire life that genuinely puzzled him.
The smoky pall lying over the city had lifted a little. A half-mile in front of them Tay could see the complex of police buildings on the corner of New Bridge and Cantonment roads that everyone called the Cantonment Complex. He had spent half of his professional life in one or another of those blue glass towers, but he had never adjusted to the squeaky-clean soullessness of them. He missed the days when police stations were grimy colonial-style buildings with cracked linoleum floors. The Cantonment Complex never felt like a police station to him. It was far too sanitized and antiseptic. It was more like the headquarters of a big international insurance company.
“Do you miss the place, sir?” Kang asked when he saw Tay looking at the Cantonment Complex.
Tay wasn’t certain how to answer that. He did, and he didn’t. He missed being a policeman, that much was true, but he didn’t really miss being part of the Singapore police force. It was hard to explain, even to himself, and he doubted Kang would understand, so he said nothing. Kang let it go, and Tay said a silent thank you.
They made a left and then a sharp right. When they got to the Maxwell Road Hawker Center, Kang slowed down and started looking for a place to park. It was a little after eleven when he found a spot on Tanjong Pagar Road.
They were in an area called Duxton Hill, a neighborhood of narrow, twisting streets lined with whitewashed shophouses of three or four floors, some of which had been converted to restaurants or bars with apartments above them. It wasn’t an area where Tay would expect a foreigner to live. Foreigners mostly lived in shiny, expensive high-rises out around Orchard Road. They didn’t live in narrow walk-ups above bars.
Kang locked the car and walked around to the passenger side where Tay was waiting on the sidewalk.
“The apartment is one block over from here, sir.”
“Did the boy live alone?” Tay asked.
“Yes, sir. He had a girlfriend, but she didn’t live with him.”
“Local girl?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Naturally.”
Kang wasn’t sure what Tay meant by that so he just nodded.
“Who found the body?” Tay asked.
“She did. The girlfriend.”
“All right, Sergeant. Let’s get on with it then.”
They walked west for about fifty yards and turned north. Duxton Road curved gently uphill from there, and the upper floors of the three-story shophouses extended above the sidewalks along both sides of it and made them into colonnaded arcades with narrow rows of spindly palm trees separating them from the street. The arcades looked like they would be welcoming and cooling in the heat of the day, but at night they were deep in shadow and felt a little ominous.
Music drifted from bars and restaurants at the other end of the block, but up where Tay and Kang were it was quiet and gloomy. A few of the windows on the upper floors of the shophouses were lighted, but not many.
Kang stopped at a wooden door in a whitewashed shophouse that had green louvered shutters on the second and third floors. The first floor had a large plate-glass window. Tay cupped his hands around his face and tried to see into the darkened area behind the window.
“It’s a nail salon, sir. You know, where women go to—”
“I know what a nail salon is, Sergeant. I may not seem to you like a man who knows what a nail salon is, but I do.”
“Yes, sir.”
Behind the door was a tiny lobby lit by a single bare bulb. It had a narrow staircase on the other side and four black metal mailboxes on the right-hand wall. Kang reached into the third box from the left, felt around, and took out an oversized brass key.
“Just like I thought, sir,” he grinned. “Still here.”
Tay nodded, but he didn’t say anything.
“There are four apartments, two on the second floor and two on the third,” Kang went on. “The dead American’s apartment’s on the third floor.”
“Tyler Bartlett.”
“Yes, sir. That’s his name. Tyler Bartlett.”
“Then call him that, Sergeant.”
“I’m sorry, sir?”
“You keep calling him the dead American. His name was Tyler Bartlett. So call him Tyler Bartlett, or Mr. Bartlett, or Tyler.”
“I apologize, sir, I didn’t mean any—”
“I know you didn’t, Sergeant. There’s no need to apologize. Just call Tyler by his name from now on.”
“Yes, sir.”
The third floor landing was illuminated by another bare bulb. Kang unlocked the right-hand door and pushed it open.
Tay pointed to the other door, the one on the left. “Who lives there?”
“No one. It’s empty.”
“Was it empty when Tyler died?”
“Yes, sir, it was.”
“These are rental units?”
“Yes, sir.”
“This happened four months ago and both of these apartments have been empty ever since? This isn’t a very popular building to live in, is it, Sergeant?”
“Both apartments are rented by the company Tyler worked for, sir. They use them for their employees. Maybe they didn’t think anyone else would want to live here for a while.”
Tay pointed to the door of the apartment next to Tyler’s. “Does your key work for the other apartment, too, Sergeant?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Tay waited a moment, but Kang made no move to find out so he prompted, “Why don’t you try it and then we’ll know?”
“It’s just an empty apartment, sir.”
“Please try the key, Sergeant.”
Kang pushed the key into the lock and turned it. There was a click and the door opened.
“Just leave it,” Tay said. “We’ll look at Tyler’s apartment first.”
The shutters were all open and there were no curtains. In the dim light that spilled into the room from the street, Tay saw that the apartment was bare. No furniture, no rugs, nothing on the walls.
Kang produced a penlight from his shirt pocket and clicked it on. The beam was surprising wide and bright. Tay looked around as Kang swung the light to the left and then back to the right. There wasn’t much to see but an empty room with white walls and a dark-stained wooden floor.
“His parents cleaned the place out after we released the site, sir. They took his personal things back to the States. Gave away the furniture.”
Tay nodded and walked into the apartment.
“It’s only the three rooms,” Kang said. “There’s a small kitchen over there…”
He flipped the light across the room to a door that was half open.
“And the bedroom’s through there.” Kang indicated a half-open door on the other side of the room with the beam of the penlight. “There’s a bathroom off the bedroom.”
Tay sniffed the air. It was still and heavy. He didn’t detect the smells of ammonia or fresh paint that he would have expected if the place had been cleaned and redecorated. He held out his hand for the penlight and Kang gave it to him.
Tay walked around the living room, played the light over the walls and floor, and glanced into the kitchen. He saw nothing of particular interest to him.
“Where was the body?”
“In the bedroom, sir.”
“You said Tyler’s girlfriend found it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“I didn’t talk to her myself, sir, but I read her interviews.”
“Tell me what she said about the discovery of the body.”
“She said Tyler’s last day of work had been on Friday and they had gone out with a group of his friends from work that night. She expected to hear from him on Saturday, but she didn’t. Then, when he didn’t answer any of her texts on Sunday either, she came over here to make sure he was all right. She found the front door unlocked and came in.”
“She opened the bedroom door,” Kang continued, “and found Tyler’s body. She said Tyler’s face was white and his arms were dangling straight down. She knew right away he was dead, but she pushed at the body anyway and it didn’t move. Then she began to scream and ran out of the building. She ran down Duxton Road until she stumbled into an Italian restaurant and they called the police for her.”
Tay nodded and walked to the bedroom door. Placing the palm of his left hand against it, he gave it a little push and it swung open. The bedroom was as empty as the living room.
“Where was the body?” he asked.
“It was hanging from the bathroom door, sir.”
Tay focused the light on the bathroom door. It was a completely ordinary door, painted white exactly like the rest of the room. It was hard to imagine the body of an adult male hanging from it.
“How does a man hang himself from a door?” Tay asked.
“Inspector Chin’s report said Tyler drilled four holes in the bathroom wall and bolted a pulley to it. He fed some kind of long black strap through the pulley and tied it to the toilet to anchor it. Then he screwed another pulley into the top of the bathroom door and pulled the strap through it. He got up on a chair in front of the bathroom door, tied the end of the strap around his neck, and jumped off the chair.”
“That sounds to me like a pretty complicated way to hang yourself,” Tay said.
“That’s one of the things that bothers me, sir.”
Tay walked into the bedroom and Kang followed him across it to the bathroom. The bathroom was so small both men stayed outside and examined it through the doorway. Tay pointed the light at the toilet. It was against the wall on the other side of the sink.
“I don’t see how—”
“Exactly, sir. If you tied something to the toilet and ran it to the top of the bathroom door, it would hit the side of the sink.”
Tay turned his head from the toilet to the door and back again, imagining the strap running from the base of the toilet through a pulley mounted high on the wall to the top of the bathroom door.
“But it might still have worked if the pulley he ran the strap through was bolted high enough on the wall for the strap to clear the sink before it reached the top of the door.”
“But, sir…” Kang trailed off. He seemed uncomfortable.
“Go ahead, Sergeant, spit it out.”
“There are no holes in the wall. If he had mounted a pulley on the wall, there would have to be holes.”
Tay ran the light slowly over the wall behind the toilet. He started at the middle and moved the beam side to side until he reached the top. There were no holes. At least none Tay could see.
“Could they have been filled up?” he asked Kang.
“Not unless somebody did it between the time they took the body down and the time I got here on Monday. I looked for the holes to see how high the pulley had been mounted and there weren’t any. That wouldn’t have been much more than twenty-four hours after the body was found. Why would anybody start making repairs to the wall within twenty-four hours?”
“Did you ask the other officers on scene about the pulley?”
Kang shifted his feet and looked away, clearly embarrassed. “No, sir. I figured I must have misunderstood what I had been told about how t
he body was hanging, and that wasn’t my part of the investigation anyway. It wasn’t until I saw the final report that I realized I had the method of hanging exactly right. But if I had it right, there would have to be holes in the wall, wouldn’t there, sir?”
Tay thought about it and looked back and forth a few more times from the toilet to the door. Then he ran the light slowly back and forth over the bathroom walls again.
No holes.
Turning around, he examined the bedroom. Like the living room, it was bare, just white walls and a dark-stained wooden floor. He ran the light over the walls, first over the outside wall that had two windows in it, then over the inside walls. Something about the wall opposite the bathroom caught his eye and he walked over and took a closer look at it.
Halfway up the wall there was a circle about an inch in diameter that was reflecting the beam of the penlight in a slightly different way from the rest of the wall. Tay rubbed his finger over the spot, and then pushed on it. It was yielding and rubbery.
“There was a hole here,” Tay said. “It’s been filled with some kind of compound that’s the same color as the wall. I only saw it because whatever it is doesn’t reflect light like the paint does.”
“I don’t see what that could have to do with Tyler hanging himself, sir. It’s too far away from the bathroom door.”
“Nevertheless, something was screwed into the wall here or hung off of it, then it was removed and the hole filled in such a way that no one would notice it.”
Tay flicked the light to the bathroom door and back again.
“A filled-in hole over here, but no holes in the bathroom. This doesn’t make any sense, Sergeant.”
“No, sir, it doesn’t. Something stinks.”
Tay nodded and went back to examining the filled-in circle.
“What’s on the other side of this wall?” he asked after a minute or two.
“I don’t know, sir.” Kang thought about it. “I think it’s probably the other apartment on this floor.”
“Let’s go have a look,” Tay said.
CHAPTER EIGHT