by Jake Needham
The coffee maker made little spitting sounds when it was done. Tay turned away from the window and filled a heavy, white mug.Then he picked up the folded sheet and took it with his coffee to the small, round table by the window. He sat down, placed the folded paper on the table, and took a long sip from the mug. It was so good he took another. Then he put down his coffee and drew the paper toward him. He unfolded it, spread it flat, and read the two lines laser-printed on it:
Singapore Airlines to London at 1240.
Come say good-bye.
There was nothing else on the paper.
There didn’t need to be.
Tay finished his coffee and looked at his watch. Nine-fifteen. Plenty of time.
He would go back upstairs and shower and dress. Maybe he would even go somewhere for breakfast before he went to the airport. All of a sudden he was starved.
TAY’S warrant card passed him smoothly through the employees’ entrance into the departure area at Changi and he took the escalator in front of the Times-Newslink bookstore up to the Singapore Airlines lounge. At the entrance, Tay showed his warrant card to the attendant and explained that he was meeting a colleague who was waiting for a departing flight. There was nothing to be alarmed about, he told the pretty young girl in the Singapore Airlines uniform, nothing at all.
He hoped he was right about that.
He turned right into the first class section of the lounge and walked past the bar to the buffet. He wandered around as if he were perusing the selection of food on offer while he scanned the lounge.
It was a large room, tasteful and elegant with leather furniture set out in groupings scattered among colorful aquariums and large flat-screen televisions. It was as quiet as a library. There was no music in the background and no audible conversation, just the occasional sound of an espresso machine spitting out coffee or silverware rattling decorously against a china plate.
Late morning was not a busy time for flight departures from Singapore. Most European and North American flights went out either early in the morning or late at night and about all that left for midday were short-haul regional flights that carried relatively few first class passengers. That meant there were not very many passengers in the lounge right then.
Tay had no difficulty spotting his man immediately. He was in a far corner, his back to the buffet, sitting in one of four brown leather lounge chairs arranged around a granite cocktail table. There was a black leather briefcase on the floor next to his chair and a small, black carry-on bag beside it. It looked like a Prada bag, but at that distance Tay couldn’t be certain.
There was no one in any of the other chairs around the table. The man was alone.
Still, Tay took his time and watched for a while before going over. He poured some tonic water and helped himself to a curry puff. When he had finished, he wiped his hands on a napkin, dropped it into a bin, and walked to where the man was sitting.
“Good morning, Ambassador Munson,” Tay said. “May I sit down?”
Without waiting for an answer, Tay settled into a chair and Munson looked at him over the top of the International Herald Tribune.
“On your way back to Washington, sir?” Tay asked.
“No,” he said, “to London. I’m speaking to the Harvard Club.”
The ambassador was clearly puzzled, not quite certain who Tay was. He peered at Tay more closely.
“Dammit, I know you, but…” Munson snapped his fingers, suddenly remembering. “You’re that policeman, aren’t you? You came to my office right after Liz was…after Liz died.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tan, wasn’t it?”
“Tay, sir. Inspector Samuel Tay.”
Munson folded the newspaper and put it down. “Where are you headed today, Inspector?”
“Nowhere.”
“But…” Ambassador Munson wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Why are you here then?”
“I’m here to see you.”
“You are?” Munson leaned back and crossed his legs. “You could have just come to my office. You didn’t have to drive all the way out here.”
“I thought it was better this way, sir.”
Munson nodded at that. Tay noticed he didn’t ask why it would be better.
“Well, then, I’m all ears, Inspector. What do we have to talk about? I assume it doesn’t have anything to do with Liz.”
“It does, I’m afraid, sir.”
“But her killer’s dead. Isn’t that right?”
“No, sir, it isn’t. Dadi was just a fall guy. He was killed so nobody could prove he’d been framed. Dadi wasn’t responsible for your wife’s death.”
“He wasn’t.”
Tay didn’t hear a question mark.
The ambassador shifted his weight. He uncrossed his legs and re-crossed them again in the opposite direction, adjusting the crease in his trouser leg as he did so. It was an oddly prim gesture and Tay wondered how much nervousness there was in it.
“Do you know who was responsible?” the ambassador asked.
“Yes, sir. I do.”
Tay watched the ambassador carefully. His eyes drifted away from Tay’s, but he said nothing.
“You were responsible, sir,” Tay said after a long while had passed in silence. “You killed her.”
Munson didn’t react at all, which was pretty much what Tay had expected.
“Mrs. Munson had access to the duplicate security card the Agency had for the Marriott and you had a duplicate of your own. She used her card to meet what she thought was a source in room 2608 and you used your card to follow her there. So neither of you showed up on the hotel’s security system. And then you killed her.”
Munson’s eyes traveled across the ceiling and came to rest on the other side of the room.
“You have probably never known a woman like Liz, Inspector. If you had, you wouldn’t ask why…”
Munson lifted both hands and then let them drop in a gesture of hopelessness. “She wasn’t always that way. I wondered sometimes what the hell happened to her. The stress from her work maybe. I don’t know. She had always fucked around a little, but it got completely out of hand.”
“She was having an affair with a woman, I understand.”
“Jesus H. Christ, where did you hear that?” Munson looked startled. “I guess it doesn’t matter. It was true. Several women, I think.”
Tay nodded.
“I told you when you came to my office that Elizabeth and I were heading for a divorce,” Munson said. “You remember that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I didn’t want a divorce. I really didn’t. I tried everything I knew…” The ambassador stopped, then seemed to gather himself. He cleared his throat. “She was awful, Inspector. She beat me down to nothing. She humiliated me in ways I hope you can’t imagine. When she told me she was going to leave me for a woman, I…”
The ambassador stopped again.
“How did you feel about that, sir?”
“How did I feel? How would you feel if your wife suddenly announced that she was leaving you for a woman, Inspector? I felt like she had cut off my goddamned dick. I felt—”
“Enraged?”
The ambassador just looked at Tay and said nothing else.
“Is that why you killed her, sir?”
“I never said I killed her, Inspector. You said that. It’s an interesting theory, I admit. And it might get you a lot of press.”
“It’s not a theory, sir. It’s a fact. You killed your wife.”
“You are forgetting, Inspector, that I have what people in your line of work call an alibi.”
“Are you referring to your trip to Washington?”
“Of course, Inspector, since I was on an airplane—”
“You were on Singapore Airlines to London on the day Mrs. Munson was killed, that’s true; and from London you made a connection to Washington. According to the airline’s reservation records, you were on the same flight that you’re on today, but you we
ren’t, were you? The records were altered. You were on the eleven twenty flight that night. You didn’t leave Singapore until five hours after Mrs. Munson died. You killed her and then you went to the airport and flew to London as if nothing had happened.”
“And you can prove that?”
“Not really, sir. But it’s still true.”
“That’s what I thought.”
The ambassador retrieved the newspaper he had been reading when Tay sat down.
“You’re not very good at this kind of thing, are you, Tay?”
Tay couldn’t think of anything to say to that.
But then, he didn’t really need to say anything.
FORTY-NINE
“TONY DeSouza knew it was true.” Tay spoke to the ambassador through the raised newpaper.
“Did he?”
“Yes, sir. And he tried to cover everything up. He tried to protect you.”
“Tony was very loyal to me.” The ambassador lowered the newspaper and offered a small smile. “He thought I was doing the Lord’s work, and he felt it was his duty to look out for me.”
“DeSouza did all sorts of things for you, didn’t he, sir?”
“Are you talking about something in particular, Inspector? Or are you just jerking off?”
“He picked up a prostitute at Orchard Towers the night before he died, a transsexual prostitute.”
“I’m shocked.”
“We followed the two of them to the Hoover Hotel.”
At that, a wariness appeared in Munson’s eyes and Tay allowed himself a moment to enjoy it.
“DeSouza came out less than ten minutes after he got there, but the prostitute didn’t come out for another hour,” Tay continued. “Were you there that night, sir? Did DeSouza bring that prostitute to the Hoover Hotel for you?”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Inspector, are you seriously suggesting—”
“It’s not easy to recognize you in the photographs, sir. I’ll say that.”
“Photographs?”
The ambassador kept his voice under control. Tay knew that couldn’t have been easy.
“The photographs I took of you going in the side entrance to the hotel. You’re just a silhouette on the street really. It took me a while to work out what it was about that silhouette that looked so familiar. But then I did. It was you, wasn’t it, sir? Your wife preferred women and you preferred transsexuals. What were you two trying for? Kinky couple of the year?”
The ambassador shifted his gaze and tightened the muscles in his forehead. It was the approved gesture of puzzlement, of course, but underneath it Tay could clearly see him sagging as the blows registered. He looked like a man watching his house catch on fire, one who knew there was absolutely nothing he could do about it but watch it burn.
“What did you have on DeSouza, Ambassador?”
The ambassador’s mouth twitched. “You don’t understand loyalty, do you, Tay? People like you think you have to force people to do things. Tony was a good man. He was loyal to me by choice. He was loyal to what I stood for.”
“He certainly was loyal, sir. That’s why you called him after you murdered Mrs. Munson. That’s why he cleaned up after you at the Marriott and staged the crime scene so that we wouldn’t be able to identify the body until you were back in Washington and your alibi was established. That’s why he arranged to alter the airline’s reservation records to back up your alibi.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“And the loyalty didn’t even stop there, did it, sir? DeSouza murdered Ambassador Rooney just to deflect suspicion from you for Mrs. Munson’s murder. That was why he set up the crime scene in Bangkok to make it look like the same man killed both women.”
“I thought it was generally believed that the same man had killed both women.”
“It certainly looked that way, sir. He fooled me, at least for a while. The two crime scenes were almost identical.”
The ambassador blinked at that and Tay waited him out.
“Almost?” he eventually asked just as Tay knew he would.
“There was only one difference, sir. Only one.”
Tay saw the flash of panic in Munson’s eyes. “And what was that?”
“It was the flashlight, sir.”
“I thought both women had a flashlight pushed up their…” Munson paused, tasting the words for any hidden danger before he used them. “Pushed into them.”
“They did.”
“Then I guess I don’t see what you mean.”
“The first flashlight was pushed into Mrs. Munson lens first, but the second flashlight was pushed into Ambassador Rooney barrel first.”
“Oh, come on—”
“No, sir. If the same man had killed both women, he wouldn’t have made a mistake like that. It would have been important to him to pose both bodies in exactly the same way. That’s what he would have been showing us by it, that the same man was responsible for both murders. To make the two scenes almost the same, but different in one respect, particularly one like that, would just confuse things. If the same man committed both crimes, he wouldn’t have made that kind of mistake.”
“Well, maybe—”
“And there was something else, too.”
“Something else?”
“DeSouza didn’t know where the flashlight at the Marriott had come from. He told me he found it in the bedside table, but it was in the closet. Remember that, sir? It was in the closet.”
The ambassador closed his eyes and allowed that to sink in.
“Motherfucker,” he muttered, his voice barely a whisper.
“Sorry, sir?”
“That’s all very interesting, Inspector,” the ambassador said instead of repeating himself, “but it doesn’t add up to dog shit. You can’t hang a case against me on crap like that.”
“You’re right there, sir. It’s not much. Certainly not enough for a court of law, but then I’m not in a court of law here, am I?”
“And you’re not likely to be. Perhaps you’d been able to make a better case if Tony hadn’t committed suicide, but—”
“Oh, Tony DeSouza didn’t commit suicide, sir.”
“What are you talking about? Of course he did.”
“I was there, sir, at least I was there just before he died. I went to his house to confront him with what I knew and what I suspected. It surprised me, sir, I have to admit that honestly, but he confessed to everything.”
“Confessed?” Tay could hear Munson’s breathing begin to accelerate. “He told you I killed Elizabeth?”
“No, sir. He claimed to me that he killed her, and that he killed Ambassador Rooney after that to deflect attention from Mrs. Munson’s murder. Then he killed Cally Parks because she was close to working it all out.”
“Well…” Munson spread his hands. “There you are.”
“Not really, sir. DeSouza did kill Susan Rooney and Cally Parks all right, and I think he killed both of them pretty much for the reasons he told me he killed them. But he was lying about Mrs. Munson. He was protecting you.”
“And what makes you so sure of that?”
“Because DeSouza told us later he was lying. That you killed Mrs. Munson and then called him to clean up your mess.”
“Us?”
“I left DeSouza that night with a colleague of yours. They had their own conversation after I had gone, and your colleague told me DeSouza gave you up with barely a whimper.”
“A colleague of mine? What the hell are you talking about, Tay?”
“Does the name John August mean anything to you?”
“No,” the ambassador shook his head, “it doesn’t.”
“That’s odd. He certainly knows you. As a matter of fact…” Tay made a show of looking around the lounge, “he’s on the same flight to London that you are today, sir.”
Tay pointed over the ambassador’s shoulder. “There he is. Right behind you.”
Munson turned and looked where Tay was pointing. When he
turned back, all the blood had drained from his face.
“Maybe you know him by a different name than I do,” Tay said. “That doesn’t surprise me. But whatever name you know him by, you obviously know who he is.”
“What do you want from me, Tay?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Look, when I get back to Singapore, we’ll sort all this out. We’ll come to some kind of arrangement. You’re wrong about me.”
“I don’t think I am, sir. But it doesn’t really matter.” Tay tilted his head toward John August. “You won’t be coming back to Singapore.”
The ambassador twitched visibly and Tay saw his jaw working.
“You’re bluffing,” he said.
“It’s funny you should say that, sir. Really funny. That’s exactly what Tony DeSouza said to me. As a matter of fact, it was just about the last thing he ever said to anybody.”
Tay pointed at the big clock on the wall of the lounge.
“You’d better get going, Ambassador. You’ve got a bit of a walk to your gate. You wouldn’t want to miss that plane.”
The ambassador sat absolutely still. He stared straight ahead and said nothing at all.
“Good-bye, sir.”
Inspector Samuel Tay stood up and walked out of the lounge without a backward glance. He was looking forward to the rest of the weekend already.
THE END
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A WORLD OF TROUBLE
PROLOGUE
I HAVE THE right to remain silent and mostly I have exercised that right. Anything I say can and will be used against me in a court of law. I have the right to an attorney. If I cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for me.
That’s what they told me.
Of course, I figure it’s mostly crap. If I don’t start talking pretty soon, telling them what they want to hear, they’ll haul me out to a little room somewhere in the back and beat the shit out of me.
So let’s get one thing straight right now. Before they come back.