The Singapore School of Villainy (22 page)

‘They've decided not to go ahead. The police said I was to come back to the office and act like nothing had happened. Singh…Singh said that he “only gave a damn about finding a murderer”.'

 

Jagdesh was still in a coma. That much Singh could see the moment he walked into the room. The stillness of a coma went beyond that of sleep. In sleep, there was the occasional stretching and shifting, murmuring and muttering. For Jagdesh, the only movement was the barely discernible rise and fall of the chest, the only sound the slight whistling exhalation between parted lips, largely drowned out by the machine-generated sounds from the paraphernalia of life support. His passivity was so comprehensive as to be indistinguishable from death.

Singh felt a deep sadness for the young man lying on the bed. Even if he recovered, which seemed unlikely from what the doctors had said, he would still be the same unhappy person who had tried to take his own life in the first place. What was to prevent him trying again? After all, the circumstances that had led to the attempted suicide had not changed. He was still a gay Indian man in Singapore. His country of birth and his country of residence – one a dangerous noisy land teeming with people, the other a highly regulated pristine city state. They did share one thing in common, however – a deep prejudice against homosexuality that was still reflected in the colonial-era laws on the statute books.

Singh scratched his beard. It was itching as usual, reflecting his troubled mind. The primary question for him, bastion of the Singapore police, was whether a man who did not baulk at self-murder might also have committed murder. The case against Jagdesh was far from watertight, but there were plenty of pieces of evidence that added up to an incomplete but suggestive picture. He ticked them off in his mind: a secret that, according to the testimony of Maria Thompson, her husband had known; a gay man who was determined to stay in the closet; an attempted suicide and a note that might constitute a confession. Singh snorted out loud. If Jagdesh was the killer, he wished his epistolary arts had better reflected his chosen profession. If Jagdesh was indeed innocent, that left him with Quentin Holbrooke, an insider dealing coke addict who – no doubt to thwart the investigative efforts of the Singapore police – was skint. Which in turn indicated the beautiful and flirtatious Maria Thompson. She had motive and opportunity. Singh did not doubt that she could have summoned up the will to murder her husband if that seemed the best option for her children. But that left him with a partners' meeting, belatedly summoned, apparently urgent, and yet supposedly irrelevant to Mark Thompson's death.

As for the rest – Stephen, Annie, Reggie and Ai Leen – he had a mild fondness for the first two and a strong dislike of the latter two, but he had nothing evidentially substantive on any of them. Singh scowled. Why did the law firm need so many bloody partners anyway? Presumably they were all just splitting the hairs of angels dancing on the head of a pin – and charging by the hour for their efforts.

The policeman didn't realise he had company until a sudden movement caught his eye. He glanced up in surprise at the youth who stood nervously by the door. If Singh was surprised, the young man was completely taken aback to find someone in the room with Jagdesh. The stranger looked like a rabbit in headlights, trying to find the will to bolt.

Singh bared his teeth in a facsimile of a smile. He asked, ‘Are you here to see Jagdesh?'

The youth managed a quick nod in response.

The inspector, wondering why he was so nervous, said, ‘Come in.'

The youth started and Singh thought he could not have terrified the young fellow more if he had invited him into a lions' den.

Despite this, he came in, his steps hesitant but committed. He spoke in a gentle voice, barely above a whisper. ‘I'm Ahmad. I'm a…friend of Jagdesh.'

Singh gestured, inviting Ahmad to get closer to the bed and see Jagdesh for himself. Ahmad crept up to the bed and gazed down at the still figure. The policeman was surprised and interested to see a glint of tears in his eyes.

The young man stood by the bed for a while and then turned and asked, ‘Will he get better?'

‘I don't know. He hasn't got any worse.'

They both gazed at Jagdesh lying prone in the bed, indifferent to his guests.

‘Have you known Jagdesh long?' asked Singh, with feigned casualness.

‘Not so long, no. We have only met a few times.'

He was a soft-spoken fellow, speaking in the gentle undulating cadences of the Malay. Singh strained to hear him. Growing in confidence, the boy said, ‘I read about him in the newspapers, so I came.'

Singh nodded. Jagdesh's attempted suicide had leaked to the press and there had been much speculation as to why he might have done it, the newspapers walking a fine line between titillating their readers and risking a potential libel suit if Jagdesh recovered and was not after all found to be a murderer. The unfolding story surrounding Mark's death was still very much grist to the tabloid mill.

Ahmad muttered a farewell to the inspector and turned to leave, but the policeman took a step backwards, his bulk filling the doorway and obstructing the exit.

He asked, ‘Who are you then?'

‘I told you! A friend of Jagdesh.'

‘I'll bet you are!'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Just that I know a rent boy when I see one.'

Ahmad stood, quivering. ‘Why do you say such a thing?'

‘Twenty-five years as a policeman, young man!'

The boy's expression at discovering that Singh was a policeman caused the inspector to burst out laughing, his belly rippling with humour.

‘I should throw you in the lock-up,' he said, poking a finger into Ahmad's chest.

Ahmad looked terrified.

‘Don't worry. I'm not going to bother. Not now. Only if I find you soliciting.' He continued inquisitively, ‘What are you doing here anyway?'

The boy decided that prudence dictated honesty. ‘We have met a few times. I thought we were friends.'

‘You were a bit of a favourite, were you?'

Ahmad, emboldened by the affable tone, asked, ‘Why do the papers say he is a murderer?'

‘It's possible that Jagdesh killed Mark Thompson.'

‘The
ang moh
who was his boss?' Ahmad asked.

The policeman nodded.

‘Jagdesh told me about it.'

The inspector's interest was piqued. ‘When did he tell you about it?' he asked.

‘That evening. I was with him, you see, but then he had to go to the office. I waited for him at his flat for a long time. When he got back, he told me that his boss had been killed.'

The inspector's eyes almost overlapped as he squinted at Ahmad. ‘Listen to me, young man. I am going to ask you a few questions and I want you to tell me the truth. If I find that you've lied to me, you will
never
see the sun again. Do you understand me?'

Ahmad was petrified into a stillness as profound as that of the man in the coma.

Satisfied, the inspector asked, enunciating each word with care, ‘Were you with Jagdesh the evening of the murder?'

Ahmad nodded fearfully.

‘Both before and after Jagdesh went into the office?'

Again the nod.

‘Do you know what time this was?'

‘I meet him after work – we have a drink together. After that, we go back to his flat and order some pizza for me. He had to go out for dinner with some relatives. But he got a call. He said it is the boss – this Mark Thompson who was killed. It was about seven-thirty.'

Inspector Singh interrupted him. ‘How do you know what time it was?'

‘The pizza arrive when Jagdesh was on the phone. I check the time because if they come late, they give you a discount. After an hour, Jagdesh went out. He said he would be about one hour but he did not come back till midnight.'

‘You were with Jagdesh until about eight-thirty in the evening?'

‘Ya.' Ahmad appeared puzzled by his emphasis.

‘And in that time, you did not go to his place of work?'

‘Of course not! For sure Jagdesh would not want to be seen with me near his office.'

This rang poignantly true to the policeman. Jagdesh had not kept his sexual preferences a secret only to flaunt a delicate-looking rent boy in the vicinity of his workplace. The inspector took out his big white handkerchief and patted his brow.

Jagdesh Singh had an alibi. He was not the cold-blooded killer who had bludgeoned Mark Thompson to death at his own desk. And his apparent innocence meant that there was still a murderer at large. This was a zero sum game. The exoneration of one person meant only that the killer was another of the lawyers, or the widow. Singh grasped the metal rod at the bottom of the bed frame with both hands. He couldn't believe that the young fool lying in the bed in front of him had preferred to brazen out a suspicion of murder rather than produce an alibi that would have revealed his homosexuality.

‘Well – back to square one,' muttered Singh to no one in particular.

But a big part of him was genuinely relieved that his foolish young relative was not, after all, a murderer.

Stephen knew that the life that he had worn like a comfortable suit of old clothes would never be the same again. Replaying the memory of relief that had played over the faces of his colleagues when he had told them that the police suspected Jagdesh – or perhaps Quentin – of the murder, he had longed to get away. Not even Quentin's release could temper his disgust. He grabbed his briefcase, then put it down again, walking out of the room empty-handed.

Now he sat in semi-darkness, slumped in the leather armchair in his study, wondering how he had let his wife and the interior decorator turn his private room into this pastiche of commercial masculinity with its dark wood, red leather, heavy curtains and, unbelievably, hunting prints and a ship in a bottle.

Joan, his wife, came into the room. He had thought that she had gone out for the day with Sarah Thompson, that friendship still blooming despite the pressures of recent events. She had not seen him, sitting in a corner, lost in his own thoughts. He thought about drawing her attention to his presence and then changed his mind. He wanted solitude, even from his wife. Instead, he watched her as she sat down at his desktop computer and switched it on, remembering the girl he had fallen in love with and comparing her to this middle-aged, frumpy woman for whom he had a tepid affection based on a shared history and a commonality of mundane purpose.

He noticed with mild surprise that she was printing something. He would not have thought that she knew how to switch the machine on, let alone print documents. Stephen felt awkward. His desire to be undisturbed had left him in a position where he felt that he was spying on his wife. He saw with relief that she had finished what she was doing, gathering up the sheaf of papers and making for the door.

The sound of his phone ringing stopped Joan in her tracks. She started with fright and dropped the papers, staring at her husband as if she had seen a ghost.

Stephen fumbled for his phone. ‘Sorry, love. Came home early.'

Galvanised into action, she started picking up the papers hurriedly. Stephen came over, but as he stooped to pick up a sheet she snatched it from his fingers, trying to shield the papers from his view. He had seen quite enough.

 

Stephen sat across from his wife in the family room. It was a comfortable place, the only part of the house that was not a monument to an excessive interior design budget. The sofas were of good quality but well worn. The coffee-table books were not the usual untouched hardcovers on architecture and spa resorts, but were well-thumbed travel guides and photo albums. Pictures of family covered one wall, grandchildren, graduations and holidays. It was a room that suggested that the domestic situation of the family living there was a fundamentally happy one. Stephen remembered that he had felt nothing but a mild affection for his wife of thirty-plus years when he had seen her in the study. He realised now that she was of utmost importance to him; he had merely lost the habit of acknowledging it to himself, let alone telling her so.

‘Joan, what were you thinking?'

She sat across from him, knees drawn primly together, hands folded in her lap, hair shot with grey and tied back from an expressionless face.

She shrugged helplessly. ‘It wasn't my idea, it was Sarah's…I thought it might help her get the anger out. You know, a sort of therapy.'

Stephen exploded. ‘Therapy?'

He averted his eyes from the papers on the coffee table – the anonymous letters that had sent Mark Thompson to a Balestier Road brothel hunting for his new bride.

‘I'm so sorry,' muttered Joan.

Stephen rested his head in his hands wearily and clutched at the thinning hair. His deep eyes, sunken in a lugubrious face, looked up and met those of his wife. ‘Maybe you should tell me exactly what you did.'

‘When Mark left her for that woman, Sarah was beside herself…'

Stephen remembered that Sarah had spent a lot of time closeted with Joan after the break-up of her marriage to Mark. He had maintained a prudent distance, with all the reluctance of the male of the species for getting involved in a domestic fracas.

He nodded his understanding and she continued: ‘She was convinced that Maria was no better than a prostitute, after his money. She tried telling him but he was besotted with Maria. She wanted
me
to tell him. Of course, I refused. Then she hit on this idea of sending him anonymous letters.'

Stephen asked, picking up one of the letters gingerly, ‘This stuff about moonlighting as a prostitute…was it true?'

Joan shook her head. ‘I don't know. I don't think Sarah did either. She just put in the worst things she could imagine.'

‘But I don't see why you got involved…'

‘Sarah knew she would be suspected of writing the letters. So she asked me to send them with a local postmark while she went back to England.'

Stephen was puzzled. ‘But what were you doing today?'

‘Sarah was worried that there might be something incriminating in the letters. She asked me to print out copies and take them to her so she could have a look.' She trailed off uncertainly, barely able to meet her husband's eyes.

They stared at the letters lying between them.

Joan broke the silence. ‘I'm afraid there's more.'

Her husband looked at her questioningly, almost fearfully.

‘I lied. I
wasn't
with Sarah Thompson that evening. You know, the evening of the murder.'

‘What?' Stephen's heavy jowls dragged his thin lips down until his expression was one of pure shock.

She held up her hands, a gesture of apology. She spoke quickly, the words falling over each other in her rush to get them out. ‘She begged me – she said she'd be the prime suspect for Mark's murder if I didn't make up an alibi for her.'

‘For bloody good reason!' was Stephen's angry response.

‘What are you going to do?'

Stephen took a deep breath, doing his best to calm himself down. He leaned over and grasped his wife's hand. He said gently, ‘We have no choice, we have to tell Inspector Singh.'

The flashing cursor marked each second that Ai Leen sat at her desk, staring at the computer screen and the letter she had just drafted. Her hand stole to her neck, still wrapped in a gossamer scarf. She no longer felt any pain from the bruising but the gesture had become a nervous habit. She made up her mind and clicked on the print command, getting up to hurry to the printer room. It was imperative that she retrieve the letter before anyone else set eyes on it in that public place. She wrested the door open and found Reggie standing there.

She took an inadvertent step back and he seized the advantage to put a foot in the door. She considered pushing past him, but the interested glance of her secretary, her attention drawn by the frozen silent tableau, stopped her. Reggie propelled Ai Leen back into the room by the simple expedient of stepping forward. She was forced to retreat. He shut the door behind them. Her eyes were drawn to the computer where the letter was still on the screen. Reggie looked her over, his gaze personal and insulting. He reached out and touched her cheek with one finger. It might have been a caress but for her reaction.

She slapped his hand away and shrank from him, hissing, ‘Don't touch me!'

Reggie enjoyed her fear; there was a hint of a smile on his face. He gloated, ‘That's a change of heart!'

Ai Leen slipped behind her desk, creating a barrier between them. She said, unable to hide the tremor in her voice, ‘I mean it – don't touch me.'

Reggie came around the desk and perched on the corner. He put his hands up in a conciliatory gesture and said, ‘I came in here to see whether we could make a deal.'

She did not reply and refused to meet his eyes.

He said sardonically, ‘After all, we made a bargain before and I kept my end of it.'

Ai Leen closed her eyes against the greed and ambition that had led her to this point.

Reggie waited a moment and said, ‘Jagdesh killed Mark. End of story.'

‘There's no evidence that it was Jagdesh!'

‘All right, Quentin then – I don't care. The point is that our dear colleagues are lining up to put their heads in a noose. And as long as the police are focused on them,
we
have nothing to worry about.'

His audience of one looked unconvinced. She said, ‘They've already let Quentin go…'

‘For now!' He continued, ‘Look, we have nothing to worry about. You and I can put this behind us. But I need your guarantee that you'll keep your mouth shut.'

It was only through a singular effort of will that Ai Leen refrained from looking at the screen. Instead, she nodded just once.

Reggie said, ‘I want to hear you say it.'

Hatred burned in her eyes.

He took a step in her direction and she whispered, ‘I won't say anything.' Her hand went to her throat.

He did not miss the fearful gesture. The tension went out of his body.

‘Good,' he said cheerfully and turned away from her. At the door, he stopped and glanced over his shoulder. His parting words were, ‘It's been fun!'

Ai Leen watched him go, her palms clammy with perspiration. She remembered the letter and hurried to the printer room. To her almost light-headed relief, the room was deserted and the letter was still there, obscured in a pile of other printed material. She glanced over it and was satisfied with what she saw. Then she walked over to the shredder, a fixture in any legal office, and fed the letter through, watching the remnants rain into the waiting bin like wedding confetti.

Reggie Peters walked down the road to a phone booth. It was empty, spotless and in perfect working condition. He smiled to himself at the contrast to the red kiosks in London where he had first started practising as a lawyer almost thirty years previously. There, chewing gum was, more often than not, stuck into every crevice including the coin slot and little cards offered sexual services by women whose pictures suggested that nature had contributed only partly to their robust physiques. Reggie much preferred living in Singapore. He grinned suddenly – the women were more to his taste as well.

He fished a piece of paper out of his trouser pocket and dialled the number that his secretary had been obliging enough to procure for him. On the third ring, a brusque voice answered.

Reggie said in a low voice, ‘I have some information for you.'

‘Who is this?'

‘That's not important…'

‘What's it about? I don't have time to waste, you know.'

‘The Mark Thompson murder,' said Reggie. He could almost sense the journalist at the other end sit straighter in his chair. He had not doubted for a moment that this impatient press man would be all ears when he dropped Mark's name into the conversation.

‘Well, go on.' The tone was still hasty but this time it reflected the reporter's interest in getting to the bottom of the story.

‘Quentin Holbrooke was arrested.'

‘For the murder? We haven't had any information like that from the newswires.'

‘He was arrested for drug trafficking – a large bag of cocaine, enough for the death sentence was found on him,' explained Reggie.

‘Well, go on!'

‘They let him go without charging him. He's back at work.'

‘Why would they do that?' asked the newspaper man.

‘Too embarrassing for the authorities to hang an expat so soon after one is murdered at his desk.'

‘I see,' muttered the journalist. ‘Typical double standards.'

‘Exactly,' agreed Reggie. He knew that what he was doing was unconscionable. But he needed the police, especially the ubiquitous Inspector Singh, to focus their attention on his colleagues – he didn't care which ones as long as it wasn't Ai Leen or himself. And after all, he rationalised quickly, Quentin was only getting what was coming to him. It was not as if he, Reggie, had planted the bag of cocaine on him or anything like that.

The voice at the other end of the line was suddenly suspicious. ‘What has this got to do with you anyway? Why are you telling me this?'