TAY DIDN’T KNOW either of the two men who were waiting for him when he came back to his office after lunch.
“Inspector Tay?” one of them asked when Tay opened his door.
Tay didn’t answer. He didn’t like finding anyone in his office other than Sergeant Kang. He was old fashioned enough to believe you only went into another man’s office when you were invited.
So Tay said nothing. He walked around his desk, sat down, and looked at his visitors with his face blank.
He had no doubt the man who had spoken was a Singaporean. He had a square Chinese face and black, badly cut hair. His most prominent feature was a scar that started somewhere inside his hairline just above his left ear, meandered more or less diagonally across his cheek, and then disappeared just below his jaw. It look liked the sort of dueling scar actors in old black and white movies had when they played German aristocrats, but in Singapore people didn’t duel with swords anymore, they dueled with money. And money generally left scars that were deeper than just a discolored welt across the cheek.
Tay’s first thought was the man was probably a policeman, but he didn’t remember ever seeing him before so that seemed fairly unlikely. Before Tay could take his speculation any further, the man held out an identification card.
“I’m Philip Goh. ISD.”
The Internal Security Department. That would explain both the bad haircut and, probably, the scar. It would also explain why these jokers were in his office without an invitation. In his experience, ISD didn’t care much about invitations. They went wherever they wanted.
Tay’s eyes shifted to the second man, who plainly was not a Singaporean. He was Caucasian, and so big that the straight chair in front of Tay’s desk seemed to be struggling to contain him. The man’s face was slightly discolored as if it had once been burned and the new skin grafted to the old had taken on a slightly different coloration. Or perhaps the grafts had been less than perfectly done. When you looked at the man, all you saw was his size and the huge pink blotches on his face. The whole effect was downright scary.
Were the ISD guys going around with hired muscle after the bombings? No, that was silly. Even if they were, their hired muscle certainly wouldn’t be Caucasian.
The Caucasian man looked back at Tay, but he didn’t introduce himself. It was Goh who handled that.
“This is Vincent Ferrero,” he said. “Vince is with the American Embassy.”
In Tay’s experience, with the American Embassy was the euphemism normally used to identify the local CIA guys.
Wonderful. An ISD man and an American spook waiting for him in his office. And the afternoon was young. There was still a chance it might get even worse, wasn’t there?
So what the hell was going on here? He’d had a perfectly nice lunch, was looking forward to an afternoon of relaxed contemplation about the state of the Woodlands case that would no doubt lead him straight to a blinding insight of some kind, and…well, he hadn’t figured on Phil and Vince here ambushing him in his own office.
Tay still hadn’t spoken a word since he had walked into his office and found the two men waiting on him. That policy seemed to be working out just fine, so he leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, and awaited developments.
***
“What progress have you made in the investigation of the dead man found at the Woodlands?” the ISD man asked.
The question took Tay by surprise, but he tried not to show it. Instead, he consulted a spot on the wall just over his visitors’ heads and tried his best to look reflective.
“I thought you guys would be busy enough with the bombings,” Tay said after a moment or two. “Why are you interested in that case?”
“I don’t really need to tell you that, Inspector.”
“No, that’s true, you don’t. But — and this is just a guess — I’m thinking you’d probably get a more helpful answer to your question if you answered mine first.”
Neither of Tay’s visitors had anything to say to that, so Tay gave it a moment and went on.
“Let’s try it again, shall we? Why is ISD interested in a simple homicide, particularly one in which the victim is a foreigner?”
Goh looked annoyed, which was good because Tay really wanted to annoy him. Annoying people was about the only real fun he had anymore, and having the opportunity to annoy an ISD man scored bonus points. Tay flicked his eyes at the muscle and saw that Ferrero was expressionless. It would be fun to think of some way to annoy him, too.
Goh cleared his throat. “Your investigation may be connected to another investigation we’re running.”
Since there was only one investigation in Singapore that anyone gave a damn about right at that moment, Tay had no trouble now working out where this was going.
“My case has something to do with the bombings?”
“I can’t answer that.”
Which, of course, meant Yes, it has something to do with to the bombings.
Christ, maybe he hadn’t been hallucinating. His mother’s ghost had told him there was a connection between the dead man at the Woodlands and the bombings. Or at least what he had imagined his mother’s ghost had told him. He had to keep in mind here that there was no such thing as a ghost.
“My guy was a Caucasian. How could he possibly be connected to your investigation of the bombings? Everyone seems to think that was a JI operation.”
Neither Goh nor Ferrero said a word. They both acted as if Tay hadn’t even spoken.
“If I tell you what I’ve got,” Tay said when he got bored with waiting for them to say something, “are you going to tell me what the connection between my case and the bombings is?”
“We’re not negotiating here, Inspector,” the ISD man said. “I’ll tell you as much as I can simply as a matter of professional courtesy, but that’s all I can promise.”
Which, of course, meant, No, I’m not going to tell you shit, you insignificant little policeman.
Tay concocted a quick narrative of his examination of the corpse and the apartment and tried — he thought with admirable success — to make it as useless and free of information as possible. Somehow it slipped his mind altogether to include Dr. Hoi’s theory about the blow from behind having come from a Maglite. It did not slip his mind to mention the safety deposit box key the dead man had in his ass. He just decided not to tell Phil about that.
“You don’t even know who he is, do you?”
The question came from Ferrero, which was the first sign of actual life he had shown.
“Do you?” Tay snapped.
But that was apparently the end of his meaningful dialogue with the spook. Ferrero said nothing else.
Which, of course, meant, Obviously I do, tiny policeman, and I just wanted to see if you did.
“Inspector,” the ISD man continued, “I’d like to be kept informed of the progress of your investigation. It is a matter of national security even if I’m not permitted to tell you exactly what the circumstances are.”
Goh removed a business card from his shirt pocket and laid it on the edge of Tay’s desk. Then he stood up and offered his hand. The CIA man stood up, too, but he did not offer his hand.
“Will you give me a call if you get an ID on the dead man, or if anything else turns up in connection with your investigation that you think is unusual?”
“Of course, Phil. I’d be more than happy to.”
Which, of course, meant, No, you can go fuck yourself, you arrogant prick.
***
When the two men had gone, Tay sat back down behind his desk. He swung his feet up, crossed them at the ankles, and knitted his hands together behind his head.
Did he know something now that he hadn’t known fifteen minutes ago?
Yes, of course he did.
For starters, he knew for certain there was a link of some kind between his dead guy at the Woodlands and the bombings.
That’s what his mother’s ghost had said. Exactly what she had said.
Had he really been talking to his mother’s ghost that night in the garden of his house? Surely not. Ghosts weren’t real. They didn’t exist. And yet…if he hadn’t been talking to his mother’s ghost, if the conversation had all been just a hallucination, how in the world had he managed to hallucinate something that later turned out to be true?
Tay didn’t want to think too hard about that. It might take him to all sorts of places he would just as soon not go.
So he turned his attention to the second thing he knew now that he hadn’t known fifteen minutes ago.
Both ISD and the CIA knew exactly who his dead guy was. And they weren’t telling him. Tay didn’t much like the sound of that either.
Then his thoughts drifted back to his mother again. Somehow, unconnected with anything in his life for ten years and dead for two, she had come to occupy center stage in the drama that was now swirling around him. She would have loved that, Tay thought. Center stage was where she loved to be. Even as a child he could remember how she had loved attention and how she knew so many people who…
And just like that Tay remembered something useful.