TAY THOUGHT THERE must have been times in his life when he had been angrier. But if someone had asked him right then when those times were, he doubted he could have come up with any.
Tay stormed past Rachel and burst into the SAC’s office without knocking. The SAC was at his desk reading something and making notes with a heavy gold fountain pen.
“Do you know about this?” Tay snapped.
When the SAC looked up, Tay’s first thought was how tired he appeared. He looked even worse than he had a few days ago, and that had been pretty bad. Tay was almost ashamed to be adding to the man’s burdens. Almost.
“It looks like ISD has called you in,” the SAC asked. “They told me they were going to.”
“Then you do know about this.”
The SAC paused and seemed to think about it, although Tay didn’t see there was all that much to think about. Very deliberately he capped the fountain pen, laid it on his desk blotter exactly parallel to the document he had been reading, and shifted his weight in his chair.
“Sit down, Sam.”
Tay took the straight chair closest to the SAC’s desk.
“Of course, I know,” he said. “I didn’t get to be the Senior Assistant Commissioner of Police by not knowing things like this.”
“You don’t look very upset about it.”
“You look upset enough for both of us, Sam.”
Tay said nothing.
“Look, Sam, what good would it do for me to be upset. It’s ISD. If they want the case, they’re going to take it. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
“They don’t want the case, sir. They want to shut it down.”
“Shut it down? What are you talking about?”
“They’re closing it as a suicide.”
The SAC’s jaw tightened. “That’s not what they told me.”
“Well, sir, that’s what they told me. They’re going to bury this.”
“Suicide?”
“Yes, sir.”
“They’ll never make that fly.”
“They will if we’re shut out. There won’t be anybody left to ask questions about it.”
Tay could see from the look on the SAC’s face that he was chewing that over. Eventually he leaned back and folded his arms.
“Tell me what you’ve got on the murder, Sam.”
So Tay told the SAC about their inability to identify the dead man using any of the usual approaches. Then he told him about the safety deposit box key and finding the ledgers with his father’s initials on them inside the box. He even told the SAC about how finding his father’s initials on the ledgers had led him to discover the photograph of the dead man and his father together over thirty-five years ago. Tay didn’t really like sharing so much information, not when he had no idea yet what it all added up to, but he figured he had nothing to lose anymore.
“Your father?” the SAC asked. “Seriously?”
Tay nodded.
“So you think your father had some connection to the dead man?”
“All I know for sure is they were photographed together in Vietnam in 1975. And they looked pretty friendly. So, yes, there’s at least some connection.”
“How do you know the photo was taken in Vietnam in 1975?”
That raised a problem for Tay. Was he going to tell the SAC about John August? No, that was a connection Tay had always kept deeply buried, for both his sake and August’s, and he was going to continue to keep it deeply buried. Besides, he was pretty sure the SAC would prefer not to know. He wouldn’t be happy to have specific knowledge that one of his detectives had been consorting with an American spook, or worse, even if he suspected it. But then how would he explain knowing the things August had told him? Tay couldn’t think of a suitable evasion, so he went with the simplest possible response.
“I’d rather not say, sir.”
The SAC grunted. “So all this has something to do with your little spook buddy at the American embassy, does it?”
“I don’t have a spook buddy at the American embassy, sir.”
Tay didn’t want to flat out lie to the SAC, but he told himself that wasn’t really a lie. John August certainly didn’t work at the American embassy, and the truth was he didn’t even know for sure August was a spook.
“Look, Sam, I have to know—”
“There are things you don’t want to know, sir. This is one of them.”
The SAC looked away and scratched unnecessarily at his neck. He didn’t get to be Senior Assistant Commissioner of Police by asking the wrong questions, Tay knew, and he was willing to bet the SAC would let this go.
He did.
“Where are those ledger sheets now” he asked instead.
“They were stolen.”
“Stolen?”
Then Tay told the SAC about the man who forced his way into his house, knocked him out, and took the sheets.
“You’re not saying you think—”
“Not exactly, sir.” Tay hesitated. “But…who else could it have been?”
“You really think ISD sent somebody to your house to mug you and steal evidence in a murder case?”
Tay said nothing.
After a moment the SAC pushed back from his desk and rubbed at his eyes with both hands. “Oh boy,” he muttered.
“Look, sir, now that I know who the dead man is—”
“You know who he is? I thought you said you hadn’t been able to ID him.”
“No, sir, I said…”
Tay stopped and thought about it. He couldn’t actually remember what he had said. That was one of the reasons he hated lying to people. It was less a matter of moral compunctions than simply having a lousy memory.
“Is this another one of those things you don’t want to tell me?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, sir, it’s just that—”
“You think I’d be better off not knowing.”
“Something like that. Yes, sir.”
The SAC stared at a spot on the wall somewhere above Tay’s head and said nothing.
“Why would ISD want to shut us out and close this case?” he asked after a minute or two had passed in silence.
“Because there’s something there they don’t want us to find.”
“And I’m sure you have a theory as to what that might be, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir. There may be a connection between the dead man at the Woodlands and the bombings.”
“And is there a connection?”
Tay hesitated. He wasn’t sure exactly how to answer that. His instincts told him there was — and then there was the matter of his mother’s ghost also saying there was, but he certainly wasn’t about to mention that — yet he knew he didn’t have any hard evidence so Tay chose his words carefully.
“I don’t know for sure there’s a connection, sir. I certainly have no evidence of it.”
“Do you think there might be?”
“It’s possible, sir.”
The SAC nodded and considered that. “So it’s your theory that ISD thinks if we keep pushing on this case it will lead us to something that might embarrass them. Something to do with the bombings. Is that about the size of it?”
“I think it is, sir.”
That was a gesture common in conversation in Singapore, one Tay had seen repeated a thousand times, and he saw it again now. It was a curious idiosyncrasy Tay called the Singapore Swivel. When discussions arrived at a point where one party thought he was expressing an opinion he shouldn’t, that party would abruptly go off the record. His voice would lower to a whisper and his head would slowly swivel — left, center, right, center — scanning his location to see who else might be within earshot. The gesture was automatic, even when you thought you were speaking in private. You never knew who was listening in Singapore.
“Well,” the SAC mumbled, “then, if I were you, I’d probably keep pushing the investigation until I got to the bottom of it.”
Tay wasn’t sure he had heard right.
“I’m sorry, sir. What?”
“I said if I were you, Sam, I’d probably keep pushing the investigation. But I’m not you, am I? You’ll have to decide for yourself what the right thing to do is. Whatever you decide, just make certain you don’t tell me anything I don’t want to know.”