WHAT JUST HAPPENED? Tay asked himself standing in the hallway outside the SAC’s office.
Had his boss really just given him a wink and a nod and told him he was free to continue the investigation regardless of what ISD was demanding?
It occurred to Tay he might be getting in way over his head here. So he did what he usually did when he thought he might be over his head. He went straight to his office, closed the door, and called John August. He got no answer, of course, but then the number he had for August never answered. So he sat and waited for August to call him back.
John August knew more than he had told him. Tay had no doubt about that.
He was less certain he could persuade August to tell him what that was, but he had to try. Even if he took the SAC’s wink as a sort of tacit form of approval to continue the Woodlands investigation, it was clear he would be working without a net if he did, and working without a net meant his options would be limited. And if ISD got wind he was still chasing the case, he didn’t know what would happen. He just knew it would be bad.
After two hours of waiting for August, Tay had had enough. He went down to the pool office and checked out a car. He drew another Volvo V70, this one a depressing shade of green. He made sure it was full of gas, and then headed for August’s little nest behind the Polo Shop in JB.
The Woodlands checkpoint was jammed and backup stretched for what looked to Tay like half a mile. He pulled onto the shoulder and cut around the line all the way to the front. Normally he would be embarrassed about pulling rank so conspicuously, but this was not one of those days. He held out his warrant card at the young officer controlling traffic and snapped, “Police emergency!”
Twenty minutes later he was through both the Singaporean and Malaysian checkpoints. He drove about half a mile and pulled into a Shell station where he could park off to one side and watch the passing traffic.
Was he being followed? It was probably a little paranoid of him even to let the thought cross his mind, but now that it had crossed his mind he figured it was worth a few minutes to see if it could be true. If someone had been behind him, the traffic at the Woodlands checkpoint would either have stopped them or they would have had to show themselves and provide identification to jump the line the same way he had.
After seeing nothing suspicious for ten minutes, Tay felt stupid. He was just glad no one had been around to catch him sitting there watching the road. He started the Volvo and made for the Premium Outlet Center at the highest speed he could without attracting any unwanted attention.
***
When he got to the center, he exited the highway and drove around until he saw the Polo Shop. There was a parking place right in front of it which he took, and then he locked up the Volvo and went inside.
The same attractive young woman he had seen before was straightening up colorful piles of golf shirts displayed on a long wooden table just inside the front door. The last time he had been there she had greeted him with a dazzling smile. This time, she didn’t.
“May I help you, sir?”
“I need to see August.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t understand.”
“I need to see John August. It’s important.”
“No one by that name works here, sir.”
Tay stared at the young woman. Could he be mistaken? Wasn’t this the same woman who had greeted him when he had been here before and taken him straight to August?
No, he wasn’t mistaken. Maybe it was just that she hadn’t been told to expect him this time. Which was understandable, since August didn’t know he was coming.
Tay pointed back to the door between the shelves holding packages of underwear and the horizontal rails holding rows of identical blue blazers.
“Tell August this is important or I wouldn’t be here.”
“I really don’t understand what you mean, sir.”
“Look,” Tay snapped, “I know you’re just doing your job, but I don’t have time for this crap. Either you go back there and tell August I need to see him or I’ll do it myself.”
The girl took a couple of quick shuffling steps away from him. Now Tay could see something like fear on her face. He had to hand it to her. It was a very convincing performance, but he was tired of standing there and admiring it.
With a dozen strides he was through the unmarked door in the back wall and into the short hallway paneled in blond wood he remembered from his last visit. He went straight to the last door on the right where August’s office was, knocked briskly, and — hoping August wouldn’t shoot him or something — opened it.
Inside were stacks of cartons with large Ralph Lauren logos on both ends. Tay quickly backed out of the room and rechecked the hallway doors. August’s office had been the last door on the right, hadn’t it? Yes, of course, it had. He looked up and down the hallway. It was identical to what he remembered, and this was the last door on the right. He peered inside the room again.
It was the size and shape he recalled, but the paintings and all the furniture were gone. Instead, there was nothing there now but piles of white cardboard cartons. Tay reached for the nearest one and tore it open. Inside were packages of athletic socks with tiny blue polo players on them.
Tay was too flabbergasted to do anything but stand with his hands on his hips and look around the room. He half expected John August to materialize from a hidden door or perhaps to rise straight up through the floor. But August did neither.
It took Tay a moment to accept what he was seeing, but finally he did. He was standing in a storeroom in the back of a Ralph Lauren factory outlet right across the Malaysian border from Singapore. It was not an office and John August was not in it. It was a fucking storeroom, and he was sick to death of all the cloak and dagger bullshit.
Tay didn’t speak to the young woman as he walked out and crossed the store to the parking lot, but he shot her a glance as he pushed his way outside. The half-smile on her face was impossible to miss.
***
Tay drove south a lot faster than he probably should have. If some Malaysian cop stops me for speeding, he told himself, I swear I’ll take out my gun and shoot the little shit. Fortunately, he didn’t have his gun with him, so he wouldn’t have to decide whether or not to make good on that pledge if circumstances arose to test it.
What was he getting into here?
ISD was threatening his career to get him to drop a murder case, and the one man he knew who might be able to protect him from the wrath of the local Gestapo had just demonstrated exactly how insignificant one Inspector Samuel Tay was in the greater scheme of things.
He passed a silver Bentley in the right-hand lane that had Singapore plates reading SGD8888. Did SGD stand for Singapore dollars? Of course it did.
You couldn’t stop a Singaporean from thinking and talking about money. Money was the first thing most Singaporeans thought about every morning and the last thing they thought about every night, and now Singaporeans were even plastering it on the backs of their cars. To be entirely fair, since religion and politics were both forbidden subjects in Singapore, that’s about all that was left to talk about. Other than the weather, of course. And, in Singapore, the weather wasn’t worth talking about.
All at once a joke Tay had once heard came back to him.
Heaven is where the police are all British, the cooks are French, the businessmen are Singaporean, the playmates are Thai, and it is all organized by the Swiss. Hell is where the chefs are all British, the businessmen are French, the playmates are Swiss, the police are Singaporean, and it is all organized by the Thais.
He hadn’t thought that was funny the first time he heard it, but now it made him smile. Maybe his sense of humor was improving with age.
***
The Volvo’s engine coughed and sputtered and the car began to slow.
“Shit!” Tay snapped.
But there was nobody else there to register his displeasure and the Volvo didn’t particularly care.
Tay pumped madly at the accelerator, unable to think of anything else to do, and after a few seconds the engine coughed once more and caught, and the car began to pick up speed again. He listened carefully to the car, but his skills as an automotive mechanic were pretty much limited to determining whether or not the engine was running. Fortunately, as nearly as he could tell, it was.
Why was he in such a God-awful hurry to get back to Singapore? Tay suddenly wondered. Singapore was one of the smallest countries in the world. The Red Dot some people called it. Disneyland with the death penalty, others said. Was this really the place where he wanted to spend the rest of his life?
Singapore was a country with lousy weather populated by people who cared about little other than money. It was a country alternately swept by rain or denuded by the caustic brutality of a blazing sun. It was a country without shadows.
And yet, as Tay knew better than most, it was a country run by men who lived in shadows.
***
The Volvo sputtered again. This time when Tay pumped at the accelerator nothing happened.
When the engine cut out, it killed the hydraulic system and the steering and brakes both became heavy and hard to operate. It was with some difficulty that Tay wrestled the car into the outside lane, let it roll onto the shoulder, and stood hard enough on the brakes to bring it to a halt.
He looked around and tried to work out where he was. He had left the Utara-Seletan Highway a few minutes ago and turned south through JB toward the Woodlands crossing back to Singapore. But what was the name of the road he was on now? He couldn’t remember, but maybe it didn’t matter. What really mattered was finding somebody to fix the damn car so he could get back to Singapore as soon as possible.
That was the story of his life, it occurred to Tay. Knocking himself out to get someplace he didn’t really want to be.
***
Tay got out of the car and looked around. He had rolled to a stop in a parking lot in front of a slightly shabby strip of shophouses. The one directly in front of him had a false wooden front and a couple of fake windows with fake window boxes. A sign above the door read Gourmet British Pub. If Tay had been in even a slightly better humor, he would have laughed right out loud.
He looked at his cell phone and saw, mercifully, that he had a signal. But who was he going to call? If he called the motor pool at the Cantonment Complex and asked them to come tow the car, how was he going to explain what he was doing in Malaysia?
Before he could decide, he heard the crunch of tires on pavement and looked up to see a black Mercedes with Singapore plates rolling to a stop behind him. The driver was a man who appeared to be alone in the car. He was wearing dark glasses and a white shirt without a tie, and he had an official sort of look to him which shifted Tay’s imagination straight into high gear.
Tay had only the vaguest idea how to detect surveillance and the dim-witted effort he had made to find out if he was being followed after he passed through the Woodlands checkpoint was now an embarrassing memory.
Had he led ISD straight to John August? Well, he supposed he hadn’t, since John August was nowhere to be found at the Polo Store and the room where he and Tay had met before was now filled with cartons of socks. He was certain ISD would get a big laugh out of that.
The man opened the driver’s door and got out.
Tay took a deep breath. Was he about to sink even deeper into whatever this quagmire was that he had stumbled into?
He had no idea, and no better plan than to wait and find out.