Today, Mae Lyn could have been anyone. In her pink sun dress and pretty silver sandals, she blended into the crowd of tourists snapping photographs and listening to the driver’s commentary.

The tram made its way through the grounds, stopping to let visitors on and off. Despite the park housing over three and a half thousand birds, Mae Lyn was yet to see an African grey parrot. Surely Miss Polly would have been a treasured attraction in a place like this.

Mae Lyn had seen her boss conversing with the creature on the terrace by the pool this morning while eating his breakfast. As it was Sunday, Mae Lyn’s day off, Vera was on duty looking after Mr Koh. The older woman took Saturdays as her official day of rest but – given Mr Koh disappeared into the city immediately after breakfast every Sunday morning and frequently didn’t return until after midnight – Vera tended to wind up with almost the entire weekend to herself.

Mae Lyn had often spied her at the Lucky Plaza on Orchard Road, where hundreds of helpers congregated, hanging out and swapping stories about their week. Some of them formed dance groups, learning and performing the latest crazes, while others practised elaborate hairstyles on one another or simply chatted and ate. Vera sat in the same place every week with her posse of older maids, whispering behind their hands about the other girls – though sometimes their remarks were intentionally loud enough for everyone to hear and they were mostly very unkind.

The comment Vera had given Mae Lyn this morning had been of the latter kind. When Mae Lyn had ignored her as usual, Vera’s tongue became more poisonous, speculating that Mae Lyn was off to meet a boyfriend. If only the older woman knew.

‘Coming up on the left-hand side, in the Wings of Asia exhibit, you will see some of Jurong Bird Park’s most beautiful recent additions – the pink-headed imperial pigeon, which hails from the Lesser Sunda islands of Indonesia, and the island imperial pigeon from the Solomon Islands. Sadly, they are both considered to be endangered species, but we have a new breeding program in the hope of increasing their numbers.’

‘We will stop here for you to alight and take a closer look,’ the guide said as he brought the tram to a halt.

Mae Lyn hopped down, eager to catch a glimpse of the rare birds. She was here to get the lay of the land and meet her contact.

A man standing beside her honed in on a pheasant walking around the bottom of the enclosure with a professional-looking DSLR camera. Scouring the aviary, Mae Lyn found she couldn’t see anything resembling the two birds the guide had described, and whose pictures were displayed on the sign.

‘There are no pigeons here,’ a little boy declared. ‘This is boring.’

An attendant entered the enclosure through a rear door, armed with a small bag of food. He pulled the door shut and walked to the feeder.

‘Where are the special pigeons?’ a woman called out to him.

The young man in uniform smiled. ‘I will locate them for you. Perhaps they are sleeping,’ he said. But as he searched high and low, checking the branches and the cubby holes, the crowd could see he was growing more and more agitated. He looked for a good five minutes before he picked up the two-way radio that was hanging from his belt.

‘Boss, it’s Imran. We have a problem,’ the attendant said. ‘The pigeons – they are gone.’

There was a blast of static before a man’s husky voice replied.

‘What do you mean, gone?’

‘They are not here,’ Imran replied.

There was a long pause. ‘I hope you mean the garden variety style pigeons that we have more than enough of.’

There was a crackling noise and the attendant was visibly shaking. ‘No, sir. I am in Wings of Asia and there is no sign of the imperial pigeons anywhere.’

‘But I was just there half an hour ago and personally showed them to one of our VIP guests,’ the man said calmly.

‘I can assure you – they are not here now,’ the attendant said.

‘Code red,’ the man’s voice rang out through the line. ‘Code red. All stations.’

The crowd outside the aviary was growing restless, rife with speculation about where the birds could be.

Mae Lyn’s eyes were darting everywhere. She was racking her brain, thinking whether anyone had acted suspiciously while she’d been on the tram.

‘Maybe they didn’t like being in a cage and they’ve flown home,’ one young lad said.

‘Did they die, Daddy?’ a little girl asked.

Seconds later there was a booming announcement through the PA system.

‘Would all visitors and guests please make their way to the park’s main entrance? Due to unforeseen circumstances, we must close early. We apologise for the inconvenience. All guests will receive a return pass to visit again. Please have your bags and other personal belongings ready for inspection on the way out.’

‘Well, that doesn’t work for us,’ one lady with three children sniped. ‘We’re leaving tomorrow. I think I’ll ask for our money back.’

Mae Lyn held up her phone and quietly took photographs of the cage and the attendant as the group was ushered back onto the tram. It looked like her meeting would have to be postponed now too.

‘Do you think someone let them out?’ asked a red-faced man with a thick southern American drawl.

‘Perhaps they’ve been stolen,’ the woman sitting next to him replied. ‘They’re rare, ain’t they? People like to have things that no one else has.’

Mae Lyn sat at the rear of the tram as it wound its way towards the park’s front gate. As they turned the corner into the main thoroughfare, she spotted Heston Fong running towards the enclosure with several security guards flanking him. He had only been the managing director of the bird park for five months – a robbery would be a terrible blight for him, and all indications suggested that may well be the case.

This wasn’t the first instance of exotic animal theft on the island recently, though there had been nothing in the news. Mae Lyn had overheard Mr Koh’s guests talking at dinner on Friday night. Sedgewick was on the board of the organisation that ran the bird park and the zoo, and denied his guests’ accusations emphatically, saying that the rumours simply weren’t true. At the time, Mae Lyn had thought he looked particularly tense. A crime of this magnitude would attract a huge amount of attention given Singapore was known as one of the safest places on earth. Mae Lyn couldn’t imagine that the board of directors would want this getting out. Though perhaps it was time for the media to know exactly what was going on – some attention may just help bring things to a head.