Singapore
Road Kill
Richard Lord
Kannan Katt had been working as a Singapore police force inspector for just under three months and he still didn’t feel that he fit in. Soon after his assignment to the Cantonment headquarters, he had determined that the police force was a kind of club, bound by its own set of rules. But he had not yet mastered all the rules. In fact, he was still deeply in the dark about what many of those rules were.
Still feeling awkward, he strolled into the fifth-floor canteen with Sergeant Faizal, his colleague from Criminal Investigation Division, for a late-morning coffee.
From across the room, the two were invited to join a few uniformed officers at their table. The officer who had signalled the invitation was Hamilton Kwan, a cheerful fellow in his late forties who was friendly towards Kannan.
Faizal was still at the counter, waiting for a heated-up muffin to go with his coffee as Kannan sat down with his. He was greeted with one of Kwan’s impromptu lectures.
‘Hey, Kannan, you know we’re getting almost as exciting over in the Traffic Division as you guys up in CID. We just got another fatality. Some fool slammed a pedestrian in the crosswalk because he wasn’t paying attention. Second one like that in two weeks, too. Both victims dead on the scene: bang, boop, splat, all over.’
‘So what happened?’ asked the Malay officer to Kwan’s right whom Kannan did not know.
‘The driver said he was “distracted for just a moment”. Distracted; you know what he was doing? He had one of those things that runs videos next to the steering wheel and he was watching one of those instead of the road. A pedestrian starts crossing and interrupts the film by getting hit.’
‘Getting splattered, more like,’ added the officer next to Kwan.
‘Oh, shit.’
Kannan tried to judge what his exact response should be and then register this on his face. He decided on a wince. ‘And this is the second one like that?’
Kwan nodded. ‘A week ago last Tuesday, a guy is listening to music while he’s backing up. He’s changing the channel, keeps backing up, not looking, hits a pedestrian walking behind him, drags him along ten metres, doesn’t even know the guy’s there until he feels “something dragging” under the car.’
Kannan now delivered his full-winged wince. ‘Not a pleasant way to go.’
Kwan gave a look that was half grimace, half smile. ‘Even you wouldn’t want to hear the details.’
And then, as if they were the two players in a rehearsed routine, Kwan’s colleague on his right provided those details.
‘His neck was snapped right across, spine twisted, hip broken, skull smashed, bit of brain left on the street.’ Staff Sergeant Lee finished the litany with a sour expression and sad nod of the head, suggesting that those were the highlights.
Kwan shook his head in tandem. ‘The worst thing, you know, is how easy these guys get off. You kill someone with a car, it’s an accident, all we can charge them with is negligent driving. You get maybe a $5,000 fine and they suspend your driving privileges for two years, max.’
‘You’re kidding,” said Kannan.
‘No. The most you can get … three years suspension and a $ 10,000 fine, but you have to be really negligent to even get that.’ He flicked an irritated finger against his coffee cup. ‘I think we would get better drivers if we made the penalties stronger. Give them about a dozen strokes of the cane, they kill somebody. The cane, the fine and no driving for at least five years. Then I think these guys would start paying more attention when they’re at the wheel.’
‘At least that,’ the Malay officer to Kwan’s left said in agreement.
Sergeant Faizal, having joined the group, stared off as if in a fantasy. ‘Five thousand dollars fine, two year suspension. You know, if I ever really want to kill somebody, I think I’ll just run them over with my car. Call it an accident, say I was looking the wrong way.’
The older Malay officer laughed. ‘Yeah; you just say you were staring at some really good-looking girl, everyone will believe it. They all know you too well.’
All the cops laughed at this. But Kannan Katt’s laugh came late and was offered mostly as follow-up to the other laughs. He hadn’t really been listening to that exchange. His own thoughts had already jumped to what they were joking about. And he wasn’t thinking of a joke.
As soon as he got back to his office, Kannan plunked himself into his chair, grabbed a small blue notebook and started jotting down notes. Not two minutes later, he was out of his seat, pacing back and forth, like a panther sensing some prey in the distance and already calculating how best to attack. After several rounds back and forth, he grabbed his phone and dialled the exchange of Kwan from the Traffic Division. He got his first break on the case right there: Kwan was in his office and answered after four rings.
‘Kwan here.’
‘Hamilton, this is Katt, Kannan Katt.’
‘Oh, Kannan. What can I do for you, sir?’
‘Funny you should ask. I was just wondering if you could … do me a favour.’
‘Let’s hear it.’
‘Do you happen to have the statements from those two drivers involved in the fatal accidents. The ones you were talking about in the canteen?’
‘Sure; we have full statements. Why?’
‘I was hoping I could maybe … take a look at them? They might be able to help me with a case we’re trying to patch together over here.’
‘OK, that shouldn’t be any problem. Anything else you’d like to look at? We can give you some background on the two guys, descriptions of the accidents, whatever.’
‘That would be great. I would really appreciate that. We would … all appreciate that. It could be very helpful.’
‘OK, give me about half an hour, I’ll try to put everything together that I can let you look at.’
Half an hour later, almost to the minute, Inspector Katt was at Kwan’s office to pick up a slender file filled with reports on the two separate fatal accidents. Kwan had gone out, but an assistant dutifully handed Katt the file, along with a brisk smile and no questions asked.
That afternoon, Kannan was at his computer, staring intensely at the screen, hoping to find something he could add to his findings. He was so absorbed, and so frustrated, that he hadn’t noticed one of the Division’s senior officers, Inspector Lim, who had shuffled in and planted himself right behind Katt. After a few seconds, Katt became aware of this stealthy presence, and turned around with an embarrassed look on his face. Inspector Lim returned that look with a strained smile steeped in vitriol.
‘This is … uhh, Facebook. It’s what they call a social networking website.’
‘Yeah, I know what the Facebook is,’ Lim replied. ‘My two kids waste most of their time with that thing.’ He tapped the sheath of papers he was carrying against his leg as he cleared his throat. “Maybe nobody’s spoken to you about this before, Inspector, but we do not like our officers surfing the Internet and doing other personal things during work hours.’
‘No, I know that, Inspector Lim. Thank you for the reminder, but this is nothing personal. I was doing research for a crime investigation.’
‘Oh? What case is this then?’
‘Well, it’s not really a case yet. As such. But I think it could be. And an important case really. But I’m still trying to put things together, to work out a possible double homicide here.’
Lim shook his head in incredulity. ‘Inspector Katt, we don’t try to spin out murder cases in this division. We wait for real murders to happen, and then we go out and solve them and arrest the perpetrators.
‘Now I realise working in a low-crime jurisdiction like ours might be a little bit boring for someone like you who went to university and likes to read lots of literature. But here we like to concentrate on what we have before us, not go out and make some case that doesn’t even exist yet.’
‘I understand, Inspector Lim. And thank you for that reminder as well.’
‘No problem. Oh, here are the latest figures and assessments from the Division administrator. You can study these if you’re very bored.’
‘Thank you, Inspector. I’ll start studying right away.’
‘Yes, that’s good. Right after you turn off that Facebook thing.’
Katt clutched the mouse tensely and clicked to close the Facebook page. He hadn’t been able to find what he was looking for, but he knew he could search again later, maybe when he got home.
The next morning, Inspector Katt still hadn’t found what he was searching for in Facebook, but he had found an interesting snippet in the report on one of the accidents. He circled that with a red pen and switched his energy flow to following this lead.
* * *
Early the next week, Katt decided to go to the most senior officer in his group with what his investigation had turned up. He knocked on Deputy Superintendent Weston Tan’s door, having called earlier to ask if he could see him briefly.
‘Kannan, come in, come in. How are you this morning?’
‘I’m fine, sir. And how are you?’
After hopping through the pleasantries, they got down to business. They were both men who liked getting down to business quickly.
Kannan told that the Deputy Superintendent he’d been looking at the two fatal traffic accidents in the past few weeks and he noticed something suspicious. One of the drivers, he informed his superior, had profited significantly from the death of one of the pedestrians involved.
‘What?? A man profits big from the death of somebody he’s killed with his vehicle, and Traffic doesn’t see anything strange in that?’
‘The thing is, sir, that driver didn’t kill the man whose death benefited him.’
‘But I thought you just said …’
‘No, that fortunate fellow was the driver in the second fatality. The man whose death greatly benefited him was the victim in the first incident.’
‘Oh. So what is the case here?’
‘I don’t think either death was really an accident.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’m pursuing a hunch that the two drivers were somehow involved in a pact. That the first one killed the other man’s target intentionally and the second driver then killed the first driver’s target to fulfil his part of the deal.’
‘Sounds complicated, Kannan. Sounds very complicated.’
‘Which is why I think it might be true. The two perpetrators would assume that it was so complicated, they could get away with two murders. But we can still foil them if we can work out the deal they came up with and how the deaths are related.’
Deputy Superintendent Tan rested the lower part of his face in a folded fist and slipped into rumination for a short time. When he pulled his hand away from his face, he seemed to have reached a decision.
‘So you want approval from me to pursue this further?’
Katt took a calming breath before answering. ‘That’s right, sir.’
‘Alright. I give you my approval. Also any office support you might need. But on one condition: you need to have a senior officer working with you on this investigation.’
‘Yes, I already anticipated that, sir.’
‘Fine. I assign you to work with Inspector Lim on this.’
‘Inspector Lim?’
‘Yes. Is there a problem there?’
‘Uhh … no, not really a problem. It’s just that … I’m not sure that Inspector Lim would be all that sympathetic to this case. Or to …’
‘To you?’ Tan nodded sympathetically. ‘I understand your hesitation, Inspector Katt. I know that Inspector Lim often takes a while to warm up to new people in the Division. And he is suspicious of some people who have taken … an easier path to success.’
‘Easier, sir?’
‘Look: you got out of the academy with a glowing record and in about two days, you reached a level that it took Lim twelve years to work his way up to. I know he’s suspicious that someone can learn enough in police courses as they can being out there doing the hard work. But he is one of our best men. And he’s a lot smarter than he likes to let on.
‘Even better, he’s got long years of good, practical experience investigating crime he can call on. If this investigation is going to go anywhere, Lim is the best person to help you with it. Inspector, I want you to work with him on this, because I want you to be successful with it. That’s my decision. Any questions?
‘No, sir, no questions.’
‘Well then, thank you for your work so far on this matter and good luck with your investigations.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Inspector Katt sat in his office for over an hour mulling his decision. Was there any way he could get around bringing Lim into this investigation, maybe with another officer or two and using Lim as a figurehead? When he finally realized that he had no other option if he wanted to pursue this case, he swallowed hard and trudged down the hall to see Lim. He brought all his research with him in a large manila envelope.
He knocked on the door and waited until Lim barked permission to enter. Usually, CID officers just knocked twice and looked in on fellow officers, but Katt was sure that Lim would be looking for any excuse to turn him and his project away.
He began his narrative by saying that he had the lead on an extremely interesting case, and that Deputy Superintendent Tan agreed with him that it was interesting. In fact, he dropped the deputy superintendent’s name four times in his short introduction. Inspector Lim still had a sour look on his face, as if ingrained scepticism tasted like sliced lemons. But he did ask Katt to go on. Katt felt he just had to build up his momentum and deliver a strong argument.
‘OK, I think I have a double homicide here.’
‘When? Superintendent Tan didn’t say nothing about this to me.’
‘That’s what we have to prove, that it was homicide. In fact, that’s what I was trying to put together that one day last week. Remember, when you walked in on me, and I was on Facebook?’
‘Yes, I remember that. I remember very well.’
‘OK, here’s what I’ve been working on. Did you ever watch the film Strangers On A Train?’
Lim scrunched his features. ‘Strangers On a …? No, I don’t think so.’
‘It’s a film by Alfred Hitchcock. A real classic.’
‘Oh. No, then I haven’t watched it. I don’t like all those classic things.’
‘This one you would like, I’m pretty sure. OK, here’s the story: These two guys meet on a train. They’re perfect strangers, never met before.’
‘OK.’
‘The one guy, he’s a big tennis star. Like Roger Federer.
‘I prefer Rafael Nadal.’
‘OK, Nadal then. Anyway, he’s this famous tennis star. He’s got everything going for him. He’s really handsome, charming, everything. He’s in love with this lovely girl, she’s the daughter of an American senator, and they want to get married.’ Lim nodded. ‘But they can’t, because the tennis star is already married. And his wife is a real bitch who won’t give him a divorce.’
‘I know the type.’
‘The other stranger, he’s the son of a really wealthy man. But the son, he’s an absolute slacker, obnoxious, wants everything handed to him.’
Lim nodded. ‘I know that type, too.’
‘Anyway, he hates his father and his father hates him, the father’s just about to disinherit him, cut him off without a penny.’
‘Cheers to the father.’
‘Now, the rich guy, he suggests to the tennis star that they make a secret pact: the rich punk kills the star’s wife, but then the tennis star has to kill the rich guy’s father for him.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s just it. There doesn’t seem to be a why. The two intended victims are both complete strangers to the other person. The tennis star seems to have no motive to kill the spoiled guy’s rich father, and the rich guy has no motive to kill the tennis player’s wife. So he thinks it’s a perfect crime; a perfect double crime, in fact. No one will suspect the two murderers because neither one has any motive to kill the person they kill. They swap motives, and then they swap murders.’
‘OK, and how is this relevant to us?’
And it was then that Lim sat back and crossed his arms tightly over his chest. Katt felt the wind drawn out of his momentum. Crossed arms held high on the chest: Body Language 101 tells you this person has just shut the doors on what you want to tell him. Lim had already decided to be uncooperative, Kannan told himself. He knew this would not be an easy sell, but he didn’t think that his attempt would be shut down this quickly. Still, he had to give it a shot as he was fairly sure it was important.
‘Those two people killed in the so-called negligent driving incidents?’
‘Yeah …?’
‘I think both of them were non-accidents. I’m saying that both of them were intentional, well-planned murders. The only thing is, the two killers swapped the people they wanted to kill and swapped motives. The first driver killed the second driver’s victim, and the second driver killed the first one’s victim.’
‘And what proof you have on this?’
The junior inspector swallowed deeply. ‘Right now, it’s just a theory swimming around, looking for proof.’
Lim’s eyebrows swept up again into their full sceptical height. But Katt was not ready to give up yet.
‘And until yesterday, it was just an interesting theory. Today, it’s a strong theory.’
‘I see. Why?’
Katt picked up the piece of A2 paper on the side of his desk, unfolded it, and spread it out on the desk. He’d sketched out some diagram on that paper and now started to explain it to his colleague.
‘The second driver knew the first victim. More than that, they were both involved in this really convoluted … really mixed-up inheritance case.’ Kannan paused and sucked in air. Was it even worth going on now? Lim’s response took him by surprise.
‘OK, I’m still interested.’ And as if to prove that, Lim had unfolded his arms, put his hands on the desk and leaned forward to get a better look at the diagram.
‘Driver number two was a nephew by marriage of this rich guy who died in January. Victim number one was his blood nephew.’ Lim nodded. ‘Driver number two seemed to have inherited a handsome chunk from our wealthy guy. But the blood nephew took out a suit stopping him from getting what he was supposed to get. He was contesting that part of the will. Even more relevant is that it looked like he might have a good case. At least good enough to delay settlement for a year, maybe two years.’
‘How much was involved?’
‘Our lucky driver should now get about $600,000.’ Lim pursed his lips in respect of the amount. ‘And also two condos. On the east coast.’
‘OK. This is starting to sound promising. And what was driver number one’s motive for wanting the other victim dead?’
‘That’s the glitch,’ said Kannan. ‘I just haven’t figured that one out yet.’ The young inspector felt like an angler who had just lost his catch. But to his surprise, Lim did not react negatively to this admission.
Lim stared down briefly and intensely at Katt’s diagram, as if he might be able to read something there that Katt himself had missed. After ten very long seconds, Lim looked back up. ‘No motive?’
‘None … that I’ve been able to find yet.’
Lim stared back down at the diagram, then shook his head. ‘Inspector Katt, this could all be just a great coincidence, you know.’
‘It could be. Yes, it is maybe possible it’s all coincidence.’ He paused for effect. ‘Do you think it is a coincidence? Do you really think this is a coincidence?’
Lim squinted hard, as if this allowed him to see something otherwise closed off to him.
‘You really need to find that second motive. Without that, we can’t move very far on this thing.’
Kannan looked at him intently. ‘We? As in you and me?’
The look on Lim’s face suggested he was already thinking ahead, to the next steps they would need to take. ‘Let’s see if we can find that motive for driver number one.’
Kannan flashed a big smile, but Lim merely stared back down at the diagram. Then, a few moments later, he looked up, nodded, and the two officers shook hands. Lim now had an inquisitive look.
‘And how’d you come up with this information about the inheritance and the legal fight over it?’
‘I … that’s what I’ve been doing research on for the last … few days.’
‘Just on a wild hunch?’
‘Yah, it was kind of … just on a hunch.’
Lim nodded. ‘Good work.’ He then turned and reached for some papers on his desk. He started going through the papers without turning back to his visitor. Katt knew it was time for him to leave with no more ado.
Within the next half-hour, Drivers Number One and Two had been given their proper names: Driver One was Ong Swee Chun and Driver Number Two was Daniel Tay. Lim learned the victims’ full names as well. Katt also handed over photocopies with a quick background on victims and suspects. Though reluctant to admit it, Lim was hooked.
* * *
For the next three days, Inspectors Katt and Lim worked hard trying to link Ong to the death of the second victim, one Andrew Lee.
‘Why would Ong want to see this guy dead?’ Inspector Lim kept asking, as if repeated cadences of this mantra would sluice out an answer. It didn’t, and the repetition quickly started to irritate Inspector Katt, though he kept his irritation hidden; but only just.
Meanwhile, Katt did much of the legwork and came up with a raft of information on both Ong Swee Chun and the victim, but none of it suggested any link between Ong and the killing.
‘Let’s see, why do people kill other people? I mean, you know, a planned killing, nothing spontaneous.’ Lim scrunched his brow. ‘Greed, revenge, jealousy. Let’s start with greed. That always seems to be a strong motivation here in Singapore.’
Katt pursed his lips before speaking. ‘Nothing that we can determine would drive Ong to want the victim dead. We checked all his financials. No connection whatsoever to Lee. And he seems to have no financial problems. In fact, the one thing that stuck out recently was a big loan he got and a REITS deal.’
‘Who was that with? Maybe it was a friend of this Daniel Tay. Or an enemy.’
Katt shook his head slowly. ‘A bank. United Helvetica Bank, to be specific.’ Lim scrunched his brows. ‘It’s the local branch of a Swiss bank. They’re heavy in investments, but they also do some personal loans. I checked it all out. Ong secured a big loan from them last month, but he seemed to have no problem getting the loan. And he has no co-signer on it.’
‘So no alarm bells ringing?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘OK. Hey, you think it might be a love triangle there? Andrew Lee was sleeping with Ong’s wife maybe?’
Katt shook his head. ‘Ong divorced his wife in 1998. And he doesn’t seem to have had any serious relationships since then.’
‘Maybe he divorced her because of this guy Lee. So then he waits seven years and takes his revenge. What’s that they say about revenge? It tastes best, you eat it cold.’
Kannan again shook his head. ‘She was the one who filed for divorce. And the reason given was irreconcilable differences. No mention of adultery anywhere in the court case. No mention on either side.’
Inspector Lim nodded. ‘So, no love triangle. Too bad. I always like them. Lots of hanky panky in those triangles. Always makes a case more fun to work out.’
‘I’m sure it does,’ said Katt morosely. Suddenly he sat up stiffly. ‘Wait a minute: a triangle. That could be it! Maybe Ong didn’t want to see the victim dead, but someone else did. A someone else connected to Ong.’
‘What?’
‘We’ve been trying to find a nice, tidy, easy solution for a complicated case. A simple tit-for-tat: Ong’s target for Tay’s. But maybe it was more than that. Ong had a deal with someone else to kill Andrew Lee. Now we have to find out who that deal was with.’
‘OK, I like that. So we start by …’ Lim looked at Katt as would a teacher looking to see if the star pupil had done his advanced homework, learned some key principle and could now solve the problem himself. Katt nodded.
‘We talk to the widow. See if she has any idea who would want her husband dead.’
Lim nodded, a big smile on his face. He was proud of the student.
* * *
The next day, shortly before ten, Lim and Katt appeared at the front door of the apartment in Bukit Timah where Sondra Seow, Andrew Lee’s widow, lived. Ms Seow was clearly surprised by the visit, and even more so when Inspector Lim stepped forward and flashed his police ID. He tried to give her a friendly smile mixed with appropriate sympathy. As Lim was not good at casting such mixed facial expressions, Sondra Seow’s hesitant response was to be expected.
‘Ms Seow, my name is Inspector Lim. This is my colleague, Inspector Katt.’ Katt nodded. ‘We’d like to ask you a few questions if it’s not too much of a problem.’
‘Well, actually, I was just getting ready to go out and …’
‘Just a few questions, I promise. It won’t take more than five or ten minutes of your time.’
Sondra took a deep breath, nodded and invited the two policemen in. Two minutes later, the three were sitting across from each other in the tastefully decorated living room which the late Andrew Lee used to share with his wife. The two officers had passed up the offers of a drink, but Sondra Seow had gone into the kitchen to fetch a sports drink for herself. Lim waited until she returned, then started asking his carefully prepared questions. But even before he started, the widow put up a shield.
‘I’ve already spoken to the police, you know. Twice.’
‘Yes, yes, we know. That was our colleagues, Constable Kwek and Sergeant Haziz. But we just wanted to …’
‘Ask questions of a slightly different nature,’ Katt chimed in helpfully.
‘Yes, that’s it. A slightly different nature of question.’
‘Well, alright, I guess. You’re already here, you might as well ask.’
Lim nodded in gratitude, then struck a note of dramatic pause before commencing. ‘Ms Seow, did your husband have any enemies that you know of?’
‘Enemies? No, he didn’t have any enemies.’
‘That you know of.’
‘Correct. No enemies that I know of.’ She paused and moistened her bow-shaped lips. ‘My late husband was a man who was fairly easy to get along with. Most people found him quite pleasant, and they liked him. And … nobody really disliked him. Not in a way to kill him.’
‘Did he owe anybody money? A substantial amount?’ At this, Ms Seow scrunched her face tartly, implying that she either didn’t understand the question or couldn’t believe that Lim was sitting there asking it. ‘Or did somebody else owe him money?’
‘No. Again, not that I know of. And I think I would know. If a man has big money problems, he won’t be able to hide it. Not from his wife. There are all those signs. I never saw any of that with my husband.’
Lim again nodded sympathetically. ‘I understand.’
Katt also nodded sympathetically. But then he homed in with the payload question. ‘Ms Seow, it is at all possible that your husband was … having a relationship with another woman? A sexual relationship?’
At this, anger flared in Seow’s face and she sat up stiffly. She then glared at both officers – Katt first, then Lim.
‘Have you no sense of decency? Don’t you remember that I just lost my husband? Lost him in a terrible, senseless accident. And you have the nerve to ask me questions like that.’ She then grabbed the bag sitting on the floor next to her and stood up angrily. ‘I’m sorry, officers, but I’m just not able to deal with these matters right now.’
Lim reacted first: he stood, dipped his head in apology and offered her a wince of remorse. ‘Yes, of course, Ms Seow. You’re right; this is not a good time to be asking these kinds of questions. Also, we caught you at a strange time. I’m very sorry for this intrusion. Maybe some other time we can pick up with our … inquiries.’
This seemed to lower her hackles a bit. ‘Yes, alright; perhaps at some other time. And now, gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get along with some other matters.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Inspector Lim assured her. ‘We understand entirely, Ms Seow.’ He again nodded in remorse, and a few seconds later, the two officers stood and headed to the front door without waiting for the lady to accompany them.
As they waited for the lift, Lim snapped his fingers in exasperation and made an irritating noise with his lips. ‘Well, that didn’t go as well as we hoped, isn’t it.’ He shook his head and stepped into the lift with just a frustrated glance at his partner. Katt joined him and they both stood staring at the door as the lift descended.
After a few moments, Lim mentioned that he had conducted a good many bad interrogations in his career.
‘Even worse than that one, I imagine.’
Lim looked at him with a sly smile. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that one was really bad. Actually, It went kind of well, I’d say.’
Katt, who had been looking straight ahead, wrapped in thought, turned back to the senior inspector. They’d just reached the ground floor. As the doors opened, he fixed Lim with a quizzical look.
The smile did not leave Lim’s face. ‘So, Inspector, what do you say we might have learned from that session?’
Katt stared at Lim, then turned away for a few seconds. Suddenly, a look of recognition appeared.
‘You think we just found our third part of the triangle?’ A smile now started to stretch across Katt’s face.
Lim nodded. ‘Yes, I think so; the grieving widow herself. I really think she’s our link to the second murder.’
Katt’s smile deepened. He, too, nodded. ‘Yeah … right. The way she was reacting there. Everything. That wasn’t really someone outraged at our insensitive questions.’
Kannan then stabbed the air with his index finger. ‘It was the reaction of a guilty party.’
‘Who realises someone has caught up with their deed. And that makes them very irritable,’ Lim added.
Kannan again nodded. ‘And it just struck me: she said no one hated him enough to kill him. We never mentioned anything about him being murdered until then.’
Another, deeper nod followed. ‘She’s the one who wanted her husband dead. And she probably had many good reasons for it.’ This time, Lim tapped his young colleague on the shoulder to show his approval. ‘OK, let us count the ways.’
‘Right. And then let’s find out how this all ties in with Ong.’
* * *
The first task proved the easier … by far. Kannan spent most of the next two days investigating. Then, armed with the juicy fruits of his investigations, he strolled briskly into Lim’s office.
Lim looked up from some papers, a crisp smile on his face. ‘You look like someone with good news.’
‘I think you can call it that. Our poor widow? She’s not so poor. The late Andrew Lee had no siblings and his wife was his only close surviving family member.’
‘Sounds interesting.’
‘So she gets the apartment they were living in. Which, as we know, is in one of those new, very nice HDB areas.’
‘Right.’
‘The thing is, they upgraded to that place. They kept the other place, which they rent out. So that property belongs to her as well.’
‘Well, that should all soften the blow of losing her husband.’
‘It gets even more softening. His car is now hers, and the money he had in his bank account, around seventy thousand.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And … here’s the big part. Mr Lee was carrying a $200,000 life insurance policy. But with triple indemnity, if he met his end through an accident like the one that he had. In other words, three times the payout on that insurance policy.’
Inspector Lim threw his hands up triumphantly. ‘Oh yes! Motive, motive, motive.’
‘With a capital M and double exclamation points.’
Lim clapped his hands together. ‘OK, now we just have to find what links her to Ong.’
‘Actually, I was trying to look for links. Or at least some hints while I was doing this other research.’
‘Investigation is the term we prefer over here, Inspector.’
‘Yes, of course. I meant investigation. Now we can just concentrate on finding that link. It’s got to be there.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ said Lim with an avuncular tone. Kannan smiled and nodded at this.
‘You know,’ Kannan said as he stood up and slid the photocopy with the figures towards Lim. ‘Until now, I was never really sure. I mean, I really had this strong feeling in my gut that I was right. But somewhere at the back of my head was this nagging doubt. Maybe it was just a double coincidence that looked like it should be something more. But now I’m convinced that we’ve uncovered a clever double homicide involving three people. Now we just have to tie it all up.’
‘And that we will do, sir. And we’ll do it very quickly.’ Lim tapped his fist on his desk. ‘Let me just finish up what I was working on here and then I’ll come join you in your office to work out how we proceed.’
Kannen nodded, turned and left. He felt very good.
But one week later, the pair had still not found a single piece of additional evidence that tied Sondra Seow to Ong Swee Chun. Everywhere they looked, the trail wound up cold and barren.
It wasn’t that they didn’t try. Most of their working day was spent trying to turn up anything, anything at all, that could link Ong to the widow Seow. They had even put in extra hours almost every day. And when Kannan went home at night, he would spend time doodling things on paper, trying to connect the two. Later, he would lie restless in bed, all the lights off, and work out possible scenarios in his head. But nothing seemed to come together. In the morning, he’d wake up exhausted, haunted by this case.
Early on, the two had sat in Lim’s office, staring at a triangle posted on a cork board, trying to come up with some connection.
‘Do you think they were having an affair? Do you think that’s what she used to get him into the arrangement?’
Kannan turned. ‘An affair? OK, look at her.’ He pointed to her photo, pinned at the top of the triangle. ‘Now look at Ong. And then the husband.’ Lim nodded. ‘Do you think a woman who looks like that is going to cheat on her husband, a fairly handsome guy, with someone who looks like Ong?’
‘Well, stranger things have happened. You never know what’s going to attract somebody.’
‘Yeah, I know there’s no accounting for taste. But this wouldn’t be a matter of strange taste; this would have to be full-out perversion if she moved away from her husband to climb into bed with Ong.’
Inspector Lim gave his partner an acerbic grin, which told Katt that he had edged a little too close to offending his jowly, balding senior with that remark. He decided to avoid any such witty toss-offs in future.
* * *
Ten ragged days later, the two sat staring at the exact same diagram: the triangle with the three suspects at different corners and the two supposed murder victims underneath.
All they could come up with was a supposition: that Sondra Seow had somehow come into contact with Ong, a contact that they had managed to erase, and then offered him a nice chunk of her windfall to participate in the crossed murders. And then, of course, either Sondra or Ong had come into some now lost contact with Daniel Tay and persuaded him to participate. But if Sondra Seow had offered Ong Swee Chun a lot of money, the payment would have had to be delayed until long after the double murders, after all the trails had grown cold.
Lim shook his head and summarised their situation with a dry, morose tone. ‘Maybe we won’t get that key bit of evidence. We just won’t be able to prove that connection or prove that part of the murders.’
‘Which means that we can’t prove one or the other.’ Kannan slapped the side of the board hard, in anger. He then strode to the other side. ‘If we can’t prove their involvement, then we can never prove that Daniel Tay killed Andrew Lee intentionally. It was just an accident, and a great coincidence that the victim of the first accident was Tay’s distant relative whose death he profited handsomely from.’
‘Yes, that is our situation.’ Lim then took a deep breath. ‘Kannan, I really, really hate to say this, but … maybe it’s time that we just stepped back from this case. Just left it alone for a while. Maybe something will turn up, help to tie the pieces together. But just staring at this damn pattern doesn’t solve anything.’
Kannan looked like he was in real pain. ‘Isn’t there anything we can do? Maybe bring all three of them in for questioning, try to squeeze it out of them, or maybe fool them into revealing something?’
Lim shrugged. ‘It’s possible. They may even feel guilt and confess during the questioning. But it’s more possible that they’ll deny everything and then go back and make sure any evidence is well covered up or destroyed.’
He paused and weighed the options. ‘We probably have a better chance if they think they got away with it and nobody suspects anything. They keep thinking that, they might get careless.’
He then put his fingers to his temples and started rubbing. ‘This thing has been giving me headaches, and I hate having headaches.’
Kannan gave a laugh. ‘It’s been giving me headaches too, and I rarely got headaches before this. Now I get them every day.’ He stopped and stared off into space. After a long, sour pause, he turned back to Lim.
‘I’m sorry; I can’t let this go. Not now. I need to find out how it all hangs together.’
‘It’s not there, Kannan. It’s just not there. I mean, it probably is there, but these people are too clever for us. They were able to come up with the perfect crime.’
‘Remember what we learn during our training? There is no perfect crime.’
‘Well, good enough to beat us this time.’
Kannan turned back and stared at the board. Neither of them spoke for over a minute. Finally, Kannan pointed at the triangle. ‘No, we’ve got them. Almost. The problem is that there’s something we don’t see yet. Something that makes all the pieces fit together.’ He stood staring in silence for another minute, and then was hit with an epiphany.
‘You know what it is? What we didn’t see?’ He almost lunged at the board, getting there in one huge stride, then carefully poked at the top of the triangle. ‘Sondra Seow doesn’t have a direct connection to Ong. No, their connection is through her lover.’ He traced a line with his finger, close to and parallel to the line they had already drawn on their diagram.
‘Her lover is the one who has the connection to Ong, and he has enough influence over him to draw him into a complex murder scheme. It’s not three degrees of separation – it’s four degrees. Which is, of course, even a better scheme – by one degree.’
‘Her lover?’ Lim had a puzzled look on his face, as if he had been missing something going on for some time. ‘And who’s this lover?’
‘That we don’t know yet,’ Kannan replied vigorously. ‘But he’s the link we’re looking for. He’s the one who can tie up this final part of the case.’
At this, Lim gave a moan, dropped his arms, folded, onto the table and dropped his head into the folded arms.
‘OK, I know it sounds lame, but it all makes sense. Somehow.’
Without raising his head from the desk, Lim asked, ‘How? How does it make any sense?’
‘It’s like with science. You know how they have these great breakthrough theories in science, these new discoveries.’
Lim looked up and gave a squirming shrug. ‘Sorry; I was always terrible in Science.’
‘No, I wasn’t very good at it myself. But I do remember that some of the most important discoveries in science came when they had put together this brilliant theory, with just one key element missing. One part of this great puzzle. And what they would say is, we can’t see it now, we don’t really have proof for it, but it must be there. It must be there because that’s the only thing that works. There has to a planet, a moon there, a virus back in the picture somewhere … because it needs to be there for everything else to make sense.
‘Well, Sondra Seow’s secret lover is that for us: he has to be there for everything else to make sense.’
At that point, Inspector Lim himself stood up and started pacing, but more slowly, in a cautious, heavy-footed manner. He didn’t look at Katt, even as he started talking.
‘Inspector Katt, that’s a nice way of putting this together. And I’m sure that if you were making a scientific theory and you said, “This has to be there, because it’s the only thing that works”, you would be a hero. You will get some award, maybe a promotion to a really good teaching job.
‘But our job is catching criminals. And then sending them to trial where they can be found guilty for their crimes and given their due punishment. And we can’t do that with something that we can’t put our fingers on, but it “has to be there”. We will get ourselves a nasty scolding from the Attorney General’s office, we tried to walk in with that argument.’
Katt shook his head. ‘I’m not saying we will do that.’
This did not make Lim feel any better. ‘And the sad thing about this case is if we don’t have every single element, the whole thing falls apart. You told me this yourself, Inspector.’
‘I know, I know. And I know we have to find this lover if we want to have a case. What I wish to argue here is that we now need to direct all our energies to finding this missing lover.’ No sooner had Katt said that last sentence, than he built his lower lip. He was sounding like a lawyer, or at least a law student. He didn’t want to lose any of Lim’s cooperation by doing something like that.
But Lim didn’t seem to mind. He thought for a moment, nodded, then asked, ‘Do we have any leads?’
‘Not at the moment, but … I think we might want to call in some outside help on this.’
This suggestion clearly did rile the senior inspector. ‘Outside help? Why do we need outside help?’
‘We don’t, of course … but it may point us in the direction of the missing lover and leave us free to work out some other details of the plot.’ He took a long, taut breath. ‘I know somebody who’s an expert in this field. He’s an old friend of mine from … way back. Let me see if he’s free and if maybe he can give us some assistance in finding the lover.’
Lim didn’t reply, other than by staring intently at the diagram on the board, then down at some papers on the table. It was over a minute later that he turned to Katt and said, ‘OK; you probably should contact this friend and see what help he can give us.’ Katt nodded gratefully.
A short time later, Katt was back in his own office and on the phone to an old friend from university. This old friend, Robert Lozario, was frequently touted as perhaps the best private detective in Singapore. The fact that much of that touting came from Lozario himself did not bother Katt too much. The two had once been quite close friends, and Kannan still had a lot of trust in the man.
After six rings, a voice message came on, saying that all the agents were busy on assignment at the moment, but if the caller would leave a message, someone from Sleuth and Truth Private Investigation would get back to them soon. The Inspector left his message, saying he wanted to speak to Mr Lozario specifically and that he would be available at the following number for the next few hours.
The return call came within thirty seconds. ‘Kannan. Hey stranger, how’s it going?’
‘Robert, good to speak with you again.’After a quick volley of catch-up greetings and polite questions, Katt got down to business. He told his friend that the CID needed some key information about a suspect, and they were ready to give the assignment to an outside agency, such as Robert’s. Of course, Kannan assured him, the Singapore Police Force would be ready to pay his standard fees and expenses for the investigation. Robert said he would be more than happy to take on the assignment.
The Inspector then gave Lozario the name and some other details of the investigation’s target. While he was still going down the list, Lozario deftly cut in. ‘Hang on a minute – this Sondra Seow, she was married to that guy Anthony Lee or something.’
‘Andrew Lee.’
‘Yeah, that’s right: Andrew Lee. He just got killed in a traffic accident, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right. I guess it made a few ripples over in the news pool.’
‘I believe so. Look, send me all those details you have and I’ll get back to you soon.’
‘OK; I’ll send along everything I have in the next twenty minutes or so.’
‘You’ve got my e-mail address, right? Well, just shoot me that information.’
Kannan was still typing in details about where Sondra Seow lived and worked, the name of her fitness club and various marginal matters when the phone rang again. It was barely five minutes after he had called Lozario. He picked it up.
‘Inspector Katt.’
‘Robert again. OK, I’ve got a lot of the information you’re looking for.’
‘What?’
‘We work fast around here. Hey, how many times have I told you I’m the best private eye in Singapore. Maybe now you’ll start believing me.’
‘I’d better believe it now.’
The two made arrangements to meet at a quiet bar near the Cantonment Police Headquarters a few hours later. When Kannan entered the Dutton Road bar, Robert was already there, making his way through a bag of chilli peanuts. They quickly ordered two Heinekens and played a bit more catch-up before getting down to business. When the beers arrived, Kannan insisted on paying.
‘This one’s on me. The follow-up brew as well, if there is one. It’s because of me you had to come out here.’
‘No problem, buddy.’
‘All the same. It’s my treat. Besides, if I let you pay for anything here, I know it would appear on the expenses statement you send to our people. So I might as well pay now.’
‘You know me well, Kannan.’
‘Very well. And that’s why I come to you for your expertise in sordid affairs.’
Lazario laughed. After a toast to good fellowship, they swung back into the business behind this meet-up.
‘So you already knew something about this affair?’
Robert eased his glass away from his face and nodded. ‘About a year ago, Mr Andrew Lee engaged our services. He had some strong suspicions his wife was involved in extramarital activities and he asked us to investigate. As it happens, that was one of our easier assignments.’
‘Why?’
‘Ms Seow and her male friend were not into heavy cover-ups. Within a fortnight, we had juicy photos and videos of PDAs in various locations.’
Kannan scrunched his brow. ‘PDAs?’
‘Public displays of affection. Though a lot of people in my field prefer to call them “pretty damaging assignations”. We also put together a little log of several meetings at this fancy short-term hotel. She would arrive about ten minutes after him and leave ten minutes before.’
‘And they weren’t having a business conference, I take it.’
‘I did have my doubts.’
‘OK, so go on.’
‘There’s nowhere to go. I’ve reached the end of that tale. We presented our preliminary report to Andrew Lee, he thanked us, paid us and said he didn’t want any more snooping.’
‘Isn’t that strange?’
‘Not really. Often times, a spouse who’s getting cheated on just likes to get a nice messy stack of evidence to throw in the cheater’s face. Believe it or not, that alone is sometimes enough to bring the affair to an end. There’s a lot of remorse, a flood of tears, a touching forgiveness and a vow to go forth and sin no more. Maybe that’s what happened with Andrew and Sondra.’
‘Hmmm.’ Kannan looked and sounded disappointed.
‘But if you like, and would care to commission a further investigation, I could give you a quick update on the status of that affair.’
‘I would like that a lot. But we do need something very quickly.’
‘By when?’
‘The day before yesterday?’
‘I think we can manage that. Seriously, let me see what we can put together in the next couple of days.’
‘That would be wonderful.’
‘I’ll put my A-team on this one. And, of course, I’ll be out there leading the team.’
‘I expect nothing less.’
Robert nodded and took another draught of his beer. Then he spoke. ‘So you’re now thinking that Mr Lee’s fatal accident was maybe not quite an accident.’
The Inspector hesitated for several beats before answering. ‘Something like that.’ He then gave Robert a look that said he didn’t want to discuss that matter any further at the moment. They were still close enough that Robert read the look accurately and immediately. He merely nodded and returned to the task of downing his beer.
Two days later, Inspector Katt had received no communication from Robert or his agency. A call late in the afternoon of the second day drew no reply. Around 4 o’clock on the third day, Katt finally got the phone call he was waiting for.
‘Kannan, it’s your favourite snoop.’
‘Robert. What have you got for us?’
‘Something very, very interesting. When can we meet up?”
‘As soon as possible.’
An hour later, they were again at the same bar and twinned Heinekens, freshly drawn, were on their way. Preliminaries were kept to a minimum this time, as Lozario could see his friend was anxious to get information.
‘OK, I can’t say what might have happened in the interim, but at the present time, the widow Seow is still in contact with that guy she was seeing last year.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Of course. As a matter of fact, they spent a few hours together just last night at a condo in the Novena area.’ Lozario opened a notebook to a pre-marked page. ‘From 7:42 to 10:56, to be exact.’
‘That is exact. And who is this lover?’
‘A guy called Axel Gersten.’
‘Sounds German.’
‘Close enough. He’s a Swiss. He’s one of the local directors of a major Swiss bank with operations here.’
Kannan gazed into the air as he spoke. ‘United Helvetica Bank?’
‘Exactly. How’d you know that?”
‘It had to be. It’s what had to be there.’ He turned to Robert and stared him in the face. ‘It’s the final fit, the piece that fits and gives us the whole picture.’ He slapped the table in triumph. ‘You’ve got evidence of all this? Pictures and everything?’
‘You could have a small gallery exhibition with all the photos and videos we’ve got on this.’
Kannan thrust both his hands into the air. ‘Yes.’ He put his arm around Robert’s shoulder and gave him a big, robust squeeze. ‘You are the best PI in Singapore. And you just helped us break this case.’ He spread his arms apart as far as they would go. ‘Break it wide open!’
Inspector Lim had already left the office, but Katt buzzed him on his mobile phone to tell him that he thought he had found the missing piece that proved their breakthrough theory. They discussed the who and what briefly, then agreed that they would meet at the office extra early the next day to start pulling everything together. That night, Kannan slept deeply and well, the first really decent sleep he’d had in over three weeks.
His sleep was so good that he overslept the next morning and was actually late, not early, getting to the office. But Lim forgave him when he heard the full breakdown of the breakthrough.
‘So I think the key connection to Ong is through Axel Gersten. And that loan Ong got two months ago from UHB? I’m pretty sure it’s just a clever way of paying him for participating in the double murder. It’s probably Sondra Seow or Gersten himself who will pay off the loan. The same thing with that REIT that he got from UHB.’
A big smile was splashed across Lim’s face. This only stoked Kannan’s good mood further. ‘We got them! We really got them!’
Lim put his hand up at this pronouncement. ‘Not yet, Inspector, not yet. What we got here is a strong theory supported by evidence; but it’s still all circumstantial evidence. And we still have no idea about what connects Daniel Tay to Ong.’
His mood noticeably dampened, Katt turned and looked at the board once more. ‘Oh shit, I almost forgot about that. We still need that, don’t we?’
‘Not to worry: if we were able to discover all this other stuff, I think it’s just a matter of time before we discover that last connection.’ He paused, the big smile returning to his face. ‘In fact, Inspector, right now I have no doubt we will discover it.’
A few hours later, Kannan burst into Lim’s office again. ‘Guess what I just found out. The money that Daniel Tay inherited?’
Lim leaned back and smiled. ‘It was tied up in a United Helvetica three-year account.’
This knocked Katt completely off stride. ‘How long have you known this?’
‘About an hour. I thought I should call you up and tell you right away, but then I decided to wait till you came bursting in here again. I thought it would be more dramatic.’
‘I guess it was. And you know who was the bank’s administrator on that account?’
‘Let me guess. Our friend Axel Gersten.’ Kannan gave him the thumbs-up signal. He then stepped over to the board with the double homicide diagram and carefully drew a thick line between Gersten and Daniel Tay.
‘And that closes our triangle.’
‘Yes, sir. But now we need to turn the evidence into proof.’
Kannan turned. ‘Right. How do we do that?’
‘Here’s where you get to complete your education, dear Inspector. Now is when we bring them in for questioning. We bring in all four of them.’
‘Don’t we have the same risk of just forcing them to close tighter than a pillbox?’
‘Not if we handle it right. And I’m going to show you how to handle it right.’ This time, Lim’s smile had a slight twist of the conman to it. ‘The hardest part of a good investigation is hooking the right fish. You’ve got that part mastered. But another important skill is knowing how to reel that fish in. That’s the next lesson.’
The pair spent the next two days working with others in the Force to draw up warrants and a tightly rehearsed strategy. On the third day, police arrived at the offices of Daniel Tay, Ong Swee Chun and Axel Gersten and the home of Sondra Seow. By 3 pm, all the suspects had been taken to the Cantonment complex and brought to the interrogation centre.
Ong Swee Chun was waiting in a small, side office sporting a grimace as Inspectors Lim and Katt approached. Lim pulled out his handphone at the door and punched a speed-dial number. Within seconds, he got an answer.
‘OK, we’re about to bring out our suspect. You start out with this Gersten guy.’ Lim then looked into the room and asked Ong to join them across the hall in one of the interrogation rooms.
As the three of them were heading across the bullpen, another officer turned the corner with his suspect: Axel Gersten. The officer had a tight squeeze hold on Gersten’s elbow; the coldly handsome Swiss did not look much happier than did the haggard Ong.
As they proceeded in opposite directions, the two groups ‘happened to’ pass within a foot of each other. Gersten saw Ong, then looked away quickly, pretending to neither know nor notice him. But Ong was obviously so startled when he saw Gersten that he stared at him the whole time they were passing each other.
‘A friend of yours?’ Inspector Lim asked. Ong’s only response was to look at the two policemen with dismay before garbling a few words. He seemed unable to speak coherently all the way into the interrogation room.
A short time later, another police officer from the CID brusquely escorted Daniel Tay into an interrogation, but made the well-planned ‘mistake’ of bringing him into a room already occupied: by an Inspector Tal, who was grilling Alex Gersten. The fellow officer quickly apologized to Tal for interrupting the interrogation. But he also lingered a short time, extending his apology so as to allow Gersten and Tay to spear each other with caustic stares. When he pulled Mr Tay out and closed the door, Inspector Long found himself with a noticeably more cooperative suspect.
Inspector Katt stayed overtime again, banging out his reports on the case to date. Shortly before seven, his partner Lim knocked, then stepped in. He was toting three small grey boards. Katt looked at the boards, perplexed, and his perplexity only grew when Lim carefully arranged them on a side table: one on the bottom, the other two on the sides, like a small tent.
He looked up, smiled, then grabbed one of the side boards, which he pulled away swiftly. The tent, of course, collapsed.
‘And that’s the way it works,’ Lim crowed. ‘You pull out just one side of a triangle and the whole thing collapses.’
‘What? You got them all to confess?’ Kannan asked.
‘All except Gersten. Ong cracked first, right after you left. “The whole thing was his idea, he pushed me into it” is what he said.’
‘He was talking about Gersten, is it?’ Kannan asked.
Lim nodded. ‘But then he explained the whole swapped killings scheme to us. How they worked it out and everything. Not a bad job of planning, I got to admit. And when we told Tay what Ong had told us, he quickly cracked too, explained his part in the arrangement, and also put the blame on Gersten.
‘We used all this in our interrogation of Sondra Seow, and the lovely widow broke down quickly. Really broke down, too. It wasn’t too long before she was crying like a little child, saying how affectionate and understanding a husband Andrew Lee was and how she should never have allowed Gersten to talk her into this horrible deed.’
‘And what does our banker friend say about all this?’
‘Just what you’d expect from a very respectable businessman who has this interesting little sideline in having people killed. He claims the other three are all highly delusional.’
‘And that includes his girlfriend?’ Katt asked with eyes spread wide.
‘Oh, that was maybe the best part. He says he met that woman – that’s what he called her, “that crazy woman” – at some corporate functions and she asked if he could advise her on some financial matters. He claims they met a few times to discuss investments and all like that, and then she started to make all these crazy suggestions. He also swore that their relationship was “strictly professional”.’
Kannan tapped the thick envelope with the photos that Robert Lozario had provided. ‘He has a very interesting profession then, I’d say.’
‘You said it. Wish I could get into that field.’
‘Think he might get away with it?’
‘He’s got about as much chance as I have to steal Angela Jolie from Brad Pitt.’ Lim then lowered his eyelids and shook his head. ‘We’ve got three signed confessions and three very scared witnesses all pointing their fingers in the same direction: at Mr Gersten. I don’t think any judge here will buy the story he wasn’t deeply involved in those killings.’ Katt and Lim shared a volley of high-beam smiles at that.
But Katt then grew slightly sombre. ‘Do you think they’ll all hang?’
Lim shrugged. ‘It depends. On a number of things. Look at it from one angle, they’ve all earned the right to hang. Look at it from another angle, they all can claim something that mitigates the sentence.’ He shrugged. ‘They might all hang, they might all get life sentences. One thing for sure: it will be a lot harsher than a $5,000 fine and loss of driving privileges for two years.’ Katt gave a nervous laugh at that.
‘Anyway, that’s for the Deputy Prosecutor and the judge to decide. My job is just to catch bad people and turn them over to the courts, let them decide what happens to be justice in this case. Just catching bad people is work enough.’ He paused a beat. ‘As you know.’
There was an awkward silence in the room. Katt fingered the first pages of his report and avoided Lim’s gaze. ‘You know, you’re the big hero here, Katt. If you didn’t see something strange and started pursuing it, all four of them would get away with murder. I wonder how many other people have intentionally killed with their motor vehicles and just received fines and suspensions of licence. From now on, anyone who thinks about this will have to think twice.’ He paused. ‘Thanks to you.’
‘Well, I’m just glad I could do my job.’
‘Very well, I should say; very well.’ He glanced at Katt, who was himself staring off into space. ‘Is this your first murder case?’ Katt nodded. ‘First possible death penalty case too?’ Katt nodded again.
‘The first one is the most difficult. Except if you get one where you’re not really sure, and then that one’s even more difficult.’ He then took a deep breath and stared into space himself. ‘Are you vegetarian?’
Katt shook his head. ‘No. I tried to be for a few years when I was at school. I was pretty good with it for awhile. But then KFC and Burger King beat out my grandfather’s piety.’
‘Well, that’s good really. The officers who are vegetarian, they’re the ones who usually have problems with death penalty cases. The rest of us get over it eventually.’
‘That’s good to hear,’ Katt replied. But he kept seeing the torn look on Sondra Seow’s face, the scared look on Ong’s face, the confused look on Daniel Tay’s. The only face that he could feel real, implacable contempt for was Axel Gersten’s, sitting there in all its settled arrogance.
After an awkward stretch of silence, Lim stood and slapped the top of Katt’s desk.
‘Come on, partner – let’s go out and have a celebration drink. We’ve got ourselves a big victory to celebrate here.’
Katt turned. ‘Yeah, that’s right. We do have a victory to celebrate, don’t we?’
‘Absolutely,’ answered Lim, as he turned and headed towards the door. For several moments, Katt seemed trapped in his chair, unable to move. But then he stood up, nodded confidently and followed Lim out. And as he walked along, he felt, for maybe the first time, how well he fit into the space he was passing through.
Richard Lord is the author or co-author of over 20 published books and has edited or co-edited over two dozen volumes. His first full-length books were non-fiction titles, including Culture Shock! Germany; Success in Business – Germany; and Insider’s Frankfurt. Among the books he’s edited was Crime Scene Singapore, the prototype for the current Crime Scene Asia series.
For the last six years, Lord has been concentrating more and more on fiction, especially crime fiction. His short stories have appeared in five anthologies as well as in the now defunct Amazon Shorts program. One of his short stories, ‘The Lost History of Shadows’, was adapted as a mini-series for Singapore’s Mediacorp television. This followed the adaptation of his earlier story, ‘A Perfect Exit’, as a one-hour TV film, also on Mediacorp.
His novel, The Strangler’s Waltz, a murder mystery set in 1913 Vienna, is published by Monsoon Books. It is the first volume in a projected four-novel crime fiction series, The Vienna Noir Quartet.