In the three months he had been in Singapore, Axel Thorssen had scoured the markets and pet shops looking for possible dealers in animal contraband. He had even set up a small office in a glass and steel tower near Orchard Road and taken on a couple of people to help him. Charles Ong was a young Chinese police officer with a college degree in anthropology and excellent investigative skills. He had been born in Singapore and knew his way around, plus he spoke English, Mandarin, and Hokkien, a local dialect. His second assistant was Satya Das, an Indian police cadet who spoke fluent English, as well as Hindi and Tamil. She was almost as tall as Charles and nearly as thin. She told Axel her name meant “truth”; she was meticulous and thorough and usually ended up writing most of the reports, or correcting the reports that Axel and Charles wrote. Her computer skills were well beyond the two men’s. While they did a lot of the legwork, Satya scoured the Internet and worked the phones and Skype.
It was a good team, and Axel enjoyed the added bonus of access to the best Chinese and Indian food for lunch every day. Except for the heat, Axel liked being in Singapore. It suited his orderly mind and his punctilious temperament. Things worked in Singapore; the people were hard-working and law-abiding, much like the Swedes. He tried not to pay too much attention to some of the overzealous laws — no chewing gum on the street, no spitting (although Axel wasn’t a spitter, it seemed to him that not spitting was a matter of courtesy, not of law, and that chewing gum wasn’t the problem, but spitting the gum out on the street was) — and he knew that taxes were high, but Sweden’s taxes were among the highest in the world; it was the price you paid for everything from free medical care and education to clean streets and public transit systems.
Axel’s efforts had led him to believe that the major trafficking ring he was trying to break did not do its business at the street level of markets and pet shops. He had no doubt that the trade in endangered species and animal parts existed at that level, and even flourished, making some small-time players relatively wealthy. But it was much more of a one-on-one trade — individual seller to individual shopkeeper/buyer. He wanted the bigger players, those with international connections, who could transport and ship in quantity the rarest and most sought-after goods.
Where to look next? It was a question Axel and his team pondered at various times over dim sum, fried Hokkien mee, dumplings, fish head curry, biryani, and tandoori chicken. Today it was dim sum.
“I’m thinking we should look into import-export businesses that trade in items that can camouflage some of this stuff,” said Charles Ong one day. “Like maybe furniture, you know, like, big stuff.”
“That stuff gets scrutinized pretty tightly by customs, precisely for that reason,” countered Satya Das. “I mean, they look for any number of things, such as gems, drugs, even gold. So don’t you think they would have discovered if animal parts were being shipped?”
“You think it’s too obvious?” said Charles.
“Yes,” said Satya. “I think these guys are smarter than that.” She glanced at Charles to see if she might have offended him by implying that he wasn’t smart enough to see that. Charles had just popped another shrimp har gow into his mouth and smiled at her. She shook her head. He was either really, really smart or really, really not smart. She couldn’t decide which.
“I think we can assume they’re very clever,” said Axel. “We’ve been looking for them for three months and we still can’t figure out how they’re doing it. Unless, of course, they’re not doing it from Singapore. But I’m still pretty sure they are.”
“So am I, Boss,” said Charles, who like calling Axel “Boss” and Satya “Sat.” It was his “cool” factor, at least in his own eyes, Satya had decided. Which made him pretty uncool, in fact. But cute.
Satya and Axel watched Charles suck the meat off a chicken foot, a delicacy, he said. Satya masked her disgust by biting into a steamed bun with black bean paste in the middle: one of her favourites. Axel was partial to the steamed pork meatballs wrapped in thin pastry.
“I think we need to brainstorm a list,” said Satya. “And then systematically try and eliminate each possibility until we have a core list of real possibles.”
Axel was nodding his head. “Good idea,” he said. “Anything that involves shipping, mailing, international couriers, travel, but on a fairly large scale with regular shipments in and out of the country.”
“I suggest we go on an alphabetical basis,” said Satya, and Charles rolled his eyes. But Axel liked the idea. It was systematic rather than random, and that suited him. While Charles liked to let his mind roam and make hit-and-miss connections, Axel and Satya were definitely systematic thinkers. They liked to apply a method to a task, rope it in, and control it. Axel knew Charles would not stick to the ABC method, but that was all right. They’d still come up with a pretty comprehensive list.
“Okay. A,” said Satya, pulling out a spiral-bound notebook and pen from her bag.
“Antiques,” said Axel. “Alcohol.”
“Musical instruments,” said Charles. Satya frowned and shook her head. She flipped over a few pages and started a column for M.
“Animal skins,” she said. “Legitimate ones like fur and leather — you could hide the contraband in plain sight, so to speak.”
“Aircraft parts,” said Axel. “Do they make them here?”
“I don’t think so but I’ll check.”
“Armadillo,” said Charles.
“What?” said Axel and Satya in unison.
“It was the only A-word I could think of,” he said. “So shoot me.”