For The Death Of Me

25

He was, of course. It was the name, the new identity, they had given him after the Amsterdam debacle, when he had come back from the dead and had been more or less conscripted as an Interpol agent. He reckoned that calling him Dyer had been someone’s idea of a joke.

Superintendent Tan Keng Seng (known universally as Jimmy) was, he told me, the head of the state-security section of the Singapore Police, the sort that every force has but doesn’t like to talk about. He worked in association with his opposite numbers in the neighbouring countries and with various international agencies. He reeled off a list that made my eyes water: Interpol, the American DEA, the CIA, occasionally the FBI, (apparently the Americans didn’t share information with each other unless ordered to), our own Secret Intelligence Service and the Russian SVR.

Wherever the superintendent had been, getting word to him must have been given top priority for he arrived before the detectives. He walked in like God; he had a presence that parted crowds like the bow of a ship cuts through water. He was aged somewhere in his fifties, with baggy eyes and a yellow complexion. His grey-flecked brown hair was parted roughly on one side, and he was dressed all in black, a collarless silk shirt with slacks and slip-on shoes.

He stared at Dylan for a long time, then ushered both of us ahead of him into the area that had been sealed off. ‘Jesus, Martin,’ he said, when we were out of earshot, ‘they told me you were dead for real, that you’d been wasted in that big drug operation in Bangkok. What for the hell you show yourself here? It’s crazy, man. If these Triad boys find out you’re alive, they’ll work out who set them up. They chop you to pieces. What you do now, private security for Mr Blackstone here?’

‘I’m a friend of Mr Blackstone, Jimmy. My name is Benedict Luker now, and I’m an author. I’m here because Oz has private business, and he’s asked me to come along to help him.’

‘Tell me rest later.’ He looked towards the booth. ‘What is this? Mr Blackstone’s shirt tells me that you know.’

‘His name is Lee Kan Tong,’ Dylan replied, ‘known as Tony Lee, when he was in London. He’s the head of a theatre company called the Heritage, but our information is that he’s a member of a Triad society, in Singapore.’

‘Ah,’ said Tan. ‘I get it. He saw you and recognised you, so you killed him. Don’t worry, son. The autopsy will say it’s a heart-attack.’

‘No, Jimmy, that’s not what happened. Oz, tell him the story.’

And so I explained to the most powerful secret policeman in South East Asia, that I, one of the most recognisable faces in the Western world, had come to his country on a fool’s mission to get my brother-in-law out of a situation which now, in the light of all that had happened, looked very trivial indeed. I told him I had come to meet Lee’s girlfriend, not him, and I showed him the fifty grand in the knapsack. ‘But he turned up instead. He’s probably killed her already, and thought he’d collect fifty grand from me for Harvey’s photographs. The big problem for him is that the Triads had him under observation instead. My guess is that they thought he’d come to sell me Maddy’s pictures of their top guy, and they got to him first, maybe in a way they hoped would incriminate me.’

‘And they fucking would do that,’ Jimmy Tan exclaimed. ‘We know just about everything about Triad in Singapore, but for one thing. We don’t know who top man is, not his name, not what he looks like, not nothing. These boys don’t ride in Popemobile waving to crowds, although they have same influence in Chinese communities; they ride in cars with windows blacked out. This one, this Lee Kan Tong, I don’t know, but if he’s new back from London, that would explain why. Let’s see what he’s got on him.’

Two more police had arrived; I guessed they were the detectives. Tan shouted to them, ‘Clear the place. Get everybody outside, take names and addresses, and see ID, then let them go. Quick now.’ He watched as his orders were obeyed.

As soon as the bar was cleared, he turned. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got,’ he exclaimed, then walked over to the booth, reached in and grabbed the body under the armpits. ‘Wait,’ he muttered, as if he was talking to it, then looked over his shoulder at me. ‘Mr Blackstone, you a big guy and you got blood on you already. Can you do this?’

‘You mean haul him out?’ What about scene-of-crime technicians and such? I used to be a copper too, I should tell you.’

‘But now you a movie star you don’t want to get your hands dirty?’

Mockery has always got to me. ‘Shift,’ I told him, then leaned over and pulled Tony Lee’s body out from the bench seat, awkwardly, because I really didn’t want to get any more of the gore on me. The trouble with blood is that you never know where it’s been, or what’s in it. He hadn’t been a big man; even dead and flopping he didn’t weigh all that much, so I didn’t have any trouble holding him up. ‘What do you want me to do with him?’ I asked.

‘Put him on the pool table.’

I hefted him across to the blue baize; it wasn’t full size but it looked to be just about big enough. It was racked for a game and Mike had to sweep the balls into the pockets before I could lay him out. As soon as I had, Jimmy Tan stepped past me and began to search him. He found keys, to a BMW, and I guessed to his home, in the right trouser pocket, and some change in the left. The inside pockets of the jacket held a wallet, stuffed with Sing dollars and Malaysian ringit, and a Singaporean passport. A compact Beretta Cheetah automatic sat in a holster strapped to his right ankle. But nowhere did the superintendent find any film or prints.

‘Whoever killed him came for pictures and he got them. He’s in for big surprise when he looks at them.’ Tan laughed. ‘He expect top man in Triad, he get Scotsman’s bollocks. You no worry now,’ he said to me. ‘Your brother-in-law is okay. They won’t understand those, they’ll throw them away.’

But I was worried, and I’d continue to be worried until I knew for certain what had happened to Maddy January. It worked on two levels: I didn’t trust that lady as long as there was breath in her body, and yet, having met her, I found that I wanted to reassure myself that there still was.

‘I need more assurance than that,’ I replied. ‘I still need to know what happened to the woman.’

Tan shrugged. ‘What matter? Fuck her, she’s in the sea.’

‘The Triads will want to make sure as well,’ I pointed out. ‘If she’s still alive, and maybe still has the pictures, she’s a threat.’

‘Then let them have her, and for sure she won’t be a problem any more.’

‘And you still won’t have identified the top banana.’

‘True,’ he conceded. ‘What you wanna do? Got any ideas?’

‘I want to see where this guy lived. If we find her there, dead, okay; if not, maybe there’ll be something that’ll give us a pointer to where she might have gone.’

Jimmy Tan picked up the keys from the pool table. . that cover was never going to be the same again. . and tossed them in the air. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I can find out his address no problem. . and we have no problem getting in either.’

He grinned at me. ‘Now I take you back to your hotel, but first we better fit you into one of those T-shirts on show behind bar. You can’t turn up for your girl in that one.’

I stared at him: secret fucking policemen. ‘How did you know about that?’ I demanded.

He laughed out loud. ‘Mr Blackstone, you forget: you made your date on television.’