He swung through a gate, nodded his way past the security guys in a booth to the left, and dropped us in front of the first building. He got a respectable tip. He glanced at it and said, ‘Thanks. I hope I get you guys again.’
I waved him goodbye, then glanced upwards. The Makena towers weren’t in the same league as the Stamford when it came to height, but they were taller than anything I’d seen in my home country, even in Glasgow, where for a while the city fathers seemed to be conducting an experiment to determine how many unhappy people they could cram into a single structure. There seemed to be nothing unhappy about this place, though, as Mike, who seemed to know where he was going, led us along the entrance driveway and round a corner.
Jimmy Tan was waiting for us, standing in the shade of the building. The black gear from the night before had been replaced by a white linen suit. The jacket was loose-fitting, the sign, once you learn to read it, of the plain-clothes policeman everywhere. Behind him, unconcerned by the fact that they were in the morning sunlight, stood half a dozen dark-uniformed troopers, wearing flak jackets, Kevlar hard hats and carrying automatic weapons. I looked beyond them to a central courtyard area surrounded by five apartment blocks. Most of it seemed to be taken up by the biggest swimming-pool I had ever seen, but since the community probably contained, at first glance, more individual residences than my home town of Anstruther, maybe that wasn’t surprising. For all that it was vast, it was almost deserted: this wasn’t a tourist hang-out but a working community, so the parents were at work and the kids were at school. I could see maybe half a dozen people in and around the pool, but only a couple of them were aware of what was going on.
‘What the fuck is this, Jimmy?’ Mike barked, as we approached. ‘Why the SWAT team?’
‘This is a Triad house we go into,’ Tan replied. ‘Best these boys in first.’ I had no objection to that.
‘What about Lee?’ I asked.
‘What about him?’
‘He was murdered, remember?’
Tan shook his head. ‘He had heart-attack, like I said last night.’ The look on my face must have merited some further explanation, for he continued: ‘Listen, Lee was Triad member, that wasn’t just a story. My sources confirm it. He was senior guy, quite near the top, involved with drug distribution and prostitution, as he was in London. He the sort of guy we never catch with anything on them; the boys and girls on Death Row are all mules, well down the chain. I’m not going waste time investigating; we never catch who did it anyway. Fuck him.’
I nodded: it made sense, in a cynical sort of way, and he was the guy with the local knowledge.
We rode the lift together to the seventh floor. When we got out, Tan told us to stay where we were until he called to us, then led his batter squad round a corner to the left. A few minutes later we heard some shouts; whatever the Chinese is for ‘Armed police!’ I guess that’s what it probably was.
It didn’t take long, only a couple of minutes, before one of the squad, a corporal, returned and signalled to us to follow. Tony Lee’s apartment was quite something: the floors were marble, and the main living space was split level, with dining furniture topside, and a couple of steps down to a sitting area with two leather chairs facing a big plasma television, and a unit which housed the best music system that Mr Bang and Mr Olufsen produce. The main attraction of the upper level was an aquarium, which seemed to cover most of the wall opposite the door. Jimmy Tan stood in front of it, with his hand on the shoulder of a very frightened woman in a black tunic.
‘Maid,’ he said. ‘Filipina; she says she doesn’t speak English, but I don’t buy that. We find out for sure later.’ The woman flinched, proof enough that she understood him.
‘Maddy January?’ I asked.
‘Not here, alive or dead.’
‘Can we look around?’
‘Be my guest, but what you looking for? We won’t find drugs here, or anything else that ties to Triads.’
‘I don’t know what I’m looking for. Anything that gives us a clue to where Maddy might have gone, I suppose.’
‘Okay. She’s nothing to me; you want to look for her, Mr Blackstone, that’s fine.’
He dismissed the troopers as Dylan and I moved off to search the place. We started in the kitchen: it was as well equipped as the living areas had been. All the appliances were state-of-the-art. We opened cupboard after cupboard and found nothing but food, drink and cleaning products; the place was well stocked, though. ‘Look at this,’ said Dylan, waving a piece of paper he had picked up from the counter. ‘It’s a supermarket till receipt. Somebody did a big food shop on Thursday. The shit must have hit the fan after that.’ Calamity had fallen on Maddy and Tony suddenly.
Beyond the kitchen we found a small back room, with a bed, a small hanging wardrobe, and a dressing-table with a couple of drawers. ‘Maid’s room,’ I said. ‘Look at that.’ There was a magazine on the bed: English language.
Dylan wasn’t listening: he had opened a door that seemed to lead out on to a small, shaded balcony. (Shade is difficult to find in Singapore, because it’s almost on the equator, so the midday sun’s directly overhead but the architect who planned the Makena had built it in wherever possible.) It housed a big condenser unit for the air-conditioning system, and more than that: a wetsuit, black and blue in colour, mask and flippers, lay there. There was other scuba equipment too, a tank and a regulator. I’ve done some diving, so I was able to recognise them all as top quality, and I realised something else: the suit belonged to Maddy. Tony Lee hadn’t been a giant, but he’d been too wide to fit into it.
I logged the fact away as we moved through to the rest of the apartment. There were three bedrooms; we looked in the master with its en-suite, then moved into another that was furnished but appeared to have been used only as a store. We checked what had been Maddy’s wardrobes, her drawers, her cosmetics table; they were all well stocked, but we had no way of telling if anything was missing. There was a Tampax box in the bathroom. It was almost full, but I read nothing into the fact that it was still there: Susie carries a couple of the things in her handbag like she carries lipstick. If the woman had done a runner, she’d have taken what she needed and no more.
Next we checked Tony’s space. There were two empty hangers that might have held suits; the one he’d been wearing when he’d been killed, and maybe he’d packed another. He’d been ready for flight, I reckoned that was for sure. Somewhere in the city there was a BMW that would be attracting parking tickets, unless Jimmy had found it and had it towed.
‘Look,’ said Dylan, pulling the hanging clothes apart. Behind them, set into the wall, there was a safe, open, and empty, ‘I’d guess Maddy’s got some cash. He had some in his wallet last night, but less than you’d bother to keep in the safe. My bet is that he sent her on ahead with most of their stash, then went to do the trade with you and follow her.’
‘Or rob me. He had a gun, and he was a criminal.’
‘Maybe, but I doubt it. You’re high-profile: robbing you could have drawn attention to him and that was the last thing he wanted.’
The third bedroom had been converted to an office, with a desk, a filing cabinet and a message board on the wall. It was covered in yellow message stickers. I read a few. ‘Tony: lunch 1.30 Rubino’s.’ ‘Hairdresser: 11 a.m.’ ‘FW, Riverside, 7 Friday.’ Nothing signified: there was nothing, for example, about meeting me on Siloso the day before. However, there was a photograph, pinned to the board. It showed Maddy and Tony, smiling in the midst of a group of people in a bar; a sign in the background read ‘Cafe Narcosis’. That told me at once that it was a hang-out for divers. Who else would use a bar called after the clinical name for the bends?