The Ambassador's wife

“Is it? Is that the reason?”

The OC drummed his fingers on the desk and examined a point somewhere in the air just above Tay’s left ear.

“That’s not why most people would want to go to Bangkok,” he said. “It’s sure as hell not why I’d want to go to Bangkok.”

“Nevertheless, sir, it’s why I want to go.”

“Uh-huh,” the OC said. “It might be at that.”

Tay’s boss stopped drumming his fingers. He bent down and opened a bottom drawer in his desk and propped his feet on it, then apparently thinking better of it, he took his feet off the drawer and closed it again.

“Why don’t we just let the Americans have this one, Sam? First an American ambassador’s wife is murdered here and then an American ambassador is murdered in Thailand. There can’t be much doubt anymore about terrorism being involved and that would give the Americans jurisdiction. I don’t see any reason to argue with them about it.”

“The second murder doesn’t make you wonder, sir? About the terrorism theory, I mean.”

“An American ambassador murdered in Bangkok? Why would that make me wonder?”

“Both victims were women, sir. And both killings had sexual overtones. That doesn’t sound like the kind of thing terrorists usually do and the press is bound to make something out of those overtones whether they have anything to do with the murders or not.”

The OC looked unhappy. “What overtones?”

“Well, sir, you’ll have to admit that the posing of Mrs. Munson’s body was unusual and from what I understand the woman in Bangkok was posed the same way.”

“That could just be a coincidence.”

And you could be the next prime minister of Singapore, Tay thought, but that was not what he said.

“What if the second murder does indicate that a serial killer is out there, Chief? If we just turn our case over to the Americans and don’t run our own investigation, how will that look for us?”

The OC went back to drumming his fingers.

“And, sir, one other thing.” Tay sensed he was almost over the finish line, so he pressed his luck a bit. “Don’t forget that I was personally invited to join the investigation by the State department’s Regional Security Officer in Singapore.”

“And don’t you forget, Sam, you were personally invited to fuck off by the American ambassador to Singapore.”

Tay kept quiet.

“Why can’t you just do that, Sam?”

“Do what, sir?”

“Fuck off like they told you to. Let the bloody Yanks have this whole mess if they want it so much.”

“Are you ordering me to turn this investigation over to the Americans, sir?”

The OC leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He exhaled heavily.

“No, of course I’m not, Sam. I’m only asking why in God’s name can’t you just leave this one alone?”

“Elizabeth Munson wasn’t killed by terrorists, Chief. She was executed and battered to a bloody pulp by somebody she knew. And it happened right over there in the Marriott Hotel.”

Tay thrust out his forefinger for effect, then realized he had no idea in what direction the Marriott lay and yanked it back.

“Now there’s another woman in Bangkok who appears to have been murdered in exactly the same way,” he continued. “That’s two women in less than a week in two cities a couple of hours apart.”

“But, Sam-”

“There’s a connection, Chief. There has to be.”

“Of course there’s a connection, Sam. One woman was the wife of the American ambassador to Singapore and the other woman was the American ambassador to Thailand. They almost certainly knew each other and a hell of a lot of people must have known both of them. I imagine they went to the same parties. That kind of thing. What does that prove?”

“I meant some other connection, sir.”

Tay considered briefly telling the boss about his conversation with Lucinda Lim and the story she had told him about Elizabeth Munson’s personal life, but he quickly came to his senses.

The OC chewed on his lip and looked down at his desk.

“I warned you, Sam.”

Tay was momentarily puzzled. “Sir?”

“I warned you that you might be getting in over your head here, that you might not be up to it.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with me going to Bangkok, Chief.”

“You don’t have to go just to prove to me that you are up to it. You could just leave this alone.”

Tay took a deep breath and looked away. He didn’t trust himself to do anything else.

The OC apparently noticed. He sighed long and hard.

“How long would you need?”

“Only a day or two, sir. I just want to look at the crime scene. See where the investigation is going. That’s all.”

“I’m probably going to regret this.”

Knowing now that he had what he wanted, Tay watched the wall and waited patiently.

“Okay, I’ll call somebody over there,” the OC said. “I’ll tell them to expect you.”

He pulled his chair closer to the desk.

“And, Sam,” he said, “try not to get into any trouble, but if you do, at least try not to get caught at it.”

Tay mumbled something unintelligible and left it at that. There was no point in doing anything else. He had very little doubt that he and the OC were thinking about two very different kinds of trouble altogether.

Tay went straight home after that and threw some stuff in a bag. He wasn’t any good at packing since he hadn’t had very much experience at it and at first he couldn’t decide what he ought to take with him. He resolved his quandary by packing whatever pieces of clothing his eyes happened to fall on until his bag was full. The bigger problem was finding his passport. When he eventually located it in a dresser drawer, buried beneath two unopened boxes of handkerchiefs he didn’t know he had, he was vastly relieved to see it hadn’t expired.

Tay managed to get to Changi Airport in time to make a Thai Airways flight that left just after six. The flight took barely two hours. With the one-hour time change between the two cities, by seven-thirty he had cleared immigration in Bangkok and was waiting at the baggage belt for his suitcase. He had thought about calling Bangkok and leaving a message at the American embassy for Cally about when he was arriving, but he didn’t do it. Maybe it was nothing more than his normal instinct not to tell people anymore than he really had to that had stopped him, or maybe it was something else altogether. He wasn’t quite sure.

Regardless, he hadn’t called Cally before he left and there didn’t seem to be any point in doing it now. He would just find a hotel for the night, get up early and check in with the Thai police, and then see what came from that. He might try to call Cally after that or he might not. Well, probably he would.

His bag came more quickly than he expected and he pulled it off the belt and headed off to look for a hotel booking desk. The customs channels were deserted so he walked straight through and emerged into a large, brightly lit lobby. Behind a barrier quite some distance away, he saw a crowd of people apparently there to meet arriving passengers, but right outside the door from customs, leaning casually against a pillar, was Cally Parks.

“What are you doing here?” Tay asked, too incredulous to come up with anything more memorable.

“Waiting for you, of course. Do I seem like the sort of girl who just hangs around airports?”

“How did you know-”

“I’m a trained law enforcement officer, remember?” Cally said. “I am a seeker of truth, a seer of the unseen, a finder of the unfindable.”

“But I didn’t even know which-”

“I called your office about four o’clock to see if you were coming. They said you had just left, so I checked the