“You are?” Munson leaned back and crossed his legs. “You could have just come to my office. You didn’t have to drive all the way out here.”
“I thought it was better this way, sir.”
Munson nodded at that. Tay noticed he didn’t ask why it would be better.
“Well, then, I’m all ears, Inspector. What do we have to talk about? I assume it doesn’t have anything to do with Liz.”
“It does, I’m afraid, sir.”
“But her killer’s dead. Isn’t that right?”
“No, sir, it isn’t. Dadi was just a fall guy. He was killed so nobody could prove he’d been framed. Dadi wasn’t responsible for your wife’s death.”
“He wasn’t.”
Tay didn’t hear a question mark.
The ambassador shifted his weight. He uncrossed his legs and re-crossed them again in the opposite direction, adjusting the crease in his trouser leg as he did so. It was an oddly prim gesture and Tay wondered how much nervousness there was in it.
“Do you know who was responsible?” the ambassador asked.
“Yes, sir. I do.”
Tay watched the ambassador carefully. His eyes drifted away from Tay’s, but he said nothing.
“You were responsible, sir,” Tay said after a long while had passed in silence. “You killed her.”
Munson didn’t react at all, which was pretty much what Tay had expected.
“Mrs. Munson had access to the duplicate security card the Agency had for the Marriott and you had a duplicate of your own. She used her card to meet what she thought was a source in room 2608 and you used your card to follow her there. So neither of you showed up on the hotel’s security system. And then you killed her.”
Munson’s eyes traveled across the ceiling and came to rest on the other side of the room.
“You have probably never known a woman like Liz, Inspector. If you had, you wouldn’t ask why…”
Munson lifted both hands and then let them drop in a gesture of hopelessness. “She wasn’t always that way. I wondered sometimes what the hell happened to her. The stress from her work maybe. I don’t know. She had always fucked around a little, but it got completely out of hand.”
“She was having an affair with a woman, I understand.”
“Jesus H. Christ, where did you hear that?” Munson looked startled. “I guess it doesn’t matter. It was true. Several women, I think.”
Tay nodded.
“I told you when you came to my office that Elizabeth and I were heading for a divorce,” Munson said. “You remember that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I didn’t want a divorce. I really didn’t. I tried everything I knew…” The ambassador stopped, then seemed to gather himself. He cleared his throat. “She was awful, Inspector. She beat me down to nothing. She humiliated me in ways I hope you can’t imagine. When she told me she was going to leave me for a woman, I…”
The ambassador stopped again.
“How did you feel about that, sir?”
“How did I
“Enraged?”
The ambassador just looked at Tay and said nothing else.
“Is that why you killed her, sir?”
“I never said I killed her, Inspector. You said that. It’s an interesting theory, I admit. And it might get you a lot of press.”
“It’s not a theory, sir. It’s a fact. You killed your wife.”
“You are forgetting, Inspector, that I have what people in your line of work call an alibi.”
“Are you referring to your trip to Washington?”
“Of course, Inspector, since I was on an airplane-”
“You were on Singapore Airlines to London on the day Mrs. Munson was killed, that’s true; and from London you made a connection to Washington. According to the airline’s reservation records, you were on the same flight that you’re on today, but you weren’t, were you? The records were altered. You were on the eleven twenty flight that night. You didn’t leave Singapore until five hours after Mrs. Munson died. You killed her and then you went to the airport and flew to London as if nothing had happened.”
“And you can prove that?”
“Not really, sir. But it’s still true.”
“That’s what I thought.”
The ambassador retrieved the newspaper he had been reading when Tay sat down.
“You’re not very good at this kind of thing, are you, Tay?”
Tay couldn’t think of anything to say to that.
But then, he didn’t really need to say anything.
FORTY-NINE
“Tony DeSouza knew it was true.” Tay spoke to the ambassador through the raised newpaper.
“Did he?”
“Yes, sir. And he tried to cover everything up. He tried to protect you.”
“Tony was very loyal to me.” The ambassador lowered the newspaper and offered a small smile. “He thought I was doing the Lord’s work, and he felt it was his duty to look out for me.”
“DeSouza did all sorts of things for you, didn’t he, sir?”
“Are you talking about something in particular, Inspector? Or are you just jerking off?”
“He picked up a prostitute at Orchard Towers the night before he died, a transsexual prostitute.”
“I’m shocked.”
“We followed the two of them to the Hoover Hotel.”
At that, a wariness appeared in Munson’s eyes and Tay allowed himself a moment to enjoy it.
“DeSouza came out less than ten minutes after he got there, but the prostitute didn’t come out for another hour,” Tay continued. “Were you there that night, sir? Did DeSouza bring that prostitute to the Hoover Hotel for you?”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Inspector, are you seriously suggesting-”
“It’s not easy to recognize you in the photographs, sir. I’ll say that.”
“Photographs?”
The ambassador kept his voice under control. Tay knew that couldn’t have been easy.
“The photographs I took of you going in the side entrance to the hotel. You’re just a silhouette on the street really. It took me a while to work out what it was about that silhouette that looked so familiar. But then I did. It
The ambassador shifted his gaze and tightened the muscles in his forehead. It was the approved gesture of puzzlement, of course, but underneath it Tay could clearly see him sagging as the blows registered. He looked like a man watching his house catch on fire, one who knew there was absolutely nothing he could do about it but watch it burn.
“What did you have on DeSouza, Ambassador?”
The ambassador’s mouth twitched. “You don’t understand loyalty, do you, Tay? People like you think you have to force people to do things. Tony was a good man. He was loyal to me by choice. He was loyal to what I stood for.”
“He certainly
