Umbrella Man (9786167611204) (41 page)

“Yes, Inspector, of course.”

Tay pursed his lips and thought for a moment
while everyone waited in respectful silence.

“Sergeant, put patrolmen at all the lifts.
The stairs, too. No one except our people on this floor until I
tell you otherwise.”

“Inspector,” the manager spoke up, “there are
nine guests staying on this level and they will have to—”

“Yes, we’ll need a list of them along with
all their registration information. Also a list of everyone else
who has checked out but may have stayed on this floor any time
within the past week.”

“Naturally, Inspector. But as for the guests
who are on this floor now—”

“You’ll have to make other arrangements for
them. Sergeant Kang will get a patrolman to accompany each of them
back into their rooms to retrieve their personal belongings as soon
as possible.”

“I see.”

The manager didn’t see, of course, but he was
smart enough to recognize there was no point in arguing with
Tay.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Tay said. “If you
will wait downstairs in your offices, either Sergeant Kang or I
will be down shortly to talk to you further.”

Keshar looked for a moment as if he was about
to say something else, but then he merely nodded. The manager,
however, was less reticent.

“I am completely at your service, Inspector,
as are all the members of my staff,” he said in his most sincere
voice. “This is a terrible thing. Terrible. And we want to do
everything we can to help you bring whoever did this horrible thing
to justice. Of course, at the same time, we naturally would prefer
that the hotel’s involvement in this unpleasantness be kept to the
absolute minimum and we hope you will do your best to help us to
accomplish that end.”

Tay hardly thought it worth the effort to
point out that a hotel with a murdered woman lying in a presumably
unoccupied suite was about as involved in unpleasantness as it was
ever going to get. Instead, he just held out his hand to
Keshar.

“May I have your passkey, please?”

“Of course, Inspector.”

The security man fished a plastic card out of
his pocket and handed it to Tay, who turned it over several times
and examined it with evident curiosity.

“We have electronic locks rather than
mechanical ones, Inspector. The way they work is—”

“I know how they work,” Tay interrupted. “I’m
a policeman, not an idiot.”

Keshar looked embarrassed. “I didn’t
mean…”

Tay waved him into silence and turned to the
patrolman standing in the room’s doorway.

“Take these men downstairs, Officer. Then
stay with the maid who found the body until either Sergeant Kang or
I come down to interview her. Make certain she doesn’t talk to
anyone until then.”

“Yes, sir.” The patrolman saluted and spread
his arms as if to herd the three men away.

“Now wait, Inspector.” The manager stood his
ground for a moment. “I really do think we ought—”

“Thank you for your cooperation, sir. Someone
will talk with you downstairs. Please return to your office
now.”

The manager puffed out his cheeks and bounced
on his toes for a moment. He looked as if he might be about to say
something else, but then he just gave a little shrug and allowed
the patrolman to shoo him away along with the other two men.

Sergeant Kang followed them to the elevators
and watched until the door closed; then he organized the other
patrolmen on the scene to seal off the floor. When he returned to
2608, Tay was standing in the corridor exactly where Kang had left
him. Kang would have sworn that Tay had never moved a muscle the
whole time he was gone, and perhaps he hadn’t.

“Right, sir. The floor is closed off.
Anything else?”

Tay took a deep breath and tugged at his
right earlobe. He said nothing.

The Forensic Management Branch would have
been dispatched by now, Kang knew. Perhaps their van full of
equipment was even in the driveway twenty-six floors below.

“Do you want to go in now, sir, or wait for
FMB?”

When Tay still said nothing, Sergeant Kang
shifted his weight from one foot to another and waited. The silence
stretched on with no end in sight and eventually Kang spoke
again.

“I think, sir, that we might—”

“I don’t give a shit what you think,
Sergeant,” Tay snapped. Almost as soon as the words were out Tay
wiped an open hand across his face and sighed heavily.

“I’m sorry, Robbie.”

“It’s all right, sir.”

“No, it’s not. I’m sorry. Really.”

“Not to worry, sir.”

“Is the boss here yet?”

“Not yet, sir. But I’m sure he will be
shortly.”

Tay nodded several times, apparently more to
himself than to Kang, then rubbed absentmindedly at his face
again.

“Okay, Sergeant,” he said after a few moments
of silence. “Let’s find out what we’ve got.”

“Right, sir.”

Tay slid the security man’s card into the
slot in the lock with two fingers, taking care not to touch the
mechanism. A tiny light above the slot switched from red to green
and there was an audible click. Using only the knuckles of his left
hand, Tay pushed at the door to 2608.

It swung open without a sound.

TAY’S FIRST IMPRESSION, however incongruous
it might have seemed when he thought about it later, was of the
view. It was dazzling.

The drapes in the living room were open and
the suite’s big windows offered an unobstructed panorama all the
way south to the Straits of Singapore. Hundreds of cargo ships rode
at anchor on a glassy smooth sea, each waiting its turn to enter
the Pasir Panjang Terminal which was presumably the largest
container port in the world. Tay had never really been certain
whether it really was the largest in the world or whether that was
just local boasting, but then he had never really cared much
either.

Off to the right, the towers of the financial
district marked the entrance to the Singapore River where, in
simpler times, wharves had lined the banks and fleets of
flat-bottomed barges called bumboats had ferried cargos of rice,
rubber, and tin to ships moored out in the Straits. Somewhere along
the way the bumboats had been swapped for steel containers and the
wharves for cranes and the traffic had started running in the other
direction. Instead of taking out rice, rubber, and tin, cargo ships
calling in Singapore now brought in Sony PlayStations, Samsung flat
screen TVs, and Apple iPhones. That, Tay supposed, was what people
meant when they talked about progress.

In front of the windows was an L-shaped
seating area with a couch and a chair, both upholstered in some
kind of nubby, darkgreen fabric. There were also two side tables,
two lamps with heavy brass bases, and a coffee table with a thick,
oval-shaped glass top. On the right was a light-colored wooden desk
that matched the end tables, and on the left was a large cabinet
with a television set inside it, an old-fashioned-looking model
with its cables coiled haphazardly into a corner. The furniture was
tired-looking and didn’t really seem to fit the room. The carpet
was worn and had several burns and stains as well as a big wrinkle
across it. The drapes were made of some kind of heavy,
neutral-colored fabric and looked as if they could use a good
cleaning.

The whole effect, Tay thought, was slightly
shabby. Certainly not what he would have expected a suite in a
five-star hotel to look like, but then he supposed he really hadn’t
seen all that many suites in five-star hotels, so what did he know?
After all, he reminded himself this was just a Marriott, not the
Four Seasons. Maybe the hotels where everyday business travelers
stayed always looked like this.

Without stepping into the room Tay squatted
and examined the carpet. He placed his hand flat against it. It was
dry to the touch and when he lifted his hand and sniffed his palm
there was no odor. He raised his eyes and scanned the room. It
looked normal enough. No furniture shoved around, no tables tipped
over, nothing pushed to the floor.

Tay raised his head and tasted the air. It
was cold. Someone had set the air-conditioning very low. And there
was death in it. The rancid, raw meat odor of blood mixed with the
stink of urine and feces. It was a smell like no other he had ever
known.

When Tay stood up, his knees creaked loudly.
Sergeant Kang was behind him and Tay wondered to himself if Kang
had heard. Yes, of course he’d heard, but then what difference did
it make? Would Robbie be surprised that he was starting to creak at
the joints? Would he somehow be disappointed in Tay for starting to
turn into an old man? No, of course he wouldn’t. What a lot of
nonsense it was even to think about it.

Tay handed Kang the security card he had used
to open the door. “Return this when you go downstairs please,
Sergeant.”

Kang nodded quickly, a single jerk of his
head, and slipped the card into his shirt pocket.

Across the living room a door was ajar. Tay
assumed it led to the bedroom where the security man said he had
found the body. Watching carefully where he placed his feet, he
crossed the suite.

The door was a little more than half open,
but the room beyond was dark and Tay could make out almost nothing
inside. He nudged the door with his elbow and in the light from the
living room window saw a light switch to the right of the door. He
used the side of his hand to flip it up and two bedside lamps
flared to life.

Tay looked away. If he had not, he knew he
would have vomited then and there.

It was worse than he expected. Much worse.
Later he would say it was the worst he had ever seen, and he
thought he had seen more than any man should have to see.

The woman lay spread-eagled on the room’s
king-sized bed. Her head and shoulders were held upright by two
pillows and her legs pointed to the doorway where Tay was standing.
They were open at an unnatural angle. The woman’s face appeared to
be looking straight at Tay, or it would have been if she had a
face. It was crushed beyond recognition.

Tay breathed slowly in and out and tried
desperately to bring himself under control. His mouth was drier
than he could ever remember it. He tried to swallow, but couldn’t.
A few more breaths, he told himself, just take a few more breaths,
slow and deep. Gather the moisture in your throat. Roll it around.
Take your time.

***

When he thought he might be ready to try
again, little by little he moved his eyes back to the bed.

The woman was nude. Her body was slim and
appeared to be fit and toned, but it looked as if she was still in
the rigid stage of rigor mortis so it was difficult to be sure. Her
skin might once have been tanned, but now it was gray, except
around her hips and buttocks and at the bottom of her legs where
Tay could see the dusky purple lividity where stagnated blood had
accumulated. It struck Tay there was remarkably little blood
anywhere around her on the bed.

Where the woman’s face had been there was
nothing now but a dark mass of tissue spread out in a coagulated
lump like a tray of ground meat in a supermarket display case. The
light from the bedside lamp glistened off patches of white bone
shining through raw flesh and her swollen tongue, bitten half
through, hung from where Tay assumed her mouth must have once been.
The woman’s hair had been deep brown or even black, and clumps of
it were stuck into the matted tissue like soiled straw spread on a
garage floor to mop up oil stains.

The body had been posed after the woman was
murdered. There was no doubt of that. Her hands were neatly folded
beneath her breasts and her legs were spread open at a freakish
angle. Something between them flashed in the light and in spite of
himself Tay looked more closely. There was a metallic object of
some sort protruding from the darker mass of the woman’s pubic
hair.

For a moment Tay did not know what it was;
and then he did.

He was looking, he realized all at once, at
the rear end of the barrel of a chrome-colored flashlight. The rest
of the flashlight, at least six inches of it beginning with the
lens, had been pushed up the woman’s vagina.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Tay heard Sergeant Kang
whisper from behind him. “Shit, oh shit, shit, shit.”

Tay said nothing. He was fighting too hard to
control his nausea.

***

Inspector Tay and Sergeant Kang were waiting
outside in the corridor when the Forensic Management Branch
arrived. There were three men, two wearing black vests over their
sport shirts with
FORENSIC
on the back in white letters. The
third man wore a short-sleeved white shirt with a dark striped tie.
Each of them carried a small aluminum case and a black cloth duffel
bag.

The man with the tie stopped in front of Tay.
“Ready for us?”

Tay’s face was pale and he was leaning
against the wall as if it were holding him upright. He just grunted
and waved toward the open door. The man nodded and said nothing.
One glance at Tay told him all he needed to know.

The three men organized their bags into a
neat row just outside the door to the room. One of them produced
paper shoe bags and a box of latex gloves, and Tay and Kang watched
silently as all three slipped the protective coverings over their
hands and feet. The shoe bags were white, but the gloves were
bright red and they struck Tay as looking unreasonably cheery.

The man with the tie squatted just outside
the open door and surveyed the room’s interior while the two men in
black vests leaned over his shoulders and did the same thing. They
stayed like that for quite a while, whispering a few words to each
other now and then, but they kept their voices low and Tay and Kang
couldn’t make out what they were saying. For his part, Tay was just
as happy he couldn’t.