Read Online The Ambassador's Wife by Jake Needham - Free Book Online Page B

she was already dead?”
    “Rage?” Dr. Hoi shrugged. “That would be my guess, but you’re the detective here, Inspector. I just cut up dead bodies and try to find out what made them dead.”
    Dr. Hoi leaned back and waited a few moments for Tay to speak again. When he didn’t, she fiddled briefly with her pen, then abruptly pushed herself away from her desk and stood up.
    “That’s about all I have now, Inspector. I should get back to the report. I ought to have it completed by Monday and I’ll see that you get it immediately. Now unless there’s something else…”
    “No, I don’t think so,” Tay said as he rose slowly to his feet. “Nothing else. Thank you.”
    Dr. Hoi offered her hand and Tay took it. It was cool to the touch. He was suddenly seized by a wild impulse to pull it toward him, open her fingers, and press her palm to his forehead, but he resisted.
    “Take a left outside and go through the door,” Dr. Hoi said.
    “Follow that corridor all the way to the end and you’ll be back in reception.”
    “Thank you, yes,” Tay said.
    Tay sensed Susan Hoi was waiting for him to say something else, but he couldn’t think what it might be.
    “Have a nice weekend,” she eventually said when he remained silent.
    “Thank you.”
    And then he left, closing the door behind him.
    Tay followed Dr. Hoi’s instructions and before long found himself outside the mortuary, standing on a concrete walkway next to a lawn that was mowed as smooth and tight as a putting green. He got his bearings and began to walk back to his office, taking it slow.
    That’s the ticket, Tay thought to himself. Take it slow. Take it all slow.
    The afternoon was hot and clear and the sky was a dense, crystalline blue. It looked as perfect as the inside of a ceramic bowl.

EIGHT
    THIS time Tay remembered to bring the letter from New York home with him, but when he called that evening he was unable to reach the lawyer named Rosenthal. A secretary told him that Mr. Rosenthal was at his house at the shore and wouldn’t be in the office again until Monday morning. Tay left both his home and his cell phone numbers, suppressing his annoyance at finding himself a supplicant to a man who not only could take his Fridays off but also had a house at some shore. He hung up wishing he had never made the call in the first place.
    It rained all day Saturday and Tay did nothing but read the Martin Cruz Smith novel, smoke, and think about the murdered woman. He felt as if he were becalmed in the eye of a hurricane. All around he could hear the wind howling and feel the storm coming, but he had no way to guess when or from what direction it might strike. Major cases were like that, he knew. Periods when nothing happened followed by periods when everything happened. Something would come up. He had no idea what it would be, but he had no doubt he would be off and running again soon. It always worked that way. At least it always had.
    His mother was a different matter entirely. There Tay lacked any experience of value to him in trying to assess the future. Assuming what Rosenthal told him in the letter was true, what did it all actually mean? More to the point, although he flinched from the nakedness of the question, he knew he was really wondering what effect it would have on his own life.
    He simply had no idea at all.
    ON Sunday morning Tay rose late, made toast and coffee, and then thought about what to do with the final day of his weekend. He knew a lot of people claimed Singapore was boring. ‘Singabore,’ tourists sometimes called it. Usually that annoyed him, but sometimes he thought those people might well have a point. Still, he realized there was another possible explanation for his lethargy, and he liked that one even less. Maybe it was he who was boring, not the city. Perhaps he was just turning into an old fart, cranky and tedious, and that was that.
    When Tay finished breakfast, he considered starting on the three-volume Graham Greene