Jake Needham - The Ambassador's wife

“Well…” Munson spread his hands. “There you are.”

“Not really, sir. DeSouza did kill Susan Rooney and Cally Parks all right, and I think he killed both of them pretty much for the reasons he told me he killed them. But he was lying about Mrs. Munson. He was protecting you.”

“And what makes you so sure of that?”

“Because DeSouza told us later he was lying. That you killed Mrs. Munson and then called him to clean up your mess.”

“Us?”

“I left DeSouza that night with a colleague of yours. They had their own conversation after I had gone, and your colleague told me DeSouza gave you up with barely a whimper.”

“A colleague of mine? What the hell are you talking about, Tay?”

“Does the name John August mean anything to you?”

“No,” the ambassador shook his head, “it doesn’t.”

“That’s odd. He certainly knows you. As a matter of fact…” Tay made a show of looking around the lounge, “he’s on the same flight to London that you are today, sir.”

Tay pointed over the ambassador’s shoulder. “There he is. Right behind you.”

Munson turned and looked where Tay was pointing. When he turned back, all the blood had drained from his face.

“Maybe you know him by a different name than I do,” Tay said. “That doesn’t surprise me. But whatever name you know him by, you obviously know who he is.”

“What do you want from me, Tay?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Look, when I get back to Singapore, we’ll sort all this out. We’ll come to some kind of arrangement. You’re wrong about me.”

“I don’t think I am, sir. But it doesn’t really matter.” Tay tilted his head toward John August. “You won’t be coming back to Singapore.”

The ambassador twitched visibly and Tay saw his jaw working.

“You’re bluffing,” he said.

“It’s funny you should say that, sir. Really funny. That’s exactly what Tony DeSouza said to me. As a matter of fact, it was just about the last thing he ever said to anybody.”

Tay pointed at the big clock on the wall of the lounge.

“You’d better get going, Ambassador. You’ve got a bit of a walk to your gate. You wouldn’t want to miss that plane.”

The ambassador sat absolutely still. He stared straight ahead and said nothing at all.

“Good-bye, sir.”

Inspector Samuel Tay stood up and walked out of the lounge without a backward glance. He was looking forward to the rest of the weekend already.