Assassins Are Our Greatest Assets

Prologue – A Maid’s Lament

I am so thirsty.

I haven’t had water for more than two days.

“You don’t deserve any water, you pig!” Madam had screamed.

My mouth is parched. My eyes are burning.

I am huddled here, in the dark.

I am in so much pain.

“Take that, you bitch,” young Master had shouted when he kicked me in my stomach.

My abdomen is purplish-black and swollen.

My leg is broken, I think.

I am locked in a closet. I can’t stand. I can’t move.

I am so hungry.

“No food for you, you useless wretch,” Madam had stated coldly, with finality.

What did I do wrong?

I get up every morning at 4:30 am. I sweep and swab the floors. I cook the food. I wash the bathrooms. I wash the clothes. I iron them. Everything they ask, I do, without comment or complaint. I am allowed to go to sleep only at 11:00 pm.

But they hit me and kick me and punish me.

Every day.

I miss my daughters, Sunarthi and Shamini. Such darlings. I hope they are fine. I hope my mother is taking care of them properly. Shamini needed to go to the dentist. I sent the money. Has she gone yet? Sunarthi must have finished her exams. Did she do well?

I haven’t seen them for two years.

When will I see them again?

Will I ever see them again?

Oh, the pain.

I don’t even have the tears to cry.

Two days ago, Vasuki, the neighbour’s helper, saw me when I was sweeping the corridor outside the apartment. She took a step back in shock at my appearance.

“What happened?” she asked, in a horrified whisper. I could tell her a few things before I had to rush back inside. I hoped that she would tell someone about my condition, but it seems that she has not. I don’t think I can expect any help.

I can’t bear the cramps anymore. They squeeze me like a giant pair of tongs, ripping me inside.

I think I am dying.

But I can’t die. I can’t without seeing my darling angels.

Dear God, please don’t let me die.

Chapter 1

JAMES HONG.

I stared at the name in my notebook.

My next assignment.

The bastard who set in motion the deaths of Greg Closier and Lee Sun Wah.

The weasel who destroyed my daughter-in-law’s reputation and almost broke up her marriage.

The lawyer.

Now, the last sin was enough for James to get onto my list. I am not what you would call a ‘lawyer-friendly’ person. Many years ago, I read Shakespeare’s definition of lawyers - ‘airy succeeders of intestate joys, poor breathing orators of miseries!’ and found myself nodding in sync with the Bard.

But it was for the first two that he would pay the price.

What?

Oh. Oh, sorry, you really have no idea what I am talking about. You haven’t read my first book, ‘Sixty Is The New Assassin’.

Okay. Your loss.

Let me start again.

My name is Ishmael Dollah.

I am sixty years old.

I used to be a CEO.

I am now an assassin.

And the next target on my list was James Hong.

Chapter 2

Well, when I say I am an assassin, I am indulging in a bit of title inflation.

You know what title inflation is, right? When garbage collectors are called sanitation engineers and bus drivers are called transport captains. Or when low level functionaries in banks (who don’t know their ass from their elbow) are called director and vice president and general manager.

I am more what you would call a novice assassin.

I have just entered the trade.

I had completed only two assignments so far.

(However, the first target was already in the process of dying when I assassinated him. So, let’s call it one and a half assignments?)

(Also, this first target was a sort of mistake. I jumped to a conclusion based on incorrect information. I am a very judgemental person. I sometimes make wrong judgements.)

(Of course, in the larger scheme of things, Greg Closier deserved to die. The fact that he was assassinated twice clearly proves his culpability.)

I have much to learn and a long way to go.

This is obvious from my actions in my first two assignments.

I did not have sufficient information. I used makeshift tools. Luck played a huge role.

For the next assignment, I will be better prepared and equipped.

I promised myself that I would do better.

Now, let me tell you about James Hong.

James was a lawyer with the firm Nestor & Ross. This is the same firm in which my daughter-in-law, Marianna, was a partner.

A few weeks ago, I met James at a Nestor & Ross party. During this party, we met, and he told me, a complete stranger, that Marianna was having an affair with Greg Closier, her boss.

This led to a series of events that left Greg dead. As an unfortunate consequence, another gentleman, Lee Sun Wah, who believed he witnessed Greg’s passing, also died.

These untimely departures would have been fitting if James was correct. He was not.

Marianna and Greg were not having an affair. They were working together to set up a new law firm. James saw them leave office together a few times and reached the wrong conclusion.

That was forgivable.

But telling me, and evidently, many others, about his unfounded suspicions was not.

So, James had to go.

That is why I was staring at the notebook.

This is how my planning process usually commenced.

Without having a clue.

Staring at the notebook gave me the feeling that I was doing something, making progress.

I did this often when I was a CEO. When faced with a problem, I would open my ‘to-do’ notebook and uncap my fountain pen. After an uncomfortable amount of time, during which pen never met paper, I would go downstairs for a cigarette. That is when the plan would start coalescing and crystallising.

I was just about reaching the point when I would rise and leave the study to head for the balcony for my cigarette, when,

“Ishmael!” called Nysa.

“Yes, dear,” I said, automatically, “coming!”

My wife and I have been married for more than three and a half decades; most of my reactions are automatic and geared towards earning brownie points.

I left the study and wended my way to the living room from where Nysa had called.

I found Nysa on her sofa, legs folded under her, laptop on her lap, scanning the screen earnestly.

She looked up when I entered and kept the laptop on the arm of the sofa beside her.

“Sweetheart,” she said, “Marianna and Shahed are planning on coming over tonight for dinner. I hope you have no other plans?”

I looked at my watch. Today was Wednesday. The Club had social tennis at 5:00 pm but I could take a rain check. I checked my calendar on my phone. No meetings, no calls.

“That’d be wonderful,” I smiled at Nysa. “Will they be coming over at the usual time?”

“Yes,” said Nysa, “around 7:00 pm. Tomorrow is a working day for both of them, and I suspect they’ll want to leave by around 9:30 or so.”

I sat down next to her.

“How are they doing?” I asked.

Nysa reached out and took my hand.

“I think they will get through this,” she said, “they love each other very much.”

It was less than a week since Shahed and Marianna almost broke up.

Shahed had heard, like me, that Marianna was having an affair with Greg Closier. Feeling hurt and betrayed, he had told Marianna that he was leaving her.

Marianna had confided in Nysa and me. She told us how she, Greg and two others were planning to break away from Nestor & Ross and set up a new law firm. In the process, they had agreed to meet at a boutique hotel in Joo Chiat a couple of times a week, to thrash out the planning and structuring of the ownership, business case, investments, etc. Unfortunately for Marianna, this hotel belonged to the category of ‘short stay’ hotels where people could hire rooms for an hour, or two, or six, mainly to have sex with other people with whom they were not supposed to have sex. This led Shahed to believe that the gossip he had heard about Marianna and Greg was actually fact.

To be fair, I had believed the exact same thing.

Marianna, on her part, was deliberately keeping the new firm a secret so that she could surprise Shahed and present him with her new ‘name partner’ business card at a dinner she had planned for him. This added fog to the smoke, and both Shahed and I cried ‘fire!’.

Once we knew the truth, Nysa took matters in hand. She spoke to Shahed. Then she got Marianna and Shahed together and had them speak to one another.

I was there. It happened in our living room four days ago.

“What a fool I have been,” Shahed had almost whispered, “to have believed that you would do this, Marianna.”

Marianna’s face was stony. But that did not mask her deep hurt. She did not say anything.

Shahed had looked into her eyes. I don’t think Nysa, or I existed for either of them at that moment.

“You have the right to be angry with me. You have the right to hate me,” he had said, “and I deserve it. I know that no apology will come close to righting this wrong. But I apologise regardless. I am sorry, sorrier than I can express, and beg for your forgiveness.”

Marianna’s eyes had filled with tears, which then overflowed and trickled down her face.

“I should have trusted you,” Shahed had continued, “if nothing else, I should have spoken to you about everything I had been told, and listened to what you had to say…”

A sob had broken from Marianna’s throat. It was a sound that tugged at you. A sound of desolation and hurt and pain.

Shahed’s eyes teared. He leaned forward.

“What can I do,” he had said, his voice breaking, “to undo what I have done?”

Marianna had risen from where she was sitting and reached out her arms to Shahed. He stumbled up and moved towards her.

Nysa and I thought it was time to watch the next episode of ‘The Crown’ in our bedroom.

When we came back to the living room an hour or so later, it was empty.

Much later, we received texts from both Marianna and Shahed apologising for their unceremonious departure. We forgave them for their rudeness.

This was the first time we were seeing them after that night.

I knew that it was not easy repairing a relationship that had gone through the strain that Marianna’s and Shahed’s had gone through.

It was going to take trust and forgiveness.

It was going to take the willpower not to bring it up when angry.

It was going to take time.

I squeezed Nysa’s hand.

“They are lucky to have you on their side,” I said, gratefully.

She squeezed back and smiled.

We sat together for a few moments. Then I arose and walked to the balcony.

Time to plan.

INTERLUDE 1

As Ishmael Dollah stood in his balcony and looked out at the panoramic view of Singapore,

In a poky cabin in the CID headquarters in New Bridge Road, Inspector Julia Binti Shafiq shifted uneasily in the chair she was sitting on.

She had three problems.

The first was that her new uniform pants were tighter than any pair of pants had the right to be. The synthetic fibre was creating new and interesting creases on various parts of her lower body. It was also sticky. Yes, they had taken measurements about 6 months ago, but she was quite, no, mostly, no, sort of sure that those measurements were still valid. Her refusal to ascend any kind of weighing scale, however, prevented a fact check.

The second was that the chair that she was sitting on was well past its prime. The seat, presumably faux leather, was cracking and peeling, much like her skin on her last trip to Phuket. It was also probably stained with unidentifiable fluids, but since it was black, nothing showed. She could sense the stains from the delicate aroma that rose from the seat every time she shifted. It was also unstable and jerked drunkenly every so often, causing her to sit gingerly and trying to avoid unnecessary movements.

The third had nothing to do with her personal comfort.

The third problem lay in front of her in the form of two files. One was quite thick, about three quarters of an inch. The other was elegant in its slimness. Both were the standard pale blue files that the CID purchased in thousands.

The first file contained everything there was about the murder of a lawyer.

The second file contained very little about the death of a retired banker.

Only two coincidences connected the two deaths. The first was that both the deceased belonged to the same club. The second was that both of them died within 4 days of each other.

Julia knew that the connections were most likely specious.

But.

She could smell something rotten, and it wasn’t the chair.

Her instincts, honed by fifteen years of investigative work and nearly forty years as a human being, told her that the two cases were linked. How and why? She had no idea.

Julia had reviewed the files at least ten times in the past two days. Nothing had sprung out at her, as things did so easily in detective serials. The files were boring, dry and factual. They were sparing in their facts and ambiguous in the conclusions. There were no highlighted phrases, the sight of which caused a sudden epiphany.

She went over the facts again in her mind.

The first victim (yes, if Julia’s instincts were right, he was a victim), a lawyer, died in the club restroom, seemingly of poisoning.

The second victim, a retired banker, died at MacRitchie Reservoir, seemingly of natural causes.

There was no evidence that the two victims knew each other, professionally or socially. They were about three decades apart in age. The banker had spent his career in personal wealth management and had never had cause to engage with a corporate law firm. They moved in very different social circles. The only overlap was the club, and the two never seemed to have encountered each other ever.

Julia took a deep breath. She collected the two files, opened a drawer in her desk and pushed them in.

I need a cigarette, she thought. Time to stop thinking for a while. Let me catch up on what’s going on in the gossip circle.

She stepped out of the temporary office and began the long walk to the smoking area.