Free THE DEAD AMERICAN (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 3) by Jake Needham Page A

it was quite different. Singapore was an authoritarian society in which most of the citizenry had willingly exchanged personal freedom for material prosperity. Westerners had difficulty understanding that such a bargain existed because, by and large, they already had both.
    Singapore held elections, at least they looked like real elections, but they never changed anything. The same party always stayed in power and more or less the same tiny group of men who had ruled absolutely over the country from its very beginnings continued to rule without challenge. It was simply accepted now. It was the way life was.
    If one of those men had decided that Tyler Bartlett’s death was a suicide, whatever his reasons for wanting that to be true, then a suicide it would be. Tay just couldn’t see how Tyler’s death could possibly be significant enough to any of those men for one of them to get involved in this case. He had seen nothing in the police report about Tyler being connected with political dissent or any other activities that could be considered a threat to the government, but then he wouldn’t, would he? Still, that seemed unlikely. Foreigners didn’t get involved in politics in Singapore. The only reason foreigners came to Singapore was to work and make money. They were there temporarily, and they were well paid for being there. Rocking the political boat didn’t come into it.
    What Emma had said about Tyler’s job still bothered Tay. According to her, Tyler had told his parents he learned something that frightened him and that he had learned it through his job. Tay hadn’t pursued her comment at the time. He hadn’t even gotten a clear picture of exactly what Tyler’s job was because he had been so busy at the time trying to think of a way to ease Emma out of his house.
    Now Tay was annoyed with himself for not asking enough questions to understand what Tyler was doing in Singapore. Could it have had something to do with politics, after all, something that might explain why the government could be interested in him? That seemed unlikely but, whatever it was Tyler was doing in Singapore, that was the missing piece of the narrative. He would at least like to know what that piece was before he extracted himself from all this. Purely to satisfy his curiosity. Absolutely nothing more than that, of course.
    His musings overtaken by a sudden craving for caffeine, Tay stubbed out his cigarette and went inside to make coffee.
     
    By the time Tay came back outside with a mug of coffee, he was thinking about getting in touch with Emma and asking her about Tyler’s job. He didn’t want to give her false hope that he was going to get involved in the case, but he did want to fill in the narrative a bit before he let this go completely.
    He could always just telephone her at the Ritz-Carlton, of course, but he had never much liked asking people questions over the telephone. Tay understood very well that almost no one ever gave him a complete answer without a little probing. Some people simply lied, but almost everyone at least rearranged the truth a bit to make it prettier. Tay liked to look people inthe eyes when he asked them questions. Over the years, he had become confident that he could get to the truth when he did that. There was really no other way to be sure.
    He would telephone Emma and ask her to come around again at her convenience. That was the best way to handle it.
    Tay went into the house, found a telephone book, and looked up the number for the Ritz-Carlton. Was he the last man on earth who used a telephone book rather than getting phone numbers off the internet? Yes, he thought he probably was, but he didn’t particularly care. He would keep using telephone books as long as they existed, and that was that.
    He was about to punch the number into his cell phone when he stopped. What Sergeant Kang had told him about meeting at the Highlander yesterday came to mind, and he stood and held the telephone and thought