Free THE GIRL IN THE WINDOW (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 4) by Jake Needham

believe were likely to be true. When people told him they worked on the basis of intelligence, it usually meant they didn’t have very many facts. They had collected what some people told them or what other people told them other people had told them and were trying hard to make it all sound like facts. In Tay’s view, relying on so-called intelligence to make decisions was nearly always a sure way to get your ass handed to you.
    “What can you tell us about the source of your intelligence?” Tay asked.
    He noticed everyone else in the room turned to look at him, and he didn’t detect a lot of warmth in their looks.
    “Nothing,” Goh said.
    “So you want us to take all this on faith.”
    “ISD has vetted the intelligence and views it as actionable. That’s all you need to know.”
    “It seems to me—”
    “Look, Tay, I don’t really care how anything seems to you. ISD is taking down Suparman on the basis of this intelligence and holding him under the Internal Security Act. If anyone interferes with us, or if we discover citizens of Singapore involved in sheltering or protecting Suparman, CID might be needed since that wouldn’t fall under the Internal Security Act. Otherwise, the details of this operation are of no concern to you.”
    “Then you’re saying—”
    “Can I go on with my briefing now, Tay? If you have any questions, I’ll try to answer them when I’m done.”
    The screen behind Goh began to flash as it displayed a succession of images of the woman Goh had identified as Abu Suparman’s sister. In most of them she was wearing the same jeans, shirt, and dark red hijab she had been wearing in the first picture, which suggested most of them were made at the same time.
    The screen stopped flashing and held on a picture of a row of shophouses that looked vaguely familiar to Tay.
    “This is the Temple Street Inn. As most of you probably know already, it’s on Temple Street just east of New Bridge Road in Chinatown. The hotel consists of four shophouses, each three stories high, joined together into a single structure.”
    Tay always thought it was a little strange that Singapore, which was as a practical matter a Chinese city, had a neighborhood called Chinatown. The narrow streets lined with small shophouses and filled with restaurants and souvenir shops were a big draw for tourists, particularly western ones, but the area bore more resemblance to an amusement park than it did to any real Chinese city Tay had ever seen.
    “If Suparman does try to see his sister as we expect, we are certain it will be at this hotel, not at a public place like the hospital. That’s why we’re going to put a net over the Temple Street Inn from the moment Atin Hasan arrives until she leaves for the hospital. We have every confidence we will snare Suparman in that net.”
     
    “Let me lay out the operational plan for you,” Goh went on. “Three teams of six men will work eight-hour shifts to keep the Temple Street Inn under constant surveillance. We have taken over two apartments on Temple Street, one about fifty yards to the east of the hotel and one about thirty yards to the west, and we have access to the back of a restaurant on Pagoda Street which overlooks the loading dock at the rear of the hotel. One team will man each of those positions twenty-four hours a day. Nobody will be able to get in or out of the hotel without us knowing it.”
    “What about putting somebody inside, sir?” a man two rows up asked. Tay assumed he had to be ISD since he addressed Goh as sir . Tay couldn’t imagine anyone else would be willing to do that.
    “We can’t put surveillance inside the hotel since it’s small and there’s no way we can do it covertly. We considered approaching management and getting their cooperation, but we decided not to. We are simply not certain we can trust either the management or the staff and we don’t want to take a chance of tipping off Suparman if has sympathizers there. If we scare him