Singapore Sling Shot - Andrew Grant [117]
“How long ago?”
“Two minutes.”
“Has she got a car?” I directed the question at Paul, who was standing there like a spare prick at a wedding.
“No,” he replied, “she can’t drive.”
“Small mercies,” I snarled, launching myself into the lift, fitting the key and sending the car down to the ground foyer.
Kaylin was running for her life and she knew it. She had double-crossed Sami Somsak and now his killer friend was on her tail. She crossed the apartment foyer at a run. All she carried was one small bag. A tracksuit had replaced her dressing gown and her slippers had been traded for sneakers, but her hair was still a wild mess.
“My mother is ill,” she called, sobbing to Quong who was watching her from his desk. “She may die.” Kaylin entered the elevator with her key and feverishly fumbled to insert it. Eventually her trembling fingers guided it home. She stabbed the button for the foyer and breathed a long sigh of relief as the car started towards the ground.
The doorman barely had time to open the large double doors before the housekeeper was through and out onto the street. She started running down the footpath, frantically looking for a cab. Rush hour was over, but the traffic was still heavy.
Nothing was supposed to have gone this way. Sami Somsak and his immediate people were supposed to be dead. She, they, had never anticipated that the plot on his life would fail or that someone would come looking for answers. Thomas Lu had insisted she remain at Somsak’s apartment and she had agreed because the rewards were great. That had been a huge mistake.
There was a cab. She waved, but it pulled up short and another woman got in. Kaylin screamed in anguish. She looked back up the street and then she saw the figure in black arrive on the footpath. He turned first the other way and now towards her, and he started running.
Another taxi pulled up. The housekeeper threw herself into it. “Changi Village,” she gasped. It was the first thing that came to mind, probably because it was as far away from here as she could get. The taxi pulled away from the kerb and swept past the running man, who partially stepped onto the road to block it. The driver swerved and cursed, but carried on.
Kaylin turned in her seat. The last thing she saw was the man in black holding out one hand, the index finger extended pointing directly at her face, his thumb raised for a moment and then it snapped down.
“Oh my God,” she whimpered. She knew that if she and the man in black ever met again, she was dead.
44
I arrived back in the penthouse like a tornado. I was fuming. I should have instructed Quong not to let anyone leave. Of course, the traitor could have been him in the first place, and that would have alerted him—a semi-automatic pistol is no match for an MP5.
I retrieved my Browning and holstered it as I carried on into the apartment. The staff rooms were to the left of the main corridor. I stormed down the side passage. It wasn’t hard to spot Kaylin’s room. The door was wide open. One of her slippers was on the floor in the doorway.
Inside, her room looked as if a hurricane had blown it apart. I was in a force ten mood. So close, yet so damned far!
There were clothes scattered all around the room, but worse still were the pictures on the wall—they would have made a madam blush. Hard-core, total hard-core, large photographs of men on men, women on women and everything in between. There was a big flat screen television with DVD player and sound system. There was an image on the screen, but the sound had been turned off.
As I watched, I saw Kaylin’s image fill the screen, all of her, every inch, in full living colour. She and her three playmates. Two males and another female were indulging themselves in a good old-fashioned orgy.
I ignored the moving pictures and started looking for any paperwork, a cellphone, anything that could help track her down when she landed, wherever she landed. It appeared Kaylin had a fetish, or maybe several. Drawers revealed a range of sexual appliances that could have stocked a full-fledged