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sipping from a large takeaway cup without a lid. She wore a black suit that looked expensive and small gold-rimmed glasses pushed halfway down her nose. As he watched her, she uncrossed her long legs and then re-crossed them in the opposite direction. He allowed his eyes to linger long enough to register three things. The woman was extraordinarily attractive; she was young enough without being too young; and perhaps most important, she was alone.
    Tay instinctively began a more detailed assessment of his prospects, but before he could get very far, the woman lifted her gaze from the IHT and looked straight at him. Their eyes met and, following a brief moment of appraisal, she smiled. It appeared to be a genuine smile, even warm, but it caught Tay completely off guard. To mask his embarrassment, he glanced quickly around the room as if he was looking for someone, then put down his cup, stood up, and walked quickly away. After he was safely out on the sidewalk, he began almost immediately to wonder why he had done such a thing. Surely returning the woman’s smile wouldn’t have been unreasonable, would it? Particularly not since the woman had smiled at him first.
    You’re a damned idiot, Sam Tay. Pass up too many opportunities like that and one of these days there won’t be any more .
    Shaking his head at the depths of his own foolishness, Tay crossed Orchard Road to a 7-Eleven where he bought another disposable lighter, a blue one this time, and a fresh pack of Marlboro Reds. Then he walked about a hundred yards back up Orchard Road to the nearest taxi stand. The line was blessedly short and within ten minutes he was in the back seat of a Comfort taxi on his way to the Police Cantonment Complex on New Bridge Road.
    Tay suddenly realized that the taxi was exactly the same shade of blue as the lighter he had just bought and he wondered for a moment about the coincidence. In spite of the healthy sugar and caffeine buzz he was carrying, he really couldn’t see what significance that fact might have, so he stopped thinking about it as abruptly as he had begun. Settling back against the seat and shutting his ears to the music blaring from the driver’s radio, Tay watched the streets and sidewalks slide by and tried very hard to think about nothing much at all.
    AS soon as Tay got to his desk, he began work on the investigation papers for the dead woman at the Marriot. The investigation papers in every case were ultimately the responsibility of the designated investigation officer, although most IOs treated the job as the police equivalent of manual labor and assigned it to the first junior officer they saw who wasn’t fast enough to get out of the way.
    Tay didn’t look at paperwork that way at all. He really didn’t mind dealing with the IP on his cases himself. To tell the truth, he rather enjoyed it. He sometimes thought he had the soul of an accountant rather than that of a policeman.
    Tay even found dealing with the IP himself brought with it a sort of sense of personal redemption. Holding the progress of an investigation right there in his own two hands was both a symbolic and a practical act. It was symbolic in that it reminded him he was accomplishing something, and it was practical in that it prevented him from thinking he was accomplishing any more than he actually was.
    Tay worked on the IP in silence for nearly an hour, methodically filling out the investigation diary with the details of his observations at the crime scene. He wrote until he was interrupted by a knock at his door. When he looked up, Sergeant Kang was leaning in.
    “In a little early this morning, are we, sir?”
    Tay had never understood how people who rose early could lay claim to such moral superiority over those who didn’t. Yes, Kang was usually in the office by eight and Tay seldom made it until nine-thirty or even ten; but then Tay was usually still in the office at six or seven, and there wasn’t a chance in hell that Kang could be