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

monument.
    Lau Pa Sat market is a Victorian structure that was built in Glasgow in the mid-nineteenth century, shipped out to Singapore in pieces, and reassembled on a full block between Robinson Road and Shenton Way. Delicately filigreed trusses capped dozens of huge, cast-iron columns, and an orange-tiled roof sheltered sixty or seventy separate stalls offering all kinds of Singaporean and Malaysian food.
    Tay arrived first, bought a cup of coffee, and strolled through the vaulted walkways. He hadn’t been in Lau Pa Sat market in years, and he missed the feeling he got in places that had the kind of connection it did with Singapore’s past. There weren’t many left.
    For more than four decades, ruthless government redevelopment programs had relentlessly ground away at Singapore until it had been thoroughly homogenized. The drive to turn Singapore into a modern, international city within a single generation required the bulldozing of anything that was old, and the bureaucrats kept bulldozing until they had completely pulverized Singapore’s rather sketchy past. To avoid the charge they were destroying Singapore’s history, which of course was exactly what the bastards were doing, the government occasionally decreed that reproductions of the old structures they tore down were to be built in their place. But the sanitized recreations were never quite the same somehow. They were never quite anything really, other than new.
    Now Singapore looked like Dallas with palm trees. To be honest, Tay had never been to Dallas, and for all he knew Dallas had its own palm trees, but he had heard other people make the comparison between the two cities and it had stuck in his mind. He did not think the point of the comparison was to flatter Singapore.
    Lau Pa Sat market had been renovated and rebuilt more times than Tay could remember, but the original ironwork remained and it linked the structure irrevocably to a life more than a century now gone. The market had outlived the bureaucrats. Tay gave one of the old iron columns a friendly pat and murmured his admiration. Well done, friend. Well done .
    It was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch, so the market was largely deserted. Tay carried his coffee to one of the round tables along the western edge of the pavilion and pulled up a stool. A few minutes later he saw Emma getting out of a red and white Toyota taxi on Robinson Road. He got to his feet, flipped his half-finished paper cup of coffee into a green trash barrel, and walked out to meet her.
     
    “How do you want to do this?” Tay asked.
    “Let’s keep it simple. I’m a writer for the Wall Street Journal working on a piece about the development of driverless cars. You’re my researcher.”
    “Are you working on a piece about driverless cars?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous, but I can’t tell this guy I’m writing about the death of Tyler Bartlett, can I? He’d throw us out before the coffee was served.”
    “No great loss,” Tay shrugged. “I’ve already had coffee.”
    Emma wasn’t certain whether Tay was kidding her or not. She eyed him for a moment, but his face gave nothing away.
    “I’m open for suggestions, Inspector, if you have any.”
    “I do have one.”
    “Yes?”
    “Stop calling me Inspector.”
    “Good idea,” Emma chuckled. “What do you suggest I call you?”
    “How about introducing me as Sam Tay and just calling me Sam? Unless, of course, you’d like to introduce me as Sigmund Freud. Then you could call me Sigmund.”
    Emma burst out with a throaty laugh. Just as he had the last time that happened, Tay felt unreasonably pleased with himself to have raised a laugh in a beautiful woman.
    “You don’t look like a Sigmund to me,” Emma said.
    “I don’t look like a researcher for the Wall Street Journal either.”
     
    They crossed Robinson Road and walked south along the sidewalk, past mostly indistinguishable buildings packed together on both sides of the street.
    “Zachery