Financial suspense in Singapore: Records don’t lie. People do.
Chapter 1
The immigration officer at Changi Airport closes her passport, lays it flat on the counter, and pins it there with his palm. His eyes flick to the monitor, then to his hand.
“Is something the matter?” Dread pools behind Pippa’s kneecaps, slowly drains into her ankles, turning her feet mushy.
“One moment, ma’am.”
The queue behind her shuffles. Someone sighs. A suitcase wheel rattles like a loose tooth.
Pippa tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. She attempts a smile; small, polite, non-demanding.
“Ms Hart?”
A man approaches with the calm certainty of someone who’s been waiting. He’s dressed in standard Singaporean office attire of open neck shirt and casual trousers.
“Yes.” Her fingers dampen on the handle of her carry-on.
He flashes a warrant card. “Inspector Lim. Police. Commercial Affairs Department. Please come with me.”
Pippa glances at the immigration officer, expecting a sensible explanation. Perhaps a computer error, a visa muddle, a random bag check. Anything that keeps the world in its usual shape.
The officer hands her passport to Inspector Lim.
Without it, she feels oddly exposed.
A second detective appears. Neither man touches her. They walk on either side, close enough that turning would mean bumping into them. Polite, neutral control.
The trio walk past bright ads, returning families, and excited tourists. The smell of coffee and cinnamon buns drifts through the overzealous chilled air. Her one gripe with Singapore isn’t the heat and humidity but air-conditioning always turned below comfort.
Homesickness for England rises, sharp and unexpected; a longing she hasn’t felt in the five years she’s worked here.
A holiday in South Korea is supposed to end with a cool shower, clean sheets, and a few stories for the office. Not doors that click shut from behind.
The interview room is blank and too cold. A table, bolted to the floor, is monitored by a camera that doesn’t pretend to be anything else. A plastic bottle of water and a paper cup are placed with careful neutrality.
“Sit,” Inspector Lim says. “Handbag on the table.”
She complies.
“All your devices,” he says. “Phone, tablet, anything.”
Pippa hesitates. A reflex, not rebellion. Her phone is her map, her lifeline, proof she exists.
Lim waits.
She slides it across.
He passes it to the second detective, who carries it out. Bereft of both passport and phone, she is whittled down to bare bones.
“My luggage…the carousel?”
“Collected.”
“Oh.” Her thoughts are starting to slide.
Lim sits opposite Pippa and sets a thick folder down with a quiet thud. “Any other devices?” He glances at the carryon.
“No.”
“We’re investigating an offence involving misappropriation of client funds. You’re believed to be involved.”
“I’m sorry…what?”
“A client’s money was moved into a product that doesn’t exist,” he continues. “Instructions and approvals were sent using your access. Communications carried out under your name.”
She snorts, then covers her mouth, embarrassed.
“That’s impossible.” She rubs her face. “I’ve been in South Korea. On holiday.”
“Two weeks,” Lim says, as if reading from her diary. “That doesn’t prevent actions, Ms Hart.”
Her hands feel empty and useless. She pushes them inside her trouser pockets. Fingers close around something small and soft: the charm that strange man gave her on the street in Seoul. She’d kept it as a silly souvenir, a joke she’d thought was oddly sweet. Protection from Wi-Fi spirits, he’d said.
Too late, apparently.
“Hands where I can see them.”
He slides out a printout: a screenshot of a chat thread. The sort everyone has, the sort that should mean nothing. Her profile photo. Her name. Her cadence.
The messages are crisp, confident, practical.
They read like her.
Pippa leans in before she can stop herself.
The final line is underlined in pen.
Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.
She gasps. That is exactly what she would say.
Inspector Lim watches closely.
“Ms Hart. You are under arrest.”
Something cold and precise clicks into place behind her ribs—the realisation that this is not a mistake you can explain away.
The story has already been written, with her name on every page.
Chapter 2
The van’s air-con is set to punish mode.
Pippa sits on a vinyl bench that offers neither support nor comfort. Her wrists aren’t cuffed, which should be reassuring; except her handbag is gone, her passport is gone, her phone is gone.
The driver doesn’t speak. The officer beside her doesn’t look across.
Outside, Singapore slides past in clean, bright fragments: the curve of the expressway, a strip of manicured verge, a flyover with bougainvillea spilling over concrete. Labourers work with measured effort; their faces shaded from the sun. Pippa envies their certainty.
She knows these roads and can usually place herself by instinct. But today her mind won’t cooperate. It keeps insisting that this is happening to someone else.
The only thing she can concentrate on is something stupid, and safe. The charm in her pocket. A ridiculous talisman against invisible spirits. She’s almost certain it feels warmer than it has a right to be.
Brakes sigh. The van turns. A gate. A pause. Another gate. The city disappears behind walls that don’t care who she is or what her job title says on LinkedIn.
Inside the police compound, everything is a shade of institutional beige. Floors shine too hard, doors close too soft.
She’s moved along like paperwork.
Processes repeat. Name, date of birth, address. She hears her own voice answering, flat and polite, and hates how normal it sounds.
Pippa is led into a room with the same featureless ensemble as the one at Changi.
The questions come in waves. She answers some, tries to answer others. Time breaks into slices. Her mouth is dry, her tongue sticks to her teeth, her own name floats above her like it belongs to a different woman.
At some point the words flight risk, custody, pending further investigations, fight their way through her muddled brain.
“I want a lawyer.”
Why did this just occur to her now?
Inspector Lim nods, as though she’s finally said something sensible.
Her hands shake when they put the phone in front of her. Not her phone. Theirs. That detail strikes her hard in the chest. Who is she without the belongings that hold her life together?
She stares blankly. How can she call a lawyer when she can’t even google one?
Muscle memory kicks in, and she dials a number.
Eric picks up on the second ring. “Hello.”
Relief hits so hard she nearly cries. She hates that too.
“It’s me,” she says. “I need…I need you to arrange a lawyer. I’m…” She swallows. “I’ve been arrested.”
A pause, deliberate and controlled.
“I can’t,” Eric says.
“What do you mean?” Her voice pitches high, traitorous.
“I can’t be involved,” he mumbles. “It’s madness here. Everyone in the office…” Eric doesn’t finish the sentence. “Don’t mention my name. Just don’t bring me into this.”
The line clicks dead.
Pippa doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak.
A detective takes the phone.
She’s led through corridors smelling of disinfectant and stale air, back to the outside world. But this is no longer a world she recognises.
On the steps, cameras are everywhere. She wobbles, the hollow feeling in her legs trying to fold her in half.
In her pocket, her fingers clasp the tiny charm.
She lifts her chin, fixes her gaze on a single lens, as if it’s a person she can hold to account.
She will not give anyone the satisfaction of watching her break.
Chapter 3
Pippa has stopped being a person and become a body to be counted, searched, recorded.
They place her in front of a female officer with a blank face.
“Remove everything from your pockets.”
Pippa hesitates, as though there’s something left to negotiate.
“Now, Ms Hart. Pockets.”
She pulls out a crumbled tissue and a receipt she doesn’t recognise.
“I said everything.”
Here fingers close around the charm, as if she can fuse it to her skin by sheer will.
“It’s…it’s nothing. Just a…”
“If you do not comply, I will remove it.”
Pippa brings the token out. The tiny red and gold figure is sealed inside a clear bag. When the zip-lock snaps shut, something closes deep inside her. Without the charm, she has nothing to hold. Nothing to anchor her.
The last of her resistance drains away. She undoes, loosens, discards. Watch, rings, necklace, belt are placed in the tray, no longer hers. The officer’s pen records it all, as if Pippa’s life is just a list to be ticked off.
“Arms out.”
The pat-down is fast, professional, and thorough. Hands run along her sleeves, her waistband, the seams of her trousers, around her bra and panty line. She thought she had nothing left to lose until humiliation proved she still had dignity.
“Turn around.”
Pippa stares over the officer’s shoulders at the notice of rules and prohibited items. Above is the date:
16 January 2026
The numbers float for a moment. Then her brain catches, like a gear engaging.
A year ago, she’d spent the afternoon at Raffles with Eric. Amongst the polished floors and cream columns, under the fans that stirred the air like silk, she’d laughed at his jokes. Surrounded by history and the hush of money she’d drank cocktails. Did she have a Singapore Sling? Or something sharper, less touristy, because she dislikes being predictable.
She licks dry lips, longing for a taste of something other than fear.
“Step back.”
A camera flashes. Her face is captured in the worst light. The inkless scanner beeps as it captures fingerprints.
“Any medical conditions? Allergies? Medication?”
Pippa answers automatically. She longs to add, I’m allergic to being erased.
She is lead away. Another corridor. Another door. Another click of a lock that doesn’t need to be loud to be final.
For the first time her composure thins into a hollow, aching absence where her private bravery used to sit.
She presses her fingers to the pocket where the charm was.
Nothing.
Pippa closes her hand around the emptiness, as though she can stop herself from leaking out.
“A lawyer,” she says as the officer turns. “I need to contact one. But I don’t know any.”
They move her again. Not used to following, she walks with a weird shuffling step.
The new room has a computer that looks older than the building. The officer stands directly behind her.
“Ten minutes.”
Ten minutes to locate a lawyer in a city of lawyers. Ten minutes to pretend she still runs her own life.
She types best criminal lawyer Singapore like she’s booking brunch. Deletes it.
Commercial Affairs Department arrest lawyer. CAD investigation representation.
A handful of firms appear with polished language that promises calm solutions to catastrophes. She chooses one at random and phones.
A round of introductions and explanations is followed by a voice of reason.
“Provide no further statements. Answer no questions until I arrive. Do not speculate or guess. And most importantly, do not try to be helpful. Understood?”
Pippa grips the edge of the table until her fingers hurt. “Yes.”
Another room. Another table. Another camera.
Except this time its different. Ms Tan arrives like a visitor from a world Pippa can barely remember.
Dressed in a pressed navy suit, with neat hair and alert eyes, Ms Tan doesn’t waste time on soothing or theatrics. She asks about security updates, new device registration, one-time passwords. All the usual places security breaches occur.
“Tell me what you’ve said so far.” Ms Tan says.
“I don’t know.” Pippa’s voice is raw.
“Did you sign anything?”
“I can’t remember.”
Ms Tan gathers her papers. ““I’ll be back tomorrow. They can only hold you for forty-eight hours.”
Pippa sits alone. In the emptiness, her mind turns traitorous.
What if I didn’t do it, but can’t prove it?
What if I did? And it wasn’t an error? What if I did it on purpose?
Colder than greed. Worse than carelessness. But deliberate, just because she’s capable.
In the silence, two shadows fight: the woman she believes she was, and the woman this place is trying to turn her into.
Chapter 4
Confinement changes the fabric of Pippa.
By the second night, she thinks in the language of custody. Comply. Wait. Don’t make it worse. Even her breathing queues in a straight line, seeking permission to exhale.
The monotony of the cell allows fear to creep in, to settle on the concrete bench and circle the stainless-steel toilet.
Pippa tries to hold onto her old self. The woman who writes neat emails, makes good decisions, smiles in meetings; the woman who can charm a client and read a room.
But that person belongs to a world with handbags and calendars and choices. Not to a hard light that never changes.
Something else edges in. It’s stripped-down and persuasive, offering easy exits, dreamless sleep, and an empty mind.
End this. Give them what they want so the room stops pressing the air from your lungs.
No matter how many times she tries, she can’t stop hearing it.
Ms Tan phones. Pippa stands in the drab room with her eyes closed, relishing the sound of a competent voice. She concentrates on the details Ms Tan provides, the results of her investigation.
At the end Ms Tan adds, almost casually. “You’ve been suspended. Prepare yourself for professional fallout.”
Denied her desk, inbox, access card; denied the routine of being valuable. What remains now?
Confess, the voice whispers. Control the story. Choose the shape of the end.
The thought is obscene, the consequences disastrous. Exhaustion has made everything slippery. And yet, for one horrifying moment, she is almost giddy with relief.
She’s led to another room. Inspector Lim enters with a stack of papers.
“Read,” he says. “And sign.”
Pippa scans the printed lines, formal phrases, and neat paragraphs. A statement of what she has said. The version of events is almost reasonable.
It even sounds like her.
That’s the sickest part. Whoever drafted it has her delivery down pat: the competent tone, the tidy logic, the careful caveats. To the best of my knowledge. I may have inadvertently. I accept responsibility.
Her hands start to shake.
This is a confession.
A thought slides in, smooth as silk.
I could sign this and it would be believable.
She imagines the relief of no longer having to think. And for a terrifying second she understands why people confess to things they didn’t do—because the walls lean on you until you agree with them.
Do you really want to be your own executioner?
Pippa repeats Ms Tan’s instruction like an incantation. “No statements, no signatures.”
Again, Pippa is led to a room with a hard chair, bare table, and fluorescent light. She’s lost count of their number. A screen sits at eye level, showing a cropped view of a courtroom. The camera points at her from above, a microphone sits on the table, and tinny speakers spit out voices with a half second delay.
Ms Tan’s voice fades in and out. Formal phrases and numbers slide past like water. Pippa can’t follow the logic. Her mind keeps snagging on the statement she’d nearly signed, on the life she nearly threw away.
But she registers the ending.
Bail granted, with conditions.
She’s processed in reverse order. Her property is returned and the tiny charm rests safely in her palm.
And then she’s outside, blinking in the light.
The air is heavy and wet, and clings to her skin.
Behind her are walls darkened by rain and exhaust. Ahead lies the city that waits for her to decide who she is now.
Pippa stands between them, alone.
She holds up the little charm in the zip-lock bag. The gold sparkles and catches the light.
“We’d better get cracking,” she says softly. “We have a lot to do.”
Chapter 5
Home doesn’t feel like home.
Pippa closes the door behind her and keeps her fingertips on the handle. The quiet is wrong. There are no footsteps in corridors, no brusque commands, no voices through tinny speakers. Just the ordinary hush of her apartment, as if nothing has happened.
She discards the clothes that smell of sterile rooms and disinfectant, and showers. No one opens the bathroom door and tells her time is up. She doesn’t move.
The water pours over her until it runs cold and it’s too late to use soap or shampoo. She steps out and stays there, dripping, stunned by the luxury of being wet without permission.
Dry, she stands naked, unable to choose an outfit. Eventually she grabs anything. Her hands hover over jewellery, then stop. She wants nothing on her person that can be taken.
Dressed, she kneels beside her suitcase. She stares at the neatly folded clothes as if she’s picked up a stranger’s case at the airport. She lifts out the blouse she’d bought in Tiong Bahru, puts it back. A dress she’d worn at a work dinner. Out, then back.
The act of unpacking requires a belief in tomorrow, and she doesn’t have any to spare.
She leaves the suitcase open on the floor and goes to the dining table, opens her laptop and attempts another task; something adult and boring and safe. Pay a bill. Check balances. Prove to herself that life is still arranged in familiar boxes.
Her fingers fumble the keys like they’ve forgotten how to be trusted.
After she logs in, the screen refreshes and a polite sentence appears, perfectly spaced and quietly ruthless:
Your account is temporarily unavailable. Please contact the bank.
She tries again. Checks for errors. Same message.
Of course. The system has flagged her name and frozen her funds. Another door slams shut.
What’s next? Her landlord? Her phone plan? Her right to buy groceries without being watched?
How much more can be pared from her bones until nothing is left?
She closes the laptop slowly, as if sudden movement might make the situation worse. Her stomach churns, flipping between hollow and overfull.
She needs air, no matter how warm. She needs green and alive, not dead spaces framed by concrete walls.
Pippa flees to the Orchid Garden, her favourite place.
The greenery is aggressively alive; the beauty arranged with such confidence that tears swell. The colours are loud and dramatic, as though staged to prove a point.
The humid air is heavy and used, crowded with other people’s breath. Pippa inhales deeply, welcoming the instant stickiness as proof that her body belongs to the open world again.
Among the shimmering leaves of the begonias, she bumps into a colleague. They have shared cocktails, dinners, weekends together. Su An stops mid-stride, turns her back, and walks away.
Half-raised, Pippa’s hand pauses. A greeting cuts off mid-word.
With that simple snub, Pippa realises that it isn’t prison she fears the most but being miscast. No matter what happens, she’ll always be ‘that woman’. The one people avoid, the one whose name makes others lower their voices. A cell is temporary. A story about you isn’t.
She leaves the gardens before the beauty turns into mockery.
There’s some cash in her wallet. Not much, but enough for a meal. She heads to the Hawkers Market. The air is thick and smoky with frying garlic and chatter.
“You okay or not?” the stall owner asks.
“I’m…fine.”
The lady shakes her head and slips a boiled egg onto the tray, next to the near-overflowing bowl of prawn noodles.
Would she still be so kind if she’d seen the headlines?
“Bad day, must eat. Good day, must eat. Same.”
A tiny space in Pippa’s chest unjams, just enough for air to return.
Pippa takes her tray to an empty table. Her phone buzzes. She lets it ring out.
It buzzes again. She glances at the screen and answers.
“Pippa,” Ms Tan says. “Listen carefully.”
The noise from the markets falls away, as if the city has stepped back to hear what comes next.
Chapter 6
Gardens by the Bay looks like a postcard until you’re the one being edited out of the picture.
Pippa arrives early and sits on a bench like a footnote, watching crowds move through a world that no longer includes her.
The air smells of wet leaves and soil warming in the heat. Clean and sharp at first, then sweet as it settles in her throat.
Ms Tan arrives on time and sits without preamble.
“Tell me,” Pippa says, because she can’t stand another minute of guessing.
Nearby, a tour leader calls their group back together as if it’s the most important thing in the world.
“You’re being used,” Ms Tan says.
“By who?”
“The corporation.”
“Why?”
“Think of it as a story with a purpose.” Ms Tan taps the folder in her lap. “You’re a headline designed to distract from a serious situation.”
The chatter of tourists falls away to a dull hush as Pippa’s mind surges into overdrive, sprinting down every outcome at once.
“And the situation is…?”
“The Monetary Authority of Singapore is circling the company. An enforcement action is pending for controls failure.”
“How does framing me help them?” Pippa rubs her face, smearing her foundation with sweat.
Ms Tan’s demeanour doesn’t soften. “Identifying ‘one bad actor’ reassures the market, buys time with MAS, and keeps scrutiny away senior management.”
Pippa wants to scream. The absurd optimism of the manufactured greenery and gleaming glass around her merges with the surrealism of her situation. A memory flashes of a snow-covered street in Seoul, a young woman, and a charm pressed into her hand like a joke that wasn’t quite a joke.
Her fingers clasp the tiny token in her pocket and, unexpectedly, she laughs.
Ms Tan frowns. “Are you okay?”
“So, what happens now?” Pippa asks.
“There are two paths. Only one offers a chance. Please note that.” She raises one finger. “Of you walking away clean.”
“What!”
“The first option is the easiest.” Ms Tan’s voice remains clinical. “A compromise masquerading as certainty. You accept a narrative that gives them something. You ‘take responsibility’ for an adjacent failure: a process breach, governance failure, carelessness. You’re not admitting to the crime, but you are letting them stain you with it.”
“Why would I choose that?”
“Because they’ll back off. But it leaves you marked. Professionally ruined.”
If that is the easy path, Pippa’s not sure she wants to hear the second.
“Option two?” she whispers.
“It’s precarious. The physical evidence they’ve created will be hard to fight. They will drag you into the gutter. They will try to break you. Socially, financially, emotionally, mentally. The process will be drawn out.” Ms Tan looks her directly in the eyes. “And we may still lose.”
Pippa’s insides seem to fall away, leaving only brittle panic.
Across the water, the Supertrees rise like impossible sculptures of nature re-engineered into spectacle.
“Hey.” A man steps into Pippa’s line of sight with a sunlit grin. “Can you grab a photo for me?” He holds out his phone. “I’m allergic to selfies.”
“Uh…oh. Sure.”
He moves into place like he belongs in the frame; one hand in his pocket, shoulders loose, smile broad. He laughs right as the shutter clicks, making the shot accidentally perfect. When she hands the phone back, his grin flickers into a quick wink.
“Not to rush you,” Ms Tan says quietly, “but I’ll need your decision soon.”
One path offers a quiet life in ruins. The other offers war, and no promise she’d survive intact.
Episode 7
The notes in Pippa’s wallet smell faintly of airports and duty free. In Singapore, the Korean won has become something uglier—the price of surviving another week.
With frozen bank accounts, she needs cash. She’s chosen the money changers in Chinatown, away from curious neighbours.
The charm sits snugly in her pocket as she stands on the MRT platform. Since her release, she’s kept it with her. She pulls the token out. The gold glitters in the light.
“Are you any good at decisions?” she murmurs.
A man scrolling on his phone looks up. Pippa just shrugs. She’s beyond caring about minor embarrassments.
The two paths Ms Tan offered hang in the air like humidity. They follow her, relentless and unforgiving.
She boards the train: Compromise or fight?
Taps her card: Quiet ruin or open war?
Takes a seat: a living death or a dying life?
Two women sit nearby. They talk too loudly for the space.
“…that’s what I heard,” one says, bright with gossip. “She was caught at Changi. Apparently, she was trying to flee. She’s cost the company a fortune.”
Pippa’s fingers curl, knuckles rising, as her hand locks into a fist.
The other woman makes a sound of delighted horror. “Oh my god, that one? I saw something in my feed. Like…CAD, right?”
“Yeah. Commercial Affairs. Wild. My boss is talking about it like it’s some big integrity cleanup.”
The second woman lowers her voice as if that makes it kinder. “Do you think she did it?”
“Doesn’t matter,” the first says. “You can’t come back from something like that. Even if you’re innocent.”
Heat rises on Pippa’s neck. Her spine goes rigid, like she’s been caught half-naked.
The carriage glides forward. Above the door, an advertisement of a smiling couple holding shopping bags promises a life where problems can be solved by purchasing the correct items.
Her reflection flashes in the window. A ghost in her own life, haunting a train full of strangers who are already rewriting her into entertainment.
A familiar impulse rises. The old Pippa, the polished Pippa, to turn around and correct the women.
She almost does. Her lips part. She swivels…
…and stops halfway.
The noise in her head fades. A single word remains.
Refusal.
Hard, cold, and quiet.
The women laugh and move on to another topic.
The train slows. Doors open. People file out. Pippa steps onto the platform. She finds a quiet corner near a wall map and pulls out her phone.
Ms Tan answers on the second ring.
Pippa doesn’t wait. “Option two.” The words spill out as a single note.
“Understood,” says Ms Tan.
The corners of Pippa’s mouth lift, not quite a smile. A promise not a pleasantry.
This is a beginning, not an ending, after all.