The Scottish Banker of Surabaya

( 30 )

The house wasn’t air-conditioned, and although some of the windows were open there was hardly any air flow. Cameron was sweating badly. Ava didn’t know if it was because of fear or the heat. The sweat gathered at his hairline and on his brow and trickled around the tape on his eyes, coursing down his cheeks and settling around his collarbones. She looked down and saw moisture on his shins and the tops of his bare feet. She wondered if he had peed himself already, but there was no odour.

“Andy, this is Ava Lee, though I imagine you’ve figured that out already.”

He tried to speak but she reached out, grabbed his knee, and squeezed. “No, don’t say anything yet. You need to listen to me first.”

He nodded.

“Good. Now the first thing you need to understand is that this isn’t personal. I know that may be hard for you to believe, but it’s the truth,” she said as calmly, as softly as she could. “This is business, Andy. You are here because of the bank. I have clients in Canada, in Toronto, who lost more than thirty million dollars doing business with your bank branch there. So I’m here and you’re here because we need to talk about the bank and the branch and the way you conduct your affairs.

“That doesn’t mean that I’m not angry about what happened two nights ago, but you know what, Andy? I’m a big girl, and I’m prepared to put personal feelings aside as long as we can have an intelligent discussion about Bank Linno. Nod if you understand.”

He nodded, without conviction.

“Okay, that’s good. Now I’m going to start telling you about my clients and the fund they invested in, and the cretin who worked for your bank who made off with their money. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?”

Cameron shook his head.

Ava moved away from him and began to walk in a wide circle around the chair. “The fund was called Emerald Lion and it was operated by a guy called Lam Van Dinh. Have you heard of it, or him?”

He shook his head again.

“Well, it wasn’t really a fund, was it. More like a bank account at Linno that was opened for Lam by Fred Purslow. You have heard of Purslow?”

There was slight hesitation and then a slight nod.

“The thing is, Purslow seems to have conned Lam into opening the account on the pretext that the money was going into a fund operated by your bank, a fund called Surabaya Fidelity Security. It paid a modest and steady rate of interest on the money until about six or seven months ago, when the payments stopped. Purslow seems to have left the bank and Toronto at the same time. Now, Lam was understandably upset and paid a visit to the branch, where he met with a man called Muljadi, who as far I know was the Canadian operations president, and another guy, named Rocca. They told Lam in reasonably quick order that they thought Purslow had scammed him and asked him to back off while the bank looked into it. They even paid him a month’s interest on the fund’s money to buy some time — as good as an admission of liability in my mind. What do you think of that? Is the bank liable?”

Cameron shrugged.

“We can come back to that,” Ava said. “Let’s finish the story first. So a couple of weeks go by and Lam doesn’t hear from your guys. He’s about to take matters elsewhere when he is informed that Purslow and a friend of his have been killed in Costa Rica . . . rather nasty deaths at that. Panicked, Lam runs back to the bank and finds it closed. No one. Nothing. As he’s leaving the building, he’s picked up by a couple of thugs — hired by the bank, I’m presuming — who tell him that if he wants to end up like Purslow then he should keep pursuing the money. Lam is no hero, far from it. He leaves town too, although not to anywhere as exotic as Costa Rica.”

She paused and stood still behind Cameron. She saw him tense. “It’s only fair to tell you that I’ve made several assumptions about this mess. I believe, first of all, that it’s entirely possible Purslow orchestrated this fraud on his own and without the knowledge or consent of the bank. I believe that when he left the bank, he took the money with him, probably to Costa Rica. I believe that the bank found both him and the money, in no particular order, and had him killed. I believe that the bank then decided to treat the money as its own and to screw over Lam and my clients.”

Ava began circling Cameron. “Now, obviously I want the money returned. But before we get into the mechanics of how you’re going to make that happen, I want you to talk to me about Bank Linno. I’m curious — no, actually, more than curious — about how a backwater Indonesian bank managed to build such a large equity base in such a short period of time with a Scotsman running it. I’d like to know who owns the bank. I’d like to know why you opened a branch in Toronto, of all places, and how a bank from Surabaya thought it could compete and make money in New York and Rome and wherever else you are overseas.”

Cameron sat still. Ava knew she’d thrown a lot at him and it was time to back up. “Andy, I’m going to take the tape off your mouth. When I do, I’m going to start asking you specific questions and I expect you to start giving me specific answers. If it goes well, then you can take your Porsche and be on your way.” She reached from behind and ripped off the tape.

The first words from his mouth were, “This is f*cking crazy.”

“That’s not a good start,” she cautioned.

“I don’t know half of what you’re talking about,” he said, his voice hoarse.

“Well, let’s talk about the half you do know about. Fred Purslow, for example. Were you acquainted with him?”

“No.”

“You’ve never heard the name?”

He hesitated.

“Don’t think you can lie to me,” Ava said.

“I heard the name.”

“That’s all?”

“He was an employee, low-grade. I had no reason to know him.”

“Are you saying that when he took off with thirty million dollars, Muljadi didn’t brief you?”

“That’s when I heard the name, but it was almost in passing. Muljadi said he had things under control.”

“And it seems he did. I mean, he took care of Purslow, he recovered the money, and he scared off Lam. That leaves the rather obvious question of what he did with the money. So what did he do with it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“We were closing the Toronto operation, things were in a state of flux —”

“That is a pathetic explanation,” Ava said.

Cameron shrugged.

“Who owns the bank?” she said sharply.

“We have a large number of investors.”

“And they don’t care about thirty million dollars, plus or minus?”

He didn’t answer.

“And tell me, just how did you create all those billions of dollars in equity?”

“Our investors put a lot of money in and there was good management.”

“Of course, good management. I’m told you were a major player in the Toronto real estate market.”

“We’re a commercial bank overseas. We invested heavily in real estate and other safe business opportunities in Toronto and New York and everywhere else.”

“So why leave Canada?”

“My board doesn’t like to be overcommitted to any one market. I operate under a set of guidelines, investment limits. Once I reach a certain threshold in one market, we move on to another.”

Ava noticed that the tension in his voice was easing. He was obviously comfortable talking in generalities about the bank. She switched gears. “I want the thirty million dollars returned.”

He rolled his head back, twisting his neck. “How do you expect me to do that?”

“You’re the president.”

“Get real. I’d have to go to my board to get their approval.”

“So how much can you transfer on your own authority?”

“Things are very tightly controlled.”

“How much?”

“No more than a million.”

“Well, if that’s true then you’re going to have to get creative,” Ava said.

“I don’t understand.”

“No matter. Look, Andy, I’m going to tape your mouth again and I don’t want you to resist. Then I’m going to get my associate and we’ll resume our questioning.”

He stiffened again. “This is a waste of time,” he said. “There’s no way I can get you thirty million dollars. A million, yes, that I can do. And that I will do. You can split it among your friends here and tell your clients whatever story you want.”

She taped his mouth and left the kitchen.

Perkasa sat in the Nissan, the door open, the air conditioning thrumming. “He isn’t being cooperative. I’m ready to use the picana,” she said.

Ava had seen a picana used only once before. She had been in China with one of Uncle’s men and had located a scam artist who had a lot of local protection. They had a limited amount of time to find out what they needed, and Uncle’s man had suggested using a picana to speed up the process.

The electric prod was about half a metre long, with a bronze tip and an insulated handle. It could be plugged into a control box with a rheostat, used to raise or reduce voltage, and a transformer connected it to any ordinary electric wall socket. Uncle’s man was quite expert with it. He stripped the scammer and then wet the target to reduce the electrical resistance of his skin. He had Ava adjust the rheostat control while he applied the tip to various parts of the guy’s body. She was worried they might actually kill him, but Uncle’s man explained that although the current was high-voltage, the amperage was low. It took less than fifteen minutes for them to get all the information and cooperation they needed.

Cameron hadn’t moved while she was gone from the room. Perkasa took a disinterested glance at him. “Take his pants down while I hook up the machine,” Ava said.

Cameron squirmed, rocking his body back and forth. “Be still,” she said.

The picana looked new, the current range higher than she remembered. In China the prod had delivered between twelve and sixteen thousand volts. This one promised to go all the way up to thirty thousand. Ava plugged it into the wall socket and turned up the rheostat. When she turned back, Cameron’s shorts and underwear were already dangling around his ankles. She looked at his penis. It was fat and stubby and he hadn’t been circumcised, so flesh hid the head. She thought it was one of the ugliest things she had ever seen. His testicles sat on the chair, spread out by the contact. Ava thought about wetting him but figured he was sweaty enough.

She set the picana at twenty thousand volts and moved closer. “Lift his penis,” she said to Perkasa.

He reached down and grabbed it, averting his eyes. As he raised it, the testicles went along for the ride. Ava moved to one side, slipped the picana underneath, and then placed the tip hard against them.

Cameron’s body contorted so violently that he raised the chair from the floor. Ava kept pressing up. His head was rolling from side to side, screams audible even through the tape. She pressed harder.

Ava wasn’t aware how much time elapsed. Even when he emptied his bowels, the excrement spilling over the chair seat, she kept the prod in place. It wasn’t until Cameron began to convulse that she slid it out from under his testicles.

“Sorry about the mess,” she said to Perkasa.

He grimaced.

“No reason to clean him. He’ll just do it all over again when I zap him again.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to pay Waru a bonus when this is done. I’m sure he wasn’t counting on this.”

“Neither was I,” he said, matter-of-factly. Perkasa looked at Cameron. “Do you think he’ll be more cooperative now?”

“One more time and then we’ll ask,” Ava said.

She wasn’t sure how much damage she had done. He wouldn’t be fit for any sexual activity for a while, but with one more treatment maybe she could make that closer to permanent. She turned the rheostat up to thirty thousand volts. She looked down at the chair and saw that Cameron’s testicles were half hanging over the edge, so she wouldn’t have to ask Perkasa to expose them. She slid the picana tip just under them and then pulled it high.

The chair came off the ground again. Cameron’s body twisted left and right as if he was trying to shake something off. The chair teetered to one side and Ava thought for a second he was going to fall over, but Perkasa reached out and steadied it.

He had screamed when the jolt first hit him, but as she continued to press, the noise lessened until it became not much more than a whimper. His body became less active as well, the contortions becoming twitches, his legs shaking less violently. She knew he was almost unconscious and retracted the picana.

“Let’s give him a few minutes to recover,” she said. “Then I’ll ask my questions again.”

They went outside, the morning sun now high in the sky and the heat bearing down on them. “It might be a good idea to clean him up a bit,” Perkasa said. “It’s going to smell something awful in there in a few minutes.”

Ava nodded. “Take him and the chair out the back door and hose them down. I’ll join you in a few minutes.”