The Scottish Banker of Surabaya

( 35 )

Cameron was slumped in the chair, his chin resting on his chest. Ava shook him. “I need water,” he said, twitching as he woke.

“After you make the phone call to Yannie, you can have all the water you want,” she said. “Now what’s the number?”

She punched it in as he recited it. She held off hitting the last digit and she said, “Andy, remember what I told you — no funny stuff. You’re sending someone from the golf course to get the gift. Just tell her where it is and tell her to get it ready for pickup. Nothing more. Not one word extra.”

“I know,” he said.

Ava hit the last number and held the phone loosely to his ear so she could hear it ring. On the third ring a woman picked up. “Hello, Pak Andy.”

He spoke quickly. “Yannie, I’m at the golf course and I have to go back to play in a minute, so listen carefully. I left a pair of green jade cufflinks on my dresser. They’re a gift for a friend’s birthday. He’s here with me and I want to give them to him later this afternoon. I’ve asked one of the men from the golf club to come by and pick them up. Could you wrap them, please?”

Ava heard Yannie’s voice and knew she was asking a question.

“No, I don’t need a card. Just the gift,” Cameron said.

The housekeeper spoke again. Cameron looked up at Ava. “She’s asking the name of the person going to the house,” he said.

Ava glanced at Perkasa.

“Tell her Tedjo is coming,” he said.

“He’s called Tedjo,” Cameron said.

Say goodbye, Ava mouthed.

“I have to go now. I’ll talk to you later,” said Cameron.

Ava hung up the phone and put the tape back on Cameron’s mouth. “Well done.” She motioned for Perkasa to follow her into the kitchen. “Who is Tedjo?” she asked.

“A guy in Jakarta I don’t like.”

She smiled. “How long do you think it will take you to get back and forth from Cameron’s house?”

“About an hour, give or take.”

“Call me as soon as you leave there, as soon as you have the gift and the suitcase.”

“I will.”

“And talk to the boys about digging that hole.”

“Right now.”

Perkasa called to Waru and Prayogo to come into the house and Ava replaced them on the porch. Cameron was slumped over again, unconscious or close to it. Ava wondered if he was playing possum and nudged his naked knee with the toe of her shoe. He didn’t budge.

She looked at him and wondered what Fay would think of him now. Without the gel in his hair, the fashionable spikes were gone, exposing balding temples. The wet shirt pressed against his torso, and the fact that he was sitting made his belly look twice as big as it probably was. His legs were thin, white, the knees knobby. Then there were his genitals, shrunken now, as if retreating inside his body to avoid any more pain.

He’s pathetic, Ava thought. The cocky, sneaky little Scotsman reduced to a whimpering mess with two flicks of the picana. It shouldn’t have been so easy. If he had any guts he would have resisted for longer. But then, if he had any guts he wouldn’t have drugged her.

Waru and Prayogo came out of the house, nodded at Ava, and then went around the side. When they re-emerged, they were both carrying shovels. They walked in a straight line away from the house towards a cluster of palms and stopped in the shade of the trees. Waru dragged the tip of his shovel across the surface of the earth, making a rectangle. They began to dig, the soft reddish brown soil flying in the air.

In a few hours she’d be on a plane back to Hong Kong, back to a different reality. Surabaya and Andy Cameron would be behind her. But had she really purged herself of him? Maybe not completely, but enough that she knew she could move on.

Ava looked at her watch. If Perkasa’s schedule was accurate, she could get to the airport with enough time to get caught up with the rest of her life — a life she hadn’t thought about since Saturday morning, a life she now felt the strongest urge to reconnect with. She needed things to be normal; she wanted to be surrounded by familiarity.

Then, as if on cue, her phone sounded. The caller ID showed a Chinese area code — Wuhan. May Ling Wong. Ava let it ring through to voicemail. The job isn’t done, she told herself. May would have to wait until the job was done.

In the distance she could see the brothers in the hole, their heads bobbing up and down as they bent to dig and then popped up to toss dirt over the side. She thought about telling them that the hole was deep enough, but then realized they might know more about that kind of thing than she did.

She closed her eyes and thought about Hong Kong. She’d spend a few days there. See her father. Congratulate Amanda and Michael. See Uncle. Should she contact his doctor? If she did, what story could she possibly tell that would get him to disclose Uncle’s medical condition? The last time she had talked to Sonny, it seemed clear enough that it was the right thing to do. Now she wasn’t so sure. Everyone had secrets, and they were entitled to keep them.

Her attention was drawn to the sound of voices. She looked up and saw Waru and Prayogo walking back towards the house. They had left the shovels by the side of the hole. Then her phone rang and she recognized Perkasa’s number.

“I have the gift and the suitcase,” he said.

“Passport?”

“It’s in the case.”

“Any problems with the housekeeper?”

“No.”

“Good,” said Ava. “The boys have just finished here with that piece of work we needed done and are almost back at the house. I’m going to pass my phone to Waru. Tell him to give me that equipment I need.”

He hesitated. “Ava, are you sure you want to do this? I don’t mind doing it myself.”

“My job, my decision,” she said.

“Then give him the phone.”

As the two men spoke, Ava approached Cameron. He wasn’t moving. She shook him by an arm until his head lifted from his chest. “Can you hear me?” she said.

He nodded.

“Okay, we’re going to be leaving here in a minute. We all can use a little air conditioning. I have to keep you blindfolded but I’ll take the tape from your mouth, and I’m going to free your legs so you can walk. When we get to where we’re going, we’ll get your money organized, and then we’ll be on our way,” she said, reaching out and tearing the tape from his mouth. “Now, Andy, you aren’t going to do anything stupid, are you?”

“What do you mean?” he croaked.

“Go to the police.”

“And tell them what, that I was kidnapped by the police? Good luck with that.”

“Or talk to your bosses.”

“Never,” he said.

She believed him, or at least she believed that in that moment he meant what he said.

Waru stood in the doorway, the gun in his hand. The sight of it made her shudder. A memory from Macau crashed into her head. She went to the door and took the gun from him. It was a Glock 22, as close to standard police issue as you could get. She’d fired one before, but never in these circumstances.

“I’m going to sit inside for a moment,” she said to Waru, gesturing to make herself understood. “Watch him until I come back.”

She sat at the kitchen table and tried to steady herself. In Macau she had shot Lok, a Triad member, in the head at close range. It was the first time she had killed anyone for any reason other than immediate self-defence. It had bothered her enormously, but in the months since she had found ways to rationalize her actions. Now she was going to do it again.

The gun lay on the table beside her right hand. Ava watched her fingers tremble. “I’m not sure I can do this,” she whispered.

She heard a shout from the porch. She stood up, the gun in her hand. It became quiet outside and she sat down again. Procrastinating isn’t going to make this any easier, she told herself. There was no choice, she knew. Leaving him alive would put everyone at risk: the brothers, Perkasa, John and Fay Masterson, her, maybe even Uncle. Still she waited, gathering herself.

Then Waru was at the door, shouting at her in Indonesian, pointing back towards the porch. She ran out to him, the gun in her hand.

Waru was standing next to Cameron. The Scotsman’s head was slumped onto his chest and he wasn’t moving. She walked over to Cameron and held her hand against his mouth and nose. She couldn’t feel his breath. She lifted his chin, reached for his neck and searched for a pulse. Then she grabbed his wrist and pressed her fingers into the artery there. Nothing.

“He’s dead,” she said to Waru.

He ran his hand across his throat in a slicing motion.

Ava nodded.

“What’s going on?” Perkasa said.

She turned and saw him emerging from the kitchen. Either the trip from Cameron’s house had been very fast or Ava had lost all sense of time while she was thinking about what she needed to do.

“He’s dead,” she said. “He seems to have had a heart attack or a stroke.”

“Fat, out of shape, stressed, cooked by the sun — I’m not surprised,” Perkasa said, and then looked at the gun in her hand. “It was nice of him to save us the trouble.”

“We need to bury him,” Ava said.

“Is the hole dug?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll tell the boys to get him into the ground.”