Wayan’s sister rode her motorbike into the midst of rapidly scattering chickens. She jumped off and ran indoors without a backward glance, scurrying in to warn her brother that she had the police in tow.
Their reception from Wayan was the height of hospitality. He ushered them in and invited them to sit down on an eclectic selection of chairs that appeared to have been pilfered from an assortment of Bali hotels. He disappeared into the kitchen and came back with whole coconuts, a hole neatly knocked in one end.
Bronwyn thanked Wayan, sipped her drink through a straw and wondered when they would turn the visit away from social courtesy to police business.
For some reason that she could not fathom – what about the fat man did she comprehend, she wondered – Singh seemed happy to make small talk.
Wayan’s sister was perched on a small wooden stool. She rocked back and forth, distrusting the peaceful social scene before her. She had led the police back to her brother. It was unlikely that it had been for a chat about the weather or the health-giving properties of coconut water.
It was Wayan who brought up the reason for their visit. Unable to carry on in the role of unsuspecting host, he asked, ‘You want to talk about Mr and Mrs Crouch, yes?’
‘Why do you say that?’ asked Singh.
Wayan was genuinely surprised. ‘But otherwise why would you come to my house?’ His raised eyebrows compressed the acne on his forehead.
Singh stopped beating around the bush. He said abruptly, ‘Tell us all you know about them.’
‘I told you everything already,’ protested Wayan.
‘You told us they were not happy. What gave you that impression?’
‘I don’t understand what you mean, Pak.’
‘How did you know they were not happy?’
Wayan’s face lightened. ‘If you work in the hotel you always know about guests staying in the villas,’ he explained. ‘She read the book in the patio, he stay in the room. Or she is in the room and he go out with friends. When they eat together, they not talk. They just look at the food …’ Wayan trailed off.
‘What is it? What else do you know?’ asked Singh sharply.
Wayan looked mischievous. ‘They do not sleep in the same bed.’
‘How could you know that?’
‘Their suite got two rooms, two beds – both are messy in the morning.’
Singh clapped his hands together and said, ‘That is good work. You should be a policeman, Wayan.’ He continued, glancing over at Bronwyn, ‘Not much marital bliss in the Crouch household.’
She replied tartly, ‘It doesn’t prove that she had anything to do with his death. I just can’t picture a scenario where she shot her husband and left the body at the Sari Club.’
Singh sighed. ‘It’s a bit far-fetched. What if Crouch had a bit on the side and she followed him? She might have done it if she saw them together at the Club?’
‘Then why isn’t she dead? And where would she have got the gun?’
Singh said, ‘We need to get back to Kuta and have a look at the Sari Club – try and get the floor plans. She might have shot him in the bog or in the bushes and had a bit of time to get away.’
He turned to Wayan. ‘Did Crouch have a girlfriend?’
Wayan said, ‘I do not know, Pak.’
‘You never saw him with another woman?’
‘No, Pak.’
‘He wouldn’t have flaunted a girlfriend around the villa,’ pointed out Bronwyn.
Singh rubbed his eyes tiredly. ‘That’s true, of course. Wayan, you mentioned Crouch had friends – who were they?’
‘You mean the white people they used to meet sometimes? ’
‘No, those people were friendly with Mrs Crouch. She said that he had other Balinese friends that she didn’t like.’
‘I do not know them. But I have seen them around Ubud.’
This time even Bronwyn sensed that there was something Wayan was holding back.
Singh asked abruptly, ‘What was it about Crouch’s friends you didn’t like, Wayan?’
He stared down at his feet. ‘Why should I not like them?’
‘That’s what we’re wondering.’
‘It is nothing, Pak,’ Wayan said reluctantly. ‘Only his friends were not Balinese.’
‘Not Balinese?’ Singh was surprised. ‘But I thought both you and the wife agreed that Richard Crouch didn’t hang around with expats that much?’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Wayan.
‘Then what do you mean?’ Singh was fed up.
Bronwyn suppressed a grin. The Balinese could smile and talk and appear to co-operate without actually saying anything if they set their minds to it.
‘His friends were Indonesian, but not Balinese. They were mostly Javanese, I think.’
Bronwyn, unlike Singh, understood immediately. She told the inspector, ‘There’s a lot of resentment amongst the Balinese about the influx of Moslem Indonesians from the rest of the country. The Balinese are extremely protective of their Hindu ancestry and culture.’
‘Is that so, Wayan?’ asked Singh. ‘Do you dislike the newcomers?’
Wayan was embarrassed but defiant. ‘They take jobs from Balinese, sir. They work in construction and they run warungs. Also, they are all Moslem and we Balinese are Hindu. It is very important that we are a Hindu island – if too many Moslems come, there will be more mosques than temples!’
There was a silence as Singh and Bronwyn digested the information.
Wayan added defensively, ‘And now you see what the Moslems have done to Bali? It is they who do the bombings. Now all of Bali suffers.’
‘I want a divorce.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me …’
Tim Yardley watched his wife carefully. She seemed genuinely shocked, her finely plucked eyebrows, redrawn with a dark pencil, were arched. The pupils of her grey-green eyes had grown large in the evening light.
‘I don’t believe you – you’re just upset.’
Tim sighed. He had been reluctant to take this step without consulting Sarah Crouch. But it had been impossible to reach her. She was lost in an emotional maze of her own. And he could not help her, be there for her, until he was free of this woman staring at him, an expression of bemusement on her face. His gaze was drawn to the streaks of white across the orange sky, jets flying over and leaving their poisonous trail. The setting sun was behind a huge embankment of cumulus clouds but golden rays were pouring through the gaps like a benediction. Tim felt confident of his decision. He would not change his mind.
‘Stop staring into the distance and tell me what this is about!’
He turned back to Karri, noting the long-suffering tone she had adopted. She was still not taking him seriously, convinced that this was some minor rebellion that would soon recede.
‘I want a divorce because I can’t carry on like this – you treat me like dirt, you sleep with other men. You’ve destroyed our marriage – almost destroyed me. I want … I need a last chance to look for some happiness.’
He saw that he had annoyed her. The scarlet tips of her long fingers were pressed together as she tried to keep her temper.
When she spoke, her tone was scornful. ‘What is this – some sort of mid-life crisis? You don’t have the courage to make it on your own. That’s the only reason you’ve hung around making a fool of yourself – letting me make a fool of you – all these years.’
Tim was stung into a response. He said, ‘Maybe I won’t have to make it on my own!’
Karri laughed, a genuine guffaw of amusement at the idea that her overweight spouse with his careful comb-over would have a substitute in the wings.
Her husband came to the painful realisation that he actually hated the woman standing a couple of feet away from him on a dusty Bali street. The gulf between them was a chasm with his shattered hopes and dreams scattered across the bottom.
He said again, trying to inject firmness into his voice, make her understand that he meant wh
at he was saying, ‘I want a divorce.’
Legian Road had reopened to pedestrian traffic.
Singh and Bronwyn walked down the narrow street. It was late evening and they had just returned from Ubud. It was Bronwyn who had suggested they make a detour to the bomb site. They stared at the destruction in shock – even the usually garrulous policewoman was stunned into silence. Buildings up and down the street had had their windows blown out. All that were left were jagged shards of glass forming the sharp teeth around square open jaws. There were burnt-out vehicle wrecks along the road.
The debris-strewn thoroughfare was lined with pieces of white cloth on which people – passers-by, relatives of the dead, Balinese mourners and tourists – had left messages. There were flowers and wreaths, some old, some freshly laid, their bright colours discordant against the blackened background. As the two approached the site, the piles of flowers grew higher until there were small mountains of blossoms commemorating the dead.
In the immediate vicinity of the bombs, there were photos of victims stuck to makeshift memorial pillars. Some had been placed there as tokens of remembrance, but many were frantic entreaties from relatives asking if anyone knew the whereabouts of the persons in the photo – they had been missing since the bombings.
As they reached the entrance of what had once been the Sari Club, opposite the road from Paddy’s Bar, they could see the huge bomb crater, a few feet deep, right in front of what was left of the building – heaps of rubble, a few concrete stumps and melted, twisted metal pieces. It was impossible to guess the provenance of the metal without expert forensic help.
The policemen toting machine guns in front of the shell of the Sari Club were unimpressed with their identity cards. It was only when a senior AFP member walked past and was hailed by Bronwyn that the guards were persuaded to let them in.
‘Just make sure you don’t touch or take anything,’ said the AFP man.
‘Of course not,’ said Singh. ‘But haven’t you finished the site examination?’
‘Yes, but there’s so much information to sift through – so many samples to examine. We’re just concerned that we might have to scrape up more evidence with a teaspoon if they find anything odd.’
Singh nodded. Looking around at the destruction, it was impossible to know where the clues, if any, could be hiding.
‘Do you know how it happened?’ asked Singh, his voice subdued.
‘As far as we can piece together,’ the AFP officer told them, ‘a suicide bomber detonated a bomb inside Paddy’s Bar. As the crowds ran down the street, a van drew up in front of the Sari Club. The vehicle exploded. It killed visitors to the Club – and some of those escaping the chaos at Paddy’s.’
Singh was standing at the edge of the crater, peering in.
He said, ‘There wasn’t much left of Richard Crouch. He must have been pretty close to the eye of the storm. Anyone around him could’ve been killed too.’
Bronwyn asked, raising one eyebrow, ‘That means the killer was likely one of the victims?’
‘It’s quite possible. But we should keep sniffing around.’
‘Do you know what this place was like before the blasts?’ asked Singh, turning to the other policeman.
‘More or less,’ said the AFP man, who had been listening to their conversation with interest. ‘The Sari Club was a sort of open-plan outdoor club. It had thatched-roof bars with high walls around it.’
Singh said, ‘That explains why there’s nothing left.’
The AFP man added, ‘People who survived were towards the back or behind some sort of structure that took the brunt of the blast. The bomb was so big that the shock wave alone would have killed anyone in the vicinity.’
Singh tried to imagine the Sari Club on the night of the bombing. Crowded with backpackers, surfers and rugby players – all dancing and swigging from their bottles of Bintang – the heavy beat of the music punctuating the sounds of revelry. The lighting would have been subdued on the fringes. There would have been dark corners, areas that were in the shadows. The dance floor by contrast would have been lit with colourful, moving disco strobe lights. The noise would have drowned out conversation, perhaps even a gunshot.
All that and then the explosion. Singh had read that, for many in the Sari Club that night, the blasts were followed by a complete unnerving silence because their eardrums had been damaged by the force of the explosion. The electricity grid had failed and the lights across Kuta had gone out. For the victims, it had been a silent darkness lit only by the raging fires.
Singh asked, his voice suddenly husky with doubt, ‘Do you feel that what we’re doing, looking for the murderer of one man in the midst of this … this horror, is a waste of time?’
Bronwyn shook her head reassuringly. ‘Of course not. Richard Crouch deserves justice too.’
Nuri lay on her side, feigning sleep. She pulled the thin blanket over her shoulders and curled into a foetal position on the narrow sagging bed. Her eyes were squeezed shut but she could picture the bedroom. Small, with flaking white paint, faded patterned curtains and a brown damp water stain on one wall. A pipe had burst and the water was seeping through the brick and paint. Ghani complained often that the damp in the bedroom made his bones ache. It reminded her of how much older he was than her, suffering the pains of late middle age.
She had half-expected Ghani to follow her into the bedroom. She knew that many husbands would have demanded an explanation for her flash of temper that lunch time. But not Ghani. He was such an unassuming, undemanding man for a respected village elder, well known both for his piety and Islamic scholarship.
And he had picked her, Nuri, to be his wife from all the village girls. She had been so grateful and happy – although surprised to be his first wife. She would have been content to be one of the four wives he was permitted as a Moslem.
Abu Bakr had explained that Ghani had not had time to settle down previously. He had continued, ‘Your marriage to Ghani will forge a bond between our families. It is important that the ties of friendship be strengthened by this marriage.’ There had been pride in her older brother’s voice when he said, ‘You have done well, sister.’
Provoked by her younger brother, she had walked away from the dining table. It was her first act of rebellion. She wondered again whether she would get into trouble. Her entire fate was bound up with that of Ghani. He need only say ‘I divorce thee’ three times and she would be out in the street. She would have no means of survival. Her parents would be too ashamed to take her back. Without an education, except in the Quran, she was ill-equipped to get a job.
She listened hard. It sounded, from the clattering outside, as if someone was washing the dishes in her place. No prizes for guessing who it would be. Only Yusuf would think to protect her by doing her chores.
Nuri buried her face in the pillow, hardly noticing its rancid odour. She was determined not to cry. What in the world would Ghani think if he came in and she was in tears?
But the overwhelming sense of loss she felt was too much – tears, round and full and glistening like pearls, welled up past her tightly closed eyelids and dripped on the pillow, leaving a spreading damp patch under her cheek.
She was so terribly ashamed. She knew – who better ? – her obligations to her husband. She had been taught over and over again that Allah did not look kindly on those who failed in their duties. Nuri rubbed her eyes with her knuckles like a small child.
In her heart, she knew very well that her tears were not for her failures and shortcomings. She was weeping – great racking sobs now – for Abdullah, a man who had left her with all the world of promise in his eyes and then never returned.
Emily Greenwood picked up a mug of black coffee and gulped some down.
Julian had noticed that the long boozy lunches usually caught up with his wife by late evening. He would almost have felt sorry for her if concerns for his own wellbeing were not uppermost in his mind.
His wife placed the mug carefully on
the handmade beaded coaster on the polished table. The wood was old teak, recovered from railway sleepers, its history worn into the rich smooth surface. Even in her tired state, thought Julian, she was careful of her expensive possessions, determined not to mark the wood with a burnt ring from a hot mug.
Emily was heavy-eyed, dark shadows forming crescents of contrast to her pale skin. She stayed out of the sun despite living in Bali. She said the heat made her uncomfortable. Julian was not surprised. He had seen his wife turn slick, the sun reflecting off her damp arms like carlights on a rain-soaked road, after the short walk from her air-conditioned chauffeur-driven car to their luxury villa on the beach.
Julian took a deep breath. He leaned across and took one of Emily’s hands in his. The palms were warm and moist. It reminded him of the perfumed towelettes provided on airlines.
He said, remembering to adjust his tone – Emily did not like to be reminded that she had married beneath her – ‘Darling, I need a bit of help.’
Her eyes, fringed by light, almost invisible lashes – the mascara had worn off after a long day – narrowed and she pulled her hand away. A small gesture of rejection that Julian knew meant trouble.
He had no choice but to proceed. He was running out of time and excuses. He laughed a little, sounding strained even to his own ears. He reached for her hand again and she tugged against him. For a moment, they indulged in an unseemly juvenile tug of war. Julian let go.
He continued, trying to adopt a casual reassuring tone, ‘Nothing too serious.’
Emily demanded, ‘How much?’
Julian felt his face flush. He chewed on the end of his drooping moustache. His prominent Adam’s apple bobbed merrily as he swallowed hard. He could not believe this woman. She had more money than she could spend in three lifetimes but she was as miserly as a village moneylender sitting cross-legged under a banyan tree.
He said, ‘Two million rupiah.’
‘Cockfighting?’
He nodded sullenly. ‘It was a sure thing but the bird wouldn’t fight. I think it might have been a fix.’
A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul Page 8
