A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul

by Shamini Flint

  Emily started to giggle. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She said, ‘It was “fowl” play!’ She was shaking with laughter, her double chin dancing with delight.

  Julian’s nails dug into his palms. He thought he might draw blood. He knew that he had to stay calm, stay cool. He tried to laugh along with his wife but it was too difficult. He turned his attempt into a dry cough and then curved his lips in an effort to simulate good humour.

  Emily stopped laughing as suddenly as she had begun. She dabbed her eyes and wiped her cheeks with a small silk handkerchief she extracted from her clutch purse.

  She said, her tone unyielding, ‘I won’t lend you money.’

  ‘It’s such a small sum, dear. I’ll pay you back. I just need it to tide me over this rough patch. It won’t happen again, I promise.’ He forced a chuckle. ‘I think I’ve learnt my lesson, love.’

  She looked at him. Her round, pretty face was expressionless. She said, ‘I am your wife, not your banker of last resort.’

  Seven

  Richard Crouch’s possessions were profoundly uninteresting, thought Singh. He was going through the plastic bags of stuff the Bali police had confiscated from the widow. There were a few pairs of dark slacks, a number of smart plain T-shirts and neatly folded boxer shorts. The policeman wondered who had kept the clothes in such pristine order. Was it Crouch or his wife? From what little he had heard about their relationship, he could not picture Sarah Crouch lovingly folding her husband’s underpants.

  Bronwyn looked up from where she was thumbing through the dead man’s passport and said, ‘I bet he was killed outside the Sari Club, maybe on the street.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ asked Singh, refolding Crouch’s underwear with careful attention to the earlier fold lines.

  ‘He wasn’t a man who knew how to have fun. I doubt he would have been at one of the hippest clubs in Kuta.’

  This time Singh glanced up. His interest was caught. When Bronwyn did not embellish further, he said, ‘Well, go on – how do you know he didn’t know how to have fun – aside from the evidence of his choice of spouse.’

  Bronwyn wrinkled her small nose. ‘I don’t know why you have it in for that woman.’

  Singh waited for her to continue and she gestured at Richard Crouch’s posessions. ‘What sort of collection is that? Where are the swimmers, the surfer T-shirts, the sandals and the sunscreen? He looks like he packed for an engineers’ conference in Singapore! And there isn’t a single souvenir.’

  Singh realised she was right. It was a pathetic effort by Crouch to equip himself for a Bali lifestyle. He stared down at the contents. There was a certain familiarity about them and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He wondered if it was a clue he was missing. He hated investigations that were outside his natural turf in Singapore. He could never be sure if any discordant note he picked up was his nose for crime operating at its best or the unfamiliar surroundings leaving him feeling uneasy without any cause that was relevant to the investigation.

  He rifled through the T-shirts. Simple, plain, cotton, of good quality but not branded. They weren’t even the fake designer tops that were available at the tourist haunts in Bali.

  It came to him suddenly.

  Richard Crouch’s belongings were familiar because the well-ordered, dull contents reminded him of his own suitcase back at the hotel. Bronwyn’s observation that there were no swimming shorts, surfer T-shirts, sandals or sunscreen applied equally to his packing. To be fair, he had been sent out to assist the Balinese police on terrorist prevention methods. He had not arrived on the tropical island to adopt the lifestyle of the Bali expats and tourists. Also, he preferred long-sleeved shirts to T-shirts.

  Singh pictured himself in a pair of floral beach Bermudas and open sandals, exposed belly hanging over the elastic waist band, turban intact and hairy chest collecting sand. He laughed out loud. He would be competing for attention with the thong-wearing tourist.

  Bronwyn looked up and grinned. ‘What’s so funny?’

  Singh shook his head. It was a mental picture best kept entirely private. Instead, he asked, ‘Anything in the passport? ’

  It was one of those extra-thick documents that the well-travelled could request in exchange for paying an extra fee if their passport was unlikely to last until its expiry date otherwise. The gold crest on the front of the reddish-maroon book was worn out and almost invisible.

  Singh flicked it open. The familiar Indonesian passport control stamp, green with the words ‘Ngurah Rai’, the name of the Bali airport, was marked within. He turned the pages of the passport slowly. It was a tour of Third World countries. Sarah had not been kidding when she said that Richard Crouch travelled a lot. And apparently on these trips to South America, India, Pakistan and Indonesia, he had been happy fraternising with the locals, rejecting the traditional overseas experience of living in expat ghettos and avoiding the natives except as being handy to do the cooking and gardening.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ Bronwyn stood up and stretched. The bones clicking in her shoulders were audible.

  ‘Nothing stands out as being particularly interesting. Do chemical engineers have work-related enemies?’

  ‘Who might hunt them all the way to Bali? Seems unlikely!’

  ‘We need more suspects,’ said Singh. ‘Tomorrow, we’re going to track down these so-called friends, his and hers. Richard Crouch lived in Bali for six months. In that time, he made an enemy who was willing to look him in the eye and shoot him in the middle of the forehead at close range. I intend to find out who that was.’

  The inspector from Singapore opened the passport to the photo of Richard Crouch.

  Bronwyn took it from him and gazed down at the likeness of the dead man. She said, ‘He looks like such an unassuming young man … it’s hard to imagine that anyone hated him that much.’

  Agus did not expect to be spotted by his quarry. In plain clothes, he did not look like a policeman. His hair was a bit shorter than the average but the residents of Bali were a well-kempt lot. It did not mark him out too much.

  He had been told by that fat policeman from Singapore to watch this woman if she left the villa, to follow her unobtrusively and see if she spoke to or met anyone. He had no idea why he was taking instructions from a foreign cop. But he was too low down the food chain to ask questions of his superiors. Besides, Agus liked the idea of tailing someone. It was the kind of work he had signed up for when he joined the police force. Instead, he had found himself directing traffic at one of the busy intersections in Kuta or Denpasar. That was a thankless task. No one paid much attention to him as he stood at junctions blowing his whistle frantically and waving his arms like windmills. Directing Balinese traffic was like herding cats.

  Agus had been devastated like everyone else by the Bali bombs but a small part of him hoped that there would be a role in the investigation for him. After all, it was the worst act of terrorism in Indonesian history. Surely they would need every cop they could lay their hands on?

  But he had been left on his traffic detail with additional instructions to look out for any suspicious-looking characters or vehicles, and especially suspicious-looking characters driving vehicles. They feared another car bomb. He had done his dogged best. He stopped closed vans and insisted he be allowed to look in the back. He randomly flagged down cars and peered into the rucksacks of men on motorcycles. Considering how little traffic there was on the road with so many of the tourists having left, he had done a good job of snarling up traffic in central Denpasar. Needless to say, it had been a futile effort. It would take a huge amount of luck to spot the right vehicle at the right moment. It did not seem to Agus that Bali was a lucky place any more.

  But now he had been given a real job to do. He had no idea who this woman was or why he had been told to follow her, but he would do his job. She was white and thin, with a puckered mouth and yellow hair tossed about in swirling gusts. Agus was not one of those Balinese men who fancied Caucasian women. Many d
id. Female tourists with their tans, blonde hair and sense of natural superiority appealed to quite a few of the young Balinese hotel employees and beachcombers. The reverse was true as well. If Balinese men found the independence and assertiveness of Western women attractive, white men were often captivated by the gentle beauty and quiet manner of Balinese women. It was not healthy, thought the policeman. It was an attraction of opposites. But neither side had any real knowledge or understanding of the culture of the other. It was a superficial appeal, good for a holiday romance, but without substance.

  It would never do for him. Agus was a serious young man. His wife was from the same village as him.

  His attention was drawn back to his prey. Her taxi pulled up outside a guest house. It was a run-down building about a hundred yards away from the Kuta coastline and on the opposite side of the road to the beach. It was the sort of place that surfers on a tight budget would stay at as they experimented on Kuta’s gentle beach break.

  The woman got out of the taxi and walked quickly to the guest house. She asked an employee a question – the policeman was too far away to hear what it was. The doorman pointed in the direction she had come and said something, a smile accompanying his words.

  The policeman dropped to his knees and tied his shoe lace as she walked past. She did not even glance down at him. He suspected she would have not bothered to look his way even if he had been standing directly in her path. She was probably one of those women who were unable to distinguish between the local Balinese. To her, they were all slight, brown men with dark hair and friendly smiles, waiting to be of service. The policeman tried to control his sudden burst of irritation at the hordes of tourists who had made Bali their holiday destination of choice without having the courtesy to acknowledge her residents. Then he remembered the bombings. He might be resentful of these foreigners, but they were the livelihood of his people.

  The woman was waiting to cross the busy road that separated the guest house from the seaside. She made a dash for it, causing a motorbike to swerve dangerously. Brushing away the hair that was clinging to her forehead in the humidity, she hurried towards the beach.

  The policeman sauntered after her. He watched her look up and down the coast. The person she was looking for wasn’t there. Her shoulders slumped but she continued scanning the horizon.

  Suddenly, she hurried to the water’s edge.

  A surfer was riding the waves. The swells were not huge but the young man was cruising the white tops with casual elegance, angling towards the shore. As he got closer, the woman waved her arms and shouted something. The wind snatched her words and scattered them across the beach. His trajectory took him past where she was waiting impatiently. He hopped off his colourful, fibreglass board into knee-deep water fifty yards down the coast from where she was standing.

  The woman hurried towards the surfer and this time the policeman could hear her. She was shouting, ‘Greg! Greg, it’s me.’

  At last, the surfer heard his name. Agus, that much closer, saw him grimace slightly. As she approached, he smothered the expression in a wide smile and waved in response. When they reached each other, both paused for an instant. The woman flung her arms around the man’s waist and put her head against his bare chest. The surfer hesitated for an instant, made up his mind, and wrapped dripping wet golden arms around her.

  She said, ‘They found him, Greg. They found the body.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The Sari Club.’

  ‘Poor bastard,’ said the tall young man with easy sympathy.

  The policeman noted that his blond hair was bleached almost white by the sun and glowed like a halo around his head. His dark, smooth, tanned chest made a sharp contrast to the pale white face of the woman.

  Sarah Crouch said, ‘What’s important is that we can be together now.’

  Singh, gazing around the table, decided that he had rarely seen such a motley crew.

  Individually, they were ordinary, some even good-looking. Julian Greenwood reminded him of one of those actors always asked to play the lord of the manor in period television dramas. His wife, Emily, had a self-satisfied air, like a well-fed pedigree feline.

  The Yardleys were less prepossessing. Tim looked like a million other overweight middle-aged men with thinning hair and an air of quiet desperation. His wife was a strange one with burnt leather skin and a wiry strength. Karri’s hair reminded Singh of a nest made by a careless bird, twigs and straw sticking out at all angles.

  He would not have given any of them a second glance on a Bali street, or even on a Singapore street. They were typical of slightly dissipated expatriates. Singh imagined that they had read Kipling in school and when the opportunity arose, come out to Asia in order to enjoy the superiority of ‘whiteness’ – the unspoken assumption amongst most Asians that anyone white-skinned was that much more likely to be wealthy, educated and related to Hollywood stars. The inspector from Singapore was surprised to find that he resented the two men and two women sitting in a semi-circle across from him like a panel of gameshow contestants. He found their aggressive sullenness aggravating. He did not need to be a student of human nature to realise that they looked down on him as a ‘native’, as Sarah Crouch might have said.

  Greenwood interrupted his reverie. He said bitingly, ‘I thought you said you had some questions for us?’

  Singh grinned at him. Julian did not know it but the Sikh policeman was grateful to be reminded that he had a job to do – this was not the time for cultural generalisations, it was the time for the investigation of individuals.

  Besides, if he was in luck, one of these losers would turn out to be a murderer.

  Greenwood continued, ‘What’s this all about anyway?’

  Singh snapped, ‘Richard Crouch!’

  He noted that everyone stared at him with real interest – everyone that is except Tim Yardley who did not glance up at the announcement. Singh filed away his reaction, or lack thereof, for later consideration.

  ‘What about him? Have you found him? Where is he?’ The questions were coming thick and fast, from everyone except Yardley.

  ‘Yes, we’ve found him …’

  Greenwood leaned forward, his long nose quivering with irritation at the absence of detail. ‘Well then? Tell us! Where is he?’

  ‘I should have said we’ve found what’s left of him.’

  It took a moment to sink in. Singh watched as the implication of his words registered. Both women, so different in appearance, reacted the same way. They covered their mouths with shocked hands.

  Tim Yardley looked up – he met Singh’s eyes briefly and then dropped his gaze to the table top again. Singh noticed that his fingernails had been chewed to the quick.

  It was the other man who breathed, ‘Bali bombs? Sari Club?’

  Singh nodded his head, his turban bobbing up and down like an exclamation mark.

  ‘Poor bastard,’ muttered Karri.

  Singh realised that she both disliked Richard Crouch and felt sorry for his fate.

  Emily spoke, and her unspoken assumption that her words had authority was compelling. She said calmly, ‘That does not explain why you’ve asked us here.’

  Singh did not answer the implied question. He was not in the habit of subjecting himself to cross-examination by suspects or witnesses. Truth be told, he thoroughly enjoyed annoying interviewees by ignoring their queries and revealing what he knew with all the slow cunning of a card player.

  It was Tim’s turn to butt in. He blustered, ‘Emily’s right! Why’ve you demanded to see us?’

  Singh asked, his tone conversational, ‘So how did you become friendly with Crouch?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’ It was Emily again.

  Singh said brusquely, ‘I’m asking the questions.’

  There was a sudden silence as the two men and two women adjusted to the change in tone.

  Tim Yardley was conciliatory, immediately succumbing to the air of authority. Singh thought rather sadly that Ya
rdley was undoubtedly one of those children who had been bullied at school. Still, it was useful in the context of a murder investigation to have someone who would always try and ingratiate himself with the strongest personality in the room.

  ‘We met at a restaurant in Kuta … and we became friends. Although, to be frank, we were probably more acquainted with Sarah than Richard.’

  Singh was silent, inviting further confidences. They were immediately forthcoming. Yardley was garrulous – filling the threatening empty spaces with words.

  ‘There was some dispute about the bill – the Balinese were trying to pull a fast one – you know what they’re like …’

  Singh sensed Bronwyn stir beside him and hoped that she would have the sense not to interrupt Yardley in defence of Balinese integrity.

  ‘Go on!’ he barked.

  ‘Sarah was making a fuss about being overcharged. Richard didn’t seem to care that much. She sort of asked us – we were having dinner at another table – whether we thought the bill was reasonable …’ He trailed off.

  Julian took up the tale. ‘We started talking – in the end they walked out without paying. We made a plan to meet up at an Indian restaurant in Sanur that Emily and I recommended … I guess we just started to spend time together after that.’

  This time Singh was not quick enough to prevent Bronwyn leaping in. She said, her tone brittle, ‘So what you’re saying is that a bunch of expats ganged up to cheat some poor Balinese restaurateur – and that you were so self-satisfied with what you’d done that you became friends?’

  She was being facetious but Singh sensed that there was an element of truth in her characterisation. He was familiar with the same attitudes in Singapore. He had overheard expatriate wives complain of the poor service in Singapore restaurants and service stations, conveniently forgetting the surly student waiters in London or the self-service petrol stations in Sydney. It was important to a sense of belonging as an expat to be able to bitch about the locals, he realised, and friendships really were formed on such weak foundations.