Java Spider

by Geoffrey Archer

  A harassed casualty officer brushed past, her pager bleeping. Young-looking but in charge. Nick touched her arm.

  ‘Any fit enough to talk?’ he asked. ‘I’m police.’ He showed his ID.

  She took in his face then noted the cord trousers and pullover under his coat. Preferred her policemen in uniform probably, Randall guessed.

  ‘Just a moment. I’m being beeped.’ She grabbed a wall phone, dialled a number, gave her name and listened.

  Her face was English and cultured. Well-bred, well-educated and good-looking. Like the crowd he’d been brought up with as a child and then rejected in his teens. She harangued the caller with words all the more cutting for their omission of obscenities. Finally she slammed down the receiver.

  ‘If they want miracles they should phone a priest,’ she snapped, turning back to him. ‘Now … you’re looking for witnesses?’

  ‘That’s the idea.’

  ‘Well, there’s a man over there. I think he worked behind the bar. Minor cuts and burns. And shock, so take it easy.’

  She led him to a bay with its curtains closed, then abandoned him as her pager trilled again. Nick peered inside. The man was in his thirties, his face red. Flash burn, he guessed.

  ‘Hello. Can I talk to you? I’m police.’

  A blank stare. ‘Why?’ The man’s voice trembled.

  ‘Just a chat.’

  ‘No,’ he moaned. ‘I mean why’d they do it?’ Angry now, as if it were Nick’s fault.

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out. Maybe you can help.’

  ‘Bit bloody late …’

  ‘I don’t think so. You worked there, is that right?’

  ‘Worked there? It was my sodding bar.’ His face twisted with the shock of his loss.

  ‘I’m sorry. You must’ve known everybody in there, then?’

  The man turned away, mouth trembling. Nick left it for a few moments.

  ‘I wonder if you’d look at a couple of pictures?’ he asked after a while. ‘No rush.’

  He leaned through the curtains, spotted a chair and retrieved it. He placed it beside the bed and sat down.

  ‘OK now?’ he checked. The man nodded. ‘Sorry to press. Any strangers in the bar tonight?’

  ‘Always a few I don’t know. Mixed up amongst the regulars.’ His eyes were remembering what he’d seen.

  ‘Nothing special you noticed? Someone acting strangely, differently?’

  The man thought, but couldn’t get his brain past the images of shattered flesh. He shook his head. Nick took out the photos from the folder.

  ‘Who’s this, then? Are these the ones?’ the bar owner asked.

  ‘Just wondered if you’ve ever seen any of them.’

  The man took the prints from him, but his hands couldn’t hold them still.

  ‘Here. Let me.’

  Nick watched the bar owner’s eyes as he shuffled the prints. Nothing. The man shook his head again, which made him wince this time. He put a hand to the small dressing on his neck. A glass-splinter cut.

  ‘Can I take your name and address in case I want to contact you once more?’

  Randall wrote it down.

  ‘You bloody nail them, right?’ Angry again. ‘Those were my friends …’

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get ’em.’ He pushed through the curtain, wishing he believed it.

  The young casualty officer was on the phone again, close to losing control. She really was a very pretty girl, he decided. Pale, creamy skin with heat blotches on her cheeks. When she put the receiver down, she looked close to tears. He wanted to hug her.

  ‘Any luck?’ she asked, dabbing her nose with a tissue.

  ‘No. He couldn’t help. Got any more?’

  ‘There’s two others able to talk. But they’re confused … Still, if you’re gentle …’

  ‘I’m always gentle.’ He gave her the smile that had got him in deep water several times too often and watched her blush.

  West End of London

  22.45 hrs

  Charlotte Cavendish pushed through the glass door, paused on the step and turned up the collar of her fawn coat against the cold. It had been a long day, made longer by the Wag’s Bar bomb. She should have gone off shift at seven, but at the thinly-staffed News Channel when something big happened it was all hands to the pump.

  ‘Got ’ny change?’

  She jumped. Hadn’t noticed the vagrant huddled in the entrance. She peered left and right for the lights of a taxi.

  ‘I said can you spare some change, please?’

  More of a threat than a request. She pulled the black leather purse from her pocket and gave him a pound.

  ‘Thanks, miss.’

  ‘For something to eat, right?’

  She wished she hadn’t said that. Made her sound like her own mother.

  ‘Yes, miss. I’ll go to the caff,’ he mocked, lifting a lager can to his lips.

  Charlotte stepped on to the pavement as a taxi turned into the street, its lamp like Florence Nightingale’s. She crossed to the kerb, arm outstretched.

  Inside the cab, she flicked on the heater and hugged herself for warmth. She looked for the usual sign saying THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING. None there, so she lit up. Her nicotine levels felt uncomfortably low. The News Channel was a non-smoking office.

  Charlotte pushed her free hand through her blonde hair and squeezed the tension from the back of her neck. Aged twenty-nine, she was a video-journalist with a new, low-cost television news station broadcasting on cable and satellite where everyone abbreviated her name to Charlie. She was ambitious – chief reporter at the BBC was where she’d set her sights. Meanwhile, as a humble VJ for now, she was jack of all trades – on-screen reporter, off-screen writer of scripts for the studio, and occasional camera operator.

  The wine bar bomb had squeezed out her earlier report on the arms contract with Indonesia – submarines, patrol boats and aircraft upgrades, worth half a billion pounds. Lots of jobs – and votes for the beleaguered government. In the afternoon she’d filmed the small crowd outside Downing Street, anti-arms trade activists protesting that the weapons were for a regime that ruled by torture and murder.

  In truth she knew little about Indonesia. Had to look up the Times Atlas to find where it was. Foreign news wasn’t high on the News Channel’s agenda anyway, so when Wag’s Bar flashed they’d switched her to the bomb story.

  A News Channel cameraman had been one of the first at the scene. She’d edited and voiced his tape from the studio. Horrific footage. When another reporter was sent to do the live spots there she’d been glad it wasn’t her.

  The taxi stopped at red lights, the third in a row. The driver was black. She didn’t see herself as socially or racially prejudiced, but the Revenue Men bombings had divided people. Haves and have-nots. Irrational fears had crept into her head.

  She glimpsed a flash of white in the mirror – his eyes watching her. She shifted across to be out of his sight, then felt bad about it. The driver slid the glass partition. Charlotte shivered. No conversation please. Just get me home.

  ‘D’you mind openin’ the window if you’re goin’ to smoke?’ he asked.

  She smiled weakly. Why did everyone make her feel bad about her habit?

  ‘Sure.’ She took a last deep drag, opened the window a crack to throw out the butt, then closed it. Better to die of nicotine starvation than of cold.

  She’d been with the News Channel for a year. Joined when it started, after training and working at the BBC for four years. The Channel wasn’t her style – a downmarket mix of hard news and soft porn financed by a tabloid paper – but it had given her the chance to be a reporter. She knew she had the looks to make it up the ladder and hoped she had the talent. All she needed were the breaks.

  The taxi’s brakes squealed. Ahead stretched red tail lights. A jam that seemed to go on for ever. The driver slid back the glass again.

  ‘Sorry ’bout this. Didn’t see it in time. Could’ve taken the back doubles if
I’d realised …’

  ‘What’s up, can you tell?’

  ‘No. It’s way ahead. But there’s blue lights. P’lice. They keep doin’ this. Road blocks. Lookin’ for the bombers … Haven’t a clue, have they?’

  They were stuck. No way to turn or move forward.

  ‘Nothin’ I can do. Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she told him. ‘At least it’s warm in here.’

  ‘Yeah …’ The driver hugged himself. ‘If we’re stuck here long enough, I might get in the back there with you!’

  All she could see in the mirror was his grinning teeth.

  ‘Don’t even think it …’

  The words slipped out before she could check herself. The driver turned away and hunched his shoulders. Damn! Rich white bitch – that’s what he’d think.

  Charlotte bit her lip. Oh for the knack of never saying the wrong thing – particularly to men. She would turn thirty next year. Always thought she’d be married by that age, but the long hours and the frequent need to drop everything for the job didn’t sit well with relationships.

  There had been affairs, mostly short-lived. Men lost interest when they came second to a career. She did have dates occasionally – men she met in the course of her work. Businessmen, politicians, powerful men turned on by a woman they’d seen on TV.

  From the start at the News Channel she’d made a rule not to go with men from the office. Then, two weeks ago loneliness and fear had got the better of her.

  Heading home late after a gruelling day, she’d gone for a drink with the video technician she’d been working with. Jeremy was pleasant enough, but a boy – a diffident, fair-haired lad who browsed computer magazines in his meal breaks and tended to blush when he talked to her. She’d babbled to him about how frightening London had become and he’d suddenly turned grown-up and protective. Insisted on escorting her home and she hadn’t objected. Slept on the sofa that night. The next night, however, he’d shared her bed.

  The taxi driver slipped his cab into gear. The tail lights were moving again. He wound up the volume on his radio. A talk show. The topic – the Revenue Men and the Wag’s Bar bomb. Charlotte pricked up her ears. Some of the callers were supporting the terrorists.

  The highway to the west rose up on to its elevated section. The taxi picked up speed. Five more minutes to the cosy, ground-floor flat in Shepherd’s Bush which she’d bought three years earlier on a mortgage she couldn’t afford.

  The driver slid the glass again and switched off the radio.

  ‘Down here somewhere?’ He’d turned left off the highway.

  ‘Third on the right, then second left.’ She’d felt safe in this neighbourhood, until a recent spate of burglaries. ‘Just before the next lamppost, please.’

  She reached in her bag for her purse. Out on the pavement, she handed him a ten-pound note.

  ‘I didn’t mean that, you know. About gettin’ in the back,’ he whined, giving her some change. ‘No offence.’

  ‘I know. And I didn’t mean to sound like a racist bitch. It’s been a long day.’ She gave him an extra pound.

  A four-storey Edwardian house converted into flats in the sixties, Charlotte had picked the ground floor apartment for its neat rear garden. No worries then about intruders.

  She undid the mortice lock, then slipped in the Yale key. The light was on inside, just as she’d left it that morning. Stepping into the tiny hall, the warmth welcomed her. Ten seconds to de-activate the alarm. She tapped a code on the small wall panel installed just days ago at Jeremy’s suggestion.

  She hung her coat by the door, then checked her face in the gilt-framed mirror next to it. Brown, almond-shaped eyes, high cheek bones and a mouth that men liked kissing. A complexion that got puffy when tired. She straightened her hair. Hell! Forgotten to book an appointment to get her roots done.

  From behind the closed kitchen door she heard a muffled mewing. Since the alarm was installed the cat had been banned from the run of the house. She opened the door.

  ‘Hello Rudolf,’ she whispered, stroking the fluffy grey creature that pirouetted at her feet. ‘Are you a hungry puss?’

  She flicked on the kitchen light and searched the cupboard for cat food. The last tin – the type the cat disliked. Have to buy more in the morning. Silence, apart from the relentless tick of the wall clock. The place felt so empty.

  She opened the can and forked tuna into the cat bowl. The animal sniffed it once, gave a look of bitter resentment, then pushed through the catflap into the garden.

  ‘Sodding animal!’ Charlotte hissed. ‘I’ll bloody give you to Oxfam if you don’t watch it …’ She left the spurned food in the bowl. Stupid name for a cat, Rudolf. As a kitten he’d looked like Nureyev.

  She opened the door to the living room. A folding metal grille covered the French windows to the garden. Hideous, but she slept better knowing it was there. Her furniture was a jumble, acquired during the past four years. A squashy velvet sofa, a dining set in chrome and a sideboard with glasses and a bottle of Stolichnaya. Beside it was the answerphone. She checked. No messages.

  She was glad Jeremy hadn’t rung. Their relationship which she’d drifted into for reasons of self-interest was getting out of control. Her fault for encouraging him. Yesterday she’d even asked him to take her to Devon at the weekend. A visit to her parents. Madness. Her mother would get the wrong idea, her father hated visitors and, anyway, had been extremely ill, and Jeremy would think she was serious about him.

  She ran a bath, dropping her clothes on the floor. Breasts smaller than she would have liked, hips bigger than she wanted. She sprinkled Badedas under the running tap and fluffed up the foam.

  Jeremy had a car and she didn’t. That was the point. That’s why she’d asked him to take her to Devon. To save her a train ride. Pretty selfish really. But then, she assured herself, the relationship wasn’t entirely one-sided. Sex for him was no longer a solitary activity, she thought bitchily. And he was doing it with someone famous, to boot.

  But not for much longer. Not if her horoscope was to be believed. Much talk of a new man in her life.

  Jakarta

  Wednesday 07.05 hrs (00.05 hrs GMT)

  She smelled of lilies and musk, sitting just inches from him, but he couldn’t risk touching her. It was too soon. The invisible barrier between them had still to be broken and it wouldn’t be while they remained jammed in the traffic. Stephen Bowen tapped his head against the window in frustration. Gridlock, time and again in their escape from the city.

  Outside, an arm’s length away, skinny youths hung from buses, staring and grinning, nudging each another about the middle-aged European with his pretty young Indonesian girl. That his intentions should be so plain to these yobbos needled him. Where was the privacy he’d been promised?

  She’d probably done this before, he decided. Paid by the big man to sleep with useful foreigners. How else could a low-salary government employee afford a brand new Toyota?

  Yet he wasn’t sure. For the first few minutes of the drive she’d been chatty and smiley, still the professional from the protocol department, but beneath the mask there was a tension which suggested that perhaps she wasn’t so experienced at this sort of thing.

  He cleared his head, concentrating on the game. Whatever she’d done before, whoever she’d done it with, it didn’t matter. For the next three days she was there for him, and by God was he going to make the most of it.

  Suddenly the traffic unblocked and they turned on to a toll road that sliced through the city’s overcrowded suburbs towards the airport.

  ‘This road owned by president daughter,’ Selina announced, back in tour-guide mode. ‘She make us pay big price to use it. You know how we say expensive in Indonesia?’ she asked, laughing.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Mahal. India has Taj Mahal, but we have Toll Mahal!’ She laughed again.

  Bowen chuckled. ‘Very good …’ He longed to touch her.

  ‘You’re very lovely, Selina,’ h
e growled, relaxing slightly. ‘Makes my heart go boom-badi-boom-badi-boom-badi-boom! Remember that film? Peter Sellers?’

  She frowned, not understanding. ‘You think I lovely?’ she asked coyly.

  ‘Oh yes. And how … You’ve got ebony eyes, velvet skin, the body of an angel …’

  ‘Ohhh …’ she giggled, blushing. ‘You make me embarrass, Mr Bowen.’

  ‘Stephen,’ he beamed. ‘Steve if you like.’

  After thirty minutes the car turned into Soekarno-Hatta Airport. Skirting the taxi-choked terminal, Selina took a road parallel to a chainlink fence, then halted at a red and white pole. Beyond, executive jets were parked. She gave the gate guard two thousand rupiahs and he let them in.

  Bribes at every level. Without them the country couldn’t function. Big commissions at the top, a pittance at the bottom to oil the wheels of even the simplest service.

  The General Aviation terminal was old and drab.

  ‘He’s meeting us here?’ Bowen checked. His host had been vague about the travel arrangements.

  Her face clouded.

  ‘No. He er … he meet us in Singapore.’

  ‘Singapore?’ he exclaimed. ‘He told me yesterday his boat’s in Bali.’

  ‘Yeh. Bali where boat is. But he have to go Singapore last night for business dinner.’ Her smile had gone, replaced by that tension he’d seen earlier. ‘We go Singapore first, pick him up. Then we go Bali.’

  She looked acutely uncomfortable. Javans hated giving bad news, he’d been told. She was expecting him to be angry.

  ‘That’s going to take some time,’ he remarked gently.

  ‘Maybe two hours more. Not long. And airplane very comfortable. You like champagne?’

  ‘What kind of plane is it?’ He had a terror of small aircraft. Claustrophobia.

  ‘Is British!’ The smile was back. ‘One-two-five. Very nice. Big so-fa.’ She flickered her eyebrows flirtatiously.

  ‘Now you’re talking …’

  Inside the scruffy terminal a small, empty executive suite was furnished with sticky, vinyl-covered armchairs. Selina left him there with a cup of coffee and took his passport to be stamped.