A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul (3 page)

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Authors: Shamini Flint

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Sarah Crouch tucked the small sum of money she had withdrawn from the ATM into her handbag and walked quickly towards a waiting minicab. She climbed into the back seat, catching a glimpse of red-rimmed eyes in the rearview mirror. The driver looked at her curiously, her drawn, pallid face curbing his natural instinct to embark on conversation. She told him where to go in curt tones that did not invite comment and then leaned back against the grimy cushions. Sarah closed her eyes. She had not been able to sleep of late. She lay in bed every night on the too-soft mattress staring at the ceiling for long hours, listening to the small brown geckos make their strange clicking noises as they pursued flies and mosquitoes across the walls of her room.
She wished Richard had been willing to grant her a divorce. She was sure he would have been delighted to walk away from the mirage that was their marriage to seek a firmer grip on happiness somewhere else. She too had longed to be free of the ties that bound them together, hastily constructed and quickly regretted. She grimaced. It was Richard, with his over-developed sense of responsibility, who had been reluctant to give up on their relationship without a last attempt to save it. He was the one who had suggested this Bali sojourn to try and repair the cracks, or at least paper over them with holiday snapshots.
She sighed. The attempt had been doomed from the start. A marriage could only be saved where affection remained. She had long since learnt to despise her husband and crave a more fulfilling relationship. He had taken to spending most of his time with the friends he had found on the island. She had formed a coterie of expatriates, including the Yardleys
and the Greenwoods. On the rare occasion she had dragged Richard out for dinner with them, he had maintained a sullen disapproving silence, his contempt for her friends visible on his slim face. He had never shown any interest in introducing her to
his
companions. Sarah scowled. The expression aged her. It revealed the discontent that was usually masked by her regular features and the light make-up she used to smooth over the fine lines.
The driver said quietly, ‘We are here,
Ibu
.'
Sarah carefully counted out the exact fare. She was not going to give the man a tip. He had done his job – nothing more. There was no need to be wasteful of her diminishing hoard of
rupiah
. Money was becoming very tight. She needed to find some solution to her immediate troubles. She wondered if she dared confront Tim Yardley. How would he react? Sarah clenched her thin hands into angry fists. She had no idea what to do next.
 
Bronwyn appeared at the door and beckoned to Singh. As he approached, his footsteps muffled in his white sneakers, she said, ‘I just got a call from the Sanglah morgue in Denpasar. They want us there.'
‘Who does?' asked Singh, puzzled.
She shook her head. ‘Not sure. AFP? Bali police?'
Singh sighed. ‘Well, I have nothing better to do.'
There was a car waiting for them outside with a police driver. He saluted smartly as the Sikh inspector trudged towards him. Singh's eyebrows shot up for the second time that morning. He slid in the back next to Bronwyn and pondered this sudden elevation in status from political window dressing to important personage. An urgent summons. A car and driver. Something was up and he had no idea what it could be.
Bronwyn's broad forehead had puzzlement etched on it. She echoed his thoughts. ‘What's going on?'
He said, ‘Not a clue!'
The inspector from Singapore sat back and gazed out of the window. The sky was cloudless and a piercing, eye-watering blue. It was a hot day and the huffing and puffing of the noisy air-conditioning was not helping. Singh wiped his forehead with a big white handkerchief. He ran a forefinger under the rim of his turban, trying to let some cool air drift towards his scalp. His head itched in hot weather. He wished someone would invent a lightweight version of the six yards of cotton cloth he had twined expertly around his big head that morning. He could just dispense with the turban, of course. Many of his fellow Sikhs had long since abandoned the traditional headwear, giving in to the pressures of hot weather and modern dress norms. He himself did not wear the iron bangle – it gave him a rash around his wrist – that was yet another requirement of Sikhism. But Singh knew he would feel exposed and defenceless without his turban. He had worn it for too many years. It was his security blanket.
He glanced at Bronwyn. Her face was reddened with heat. Tendrils of hair adhered to her forehead. Every single pore on her small nose was as distinct and visible as the craters on the moon. The moisture above her upper lip looked like a translucent moustache. The Bali climate was certainly not kind to pale-skinned Australians. But at least she wasn't wearing a turban. She noticed him looking at her and smiled – the dimple carved into one cheek gave the smile an infectious quality. Singh had to work hard to avoid grinning back. He didn't want any accidental overtures of friendship. It was already hard enough keeping this painfully chummy woman at arm's length.
It did not take long to reach the Sanglah hospital mortuary. Singh got out of the car with some reluctance. He was familiar with bodies. He had seen them stabbed, shot, drowned and strangled. But he had never been exposed to mass killing on the scale of the Bali bombings.
There was a tall thin man with overgrown sandy hair lapping the collar of his white coat waiting for them at the entrance. He demanded in a staccato voice, ‘You're Singh?'
The inspector nodded. He decided to overlook the man's gruff tone. From his bloodshot eyes to the vein pumping in his forehead, this was a man at the end of his tether.
‘I'm Dr Alex Barton. I'm in charge of the collection of burnt-out body parts we have here.'
‘Lucky you!' muttered Singh as he shook hands with the man, noticing that the skin on his palm was dry and rough. He still had no idea why he was at the morgue. He hoped there wasn't something that needed doing for which he had no expertise – God only knew what his superiors had told the Balinese about his skill set. He wouldn't have put it past his Singapore bosses to assure them that he was a forensics expert.
The doctor looked like he wanted to say something but was not sure how to proceed. He slipped his hands into the pockets of his white coat, glanced at Singh, changed his mind and stared down at the policeman's white plimsolls, a perplexed expression on his face. He said abruptly, ‘Why don't you come with me.'
Intrigued by this air of mystery, Singh trotted after the doctor, taking two steps for every one of the other man. Bronwyn had no trouble keeping pace in her soft-soled shoes that were worn down around the heels. She was almost as tall as the pathologist. Bronwyn was being reticent by her standards. Singh wondered about it for a moment. Did she know
something she was not telling him? He abandoned the mental task of second-guessing Bronwyn in favour of the physical task of keeping up with the others.
Alex Barton did not stop until he reached a large steel freezer. He opened the door and gestured for them to look inside. Singh peered in reluctantly. His disinclination was vindicated by the sight of small piles of charred limbs and other human remains.
He looked inquiringly at the Australian doctor. ‘Having trouble identifying these victims?' he asked.
‘Yes. But it's early days yet. We're still waiting for DNA samples, dental records, information on identifying marks, you know, scars, tattoos, that sort of thing.'
‘Tough job,' said Bronwyn sympathetically.
‘It wasn't helped by the cock-ups after the bombs,' complained the doctor bitterly.
Inspector Singh asked in his gravelly voice, ‘What do you mean?'
‘There wasn't enough space here – at the morgue, I mean. The freezer was only designed for ten bodies. We had over two hundred. The remains were left in bags in the garden. They were so burnt, decomposition was faster than normal. I've been in war zones that weren't as bad. But the worst part' – he shook his head in disbelief – ‘anyone and everyone was allowed to wander in looking for missing relatives. People claimed bodies based on visual identification – hopeless in the circumstances.'
Bronwyn asked in horrified tones, ‘Do you mean families claimed the wrong bodies?'
‘That's not the least of it,' said the doctor, sighing. ‘Some of the volunteers who came in to help – they didn't have any training – they mixed remains. There's a lot of cross-contamination of DNA samples.'
‘But that means there are victims who might never be identified!' exclaimed Bronwyn.
The doctor nodded, his face crumpled with lines of worry and fatigue.
There was silence.
Singh broke it. He asked, ‘But what do you want me for?' He continued, ‘I'm afraid I don't have any expertise on the forensics side.'
Before Dr Barton could continue, they were joined by another man. Short, squat and with a big square head, he looked like a Caucasian version of Inspector Singh – except without the turban. The newcomer shook hands with Barton, turned to the policeman and asked, ‘You're Singh?'
Singh was getting a little tired of dealing with brusque Australians. He said, not bothering to keep the note of irritation out of his voice, ‘Yes, who's asking?'
‘I'm Chief Atkinson – AFP.'
‘What do you want with me?'
The Australian turned to the doctor and snapped, ‘You haven't told him?'
‘No. I was about to when you showed up.'
‘All right.'
Atkinson gazed at the Sikh policeman appraisingly. Singh supposed he was not a figure to inspire confidence. He was short and fat with an excessive number of pens in the breast pocket of his shirt. His snowy white sneakers were in contrast to the large blue turban on his head. He had a thin upper lip, a pink, moist protruding lower lip and a neatly trimmed beard and moustache, both flecked with white.
Atkinson asked, ‘You
Moslem
?'
Singh was really annoyed now. He said, ‘Not that it's any of your business, but no.'
‘Then why've you got that hanky around your head?'
‘Because I'm a Sikh and our people have been turbaned for longer than you've had ancestors out of prison.'
Atkinson barked with sudden laughter. ‘You might be right about that, mate.'
Singh maintained a stony silence, his lips pursed to indicate displeasure.
The Australian continued, ‘I don't give a damn whether you're Sikh or Christian or a bloody Moslem for that matter – but as it was a bunch of towel-heads behind the Bali bombs, I thought it was worth asking.'
Bronwyn demonstrated the talent for insubordination that was keeping her at the periphery of the investigation. She said in a determined voice, ‘I don't think the question was justified under any circumstances, sir.'
The doctor, surprised by the developing antagonism, interrupted them, ‘Look, I've got upwards of twenty people in deep freeze waiting for me to turn them from charred remains into human beings. Are you going to get on with it? Because, if not, I've got work to do and you guys are just wasting my time – and your own.'
Atkinson said in a conciliatory tone, gesturing to the doctor, ‘Show him.'
Barton raised a sandy, sparse eyebrow and then nodded in agreement. He opened the freezer door again and a blast of cold air, laced with just a hint of decaying flesh, washed over them. The doctor brought out a small black plastic carrier.
Singh decided it looked like a smaller version of the bag he used to put out the garbage every evening.
Barton took it to a gleaming waist-high steel table on castors and shook out the contents carefully. A few blackened pieces fell out.
The inspector was certain that he would not have been able to tell the difference between these human remains and
the charred pieces of vehicle chassis he had been shown earlier in the day.
The doctor slipped on a pair of thin rubber gloves and rummaged through the pile.
Singh felt squeamish. The large breakfast of bacon and eggs followed by fried noodles and washed down with three cups of strong locally grown black coffee was churning in his belly. He decided his stomach felt like a washing machine in a spin cycle. He wondered at his own queasiness. It was not like him at all. Rookies in the Singapore police force spoke admiringly of his cast-iron stomach during autopsies. It was part of his larger-than-life reputation. Why was he more affected by these victims of a suicide bomber than he had ever been when confronted with a corpse in the course of a murder investigation? Singh pondered the question as he watched the doctor. Was it that, in all the murders he had ever dealt with, there was always a personal nexus between killer and victim? Whether it was a crime of passion, of greed or of anger – the two chief participants in the crime had some sort of connection. Quite often the murder was intended to sever that bond but it often had the opposite effect, tying the criminal once and for all to his victim. But here, there was no connection between murderer and victims. All those killed had merely been in the wrong place at the wrong time – selected not by the murderer but by the random hand of fate.

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