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Authors: Shamini Flint

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BOOK: A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul
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Yusuf, short hair standing on end as if he had gone to bed with it damp, emerged, blinking nervously. His round glasses reflected the light streaming in the small window overlooking the street. He tugged at his beard nervously.
She said gently, ‘Lunch is ready, Yusuf.' Yusuf followed her into the room.
‘Yusuf, your beard is supposed to be a fist long. You can barely grow it at all and now you are pulling it out at the roots,' Ramzi remarked cheerfully.
They all laughed. Yusuf managed a weak smile to show that he did not mind being the butt of their jokes.
The Prophet's exhortation to grow a decent-length beard was challenging to Asian Moslems who were not hairy by nature. Of the men, only Ghani had a full beard and he kept it trimmed. Ramzi was clean-shaven. Yusuf and Abu Bakr both had straggly goatees, well short of fist-length except for a few wayward hairs.
Ghani had been adamant that there was no need to be exacting in adhering to this particular religious stricture. As
he had put it, when Abu Bakr had questioned his younger brother's decision to shave, ‘The police think that everyone with a long beard is a mad
mullah
. Let us not give them an excuse to look at us twice in these difficult times after the Bali bombings.'
It was going to be a fraught meal, thought Nuri. Ramzi, her younger brother, was on edge. He was picking on Yusuf and her repeatedly, using his sly humour to good effect. Yusuf was visibly agitated. He kept taking off his glasses and cleaning them with the edge of his shirt. He would stare at Ramzi while doing this. His unfocused gaze was unnerving.
Ramzi turned his attention from Yusuf to her. He was complaining loudly about the food, the lamb curry and fried vegetables with steamed rice that Nuri had painstakingly cooked on the small hob in the kitchenette.
‘It is too spicy,' he said, sticking out a curling red tongue and fanning it with a curried hand.
Yusuf said stonily, ‘I think it is tasty.'
‘Nonsense,' said Ramzi. ‘We might as well chew on raw chillies. My sister is unskilled in the art of cooking. I have no idea why we brought her along.'
Abu Bakr said, ‘Her husband is not complaining. Only he has the right to chastise Nuri.'
Ramzi giggled. ‘I would not dream of scolding my dear sister. As she knows, I am just doing my duty as a brother by pointing out her shortcomings – as I
always
do.'
Nuri glanced at her husband to see if he had noticed this pointed criticism of her. Ghani was still eating, shovelling the rice and lamb into his mouth at regular intervals with his right hand. He chewed slowly and methodically, his mouth opening and closing so that all of them could see the gradual process by which the food was broken down into digestible pulp. His forehead was shiny with perspiration. The food
really was spicy, thought Nuri, but Ghani was too lost in thought to notice. She felt a moment of profound dislike for her spouse, a visceral disgust for the way he sat stolidly at the head of the table, oblivious to the tension in the room. She remained quiet, determined to ignore Ramzi, serving the men more food when their plates became empty.
Yusuf was staring at her with a half-worried, half-admiring expression on his face. She was tempted to sigh out loud. She had always known that Yusuf, anxious, devout and a complete failure with women, found her attractive. The time spent with her in the small Denpasar apartment had magnified his admiration until it was something very akin to love.
Nuri smiled ruefully, forgetting her annoyance at Ramzi and her husband for a moment. For the first time in her young life, she realised, she was sensitive to the signs of new love, her senses picking up signals like the antennae on the small kitchen table radio in her home in Sulawesi.
She dragged her attention back to the meal, quietly ladling more rice onto Yusuf's plate. Ramzi was still complaining about the food. She felt a sudden crashing wave of anger at her younger brother – doing his best to aggravate her, oblivious or indifferent to her suffering at the disappearance of Abdullah.
Nuri stood up suddenly and left the table. She marched to the bedroom and slammed the door, the sharp crack causing all the men at the table to stare after her in surprise.
Inside the dark dingy room lit with a single lightbulb, Nuri looked into the cracked mirror. A furtive creature, divided in two by the fractured mirror – as if the glass had the ability to reflect the truth in her heart – looked back at her.
 
Bronwyn stared at the inspector in disbelief. ‘You don't mean that, do you?'
Singh didn't answer immediately. Instead he said, ‘Nyoman, what's good to eat around here?'
Nyoman grinned. ‘Do you want to go to a
warung
which is very cheap, just a few
rupiah
? Or we can go to the Amandari – everything US dollars!'
‘What's a
warung
?'
It was Bronwyn who answered. ‘A food stall.'
‘What sort of food?'
‘Maybe like
ikan bakar
or
nasi goreng
,' said Nyoman.
Singh asked Bronwyn, ‘You know Bali. Don't you have somewhere to recommend?'
‘Asian or Western?'
‘Asian, of course,' he said.
Bronwyn said to Nyoman, ‘Take us to the Dirty Duck Diner!'
Nyoman nodded enthusiastically.
Singh said suspiciously, ‘Doesn't sound very Asian …'
‘No worries,' said his Australian counterpart, ‘it's the best place to try Ubud's signature dish – duck – first stewed in local spices and then deep fried. Served with steamed rice and Indonesian vegetables.'
Singh did not look convinced.
Bronwyn laughed. ‘You look more suspicious now than when we met the widow! Do you always radiate such hostility to the recently bereaved?'
Singh said, ‘Only when they are my only link to a murdered man. If she decides to tell us a pack of lies about their time in Bali, we have no practical way of finding out the truth.'
Bronwyn said slowly, ‘I suppose they've not been here that long. There isn't the usual network of friends, relatives and workmates to contradict or corroborate what suspects and witnesses choose to tell us …'
‘Exactly,' said Singh. ‘We're operating in a vacuum.'
Bronwyn was more optimistic. ‘The Balinese are inquisitive and observant. More than half the island works in the tourist trade.' She corrected herself. ‘Or they did before the bombs anyway. They pass the time between being obsequious to foreign tourists by gossiping about them.'
Singh nodded his great turbaned head thoughtfully. ‘You may be right. That young fellow Wayan had a bit to say.' He slapped his knee hard in sudden frustration. ‘In fact, do you remember he was about to say something about Crouch's friends when the widow turned up? I wonder whether she was listening somewhere …'
Bronwyn interrupted. ‘The expats form cliques very quickly – even your reticent English types probably have a few mates on the island.'
‘You may be right – I look forward to asking any new-found friends for the dirt on Sarah Crouch.'
Bronwyn shook her head emphatically. ‘I can tell you once and for all she had nothing to do with it.'
‘On what grounds?' asked Singh.
‘Women's intuition,' she replied and then burst into laughter at Singh's disgusted expression.
 
The Dirty Duck met with Singh's approval.
He chewed his way through the flaky duck, drank two bottles of cold Bintang beer and said, ‘So where do we go from here?'
‘Back to the widow, I guess,' said Bronwyn.
‘And we need to bully Wayan.'
‘I'll leave that to you,' replied Bronwyn.
‘The Bali police should have collected all Richard Crouch's possessions by now. We'll have to go through that.'
Bronwyn was impressed. ‘When did you arrange that?'
‘I told them to do it last night – but I said to wait somewhere till after we'd broken the news to the widow and then follow us in. I saw two coppers walk in as we got into the car.'
‘Why did you want them to wait?'
‘In case she made a mad dash to destroy any incriminating evidence. That would have incriminated
her
.'
‘This murder stuff is quite complicated, isn't it?' said Bronwyn, patting her mouth with a napkin.
Singh shook his head. ‘No. Actually it's the simplest of crimes. Murder is such an extreme, absolute step that there are only a very few people capable of it. And of those few, an even smaller subsection will ever find themselves in a situation where killing another person seems like the appropriate solution.'
‘You really believe that? You don't think that we're all capable of murder given the right circumstances?'
The Singaporean inspector said, ‘I'm talking about premeditated murder. In a fit of rage, in self-defence, to protect loved ones – we might all be able to kill a fellow human being. But to plan, to think, to decide in cold blood that murder fits the needs of a given situation best? I believe that very few people could do that.'
‘Inspector Singh, I do believe you're a romantic!'
The policeman scowled at the grinning Australian. ‘What do you mean?'
‘You wander around with a long face hunting murderers but you're convinced of the essential goodness of human nature.'
Singh stood up, dropped a fistful of crumpled
rupiah
on the table – inflation was such that it took a lot of paper money to pay for things in Indonesia – and said curtly, ‘Let's get back to the widow.'
 
 
The widow of Richard Crouch was composed. She sat primly, like an extra from a Jane Austen television drama, with her knees together and her hands folded on her lap. She had even smoothed her skirt after sitting down to make sure her knees were covered.
She asked, as if it was a social visit or – perhaps on the evidence of the cold formality – a business meeting, ‘What can I do for you now?'
‘Help us find your husband's murderer!'
‘Of course,' she said. ‘I'll do everything I can. I'm just not sure what use I can be.'
‘Tell us about him,' interjected Bronwyn.
‘Richard? There's not an awful lot to tell. He is … was an only child. His parents are both dead – they died in a car crash a few years back.'
‘Was he close to them?'
Sarah looked at Singh in surprise. ‘I guess so. I met him for the first time about six months after the accident.'
‘And you got married – when?'
‘About six months after that – two and a half years ago.'
‘A whirlwind romance,' remarked Singh.
She said, ‘Looking back, I think maybe he was looking for a family to replace the one he lost.'
‘That implies that all was not well with your relationship,' pointed out Singh.
She glared at him, a crack in the ice, swirling cold dark waters underneath. She said, ‘We were fine – there were a few issues, there always are. This move to Bali was a way for us to iron out some of our difficulties – get away from it all.'
‘Sounds to me like he spent most of the time – before he was killed, that is – getting away from you.'
‘That's nonsense!' Her voice was uneven, but it was anger, not sadness, that Singh sensed. Sarah Crouch was trying to
keep a tight lid on a resentment that ran very deep. He reminded himself that it did not make her a killer.
‘What was the trouble? Another woman?'
‘Of course not! Richard worked very hard, that's all. I felt that he was not spending enough time with me.'
‘What did he do?' asked Singh. ‘For a living, I mean.'
‘He was a chemical engineer. He travelled a lot for his work – there was always a project in some far-flung part of the world.'
‘It's awful when they do that, isn't it?' said Bronwyn. ‘My ex-husband used to be away a lot – it makes it very difficult to sustain a relationship.'
Sarah did not respond to this attempt at solidarity.
Bronwyn was trying to forge a bond with the widow. Singh was not sure that, tactically, it was a good idea. Practically, it was a waste of time.
‘What was your routine in Bali?' Singh did not plan to change his own approach of being unpleasant. He hoped it would provoke the woman into saying something revealing.
‘The usual,' she said. ‘We shopped, visited art galleries and temples, went down to the sea, met friends for meals or a drink, tried out the local cuisine.'
BOOK: A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul
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