The Scottish Banker of Surabaya - By Ian Hamilton Page 0,39
her. She had heard his words but had no idea what they meant for him, for her, for Theresa Ng. What have I gotten myself into? she thought.
“I knew about the bank’s closing. I just didn’t know the circumstances or have an exact timeline,” she finally said.
“Now you do.”
“Have you told this story to anyone else?” she asked.
“No, just you,” he said quickly.
“Why me?”
He shrugged. “I don’t really know. There you were at the fence and then you were in the house, and you just seemed like someone I could talk to. Besides, I knew someone would come, and that sooner or later I’d have to share this nightmare. I believed you when you said you just wanted to talk . . . I have to tell you, I feel a bit better for it.”
“Well, if I can make a suggestion, don’t talk about it with anyone else.”
“I have no plans to.”
She was still trying to process two dead bodies, their heads on a chair, two bikers in a lobby, a disappearing bank, and thirty-two million missing dollars. All she had were questions that she doubted Lam could answer. She looked at her notebook.
“You said you had a letter from Surabaya with terms and conditions laid out, and you have copies of the receipts. Can I have those?”
“Sure, although I don’t know what good they’ll do you.”
“Do you also have copies of the statements you were sent?”
“I do.”
“I’d like to have them too.”
“Why?”
“I’m an accountant, like you. I want to know just how much money is involved in case I ever catch up to it.” She saw his skepticism and ignored it. “You know, in this day and age it’s difficult to hide anything anywhere. Your friend Purslow probably thought he’d be safe in some backwater in Central America, and look what happened to him, and how fast it happened.”
Lam shivered. “Will they come after me?”
“Who?”
“The ones who killed Purslow and Lowell. Maybe even the ones who hired you.”
“The people who killed Purslow will leave you alone unless you give them a reason not to,” she said slowly. “Stay quiet and out of sight and you’ll be out of mind. As for my people, I’m it. Assuming you told me the truth — and I think you did — there will be no more visits and there will be no repercussions. Now, I may need to call you in case some detail you forgot pops up, so I’d like a phone number, but that’s it.”
“Are you really going to chase the money?”
Again she took her time. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
He started to say something and then caught himself.
“I’d like to get all the paperwork you have,” she said.
He stood, and she saw the sweat stains on his shirt. He left the room and walked to the stairs. She guessed he didn’t weigh much more than 110 pounds, and she could imagine how easy it had been for the two thugs to terrify him.
As she waited, the complexity of his story began to spin in her head. Two months at the cottage had made life seem simpler than it was. She had thought that finding Lam and getting him to come clean about the fund’s money would start to resolve things for Theresa Ng and the others. Now he seemed to be, if not irrelevant, then at least a minor player in a story that had just taken a dramatic turn.
The thugs in Toronto, the two deaths in Costa Rica, the bank’s closing, the missing money — she had no idea what any of it meant.
( 14 )
It was early evening when Ava got back to the hotel. She stripped and got back under the rain shower, fighting jet lag now, her mind a jumble. She replayed Lam’s story in her head. It was so far from what she had expected, she didn’t know if she had the ambition to deal with it. Revived at least physically, she put on a T-shirt and running shorts and checked the room-service menu. She went pan-Asian: a Vietnamese fresh spring roll and a plate of nasi goreng. She chose a Pinot Grigio that she knew and liked from the wine list.
Her notebook was on the bed. She picked it up, went to the desk and leafed through the three pages of notes from her discussion with Lam, writing comments in the margins. She started a fresh page as other things he’d said came back to her. Then she turned to the