The Scottish Banker of Surabaya - By Ian Hamilton Page 0,40
back page and taped to it the photos of Purslow’s and Lowell’s heads and Muljadi’s business card. She slid the article ripped from the Tico Times between two other pages. It was a rote process, without any clear objective. Her meeting with Lam had left her utterly confused. Maybe talking to Uncle will help, she thought.
Her meal came and she drank two glasses of wine rather quickly. They went directly to her head. She knew she needed to make her phone call right away if she was going to be mentally acute.
“Wei,” he answered on the second ring.
She could hear a television in the background, a voice reciting horses’s names and training times. He’s probably watching a Happy Valley Racecourse preview, she thought. “It’s Ava.”
“How is Ho Chi Minh City? Did you get the help you wanted?”
“I did, thanks.”
“And have you managed to corner Lam yet?”
“Yes. It wasn’t very difficult — he was waiting for someone to show up, waiting for someone to talk to.”
“Some people cannot carry guilt.”
“It was more fear than guilt he was trying to shed,” she said.
“Hard to tell the difference sometimes . . . So, what was his story?”
Ava sighed, trying to group her thoughts in her head, wishing she hadn’t drunk quite so quickly. “It’s far more complicated than we thought.”
Uncle paused. “I am going to turn down the television,” he said.
While she waited, Ava turned the pages of her notebook to the photos of the two heads.
“The money is gone?” Uncle asked when he came back on the line.
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about the whereabouts of the money. All I know is that Lam doesn’t seem to have it, and the people who were the prime suspects are dead.”
“Dead?”
“Yes, decapitated, actually. I’m looking at pictures of their heads as we speak.”
Uncle said very slowly, “This is not what we expected.”
He’s like my echo, Ava thought. “It is a bizarre story.”
“I am listening.”
She went over the events as described by Lam. Uncle didn’t speak once, but she could feel his attention. When she was finished, the first question he asked was the most obvious. “And you believe him?”
“I think I do,” she said, and then closed her eyes and imagined Lam sitting in front of her. “In fact, I know I do. He told me the truth about as much as he knew. His friend Joey Lac in Toronto told me that Lam can’t lie. I feel the same way about him.”
“If that is the case, then the people who killed the two men in Costa Rica probably have the money.”
“Of course,” Ava said.
“And it seems to me that the money is then out of reach.”
“I didn’t say I couldn’t find it,” she said defensively.
“Ava, I know if you set your mind to it, you might be able to find it. What I am saying is that it does not appear to be worth the risk. We do not know who is at the other end of the money trail. All we know is that they were prepared to kill two men for it, and were able to reach down to Costa Rica to do it.”
She was surprised, even slightly dismayed, by his reaction. They were no strangers to difficult money trails and no strangers to violence, or the potential for it. “I’m not quite ready to give it up,” she said. “We still have a link to Lam and the money, and it’s that bank. Let’s find out what we can about them.”
“And then?”
“I don’t know. That depends on the information, doesn’t it. Did you make those calls to Indonesia?”
“I did.”
She waited for him to tell her what he had unearthed. When he remained quiet, she said, “Uncle, you know I’m not about to do anything rash or stupid. What did your people say?”
She sensed he wanted to withhold what he had, and she was preparing to counter when he said, “Our contacts there are not as good as I was led to think. I do not have any information yet.”
“How much longer do we have to wait?”
“I do not know.”
“I’m finished here,” she said. “So I either go home or I pursue this bank lead. I mean, what other options do we have?”
“I will call Indonesia again.”
“Thank you.”
“Give me an hour.”
“I’ll wait up until then.”
As Ava ended the call she tried to remember a time when Uncle had lacked a sense of urgency, and couldn’t. She’d wait for him, she decided, but in the meantime she’d explore one other