Smelly, spiky, sickly sweet - durian sounded so unappealing I had to
investigate, which after all was my job back in Finland. So I'd begged a morning
off from temping at the aid station for a mission of my own. By now I felt
uncomfortable without a jilbab covering my hair in the predominantly
Muslim country, removing it only at home or in the company of Christians,
even though I wore it out of respect for Indonesian sensibilities rather than
religion.
There were mountains on my left. I was fairly sure I
would have noticed a mountain range located in the shopping district of Kotik.
Yanti would not be pleased.
I felt myself blinking stupidly as my brain pointed out
the futility of assuming everything was fine. The minivan swerved wildly to
take in another group of leering, smoking men. Clearly my idea of waiting until
the bemo was empty would not help. Perhaps the driver would eventually
loop back to Kotik. Perhaps I would find a space-time portal for hire in one of
the warung lining the road and
could travel back to the beginning of this year when a humanitarian holiday
seemed such a good idea. I enjoyed the delusion, fancying I heard people
talking in Finnish. But it was real. The three latest additions were speaking
in accented but grammatically accurate Finnish.
“Has the dog died?
“The dog is very dead.”
“And the other dog?”
“What other dog do you mean?”
“He means the first dog’s friend, stupid.” the third
grunted.
“The first dog’s friend will die the day before tomorrow.”
Hearing my own language was very comforting, and I couldn’t
help interjecting, “after”. They stared at me as if I had spit in their face.
“The first dog’s friend will die the day after
tomorrow. Although I don’t see how you would know that. Where are you learning
Finnish?”
The third man called out to the driver in Indonesian and
the three of them passed crumpled rupiah notes to the driver and exited the
vehicle before it had come to a complete stop. I struggled to remember their
appearance, telling myself I'd still got it. They were short, and smoked, and
had plucked their facial hair to a few strands on the chin. In other words,
they could be any Indonesian men. But one had a tattoo on his wrist, like
google eyes on a puppet - two touching circles with a dot in each centre.
I realised gradually that the bemo had stopped and I was
being yelled at. Fumbling stupidly, I extracted the correct number of rupiah
for the driver and stepped onto a crowded street. I had asked for the centre of
the city, and here I was - just the wrong city.
Pausing for a moment, I thrilled in the midday sun to my
predicament. Clearly I was incompetent when it came to Indonesia’s public
transport system, yet I hadn’t carried enough money for an hour-long taxi ride.
I hadn’t carried water either, which was a particularly stupid move. I'd never
be a boy scout at this rate. My being a girl was no asset, come to think of it.
The thought of water made me need to pee. But I saw a wartel and remembered
the telephone number of the base so all I needed was a little humility and I
was home free.
Yanti’s breathless response to my self-defacing opening
was to say that a contact of theirs had set off after me (politely neglecting
to enlighten me that I had caught the wrong bemo) and should be outside waiting
for me with transport back from my sight-seeing’. I paid the wartel operator
and stepped into the doorway, where I was immediately accosted by a woman in a
miniskirt who offered me her motorcycle helmet. She proved a more than
competent driver and I tried to steady my voice as I dismounted shakily back at
the base, pulling the reeking helmet off my head.
Rumour had it a major figure in the region’s
micropolitical scene had been killed by a terrorist attack, and Yanti’s branch
was to analyse the situation and attempt to prevent retaliation. They needed a
driver for the supplies, while the bulk of the staff would be riding
motorbikes. Siti, my biking companion, would direct me in the car although she was
Muslim and in the Christian village it could prove unsafe for her. She changed
for the short trip and adopted a shuffling walk in her constrictive sarong.
The houses at our destination resembled old-fashioned
houses in Finland, designed for shade more than insulation but otherwise
Western in appearance. Most of the other staff had already dismounted and were
gathered near the house of the local government representative.
With Yanti’s permission, I accompanied her through the
unlocked front door to the bedroom of the murdered man. He lay face-up on the
sleeping mat, as if peacefully slumbering, except that his face had been
completely erased and the darkened blood covered not only his pillow but had
run through the grooves of the woven bamboo to make delicate patterns before
pooling on the ground. Written on the wall in charcoal from the old-fashioned
stove was mahkota duri - crown of thorns.
“Unusual”, said Yanti. “Generally even assassins -
especially assassins - use bombs. Much cheaper than guns to make and harder to
trace. Guess they used a frypan from his kitchen.”
I examined the edges of what used to be a face. Parts of
the jagged edge were evenly spaced, like a regular zigzag. Yanti followed my
finger and shrugged. “No need for detective work. He was vocal about resolving
issues around here. We offered security but he refused. It was only a matter of
time before the Muslims responded. Siti was hinting yesterday that we should be
coming here. She’d be a fantastic informant except that we’re no intelligence
organisation.” She fingered the wall. “This is a dare for the Christians to
attack, which I'm afraid they're all too likely to take up. And a clear threat
to the next government rep.”
I was still considered not to know my way around so was
provided with a babysitter who was the next in a dynastic-style line of
unspecific authority that dated back to pre-colonial times, including the
authority to chat up visitors he liked the look of. Wiryanto was a student at
the university near our base and proudly wore imitation Nike sneakers. He told
me about the funeral customs - that Petrus would remain where he was until his
family members had assembled for his funeral, which could take up to six months
for travel from the farthest islands - however he apologised that he did not
personally know the character of the deceased, except that the man had a
reputation for disappearing into the forest for days at a time, disregarding
his responsibilities in the village. He took me on a tour of some of the
produce fields nearby and laughed uproariously when I suggested we join the
others and do something useful. I wasn't complaining.
While we enjoyed a fructose high, Yanti spoke to the dead
man’s betrothed, a teenager who’d inherited much of the surrounding land and
took pride in wearing her sarong when most women preferred jeans.
Siti, left waiting passively in the shade by the car, was
understandably torn between nervousness around the angered Christians and
macabre curiosity about Petrus’s death. Question after question poured from
her, in a soft voice that contrasted to her thirst for detail. We were more
than halfway home when I realised that, in the snarl of motorbikes, pushbikes,
trucks, wheeled warung and tinted-window cars behind us, we had a tail of an incongruously
clean white van. Siti responded to this information by blanching so efficiently
I thought she was about to faint, and sliding noiselessly to crouch at the base
of her seat. Never one for car chases, I parallel parked between two warung
that teetered on the edge of a sharp drop to a river below, and wound my window
down with an encouraging smile in place. The van sliced across traffic to pound
Siti and I at an almost perpendicular angle. The car sidestepped a metre and
the left wheels spun helplessly as I restarted the engine and floored the gas.
Siti pointed down the mountainside, eyes levelled on me
in lieu of eloquent reassurance. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the
van had circled behind us and was ready for another hit. I grabbed the wheel
with both hands and pulled, dimly aware of Siti’s hands joining me as our car
tipped over the incline and fell just like a roller coaster except bumpier and
with air conditioning. I found that, while the brakes only made the rear of the
car shimmy back and forth, I certainly felt better wrenching the wheel back and
forth as enormous trees loomed to either side. Siti braced against the
dashboard with her arms folded, like on aeroplane safety illustrations, and
when I saw a tree which must have had a girth the size of our car, I gave up
and prepared for the inevitable impact.
We met the tree with shuddering force and the car
splintered the more easily of the two. Before I could see straight Siti was
shaking me and demanding from the back of the car that I follow her out between
the seats. I blinked blood from my eyes and gritted my teeth in determination
not to feel my forehead to find out how badly I was hurt. My shoes would not
come so I leant down and untied them before extracting my legs and then twisting
myself into a pretzel on Siti’s merciless insistence that I retrieve them. She
waited impatiently while I retied them beside the totalled car and ripped a
sleeve off my shirt to bandage my head. Not allowing an inventory of further
injuries, she set off through the trees at almost a run. I was aching and
hungry before we emerged into her small home village.
Silhouetted in front of a fluorescent sunset were neat
rows of identical houses that looked for all the world like their walls were
made of cardboard. Seeing my confusion, Siti explained that the walls were made
from compressed shredded logging waste and water. The village was a
manifestation of the government’s transmigration program. They were paid and
provided with temporary housing to move from their overpopulated island to
this.
“Where is everyone?” I smelt smoke.
“Lighting fires for dinner. Quiet is good.” she smiled.
She expertly climbed a small coconut tree, making me her lookout as she hitched
up her sarong, and we drank the lemonade-like milk. I chewed on the coconut's
sweet substance while Siti began cooking rice porridge over an open fire,
squatting on the floor and turning her head on the side to breathe.
She used pieces of wood to pick up the wok and we left
the fire burning while sitting on the other side of the house’s single
partition to eat with tin forks and spoons.
"The houses you saw in the Christian village are not
so much better," said Siti in response to my look. "The close friends
of a man build his house when he comes of age, so they use walls that link
together like a cardboard box. The walls are sold by professional builders in
various designs.”
"Why do you know so much about them?"
“Petrus. I knew him."
I put down my cutlery, secretly grateful for the chance
to put off consumption of the glue-like substance.
“What did he look like?”
“He walked with his chin very high in the air. A handsome
man.”
“Handsome?” I said without looking up, suddenly feeling
like a high-schooler at a slumber party.
Siti made me jump by throwing herself face down on the
floor, choked with the effort of muting her crying. “I killed him! I killed
him!”
Unsure as to whether I should comfort or arrest her, I
waited silently until she lay as if unconscious. She sighed and sat up, muddied
from the dirt floor. Remembering my presence she gestured embarrassedly that I
help myself to more rice porridge, and seemed pierced to the heart when I did
not move.
“Petrus, Petrus”, she said, in the same manner I had
heard mothers telling off naughty children. “He was my husband.” she began
crying again. “So innocent of mankind! He thought we should marry publicly, and
especially wished to introduce me to his family. Even now, when we meet so much
more frequently, he thinks I work for Yanti to advance the cause. To unite
Christians and Muslims and make the world a better place. For that hope,
because of me, he is dead. How could I, too, forsake the beliefs of my village?
I’d die first. This village is all I have Eline. I swear I’ll never leave
again.”
My subconscious began sorting her words before my
conscious was able to assimilate them. “Does anyone else know about your
marriage?”
“No, we didn’t even use a priest.” She stirred the
porridge absently. “But the girl suspects, I'm sure. No-one asks her anything
because she is so traditional, people think she knows nothing. Kustiani was
promised to Petrus from primary school.”
“Is Kustiani strong enough to kill a man?”
Siti laughed. “Village women are strong. But no woman
here would kill a man of her own village, even a Christian woman. Except
perhaps if he converted.”
I heard voices carrying clearly through the open seams of
the house, and motioned for Siti to be quiet. “It’s French”, I whispered in
astonishment. The voices came closer and I strained to make out the words.
“No foreigners come here unless he is selling weapons”,
Siti warned, her face pressed against the gap between the walls and the floor.
Another voice called out a warning, and Siti told me a name I didn’t catch. The
group responded in what sounded like Indonesian, but no greeting I was familiar
with.
Siti took in breath sharply. Before I could ask her what
was going on she slipped like a cat into the kitchen, emerging with her
machete, still sticky with coconut milk.
“We can’t fight them!” I exclaimed.
She glanced at me blankly and smiled tightly before
cutting a section of the rear wall away and slipping through. Her hand snaked
back and impatiently indicated I was to follow. By now the forest was
completely dark and I stumbled into every fallen log and prickly bush on the
way until we came to a stream.
“Follow it.” she said without a trace of the submissive
woman from the car. “It goes to Kotik.” She appeared to melt back into the
forest, probably simply standing still metres away until I gave up.
“Siti!” I called out several times in a stage whisper
before surrendering her to her fate. Then I became more concerned about my own,
as I wasn’t sure which direction I was to follow the river. Or, for that
matter, what manner of wildlife I was likely to encounter. Filled with the
tiredness-induced optimism that causes lost people like myself to charge
headlong into jungle in the middle of the night, or men to circle the same
block forty-seven times without asking directions in the conviction that they’ll
find their way in just another minute, I squinted through the gloom and set off
in my approximation of a straight line. After an hour or so, my right foot took
a step without glancing off anything, and my left eagerly followed. Despite my best
efforts, I had found a trail.
Within five minutes I recognised the paper-mache houses
of Siti’s village, and cautiously located Siti’s house by the simple yet
effective method of looking for a house with a large, neat hole cut in the
rear. I imitated Siti, peering in under the walls. Inches from my face was Siti’s
right hand, nearly severed from her arm with her own knife. The size of the
black patch where her blood had soaked into the dirt meant that taking a pulse
was unnecessary.
The only feet were Siti’s own so I risked a glance
through our emergency exit. Something odd immediately struck me, but it took
several minutes before I realised what it was. All the accumulated mud of our
slog through the underbrush and her grief tantrum were erased, as if Siti’d
just stepped out of the shower. She was dressed neatly in traditional dress and
even had shoes on inside the house. Dressed to die. I was about to leave when I
noticed a dark patch near her stomach, which could give much-needed evidence of
a struggle. I stepped in over the wooden frame and examined it. Google eyes. I
wondered bleakly exactly what percentage of my mind could now be officially
classified as missing in action.
By the time I entered the doors of the base after further bemo adventures, the sky was
beginning to grey in preparation for dawn and the streets were coming alive.
Yanti began to berate me soundly and would not be interrupted so I let her
finish, my eyes blurring for lack of sleep, before telling her she was down one
staff member. She was momentarily quiet but when I drew the tattoo design on
the table she told me off again, first for being foolish as it was terrorists,
not puppet fanatics, and secondly for carving the soft wood of the table. I
protested uselessly until a curly-haired American seated himself at our table
with egg-laced rice porridge and started at my impromptu artwork.
“Since when do you hire thugs?” he demanded of Yanti. “Don’t
you know what those boys are like?”
I hugged him, provoking a sour look from the other side
of the table. He unwound my arm calmly enough and inquired as to whether I
generally formed friendships so quickly. I explained again the whole story,
beginning the day before. He stifled obvious astonishment and said, “Your
murderers are in my linguistics class. They’re doing a joint thesis on European
languages and take endless delight in using them to avoid eavesdroppers and
infuriate their teachers. Finnish, you see, is about as exotic a language as
can be. I didn’t know they were learning local dialects as well but it stands
to reason. What’s more, Deny - the others do whatever he says, they’ll copy his
tattoo before long - just came into a lot of money and bought a brand new white
van. You must have seen them on their way to the dealership yesterday.”
“Money? So she didn't dirty her own hands. But what does
the tattoo mean?”
“Another linguistics in-joke. Deny considers himself
extremely witty.” He covered one of the eyes with his hand. “This is a
linguistics notation for a bilabial click. That means a kissing noise. So you
put two together and you get -”
“Linguistics faculty pick-up lines.”
“Exactly.”
He gulped down the rest of his breakfast and offered a
ride to the police station. It was easy enough to convince the local
authorities to pick up Deny’s small gang - I got the feeling they thought it
was high time. In their gratitude they allowed me to accompany an officer
familiar with Kotik who was armed with much more paraphernalia than could
possibly be useful in picking up one scorned maiden. I was only slightly
perturbed to find that we were to ride a beaten motorbike but nonetheless
yawned out my enthusiasm when Officer Yakob suggested from the front of the
bike that we pick up a durian for his Kotik cousin, since only the early durian
were available, and only in the city.
The fruit was personally halved for other customers while
I watched, pale yellow pith wetly staining the bottom of the heavy denim bags
favoured by the proprietor. The centimeter-long spikes meant I couldn’t even hold
it without protection and it was too heavy to hold one-handed from the stalk,
so I surrendered my new toy for Yakob to attach loosely to the fuel tank in
front of him.
The ride itself was a surreal nightmare of near-dozes and
near-misses as Yakob would twist in his seat to insist that I would not be able
to balance without my arms around his waist. He was closer to the truth than I
cared to admit but I definitely objected to his habit of driving with one hand
while keeping the other on my knee. I would have socked him one but I didn’t
want him to lose the other hand’s grip on the bike.
When we arrived Yakob’s friend was at home rolling a
cigarette in preparation for his lunch. I was surprised to recognise my student
friend, and more surprised to realise that he was Kustiani’s brother, making
her a more powerful figure than I had realised, who might be able to call on
village loyalties if we confronted her directly. Yakob wanted to see the
deceased so the three of us trooped into the house that had probably seen more
visitors since the host’s demise than normally visited the village in a month.
By now Petrus had a powerful odour and looked worse for
wear. I looked over the scene again out of habit and the imitation chalet-style
wood panelling on one wall struck me in contrast to the Muslim village so close
by. The wood panelling was designed to look like vertical planks of wood but
the joins were as obvious as the plasticky finish. One panel needed a wipe down
with a cloth, it was sticky with what looked like years-old durian pith. I hadn’t
noticed it before without the light shining at just the right angle. I did a
double take when I realised it was no less than a shoe print, on the wall. The
distinctive pattern made it all the more ludicrous, as if Wiryanto in his Nikes
had been walking on the wall.
On the other hand, no-one else owned sneakers and it
would be natural enough for a dirty shoeprint to be left on a wall lying on the
ground before it was built. Except it would not be so natural in this culture
for the wearer to deny knowing the owner of the house, when he had been one of
the builders. Nor could it be considered natural for a police officer sent to
investigate a murder to hear his cousin use such an obvious lie without
comment.
“I feel sick”, I said. We left the temporary tomb and
bugged Wiryanto so Kustiani could be questioned without provoking a xenophobic
reaction. Indonesia’s hi-tech was not quite what I was used to, and instead of
having a van full of bewildering and largely useless buttons and switches, we
needed to hide within ten meters of Wiryanto’s microphone and press Ôrecord’ on
what looked suspiciously like an ordinary walkman.
I’d always appreciated the enlivening affects of
adrenalin and felt all my senses but taste sharpen through the meal that I
shared with the two men, while I laughed and giggled at Yakob’s disgusting
groping. We saw Kustiani entering the village as we turned the corner to stand
against the rear of the house. It reminded me of hiding behind the gym in high school
and seemed to have similar connotations for Yakob as he pressed his nose into
my cheek and lifted a hand to encircle my waist. I returned the favour by
sliding a hand down his chest to his waist, flipping the cover of his holster
and pressing his automatic against his head.
I’ve always had a thing for automatics. Yakob very
graciously consented to lying face down in the dirt with my knee in his back
while I searched through his small arsenal to find appropriate restraints. I
was itching to question him but he could wait. What I could hear was better
than a confession. Kustiani insisted that Wiryanto tell her who had let slip
about Petrus and Siti. My earpiece suddenly crackled and died and I began a
frantic search of the outside of the house, hoping for an entry point slightly
less archaic than the front door. But Kustiani’s volume rose to such heights
that I could clearly hear her through the thin walls, and her brother’s voice
rose to match her. I held Yakob’s gun in both hands commando-style as Kustiani
used a number of obscenities that Yanti had neglected to teach me and Wiryanto
returned in kind, adding that she should have killed the Muslim-loving dog
herself instead of leaving it for someone else.
Kustiani screamed at a volume that gave me an instant
migraine even from outside and I took my cue to enter, immediately dropping my
gun to reflexively catch the dodged durian that Wiryanto had hurled. The thorns
ripped into my hands with neat zigzag edges on one side that I recognised
instantly. Wiryanto looked surprised to see me but not especially worried,
which irritated me. I dropped the durian in the same instant, mashing my big
toe, which conveniently reminded me just how adverse I was to pain and
especially those who caused it to happen to me.
I charged him, vaulting a table and smashing both of us
partially through the inner wall. Kustiani calmed down enough to realise what
was happening and grabbed his legs before changing her mind and pulling an
ornate crucifix, hook and all, from the wall and applying it to her brother’s
head. Once was plenty. We dropped to the floor in unison, dripping sweat in the
stifling humidity after only a few minute’s exertion. I automatically felt my
waist for handcuffs and found my jilbab wrapped as a sash in readiness for when
it was required. The edges were torn irregularly so it naturally ripped into
strips for Kustiani to wordlessly tie up her brother before attending to my
hands.
I gave her the number for the base and she made quick
work of convincing Yanti that even foreigners got things right sometimes and
suggested strongly that Yanti take upon herself the task of ferreting out a
less corrupt officer.
Kustiani stepped around the ruins of her living room to
begin making a cup of sweet black tea, and I curiously examined our
blood-stained durian. She cut it open with a swift blow of a kitchen standard
machete that looked identical to Siti’s except for being in better repair. She
set out the tea on the remaining table and showed me how to take a smoothly
rounded piece from inside the durian to eat with my fingers. It was the texture
of cheesecake and so rich it was almost inedible.
I checked Wiryanto’s breathing so neither of us would be
up on murder charges of our own, and returned to the tea.
How long did you know about Siti?” I asked.
“Oh, years.” She smiled slightly. “Petrus was much older
than me but not so smart. It’s just like him to tell Wiryanto the truth about
why he was reluctant to marry me.”
“But how did you find out?”
“How could I not notice?” she said. “I loved him.”
Please note that permission to publish stories from the Scarlet Stiletto Awards 2002 online has been expressly granted to Sisters in Crime Australia Inc. You may not republish, reproduce electronically or in paper form, or otherwise make use of these stories without the permission of the author.
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