The Scoop

by Terence J. Quinn

  ‘You have visitor, hah?’ he said reluctantly. ‘We talk more, later, Mr Bligh.’ And with that he went out, taking his silent colleague with him.

  67

  ABOUT TWENTY minutes later, the door opened and a tall, thin, sandy-haired man with heavy black specs entered, a document case under one arm. Similar in age to me, he was wearing a white, short-sleeved shirt, blue tie and khaki-coloured trousers. He smiled in a friendly fashion and held out his hand.

  ‘Mr Bligh? G’day, my name is Richard Hennessy,’ he volunteered. It was great to hear an Aussie accent. I couldn’t shake his hand properly because of the cuffs but I stuck both my thumbs in the air.

  ‘Call me Jonno,’ I said.

  ‘I’m from the Australian Embassy and I’m here to assist you, sir – Jonno – in any way I can.’ Turns out he was a fan of my book, but he quickly turned serious, pointing out that I was in some bother: ‘Drugs, well, that’s a touchy subject in this part of the world. You should be prepared for some unpleasantness ahead.’ That’s a bloody understatement, I thought, but just nodded. He asked me about ‘Danielle Johnston’ – Dani, I realised – who was also an Aussie citizen. I told him she was dead but I wasn’t able to provide much more detail, he’d have to ask Annie. I had not even known her second name.

  ‘What about Annie? Is she okay?’ I asked quickly.

  ‘One of my consular counterparts from the British Embassy is here to assist Mrs Greenwood. I’m afraid I don’t know anything more about her situation.’

  It was strange to hear Annie called by her married name. It sounded so alien. Hennessy went on to ask me how I was being treated. ‘Like shit,’ I told him.

  He explained the ways he could help me and then continued, ‘Normally it would be several days before we even heard about your internment at national police HQ. But the authorities here are anxious that a celebrity such as yourself is seen to be treated appropriately.’

  ‘Does that mean I can get out on bail?’

  ‘That will probably require a lawyer to sort out. They may charge you and Mrs Greenwood with drug smuggling offences. There could be very heavy penalties involved. And I think they will milk the publicity that your celebrity status will engender to the full.’

  ‘Look, for what it’s worth, we haven’t done anything illegal,’ I lied glibly. And I gave him the same edited version of the story I had already provided to ‘Inspector Hah’. Hennessy looked amazed.

  ‘Good lord, that’s incredible. Sounds like you two have been through the mill.’

  ‘Too bloody right! On top of that I have had hardly any sleep since they brought me here and I’m actually getting a bit pissed off,’ I said. ‘We are the victims here. The police should be hunting for those pirate bastards. So can you please find me the best bloody lawyer in Jakarta? I’d like to get things moving as soon as possible. And I’d like him or her to represent Annie also.’

  Hennessy pursed his thin lips and pushed his specs up the bridge of his nose. ‘I’m not sure it would be in either of your interests to have the same lawyer. Given the seriousness of your respective positions.’

  ‘Very well, mate, find me two bloody lawyers then.’

  68

  TIME STOOD still. With no watch and no windows in either my cell or the interview room I had little idea of whether it was day or night, far less what actual time it was. Any hopes that I entertained of a slick lawyer rolling up with some clever legal device to have me and Annie set free gradually evaporated. Meanwhile, I alternated between fending off the hostile blokes in the fetid cell and the equally hostile blokes grilling me in the interview room.

  My cellmates were growing bolder. I knew they were talking about me. They continually appraised me with hard, calculating eyes. They want to either bash or bugger me, I thought with despair. Probably both. One of the men, who the others seemed to defer to, looked similar to the one I had killed on The Scoop – big and ugly with horrible facial scars and a monobrow like a giant hairy caterpillar. Unlike me, the other men in the cell were wearing just shorts and T-shirts. Bare, dirty feet. Unshaven, they stank of sweat and piss and shit. But then, I suddenly thought, you don’t smell so good yourself. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d washed.

  Later, it must have been night-time, the man with the facial scars got up and picked his way through the other bodies on the floor over to my tight little corner. In the dim light, his skin had the colour and consistency of biltong. Unable to stretch my legs out, I sat with my knees up, arms clasped around my legs. Scarface grinned malevolently at me and proceeded to urinate in the bucket, his dick in his left hand. But then he turned slightly and the trickle splashed my bare feet and calves. What the bloody hell? I jumped up ready to hit the bastard when he grinned again and showed me his right hand. In it was a short, cruel-looking blade. Despite being a few inches taller than him, I backed up against the wall, hands out, palms up. He pointed the shiv at my stomach and made a vertical ripping motion.

  ‘Okay, mate. Take it easy.’ Jeez, this was getting a bit bloody scary.

  ‘Dollah?’ he said. ‘You have dollah? Sigret?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. No dollars.’ And I put two fingers to my mouth and waggled them to indicate I did not smoke.

  ‘Ngehek!’ Scarface shouted and thrust the flat side of the blade against my shoulder wound. Shit! Fuck! I screamed, and shrank further against the wall.

  Just then, there was a rap on the cell bars and I saw a guard with a short stick standing with his back against the electric light. He looked at my attacker and slowly shook his head. The thug palmed the blade and turned away from me. I sat back down in my corner, the dressing on my wound wet with fresh blood. I knew I had to do something or the cell walls would soon be redecorated . . . with my guts.

  Hennessy returned late the next morning. He had a smile on his face. ‘Good news,’ he said immediately. ‘It seems the police found fingerprints on the pirate cases that match those of an ex-prisoner. A very dangerous man apparently. It gives your story a lot more credence. Plus, the blueprints were indeed detailed plans for future hijack operations. Inspector Waseso is very happy.’

  That was good news indeed but I had other, more pressing problems. I told Hennessy about the difficulties I was facing in my cell. Hennessy nodded. ‘I’ll talk to the senior guy here and try to get you moved.’ He scribbled something in a small notebook. ‘Is there anything else I can do to help?’

  ‘Do you smoke?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  I explained that some cigarettes might keep my cellmates from gutting me in the meantime.

  ‘Sorry, I gave up years ago. Why don’t I give you some cash and perhaps that will put them off for the moment. Hopefully we can get you out of here soon.’

  I took all the cash he had in his wallet – 500,000 rupiah, or about fifty Australian dollars. Hardly a fortune given my life was at stake but it would have to do for now. He asked me to sign a receipt. Bloody bureaucrats!

  ‘One more thing,’ I said. ‘Can you get a message to Annie from me?’

  ‘Possibly. Apparently she is not doing so well but the British Embassy has sent one of their best people – Stuart Wooldridge – to help her. I know him well, he’ll do his utmost to look after her. I could ask him to pass something on, if you like.’

  ‘Ask him to tell her that . . . that I’m thinking of her. And that I’m looking forward to our lunch at Omeros on the Beach.’

  Hennessy gave me a quizzical look but made another note.

  ‘Wooldridge will probably want to talk to you as well.’

  ‘No worries.’ I had a lot to tell this Wooldridge character about Annie’s trials and tribulations. As Hennessy got up to leave, I had a sudden thought.

  ‘Anything else going on out in the real world? I have not been near a paper or the internet for weeks.’

  He gave a little cough.

  ‘I am afraid that you are the big story right now. Your erstwhile colleagues are already onto the story. About you. And Mrs Gr
eenwood. In fact, there’s a bit of media frenzy going on.’ He coughed again. ‘You know the sort of thing – Oscar-winner in drugs bust. Twitter and Facebook are already full of it.’

  I groaned. Bloody journalists.

  ‘Look,’ said Hennessy, ‘there’s an upside. It reinforces your celebrity status and puts more pressure on the police to sort things out quickly.’

  I was not entirely convinced by that argument but thanked him anyway and went nervously back to my stinking cell, my hand gripping the banknotes in my pocket.

  69

  NOT LONG after Hennessy’s visit, I reached the end of my tether. My cellmates had been giving me the evil eye all afternoon. Their leader had been unimpressed by my fifty-dollar contribution to his personal charity. At lunchtime, he stole the meagre meal that the guards had brought me. Later, as I squatted in my miserable corner, Scarface and his mates joked and laughed among themselves, pointing in my direction constantly and making stabbing gestures. Then the bastards took turns to come over to the bucket and try to piss over me, while their compadres laughed. I kept trying to shift a few inches away but my friend with the knife would wave it in my direction. Don’t move. Eventually, exhaustion took over and I must have fallen asleep. I dreamt that I was sitting on the beach at Rehab Island with my toes in the shallows; when I woke up, the bucket was overflowing and I was sitting in a putrid puddle.

  Filthy, exhausted, hungry and scared, I was trying desperately to think of a way to wrest the knife from my tormentor-in-chief, when ‘Inspector Hah’ arrived. His nose wrinkled when he saw my sordid state, but he smiled brightly.

  ‘You go now, Mr Bligh, hah?’ he said abruptly. ‘We no believe you drug runner. You free, hah?’ And with that he stood to one side of the cell door and gestured for me to leave, a smile on his face. Though mystified, and a little afraid it was some sort of trick, I didn’t need any second bidding. Without even a backward look at my former cellmates, I got up and followed Inspector Hah through various corridors and up in a lift until we finally reached what I assumed was his office.

  ‘What about Annie? I mean, Mrs Greenwood?’

  ‘Hah! She go too.’

  Thank God! My spirits soared even higher.

  They gave me back my watch but not my passport. They gave me my clothes but didn’t let me have a shower. I was told not to leave town and to be available for more questioning in the next few days, yada yada yada. Waseso shook my hand and handed me over to a cop in uniform. Hennessy appeared.

  ‘What day is it?’ I asked him.

  ‘It is New Year’s Eve,’ he said with a smile.

  Part of me had a million questions. I wanted to know what had prompted this sudden turn of events. What had persuaded the authorities that we were not, after all, major international drug dealers and all-round bad guys? But the bigger part of me was desperate to see Annie, have a steak and a shower – in that order – so I let it be.

  But while we were standing in a yard outside the police HQ, waiting for Annie to appear, Hennessy revealed that the fingerprints on the three cases and their contents belonged to a scumbag called Bambam Budiman, a gangster who had done time for violence and robbery.

  ‘He’s also known as “BangBang” . . . for reasons that will already be apparent to you,’ he added.

  I assumed this was the stocky guy who had been the pirate leader. After the fingerprints had been identified, the police had received a grainy mugshot from the prison authorities. Their own intelligence linked him to the maritime mafia and they were now treating him as the prime suspect in the deaths of Annie’s husband and friends. The clincher came, however, when a group of American surfers had reported spotting a sunken boat off the island of Sembilan. It was the Lady Vesper.

  ‘You will be pleased to hear that the Indonesian police now believe the testimony provided by you and Annie,’ Hennessy added. ‘That is why they decided to let you go – at least for the time being.’ Then he looked at me with obvious distaste and sniffed. ‘Now sir, I suggest you might want to have a shower and a change of clothes as soon as possible.’

  70

  ANNIE FINALLY arrived through a side entrance. We stood together under a concrete portico. It had been more than forty-eight hours since we’d last seen each other. Annie smiled wearily. She smelled a lot nicer than I did. We hugged and, despite the hardship of the last couple of days, I felt ready to take on the world again.

  A police media person had come out with her. He warned us that a posse of my fellow hacks, photographers and TV people were lying in wait at the main door to the building. Sure enough, as we walked through the barrier, escorted by Hennessy and the balding British official, Stuart Wooldridge, a baying pack of reporters and cameramen ran around the corner and pounced on us.

  Annie recoiled in alarm as TV camera lights ignited and still cameras flashed in the swampy gloom of an overhead wall light. She was wearing a thin cotton dress provided by Wooldridge, at very little taxpayer expense by the look of it. She appeared wan and weary but I still thought she looked terrific. Wooldridge must have brought her some toiletries: it was the first time I’d seen her with a hint of lipstick.

  ‘Can’t we just make a run for it?’ she asked.

  Tempting as it was, I said, ‘No, it would be better to get it over with now. Otherwise they’ll hound us all night. I know how to handle them. We’ll give ’em a couple of soundbites and they’ll be happy as a pig in poo.’

  I recognised a few of the reporters and snappers, mainly ex-pat stringers for Aussie and British papers, but I didn’t know any of the local pack, particularly the TV people. They half surrounded us in a rough semi-circle, already firing questions from different directions.

  Although bone tired and smelling like a dead possum, I took a hold of Annie’s arm and fronted up to the cameras. I put my other hand up to signal silence and told them I’d be making a brief statement but that we would not be taking any questions for the moment. ‘We’ll hold another press conference tomorrow,’ I said, ‘when we’ve both had a chance to rest and clean up.’

  The police had already produced a press release with a brief outline of what had happened but the hacks lapped up my first-person summary of the sensational saga: how Annie had been attacked and kidnapped by pirates, her husband and friends brutally murdered and their boat sunk. I skipped any details of the terrifying ordeal both women had suffered on the island but told them how Annie and I had escaped by the skin of our teeth in The Scoop while dodging pirate bullets. It sounded sensational, even to me. When I finished, they started shouting more questions, mostly directed at Annie. I held up my hand again and said: ‘That’s it. See you tomorrow, guys.’

  Then I took Annie’s hand and we started to move away. But the pack was still looking for more blood, it seemed. A woman thrust a radio mic in my face: ‘Is it true that Mrs Greenwood was sexually assaulted by her abductors?’ Disgusted, I pushed her away and we started walking faster. I could see that Annie was shocked by the intrusion and seemed as if she was about to faint. I held onto her more firmly and shouted to Hennessy: ‘Where’s the car?’ He shepherded us towards a corner where two dark, medium-sized sedans waited, exhausts fuming nearly as much as I was. Another question sailed over my shoulder: ‘Did you have drugs on board your boat, Jonno?’

  Ah shit. Journalists, don’t you just love them?

  71

  HENNESSY, GOD bless him, had booked two adjoining rooms for us at the Ritz Carlton in the south of the city. It was about fifteen minutes drive away, close to both embassies. I asked him if he knew what had happened to The Scoop.

  ‘As far as I know, your boat was towed in to the port yesterday. The police will still be going over it with a magnifying glass, no doubt. I’ll check it out tomorrow morning and let you know.’

  I asked him to also check if there was a cat on board. If so, could he have it fed? He looked a little surprised at the request but took a note.

  Not surprisingly, Annie and I were both feeling dead on our feet, totall
y flat after all the recent drama. Nevertheless I was keen to know every detail of how she had been treated in detention and what she had told the police. But when we got up to our floor she said she wanted to call her parents and then go straight to bed.

  We stood at my door: ‘Is it really all over, Jonno?’ she said.

  ‘I dunno. Maybe it’s the beginning of the end, or the middle of the beginning or the end of the middle. I’m too damned tired to think straight.’

  She stood on tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Thank God we’re out of that prison shithole. Mind you, I don’t know which was worse, the jail or the journalists. Good night, Jonno. See you in the morning.’

  I watched as she went to the door next to mine, swiped her card and entered the room without a backward glance.

  Once inside my room, I picked up the phone and immediately ordered a 300 gram Wagyu ribeye and a shitload of fries to be sent up. I switched on the television and a picture of Annie and I immediately appeared; I quickly turned the sound off and went for a long, luxurious shower. I smeared myself with every soap and lotion I could find. After drying myself, I felt cold for the first time in a long time because of the aircon and put on one of the hotel’s fluffy white dressing-gowns complete with gold monogram. I thought about going down to the business centre to check my emails. Nah, there’s only grief there, I thought, and retrieved a cold Bintang from the minibar instead. I downed it in one and burped happily. Bliss.

  There was a knock on the door; must be my steak, I thought. But when I opened it, there was a much better surprise. Annie was standing there in a similar white dressing-gown. ‘Snap,’ I said.

  ‘Happy New Year, Jonno,’ she said, holding up a half bottle of champagne. ‘Can I come in?’

  Annie looked about ten years younger. My heart tightened when I thought back to the first time I’d seen her – on the beach, buried up to her neck in the sand. Then she had looked less than human. Now there was no trace of cuts and bruises. Her skin glowed; her thick, glossy russet hair, still a little damp from her bath, was brushed straight back off her forehead. She had put on a minimum of makeup. As she brushed by me into the room, there was a sweet waft of expensive soap and shampoo. I must smell like that too, I mused; a bit nicer than the eau de shit I was wearing earlier.