Winner Kills All

by RJ Bailey

  ‘There’s no good and bad.’

  ‘Sam, really? You’d do that to a fellow human being?’

  Hell, yes. To get my daughter back safe? To put Bojan back in the box where he belongs?

  I’d do that. And much more.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The next day went slowly. I kept myself busy setting up communications with Freddie and, in a secluded part of the villa compound, tinkering with Kadek’s car.

  I hadn’t bought it. I had just agreed to pay for any damage, which he seemed happy with. I would, of course, compensate him for the inconvenience, too. Luckily, there was still a DIY ethos to car repairs on the island, and his boot contained a full socket set and spanners. I supplied the gaffer tape I needed from my RTG kit.

  I also armed myself with the knife he had bought for me; a version of the local kris, with a wicked, curved blade. This was not one of those ceremonial daggers, imbued with mystical powers, dense with symbolic engravings.

  It was a fighting weapon, pure and simple.

  I sent Kadek back to Bacang to score some drugs, figuring he would get a better deal than me. And he was less likely to end up in Kerobokan prison, which had an unhealthy percentage of Westerners doing time for drug offences. As little as one gram of crystal meth could get you an extended stay there. And you’d better hope you had relatives who could pay to keep you safe.

  Kadek reported back that there was no sign of Bojan, but the word was he had hired himself a posse of anak merdeka: street toughs. Kadek explained that these were originally harmless anarchists who had become disaffected outsiders after a crackdown on their subculture by Jakarta. Now, they acted as enforcers and couriers for the gangs that ran places such as Bacang.

  By mid-afternoon, we were as ready as we’d ever be and I was sweaty and dirty. I sent Kadek off to put some false plates on his car, just in case there was anyone with a smartphone – highly likely in Bali – who might take snaps of us. I needed to protect him, even if his uncle was Lord Krishna.

  I drank a litre of water, showered and tried to sleep. But sleep came fitfully and I jerked awake every five minutes, dragged up by yet another spectral image of Jess, sometimes happy and larking, sometimes . . .

  I opened the minibar and slammed it shut again. That really wouldn’t help.

  I got dressed – black-on-black – and sat waiting for Kadek, wondering how time was managing to drag its heels quite so much. As the shadows lengthened, I opened the doors, turned off the air conditioning and listened to the scratch orchestra of insects, birds and amphibians outside.

  My new phone rang. Only Freddie and Kadek had the number, but even so I was apprehensive as I put it to my ear. It was Kadek. ‘OK, the site is all sorted.’

  This was the location where, according to Freddie, I would be losing my shit.

  Someone would be in all likelihood.

  But it wouldn’t be me.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Absolutely. And the target is in place,’ he said, before adding, ‘Over.’

  I ignored that dramatic flourish. ‘You’ve checked? Were you seen?’

  ‘I did a walk-by,’ he said. ‘Plus I have someone in place to pick up the pieces.’

  ‘Well done.’ This kid was earning his money, even if he did seem to think he was in a heist movie. ‘I need a couple of other things: a baby’s feeding bottle or drinking cup, some nylon rope, three battery-powered lamps and some cigarettes.’

  ‘What kind of cigarettes? Gudang Garam?’

  ‘Don’t care.’ I wouldn’t be smoking them. Well, not much. Just in case I added: ‘Something mild that won’t rip my throat out. Not clove.’ I thought the popping and crackling kretek cigarettes smelled like a spice rack on fire.

  ‘OK. I’ll be there in thirty minutes, Ibu. I’ll bring food.’

  ‘I’m not hun—’

  But he’d gone.

  *

  The food was a good idea. Not only would I need all the energy I could get, it helped pass the time until dusk thickened and the sky turned to a star-studded black.

  ‘This is delicious,’ I said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Lawar babi,’ he said, scooping up the mixture with bread.

  ‘And that is . . .?’

  ‘Vegetables, local herbs, some coconut, minced meat and . . .’ He stuffed a parcel into his mouth, crunching down on the vegetables.

  I waited. ‘And?’

  ‘Blood,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Blood?’

  ‘Yes. Pork or chicken. The recipe changes from village to village, but all have blood. This one chicken blood.’ He gave a mischievous grin. ‘What, you don’t like now?’

  ‘No, I still like.’ I put the thought of drained poultry out of my head, cleared the plate and drank a tumbler of green tea.

  ‘Make you strong. The blood.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You know in Bali, we sacrifice animals a lot. When my sister opened restaurant in Denpasar, priests conducted a ceremony. They killed a dog and buried it out front. Then a pig was roasted, worshipped and buried. A hundred chickens were killed and buried in the building too.’

  ‘Sounds expensive.’

  He made a little screeching sound. ‘Ayyyy. It was. But it kept the demons away. My sister, she makes another sacrifice every fifteen days, to Durga, the goddess. The demons stay away.’

  I stood up. I wasn’t sure whether he believed all this or if he was just relaying local superstitions as if I were a regular tourist.

  But I wasn’t.

  That night, I would be the demon that people had to worry about. And no dead chicken was going to stop me.

  We were a few hundred metres from the Blue Turtle when Kadek’s phone rang. He barked something into it and turned to me in the rear seat. ‘Still in place.’

  ‘Ready when you are.’

  ‘Five. One. Six. Seven. Two.’

  ‘Is that a Balinese countdown?’ I asked as I hunkered down.

  ‘No. The Fast and the Furious movies in order of best.’ He turned again and shot me a big grin. ‘I love Vin Diesel.’

  With that, he slapped on a baseball cap, pulled it low over his eyes and slid on a pair of Ray-Ban Aviators. After a quick check in the mirror, he pressed the accelerator and we began our run-up to the strip of bars just behind the beach.

  It was tight. We brushed the outside tables and chairs of restaurants with our wing mirrors and startled pedestrians jumped out of the way. Kadek beeped at a group of backpackers, a couple of whom gave him the finger as they stepped aside. The Toyota’s engine whined as he gave it more gas.

  Not quite The Fast and the Furious – or at least, not the first part of the title – but it would have to do.

  Now people were turning and leaping out of our path, most with what-the-fuck expressions across their startled faces. With some, I glimpsed the fear in their eyes and I realised what they were thinking.

  Terror attack.

  Vans and cars had become motorised weapons in Nice, Barcelona, London, New York . . . and now Jimbaran Bay. Well, it was too late to reassure them that, rather than jihadis, this vehicle contained one very pissed-off mother.

  I snatched the kris from the rear seat pocket and sliced through most of the gaffer tape that was holding the rear door on. I had undone the hinge bolts earlier in the day and removed the lock.

  ‘Now!’ yelled Kadek.

  I braced myself, raised my knees to my chest and straightened my legs with all the explosive force I could muster after a meal of chicken blood. The door hung for a second on a fibrous thread and then split away, rolling behind us. I didn’t turn to look, but I knew Kadek had arranged its retrieval.

  I could see a cavalcade of horrified faces flashing by the aperture left in the side of the Toyota.

  ‘We’re here.’

  The car juddered and swerved as it hit part of the bar next door to the Blue Turtle, but Kadek regained control.

  Now we were really close to the customers. I could have snatched th
eir drinks had I wanted to. But it wasn’t drinks I was after.

  I crouched in the open doorway as we reached the Blue Turtle, and there she was, eyes wide, mouth open, still on her stool.

  Aja.

  I reached out, grabbed her and pulled her feather-light body in on top of me. As Kadek burst onto the beach, tyres slipping as they hunted for grip, I felt Aja’s teeth sink into my arm.

  It hurt. I hit her twice and, as soon as she went limp, jammed the syringe full of sedative into her arse.

  By then, Kadek had managed to find some traction for the wheels and fishtailed us between some of the painted boats, taking paint from both car and hulls as we pushed on into the night.

  I pulled Aja onto the seat next to me. She tried to fight, but already her limbs were like rubber, her head too heavy for her neck, her eyes rolling.

  They say you can get anything on the black market. I had sent Kadek to score high-quality Demerol, an opioid, and Promethazine, an antihistamine. I had mixed them together to produce a fast-working intramuscular neuroleptic.

  It was risky – to Aja, not me – but I was pretty sure I had the dose right.

  Although, I hadn’t expected her to go out quite so quickly. Still, I had a nasal atomiser of naloxone in case it all went tits up, as well as an injectable solution of the anti-opioid.

  But all she had to do was keep breathing and we’d be OK.

  Well, if she played ball.

  With a sudden swerve, Kadek got us off the tarmac road and we bounced onto an old bullock track, throwing Aja around like a rag doll.

  I looked back towards the fading lights of the bars and restaurants. Nobody seemed to be following.

  The wind whipped past the space left by the missing door, the frogs and crickets so loud they seemed to be in the back seat with us. I checked my arm where Aja had bitten me. The skin wasn’t broken. I batted away a couple of opportunist mosquitos and tried to relax a little, to regulate my own breathing.

  Stage one of Operation Wadah was complete.

  I had sent Kadek away. I didn’t want him being a witness to this. It would be my fault alone what did and did not happen to Aja.

  Kadek was at the end of the phone for when I needed him. But if this went wrong, I wouldn’t make the call.

  I’d be on my own.

  Aja began to stir. I lit another cigarette and waited while the whining mosquitoes circled the edge of the smoke I was exhaling.

  I was sat on a low stone wall, its surface slippery with moss, in a small, seemingly neglected temple that had seen better days.

  Aja and I were alone.

  Although not completely.

  There were shadows, barely illuminated by the lamps, skittering over the larger structures across the centre courtyard.

  Monkeys.

  Those rapacious, thieving, biting, spitting monkeys that people think are cute. Cute like a mixture of the Krays and Dracula. They were making noises that suggested they weren’t happy I had invaded their turf.

  Fuck ’em. I had the kris next to me, sitting alongside the naloxone. Any of them tried anything, I’d stab them in the eye.

  The night air carried the scent of jasmine and frangipani with undertones of old incense and ashes. Somewhere in the night an insomniac rooster crowed. There had been bats, but now, bellies full and night upon them, they had departed. The battery-powered lamps had attracted a halo of small insects that had survived the feeding frenzy, into which lumbered the occasional handkerchief-sized moth.

  The temple was still used, so Kadek told me, but rarely, as the village it once served had been abandoned. Something to do with devils. Or maybe they all just went bankrupt. But, occasionally, someone rich who had been born in the village decided they would like to be cremated there. Often, several ex-villagers would have to die and be cremated together to make the cost of the ceremony bearable. It might take two or three years before enough people had died and funds were made available. When that finally happened, a many-tiered wadah, a cremation tower, would be built over the dead.

  It was the ashes of one of those I could smell.

  In the old days, the pyres were built out of wood. Now, gas cylinders fed the flames to the bier on which the body lay in its white shroud.

  It was on such a platform that I had used my gaffer tape and rope to tie a spread-eagled Aja, on top of what was effectively a giant grill.

  I was sitting next to the tap that would turn on the gas supply. I was smoking because, as soon as Aja was fully conscious, she would realise it would only take one flick of the cigarette to ignite the flames once I’d switched the valve to open.

  How far would you go to save a loved one?

  This far.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I pushed the mouthpiece of the baby’s drinking cup between Aja’s lips and tipped. ‘It’s just water,’ I promised. Although, why she should believe anything I said was a moot point.

  She swallowed, gulping the contents down. I knew the drugs would have made a sandpit of her mouth. Her head would be thumping, too. As she drank, her eyes widened and narrowed, trying to put me into focus.

  I wondered what she was seeing. The devil, I hoped.

  I stepped away and she spoke, but it was long and incoherent. ‘English,’ I said.

  She tried English, but it wasn’t much clearer. I sat back down on the wall and waited a few minutes.

  ‘Whatthefuckyoudoin’?’

  I got that.

  I took a breath. Mainly to stifle the voice in my head telling me I had crossed the line with this poor girl. Crossed? I’d leapt over it like I was Jessica Ennis-Hill.

  ‘You know, your pal Bojan, the guy you suckered me into going to see, he said an interesting thing. He said we were members of the same club. The Suffer Club. Membership reassuringly painful. Well, I guess you’ve just been nominated to join.’

  ‘WheeramI? Lemmego . . . let me go, you mad bitch.’

  ‘You, my dear Aja, are tied to a funeral pyre. Underneath you are about fifty gas nozzles. Controlled from here – oh, you can’t see. Anyway, trust me, I have a handle that opens the valve. I can’t believe how much you people spend on funerals. Are you Balinese?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Malay.’

  ‘Malay? You’re a long way from home. You probably don’t believe in this shit, do you? Ah well, we aren’t going to run it according to strict Hindu principles anyway. No priest. No offering. No widow to throw herself on the pyre.’ Although, I was pretty certain the last tradition had died out, on Bali at least.

  ‘What do you want?’ The words were clearer now her anger was driving out the fear. For now.

  ‘What do I want?’ I took a drag on the cigarette. It was hot and coarse on the back of my throat. Kadek had a strange concept of mild. No wonder they came in packets of just twelve; twenty and you’d have a voice like Clint Eastwood. ‘I want Jess.’

  ‘Jess? She not here.’ Panicky once more, she began to twist and turn.

  ‘I know that. And keep still. You’ll only hurt yourself.’

  She gave a bark that might have been a laugh. ‘You worry about me hurting when you put me on here? And say you going to burn me alive? You fuckin’ mad, lady.’

  Point well made. ‘Well, I might not. Burn you alive, I mean. Depends how our little chat goes.’

  She mumbled to herself in her own language and then began to sob.

  ‘Where’s Jess?’ I asked, unmoved.

  She sniffed. ‘I told you. Not here. Not Bali.’

  ‘So where did Matt take her?’

  ‘I don’t know! Why not ask Dieter?’

  Apart from the fact he’s a crooked bastard who wouldn’t know the truth if you rolled it up and rammed it down his lying throat? ‘Because I don’t think he knows. If he did, he would have gone after his cash. I don’t think Bojan knows either. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be keeping up this charade. But I know Jess.’

  Knew, a voice inside me admonished. You have no idea what she is like as a person now. I ignored it
.

  ‘She would want a friend. A woman. I bet she liked you. Bet she thought you were her friend. My guess is you know more than you’re letting on.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you did get to know her.’ It wasn’t a question.

  ‘We went out on boat. Had a good time. But then Dieter . . .’ She began to cry again, mewing like a deranged cat this time. I stifled the stab of pity I felt for her.

  ‘Dieter, what?’

  ‘He was mad at Matt. He tried, you know . . .’ The next part came out in a rush. ‘He tried to fuck your girl.’

  Breathe. Stay calm. It’s Dieter who should be up there then. But my reasoning remained sound: Jess was more likely to have confided in Aja than Dieter about where she and Matt might be heading.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Matt beat him up. Beat him up bad.’

  ‘Matt did?’ I asked. ‘Matt beat up Dieter?’

  ‘Yes. Matt was mad. Dieter was drunk, stoned. Matt beat him up and then he knew Dieter would kill him so he left. With some of Dieter’s money. But not as much as Dieter says. Dieter liar.’ That wasn’t a hold-the-front-page statement.

  ‘Where to? Where did Matt go?’

  ‘I DON’T KNOW! Let me go . . . I don’t know.’

  So, Matt had taken Jess to protect her from Dieter. And had actually worked the little street rodent over. Well, good for him, the fucker. One tick in the positive column. There were so many crosses in the negative, though. So many.

  I lit another cigarette while I worked on getting my heart rate under control. Damn thing was fluttering in my chest. Probably not as much as Aja’s, mind.

  ‘And you have no idea where they went?’

  ‘I tell you over and over. No idea. Let me go. I tell you everything.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I did tell you. All.’ More mewing. ‘I know nothing more. Please. I won’t go to police about this . . .’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you will. One more chance.’

  ‘I don’t know any more. And if I did, Dieter would kill me if I told you.’

  That was an odd logic. But panic isn’t the best mechanism for clarity of thought. ‘I’ll kill you if you don’t.’