The Bone Ritual

Book 0: The Bone Ritual

by Julian Lees

Genres: International Crime & Mystery; Suspense

Synopsis

'Lees' strikingly descriptive writing transports you directly to the streets of Jakarta... this will make you want to book a flight right now' Independent Taut and suspenseful, The Bone Ritual is the first in a crime series set in contemporary Jakarta Inspektur Ruud Pujasumarta has seen some gang-perpetrated horror crimes in his time, but the slum murder of a middle-aged woman he is called to is both horrifying and baffling. Mari Agnes Liem has not only been choked to death while tied to her bed, but the murderer has amputated her left hand and left a mah jong tile in her throat. And he has taken the hand with him. The only bright spot on Ruud's horizon is the imminent arrival of Imke Sneijder from Amsterdam, whom he hasn't seen for fifteen years, when they were both twelve-year-old neighbours before her family moved back to Holland. As Ruud and his department investigate Mari's murder, it isn't long before they have more than one corpse on their hands . . . and a serial killer to catch. And Ruud begins to realise that the current murderous spree may be linked to events which occured fifteen years ago, at about the time Imke left Indonesia . . . 'Julian Lees' lush use of language conjures up the extravagant and the seedy sides of life in modern Jakarta and transports the reader to its steamy slums and palaces, ratcheting up the tension through myriad false trails, keeping the reader enthralled right up until the denouement' Crime Fiction Fix

Release date: October 6, 2016

Publisher: Constable

Print pages: 384

Sample

A wild snarl of nightmare shapes shifted in the blackness. The house with the slanting roof stood at the edge of the kampung, a village on the outskirts of an industrial town, shrouded by thick, dark folds of kepuh trees. Isolated in the mouth of the valley, it mouldered like a cracked tooth, the tin-and-wood construction glimmering in the enamelled moonlight. To reach the house, one took a dirt road that snaked through the cassava fields and bamboo groves. It was close enough to be seen by its neighbours but far enough away for them to close their minds to the nightly goings-on.

An hour before Fajr prayers, before first light, the rooster caught the first scream; a child’s cry of fright and pain that shrieked through the kepuh trees. A door banged. Footsteps echoed down a corridor. A little boy curled his body up tight like a centipede. A minute later the scream came again, more terrified than the last. ‘Stop! Tidak! No!’ Individual yelps. Broken-off sentences. ‘Stop! Henti! Tidak!’

The village cats tilted their heads at the noise, and switched from staring at the nesting birds to staring at the house with the slanting roof. The child’s sobs fell away. Beyond the cassava fields, Javanese fruit bats took flight in the breeze, mimicking the swirl of fallen frangipani that snagged on the damp ground.

As the bamboo grove clicked and clacked, the forest grew quiet. Stilled by an intake of breath.

And then the final wail came, this time muffled by a pillow or a hand. It tore across the kampung. As it reached the ears of the village chief, he scrunched up his face and groaned. Barebacked from the heat, he turned in his wicker cot, exposing his spine to the mosquitoes. He wondered whether he should intervene and stretched his hand out to consult his isteri. But his wife had already climbed from the cot to make tapioca cake for his breakfast.

‘Tidak lagi!’ he complained, smearing the sleep from his eyes.

‘I thought you were never going to wake up.’

‘I am going to put an end to this noise once and for all. Every night he is whining like a whipped dog.’

‘You should mind your own business, mah.’ The voice from the wet kitchen was harsh and insistent. In the grainy darkness his wife’s shadow looked huge.

‘I am the lurah, the headman, I should make my approach.’

‘Why, ah, so this woman can turn your life to dust?’

‘It is my duty, meh?’ He swung his legs from the cot. He had big, scarred feet from working the plantations for sixty years.

‘Duty, bodoh! Kamu dodol! Your head is full of coconut fudge.’

‘What. You think I cannot be firm and schoolmasterly, is it? Let me gather the council together this afternoon.’ As he got up, a stray chicken darted over from its coop and pecked at his toes. The lurah approached the window and gazed at the house in the far distance, at the tilting clothes-line pole that resembled an upright corpse. He made a mental note to tuck his good luck charm – a hornbill feather – into his sarong. ‘I will gather them,’ he repeated softly.

‘All you will gather is frightened looks,’ she said, trying not to sound panicked.

‘You’ll see.’ The old man played with the rabbit antennae of the family’s Sanyo television.

‘See my foot.’

And the lurah’s wife was right. The people of the kampung refused to listen to him. They insisted they would never approach the slanted house and claimed the woman who lived there was penyihir. They insisted she was a Chinese witch and smelled of bitter herbs. Some of them even believed that she ate the fleshy parts of homeless young children.

After speaking with the council, the village chief returned home brooding. He took a swig of arak from his secret stash and fell asleep in his cot. His wife found him with his hands gripped to his throat. She had to prise his fingers apart with a wooden satay skewer. He never woke up.

The drive to Schiphol airport took the Sneijders past cheese markets and café terraces and restaurants advertising ‘authentiek nasi goreng’. It was a Sunday morning. The city rang with bicycle bells, church bells and streetcar bells. The air smelled faintly of almonds and batter-fried appelbeignets.

Imke sat in the back seat with her arms wrapped around Kiki. She felt anxious.

She had never enjoyed flying.

As the taxi skirted the Hortus Botanicus, she experienced a strong inner stirring, as if something were germinating inside her. She could sense it propagating in her chest, hot and round, about the size of a match head. ‘Every time I think about the trip I get this odd sort of heartburn,’ she said as she peered from the taxi window.

She saw workmen with newspapers in their back pockets drinking coffee in the sun. Sailors, fresh from the boats, wearing salt on their faces, strolled towards De Wallen with socks full of money.

‘But how exciting to be flying in a private jet,’ gushed Erica. ‘You have the documentation, don’t you?’

‘Yes, in my bag.’ Imke dug them out and handed the envelope to her Aunt Erica and kept her eyes on the road. Rows of eclectic buildings slouched toward the Prinsen-gracht canal. She watched the tiny houses flash by and wondered whether it was just Amsterdam homes that had spionnetje – tilted mirrors attached to windowsills that allowed residents to spy on passers-by. It wouldn’t have surprised her. She’d always considered Amsterdammers the nosiest people on the planet.

Turning her head, she asked her aunt what she was reading.

Aunt Erica moistened a thumb with her lips and flipped a page on their itinerary. ‘We have a refuelling stop in India where we are scheduled to pick up the Indonesian foreign minister who is there on bilateral talks. It means we’re forced to stay overnight in Kolkata. Goede God above. There’s no telling what kind of diseases we’ll be exposed to there.’

‘I’m sure the accommodation will be very comfortable, Aunty Ecks. India is very advanced these days, hè?’

‘Hole-in-the-ground squat toilets, no doubt. And the beds! What’ll be on the beds? Blankets woven from some sort of fabric resembling matted nostril hairs, I bet.’

‘We don’t have to go, you know.’

‘Don’t go? Are you mad? This is the pinnacle of my career. The President himself selected me. He could have gone for Veltman, or van Aerle, or Frans Koppelaar, but he didn’t.’ There was a pause. ‘The fact that van Aerle is blind with syphilis might have swayed him of course, but that’s another matter altogether.’

Imke handed Erica her iPhone. ‘Travel information on Kolkata. See? It’s a modern city.’

Aunty Erica scrolled through several pages. ‘Oh heavens, no. No, no, no!’

‘What is it now?’

‘Says here the airport in Kolkata used to be called Dum Dum Airport. Hardly fills you with confidence, does it? Flight 64, this is Dum Dum air traffic control.’ She sighed. ‘I wonder if I can buy life insurance before flying.’

The match head flared again in Imke’s chest. It had been like this for several weeks now, ever since her aunt received the invitation from Indonesia, the letter embossed with the President’s gold seal. ‘Do you think Yudhoyono will sit for you? Or just give you a photograph to copy?’

‘Copy? I don’t copy. Forgers copy. Parrots copy. Copycats copy. Really, I mean, how could you even suggest such a thing?’ She rolled her eyes and glanced at the water. ‘Oh look!’ She pointed towards the canal belt. ‘What on earth . . .?’

Imke saw a crush of people. They were screaming and shouting, swelling the shores and bridges – a tidal swarm of banners and placards. Police wielding rubber batons held them back. A woman jumped from the embankment into the water and began swimming towards a police boat.

The cab driver shook his head at the chaos. ‘Muslims,’ he grumbled. ‘They all go crazy when a new law is proposed.’

‘What law is this?’ asked Erica.

‘The government wants to abandon the multiculturalism model. They’ve proposed a new integration bill banning Islamic burqas and outlawing forced marriages.’

Imke watched the boat pass under Magere Brug. The men gathered on the bridge went mad, tearing at their clothes and thrusting signs reading, ‘Muslim women eat herring as well!’ into the air.

‘Well, that breaks my wooden clogs!’ exclaimed Erica. ‘What is the world coming to?’

‘I think they should be allowed to wear hijabs if they want to, hè?’ argued Imke.

Stupefied, Erica Sneijder fluttered her eyelashes.’ What on earth’s a hijab?’

‘For a recipient of the Prince of Orange Art Medal you’re not very attuned to current affairs, are you?’

Erica fished a magazine from her holdall. It was an issue of Time. The cover featured an image of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. ‘See? I keep up to date.’

Imke rolled her eyes. ‘That issue’s from two thousand and eight.’

The taxi headed out of the Museum Quarter. Dog-walkers stopped to chat to one another in Vondelpark. Kiki barked at a pair of muzzled Alsatians. Her tail thrashed between the two women.

‘I cannot believe you are forcing this poor animal to come with us.’

‘I’m on a six-week sabbatical. Mama’s allergic to dog hair,’ said Imke, ‘and I’m not going to leave her here with strangers, am I?’

Erica jutted her bottom lip and huffed. ‘If you had a husband you could leave her with him.’

‘Let’s not start that again. And anyway, look who’s talking!’ In all her years, Imke had never met Erica’s beaus, never heard her talk about her romances, with either a man or a woman.

‘What happened to the bread-bin salesman, the one who used to take you out for rolled pork and brandy-soaked raisins every Tuesday?’ questioned Erica.

‘He sold kitchen equipment and he lived in Eindhoven. He came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth travelling four hours by bus each week just to get inside my pants.’

‘Pity. I could have done with a new bread bin.’

There were certain things that Imke was not cut out to do. A profession in data entry was one. Sharing her life with a man who sold kitchen appliances, Imke strongly suspected, was another. She made a list in her head of her recent sexual conquests and sighed at the thought. Her romantic experiences tended to swing from being depressingly idle to insanely exasperating.

‘Did you send him a pebble?’ wondered Erica.

‘No!’

When Imke decided she liked a person wholeheartedly, she would send them a tiny package containing a carved agate pebble from Indonesia. Erica had received a pebble. Jennifer Lammers from Amstel got one in high school. Danny van Gestel, the first boy she’d kissed, secured one. So too did Piers, her boss at DLHP, and Ellen Jonker, who sold honey and fresh herbs at the Noordermarkt farmers’ market every Saturday.

‘Anyway, give me the lowdown on this policeman friend you know in Jakarta.’

‘His name is Ruud,’ replied Imke. ‘I’ve told you about him. His father was Papa’s friend when we lived over there.’

‘Ugly? Good-looking?’

‘I don’t know! I haven’t seen him since I was twelve. He looks OK from his Facebook photos.’

The taxi driver eyed Imke in the rear-view mirror and smiled.

He drove on, passing Lake Nieuwe Meer. Families picnicked on the grass by the shore. Houseboats drifted alongside as children fed biscuit crumbs to the ducks.

‘I still think it’s unnatural, getting Kiki to fly. Dogs don’t belong in the air.’

‘The Soviets sent a dog into space fifty years ago.’

‘And the Americans sent a chimpanzee. Shall we stop off at the zoo and collect one of them too? It’s unnatural, I tell you.’

‘It’s not unnatural. Besides, Kiki will be travelling in the cabin with us.’

‘Yes, at what cost?’

‘Who cares, I’m not paying. The Indonesian government is footing the bill. Besides, they’ve gone through a lot of trouble for Kiki. She’s been granted a special diplomatic exemption. It means she doesn’t have to be quarantined.’

‘You know why, don’t you? Rare breeds are a delicacy over there. Our host will be picking bits of roasted spaniel from his teeth for weeks.’

‘Don’t listen to her, Kiki. Your Aunty Erica hasn’t turned into Cruella de Vil just yet.’ Imke flicked through the copy of Time. ‘Says here that Yudhoyono was a former army general under Suharto. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly. God knows what he does to artists who make him look ugly.’

‘Probably strings them up by their toes.’ Erica twisted her torso from left to right and back again. ‘Not such a bad idea. This old spine needs a good stretch.’

Thursday. 5.15 p.m.

My brother thinks that a killer has two faces: a public one and a private one. It is a sensible outlook, I suppose, particularly as he doesn’t want to get caught. We all wear masks from time to time. But I worry. I worry that the mask will soon grow so stuck that he will be unable to remove it without tearing the skin from his cheeks.

He lives in a subsidized apartment, built into a maze of narrow alleys and unnamed backstreets. The residents call it kampung susun or vertical village. When he leaves for work in the morning, when he emerges from his home, he becomes colourless. His personality turns opaque. Nothing he wears or does is designed to stand out. He is unnoticeable, the kind of person employers look at but do not see. He becomes a figure of insignificance. Outwardly, he is cheery towards his colleagues, a solid if quiet worker; but inwardly, oh yes, inwardly he is like a pariah dog, always hungry, always ready to hunt, always on the lookout for lame prey.

He scares me. Sih, how he scares me.

Right now it is still daylight. He watches the woman sweeping her doorstep, sweeping the debris into the open drains. He watches her talk to her neighbour, sneering and gesticulating. She has a busy mouth for gossip, this one has. As she talks she chips at everyone and everything, chip-chip-chip like a knife scraping at a block of salt. So and so did this, so and so stole that. Once in a while she strays from her sweeping, peers up and across the papaya trees, into the market square. And though evening is approaching, we have to be careful not to be seen. She might identify us. Her eyes, as bright and clever as a cat’s, might pick us out from the crowd. He waits for her to return indoors, and then he walks round to her back entrance and lifts up the latch. The screen door opens with a creak. And I follow him.

Thick thunder and the approaching scent of rain swells the air. The interior is dim; the day has turned dark quite suddenly. He slips silently into the kitchen and trails his hand across a clothes line, touching a bra strap, a fistful of fleshtoned underwear. His fingers rub against the damp fabric and he slips his tongue into the grooves of the cloth.

He hears a television being switched on. By the window, on a small desk, a fan whirrs. Quietly, he removes the rope from his bag and lets out a slow breath.

Thursday. 5.29 p.m.

Leaning over, at the edge of her bed, he watches her stare up at him. They are like lovers. Their arms touch; his right forearm grazes her left elbow. She wears a fistful of crimson fabric in her mouth. Her nostrils flare then contract, flare then contract. A guttural groan creaks from the base of her chest.

When you subject someone to violence, time moves much more slowly than usual. The same is true when you receive pain. Perhaps it has something to do with the heart rate increasing. They say children’s hearts beat faster than adults’. Is that why children always complain that they are bored, because time moves so slowly for them? I think so. Anyway, iho, it is of my opinion that a fast heart rate equates to time slowing down.

He looks down at the woman by his side. I wonder whether one minute of time feels like five minutes to her now.

I watch as he embraces her throat. One, two, three, four, five. All the fingers of the right hand on her vocal folds. He gives it a squeeze, not a strangler’s rough throttle, no, more a father’s caress. So tender. First he feels the texture of her skin, which is clammy from all that sweeping in the heat, followed by the thrum of her pulse.

Bup-bup-debup. Bup-bup-debup. As expected, it is beating fast. He adds a frisson of pressure. Mostly from the thumb and forefinger. Her pulse increases. The sweat glands offer an additional film of moisture. He tightens a fraction more and studies her eyes. Aduh, so round, how they bulge! Her larynx throbs. The palpitating muscles bring a smile to his face. Eh, now then, what is this, he says to me – a vibration, several vibrations in her throat, tickling the pads of his fingers – is she screaming? Are they her vocal cords singing as she attempts to cry out? She makes the high-pitched sound cars make when they struggle to start. He applies more pressure now on the windpipe. I can see the muscles along his forearm twitch. Fortunately, she is strapped down so there is minimal thrashing about. Her facial muscles strain, her cheeks grow dark, turning from pink to ash.

And then he releases.

She is breathing hard through her nose. Not quite choking, but almost. The crimson mouth gag puffs out her cheeks. Petrified, terror-struck, yet momentarily relieved, her gaze has not wavered from his.

Yes, the learning curve for him is rewardingly steep. But detachment and a careful awareness of his surroundings are paramount.

Strangling someone to death requires a certain amount of discipline.

The same applies to chopping off a hand.

With a theatrical air he rolls up his sleeves and frees her left wrist from its bindings. Like a table magician, he unfurls a red handkerchief and lays it flat on the floor.

And then he shows her the meat cleaver.

Thursday. 5.57 p.m.

Oh, Mother, Mother, Mother! Pinch the right thigh; the left thigh hurts as well. Cubit paha kanan, paha kiri pun sakit juga. You used to call him your little pup. But Mother, if only you could see him now: your little pup has grown fangs.

Ruud Pujasumarta approached on foot. The First Inspektur was sweating already. It was a warm morning; the sun in the sky was the colour of an egg yolk. A uniformed policeman waited at the edge of the slum, next to an abandoned truck with its chassis raised and rusted. Campaign posters were stapled to every available tree. Ruud nodded to the policeman and followed him down a narrow path towards a rustic, single-storey house. Two other officers were at hand, shooing the curious away. A few women, faces covered with sago paste to protect their skin, shook their heads in disbelief. This sort of thing happened in Jakarta’s Tanah Abang district, they sputtered, or in Usmar Ismael’s films, not in their neighbourhood.

‘It is through here, nih,’ urged the policeman. They stepped over a clump of elephant grass to avoid the disused water well.

A rooster, bathing in the dry earth, sprang to attention and scuttled off.

‘What’s your name?’ Ruud asked.

‘Hamka Hamzah. We have worked together before. Two months ago on the infamous laundry-snatcher case. What, you don’t remember me?’

‘Tell me what we have, Hamzah.’

‘One dead woman in her mid-forties. Mari Agnes Liem.

‘She stayed here alone and was not married. But she could have been having illicit relations with a man, living water buffalo style.’

‘What else?’

‘It appears she had her throat strangled and her left hand has been chopped off.’

‘Dismemberment. That’s more of a gang thing.’

The policeman made a ‘who knows?’ face and shrugged his shoulders.

The men removed their shoes at the entrance. They pulled on latex gloves and disposable foot covers. It was a typical two-roomed kampung house. The bedroom, which also served as the living and dining area, was at the front; the kitchen, with its electric stove and washing buckets, lay behind.

Inside, a police photographer was snapping pictures of the victim from different angles. Ruud saw a woman tied to a metal-framed bed. She was clothed in a batik kebaya. A crimson gag bulged from her mouth like an apple and her mutilated left arm dangled to the floor. A mess of flesh and bone protruded from the stump. Several blood pools reddened the floor.

Ruud stooped to check under the bed. ‘Where’s the hand?’

‘Gone. Together with the weapon he used to remove it.’

‘Any sign of forced entry?’ Ruud probed.

‘Why should there be? Do you lock your doors?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘People in these kampung slums trust one another.’

By the window, on a small desk, a fan whirred and cut through the muggy heat.

‘I’d still like to know how he got into the house. Did he knock? Did she know him and invite him in?’

The police photographer, all arms and elbows, squatted down and prepared to take another photo. The flash went off once again. Ruud touched him on the arm and asked him to shove off.

The man gave Ruud a hostile look.

Hamzah and Ruud watched him gather his things and leave. He left through the back entrance. Ruud heard the screen door creak and then slap in its frame.

‘Anything stolen from the house?’ asked Ruud. ‘Apart from the hand?’

A shake of the head. ‘TV and VCD player are still here. The jewellery box is intact. Nothing much in it: tin earrings, coral beads, a really ugly necklace with a cheap agate stone. I found a small amount of cash in her bedroom in a wooden drawer. Bloody thing gave me a splinter.’ Hamzah glared at his thumb. ‘See?’ When Ruud showed no interest in his injury he stood on the threshold, lit a kretek and inhaled deeply.

‘Perhaps the burglar was after something specific. She might have been wearing a gold ring on her finger,’ Ruud offered, sidestepping a great waft of exhaled clove smoke.

‘So he cut off her hand and took it with him?’

‘Maybe she had fat fingers and he couldn’t get it off her.’

‘Must have been a damn good ring!’ Hamzah exclaimed.

Ruud stood by the desk fan and peered out of the window. In one of the open fields, children squatted in the dirt, watching a pair of coconut palm beetles fighting. ‘Any witnesses?’

‘None.’

‘It’s a small, close community. Somebody must have seen something.’

‘Last night everyone was at the mosque commemorating the Ascension of the Prophet.’

‘Everyone but Mari Agnes Liem.’

‘She’s not Muslim.’ Hamzah dragged on his kretek. He spoke from the back of his throat, ‘Katolik.’ The word triggered a fit of coughing. ‘According to neighbours,’ he spluttered, ‘she was not very popular.’

Ruud’s gaze returned to the room. He noticed a crucifix above the threshold and on the walls a pair of colourful Javanese textiles hanging from wooden slats. ‘And nobody heard a thing.’

The policeman flicked ash into the palm of his gloved hand. ‘There was thunder last night. It might have muffled the screams.’

‘Check the bathroom for blood. It’s unlikely but the killer might have washed his hands in the sink before leaving. Go over the plugs and drains. Also check with neighbours and family to see if she wore an expensive ring on her left hand. And ask if there are other Chinese and Christians in the village.’

Ruud went through the kitchen and saw a printed note taped to the electric stove. He recognized the words to be part of a recent NGO campaign; launched to tackle unwanted teenage pregnancies. It read:

Cabe-cabean, Cabe-cabean, thin as a reed,

Tosses bread from her door so the goats can feed

Cabe-cabean, Cabe-cabean, goats good and fed,

Strolls to the dump kitchen-garbage on her head

Cabe-cabean, Cabe-cabean, garbage in the fill

Fishes for her supper in the parkland rill

Cabe-cabean, Cabe-cabean, supper on the hook

Takes snakehead in a pan to the fish-fry cook

Cabe-cabean, Cabe-cabean, she eats all she can

But fish swims in tummy like angry Aquaman

Cabe-cabean, Cabe-cabean, tummy full and round

Goes to see the doctor and the doctor frowned

Cabe-cabean, Cabe-cabean, doctor is wild

Rushes you to clinic to pull out your child

Cabe-cabean, Cabe-cabean, did you not see

The father of your child has run off with me.

‘Bag this as evidence, Hamzah.’

Ruud yanked at his trouser creases and squatted next to the body, avoiding the pool of dark congealed blood by his vinyl-clad feet. He took several snaps of the victim with his mobile phone. The woman was lying face up; her ankles were bound with twine and secured to the bedframe. Her right hand was tied to the bedpost by her head. There were finger-bruises all along her throat. ‘Looks like she was manually strangled. No sign of rope burn. Who discovered her?’ He studied Mari Agnes Liem’s wide staring eyes.

‘Mrs Yahaya from next door. She saw a monkey climbing out of the dead woman’s kitchen at dawn. The monkey was clutching a papaya and a bag of prawn crackers. Thought she should come over and investigate. Berdarah Neraka! The little bastards steal everything, meh?’

Over his shoulder, Ruud saw the signs of a monkey break-in. A sack of rice showed bite marks on it and there were droppings on the floor. ‘Is Mrs Yahaya sure the monkey didn’t run off with the hand too?’

‘Yes.’

First Inspektur Pujasumarta patted his trousers. ‘Knew I forgot something. Have you got a pen?’

The little policeman unfastened a pen from his tunic pocket. Ruud used it to extract the crimson gag from the woman’s mouth.

‘You’re looking tired,’ the little man pointed out. ‘Can you not sleep since your wife left you?’

‘You heard about that.’

Hamzah took a deep breath and held it before exhaling. ‘People talk.’

‘Go interview the neighbours, will you?’

The policeman made a face, dropped the ash from his hand onto the floor and went out to make his door-to-door inquiries.

The crimson cloth eventually uncoupled itself from the woman’s mouth and her jaw fell open.

Ruud shook his head. Everyone at the force seemed to know his wife had left him for another man.

He dug into his trousers, threw back two Head Start energy tablets and dry-swallowed them both.

The dokter forensik stepped through the door, panting, apologizing. He was short and stocky and forever cheerful despite his profession. ‘Ma’af! Sorry, sorry.’ His thinning hair was dishevelled and there were sweat stains under each arm. ‘It’s quite a walk in this heat.’ He removed his shoes and pulled on the standard protection. ‘I left my car at the top of the main road. All those potholes are bad for the tyres and suspension.’

‘You’re too late, Solossa, she’s already dead.’

‘Always the joker.’ He laughed. ‘And selamat pagi to you too, First Inspektur Pujasumarta.’ Solossa dropped his leather satchel and removed a comb from his shirt pocket. He ran the comb through his scalp, before sidling up next to Ruud. ‘Has the fingerprint man come?’

‘No, he only does high-profile cases. Unless Mrs Liem here turns out to be the sister of a Supreme Court judge, I don’t t. . .