The Burnings

Book 0: The Bone Ritual

by Julian Lees

Genres: Mystery

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 A killer hides in plain sight on the crowded streets of Jakarta . . . When a woman's scorched remains are discovered in her burnt-out car, Ruud Pujasumarta and his team are brought in to investigate what appears to be a routine homicide. But when another woman's charred body is found a few days later, Ruud also finds a banner unfurled by the corpse's feet. A verse from the Quran is scribbled across it, calling for unbelievers to be burned. Suspicions that the team have a religiously-motivated serial killer on their hands seem to be confirmed when a third body turns up with the same MO. But who is responsible? Is it the Australian diplomat who was obsessed with the first victim? The imam who preaches Sharia law? Or the military general taking backhanders and living a life of luxury in Jakarta? Despite the many possible suspects, Ruud is suspicious that the killer may actually be someone much closer to home, someone he has trusted for many years. What unravels next is a terrifying chain of events . . . And what Ruud discovers puts his life, and the lives of those around him, in danger. Praise for Julian Lees 'Lee's striking descriptive writing transports you directly to the streets of Jakarta' I rish Independent 'A darkly compelling tale of family secrets, lies and murder' Crime Review

Release date: October 5, 2017

Publisher: Constable

Print pages: 352

Sample

It’s three in the morning and there’s blood everywhere.

Behind the 100-watt bulb shining into the back of Ruud’s eyes, searing his retinas, stands a man.

A dimly outlined figure.

Hovering like a giant predatory bird.

He calls himself The Physician.

A smile reveals cramped white teeth, pink gums.

‘Let us get down to business.’ The teeth glisten. ‘Are you ready to answer my questions?’

Ruud barely hears what’s being said. His focus lies elsewhere, on the thing protruding from his flesh.

There’s a twenty-centimetre finger ring retractor stuck in his shoulder. It is made of stainless steel with a cam ratchet lock that draws back the tissue and exposes the surgical site. The curved metal arms twitch to the beat of his heart.

Ruud eyeballs it. Half-terrified, half-fascinated.

His circumflex humeral artery’s been punctured and the pain is almost unendurable.

The man, backlit, gives the instrument a little nudge and Ruud hears himself roil and blow.

The wound is deep. Mariana Trench deep. Each time his heart contracts the Weitlaner retractor shivers and a spurt of blood sprays up. It splatters his face and chest, douses the barber’s chair, spills down his bare shanks onto his ankles and feet. Untended, the blood gluts the spaces between his toes, pooling on the footrest. It’s as though someone clever has done a magic trick and concealed a water pistol inside the top of his collarbone. Stffff-stffff. Stfff-stfff. Squeeze the plastic trigger, cowboy! Quick Draw. Stffff-stffff.

Ruud wrestles against the wrist and neck straps and tries to move his head.

But the buckles hold. His legs are secured too.

Haemorraging. The blood spatters.

So much red. Suffocating, fungal-metallic red. It reminds Ruud of when he and Arjen tricked their mum by slathering their faces with ketchup and super-gluing rubber scabbards to their ears. Arjen clattered into the kitchen screaming blue murder. Mum, who had her head in the fridge, sorting stray Brussels sprouts from the back of the veg compartment, almost fainted. Arjen laughed so hard he choked on some spittle and had to lie down after. Ruud lifted his eyes to the ceiling – God, they should have spent more time together.

Only natural to reminisce, only normal to assess things and have regrets.

Now that I’m dying.

If only the cuntish tosser with the knife would shut the fuck up.

But he likes to talk to Ruud as he goes about his cutting and paring.

Sixty-seven types, he says.

The Physician raises a scalpel, held softly between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. Silver in the spotlights.

He tells Ruud there are sixty-seven types of scalpel blades. Blade No. 12, for example, has a sharp crescent-shaped tip – he shows Ruud – and is used to disarticulate small joints during digit amputation or for cleft palate procedures. He picks up another. While No. 15 here has a small curved tip used to make short precise incisions – good for excising skin lesions or opening coronary arteries.

The Weitlaner retractor shivers.

A slow hissing sound of pain escapes Ruud’s mouth.

The Physician attempts a few practice stabs with his wrist. He is starting to enjoy himself. Then, pumping the foot pedal of the barber’s chair, chatting about this and that, he slices Ruud open.

FSSST.

A hot electrical charge. It popped behind her eyes, a sharp explosion of static in her skull.

She stirred.

A fuzzy cognizance, followed by a voice in her head.

Her own voice.

Urging her to wake up.

FSSSSSSSST.

Gasping, swallowing blood, tasting copper, her eyelids snapped open and she made out a curved black panel mere centimetres from her face. Dazed, she blinked once, twice and quickly lost focus.

FSSSSSSSST.

Her chest jolted with a startled heave.

Awake now.

She heard an engine. Discerned movement, sensed wheels bumping beneath her.

The boot of the car stank of old carpet. The inside temperature, unbearable at the best of times, must have been nudging 50° Celsius with the motor running. There was no air. No ventilation. Nothing but stale breath and fumes from the exhaust pipe.

Everything appeared unnaturally dark. But gradually the darkness began to shimmer. There were thin chinks along the weather strips of the boot door and through them she saw the city rush by, streaming past in a kind of molten slow motion. The colours from streetlights played out across her forehead. A flicker show of sharp reds and yellows.

She was not sure how long she’d been out. Perhaps a couple of hours.

What she recalled was leaving work, walking through her building’s underground car park, hearing the squeal of balding tyres in the distance and then . . . choking, flailing. The hand over her mouth had smelled of rotting mango. Struggling, she’d raked his shin with her heel, but he soon had her by the hair, snapping her head back and toppling her to the ground.

Had he struck her? He must have done because her face felt sore. All bashed up. She couldn’t see out of her left eye. Her nose was so smashed in that when she inhaled through it she made a wet klik-klik rattle deep in her nostrils. And whenever the wheels hit a bump it was like a nail gun to the temple.

Instinctively, she went to touch her face. One wrist pulled on the other, causing both hands to move in unison, the left hand mimicking the right. A momentary confusion. She realized she lay curled in a foetal position, head bowed, back curved, with her limbs fastened in front of her – lower arms secured to ankles with thick cord. Bound like a trussed fowl.

She tugged wildly at the rope, jerking her knees right up to her chest. Elbows knocking against ribs, she brought her fingers to the underside of her chin. Straining on the cords, she probed with her fingertips, finding congealed blood and a band of plastic, which was smooth beneath her touch. A strip of duct tape ran the length of her mouth. A little higher, the pulpy flesh around her left cheekbone was sticky like a popped peach.

A car horn blasted. A motorbike roared by.

One thing was unmistakable: the streets had darkened. Night was falling fast.

The car stopped.

An aluminium shutter clattered down over a door and windows. The small shops were closing; people were making for home following the end of evening prayers.

Bucking, she heaved and yanked and tugged at her bonds. She dug her nails into her cheek, into the corner of the tape at the edge of her mouth, snatched at it. After several attempts, the adhesive came away.

She screamed. The blood from her nose slipped down her throat, turning her cries into a gurgle. She butted the boot door, hesitated, and then did it again. She battered it until her crown bled, desperate to be heard. She buffeted, bumped and slammed herself against the catch. Nothing she did sprung the lock.

The car moved off once more.

Shivering, the trapezius muscles along her spine juddering, she begged for her mother.

She groped the floor. Her bag and purse were gone. Her phone had been taken too.

She shifted her weight, knocking her pelvic bone against steel, twisting to get onto her front. The carpet was loose here. With the ends of her fingers she wrenched at the interior lining, first peeling the black polyester away from the false bottom and then the flexible rubber material to expose the metal underneath. Even in the darkness she could tell the spare wheel, the plastic trim and the spare wheel tools had been removed. But she was not interested in them. It was something else she was after.

She ripped away the final bit of rubber and there it was: the tiny hole. Only just big enough to shove her thumb through.

It was only a small rupture in the floorpan.

Regardless, it gave her hope.

She tried to force the casing open, thrusting the pads of her thumbs into the hole, prizing, wresting. But to no avail. The opening refused to get any larger.

Through a blur of tears she stared at the small gap. At the blacktop whipping by.

Once more, she tried to wrestle with the breach but it wouldn’t budge.

A sickening sense of free-fall took hold.

The night grew darker as the sedan made its way out of the city. The sky became a bruised shade of purple.

By the time she noticed the motorway lighting columns flash by, she had thought up a plan.

Using her mouth she freed a silver ring from her finger and spat it through the hole. It disappeared, vanishing from sight as it ricocheted off the asphalt and bounced away. There was another silver ring, a midi ring, that sat below the first knuckle on her right forefinger, but it was stuck tight and she couldn’t remove it, so she opted for the next best thing. She tore off her earrings and fed them into the opening, followed by her narrow wristwatch, which she jammed through the cavity.

A spasm of doubt shot through her.

The midi ring. She had to get them to see the midi ring.

Again, she tried desperately to pull it free. But to no avail. Ever since she’d damaged the top joint of that particular finger playing softball she hadn’t been able to loosen the ring, and it still refused to budge.

And then she made up her mind to do the unthinkable. She had to leave a piece of herself behind. It was the only way to be sure.

The woman scraped the flesh of her right forefinger along the sharpest edges of her canines, crammed the finger hinge between her teeth and bit down hard. The pain tore her apart, shooting though her like an electric current.

Grimacing, she inspected the digit. She had barely made a dent.

She bit. Even harder. Splitting the epidermis. Drawing blood.

Her head swam. Tears and snot soaked her face. She was close to passing out.

She positioned it between her teeth, exactly where the ligaments met below the middle phalanx. She took a deep breath, held it and chin-butted the floor.

It did not crunch like a raw carrot. The cartilage did not crack like a chicken-wing joint. Nevertheless, when she drew apart her jaws, she had gone through.

Although not completely.

Bits of dermis and muscle remained attached. She had to work on the fat and connective tissue like a dog worked on a bone.

Until the knuckle came away.

A broken country byway. Tall yellowing grasses brushed the sides of the car. The woman heard the grinding sound of small stones being flattened as the wheels slowed. Every jolting bump in the road drove the breath out of her in ragged pants. When the car came to a stop she strained her ears, terrified what she might hear. But all she could make out was the insect hum of the hills.

She remained stock-still, like a child in a secret place playing Christmas hide-and-seek. Senses on heightened alert, listening for footsteps, voices.

Several minutes elapsed. Her chest was trembling. Everything around her spun. Her wounds were making her woozy.

Hearing nothing, she silently prayed to God and Jesus and her recently departed grandmother.

She waited, inhaling slow, shallow gulps. Her chest rising and falling.

The dormant car ticked as the engine cooled.

Her face ached from crying.

A minute passed. And then another.

Her hand pounded with each beat of her heart. Even in the dark she saw that blood was smeared everywhere. It was pooled around her, congealing, sticking to her clothes and hair. Very quietly she bandaged her pulped finger with the end of her sleeve. Bloated and raw, it twitched uncontrollably, making her wince. The throbbing – she clenched her jaw to numb the pain – was driving her out of her mind. But she refused to black out.

Several more minutes went by.

She knew she mustn’t give up hope.

The sun would be up soon.

She began screaming for help again.

She screamed and screamed and screamed.

To the point that her throat gave out and only a flaccid croak escaped her. She was aware of the heat, aware of the dark, but after a while, all she could think of were her parents. Memories flashed through her head. She wondered if she would ever see them again.

The insect hum of the hills grew louder.

And louder still.

Crickets and katydids and other night-singing bugs chirped and whirred. The noise was amplified a hundredfold in the dark.

They chirped and whirred and fizzed.

But.

Then.

Suddenly.

As though a needle had lifted off a record.

It all went quiet.

A jungle hush blanketed the car. It was the sort of hush that only occurred when a predator approached.

She held her breath.

In the new silence, her skin quivered.

She waited.

And she heard it. The crunch of feet on gritty earth.

She twisted her body into a half-kneel and peered through a chink in the boot door.

The moonlight reflected off his shoulders. Drawing him in full silhouette. He was clad in black PVC. The outfit was tight and tear-resistant, like a gimp’s bondage suit, and on his head he wore a hideous rubber pig’s mask.

He was standing there. Staring right back at her. About ten short steps away.

The car keys jingled in his hand.

He whispered three muffled words: ‘Oink! Oink! Oink!’

And advanced towards her.

It was a steamy Javanese morning; the sun in the sky was over the tree line, already the colour of a dark orange egg yolk. Ruud Pujasumarta parked his blue Toyota Yaris by the police sawhorse and approached on foot. The first inspektur was perspiring profusely. The sweat dribbled down his back and into his cotton underpants. He ran a palm across the nape of his neck; it came away glistening. His shirt stuck to him like a second skin.

Along the road he passed a boy clutching a live rooster and tugging a goat by a rope halter. ‘Selamat Pagi!’ cried the boy.

Ruud wished him a good morning.

Up ahead, he heard the sound of idle chatter. A pair of Sabhara street cops stood in the shadow of a thorny acacia smoking Djarum Blacks and siphoning cold coffee from plastic bags. They acknowledged him by tapping their berets.

Ruud did not stop to debrief them. He kept on walking towards the ladder trucks.

At the bend in the broken road he spotted his colleague waiting for him by the edge of the slope. Leaning against a fire engine, Detective Aiboy Ali rested the back of his head in a casual manner on the first ‘K’ of the gold-leaf decal – DINAS KEBAKARAN FIRE RESCUE. When he saw Ruud he banged on the fleet markings and stepped into the sunshine. His gait was stiff.

He raised a black leather biker cuff. ‘Hey, Gajah.’

Ruud nodded, noticed the new Megadeth T-shirt – Killing Road 2016 – and prayed he wouldn’t have to listen to the horrendous clatter on Aiboy’s car stereo later on. ‘What have we got?’

Aiboy Ali used both hands to pull his long hair from his eyes. ‘Burned-out car. Must have skidded off the road. Went over the cliff, smashed into a coconut tree and whoomp! We think it’s a Japanese sedan, but it’s pretty difficult to tell. The registration number’s fried. Whoever was inside got flame-roasted too.’

Ruud gazed at the view overlooking the Puncak valley, at the tea plantations and the higgledy-piggledy houses squashed up against the hillside. ‘How many people in the vehicle?’

‘One adult.’

‘Male or female.’

‘Can’t tell.’

Ruud saw a second ladder truck positioned by the cliff verge. He looked up. Nearly six metres from the ground a fireman perched on his truck’s tower ladder drawing on a kretek.

Ruud neared the escarpment, cocked an eyebrow. ‘Long way to fall.’

‘A good fifteen-metre drop. Pemadan kebakaran had to use foam to douse the flames. It spread to the vegetation beyond. Took them about an hour to get the fire under control.’

‘Where’s the body?’

‘They pulled it up in a body bag. Solossa was here with the forensic team. The coroner’s van took it away fifteen minutes ago.’

‘Does Solossa suspect foul play?’

Aiboy Ali made a low guttural sound. ‘Why do you think we were called? Something tells me this is going to get complicated ugly.’

‘Let’s not start jumping to conclusions quite yet.’ Ruud studied his friend’s face and saw something he didn’t recognize. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You good?’

‘Why?’

‘You seem, I don’t know, as if you’re not yourself.’

‘Leg hurts.’

Ruud nodded but knew that wasn’t it; Aiboy had been acting out of sorts and troubled for months now. He hadn’t been the same since the shooting – more withdrawn and a great deal quieter.

Ruud crossed his arms and stared at the ground, the sticky heat on his back. ‘You should talk to someone about it.’

‘What’s there to talk about?’

Ruud noticed his colleague’s fingernails were bitten to the quick. He made light of the fact and tossed it to the back of his mind. Taking a tentative step closer to the precipice, he bent at the waist, peeked over the edge and quickly took a pace back.

‘You know you are going to have to go down there, don’t you?’ said Aiboy.

The thought startled Ruud. He had no appetite for heights.

A scorched stench of rubber coiled atop the wreckage. When the wind soughed through the trees, flecks of torched plastic and chargrilled crumbs of upholstery fell like snowflakes on their skin. The smoke permeated everything, leaving an acrid taste at the backs of their throats.

The lead firefighter strode across, removed his cream helmet to reveal a hairline damp with sweat. He touched hands with Ruud. He had a clammy handshake. ‘Salam, Inspektur Polisi Satu. A nasty business for sure. We belong to the Creator and to Him shall we return.’ His voice resonated like a Surabayan fishmonger’s. ‘My name is Sidiq. I tell you how it happen. The car came round the corner and through the bend and drop, hitting the big coconut below like an accordion.’ He pressed his fists together. ‘The collision with the tree ruptured the fuel tank and . . .’ He folded his fingers and thumbs together and then sprang them apart.

‘Babang,’ said Ruud.

‘That’s what most people will think. But you know, vehicles they do not blow up the way they do in the movies. No massive bim-bam-bam.’

‘No?’

‘No. Sure-sure, when you have a collision hot slivers of metal get shoved into the gas tank, fuel lines get cut. On occasion a spark will fly, setting off the fuel leak, but no huge bang. What you will get is a fireball. Though very rarely will it spread throughout the car if gravity is involved, sih?’

‘You think an accelerant was used?’

Sidiq inclined his chin. ‘The car crashed, came to rest at such an acute angle.’ He tilted his elbow to 45 degrees. ‘Gravity would pull the blazing petrol downward. Yet in this case the vehicle was fully engulfed. Carpets, seat foam, seat plastic, all alight! Even the tyres erupted from the heat, and the airbag melted down to white liquid, just like palm syrup, you know? After that the shock absorber struts exploded.’

‘Sounds like one helluva mess.’

‘Also the windows were open. If windows were closed the interior fire would burn itself out from no oxygen. But I ask you, meh, who drives a nice car with their windows open in this country?’

‘Was the body found on the driver’s side?’ asked Ruud.

‘Yes.’

‘Which direction was the car travelling when it left the road?’

‘East. Heading downhill. And you know what’s missing? Brake marks on the road.’

‘The rain may have washed them away. If it rained.’ Ruud raised a finger. ‘Bear with me a second, will you?’ He called Werry Hartono. ‘Werry, it’s me. Do me a favour and check with the Meteorological Agency if it rained in Puncak last night. Yes, Badan Meteorologi. Thanks. Call me back.’ Ruud returned his attention to the firefighter. ‘So you suspect someone doused the cabin with lighter fluid, tossed in a lit cigarette then pushed the car over the cliff?’

‘Either that or suicide. Throw petrol over yourself and strike a match as you roll down the cliff.’

‘Sounds unlikely.’

‘It is possible, sih?’

‘Someone wanted this to appear like an accident.’

‘Well, our job here is done. Lucky for us the wind direction was in our favour, otherwise we’d have struggled to control the blaze.’ The fireman glanced at the sky and made a face. ‘Looks like the clouds are rolling in. Listen to me, if you are going to examine the crash sight wait another hour or so. There are gasses and toxic chemicals such as hydrogen cyanide and hydrofluoric acid about from the cooked plastic. Better not tamper with anything for a while. And if you do go down, leave your mobile phones with us. Fuel vapours and wireless devices do not mix.’

The murder of crows took flight from a hollow tree trunk, soaring on an updraught. Quick darts of black against the sky. They reached a current of warm air and then glided. Ruud counted six of them way up above, drifting on thermals, wings extended, circling like buzzards.

Aiboy Ali was the first to abseil down. Then it was Ruud’s turn. He wore a handkerchief across his nose and mouth to prevent inhaling hazardous fumes. Even so, the smell of burning was pervasive.

‘Right,’ he said, ‘let’s smash this.’ Gripping the rope for dear life, peering over his shoulder, eyes bulging from their sockets, Ruud rappelled the ridge, negotiating a metre at a time. Anchored to the fire engine twelve metres overhead, he hopped and crabbed his way lower, more than a little scared even though the line was paid out in a controlled fashion and he had a climbing harness secured to his waist. The static rope bit into his palms. Singed leaves swished up to meet him. The fire crew assured him it was safe. All the same, he wondered aloud whether he should have worn protective headgear and kneepads.

He felt watched, scrutinized. Ever since he’d become a minor celebrity by solving the Mah-Jong Master killings, Sabhara cops and traffic patrolmen ogled him with unnatural interest. Ruud didn’t like the attention but he didn’t let it bother him. Even now, as he scrabbled along a bank of tall yellowing grass, he caught them staring from above, eye-balling him like birds of prey.

His vision grew milky at the edges.

To make matters worse, Ruud became conscious of his breakfast of roti bakar with cheese threatening to repeat itself. Don’t you bloody chunder, Pujasumarta, don’t you bloody dare!

As he descended, the vegetation, once riotous and dense, became brittle and bare.

When he reached Aiboy Ali, Ruud planted his feet on the tiny ledge and prodded the earth with his shoe. A twig snapped in two. He let out a long breath and his head swam a little.

‘You okay, Gajah?’

Ruud spoke in a faint tremor. ‘I’m good.’

Although logic and common sense urged him to take a moment to regain his composure, what Ruud did was spin around and take a bold stagger-step stride towards the blackened car. His foot slipped, his legs cycled in thin air and he almost toppled onto the blistered roof of the sedan.

Fortunately, he remained attached to the rope and received a faceful of toasted elephant grass instead. The dry plants crackled under his clumsy grasp and he heard laughter from high up.

Ruud stumbled about a bit. ‘Legs have gone all wobbly. Got disco knees.’ He found himself talking at the top of his lungs.

The stench of charred rubber was overpowering, even through the handkerchief. He had bits of ash sticking to him, gritting his tongue. The ambient heat pierced Ruud’s shirt and trousers, through his clothing to his skin. It was as if the air itself was roasting.

‘Is it safe to poke about?’ Ruud asked.

‘They’ve secured the frame and wedged chocks under what’s left of the wheels, so I hope so.’

Both men leaned at an angle of approximately 45°, touching shoulders. Neither looked left towards the bamboo grove by the rock pool nor right towards the low houses clustered in the distance. For a long while they stared at the empty incinerated shell in sullen silence. Everything was crumpled and deformed. Where the tyres had once been, only steel belts remained. In the back, the rear drive axle, the body side moulding and platform frame appeared wilted, and the back glass had melted. While in front, the bonnet had curled up, peeled away like a sardine tin.

‘Jesus,’ hissed Ruud as he batted away a beetle. ‘Check out the windscreen.’ The windshield was so twisted and bubbled, globules the size of onion bulbs burgeoned from the laminate.

‘You going in for a closer look-see?’

The harness chewed into Ruud’s waist. ‘On second thoughts, we should leave this for the pathologist and the forensic boys,’ he said. ‘When they haul the car upwards, make certain the recovery team protects the integrity of the vehicle and whatever evidence is left. Let’s get ourselves back on solid ground.’

Ruud made a circular, swooping gesture with his arm, as though lassoing a horse, and prepared to be winched skyward. The static rope tautened, and seconds afterwards he was lifted off his feet. He’d ascended about halfway when he heard his name called.

‘Inspektur Polisi Satu Pujasumarta!’ Ruud looked up. One of the Sabhara street cops was waving a phone in the air. ‘Telephone call for you! It’s Police Commissioner Witarsa! He says we have a saksi, a witness. Someone has contacted Polisi Lalu Lintas.

‘Who?’

‘A blind woman! You have to return to Central HQ on Jalan Kramat Raya straight away!’

‘What?’

‘A blind old lady who lives nearby. Says she heard a woman screaming. Says she knows what happened!’

Ruud’s stomach convulsed. A blind witness – this could only happen to him!

Fuck, thought Ruud, his heels dangling. Things just got complicated ugly.

Ruud waited with the other detectives in the Incident Room for Police Commissioner Joyo T.Witarsa to make his entrance. On the bulletin board someone had put up red and gold Imlek decorations to commemorate Chinese New Year.

Methodically, Ruud arranged the plastic chairs in a circle, before taking the seat closest to the door. He took a moment to appraise his teammates.

In stockinged feet was Werry Hartono, perched in the chair opposite, applying boot polish to his leather shoes with a stiff brush. The young second lieutenant wore a blue Prince of Wales check shirt, immaculately pressed and starched, together with a black knitted wool tie. Quite sensibly, he had a dishcloth draped across his knees to protect his knife-edge trousers from stains. To his right sat Aiboy Ali, a bagelen bread roll held to his lips. Beside him, Officer Hamka Hamzah, looking scruffy in his brown police uniform, picked his teeth with a matchstick.

‘Must you do that in public?’ admonished Ruud.

‘Do what?’ Hamzah slid the matchstick into his tunic pocket with his cigarettes. There was a curry stain on his shirt cuff.

‘Excavate.’

Hamzah glowered, coughed a bronchial coug. . .