Java Spider (3 page)

‘What’s up, can you tell?’

‘No. It’s way ahead. But there’s blue lights. P’lice. They keep doin’ this. Road blocks. Lookin’ for the bombers … Haven’t a clue, have they?’

They were stuck. No way to turn or move forward.

‘Nothin’ I can do. Sorry.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she told him. ‘At least it’s warm in here.’

‘Yeah …’ The driver hugged himself. ‘If we’re stuck here long enough, I might get in the back there with you!’

All she could see in the mirror was his grinning teeth.

‘Don’t even think it …’

The words slipped out before she could check herself. The driver turned away and hunched his shoulders. Damn! Rich white bitch – that’s what he’d think.

Charlotte bit her lip. Oh for the knack of never saying the wrong thing – particularly to men. She would turn thirty next year. Always thought she’d be married by that age, but the long hours and the frequent need to drop everything for the job didn’t sit well with relationships.

There
had
been affairs, mostly short-lived. Men lost interest when they came second to a career. She did have dates occasionally – men she met in the course of her work. Businessmen, politicians, powerful men turned on by a woman they’d seen on TV.

From the start at the News Channel she’d made a rule not to go with men from the office. Then, two weeks ago loneliness and fear had got the better of her.

Heading home late after a gruelling day, she’d gone for a drink with the video technician she’d been working with. Jeremy was pleasant enough, but a boy – a
diffident
, fair-haired lad who browsed computer magazines in his meal breaks and tended to blush when he talked to her. She’d babbled to him about how frightening London had become and he’d suddenly turned grown-up and protective. Insisted on escorting her home and she hadn’t objected. Slept on the sofa that night. The next night, however, he’d shared her bed.

The taxi driver slipped his cab into gear. The tail lights were moving again. He wound up the volume on his radio. A talk show. The topic – the Revenue Men and the Wag’s Bar bomb. Charlotte pricked up her ears. Some of the callers were
supporting
the terrorists.

The highway to the west rose up on to its elevated section. The taxi picked up speed. Five more minutes to the cosy, ground-floor flat in Shepherd’s Bush which she’d bought three years earlier on a mortgage she couldn’t afford.

The driver slid the glass again and switched off the radio.

‘Down here somewhere?’ He’d turned left off the highway.

‘Third on the right, then second left.’ She’d felt safe in this neighbourhood, until a recent spate of burglaries. ‘Just before the next lamppost, please.’

She reached in her bag for her purse. Out on the pavement, she handed him a ten-pound note.

‘I didn’t mean that, you know. About gettin’ in the back,’ he whined, giving her some change. ‘No offence.’

‘I know. And I didn’t mean to sound like a racist bitch. It’s been a long day.’ She gave him an extra pound.

A four-storey Edwardian house converted into flats in the sixties, Charlotte had picked the ground floor apartment for its neat rear garden. No worries then about intruders.

She undid the mortice lock, then slipped in the Yale key. The light was on inside, just as she’d left it that morning. Stepping into the tiny hall, the warmth welcomed her. Ten seconds to de-activate the alarm. She tapped a code on the small wall panel installed just days ago at Jeremy’s suggestion.

She hung her coat by the door, then checked her face in the gilt-framed mirror next to it. Brown, almond-shaped eyes, high cheek bones and a mouth that men liked kissing. A complexion that got puffy when tired. She straightened her hair. Hell! Forgotten to book an appointment to get her roots done.

From behind the closed kitchen door she heard a muffled mewing. Since the alarm was installed the cat had been banned from the run of the house. She opened the door.

‘Hello Rudolf,’ she whispered, stroking the fluffy grey creature that pirouetted at her feet. ‘Are you a hungry puss?’

She flicked on the kitchen light and searched the cupboard for cat food. The last tin – the type the cat disliked. Have to buy more in the morning. Silence, apart from the relentless tick of the wall clock. The place felt so empty.

She opened the can and forked tuna into the cat bowl. The animal sniffed it once, gave a look of bitter resentment, then pushed through the catflap into the garden.

‘Sodding animal!’ Charlotte hissed. ‘I’ll bloody give you to Oxfam if you don’t watch it …’ She left the spurned food in the bowl. Stupid name for a cat, Rudolf. As a kitten he’d looked like Nureyev.

She opened the door to the living room. A folding metal grille covered the French windows to the garden. Hideous, but she slept better knowing it was there. Her furniture was a jumble, acquired during the past four
years
. A squashy velvet sofa, a dining set in chrome and a sideboard with glasses and a bottle of Stolichnaya. Beside it was the answerphone. She checked. No messages.

She was glad Jeremy hadn’t rung. Their relationship which she’d drifted into for reasons of self-interest was getting out of control. Her fault for encouraging him. Yesterday she’d even asked him to take her to Devon at the weekend. A visit to her
parents
. Madness. Her mother would get the wrong idea, her father hated visitors and, anyway, had been extremely ill, and Jeremy would think she was serious about him.

She ran a bath, dropping her clothes on the floor. Breasts smaller than she would have liked, hips bigger than she wanted. She sprinkled Badedas under the running tap and fluffed up the foam.

Jeremy had a car and she didn’t. That was the point. That’s why she’d asked him to take her to Devon. To save her a train ride. Pretty selfish really. But then, she assured herself, the relationship wasn’t
entirely
one-sided. Sex for him was no longer a
solitary
activity, she thought bitchily. And he was doing it with someone famous, to boot.

But not for much longer. Not if her horoscope was to be believed. Much talk of a new man in her life.

Jakarta

Wednesday 07.05 hrs (00.05 hrs GMT)

She smelled of lilies and musk, sitting just inches from him, but he couldn’t risk touching her. It was too soon. The invisible barrier between them had still to be
broken
and it wouldn’t be while they remained jammed in the traffic. Stephen Bowen tapped his head against the window in frustration. Gridlock, time and again in their escape from the city.

Outside, an arm’s length away, skinny youths hung from buses, staring and grinning, nudging each another about the middle-aged European with his pretty young Indonesian girl. That his intentions should be so plain to these yobbos needled him. Where was the privacy he’d been promised?

She’d probably done this before, he decided. Paid by the big man to sleep with useful foreigners. How else could a low-salary government employee afford a brand new Toyota?

Yet he wasn’t sure. For the first few minutes of the drive she’d been chatty and smiley, still the professional from the protocol department, but beneath the mask there was a tension which suggested that perhaps she
wasn’t
so experienced at this sort of thing.

He cleared his head, concentrating on the game. Whatever she’d done before, whoever she’d done it with, it didn’t matter. For the next three days she was there for
him
, and by God was he going to make the most of it.

Suddenly the traffic unblocked and they turned on to a toll road that sliced through the city’s overcrowded suburbs towards the airport.

‘This road owned by president daughter,’ Selina announced, back in tour-guide mode. ‘She make us pay big price to use it. You know how we say
expensive
in Indonesia?’ she asked, laughing.

‘Nope.’

‘
Mahal
. India has
Taj
Mahal, but we have
Toll
Mahal!’ She laughed again.

Bowen chuckled. ‘Very good …’ He longed to touch her.

‘You’re very lovely, Selina,’ he growled, relaxing slightly. ‘Makes my heart go boom-badi-boom-badi-boom-badi-boom! Remember that film? Peter Sellers?’

She frowned, not understanding. ‘You think I
lovely
?’ she asked coyly.

‘Oh yes. And how … You’ve got ebony eyes, velvet skin, the body of an angel …’

‘Ohhh …’ she giggled, blushing. ‘You make me embarrass, Mr Bowen.’

‘Stephen,’ he beamed. ‘Steve if you like.’

After thirty minutes the car turned into Soekarno-Hatta Airport. Skirting the taxi-choked terminal, Selina took a road parallel to a chainlink fence, then halted at a red and white pole. Beyond, executive jets were parked. She gave the gate guard two thousand rupiahs and he let them in.

Bribes at every level. Without them the country couldn’t function. Big commissions at the top, a pittance at the bottom to oil the wheels of even the simplest service.

The General Aviation terminal was old and drab.

‘He’s meeting us here?’ Bowen checked. His host had been vague about the travel arrangements.

Her face clouded.

‘No. He er … he meet us in Singapore.’

‘
Singapore?
’ he exclaimed. ‘He told me yesterday his boat’s in Bali.’

‘Yeh. Bali where boat is. But
he
have to go Singapore last night for business dinner.’ Her smile had gone, replaced by that tension he’d seen earlier. ‘We go Singapore first, pick him up.
Then
we go Bali.’

She looked acutely uncomfortable. Javans hated giving bad news, he’d been told. She was expecting him to be angry.

‘That’s going to take some time,’ he remarked gently.

‘Maybe two hours more. Not long. And airplane very comfortable. You like champagne?’

‘What kind of plane is it?’ He had a terror of small aircraft. Claustrophobia.

‘Is British!’ The smile was back. ‘One-two-five. Very nice. Big so-fa.’ She flickered her eyebrows flirtatiously.

‘Now you’re talking …’

Inside the scruffy terminal a small, empty executive suite was furnished with sticky, vinyl-covered armchairs. Selina left him there with a cup of coffee and took his passport to be stamped.

Bowen picked up the
Jakarta Post
to see if his picture was in it. Certain to be. When the president met a visiting minister, no paper here dared ignore it. The photo was on page two. Full face of the president, but just the back of his head. He read the copy.

President supports 1750 Billion Rupiah arms deal for ABRI. Britain will supply two ex-Royal Navy submarines and four new-build corvettes, together with special equipment to upgrade the Hawk fighter jets delivered in the 1980s. British Foreign Minister Stephen Bowen was yesterday honoured by a reception at the Presidential palace
.

An honour indeed for a
junior
minister like him, but Bowen knew the reason. The DefenceCo agent for the arms deal was a
very
close associate of the president. Bowen had been given a hint the old man himself might be on a percentage.

He smiled. This was the most extraordinary country. Conventional economics didn’t apply here. Contracts went not to the
lowest
bidder, but to the
highest
, to ensure the price included a commission big enough to line the dozens of pockets involved.

The door burst open.

‘Come quick! They wait for us.’ Selina was flushed from running.

‘Right. Where’s my suitcase?’

‘They load already. Come quick.’

He pursued her on to the tarmac where a uniformed official hustled them to the jet fifty metres away. The air was thick and hot, the humidity rising.

‘Why the sudden panic?’ he panted.

‘I don’ know. Control tower, maybe.’

Air traffic. Always air traffic. He looked at the HS-125 and shivered. Why did they make those planes so darned small?

Ducking, he climbed inside, fighting his terrors. His eardrums popped as the door closed. When the engines began their whine, he felt he was being buried alive.

Cream leather. Two large armchairs and a long, soft bench which he eyed with interest. Selina strapped herself in on the other side of the narrow aisle.

‘Nice plane, yes?’ she smiled, eager to please.

‘I rather prefer jumbos,’ he confessed.

The aircraft swung towards the runway. He knew he’d feel better once airborne. He sank back into the soft leather and closed his eyes. He kept them closed until the plane had climbed above the early morning turbulence. Then he looked through the glass and saw the capital spread out below under its shroud of pollution. Six hundred square kilometres of urban sprawl – in the centre a golden triangle of corruption and wealth, but around it slums.

When he turned to look at the girl, she was gone. He unclipped his belt and glanced behind. She was leaning into the cockpit, talking to the co-pilot. The hem of her T-shirt rode up, exposing the ridge of her spine, her skin the colour of dark honey. The thin denim of her skirt
was
tight across her small, firm behind. Bowen began to feel better.

‘Now where’s this champagne you promised me?’ he chuckled as she sat down again.

‘You want I look in the ice-box?’ The refreshment cabinet was on the floor behind her seat.

A waft of lilies again as she crouched beside him. He’d explode if he didn’t have her soon.

Suddenly the plane banked to the right. Bowen looked out. They were in a long, steady turn. He frowned. They were changing course, heading east, along the Javan coast. Singapore was northwest.

‘What’s going on, Selina? We’re heading east.’

‘Ye-eh,’ she laughed. Her eyes betrayed her nerves, but all Stephen Bowen could see was her soft mouth and her perfect, perfect teeth. ‘Yeh, it all change again. He just call pilot from Singapore to say he take Garuda flight to Bali. We meet him there after all.’

‘Good. Straight to Bali, then,’ he smiled. Ninety minutes flying time. Ninety minutes alone with her.

‘Yes,’ she purred, lips parted. Her eyes spoke to him –
fuck me now if you want
.