Shaman of Bali Read online

  Shaman of Bali

  John Greet

  Monsoon Books

  Singapore

  Published in 2016

  by Monsoon Books Ltd

  No.1 Duke of Windsor Suite, Burrough Court, Burrough on the Hill, Leics. LE142QS, UK and 150 Ochard Road #07-02, Singapore 238841

  www.monsoonbooks.com.sg

  First edition.

  ISBN (paperback): 9789814625395

  ISBN (ebook): 9789814625401

  Copyright©John Greet, 2016

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Cover design by Cover Kitchen.

  Cover photograph©Jack Picone/Alamy Stock Photo.

  Contents

  Part One

  1. 1

  2. 2

  3. 3

  4. 4

  5. 5

  6. 6

  7. 7

  8. 8

  Part Two

  9. 9

  10. 10

  11. 11

  12. 12

  13. 13

  14. 14

  15. 15

  16. 16

  17. 17

  18. 18

  19. 19

  20. 20

  21. 21

  22. 22

  Part Three

  23. 23

  24. 24

  25. 25

  26. 26

  27. 27

  28. 28

  29. 29

  30. 30

  31. 31

  32. 32

  33. Six Months Later

  About the Author

  Blood Money

  Part One

  1

  The Sea Rover sat at her berth, a fifty-five footer, cutter-rigged with self-furling mainsail, her sleek black hull highlighting the teak decks and wooden bowsprit. Her fresh varnish shone in the midday sun. Her mooring lines creaked against the dock as she rose and dipped on the wake of a passing boat. It was a Singapore delivery; a crewman had just pulled out, and I’d jumped at the opportunity. I’d been living at the Y.M.C.A. and searching the town for a job in hospitality, but the news of my bankruptcy tended to precede me. I’d been met with sympathetic refusals from former colleagues. ‘Over qualified,’ they said. The same people who’d felt privileged to get a booking at my restaurant only months earlier now rejected me politely over a complimentary glass of wine. Although this job meant I had to sail with Duncan, it did pay well.

  His footsteps were heavy on the pier as he came towards me. His grey eyes caught mine but gave no indication they knew me. ‘Immigration clearance at 17:00. Sea Rover departing on the hour,’ he mumbled, as he boarded the yacht with surprising agility for his age.

  I climbed aboard and went to the lockers to stow my belongings. My sea bag carried my wet-weather gear, my sextant and compass, and a change of clothes for the flight home.

  At three thirty, I called Grace. She would be walking home from school.

  ‘Hi, sweetheart.’

  ‘Dad, why didn’t you call? I’ve been worried.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m not comfortable talking to you when your mum and David are around.’

  ‘I know, it sucks. And those guys who trashed your apartment, well, they had their car parked outside her house yesterday. They’re really creepy. Just kind of staring.’

  My skin burned. I knew Tula would never stop. The numbing powerlessness of not being able to do anything to stop him cut deep.

  ‘You there? Dad?’

  ‘Yeah, Grace, that sailing job came through. I’m leaving for Singapore in a couple of hours, and when I get back I’ll make a payment to them.’

  A silence followed. I could see her in her school uniform, pushing back her blond curls with her mobile, her blue-green eyes staring at the sky.

  ‘How long will you be gone?’

  ‘Three weeks, maybe four, depending on the weather.’ I checked my watch as I tied off a slack docking line. When she didn’t answer, I added, ‘Grace, I need to get these guys off our backs.’

  ‘I know, but it’s so unfair,’ her voice rose in anger. ‘You didn’t hurt anybody, you didn’t break the law, and the liquidators took everything from you. They took our life away, as if everything we’d worked for meant nothing.’

  I understood her. She’d lived most of her life in the Milano’s kitchen; it had been her sanctuary, and she’d been ordering chefs around since she could walk. Over the phone, I heard the sound of a passing car, the chatter of schoolgirls.

  ‘Gracie, I’m going to make it right. I’m going to find a way to pay them all.’

  ‘Does Mum know you are leaving?’

  ‘I’m meeting her now.’

  ‘Good luck with that.’ She paused for a moment. ‘And try to be nice to each other.’

  * * *

  David stood leaning against a lamp post, smoking a cigarette. He turned away as I walked past him. Elisabeth sat alone on the beachfront terrace. She moved her wine glass and ran her fingers through her hair as she saw me approach. I hadn’t seen her for a long time. The years had enhanced her beauty. Her skin was flawless, and the way her sandy brown hair curved towards her shoulders reminded me of Grace.

  ‘Adam, those men have their black car parked right opposite my house. Sunglasses, tattooed arms, those thugs watch everything we do,’ she said, diving right in. ‘What do they call themselves?’ Elisabeth was never one for small talk.

  ‘Kingsnakes. They’re Tula’s boys,’ I said. He had gambled on winning my restaurant, but the liquidators had beaten him to it, and the Matua of the Kingsnakes didn’t like to lose. Elisabeth knew Tula from our years of managing Milano’s. She turned away and looked at the beach. The sky was grey and swollen, awash with inky shadows. A handful of kids played at the water’s edge. An echo of Grace’s words came to me: ‘Be nice to each other.’

  When Elisabeth returned her gaze to me, her eyes sparkled with anger. She steadied her hand on her wine glass. ‘How could you do that? How could you borrow money against my share of the restaurant, and from a fucking criminal gang? Without asking me?’ Elisabeth’s voice was sharp and loud. The terrace fell silent. The waiter cast a concerned glance at us. David flicked his cigarette and moved towards us. Elisabeth held up her palm. He stopped.

  ‘And you are sailing away, just like that.’ She snapped her fingers, her voice now a low growl.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do. They are not breaking the law. I didn’t ask for that money. Tula’s boys just showed up with it, so I took it. You know how desperate I was. I thought it could help save the restaurant.’ The words came out of my mouth in a nervous tumble.

  ‘You should have sold Milano’s years ago. I should have forced you to sell the place, but I didn’t, because of Grace.’ Elisabeth was trying to keep her anger in check. I didn’t answer. I knew that talking to my ex-wife when she was worked up like this was pointless. I got up and left.

  * * *

  At dusk, the Sea Rover slipped around North Head with Duncan at the helm. A cool breeze stung my cheeks. I fastened my sea jacket and sat on the transom, watching the lights of Mission Bay flicker on. Between all the orange and red, I saw the glimmer of blue from the neon sign that shone above Milano’s. I looked further uphill, searching for my old apartment, and caught a glimpse of the giant pohutukawa tree that marked my driveway. I drifted back in time and saw Grace again when she was five years old, playing in a treehouse I’d built in the lower branches
; I heard echoes of her laughter and remembered the delight on her face. Then my stomach hollowed as I recalled the last desperate moments Grace and I had spent in the apartment only a few weeks ago.

  A hammer blow shattered the door, until it burst from its hinges and hung sideways. They pushed into the apartment through shards of wood and glass. One held a crow bar, the other a sledge hammer. Looking at their viper tattoos, I knew they were Tula’s boys. They moved fast. One twisted my arm, forcing me into a chair. He held me down with his foot on my chest. His thick-soled boot pressed the air from my lungs while the sledge hammer dangled effortlessly in his grip.

  ‘Where’s the cash, Milano?’

  ‘I don’t have any.’

  ‘Come on, man,’ said the guy with the crow bar. ‘Tula’s not gonna go for that one, you know that. All you restaurant guys have a stash.’ They ripped off the bench top and pulled out cupboards. Plasterboard walls crumbled to the ground. The crowbar screeched as it was slid under anything it could wrench open. The hammer pounded like a dull drumbeat. A fine cloud of dust hung over the room.

  Grace stood in the doorway, holding two burgers, their wrappers printed with red brand names, her hair haloed by sunlight, her school uniform the same colour as the sky. The burgers fell from her hand as she walked towards me, her cheeks red, her eyes pinpricks. I took her hand and felt her trembling.

  The larger guy eased on the hammer. He looked at us, and his lips opened like a cod’s and curled into a hard smile. The light caught his gold filling as he crossed the room. He nudged his mate and tossed his head towards the door. They shattered the remains of the door as they left.

  * * *

  The days rolled on in an endless flow of ocean and sky. We made good time. A week later, we had reached our waypoint south of New Caledonia and charted a passage into Micronesian waters. Duncan slept little and spent most of his time at the helm. I’d known him all my life: he was never talkative, was always a little strange, but his seamanship was excellent. As a teenager I’d spent eight hundred hours under his captaincy. It was Duncan who had signed off my skipper’s ticket. Over the years, we ran into him often at the marina. Grace was particularly fond of him and managed to coax sea stories out of him while my father and I worked on our boat, a classic wooden sloop, now in the hands of the liquidators. I’d sat helpless and watched as they’d methodically assessed every item I owned, ticked it off on a clipboard and marched it out to a truck. The leather couches, the oil paintings, Papa Milano’s antique coffee machine, all sucked into the void of bankruptcy that was once my restaurant.

  My mind refused to give me any reprieve. I would try to read, but after a couple of pages my concentration would drift, and I would find myself rehashing the same old scenarios and wondering what I could have done different, or calculating how much I was being paid for this voyage and how many more yacht deliveries I’d have to make to pay back what I owed. It would take seven or eight years. Grace would be twenty-five by then.

  When we sailed between Darwin and Timor, I radioed the Australian Coastguard and notified them of our position. They put us on pirate alert as we were now entering dangerous waters. Later that day, I removed the ship’s shotgun from its case, oiled and serviced it, and checked the date of the cartridges. I left the weapon breached on a shelf above the starboard bunk. The sea was calm with a steady fifteen-knot breeze. We passed local fishing craft and transport dhows, and I kept watch from a forward hatch as any of them could turn out to be pirates. Duncan seemed kind of absent and unconcerned but was doing a fine job helming the boat.

  The following morning, I was preparing breakfast in the galley when a squall hit us.

  We were in the Torres Straits on a tight reach. The boat lurched, and the coffee pot went flying. I cleaned up the mess then scrambled up the companionway. We were being driven towards the rocky coastline, with our gunnels submerged and the sea streaming over our rails. Our hull showed the colour of its anti-foul. A leaden sea tossed up foaming whitecaps. I braced myself as a sudden gust pushed the life rail under, submerging half the boat in swirling foam.

  ‘Duncan!’ I hollered, but the wind turned my voice to a whisper. I pulled myself closer, climbing up on the helm, and bellowed in his ear. ‘We’re carrying too much canvas!’

  He looked surprised, as if seeing me for the first time, then he reeled back, brushing water from his face. We were close to the shore, too close. I could see rocky outcrops. Then a sudden shift in the wind changed our course. We were now belting along parallel to the shoreline, with our bow pointing a few degrees seaward, with exactly the right amount of sail. I winched in the mainsheet. Duncan still gripped the helm. His face showed no sign of appreciation for our good luck. He wore the same blank look, the same strange expression.

  I went below. We had taken on water, and the hatch was open in Duncan’s forward berth. Sea water had filled the bilge and flooded the cabin floors. I pulled the hatch shut and turned on the bilge pump. The forward quarters were soaked, the squabs wet, the locker doors flung open, clattering and banging noisily. Duncan’s gear was strewn about. Soaked clothes and papers were scattered everywhere. As I gathered up his things, I found a box of medication. Small white bottles had spilled out of it and lay bobbing about on the last of the bilge water. They had come open, and tablets of various sizes and colour were dissolving quickly. I gathered up a handful of bottles. What kind of condition did Duncan have that required so much medication? Did this explain his lack of sleep and appetite, the blankness in his face, the strange glint in his eyes? The tablets were unsalvageable.

  He pushed into the cabin. His eyes flared, and he grabbed frantically at the remaining pill bottles. They were empty. He fell to the cabin floor on his hands and knees, scraping at the wet mixture of powder and water; it sifted through his fingers like wet sand. His mouth twisted. He fixed his eyes on me. ‘Do you know what this means?’ he said. I tried to speak but he cut me off. He grabbed my shirt and pulled me towards him, but I broke his grip, held him at bay and manoeuvred my way out of the cabin. He followed me into the salon, where he slumped down on a squab with his head in his hands. I kept a good distance from him.

  ‘For fuck’s sake man, what’s going on? Why didn’t you tell me? When do you need to take your pills next? I mean … your next dose?’

  He looked at me with an incomprehensible expression and shook his head. Then the boat lurched, the jib flapped, and the sheets cracked and whipped. We were about to breach. I got to the cockpit, winched in the jib sheets and eased the mainsail. The squall had passed and sat like a distant black smudge to starboard. The sun broke through the clouds and bounced off the boat’s decks. A halyard was tangled, and one of the poles had come loose. It took me some time to fix this and get the boat back on course.

  When I came back to the salon, Duncan was out to the world. He was curled up in a foetal position, taking short rasping inhales, then holding his breath before exhaling loudly. I tried to wake him but couldn’t. His eyes were jammed shut, his face twisted into a grimace. I tried to straighten his legs to ease his breathing, but he wasn’t having it. He pulled them back up into a curl then wrapped his arms around his knees and went on with his rattled breathing. I took a survival blanket from the first-aid locker and wrapped it around him.

  Back in the cockpit, I thought about radioing for help but then changed my mind. I decided to wait and see how Duncan was when he came to. The wind had dropped to a steady ten knots on the beam. I rolled out the genoa and shook a reef out of the main. We were making good speed towards our next waypoint, the southern tip of the island of Bali.

  It was early evening. The Sea Rover rose and fell on the ocean’s roll, our stern wake bubbling and snapping to the occasional slap of a jib sheet. A seabird followed us, then glided away. The ocean changed hues from blue to grey as dusk fell. I ate a can of tuna with crackers, changed my T-shirt and checked on Duncan. I couldn’t tell if his breathing had become worse, or if I could just hear him more clearly since we were on ca
lmer waters. I made a flask of strong coffee and took a few cushions up to the cockpit. We were averaging around six knots in light air, and the wind remained steady as we sailed through the night. By morning, I was exhausted. I’d managed to stay awake all night. Duncan still lay on the squab, breathing hard. The Sea Rover held her course. We were fifty miles closer to our waypoint. I put my head down on a cushion.

  It was broad daylight when the noise awoke me. Duncan was moving around down below. I checked our position on the navigation station. It was dead. Then I saw that all our navigational gear and electronics was out: the depth sounder, the forward sonar, the radar and auto pilots, the lot. I looked below just in time to see Duncan ripping out our ship’s radio. The V.H.F. already dangled by its wires, and so did our short-band radio.

  ‘Duncan, stop!’ I hollered as I went below.

  ‘Where are they? Where have you put them?’ He waved the ship’s radio at me like it were a weapon.

  The damage he had wrought was horrendous. In his frantic search for his medication he’d opened the housing case for the ship’s electronics and destroyed the wiring. Loose wires hung out of their casing and dangled like colourful threads. While I took stock of the damage, Duncan had moved on to the first-aid cabinet. I caught him just as he was about to swallow a handful of morphine tablets.

  ‘Give them to me,’ he screamed as I grabbed the tablets. His eyes glittered with madness.

  ‘Your pills are gone, man. Gone! These are not them.’ I threw the bottle out of a hatch. ‘And look at this mess. What are we going to do now?’ I wrapped my arms around him and forced him back to the bunk. He fought against me but I had him in a vice-like grip. ‘Duncan, look at me,’ I pleaded. ‘I want you to stay here while I try to fix some of this damage. Look at what you’ve done … Look at this shit! We’re fucked, man. Don’t move from this bunk. Do you understand me?’ From his vacant gaze, I knew that he had no idea what he’d done. I felt his body go limp as he slumped onto the squab. ‘Give me my pills,’ he murmured, falling unconscious.