Chapter 47 - A SORRY STATE OF AFFAIRS

The old cage lift creaked as it rose to the fourth floor of the fine nineteenth century Hausmanian building where Ennis had rented a small office. Two months had passed and he had was in the throes of setting himself up as a consultant once Papcon had filed for bankruptcy.

His nerves were still a little frayed. Since his Christmas trip to Dublin he was still pursued by a vision of police waiting for him, at his apartment, in the office, on the street, anywhere.

For a short while it he was floating in a kind of unreal dread, he felt that hidden people were watching him, waiting for the right moment to move in. He was swallowing more of the tranquillisers the doctor had prescribed for him than were necessary, to push away the images and fear that were omnipresent in his mind.

He pulled himself together, all he needed was a little time, if he kept cool, controlled his nerves, he could look forward to a very pleasant and comfortable life for many long years to come. The money now safely banked in Switzerland was his reward, though it would perhaps be necessary to face some tense moments over the next weeks. It was simply a question of time.

It did not however prevent him from wishing he could be transported to some point in the future once the initial drama had faded, with the passage of time and when those who could have pointed the finger at him were occupied by other affairs. He knew that the pressure of time would wear the sharp edge off any investigations.

After all, he rationalised, I’ve not killed anybody, Axelmann had died a natural if premature death, the fact that I’d abandoned his body on the beach was not a real crime.

He calculated that they would have not found the body until the next day, at the very earliest. But more likely later, and probably not at all. He had left nothing on the body, there were no clues with which it could be identified, and in any case, he reasoned nobody had been reported missing.

He had gone over the details in his mind a hundred times. According to the hotel register Axelmann, as hundreds of other guests, had checked out unremarked and without incident. If records were investigated, they would simply show that he had been through passport control at Denpasar and taken an international flight via Jakarta to Singapore. There he had stayed overnight and departed with the daily Swissair flight for Zurich the following evening, where he had disappeared without trace.

Ennis himself had entered Indonesia at Jakarta and had theoretically had not left the country for five more days, the only thing linking him to Bali was the domestic flight he had taken. However, there was nothing to connect his visit to Denpasar with Axelmann’s disappearance in Zurich.

He supposed that a real sleuth could eventually do that, but his experience of Indonesia told him that such a possibility was highly unlikely. He remembered Sutrawan’s police friend telling them of the foreign drug addicts and homosexual deaths in Bali, which were not infrequent occurrences, and the local police lacked the means and the manpower to investigate those cases as deeply as they would have liked to.

In any case with witnesses and those who could provide clues scattered to the other ends of the world at the end of each week, it would be an impossible task. The Indonesian authorities rejected the participation of any foreign agencies investigating tourist crimes on their territory as interference in their internal affairs. The lethargic and overloaded bureaucracy of the country soon condemned any investigation to years of red tape and legal procedures, then finally to a dusty shelf, if any conclusions were ever drawn it was long after the case had lost it’s urgency in Europe.

Ennis continued his reasoning; if in the unlikely event an autopsy was quickly carried out on the body, before the soft tissue had deteriorated, it would show death by a heart attack, otherwise there would be nothing to indicate foul play. They would be looking for persons reported missing and Axelmann had not been reported missing until the New Year, and that was in Paris, not Indonesia. By the time they traced him to the hotel in Bali it would be weeks, and all they would learn was that he had checked out on the Sunday and left the country.

The airlines would confirm that he had left and had passed through immigration on arrival in Singapore, where he had stayed overnight, departing on Swissair flight to Zurich the next day.

All trace of Axelmann ended in Zurich after he had deposited his baggage in the left luggage at the main railway station, which for unknown reasons was never collected.

Savio had reluctantly started to check on Axelmann’s whereabouts between Christmas and the New Year, a difficult task, since he could have been anywhere for the year end festivities. It some time before the French Embassy in Jakarta replied they had checked the major hotels, immigration and airlines; all indicated he had left the country.

He had not returned to his Paris apartment. The French police were reluctant to list an adult male as a missing person as there was no immediate reason to suspect foul play. However, the fact he was the financial director of Papcon aroused certain suspicions in view of the company’s financial situation.

Ennis was the first to be surprised when accusations were made against Axelmann by Brodzski’s family, who were surprised to learn of the Papcon’s sorry state of affairs, something that Brodzski had been careful to hide from them. It was a just short step to suspecting Axelmann of some unsavoury manipulations for personal gain.

Poor Axelmann’s name was blackened by certain of the shareholders and consortium partners, no doubt to hide some of their own irregular business, but what that was did not matter a dam to Ennis as it all provided an unhoped-for diversion.

-THE END-

Author’s Note

Since this book was first written huge pulp mills have been built across Indonesia, eating into the ever dwindling rainforests. At the same time tree plantations have remained, for the most part, the pious wish of politicians, victims of their own transitory existence.

To this a new disaster was added that of oil palm plantations which have totally destroyed vast swaths of rainforest and its natural treasures.

The rest of the remaining rainforests of Indonesia will have soon disappeared under the chainsaw, the consequence of both legal and illegal logging, shifting cultivation, transmigration, uncontrolled forest fires and oil palm plantations. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can reverse this situation.

John Francis Kinsella