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Authors: Ian Hamilton
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close to her Toronto condo.
She took the details from the Timmerman document and transferred them to the Moleskine. Then she listed May Ling’s suspicions about the brothers and their relationship with the Dutch company. On the surface the situation did look as if it had been contrived — everything was so damn neat. But while it was easy to make charges, it was something else entirely to prove May’s assumption that there had been fraudulent collusion among three or more parties. What if it was a just a case of incompetent business management that had stumbled its way into the efficient Dutch bankruptcy system?
Ava closed her notebook and sat back. She hadn’t done any work in more than five months. In the past it had taken her a while to get up to scratch after a prolonged absence. That was a luxury she didn’t have this time. The bankruptcy meeting was only a day away, and the money involved wasn’t someone else’s to lose. As she began to contemplate the enormous sum that was $30 million, the plane banked and the flight director announced they had begun their descent into Amsterdam.
They landed at eleven thirty, and in less than thirty minutes she had walked out into the cold, damp night.
The distance from Schiphol Airport to the Dylan Hotel was only about ten kilometres. In-bound traffic at that time of night was light; in fact, Ava saw almost as many buses as cars, and by twelve thirty she was at the hotel entrance. It looked like something from another century with its stone façade interrupted by metal grilles and its metal doors crowned by a high arch. The Dylan hadn’t originally been conceived as a hotel; it comprised a number of three-storey brick and stone houses surrounding a courtyard, which had been built in the 1600s.
Ava had arranged for a late check-in and her room was ready when she arrived. They called it the Kimono Room. It was entirely black and white, ultra-modern Japanese minimalism with clean, hard lines. Even the bed’s four posts were thin and reed-like, more for accent than function, more symbol than decoration.
Ava unpacked her Shanghai Tang Double Happiness bag and carried her toilet kit into the bathroom. Her plan was to shower, slip into clean underwear and a T-shirt, and then sleep. As she stripped, she became aware of how dazzling the light was.
Her room was on the top floor of the hotel, and the bathroom had been built loft-style, with black wooden beams crisscrossing from wall to wall and a glass ceiling open to an overcast sky. Because of the dark contrast created by the bathroom’s ceiling, the room seemed flooded with a brilliant glare when she turned on the lights, a glare that accentuated every pore of her body. Rarely had she felt more naked. Ava looked at herself in the mirror and was startled by how pale her skin seemed, even more so when she turned sideways and saw the red scar on her upper thigh where she had been shot in Macau.
Even in the harshness of the light, her body looked to be that of a younger woman. A combination of running and bak mei — the Chinese martial art she practised — had helped her maintain her physique for as long as she could remember. She was beautifully proportioned, her waist almost perfectly centred, her thighs and buttocks firm and muscular.
The bathroom, like the rest of her suite, was starkly minimalist. The immense white porcelain bathtub was completely encased in black marble. She drew water, added bubble bath, and eased herself into the tub.
As she soaked, she focused on two white pots shot through with streaks of electric blue, sitting on a ledge at the foot of the bath. They were probably Japanese pots, she thought, but they could just as easily have been Chinese. What was she doing in Amsterdam? Then it occurred to her that not only was she away from Hong Kong for the first time in five months, she was also completely alone. She closed her eyes. The image of Uncle lying in his bed at the Queen Elizabeth leapt into her
She took the details from the Timmerman document and transferred them to the Moleskine. Then she listed May Ling’s suspicions about the brothers and their relationship with the Dutch company. On the surface the situation did look as if it had been contrived — everything was so damn neat. But while it was easy to make charges, it was something else entirely to prove May’s assumption that there had been fraudulent collusion among three or more parties. What if it was a just a case of incompetent business management that had stumbled its way into the efficient Dutch bankruptcy system?
Ava closed her notebook and sat back. She hadn’t done any work in more than five months. In the past it had taken her a while to get up to scratch after a prolonged absence. That was a luxury she didn’t have this time. The bankruptcy meeting was only a day away, and the money involved wasn’t someone else’s to lose. As she began to contemplate the enormous sum that was $30 million, the plane banked and the flight director announced they had begun their descent into Amsterdam.
They landed at eleven thirty, and in less than thirty minutes she had walked out into the cold, damp night.
The distance from Schiphol Airport to the Dylan Hotel was only about ten kilometres. In-bound traffic at that time of night was light; in fact, Ava saw almost as many buses as cars, and by twelve thirty she was at the hotel entrance. It looked like something from another century with its stone façade interrupted by metal grilles and its metal doors crowned by a high arch. The Dylan hadn’t originally been conceived as a hotel; it comprised a number of three-storey brick and stone houses surrounding a courtyard, which had been built in the 1600s.
Ava had arranged for a late check-in and her room was ready when she arrived. They called it the Kimono Room. It was entirely black and white, ultra-modern Japanese minimalism with clean, hard lines. Even the bed’s four posts were thin and reed-like, more for accent than function, more symbol than decoration.
Ava unpacked her Shanghai Tang Double Happiness bag and carried her toilet kit into the bathroom. Her plan was to shower, slip into clean underwear and a T-shirt, and then sleep. As she stripped, she became aware of how dazzling the light was.
Her room was on the top floor of the hotel, and the bathroom had been built loft-style, with black wooden beams crisscrossing from wall to wall and a glass ceiling open to an overcast sky. Because of the dark contrast created by the bathroom’s ceiling, the room seemed flooded with a brilliant glare when she turned on the lights, a glare that accentuated every pore of her body. Rarely had she felt more naked. Ava looked at herself in the mirror and was startled by how pale her skin seemed, even more so when she turned sideways and saw the red scar on her upper thigh where she had been shot in Macau.
Even in the harshness of the light, her body looked to be that of a younger woman. A combination of running and bak mei — the Chinese martial art she practised — had helped her maintain her physique for as long as she could remember. She was beautifully proportioned, her waist almost perfectly centred, her thighs and buttocks firm and muscular.
The bathroom, like the rest of her suite, was starkly minimalist. The immense white porcelain bathtub was completely encased in black marble. She drew water, added bubble bath, and eased herself into the tub.
As she soaked, she focused on two white pots shot through with streaks of electric blue, sitting on a ledge at the foot of the bath. They were probably Japanese pots, she thought, but they could just as easily have been Chinese. What was she doing in Amsterdam? Then it occurred to her that not only was she away from Hong Kong for the first time in five months, she was also completely alone. She closed her eyes. The image of Uncle lying in his bed at the Queen Elizabeth leapt into her
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