The Two Sisters of Borneo by Ian Hamilton Page B

good first impression.”
    “Are you always so candid?”
    “Don’t know any other way to be.”
    “Then we should get along.”
    He sat back in his chair, squirming as he tried to get comfortable. “Do you need references? You didn’t mention anything like that on the phone, but I thought I should ask.”
    “Are you good at what you do?”
    “I’m the best in Amsterdam,” he said, and then paused. “Mind you, there aren’t many other detectives who focus on money matters. Here it’s all about sex and drugs and gambling and infidelity.”
    “So I noticed when I tried to find someone.”
    “I thought about advertising myself as an accountant and actually set up a separate listing, but it didn’t generate any business so I got rid of it.”
    The bartender arrived at the table with their drinks.
    Smits raised his glass. “ Proost. ”
    “ Yambui. ”
    “Where are you actually from? I don’t recognize your accent,” Smits said after draining half his beer in two immense gulps.
    “I’m Canadian. Of Chinese origin, of course, but very decidedly Canadian. This business I need you to look into, though, involves a company in Borneo. My partners and I own a venture capital firm in China and we’ve recently made a major investment in the Borneo operation. It’s gone extremely sour.”
    “Canada . . . Borneo . . . China . . . the Netherlands . . . that’s the way all business seems to be now. The days of operating in one market are long gone.”
    “And will never come back.”
    “No,” Smits said, as if he regretted it.
    “In any event, I have some paperwork to leave with you,” Ava said, reaching for her bag. She extracted the files that May Ling had given her and passed them to Smits. “This will give you the basic information about all the companies and people involved, and the nature of the bankruptcy.”
    He glanced at the paperwork. “I’ve heard of Meijer, but only in passing. Janssen is a new name to me. Timmerman I know. They have a decent reputation as bankruptcy trustees.”
    “That may be the case, and if it’s true, then whatever we can dig up to prove that Meijer and Janssen colluded to defraud us of thirty million dollars should prove useful and actionable.”
    “I said they were decent, not saints. They’ll still want to collect their fees.”
    “We’ll be good for whatever fees they would have earned if the bankruptcy was genuine.”
    “That’s good to know. And now there’s just the small matter of proving that something underhanded went on. You seemed not quite so sure of that when we talked on the phone.”
    Ava sipped her wine and then noticed that Smits’s glass was empty. “Another beer?”
    “Please.”
    Ava caught the bartender’s eye and motioned at Smits’s glass. “Well, I’m quite certain that something funny was done. Whether it was in Borneo or here or some combination of the two, and whether it involved both Janssen and Meijer in partnership with the Borneo thieves or just Janssen and Meijer by themselves or just Janssen and the Borneo bunch, I don’t know. We’ll handle things in Borneo, so don’t worry about that. What I need you to do is burrow as deeply as you can into Janssen’s business. I want to see company and banking records for as far back as you can go. I want to see the details of how they were financed, and just how entwined Meijer and Janssen were, and I want to understand the relationship between these two companies — personal and business. And when you’ve got all that information, I want you to analyze it and give me your best assessment as to what happened.”
    “You said you’d look after Borneo. What you find there could help me, no?”
    “Yes, of course. I’ll pass everything along to you.”
    His second beer arrived. He eyed it lovingly and this time half-emptied it with only one gulp. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “If you don’t mind me saying, it sounds like you’ve been involved in this kind of