The Dying Beach Read online

  ‘You got the gist of what happened?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Looks like we’re back to square one.’ There was a tremor in her voice. ‘We know someone wants Pla’s notebook but we don’t know who or why.’

  ‘Not quite square one,’ Rajiv said. ‘There have been two attacks on foreign women since Pla’s death. The first was against someone who looked like you. The second was aimed at retrieving Pla’s notebook, which you have in your possession.’

  ‘I thought you said the first attack was coincidental.’

  ‘Yes, but we cannot say the same thing about the second attack.’

  ‘No,’ Jayne said. ‘So you admit we have a case worth pursuing.’

  Rajiv had seen it coming. They may have been together only a matter of months, but already he could predict Jayne’s behaviour. He observed her face light up during her phone conversation with Sigrid, saw how quickly she became businesslike and focused. Jayne offered sympathy, but not for long. Others could provide sympathy. Jayne was after justice.

  ‘I agree there is a case to pursue,’ Rajiv said. ‘But I am not sure that we are the ones who should be pursuing it.’

  Jayne took a long drag on her cigarette, as though extracting her next words from it. ‘Another call to Major General Wichit is definitely in order,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow morning, first thing, I’ll brief him on what has happened to date and ask him for the name of a local cop we can trust.’ Rajiv nodded.

  ‘I want to do all I can personally to see this case through,’ Jayne said. ‘Not just for Pla, but for Suthita, Annabel and Sigrid, too. You said we had the means to work pro bono for up to seven days. Well, tomorrow is only day four.’

  Rajiv admired her fortitude even as it drove him crazy. ‘Your life could be in danger, Jayne. Have you thought about that?’

  ‘If I’d wanted a quiet life, I’d still be teaching English.’

  ‘Women have died. How can you be so nonchalant?’ Rajiv resisted the urge to bang the table. He’d never banged a table in his life. How did Jayne do this to him?

  ‘Nonchalant?’ Jayne said, her voice rising. ‘The last thing I feel is fucking nonchalant. I don’t want to think about why those women might have died. I just want to fucking do something about it—’

  For a moment, Rajiv thought she would bang the table. But she dropped her cigarette into the ashtray and put her head in her hands.

  ‘I need your help, Rajiv.’ She looked up and met his eyes. ‘I want to pursue this case, but I don’t want to do it on my own.’

  Rajiv held her gaze. ‘Are those your options, Jayne, to pursue the case with me or to pursue it on your own?’

  She looked away and Rajiv knew he’d called her bluff. He also knew what it took for her to admit she needed him.

  ‘Well, then, what is our plan?’ he said.

  Jayne looked at him, eyebrows raised. Rajiv nodded.

  ‘I’ve got a gut feeling about this guy Bapit,’ she said, trying not to smile as she took the sought-after notebook from her bag. ‘He’s the only person named in Pla’s notes as being in conflict with the villagers in his support for the power plant.’

  ‘His business is based in Neua Khlong?’

  ‘Yes. He lives in the company compound. I suggest we visit him there tomorrow morning.’

  ‘After you’ve spoken with Major General Wichit,’ Rajiv said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And if this Bapit is in any way connected to the deaths?’

  ‘Here’s my idea,’ Jayne said. ‘I pose as a consultant employed by the power company to conduct an unscheduled monitoring visit to see how the public relations strategy is going. You’ll need to dust off the suit, only this time you won’t need the gold accessories. What you will need is a pair of dark sunglasses and something gun-shaped in your waistband.’

  ‘And I’ll be?’

  ‘My personal security. The company has got wind of the recent attacks and decided they can’t be too careful.’

  ‘Wasim Akram,’ Rajiv quipped. ‘Formerly Special Service Group, Pakistani Army, aka the Black Storks. Built for stealth and speed. The blade is my weapon of choice. I was known in the SSG as the Silent Killer.’

  ‘What brought you into the service of a private company in Thailand?’

  ‘Money,’ Rajiv said. ‘Lots and lots of money.’

  ‘I’m feeling safer already,’ Jayne grinned.

  ‘Not advisable.’ Rajiv became serious again. ‘A role-play like this might buy us a little time, but nothing more. I’m prepared to go along with it only on the understanding that we have police back-up.’

  ‘That goes without saying,’ Jayne said.

  33

  Bapit groaned, no longer able to pretend the pounding on his front door was just a dream. He peered at his watch. It was after midnight. Who the hell was it, at this hour?

  His first guess was Othong. It wouldn’t be the first time the boy had turned up late, too drunk to go home to his mother. His nephew had long been a source of frustration, but lately he was plumbing new depths of Bapit’s displeasure.

  He levered himself out of bed and fastened a sarong around his waist as he shuffled to the door. He switched on the outside light and opened the door on a grave-faced Sergeant Yongyuth.

  ‘Sawadee krup, older brother,’ the police officer said. ‘Sorry about the late hour, but we need to talk.’

  Bapit gestured at the outdoor setting on the veranda, concrete tables and chairs cooled by the night air. He slipped inside, returning with a bottle of 100 Pipers and a couple of glasses. Yongyuth accepted a shot of whisky, declined a cigarette. Bapit inhaled both in quick succession.

  Yongyuth sipped his drink. ‘I have your nephew’s motorcycle.’ The policeman nodded towards the utility truck in the driveway. Bapit saw the bike roped to the bars in the tray but couldn’t see if it was damaged. Had Othong been killed in an accident? The idea didn’t distress him as much as it should have.

  ‘Where’s my nephew?’ Bapit said.

  ‘I was hoping you could tell me,’ Yongyuth said. ‘The bike was found in the grounds of the Sai Thai temple but there was no sign of Othong.’

  ‘Why would Othong be visiting the Sai Thai temple?’

  ‘I was hoping you could tell me.’

  ‘Perhaps the bike was stolen,’ Bapit ventured.

  ‘That’s what I need to determine,’ the policeman said. ‘Earlier this evening a foreign woman attending a funeral service at Wat Sai Thai was attacked.’

  Bapit felt his stomach sink.

  ‘The foreigner managed to defend herself and the attacker fled the scene. Up to now, he remains at large. Once the crowd dispersed, there was one motorbike unaccounted for in the temple grounds. Othong’s licence was under the seat. The farang woman’s description of her attacker matches that of your nephew. However, when shown his ID photo she was unable to say for sure as it was dark and she didn’t get a good look at his face.’

  ‘I see.’ Bapit kept his expression neutral though he could feel his blood pressure rising.

  ‘I was called to the scene because the crime involved a foreigner. This enabled me to personally impound the motorbike. It’s my job to determine whether it was in fact stolen.’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Or whether your nephew is responsible for this and any other recent attacks that have cast a dark shadow on our beautiful homeland.’

  Bapit felt the butt of his cigarette burn his fingertips. Sergeant Yongyuth had given him two scenarios only to save face and they both knew it.

  ‘The funeral service at Wat Sai Thai, who did you say it was it for?’ Bapit asked.

  ‘The young girl who drowned last weekend. They called her Pla.’

  Bapit shrugged as if the name meant nothing to him.

  ‘I need to speak with Othong,’ Yongyuth said. ‘What time would you normally expect to see him in the morning?’

  ‘Work starts at eight. But he’s usually late.’

  ‘I’ll come by and
if he hasn’t shown up by nine or ten, I’ll issue a missing persons alert.’ Yongyuth rose to his feet.

  Bapit watched as the vehicle pulled out of the driveway with Othong’s bike in the tray. Though he didn’t make a habit of drinking alone, he refilled his glass, lit another cigarette and blew smoke at the insects swarming around the veranda light.

  The smoke disturbed neither the insects nor the geckoes that climbed the walls after them. Most of the geckoes were feasting, snapping up the small bugs—gnats, flies and mosquitoes—like it was an all-you-can-eat buffet. But one gecko, much larger than the rest, didn’t budge, its gaze fixed on a fat moth. Even as smaller insects crawled past its snout, the gecko ignored them, waiting for a shot at the bigger prize. When it finally pounced, it fell short of its target, the moth flying out of reach.

  Bapit looked at the gecko’s round belly. It must have been fast once, quicker off the mark than the other geckoes darting after the smaller fare. But it had passed its peak, become slow and complacent. A liability even.

  Bapit stubbed out his cigarette, emptied his glass and went back inside. His office was at the front of the house. He deposited the whisky bottle on the sideboard before he passed through to the living quarters, leaving the glasses in the kitchen.

  The spare room where Othong stayed over on occasion was separated from Bapit’s by a narrow corridor. It had been Vidura’s room before he joined the army. Nearly two years after his son’s death, Bapit could smell his boy in that room. A landmine had blown Vidura’s body into a million unrecoverable pieces, but Bapit still had his son’s scent.

  He switched on the light. The bedside table contained a few baht coins and pair of sunglasses. Nothing under the bed or the mattress. Bapit searched the cupboard. A few items of clothing, a pair of rubber sandals. He found a porno magazine and a near-empty pint of cheap Saeng Som rum hidden in the folds of a sarong. They might have belonged to either boy, Vidura or Othong.

  They had been inseparable as youngsters, more like brothers than cousins. When Vidura insisted on doing military service, despite Bapit’s willingness to buy his way out of conscription, Othong had wanted to join the army, too. But Bapit couldn’t do without both boys. He needed the labour. Vidura was hell-bent on adventure, and Bapit let him go because it was easier to say no to his nephew.

  Bapit didn’t know the recruits in Vidura’s intake were destined for the Thai–Cambodia border. He let the army take the wrong boy. Every moment he spent with Othong reminded him.

  Bapit knew in his heart that his nephew was as guilty of the attacks on the farang women as he was for the senseless death of the Thai girl. But Bapit himself had helped Othong destroy the evidence of that initial crime, and Sergeant Yongyuth would need more than Bapit’s instincts to make an arrest.

  The old man checked behind the door. There was nothing hanging from it, but a floorboard wobbled beneath his foot as he crossed it. He squatted down to take a closer look. The board had been loosened, the grooves around it free of dust. Bapit used his fingernail—the one he grew long to clean his ears—to lift the floorboard to reveal a small cavity in the floor.

  Inside he found the evidence he dreaded.

  34

  Paul was mystified when Weeratham wanted to send him to Krabi province on his own. But the boss said that, given the company was providing an interpreter for the foreign expert attending the consultation, Paul might as well go on TEDO’s behalf. If it was a dig at how little progress he was making learning Thai, Paul didn’t care. Weeratham could be sending him off on a junket to get him out from under their feet for all he cared. Paul wasn’t going to knock back his first all-expenses-paid trip outside Bangkok.

  ‘Go down a day early,’ Weeratham told him. ‘Take a tour of the islands. I want you to experience the beauty of the environment we’re trying to defend in this country.’

  Paul hadn’t counted on forking out some of his own money for a tour but felt obliged to take one. He signed up for a ‘special promotion’ on the Phi Phi Islands because it was cheapest and soon found himself setting out from Ao Nang in a slow wooden boat that belched black smoke in its wake.

  Everything annoyed him at first. The engine noise, the rough bench seats, the bulky, tattered orange lifejackets the guide insisted they wear, the aloof Europeans and loud Americans who made up the rest of the tour group. But it was impossible not to be distracted by the beauty of the surroundings, and as the day wore on, the resentment Paul felt towards Weeratham turned to gratitude. The defining moment was navigating a narrow gap in the limestone cliffs of rugged Phi Phi Leh Island and entering a jade-green lagoon surrounded on all sides by sheer walls of stone. Hong Pileh, it was called in Thai. A room without a ceiling hidden inside a mountain. Paul had never seen anything like it.

  As the boat chugged away from Phi Phi Leh towards the resort island of Phi Phi Don, Paul sat on the prow and gazed into sea so clear he could see the black-and-yellow striped fish that amassed around the hull. He was pretty sure they had a military-type name, but an American taking photographs next to him kept referring to them as tiger fish. Paul should have been too relaxed to care but he couldn’t let American arrogance go unchecked.

  ‘Mate, I think you’ll find they’re called sergeant fish, sergeant major fish, something like that.’

  ‘They’re tiger fish,’ the American said, cupping a hefty zoom lens. ‘Fellow I met in Phuket told me.’

  Paul caught their tour guide eavesdropping on the exchange, a wry smile on her face. He waved her over.

  ‘You settle this,’ he said. ‘These fish hovering around the boat, what are they called?’

  ‘Takrapkhiaolueang,’ she said, without missing a beat.

  ‘English,’ the American said. ‘In English.’

  ‘Takrap…’ She splayed her fingers and placed one hand over the other. ‘It’s what we cook on.’

  ‘A grate or grill?’ Paul suggested.

  ‘Ka,’ the girl nodded. ‘And khiao lueang means green and yellow.’

  ‘There you go, mate, we were both wrong,’ Paul said. ‘They’re called yellow-green grate fish.’

  The guide’s smile revealed a charming gap between her two front teeth. Paul held up his camera. ‘Can I take your photo?’

  She nodded but to Paul’s disappointment closed her mouth before he could release the shutter.

  It was one of two photos of Pla he’d brought with him, her serious face against the rugged island background. The other was taken later in the day at Monkey Beach, on Phi Phi Don’s west coast. Pla had been enthusiastic about the snorkelling at Monkey Beach but not keen on its other tourist attraction: handfeeding the macaques that gave the beach its name. As the tour boats pulled in, the monkeys swarmed onto the sand from the surrounding jungle. Pla pursed her lips and shook her head as all the other tour guides waded to the beach and doled out food to the tourists.

  ‘For what it’s worth, I don’t like it either,’ Paul said.

  Pla looked surprised to find she was not alone on the boat. She raised an eyebrow. ‘Jing reu?’

  Paul’s Thai was limited but he knew the phase could mean either ‘really?’ or ‘bullshit’, depending on the context.

  ‘Jing jing,’ he said, the Thai equivalent of ‘really truly’.

  Excited childish shrieks drew their attention back to the beach, where the monkeys were snatching bananas, bread and packets of sweet biscuits out of people’s hands.

  ‘My colleagues say it makes the tourists happy, and happy tourists give better tips. But if tourists are always feeding the monkeys, the monkeys will forget how to feed themselves. And then how will they eat if the tourists don’t come anymore?’

  ‘Not to mention some of that food can make them sick,’ Paul murmured.

  ‘I worry the Thai people are the same-same like these monkeys.’ Pla’s eyes stayed fixed on the beach. ‘We take the money farang tourists feed us, but we forget how to feed ourselves. What happens when we destroy the beautiful nature and the tourists don’t want t
o come anymore?’

  Paul inched towards his daypack for a pen, keen to take down Pla’s words before he forgot them. He could use her comparison between the overfed monkeys and the Thais in the tourism industry in an article for the TEDO magazine.

  She turned around and Paul felt as if he’d been caught stealing.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

  Paul had chosen not to use his real name since arriving in Thailand. The Thais couldn’t pronounce words ending in L, so it came out as ‘Porn’ and no way was he going by Porn, even if it meant something completely different in their language. So he dusted off a schoolboy nickname derived from his initials. Paul O’Donnell. Pod.

  ‘Pod,’ Pla repeated. ‘That’s really your name?’

  ‘Actually, it’s Paul. My nickname’s Pod.’

  She frowned. ‘Careful how you say it. Too short and it sounds like the word meaning to tell lies. Better to make it long. Pord.’

  ‘Pord?’ It didn’t exactly roll off the tongue. ‘What does it mean?’

  She put one hand to her heart. ‘It means lungs.’

  ‘If it’s a choice between Mister Liar and Mister Lungs, I think I prefer Porn.’

  ‘Much better.’

  She was so sincere, Paul had to laugh, despite realising his colleagues in Bangkok had let him go for months calling himself ‘Mister Liar’ in Thai.

  ‘I don’t want to feed the monkeys. But I’d like a shot with the beach in the background. Would you mind?’

  ‘You want me to take a picture of you?’

  ‘Actually, I was hoping I could take another picture of you.’

  This time he caught her gap-toothed smile on film.

  They’d muted the colours at the photo-processing lab. Paul lacked the vocabulary to ask them not to. They’d made Pla’s skin look whiter, the way Thai people liked it. Pla later taught him to ask for si thammachaat—natural colours—so his photos didn’t look washed out. Too late in this case. Pla looked like a faded memory.