The Dying Beach

by Angela Savage

  ‘For how long?’

  Yongyuth shrugged. ‘Hard to say. A week. A month. A trial can be adjourned, an appeal lodged. You might have to come back and forth several times.’

  Jayne’s heart sank as she contemplated breaking the news to Rajiv. ‘What are the chances of making it to trial?’

  ‘On the attempted murder charge, there’s strong circumstantial evidence, which will be corroborated if we manage to lift prints off the drainpipe.’ He nodded to where his colleagues were dusting the blue PVC piping.

  ‘What about Pla’s murder?’

  ‘No evidence. Weak motive. Short of a confession…’ He shrugged again. ‘We could charge him with extortion on the grounds he threatened Khun Singh’s livelihood by planting a cobra in his guesthouse.’

  ‘What would be the point?’ Jayne asked.

  ‘The penalties for offences against property are strict.’

  Jayne shook her head. ‘No, not extortion. Murder. I know he killed Pla. Make him confess.’

  The police sergeant raised his eyebrows. ‘You’ve had a nasty shock tonight, Khun Jayne, on top of another violent incident only days ago. Your anxiety is only to be expected.’

  ‘But I’m not—’

  ‘People say things they don’t mean when they’re in a state of heightened anxiety, like suggesting a member of the Royal Thai Police might force someone to make a confession.’

  Jayne blushed. ‘Of course. I mean, of course not. Forgive me—’

  He dismissed her apology with a wave. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Try to get some sleep.’

  Sleep was the last thing on her mind.

  ‘There’s half a bottle of rice whisky in my pack,’ she said to Paul when the police finally left.

  Paul produced the bottle and two glasses. Jayne lit a cigarette while he poured two generous shots. She raised her glass to his and downed the contents in one gulp.

  Paul shot her a worried look. ‘You okay, Jayne?’

  She gave him a tipsy smile. ‘I have to make a phone call, only I’m too scared to go back to my room to make it in private. I thought some Dutch courage might help.’

  His worried look stayed in place. ‘Make your phone call out here,’ he said, pouring her another shot. ‘I’ll be inside. Call me when you’ve finished.’

  She caught his hand on the way past. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘For everything.’

  He gave her hand a brief squeeze and closed the door behind him. Jayne drew back on her cigarette deeply and dialled Rajiv’s number.

  62

  Rajiv was roused from his bed by the phone. Still half-asleep, he struggled at first to get his head around what Jayne was saying. But when she mentioned the cobra, he was suddenly wide awake.

  ‘I don’t think I would have made it without you,’ Jayne said. ‘It was as if I could hear your voice inside my head, telling me what to do.’

  Rajiv was too alarmed to be flattered. ‘I am finding it hard to believe this Choom fellow was trying to kill you. Perhaps he meant only to scare you.’

  ‘In that case, surely he would’ve used a snake that looks dangerous but isn’t.’

  ‘Maybe he thought you could tell the difference.’

  Her laugh was sharp, verging on hysterical.

  ‘Jayne, are you okay? How soon are you coming back?’

  There was a pause on the end of the line. Rajiv could hear her smoking.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘Sergeant Yongyuth wants me to make an official statement tomorrow and then there’ll be an investigation. He said something about a police line-up. He thinks there’s a strong chance Choom will be charged with attempted murder, but I reckon we can still get him charged over Pla’s death, too.’

  ‘So you will be making your statement tomorrow and then coming back?’

  ‘No. That’s what I’m saying. I need to be here, Rajiv. I need to keep pushing for the cops to look into Pla’s death and make sure Choom doesn’t try to pay them off.’

  ‘Have you told Sergeant Yongyuth everything?’

  ‘Yes. He’s even taken Pla’s notebook as evidence.’

  ‘Then surely the police are capable of conducting further investigations without you,’ Rajiv said. ‘I don’t want you to stay away any longer, Jayne. I need you. The business needs you—’

  ‘That’s what really matters to you, isn’t it? You don’t care about Pla. You just want me back so I can start earning money again. It’s all about the fucking business.’

  Rajiv took a deep breath. Jayne wasn’t herself. She’d be traumatised after her ordeal with the cobra. He tried to remember what he’d read about how to deal with people suffering from post-traumatic distress. Don’t take it personally. Don’t judge. Don’t expect much. But don’t tolerate unacceptable behaviour.

  ‘Jayne, you’ve had a terrible shock and—’

  ‘If one more person tells me I’ve had a terrible shock, I’ll scream,’ she said.

  Rajiv took a deep breath, tried a different tack. ‘I’m worried about you. I nearly lost you tonight, Jayne. Come home.’

  ‘Home?’ Her voice rose dangerously. ‘You call what we have a home? It’s nothing more than a glorified office where you occasionally sleep when it suits you.’

  ‘Jayne, please—’

  ‘You’re happy for us to be registered as business partners but you won’t introduce me to your family. Hell, you haven’t even told them about me. For all I know you’re just using me to get a toehold in the PI industry before heading home to India to marry some nice girl your mother picked out for you.’

  Rajiv wondered where all this was coming from. Wasn’t it obvious that in formalising their business partnership he had indicated his long-term commitment to their relationship?

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve given you that impression,’ he said. ‘There’s no one else. I am wanting to be with you only, Jayne. I thought you understood that.’ He listened to her smoke, trying to imagine the look on her face. ‘Come home,’ he said again.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I have to see this through.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ he said softly. ‘You are doing what you accuse me of, putting business before our relationship.’

  When she didn’t respond for a moment, Rajiv wondered if she was still there.

  ‘I just can’t drop it all now,’ she said finally.

  ‘You always have choices,’ he said.

  ‘But—’

  Rajiv cut her off. ‘I love you, Jayne, and I am wanting to be with you. But not if you are making me second best. In that case, I will not stay.’

  He heard a sound that could have been a cough or a cry before the phone went dead.

  63

  Jayne woke on Sunday morning to see the clock on the bedside table change from 5.45 to 5.46. She was surprised to have slept at all, given her state of mind.

  The pre-dawn chorus started as she watched the clock, birds whistling, whooping, screeching and cawing. Jayne rolled over and looked at Paul, fast asleep in the bed beside her. On the understanding they would ‘just sleep’, she’d asked to stay in his room, too frightened to return to hers and sleep alone. He told her she needn’t worry, made a joke of wearing underpants as well as shorts to bed, and went out of his way to be accommodating and polite. They lay back to back at first. But after an hour’s sleeplessness, Paul rolled over and put his arms around her. Jayne didn’t resist. He made her feel protected. She fell into a grateful sleep.

  The clock switched to 5.47. The birds fell silent as the sonorous dawn prayer rang out from the nearest mosque. Jayne eased herself up, careful not to wake Paul. She threw cold water on her face and dressed in the dark, taking her handbag as she crept out of the room.

  A young girl with a damp ponytail was topping up the pots of sugar, chilli flakes, soy and fish sauces on the tables in the guesthouse restaurant. Jayne ordered coffee and a bowl of noodles. She fought the urge to light a cigarette—she’d been smoking way too much—and turned on the nearest fan, the air alre
ady warm enough to make her sweat.

  She glanced at the television mounted on the wall above the bar. It was tuned to MTV. A girl in big glasses with a cat was singing to the camera as it followed her around a warehouse. Lisa someone. The volume was barely audible but Jayne knew the song. The title flashed across the bottom of the screen: ‘Stay (I missed you)’.

  Rajiv’s words of the previous evening came back to her. If you are making me second best, I will not stay. She hadn’t lied when she told Paul her partner was direct.

  Jayne had wanted to know if Rajiv was serious about their relationship and he’d called her bluff. Did they have a future together? Wasn’t it too soon to be asking? She hadn’t thought it through. Nothing new in that. For the past five years she’d made spur-of-the-moment decisions, with life-altering consequences. The decision to leave Australia. The decision to stay in Thailand. The decision to work as a private investigator. The decision to go into business with Rajiv. None of it thought through, and not a moment of regret.

  But this was different. What Rajiv offered wasn’t about running off on a whim in pursuit of the next adventure. It meant staying for the long haul.

  Jayne sipped the coffee that had arrived without her noticing and took a notebook and pen from her bag. There had to be a way she could write herself out of the case, a different story she could tell to account for the same phenomena.

  She let the noodle soup go cold and was onto her second coffee when the idea came to her. She began drafting an official statement to give the police.

  She outlined her reasons for believing Choom to be behind both Pla’s death and the attack on her. But his intended target, she wrote, was actually the Australian volunteer Paul O’Donnell. Choom recognised Paul as the environmentalist who’d been monitoring the power plant project alongside Pla. Choom got Pla out of the way when she threatened to expose his plans to establish shrimp farms in the mangrove forest. But when Paul showed up soon after, Choom guessed Pla had told Paul of these plans. Choom thought he was planting the cobra in the room assigned to Paul, but due to a mix-up at reception, the cobra had ended up in Jayne’s room. She’d need to get Singh to corroborate this part of the story but didn’t think it would be a problem. Singh would do anything to help put Choom away.

  There was a risk in fabricating Choom’s motive. But if the illegal shrimp-farming plans didn’t kill his credibility, the charge of attempted murder by cobra would. And given his ongoing denial of involvement in Pla’s death, Jayne had no scruples about bending the truth. Plus she was confident that Paul would substantiate her version of events. Something told her he’d welcome a shot at playing the hero.

  She imagined both the Thai and local English-language media would have a field day with a story involving the attempted murder by cobra of a farang. Hell, the international media would probably get in on the act. She could envisage the photo shoot, staged Thai police–style: Choom at a table with his hands cuffed and a nameplate in front of him; the cobra on the floor, teased by Charlie to rear up and flare its hood for the photo; Paul in his boots, wielding a torch, standing alongside Sergeant Yongyuth and pointing to his assailant.

  While she might still be required to put in an appearance if the case went to trial, she suspected Sergeant Yongyuth could be relied upon to help minimise her involvement. Jayne’s presence would only serve to remind him of his own mistakes. And though he was no brute—his reprimand for implying he might use force to extract a confession still smarting—as a Thai cop, he would be accustomed to the multiple ways in which justice might be served in his country.

  It was in both their interests to let Paul take centre stage.

  She’d have to tell Paul about Pla’s late husband, of course. Chances are it would come out in the investigation, and she didn’t want Paul caught off guard. Provided he wasn’t too precious about it, she’d suggest he be the one to bring Pla’s past to the attention of the cops: to point out how her history as both an environmental activist and a widow might account for her courageous if rash decision to go up against Choom.

  Jayne wondered as she closed her notebook and signalled for the bill whether Paul had the stomach to see it through. She’d do her best to brief him on what to expect from the investigation, and she had lawyer friends in Bangkok who could support him during the trial if it came to that.

  But the outcome would be beyond her control. The thought made her feel lost and liberated in equal measure.

  The morning was hot and damp, hinting of the monsoon to come. To hell with keeping a cool head. She would get through the outstanding tasks in Krabi as quickly as she could, be a pushy foreigner if that’s what it took, and get back to Bangkok as soon as possible.

  An image came to mind of sitting on the balcony of her Bangkok apartment with Rajiv, watching the monsoon rain fall from the awning in a curtain of water. It would be their first monsoon together. If she played her cards right, the first of many.

  Jayne dialled Rajiv’s number as she walked, needing to hear his voice. She needed to tell him she was coming home.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Dying Beach owes even more to the love and support of my partner and fellow crime writer, Andrew Nette, than my previous two novels, drawing not only on his plotting skills but also on files from his time spent working with Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance in Bangkok (www.terraper.org).

  I relied heavily on the TERRA publication Watershed for insights into Thai environmental campaigns and the activism of Thai villagers. However, the organisation fabricated for this story, TEDO, is in no way modelled on TERRA, whose staff and volunteers showed us every hospitality during our time in Bangkok.

  For their continued support, I’m grateful to Michael Heyward and the talented team at Text Publishing: Mandy Brett, Rachel Shepheard, Kirsty Wilson, Jane Novak, Anne Beilby, Chong Weng Ho and especially Alison Arnold. Caro Cooper provided helpful feedback on an early draft. For her insightful comments and edits on the penultimate draft, sincere thanks to Emma Schwarcz.

  In Krabi, thanks to Nattanan (Tina) Tiemlai; Prajuk (Tak) Engchuan, my guide to Neua Khlong district; and Seema Prabhu, author of the Your Krabi guide and website (www.yourkrabi.com). Thanks to Caroline Deacon and Alison Morris for sharing photos and stories of Krabi in the late 1990s; and to Christian Mortensen for his insights into rock climbing in Railay.

  In Nakhon Si Thammarat, thanks to Somchit Nak Padit, my guide to Khanom district; and Goong Nang at the Shadow Puppet Museum for explaining the role of the joker in the nang talung.

  Thanks to the author/blogger known as Kaewmala for assistance with Thai idioms. Her book Sex Talk (Heaven Lake Press, 2009) proved a valuable resource in writing this novel, as did Heart Talk by Christopher G. Moore (Heaven Lake Press, third edition, 2006).

  For kind assistance with Thai–English translations and transliterations, khop khun na ka to Premrudee (Eang) Daoroung and Kathryn Sweet.

  For legal advice, I remain grateful to Richard Fleming.

  I’m indebted to Richard Barrow and the team at Thai Blogs for insights into Thai life and culture (www.thai-blogs.com) and also to those at the Paknam Web Forums who responded to my questions about idioms, superstitions and fish (www.thailandqa.com/forum/forum.php).

  Jordyn Redwood is a suspense novelist and nurse whose blog, Redwood’s Medical Edge, is designed to help authors write medically accurate fiction (jordynredwood.blogspot.com.au). In responding to my query about what a dead body looks like after twelve hours in the water, she was assisted by Chief Deputy Coroner Charles Brining. My thanks to them both.

  In researching this novel, I read a translation of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand’s Environmental Impact Assessment of the Krabi Thermal Power Plant Project (1998). While this project provided inspiration for the one in the novel, the experts and villagers and the consultations between them are all products of my imagination. Likewise, the Krabi Golf Driving Range should not be mistaken for the Scenic Mountain Driving Range invented fo
r this story.

  While the Krabi Snake Farm is real, and I base my description of the King Cobra Show on experience, all characters and events associated with the snake farm of this novel are fictitious.

  As always, I take responsibility for any inaccuracies, not to mention the outrage of setting a crime novel in one of the most beautiful parts of the planet.

  Finally, thanks to my daughter Natasha for being such great company on all our travels.