by Claire Gray
‘Did you speak to the French tourists?’ I ask.
‘Yes. They’re leaving tomorrow. They were trying their best to have a nice last day.’
‘What did they tell you?’ I ask, positioning my pen above the paper; I hate a blank page.
‘The daughter saw him first. She thought it was a big plastic bag caught on the branch and was going to get it and bin it. She has a thing about plastic getting into the sea and then the turtles eat it. But it was a man. She screamed and her parents came running. That’s it. That’s all I got.’
I pull the laptop across the table to where I’m sitting, accidentally crumpling my notes. I wait for a map to load and then swivel the screen around to show Steve. The blue line of the river runs from behind the temples that Lena and I visited, then meanders back around the edge of town and into the sea.
‘I think his body came from here,’ I say, pointing to the temples.
‘Why? It seems more likely that he came from somewhere in town. There are lots of industrial buildings where he could have been held. It wouldn’t be far to the river from these ones here.’ Steve waves his hand vaguely, scattering dust from the screen.
‘Yeah, but listen; when we went to the temples yesterday, Lena’s bike got stolen. And, around that same time, we heard a man shouting. Scared sort of shouting. We couldn’t find the bike or the man. But then this morning, the bike washed up along that exact same river. Mike found it, you know, the guitarist.’
Steve tilts the screen so he can get a better look at the map. He’s frowning; I have his attention with this. ‘You think it was Bernard Shuttleworth doing the shouting? And he took the bike?’
‘Maybe.’ I nod eagerly, before I lose him.
‘Were you out there looking for him?’ Steve asks, with one eyebrow raised. Part of me wants to say yes, because although I wasn’t specifically expecting to run into Shuttleworth in the jungle, I do think I’ve been very clever. But I know that he’ll be hurt when he realises that I didn’t bring him in on it all right from the start. I should have done, even if he was busy getting stoned and feeling depressed.
‘I had a feeling that something was out there,’ I say, drawing a flower on my piece of paper so that I don’t have to look at him. ‘Do you remember Mike saying there was a lot of orange mud on Dolph’s car? The mud out in the jungle around the temples is orange. There’s some sort of mineral out there that does it. I read about it once. I just thought it might be worth checking out. I definitely would have brought you if I really and truly thought something important was going to happen out there, you know?’
‘Okay,’ Steve says, and then pauses. He gazes out of the window, chewing on his thumb. ‘So, you think that someone killed Shuttleworth in the temple region? That’s your theory?’
‘Yes, and I think maybe Dolph did it. He looked so shifty when I saw him at the hotel, and he wouldn’t have just dumped his car for no reason.’
‘But why would he do any of that? What do you know about him to make that seem feasible?’
‘Nothing really,’ I admit. ‘Just that the very morning before he disappeared, Shuttleworth told me that he thought Dolph might be involved in the bombing. He didn’t have much of a reason. But still, he said it. And now no one knows where Dolph is. Or his girlfriend. There’s something, isn’t there? It all adds up to something.’
‘Something.’ Steve nods.
‘But there’s more,’ I say. I tell him about the woman who Lena and I met on the road back from the temples and who gave us a lift in her big, expensive car. I say: ‘We need to find out why she was out there last night. She has to be involved somehow.’
‘She’s staying at the Grand Hotel?’
‘That’s what she said.’
‘Then it seems to me that we ought to go there and find her. One other thing though; how does the ice cream parlour fit into it all?’
‘Maybe it doesn’t.’ I shrug. ‘Even if the bomb was in one of their plant pots anyone could have put it there. It doesn’t necessarily implicate the owners.’
‘No, but I think we should try to speak to the owners anyway. We need to know why they were closed that afternoon. We should be thorough, right?’
‘I agree,’ I say, feeling just the smallest thrill of excitement, like we’re on a rollercoaster and it’s started to slowly climb up, up, up. ‘And, most of all, we should go out to the temples and see what we can find. We should probably follow the course of the river.’
‘I don’t know,’ Steve says, the expression on his face faltering. ‘That seems like it might put us in unnecessary danger. But maybe we can catch up with Kadesadayurat soon and find out what he knows. I’d imagine they must be thinking along the same lines we are.’
‘I expect so,’ I say, nodding and folding up my sheet of notes. I’m going to visit the temples, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to persuade Steve to come with me. I’ve missed a lot of opportunities lately; I missed something, I know I did, when I was talking to Shuttleworth at his resort. I missed my chance to speak with Dolph at the Imperial Hotel and I missed the shouting man in the forest. If there is something waiting to be discovered out there, I’m not going to miss my chance to find it.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Steve says. ‘I’m with you on this, okay? I just don’t want anyone else to get hurt. Let’s start by checking out the building where the ice cream owners are supposed to live. It’s not so far away. And then we’ll swing by the Grand Hotel.’
‘Okay.’ I notice him sucking on his thumb, like he’s trying to get poison out of it. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yeah, sorry. It kind of stings where that cat bit me. I expect it had some sort of disease. Mouth parasites.’
‘You shouldn’t really take in stray animals around here,’ I say. ‘They can have rabies.’
‘I mean it, you know, Lucy,’ he says. ‘I really want to help. I love this island. I’ve asked Jenna to bury me here when I die, out in the jungle. It might be illegal but I don’t care. She’ll find a way. She’s resourceful.’
I laugh. ‘It’s a good island.’
‘It saved me, I think. I was at a low point in my life when I came here. We don’t have to go into it but things were bad.’
‘Oh yeah?’ I say, looking at my fingernails and hoping that he isn’t about to ask me to share anything.
‘I ran away, you see? It wasn’t strictly necessary to run all the way to a new continent, but it helped; travelling in cramped buses all through the night, counting out foreign banknotes, drinking alcohol in bars with sticky floors in places where no one spoke my language. I got lost in it all, for as long as I could. I wandered through Vietnam and Cambodia, and then eventually settled here. I don’t know what would have happened to me if I hadn’t started up this newspaper. But I did, and it worked. I was on my own for years until things got too busy, and then, well, you came along.’
‘Yep.’ I nod, remembering the advert that had seemed too good to be true when my sister showed it to me, the Skype interview that I thought I’d bungled, and my first real glimpse of Steve as he stood in a Hawaiian shirt, waving and sweating as I stepped unsteadily onto the dock.
‘I was hoping that life could stay this way forever; drinking with friends like you, petting stray animals like that stupid cat, writing meaningless, beautiful words and taking meaningless, beautiful photographs for our stupid, but not all together meaningless, newspaper. But now things are uglier than they’ve ever been, and I’m starting to realise that I didn’t escape from anything when I fled my home. The sadness followed me here and now it’s arrived and tainted everything.’
‘You’re talking like it’s your fault,’ I say, staring through the window at the roof tops and the distant green hills. Steve’s looking out there too, at the island we love.
‘I sort of feel like it is,’ he says. ‘Is that dumb?’
‘It’s definitely not your fault,’ I say. ‘How could it be?’
‘I realise it’s not like I armed the bomb or anything. I
’m just having to admit for the first time in what, fifteen years, that I’ve been very selfish hiding here in my little haven while my old, damaged life goes on without me. And now this life is terribly damaged too.’
‘We can help with this though,’ I tell him. ‘We don’t need to run away anymore. We can stay here and help fix things.’
I don’t tell him that I ran to this island just like he did, or that I’ve been hiding here. The words nearly leave my mouth but then merely fall out in a sad little sigh.
‘I would really like to fix something.’ Steve nods.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The hairdressers is closed, but two small children sit in its doorway eating noodles from a polystyrene box balanced across their knees. A woman is sweeping the pavement beside them; gravel, hair and bits of plastic which twinkle in the sun. The building that looms behind the hairdressers is a pale grey cube, around five stories high, with cracks in its plaster and lines of washing hung across the balconies.
We’ve parked in front of the hairdressers and we’re both gazing up at the apartment block, shielding our eyes from the sun while we finish our iced coffees.
‘I can’t picture them at all,’ Steve says, unwinding his window to let a fly out. ‘You really think you’d recognise them?’
I screw up my eyes and try to think back to the last time I visited the ice cream parlour. It was probably a few weeks ago, when I bought milkshakes to bring into the office. I can picture the woman’s smile. Wrinkles around her mouth. She had a roll of Pokémon stickers beside the till, and had given some out to the children who were queueing with their parents in front of me. I tried to recall the names of the Pokémon while she counted out my change.
‘Yeah, I’d recognise her. She was always there. Him, I didn’t see so much. He’s older, I think. I used to see him smoking sometimes; when I looked out of my bedroom window he’d be across the street, having a cigarette outside the café.’
‘Bob and Mary,’ Steve says, sucking up the last of his drink, crumpling the cup and tossing it down beside his feet.
‘There’s a bin right there,’ I say, pointing out of my window. As I look, a man and woman appear around the side of the hairdressers, following a path leading from the apartment building. They’re walking close together. Their fingers are touching but they are not quite holding hands. The woman is hunched, looking at the ground. The man is smoking, keeping his hand up close to his face.
‘Oh!’ I say, waving a hand at Steve and reaching to open my door. This could be them.
Steve is looking the other way, out of his window. I glance over. A police car has just driven slowly by.
The couple have disappeared. I look up and down the street. They can only have doubled back on themselves, or gone into the hairdressers. But the children are still sitting there with their noodles and the door is still closed behind them.
‘Kadesadayurat was driving that car,’ Steve tells me. ‘There were two other policemen in there with him. Bastard’s not answering my calls. You know what we should do?’
‘Follow him?’ I venture.
‘Follow him,’ Steve says, grabbing hold of the dashboard like he’s willing the car to move.
I look one final time at where the couple were walking just seconds ago. Was it really them or was I just desperate to believe that it could be? If I get out of the car now and run along that path, I might be too late to catch them, or perhaps I’ll reach them and find that they’re strangers. Either way, it’ll be too late to follow Kadesadayurat.
I pass my drink to Steve because the cup holders are already full of empties, and then I accelerate hard after the police car, which is just turning right at the end of the street. When I make the turn we can see them continuing straight; they’re just overtaking a man leading a donkey along the road.
‘He’s sure to recognise my car,’ Steve says.
I shrug. ‘Let’s see how far we can get. Maybe he won’t mind us tagging along.’
It quickly becomes clear that Kadesadayurat is heading out of town. As the buildings fall behind us and the traffic thins, I drop back further, keeping a group of mopeds between us.
‘He’s going to the temples,’ Steve says, when even the mopeds have dropped away and it is just our two vehicles sending trails of dust into the hot air.
‘I think so.’
‘You were right, Lucy. You are so clever.’
I smile thinly because I still might turn out to be wrong and, anyway, what a thing to be right about.
We continue along behind them, keeping far enough back that we often lose sight of them as the road curves and the trees rise. The journey seems shorter today than it did last night in that drunk woman’s car, almost like I should still be able to see the town in my rear-view mirror. We’re approaching the point where the track narrows and dips towards the first temples, but then Kadesadayurat surprises us by pulling over to the side of the road.
‘What are they doing?’ Steve says. ‘There’s nothing around here, is there?’
‘I’m not sure.’ I slow down but don’t quite stop.
‘No, keep going. You’re making us look suspicious,’ Steve says, waving a hand.
‘But I’ll pass them.’
‘They might not look.’ Steve sticks his head out of the window, squinting ahead at the parked car. ‘I can see them. They’re facing away from the road. They’ve gone down into the bushes. What are they doing? Oh, they’ve all stopped for a piss.’
‘Oh,’ I say, suddenly very aware of my own bladder and the distance between it and the nearest toilet.
Steve’s laughing. ‘Just pass them,’ he tells me.
I slow slightly as we go by, and Steve winds his window the whole way down, trying to listen to what they’re saying over the sound of our engine.
‘A waste of time,’ he says. ‘Something like that. They don’t want to be here. Something else is happening elsewhere. That’s all I got.’
‘Should we wait for them?’ I say, touching the brake, not sure how to proceed.
‘We know where they’re headed, don’t we? Let’s go ahead and wait for them. He can’t accuse us of following him if we get there first.’
‘Okay,’ I say, but as soon as we continue on alone, I feel like the sky has darkened a shade and dropped lower, so that it’s pressing down on our little vehicle, as it bounces and rattles across the potholes.
Chapter Twenty-Six
‘Let’s stop here,’ Steve says.
The track has narrowed and the car is beginning to struggle against the mud and thick plants. I switch the engine off. Silence, almost. A mosquito moves about inside with us, humming. Many more insects have perished on the windscreen. Something in the engine is ticking.
‘Maybe I should pull over a bit,’ I say. ‘In case someone wants to get past.’
‘You think anyone else will be coming out here?’
‘Well, Kadesadayurat,’ I say.
‘Their car looked nearly as beat-up as ours,’ Steve says. ‘I doubt they’d get it much further than this.’
‘Still, I’d feel better if we weren’t in the way.’
‘Down there,’ Steve says, pointing to a little dip at the side of the road, partially hidden by vines hanging from the trees. ‘It’ll be out of the way and it’s sort of subtle. The police might not even notice it. Not that it matters. We’re doing nothing wrong being out here.’
‘I know.’ I nod, but somehow I feel like we are.
With a lot of groaning from the engine, and with mud spitting up all around us, I manage to manoeuvre the car off the road. We climb out and sink ankle deep in sludge.
‘Oh, we’re not prepared for this,’ Steve says as flies descend around us.
‘We’ll be fine. This is a few miles further on from where I cycled to with Lena. From here it should be possible to walk to the three temples I have in mind. They’re the temples nearest to the river.’
‘We should wait here though,’ Steve says, planting a hand
firmly on the roof of the car. ‘Don’t you think we should wait for the police to arrive and then follow them?’
‘It doesn’t hurt to look,’ I say. I’d thought, now that he was out here, Steve would want to keep on going.
‘But it might hurt. That’s exactly my concern.’
So, we get back inside the car and sit silently together, arms folded, staring out at water oozing down the trunks of the trees and dripping onto rocks below. Drops are hitting the roof of our car too, an irregular beat. We wait and wait. The police car does not appear.
Steve puts the radio on and dials through the different stations until he finally manages to catch something, although it is muffled and cuts in and out. A female voice is speaking in Thai. I can tell it’s the news by her sombre tone.
‘Is she talking about us? The island?’ I ask.
‘Yeah,’ Steve says, frowning as he concentrates. ‘She just mentioned the police in Melbourne, Australia. Something to do with members of a group. Closing in on someone. It’s so hard to hear.’
He twists the dial, attempting to make it clearer, but then we lose the voice completely and there is nothing but the hiss of empty airwaves.
‘I think maybe things are starting to happen,’ I say. ‘We’re all making progress, right?’
‘Let’s just go home,’ Steve says. ‘We’ve obviously got this wrong.’
‘You serious?’ I say.
‘We shouldn’t explore alone, Lucy. It’s stupid and it’s dangerous.’
‘We came all the way out here. We can’t just give up. You wait in the car. I’m going to have a look around.’ I’m not sure, at this point, if I really am brave enough to get out and walk off into the trees alone, but luckily Steve doesn’t call my bluff.
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘We’ll have a quick look. Ten minutes. Just to get a feel for the area. And then we’re going back to the police station and we won’t leave until Kadesadayurat sees us and fills us in on all of his news. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ I nod. ‘Thank you. And don’t worry. I’m sure no one will be here, dangerous or otherwise. Why would they wait around after doing whatever it was they did to Mr Shuttleworth?’
