The Dying Beach (13 page)

‘Please, Pamela, tell me all about the Scenic Mountain Driving Range. The name alone sounds alluring.'

‘Oh, you like it?' Pamela said. ‘I thought of it myself. And when you visit the site, you'll see where I got the inspiration. Are you able to visit the site?'

‘I was hoping to, that is, if we can fit it in. We're due to depart for Malaysia at six.'

‘For sure,' Pamela said, waving away a woman with a tray of oranges; someone had taken the trouble to peel them into flowers. ‘We'll drive out there now. We'll take my car. We can talk on the way.'

They piled into a white Toyota Landcruiser with the Apex logo on its side, Pamela in front with the driver, Jayne and Rajiv in the back. Pamela angled the rear-view mirror so she could speak to Rajiv's reflection.

‘The driving range was my husband's idea. He's an avid golfer.'

‘And there are no other golf courses in Krabi?' Rajiv asked.

‘The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand owns a course. But it's some distance from here and attracts a mostly Asian market. We want to develop a venue with a more universal appeal.'

Jayne glanced at Rajiv to see if he was offended, but he merely nodded and said, ‘Yes, of course.'

‘The land required for the driving range is much smaller than what's required for an eighteen-hole golf course,' Pamela continued. ‘And when the opportunity came to purchase the site, we were very excited.'

‘And the previous owners?' Rajiv asked. ‘I understand you are renovating a former limestone quarry.'

Pamela frowned. ‘Former limestone quarry? I'm not sure where you got that idea, Ravi. That land was state owned. Apex bought it in partnership with a Thai firm directly from the government.'

‘Curious,' Jayne muttered. Gavan needed to check his sources.

‘Who holds the majority share?' Rajiv asked.

‘On paper it's the Thai firm. But we have an understanding. Rest assured your investment would be safe.'

There was nothing particularly controversial in what Pamela implied. While foreigners were prohibited from owning land outright in Thailand, Jayne knew there were local companies that subsisted purely on the commissions they were paid as silent partners.

Rajiv gestured out the window to the rugged landscape surrounding them. ‘Are you having to do much to the site to convert it for use as a driving range?'

‘Not a great deal, as it happens,' Pamela said. ‘We removed some boulders, levelled the ground, did some minor landscape reshaping. The local villagers had been using the site illegally to graze cattle. That kind of worked in our favour.'

‘So have the local villagers objected to the project?' Jayne chimed in. She saw the severity of Pamela's frown in the rear-view mirror and turned to Rajiv. ‘Sir, I am thinking of our experience in Maharashtra.'

‘Indeed,' he said, following their script. ‘The story I am telling you, Miss Pamela. In Maharashtra, the opposition of local villagers to resettlement derailed the project permanently. I would not like to be repeating the experience.'

‘I can assure you no villagers will be resettled as a result of this project,' Pamela said.

‘So the villagers are in favour?'

‘This driving range will bring them prosperity,' Pamela said curtly. ‘Apex will provide local jobs and improve infrastructure for everyone's benefit. Of course they're in favour.'

‘I am sure you have put forward a most convincing case,' Rajiv said, flashing a charming smile. ‘Now tell me more about the facilities at Scenic Mountain.'

Jayne tuned out while Pamela waxed lyrical about cafés, equipment-for-hire outlets and souvenir shops. Their questions about local opposition had clearly touched a nerve. It felt like they were getting closer to what Pla had been working on. Next stop once they finished the tour would be the nearest village.

They turned off the highway onto a graded but unsealed road lined with trees weighed down by dust. The car rounded a bend and a view opened before them of a carpet of red dirt, fringed by thick green forest, against a backdrop of jagged limestone cliffs. A small yellow grader basking in the sun sprang to life as they got out of the car.

‘It is indeed scenic,' Rajiv said, shielding his eyes from the sun. ‘Possibly the most scenically located driving range in the world.'

Pamela beamed like a proud parent. ‘You still have to use your imagination a little. But it will look gorgeous once we put the turf in.'

‘Would you be so kind as to show me around?' Rajiv asked.

They walked off without waiting for Jayne, who decided to conduct her own site appraisal.

At one end of the perimeter was a mound of rocks. Jayne wondered if this was what became of the boulders that Pamela's people had cleared from the land. She turned to ask the driver whether explosives had been used on the site but he was nowhere to be seen.

The mid-afternoon heat was merciless. Jayne's blouse stuck to her back, and rivulets of sweat trickled down her throat to pool in her cleavage. She moved into a patch of shade at the edge of the excavation, where the protesting voices of crickets could be heard over the grader engine.

Rajiv had told her that golf was the most environmentally damaging pastime in the world due to the vast quantity of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides and water required to maintain a course. But she was struck in the immediate sense by the land clearing, the ugly expanse of red dust against the backdrop of forest and mountains. Lost in these thoughts, it took a moment to realise Rajiv was calling her.

‘Mrs Keyes?'

‘Coming, Mister Shastri.' She stepped out of the shade to join him.

‘I believe I've seen enough,' he said. ‘And Miss Schwartz has provided me with a most excellent prospectus.' He handed her a document folder embossed with the Apex logo.

‘Please let me drop you back at your hotel,' Pamela said.

‘That would be most kind.'

Jayne followed them back to the vehicle, scowling at having her plans thwarted to lose Pamela and head straight for the nearest village, without having to double back into town. But she perked up when saw the driver squatting behind the car, shaking his head. Both rear tyres were completely flat.

‘What the hell—' Pamela began.

The driver shrugged and flashed a teeth-gritting grin designed to withstand the angry outburst he knew was coming.

‘One tyre I can change with the spare, madam. But two…' He whistled between his teeth and shook his head. ‘It is very bad luck.'

The way he pronounced
madam
made it sound suspiciously like he was addressing her as ‘black dog' in Thai.

‘Bad luck?' Pamela spluttered. ‘Bad luck? This isn't about luck. This is goddamn sabotage. I do apologise,' she added, remembering her guests. ‘But this is the third time in two weeks we've had multiple flats.'

‘Perhaps the road?' Rajiv gestured at the gravel track they drove in on.

‘No, it's got to be the mechanic. Sam, that so-called friend of yours is cheating me,' she said to the driver. ‘I'm calling my husband to organise a tow to a different garage this time.'

She rifled through her handbag. ‘I must've left the phone in the glove compartment.'

Still checking her bag, Pamela didn't watch where she was going. As she neared the front passenger door, she gave a loud cry and shouted, ‘Goddamn it!'

Rajiv hurried to her side with Jayne in close pursuit.

‘Are you all right, Miss Schwartz?'

Pamela groaned. She'd stepped in what appeared to be a fresh cow pat, dung oozing through her sandals onto her toes.

Rajiv found bottled water in the car and while he argued with Pamela over the degree of assistance she would permit him to give her, Jayne scanned the scene.

There was no sign of any cow, not even hoof prints. The grader operator had remained in his cabin the whole time. Apart from Rajiv and Pamela, there was only herself and Sam the driver, who was looking at her with his teeth-gritting grin.

21

Samyan was happy to be given the task of hiking along the service road to flag down a vehicle for the foreign visitors. His jaw ached from the strain of keeping a straight face. Had he caught one of her visitors in his trap, Miss Pamela might have lost more face, but only just. And there was no denying the sweet revenge of seeing his farang boss with cow shit on her shoes.

Sah jai
, he thought. What goes around comes around. Pamela had dropped them in the shit when she appropriated their land for her ridiculous golf course. It was only fair she got dropped in the shit, too.

He ignored her order to hurry, slowing to a shuffle once he rounded the first bend. It was too hot to hurry. Did farangs never learn that? He chuckled as he walked, replaying the afternoon's events in his mind.

He'd found the cow pat in a plastic bag in the bushes, right where Aed said it would be, wrapped in a wet sack and hidden in a shaded area to prevent it baking in the hot sun. Samyan's challenge was to get the dung into position without the red-headed farang woman catching him in the act. He hadn't counted on her sticking around instead of following the others. She gave him a strange look while their respective bosses were distracted by the shit on the shoes. Was she onto him?

Samyan told himself to stop being paranoid. He had nothing to fear. Pamela trusted him as much as she trusted any Thai person. She handpicked him for her driver and she was never wrong. In that blind spot of vanity, Samyan could plant cow shit, let the air out of one tyre and allow the not-so-slow leak in the other tyre to do the rest of the work for him. It didn't matter where the car was towed or how many times Pamela changed mechanics. A bottle of Vat 69 and a carton of Marlboro would give Samyan and Aed after-hours access to most workshops in the district on a ‘don't ask, don't tell' basis.

He would have everyone in Ban Laem Kaeng laughing until their faces hurt when he told them the story. The thought of it brought a real smile to his face. The tuktuk driver who pulled over in response to his wave may well have mistaken him for the happiest man in Krabi that afternoon.

The local tuktuks differed from those in Bangkok, with smaller motorbikes and passengers riding in an open-sided box behind and to the left of the driver. Pamela tried to insist that her driver return to the main road and flag down a proper taxi—royalty like Ravi should not be expected to ride in what she called a ‘motorised rickshaw'—but Rajiv declared that he'd always wanted to ride in a tuktuk and it would be a great adventure. He assured Pamela he would follow up with her regarding his investment plans, but she seemed deaf to his reassurances. As they boarded the tuktuk, she looked as if she might throw up.

Keeping in character as the purse-lipped Mrs Keyes, Jayne frowned and fussed as she climbed in, perching on the edge of the bench seat as though fearful of contagion. But once out of eyesight and earshot, she burst out laughing.

‘Oh my god, that was priceless,' she said loudly over the tuktuk engine. ‘Talk about getting shit from the locals.'

‘So you are thinking what happened was no accident?'

‘Not only that, I'm pretty sure the driver was involved. Did you see the look on his face when Pamela stepped in it?'

‘Ah, no,' Rajiv said. ‘I was occupied with coming to the poor woman's aid.'

‘You're too kind,' Jayne said, untying the bow at her neck and loosening her top button. ‘What she said about the villagers being in favour of the project is bullshit—no pun intended. The villagers are clearly giving as good as they get.'

‘So where to now?' Rajiv asked.

‘The nearest village, of course.'

Jayne leaned forward to speak to the driver, who slowed and did a U-turn.

‘The only bummer about not going back to Ao Nang first is I have to stay in these awful clothes,' she said, undoing another blouse button.

Rajiv removed his glasses and stashed them in the pocket of his jacket together with his tie. His socks went into another pocket.

They headed back past the entrance to the golf driving range and narrowly avoided being spotted by Pamela, who pulled out in front of them in a taxi. Jayne instructed their driver to pull over and wait a few moments until she was out of sight. While they were hanging back, a motorbike turned down the service road in front of them. Moments later, the same bike roared past them with Sam, the Apex driver, riding pillion on the back. He appeared not to notice them and with the tuktuk barely nudging forty kilometres an hour, he was soon out of sight.

A hazy dusk had descended by the time they pulled into Laem Kaeng Village. The air smelled of cooking fires and thrummed with crickets. Plump children and scrawny chickens competed for dirt-scratching honours. Women with babies on their backs shooed them all home. Lighting was limited to kerosene lamps and a couple of fluorescent tubes suspended above the village beer stall, where half a dozen men sat around a concrete table pouring glasses of draught beer from a plastic jug.

‘Let's start with the beer seller,' Jayne said. ‘They usually know everyone's business.'

As they moved into the light, Jayne saw two empty jugs, a smouldering ashtray and a plate of discarded clamshells on the table in front of the men. An older woman in a black sleeveless blouse and batik sarong sat to one side, fanning herself with a plastic bag tied to the end of a stick.

‘
Sawadee ka bah
.' Jayne addressed the older woman politely as Auntie.

The woman acknowledged her greeting with a flick of her plastic bag.

‘We're after information about the golf driving range being built nearby and—'

‘
Pid paak bah Rune
.' A man at the table swung around and stood to face them. The driver from Apex Enterprises.

‘Keep your mouth shut, Auntie Rune,' he said again in Thai. ‘Don't talk to them. They're spying for Apex.' He pronounced it
Apeck
but there was no mistaking what he meant.