The Dying Beach (4 page)

The appearance of a senior officer brought the shutters down on the exchange. The younger cop flushed red above the collar of his uniform and busied himself with paperwork while Jayne tried to engage the senior officer. But Rajiv could tell she wasn't having much luck. The older man's stubborn chin and tight-lipped, downturned mouth made him look like a grouper.

‘Bastard,' she muttered when they were safely outside the station. ‘I was doing well until he showed up.'

They paused in the shade of an Indian laburnum tree that was just beginning to flower, a spray of gold blossoms resting against Jayne's head like a tiara. She lit a cigarette, offering one to Rajiv, who declined.

‘According to the first cop, a farang tourist found Pla's body early yesterday morning on Princess Beach. In the shallow cave next to the shrine, to be precise.'

‘But we were there yesterday.'

‘I know,' Jayne said. ‘But we didn't get there until after nine, remember. Pla's body was found at dawn and the cops would've been anxious to clear the scene before the tour boats started arriving.'

Rajiv shuddered at the thought of wading in the same shallows where Pla's body had been found floating only hours earlier. How much worse for the foreign tourist to stumble across a corpse on what should have been a relaxing walk along the beach.

‘Did the police say there was anything suspicious about Miss Pla's death?'

Jayne drew back sharply on her cigarette. ‘Not exactly.'

‘Well, then.'

‘But Pla dying in a drowning accident is just wrong.' She swatted at the laburnum with enough force to dislodge several blossoms.

Rajiv sighed. Clearly the visit to the police station had failed to satisfy her curiosity. He tilted his head as though this might help him see her point of view. Did working as a detective predispose her to seek an explanation for every untimely death she came across? Or was it a cultural thing, the effect of growing up in Australia, which made a young person's death unacceptable? Coming from a country where one in ten children didn't make it to the age of five, Rajiv knew better than to try to make sense of senseless deaths.

‘She must be staying at the resort if she's on the beach that early,' Jayne said after a moment.

‘Who's that?'

‘The farang who found Pla's body. The longtail boats don't leave before daybreak. The drivers are too afraid of hitting rocks in the dark. So she must be staying at the resort on Princess Beach.'

Rajiv could see where this was headed. Before he could protest, Jayne threw him by adding, ‘Poor woman.'

‘It must have been be an awful shock,' he agreed.

‘She could probably use some support, don't you think?'

Rajiv frowned at the thought of what she was probably up to. But Jayne's pale, heart-shaped face was the picture of innocence, her eyes wide in anticipation. Rajiv reminded himself of the first case they worked on together, the outstanding support Jayne had offered her client and how gutted she'd been when her help was rejected.

‘All right,' he said. ‘Let's go to Princess Beach.'

4

The longtail boat roared out of Ao Nang, an arc of spray in its wake. Rajiv guessed the water taxi drivers were keen to fit in as many trips as possible before the arrival of the monsoon kept all but the most capricious of tourists away. All the same, he wished their driver would slow down. He was starting to regret following Jayne on this venture. Their crowded boat was hugging the coastline, passing under overhanging limestone cliffs, veering perilously close to the rocks.

Rajiv shifted his focus from the dark sea beneath the boat to the view surrounding them. What appeared beautiful days earlier now seemed treacherous and malevolent. Krabi's striking landscape was formed thirty million years ago when the Indian subcontinent collided with mainland Asia. He'd known this, but only now was he struck by how violent that collision must have been, solid land mass crushed into jagged mountains and islands scattered like broken teeth across the Andaman Sea.

Local legend had the landscape formed out of violence, too. Pla had recounted the story on the day of their tour. Princess Beach had been their first stop. Pla told of a wedding party that had become a bloodbath when the groom and his friend turned into dragons to fight over the bride, and all the wedding guests weighed in. The fighting disturbed a holy man meditating on a nearby mountain, who cursed them, saying, ‘May you all turn into stone and break into a thousand pieces.'

Pla had pointed out mountains named after dragon parts—Rajiv recognised a craggy peak named for the dragon's crest—and islands named after wedding guests.

‘What became of the bride?' Jayne had asked.

‘We call her Phra Nang,' Pla said. ‘Her spirit lives in the cave on Princess Beach. On stormy nights when fishermen take refuge there, she comes to them in their dreams, bringing food and covering them with blankets.'

Rajiv invoked Phra Nang's spirit as the boat swerved towards the cliffs, begging her to shield them from the rocks. By the time they pulled into Princess Beach, he was ready to abandon plans for the resort and head straight for the shrine to give thanks.

The driver idled barely long enough for them to disembark, depositing Rajiv and Jayne in thigh-deep water while he hightailed it to the rock-climbing mecca of Railay in the neighbouring bay. They waded ashore without speaking, the raucous din of insects reverberating from the surrounding jungle. The beach was crowded and they had to circumnavigate sunbathing tourists and sarong vendors to locate the entrance to the resort. Seated by the gate was a uniformed security guard, who took one look at Rajiv and pointed to a sign saying ‘Guests only past this point'. Rajiv made a snap decision.

‘You stand a better chance of getting inside without me,' he murmured to Jayne. ‘I'll meet you at the Princess Cave.'

‘But—' she began to protest.

‘You might be able to talk your way in but not if I am hanging around. Pretend I am harassing you.'

Jayne looked flustered, but only for a moment. ‘Leave me alone,' she said in a loud voice.

The guard rose to his feet.

‘No problem,
mai pen rai
.' Rajiv raised his hands and lowered his head as he backed away.

Jayne threw an apologetic look over her shoulder but Rajiv was used to the Thais treating him like a second-class citizen. That she was affronted on his behalf only made him love her more.

Rajiv thought of Jayne as his own ‘Fearless Nadia'. The Australian-born Bollywood star of the thirties and forties was famous for performing her own sword-wielding, whip-cracking, lion-taming stunts. For decades Nadia's lover was Indian director–producer Homi Wadia, though she married him only after his orthodox Parsi mother died. Rajiv couldn't imagine Jayne being so obliging, not when even the most routine of slights offended her sense of justice.

He was trying not to think about how his mother would feel if he were to marry a non-Indian when he reached the Princess Cave, arriving at the same time as a tour group. The tourists filed inside and gathered around the spirit house, trying not to brush up against the large wood lingams that encircled it like a picket fence.

‘This is the Tham Phra Nang, the Princess Cave,' their baby-faced Thai guide said in English. ‘Long time ago, a princess from India, Si Kunlathewi, died in a shipwreck near to this place. But her spirit did not die. The princess spirit we call Phra Nang. She come to live in this cave. The fishermen pray to Phra Nang for the good catch of fish. The ladies, they also come here to pray for the good catch of husband.'

The guide laughed at his own joke. ‘The people leave the offerings you see here to make the princess spirit happy.' He patted the glossy red-painted head of a lingam as high as his waist.

‘That princess must be one horny lady,' an American voice piped up.

There was more laughter, chatter, the click and flash of cameras before the group moved on and the cave was quiet.

Rajiv eyed the princess statuette on the terrace of the spirit house and wondered who this Phra Nang was. The jilted bride at a supernatural wedding party turned violent? Or a shipwrecked Indian princess? Evidently local folklore allowed her to be both.

He thought of Pla, and Jayne's reluctance to believe the official verdict of accidental death by drowning. In this scenario, two contradictory explanations could not coexist. Pla's death was either an accident or it wasn't.

‘She's gone.'

He turned to find Jayne at the mouth of the cave.

‘The farang who found Pla's body. She checked out later the same day. I should've guessed it. No one would want to hang around after something like that.'

Rajiv couldn't see her eyes behind her sunglasses but he heard the disappointment in her voice. ‘Did you get a name? Contact details?'

‘Sigrid Homstadt from Norway. The concierge said she had more than a week left on her booking, but that's all the information I could get. They take their guests' privacy very seriously. That rude prick of a security guard wasn't for show.' She kicked at the sand.

‘You did your best,' Rajiv said. ‘Do you want to head back now or shall we stay for a swim?'

From the way Jayne stared out over the bay, Rajiv assumed she was contemplating the swim.

‘If she's come all the way from Norway, she's not going home with more than a week left of her holidays.'

It took him a beat to catch up.

‘My guess is she's relocated to the mainland,' Jayne said. ‘We know she has expensive tastes in accommodation and, given there's only a handful of five-star hotels in Ao Nang, she shouldn't be too hard to find.'

Rajiv gazed squarely at her. He recognised the stubborn tilt of her chin and knew that behind those sunglasses was a faraway look. Jayne's tendency to fixate was part of what made her a good detective. But Rajiv was determined they remain off duty.

‘We have only today and tomorrow left in Krabi before we return to Bangkok,' he said. ‘Are you really wanting to spend the last days of our holiday chasing a woman who, for all we know, may be leaving Krabi already?'

‘But I can't just do nothing,' Jayne protested.

It was on the tip of Rajiv's tongue to ask why not, when he had a better idea. ‘There's still Miss Pla's flatmate to visit. You are wanting to ask her about the funeral, yes?'

‘That's right, the funeral.'

‘We could make a donation,' Rajiv said. ‘That would be a good thing to do, yes?'

Jayne seemed revived by the idea and set out at a brisk pace, heading back along the beach to where the water taxis pulled in. Rajiv hastened to keep up; he wouldn't put it past her to start asking around the five-star hotels the moment he dropped his guard.

5

The address they'd been given for Pla's roommate was in Ban Khlong Haeng, a brief detour inland from Ao Nang on the way back to their hotel in Nopparat Thara. After a couple of false starts—Thai people were inclined to give incorrect information rather than admit they couldn't help—Jayne and Rajiv located the small compound where Pla had lived with Suthita. The main building was two storeys of narrow apartments in whitewashed concrete, windows shuttered against the heat, no sign of air-conditioning units. There was what looked like a communal shower and toilet block to the right, a muddy puddle around the entrance, and an open-sided
sala
on the left, where sticky rice simmered unattended in a bamboo steamer on a small brazier.

Pla's apartment was on the ground floor. The door was ajar and they could hear someone moving around inside.

‘Khun Suthita?'

Silence.

‘Khun Suthita, we're friends of Khun Pla,' Jayne said in Thai. ‘We just wanted to ask you—'

The door swung open on a diminutive, wild-eyed girl brandishing a coathanger.

‘G-get away from me,
p-phi tai hong
,' she stammered.

Rajiv backed away but Jayne inched closer, hands pressed together in a
wai
, her voice gentle. Rajiv recognised the word
phi
, Thai for ‘ghost', and guessed Jayne was trying to calm the girl down.

Eventually Suthita lowered the coathanger. ‘You can come in,' she said to Jayne but when Rajiv tried to follow, Suthita shook her head. ‘Men no allow,' she said in English. She poked her head out and glanced from side to side before closing the door.

Rajiv made his way to the open-air kitchen where the benefits of shading himself from the sun were soon cancelled out by the heat of the brazier. A sweaty V had formed at the neck of his T-shirt by the time Jayne reappeared. She carried a red, white and blue striped bag, the kind favoured by Asian tourists for the shopping that wouldn't fit in their suitcases. Rajiv tilted his head in an unasked question.

‘Let's get a coffee,' she said.

Rajiv nodded, the rumbling in his stomach telling him it was lunchtime even before he looked at his watch.

They headed for the village market. Alongside a line of vendor carts was a makeshift cafeteria of child-sized plastic furniture clustered beneath a canvas tied to four dusty coconut palms. Rajiv found them a table in the shade, pulling up an extra chair for the striped bag, while Jayne ordered them bowls of
khanom jin
, the curried fish soup with thin rice noodles that was southern Thailand's fast food. Rajiv wolfed down the meal, though Jayne's bowl was still half full when she pushed it aside.

She patted the striped plastic bag on the seat beside her. ‘Pla's things,' she said. ‘All she owned and the bag's not even full.'

‘And how is it that you are now custodian of Pla's worldly possessions?' Rajiv asked.

‘I'll explain in a minute. Iced coffee okay for you?'

He nodded. Jayne placed the order with a woman in a headscarf, who unveiled a large slab of ice in a tub beneath a hessian sack, hacked off several large shards with a screwdriver and placed them in two tall glasses. She added slugs of condensed milk and doused the lot with viscous black coffee strained through a muslin sack.