The Dying Beach (2 page)

‘
The Half Child
is a crime novel with a twist—a little gem of a book.'
Good Reading

‘A gripping and often wry story of crime and cultures clashing. In a word: driven.'
Gold Coast Bulletin

ALSO BY ANGELA SAVAGE
Behind the Night Bazaar
The Half-Child

Angela Savage is a Melbourne-based crime writer who has lived and travelled extensively in Asia. Her first novel in the Jayne Keeney P.I. series,
Behind the Night Bazaar
, won the 2004 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. Angela is a winner of the Scarlet Stiletto award and has twice been shortlisted for Ned Kelly awards. She regularly reviews crime fiction for Radio National.
angelasavage.wordpress.com
@angsavage

THE

DYING

BEACH

ANGELA SAVAGE

textpublishing.com.au

The Text Publishing Company
Swann House
22 William Street
Melbourne Victoria 3000
Australia

Copyright © 2013 by Angela Savage

The moral right of Angela Savage to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

First published in 2013 by The Text Publishing Company

Cover design by WH Chong
Page design by Text
Typeset by J&M Typesetting

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Author:    Savage, Angela, 1966- author.
Title:        The dying beach / by Angela Savage.
ISBN:       9781921922497 (paperback)
                 9781921921391 (ebook)
Dewey Number: A823.4

For my father Haydn Savage

who showed me the beauty and wonder in diversity

A
PRIL
1997

Sigrid's colleagues would laugh if they knew she took her holidays at a place called Princess Beach. The idea of the hard-headed war surgeon swanning around in a ball gown, tiara and glass slippers would crack them up. No point trying to explain that in Thai,
Hat Phra Nang
more accurately translated as ‘Revered Lady Beach', and that the eponymous lady was not the ball gown–wearing kind. Her colleagues weren't interested in nuances.

Princess Beach was Sigrid's secret, her guilty pleasure. Four years in a row she'd spent her annual holiday at the exclusive Dusit Rayavadee resort, paying more for a two-week stay than any of her patients earned in a year. She rationalised it with the knowledge that two precious weeks of pampering and privacy made it possible for her to spend the rest of the year in the world's least enviable destinations.

Five days into her holiday, Sigrid still woke before dawn, but it didn't bother her. The Rayavadee was the only accommodation on the cape and, as a guest, Sigrid had privileged access to the beach. By mid-morning the same stretch of sand would be writhing with tourists ferried in for the day by longtail taxi boats. But at sunrise Sigrid had the place virtually to herself.

She changed out of her sleepwear into a one-piece swimsuit, T-shirt and sarong. A short walk through a coconut grove brought her to the beach, where she stripped to her swimsuit and jogged west along the soft sand.

The sun was yet to rise but already the air was warm and Sigrid quickly worked up a sweat. She plunged into the calm, tepid water, swam back until she was level with the coconut grove and floated on the spot, enjoying the silence as the light came up. When she got out, she retrieved her clothes and headed in the other direction, past the entrance to the resort, to where the sand ended at a wall of rock, part of a steep headland that abutted the easternmost end of the bay.

Most of the beach was in shadow, the sun rising behind cliffs that blocked overland access to the cape and made Princess Beach feel like an island. In the silver dawn light, the view of the bay, studded with limestone peaks, never ceased to work its restorative effects. She wished she could prescribe two weeks on Princess Beach for all her patients. But her patients had more prosaic needs. Antiseptics. Analgesics. Antibiotics.

She shook her head. ‘Stop thinking about work,' she said aloud, earning a bemused smile from one of two young men in gold pyjamas, employees of the resort, who were sifting the sand for cigarette butts and bottle tops.

Sigrid rounded a large tree and surprised a dusky grey monkey with white rings around its eyes like goggles. She recalled the young tour guide she'd met that week asking what this
dtuah
was called in English,
dtuah
being a catch-all Thai word for ‘animal'.

The girl's smile exposed a gap between her two front teeth when Sigrid told her it was a spectacled langur.

‘That's so funny,' she said. ‘Because it looks like it wears spectacles, yes?'

Sigrid was impressed the girl knew what spectacles were. She was clearly bright, full of enthusiasm for what was new and exotic. Much like Sigrid herself, before the years as a war surgeon had wrung the joy from her and left her tired.

She shrugged off thoughts of work as she entered the shrine that gave the beach its name. Conflicting stories surrounded the origins of the Princess Cave. All claimed it was the resting place of a revered female spirit, though none explained how her preferred offering came to be the phallic objects—wooden penises, some carved in graphic anatomical detail—that stood like sentries around the spirit house.

The princess statuette struggled to be seen among the garlands of jasmine and marigolds—some fresh, others plastic—that festooned the shrine. A young woman—a cleaner from the resort, judging from her white uniform and neat hair—was pouring tea from a thermos into a cup on the main altar, too absorbed in her ministrations to notice Sigrid. She placed a sachet of sweet biscuits alongside the cup, lit a candle and added three smoking incense sticks to a crowded pot on the altar before pressing her hands to her forehead and bowing to the princess statuette.

The woman looked startled to turn and find she was not alone. But with a glance at Sigrid's unadorned left hand, she regained her composure, gave Sigrid a conspiratorial smile and scuttled off towards the resort. Sigrid smiled to herself, secretly gratified by the show of female solidarity, however wide of the mark.

Sigrid didn't know why she was drawn to the Princess Cave, being neither religious nor superstitious. Nor was she in search of a husband, no matter what the cleaner thought; she preferred women. Despite all of this, every morning she passed by to pay her respects to the princess spirit. Like tossing a coin into Rome's Trevi Fountain, she supposed. A ritual to ensure her return.

The sunrise had changed the water from silver to pink by the time Sigrid emerged from the shrine. She hitched up her sarong and waded into the shallows along the edge of the cliff, stalactites like limestone chandeliers above her head. Caves pockmarked the cliff face, forming small pools of water so clear Sigrid could see small striped fish swimming around her feet. She was chasing a school of them from one cave to the next when she came upon a sight that made her forget her sarong, letting it fall into the water.

Floating facedown in the shallows inside the cave was a human body. Thai, Sigrid guessed, judging from the build, skin and hair colour, but male or female she couldn't tell. Her first instinct was to turn it over and check for signs of life, but the advanced maceration of the skin made her think again. The corpse had been in the water for several hours and without knowing the circumstances of death, it was best not to disturb the scene. The police needed to be notified, and fast, before the beach filled up with holiday-makers.

Sigrid waded out from under the overhanging cliff and tried unsuccessfully to attract the attention of the boys cleaning the beach, her voice swamped by the engine of a passing longtail boat. She beckoned the driver over instead. He cut the engine as she approached the side of the boat, a nest of fishnets in the hull.

‘Older brother, get the police,' she said to him in Thai. ‘Tell them there's a dead body in the cave beside the Tham Phra Nang.'

The man responded with a blank look that Sigrid was used to. It often took a minute or two for local people to realise the blonde-haired, blue-eyed farang in front of them was actually speaking Thai.

‘
Dtam ruaat
,' she repeated. ‘Police.' She reached into her T-shirt pocket for the money she kept in a zip-lock plastic bag, an emergency measure she maintained whether on holidays or on mission. She handed the fisherman one hundred baht. ‘Tell them there's a dead body in the cave.'

The man looked from the money to the cave and back again.

‘I go,' he said in English.

The fisherman was clearly flustered and had trouble restarting the engine. He finally succeeded on the fourth attempt, lowered the propeller shaft and sped off, leaving a powerful wake.

Sigrid waded back to the cave and gasped. The wave had rolled the body over in the water and she recognised the young tour guide, the one who'd laughed about the spectacled langur. The girl's once-bright eyes were lifeless, her short hair floating like seaweed in a halo around her head. The abrasions on her face and arms were most likely post-mortem, caused by bumping up against the rocks. But the bruises around her neck suggested she did not die gently. As Sigrid watched, a small pink crab crawled out of the corner of the girl's mouth.

Goosebumps rose on her arms and she shivered in spite of the heat. She felt the urge to look over her shoulder and positioned herself on a rock at the mouth of the cave with her back to the cliff and a clear view of the beach. She scanned her memory for the poor girl's name.

When she glanced again at the corpse, Sigrid noticed swarms of tiny fish nibbling at the skin. She threw handfuls of sand to shoo them away.

That's when it came to her. The girl's name. Or rather her nickname.

Pla
.

Sigrid shook her head at the sad irony. Her name in Thai meant ‘fish'.

1

Rajiv lay on his back, one arm flung over his eyes as though shielding them from the harsh Thai morning light. A tent of sheet over his crotch told Jayne his cock was awake even if he wasn't. Rajiv had the sex drive of a randy teenager and was about as accomplished. But what he lacked in finesse he made up for with enthusiasm. As Jayne watched, he opened his eyes, met her gaze and rolled towards her. He reached for her breasts, grinning like a cat, making no secret of his desire. And Jayne was the cream to his cat. So what if he was clumsy. Being soft, white and fat had never felt so good.

A spur of the moment decision to stop off in Krabi on their way back to Bangkok from Malaysia was proving to be one of Jayne's better ideas. Later, as they strolled hand in hand along the great expanse of shell-flecked sand that was Nopparat Thara beach, Jayne mused that were she and Rajiv ever to get married, it would be hard to beat this for a honeymoon.

Marriage? Honeymoon? They'd known each other barely six months. The heat must be getting to her. How else to account for toying with such ideas, especially when she'd made such a fuss about formalising their business partnership?

Their relationship had blossomed amid the stacks of the chaotic second-hand bookshop owned by Rajiv's uncle in Bangkok. They went from being friends to business partners to lovers in close succession, defying all odds by being remarkably content.

Jayne never imagined she could find love with a man five years her junior, whose background was so different from her own. But Rajiv gave her a whole new way of viewing the world. As if he'd walked into her life and drawn back a curtain, revealing a window she hadn't even known was there.

The way he'd knocked her detective business into shape was a case in point. Jayne's career as a private investigator in Thailand began by accident after she ran surveillance on an Australian man as a favour to one of her Thai students. The man turned out to be an unworthy prospective husband, as she gently put it to the student, whose family insisted on paying Jayne for her face-saving intervention. Word got out and more people asked her for help. Being a private detective proved just as lucrative and way more exciting than teaching English to middle-class Thai kids. Jayne had name cards printed that said ‘Discreet Private Investigator—Speaks English, Thai and French', in English on one side and Thai on the other. As the business was informal—for visa purposes, she remained an employee of the A-One English Language Centre—she limited publicity to word-of-mouth and an ad in the popular expat magazine
Metro
. The work was addictive, if sporadic, and she spent every baht she earned.

Rajiv suggested she register her business as a company to provide more security and opportunities for growth. She protested at first that she wasn't cut out for business, loathed the prospect of paperwork, and ran the sort of operation that by its nature functioned more effectively beneath the radar. But in her heart, Jayne knew Rajiv was right. She'd shot her career prospects in Australia in the foot, and there was no telling how much longer she could limp along without a plan. She wasn't getting any younger.