‘Sure, thanks,’ I said, giving him a ten-dollar bill and not waiting for the change.
I plunged my feet into the soft sand and ran towards the big blue mass, knowing that if anyone needed to drown their sorrows, it was me. Arriving on the shoreline, my toes felt the coolness of the water and even though I was still in my shorts and a T-shirt, I dived straight in. I swam and swam in the gorgeous water, so clear that I could see the shadows of seabirds flying above flickering on the underwater sand. After a while I waded back to shore, totally exhausted, and lay flat on my back in this deserted piece of heaven in the middle of nowhere. To the left and right of me, the beach seemed to stretch on for miles and the heat that had felt so oppressive in town was swept away by the ocean breeze. There wasn’t another person in sight, and I wondered why the locals weren’t queuing up to swim in this perfect pool on their very doorstep.
‘Ace . . .’ I whispered, feeling I should say something meaningful to the sky to express my distress. But as usual, the right words wouldn’t come, so I let the feelings run through me instead.
What I had eventually puzzled together from all the online articles was that Ace was ‘notorious’. I’d had to look up the word in an online dictionary, like Star had taught me to: widely and unfavourably known . . .
My Ace, the man I had trusted and befriended, was all things bad. No one in the world had a good word to say about him. Yet, unless he was the most brilliant actor on the planet, I couldn’t believe that the guy they were describing was the same one I had lived and laughed with up until only a few days ago.
Apparently he’d done a load of fraudulent trading. The sum he’d ‘gambled away’ was so astronomical that at first I thought they’d got the number of noughts wrong. That anyone could lose that much money was just outrageous – I mean, where exactly did it go? Certainly not down the back of the sofa, anyway.
The reason everyone was doubly up in arms was because he’d run away the minute it had all been discovered and no one had seen hide nor hair of him since November. Until now, of course.
Thanks to me, his cover had been blown. Yet, having seen all the photographs of him a year or so ago in his sharp Savile Row suits, clean-shaven with hair far shorter than mine usually was, it seemed unlikely that anyone in Krabi would have recognised the skinny werewolf guy on the beach as the most wanted man in the banking world. Now I thought about it, his borrowed Thai paradise had been the perfect place to hide: there, amongst the thousands of young backpackers, he’d had the perfect smokescreen.
Today’s Bangkok Post said that the British authorities were now in talks with the Thai authorities to have him ‘extradited’. Again, I’d gone back to the online dictionary, and found out this meant that they were basically going to drag him back to England to face the music.
I felt a couple of sharp pinpricks on my face and looked up to see the storm clouds that had gathered into angry grey clumps overhead. I legged it up to the beach bar just in time, and sat with a pineapple shake to watch the natural light-show. It reminded me so much of the storm I’d seen from the Cave of the Princess before I’d been semi-arrested, and now it looked like Ace was going to be arrested for real when he got back to England.
If only things were different. . .
At the time, I thought Ace’s problems had something to do with another woman, but it couldn’t have been further from the truth. If our paths ever crossed again, I was sure he’d want to knife me rather than hug me.
What made that stupid lump come back to my throat was the fact that he had trusted me. He’d even given me his precious mobile number, which I knew from countless films could be traced to find the location of the owner. He must have really wanted to keep in touch with me if he’d been willing to take that risk.
I knew, just knew, that that lowlife Jay was part of this. He’d probably recognised Ace through his seedy journalist’s eyes, then followed him to the palace and bribed Po to get pictures as proof. I didn’t doubt he’d sold the photo and Ace’s whereabouts to the highest bidder and was now celebrating that he had enough dosh to keep himself in Singha beer for the next fifty years.
Not that it mattered now. Ace would never believe it hadn’t been me and nor would I, if I were him. Especially as I’d purposely not told him about Jay recognising him, albeit only so he wouldn’t worry. It would sound like a bunch of pathetic excuses. I couldn’t even contact him now anyway; I’d bet my life that his SIM card was swimming with the fishes on Phra Nang Beach.
‘Oh Cee,’ I berated myself as desolation engulfed me. ‘You’ve totally mucked it up again. You’re just useless!’
I want to go home . . .
‘G’day,’ a voice said from behind me. ‘How ya doing?’
I turned round and saw the girl from the tourist information desk standing behind me.
‘Okay.’
‘You waiting for someone?’ she asked me.
‘No, I don’t know anybody here yet.’
‘Then mind if I join you?’
‘Course not,’ I said, thinking it would be rude to say otherwise, even if I wasn’t exactly in the mood for small talk.
‘Did you just go swimming?’ She frowned at me. ‘Your hair’s wet.’
‘Erm, yeah,’ I said, patting it nervously, wondering if it was sticking up or something.
‘Strewth! Has no one warned you about the jellyfish? They’re brutal this time of year – we don’t go into the sea here until March, after the coast is clear. You got lucky then. One sting off an irukandji and you coulda carked it. Like, died,’ she translated.
‘Thanks for telling me. Any other dangerous things I should know about?’
‘Aside from the crocs in the creeks and the poisonous snakes that roam around this time of year, no. So, have you managed to contact yer rellies yet?’
‘You mean my relatives?’ I double-checked, trying to keep up with the Aussie slang. ‘No, not yet. I mean, I don’t think I actually have any alive here. I’m tracing my family history and Broome is where I was told to start.’
‘Yeah, it fits.’ The girl – whose name I was struggling to remember – flashed her lovely amber eyes at me. ‘You’ve got all the hallmarks of being from around these parts.’
‘Have I?’
‘Yeah. Your hair, the colour of your skin, and your eyes . . . bet I could tell you where they came from.’
‘Really? Where?’
‘I’d reckon you’ve got Aboriginal blood with some whitefella mixed in, and maybe those eyes came from Japtown, like mine.’ She gestured vaguely inland. ‘Broome was heaving with Japanese a few generations ago, and there are lots of mixed kids like us around.’
‘You’re part Aboriginal?’ I asked, wishing now I’d taken some time to do more research on Australia, because I really was sounding like a dunce. At least I suddenly recalled her name. It was Chrissie.
‘I have Aboriginal grandparents. They’re Yawuru – that’s the main Aboriginal tribe in this neck of the woods. What’s CeCe short for?’ she asked me.