Page 57 of The Pearl Sister
I pressed enter, but it brought up something about Wall Street in 1929.
‘Wanted cremenal bank man.’
That brought up a film about John Wayne in some cowboy movie.
In the end I tapped in ‘bank man hiding in thailand’ and pressed ‘enter’. A whole screen of headlines ranging fromThe TimestoThe New York Timesto a Chinese paper flickered up. I pressed on ‘Images’ first, as I needed to see what everybody else had seen.
And there it was: the photo of the two of us at sunset on Phra Nang Beach –Me!Staring back at me in full Technicolor, for all the world to see, including this – as John Wayne might say – one-horse town.
‘Christ.’ I swore under my breath, studying the picture more closely. I saw I was actually smiling, which I didn’t often do in photos. Encircled in Ace’s arms, I looked happy, so happy that I almost didn’t recognise myself.And actually, I don’t look that bad,I thought, instinctively patting the hair that currently massed in tight ringlets around my shoulders. I understood now why Star liked it better long; at least I looked like a girl in the photo, not an ugly boy.
Stop it,I told myself, because this really wasn’t the moment to be vain. Yet as I clicked on the endless reproductions of the photo – including those in a load of Australian papers – I allowed myself a grim chuckle. Of all the D’Aplièse sisters to end up on the front page of a shedload of national newspapers, I had to be the most unlikely. Even Electra had never managed such a full house.
Then I got real, clicked onto the articles and began trying to decipher what they were saying. The good news was that at least I was ‘an unnamed woman’, so I wasn’t bringing shame on my family. But Ace . . .
Two hours later, I left the café. Though my legs had let me puddle-jump earlier, now it was all I could do to make them put one foot in front of the other. Turning into the hotel lobby, I asked the receptionist how I could get to the beach. I needed some air and some space, big time.
‘I’ll call you a taxi,’ she said.
‘I really can’t walk?’
‘No, darl’, it’s too far in this heat.’
‘Okay.’ I did as I was told and sat down on a hard, cheap sofa in the lobby until the taxi arrived. I climbed inside and we set off with me sitting numbly in the back. The view out of the window seemed to be devoid of human life – there was only the red earth alongside the wide road, and loads of empty building lots where clouds of white birds sat in the tall shady trees, their heads turning as one as the taxi went by.
‘Here you go, love. That’ll be seven dollars,’ the driver said. ‘Stop into the Sunset Bar over there when you need a lift back and they’ll give me a holler.’
‘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’sBangkok Postsaid 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 hehadtrusted 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, justknew,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!’
