Bitch

The first I heard of the beach was in Bangkok, on the Khao San Road. Khao San Road was backpacker land. Almost all the buildings had been converted into guest-houses, there were long-distance-telephone booths with air-con, the cafes showed brand-new Hollywood films on video, and you couldn't walk ten feet without passing a bootleg-tape stall. The main function of the street was as a decompression chamber for those about to leave or enter Thailand, a halfway house between East and West.

I'd landed at Bangkok in the late afternoon, and by the time I got to Khao San it was dark. My taxi driver winked and told me that at one end of the street was a police station, so I asked him to drop me off at the other end. I wasn't planning on crime but I wanted to oblige his conspiratorial charm. Not that it made much difference which end one stayed because the police obviously weren't active. I caught the smell of grass as soon as I got out of the cab, and half the travellers weaving past me were stoned.

He left me outside a guest-house with an eating area open to the street. As I studied it, checking the clientele to gauge what kind of place it was, a thin man at the table nearest me leant over and touched my arm. I glanced down. He was, I guessed, one of the heroin hippies that float around India and Thailand. He'd probably come to Asia ten years ago and turned an occasional dabble into an addiction. His skin was old, though I'd have believed he was in his thirties. The way he was looking at me, I had the feeling I was being sized up as someone to rip off.

'What?' I said warily.

He pulled an expression of surprise and held up the palms of his hands. Then he curled his finger and thumb into the O-shaped perfection sign, and pointed into the guest-house.

'It's a good place?'

He nodded.

I looked again at the people around the tables. They were mostly young and friendly looking, some watching the TV, and some chattering over their dinner.

'OK.' I smiled at him in case he wasn't a heroin addict, just a friendly mute. 'I'm sold.'

He returned the smile and turned back to the video screen.

Quarter of an hour later I was settling into a room that was a little larger than a double bed. I can be accurate about it because there was a double bed in the room, and on each of its four sides was a foot of space. My backpack could just slide in the gap.

One wall was concrete – the side of the building. The others were Formica and bare. They moved when I touched them. I had the feeling that if I leant against one it would fall over and maybe hit another, and all the walls of the neighbouring rooms would collapse like dominoes. Just short of the ceiling, the walls stopped, and covering the space was a strip of metal mosquito netting. The netting almost upheld the illusion of a confined, personal area – until I lay down on the bed. As soon as I relaxed, stopped moving, I began to hear cockroaches scuttling around in the other rooms.

At my head end I had a French couple in their late teens – a beautiful, slim girl with a suitably handsome boy attached. They'd been leaving their room as I got to mine and we exchanged nods as we passed in the corridor. The other end was empty. Through the netting I could see the light was off, and anyway, if it had been occupied I would have heard the person breathing. It was the last room on the corridor, so I presumed it faced the street and had a window.

On my ceiling was a fan, strong enough to stir the air on full setting. For a while I did nothing but lie on the bed and look up at it. It was calming, following the revolutions, and with the mixture of heat and soft breeze I felt I could drift asleep. That suited me. West to East is the worst for jet lag, and it would be good to fall into the right sleeping pattern on the first night.

I switched off the light. There was a glow from the corridor, and I could still see the fan. Soon I was asleep.

Once or twice I was aware of people in the corridor, and I thought I heard the French couple coming back, then leaving again. But the noises never woke me fully and I was always able to slip back into the dream I'd been having before. Until I heard the man's footsteps. They were different, too creepy to doze through. They had no rhythm or weight and dragged on the floor.

A muttered stream of British swear-words floated into my room as he jiggled the padlock on his door. Then there was a loud sigh, the lock opened with a click, and his light came on. The mosquito netting cast a patterned shadow on my ceiling.

Frowning, I looked at my watch. It was two in the morning – early evening, UK time. I wondered if I might get back to sleep.

The man slumped on to his bed, making the wall between us shake alarmingly. He coughed for a while, then I heard the rustle of a joint being rolled. Soon there was blue smoke caught in the light, rolling through the netting.

Aside from the occasional deep exhalation, he was silent. I drifted back to sleep, almost.

'Bitch,' said a voice. I opened my eyes.

'Fucking bitch. We're both as good as…'

The voice paused for a coughing fit.

'Dead.'

I was wide awake now so I sat up in bed.

'Cancer in the corals, blue water, my bitch. Fucking Christ, did me in,' the man continued.

He had an accent, but at first my sleep-fogged head couldn't place it.

'Bitch', he said again, spitting out the word.

A Scottish accent. Beach.

There was a scrabbling sound on the wall. For a moment I thought he might be trying to push it over and I had a vision of myself being sandwiched between the Formica board and the bed. Then his head appeared through the mosquito netting, silhouetted, facing me.

'Hey,' he said.

I didn't move. I was sure he couldn't see into my room.

'Hey. I know you're listening. In there. I know you're awake.'

He lifted up a finger and gave the netting an exploratory poke. It popped away from where it was stapled to the Formica. His hand stuck through.

'Here.'

A glowing red object sailed through the darkness, landing on the bed in a little shower of sparks. The joint he'd been smoking. I grabbed it to stop it burning the sheets.

'Yeah,' said the man and laughed quietly. 'Got you now. I saw you take the butt.'

For a few seconds I couldn't get a handle on the situation. I kept thinking—what if I actually had been asleep? The sheets might have caught fire. I might have burned to death. The panic flipped into anger, but I suppressed it. The man was way too much of a random element for me to lose my temper. I could still only see his head and that was back-lit, in shadow.

Holding up the joint I asked, 'Do you want this back?'

'You were listening,' he replied, ignoring me. 'Heard me talking about the beach.'

'…You've got a loud voice.'

'Tell me what you heard.'

'I didn't hear anything.'

'…Heard nothing?'

He paused for a moment, then pressed his face into the netting. 'You're lying.'

'No. I was asleep You just woke me up… when you threw this joint at me.'

'You were listening, ' he hissed.

'I don't care if you don't believe me.'

'I don't believe you.'

'Well… I don't care… Look.' I stood on the bed so our heads were at the same level, and held up the joint to the hole he'd made. 'If you want this, take it. All I want is to go to sleep.'

As I lifted my hand he pulled back, moving out of the shadow. His face was flat like a boxer's, the nose busted too many times to have any form, and his lower jaw was too large for the top half of his skull. It would have been threatening if not for the body it was attached to. The jaw tapered into a neck so thin it seemed incredible that it supported his head, and his T-shirt hung slackly on coat-hanger shoulders.

Past him I saw into his room. There was a window, as I'd assumed, but he'd taped it up with pages from a newspaper. Apart from that it was bare.

His hand reached through the gap and plucked the butt from my fingers.

'OK,' I said, thinking I'd gained some kind of control. 'Now leave me alone.'

'No,' he replied flatly.

'…No?'

'No.'

'Why not? What do you… do you want something?'

'Yep.' He grinned. 'And that's why…' Again he pushed his face into the netting.' …I won't leave you alone.'

But as soon as he said it he seemed to change his mind. He ducked out of sight, obscured by the angle of the wall. I stayed standing for a couple of seconds, confused but wanting to reinforce my authority – like it wasn't me stepping down, just him. Then I heard him relight his joint. I let that mark the end of it and lay back down on the bed.

Even after he'd switched his light off, twenty or so minutes later, I still couldn't get back to sleep. I was too keyed up, too much stuff was running through my head. Beaches and bitches; I was exhausted, jumpy with adrenalin. Perhaps, given an hour of silence, I might have relaxed, but soon after the man's light went out the French couple came back to their room and started having sex. It was impossible, hearing their panting and feeling the vibrations of their shifting bed, not to visualize them. The brief glimpse of the girl's face I'd caught in the corridor was stuck in my head. An exquisite face. Dark skin and dark hair, brown eyes. Full lips.

After they'd finished I had a powerful urge for a cigarette – empathy maybe – but I stopped myself. I knew that if I did they'd hear me rustling the packet or lighting the match. The illusion of their privacy would be broken.

Instead I concentrated on lying as still as I could, for as long as I could. It turned out I could do it for quite a long while.

Geography

The Khao San Road woke early. At five, muffled car horns began sounding off in the street outside, Bangkok's version of the dawn chorus. Then the water-pipes under the floor started to rattle as the guest-house staff took their showers. I could hear their conversations, the plaintive sound of Thai just rising above the splashing water.

Lying on my bed, listening to the morning noises, the tension of the previous night became unreal and distant. Although I couldn't understand what the staff were saying to each other, their chattering and occasional laughter conveyed a sense of normality: they were doing what they did every morning, their thoughts connected only to routine. I imagined they might be discussing who would go for kitchen supplies in the market that day or who would be sweeping the halls.

Around five thirty a few bedroom-door bolts clicked open as the early-bird travellers emerged and the die-hard party-goers from Patpong returned. Two German girls clattered up the wooden stairs at the far end of my corridor, apparently wearing clogs. I realized that the dreamless snatches of sleep I'd managed were finished, so I decided to have a cigarette, the one I'd denied myself a few hours before.

The early morning smoke was a tonic. I gazed upwards, an empty matchbox for an ashtray balanced on my stomach, and every puff I blew into the ceiling fan lifted my spirits a little higher. Before long my mind turned to thoughts of food. I left my room to see if there was any breakfast to be had in the eating area downstairs.

There were already a few travellers at the tables, dozily sipping glasses of black coffee. One of them, still sitting on the same chair as yesterday evening, was the helpful mute/heroin addict. He'd been there all night, judging by his glazed stare. As I sat down I gave him a friendly smile and he tilted his head in reply.

I began studying the menu, a once white sheet of A4 paper with such an extensive list of dishes I felt making a choice was beyond my ability. Then I was distracted by a delicious smell. A kitchen boy had wandered over with a tray of fruit pancakes. He distributed them to a group of Americans, cutting off a good-natured argument about train times to Chiang Mai.

One of them noticed me eyeing their food and he pointed at his plate. 'Banana pancakes,' he said. 'The business.'

I nodded. 'They smell pretty good.'

'Taste better. English?'

'Uh-huh.'

'Been here long?'

'Since yesterday evening. You?'

'A week,' he replied, and popped a piece of pancake in his mouth, looking away as he did so. I guessed that signalled the end of the exchange.

The kitchen boy came over to my table and stood there, gazing at me expectantly through sleepy eyes.

'One banana pancake, please,' I said, obliged into making a snap decision.

'You wan' order one banan' pancake?'

'Please.'

'You wan' order drink?'

'Uh, a Coke. No, a Sprite.'

'You wan' one banan' pancake, one Spri'.'

'Please.'

He strolled back towards the kitchen, and a sudden warm swell of happiness washed over me. The sun was bright on the road outside. A man was setting up his stall on the pavement, arranging bootleg tapes into rows. Next to him a small girl sliced pineapples, cutting the tough skin into neat, spiralling designs. Behind her an even smaller girl used a rag to keep the flies at bay.

I lit my second cigarette of the day, not wanting it, just feeling it was the right thing to do.

The French girl appeared without her boyfriend and without any shoes. Her legs were brown and slim, her skirt short. She delicately padded through the cafГ©. We all watched her. The heroin mute, the group of Americans, the Thai kitchen boys. We all saw the way she moved her hips to slide between the tables and the silver bracelets on her wrists. When her eyes glanced around the room we looked away, and when she turned to the street we looked back.

After breakfast I decided to have a wander around Bangkok, or at the very least, the streets around Khao San. I paid for my food and headed for my room to get some more cash, thinking I might need to get a taxi somewhere.

There was an old woman at the top of the stairs, cleaning the windows with a mop. Water was pouring off the glass and down to the floor. She was completely soaked, and as the mop lurched around the windows it skimmed dangerously close to a bare light-bulb hanging from the ceiling.

'Excuse me,' I said, checking I wasn't about to be included in the puddle of potential death that was expanding on the floor. She turned around. 'That light is dangerous with the water.'

'Yes,' she replied. Her teeth were either black and rotten or yellow as mustard: it looked like she had a mouth full of wasps. 'Hot-hot.' She deliberately brushed the light-bulb with the edge of her mop. Water boiled angrily on the bulb, and a curl of steam rose up to the ceiling.

I shuddered. 'Careful!… The electricity could kill you.'

'Hot.'

'Yes, but…' I paused, seeing that I was on to a non-starter language-wise, then decided to soldier on.

I glanced around. We were the only two people on the landing.

'OK, look.'

I began a short mime of mopping down the windows before sticking my imaginary mop into the light. Then I began jerking around, electrocuted.

She placed a shrivelled hand on my arm to stop my convulsions.

'Hey, man,' she drawled in a voice too high-pitched to describe as mellow. 'It cool.'

I raised my eyebrows, not sure I'd heard her words correctly.

'Chill,' she added. 'No worry.'

'Right,' I said, trying to accept the union of Thai crone and hippy jargon with grace. She'd clearly been working on the Khao San Road a long time. Feeling chided, I started walking down the corridor to my room.

'Hey,' she called after me. 'Le'er for you, man.'

I stopped. 'A what?'

'Le'er.'

'…Letter?'

'Le'er! On you door !'

I nodded my thanks, wondering how she knew which was my room, and continued down the corridor. Sure enough, taped to my door was an envelope. On it was written 'Here is a map' in laboured joined-up writing. I was still so surprised at the old woman's strange vocabulary that I took the letter in my stride.

The woman watched me from the other end of the corridor, leaning on her mop. I held up the envelope. 'Got it. Thanks. Do you know who it's from?'

She frowned, not understanding the question.

'Did you see anybody put this here?'

I started another little mime and she shook her head.

'Well, anyway, thanks.'

'No worry,' she said, and returned to her windows.

A couple of minutes later I was sitting on my bed with the ceiling fan chilling the back of my neck, and the map in my hands. Beside me the empty envelope rustled under the breeze. Outside, the old woman clanked up the stairs with her mop and bucket to the next level.

The map was beautifully coloured in. The islands' perimeters were drawn in green biro and little blue pencil waves bobbed in the sea. A compass sat in the top-right-hand corner, carefully segmented into sixteen points, each with an arrow tip and appropriate bearing. At the top of the map it read 'Gulf of Thailand' in thick red marker. A thinner red pen had been used for the islands' names.

It was so carefully drawn that I had to smile. It reminded me of geography homework and tracing paper. A brief memory surfaced of my teacher handing out exercise books and sarcastic quips.

'So who's it from?' I muttered, and checked the envelope once more for an accompanying note of explanation. It was empty.

Then, on one of a cluster of small islands I noticed a black mark. An X mark. I looked closer. Written underneath in tiny letters was the word 'Beach'.

I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to say to him. I was curious, partly, just wanting to know what the deal was with this beach of his. Also I was pissed off. It seemed like the guy was set on invading my holiday, freaking me out by hissing through the mosquito netting in the middle of the night and leaving strange maps for me to discover.

His door was unlocked, the padlock missing. I listened outside for a minute before knocking, and when I did the door swung open.

In spite of the newspaper pages stuck over the windows, there was enough light coming in for me to see. The man was lying on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. I think he'd slit his wrists. Or it could have been his neck. In the gloom, with so much blood splashed about, it was hard to tell what he'd slit. But I knew he'd done the cutting: there was a knife in his hand.

I stood still, gazing at the body for a couple of moments. Then I went to get help.

Г‰tienne

The policeman was perspiring, but not with the heat. The air-con in the room made it like a fridge. It was more to do with the exertion of speaking English. When he came to a difficult word or a complicated sentence his brow would crease into a hundred lines. Then, little beads of sweat would pop up like opals on his brown skin.

'But Mis'er Duck no you frien',' he said.

I shook my head. 'I'd never met him before last night. And listen. The Duck name, it's not real. It's a joke name.'

'Jo' name?' said the policeman.

'Not a true name.' I pointed to where he'd written the name in his notebook. 'Daffy Duck is a cartoon character.'

'Ca'oon?'

'Yes.'

'Mis'er Duck is ca'oon?'

'Like Bugs Bunny. Uh, Mickey Mouse.'

'Oh,' said the policeman. 'So, he gi' false name to gues' house.'

'Definitely.'

The policeman wiped his shirtsleeve over his face. Sweat sprinkled over his notebook, blurring the ink. He frowned and new droplets replaced the ones he'd just swept away.

'Now I wan' ask you abou' scene of crime.'

'OK.'

'You en'er Mis'er Duck room, because wha'?'

I'd worked this out on the walk down the Khao San Road to the police station.

'Because he kept me awake last night and I wanted to tell him not to do it again.'

'Ah. Las' nigh' Mis'er Duck make noise.'

'Right.'

'And wha' you fine in room, hah?'

'Nothing. I just saw him dead and went to tell the guest-house manager.'

'Mis'er Duck already dead? How you know abou' tha'?'

'I didn't. I just thought he was. There was a lot of blood.'

The policeman nodded sagely, then leant back on his chair.

'I think you angry abou' so much noise las' nigh', hah?'

'Sure.'

'How angry wi' Mis'er Duck?'

I held up my hands. 'I spent the whole morning in the restaurant eating breakfast. From six until nine. A lot of people saw me there.'

'Maybe he die before six.'

I shrugged. I wasn't worried. There was a clear image in my head of the low light coming through the newspapered windows and the sparkling highlights on Mister Duck. The blood had been pretty wet.

The policeman sighed. 'OK,' he said. 'You tell me agai' abou' las' nigh'.'

Why didn't I mention the map? Because I didn't want to get involved in some foreign police investigation and I didn't want my holiday fucked up. Also I didn't care much about the guy's death. I saw it as, well, Thailand's an exotic country with drugs and AIDS and a bit of danger, and if Daffy Duck got too caught up, then it was his look-out.

I didn't get the impression that the policeman cared much about the whole thing either. After another thirty minutes of ruthless interrogation ('Can you ve'ify you eat banan' pancake?') he let me go, asking me not to leave Khao San within twenty-four hours.

The French girl's boyfriend was sitting on the steps of the police station with his face angled up towards the sun. Obviously he'd been brought in for questioning too. He glanced around as I walked down the steps, maybe thinking I was the girl, then turned back.

Normally I'd have taken that as a sign someone doesn't want to chat. I do a lot of my travelling alone so sometimes I get starved of conversation and company. It makes me alert to body language, because even if I'm feeling a bit lonely I don't want to inflict myself on a person who isn't interested. But this time I ignored the sign. Despite not wanting to get involved with the police, the death had made for an unusual start to the day and I had the urge to talk about it.

I sat down right beside him so he couldn't avoid me. As it turned out, I'd read the sign wrong anyway. He was very friendly.

'Hi,' I said. 'Speak English? Uh, je parle français un petit peu mais malheureusement je suis pas très bon.'

He laughed. 'I speak English,' he replied in a gently accented voice.

'You're here about that guy who died, huh?'

'Yes. I heard you were the one to find him.'

Fame.

'Yep,' I replied, pulling my cigarettes out of my pocket. 'Found him this morning.'

'It must have been bad for you.'

'It was OK. Do you smoke?'

'No, thank you.'

I lit up.

'So, I'm Richard,' I said, exhaling.

'Г‰tienne,' said Г‰tienne, and we shook hands.

Last night I'd put him at eighteen or so, but in the daylight he looked older. Twenty or twenty-one. He had a Mediterranean look about him – short dark hair and a slim build. I could see him in a few years' time, a couple of stones heavier, a glass of Ricard in one hand and a boule in the other.

'This is so weird,' I said. 'I only got to Thailand last night. I wanted to relax in Bangkok, if that's possible, and instead I got this.'

'Oh, we have been here already four weeks, and it is weird for us too.'

'Well, yeah, I suppose someone dying is always a bit strange. So where've you been for the last month? Not only Bangkok, surely.'

'No, no.' Г‰tienne shook his head vigorously. 'A few days in Bangkok is enough. We have been north.'

'Chiang Mai?'

'Yes, we went on a trek. We rafted on a river. Very boring, no?' He sighed and leant backwards, resting his back on the stone step behind him.

'Boring?'

Étienne smiled. 'Raft, trek. I want to do something different, and everybody wants to do something different. But we all do the same thing. There is no… ah…'

'Adventure.'

'I think it is why we come here.' He pointed around the corner of the police station, towards the Khao San Road. 'We come for an adventure, but we find this.'

'Disappointing.'

'Yes.'

Étienne paused for a moment, frowning slightly, then he said, 'This man who died. He was very strange. We would hear him late at night. He would talk and shout… The walls are so thin.'

To my irritation I blushed, remembering the sound of Г‰tienne and his girlfriend having sex. I took a deep drag on my cigarette and looked down at the steps we were sitting on. 'Are they?' I said. 'I was so tired last night I slept

'Yes. Sometimes we do not return to the guest-house until late so he will already be asleep.'

'It won't be a problem any more.'

'Often we could not understand him. I know he talked English because I would recognize some words, but… it was not easy.'

'It wasn't easy for me either. He was Scottish. Strong accent.'

'Oh… You heard him last night?'

Now it was Г‰tienne's turn to go red while I concentrated on my cigarette. My embarrassment was compounded by his. It was odd, but if his girlfriend had been ugly I'd only have been amused, but because she was so attractive it almost felt as if I'd had some kind of affair with her. Which of course I had. A mental affair.

We blushed at each other until the awkward silence became too oppressive.

'Yes,' I said, far too loudly. 'He had a thick Scottish accent.'

'Ah,' replied Г‰tienne, also a little firmly. 'Now I understand.'

He stroked his chin thoughtfully as though he were smoothing down a beard, although I could see from his light stubble that he was a long way from being able to grow one. Then he said, 'He would talk about a beach.'

He looked straight at me as he said it. He was watching my face for a reaction – it was obvious. I nodded to make him continue.

'He would talk about it all night. I would lie on my bed awake, because I could not sleep with his shouting, and I would try to follow his words. Like a puzzle.' Г‰tienne laughed. 'Fokkin' bitch,' he said, approximating the man's voice pretty well. 'It took me three nights to understand it was a beach. Just like a puzzle.'

I took another drag on my cigarette, leaving a pause in the conversation, letting Г‰tienne fill it.

'I like puzzles,' he said, but not really to me. Then he let the silence grow.

A trip to India, seventeen years old, more dope than sense, me and one friend decided to take about an eighth of hash with us on a flight from Srinagar to Delhi. We each made our own plans as to how to take it. I wrapped mine up in plastic, swathed it in masking tape and deodorant to mask the smell, and tucked it into a bottle of malaria pills. The precautions were probably unnecessary. The customs officers were unlikely to be too interested in internal flights, but I did it anyway.

When we got to the airport I was shit scared. I mean I was shit scared – eyes popping, shaking, sweating like a pig. But in spite of my fear, I did the most extraordinary thing. I told a complete stranger, a guy I met in the waiting lounge, that I had some dope hidden in my backpack. It wasn't even like he'd winkled the information out of me. I volunteered it. I made the conversation move on to the subject of drugs, and then confessed that I was a smuggler.

I don't know why I did it. I knew it was a fantastically stupid thing to do, but I went right ahead and did it anyway. I simply needed to tell someone what I was doing.

'I know where the beach is,' I said.

Г‰tienne raised his eyebrows.

'I've got a map.'

'A map of the beach?'

'The dead guy drew it for me. I found it stuck to my door this morning. It shows where the beach is, how to get there. I've got it in my room.'

Г‰tienne whistled. 'You told the police?'

'Nope.'

'Perhaps it is important. Maybe it is something to do with why he…'

'Maybe it is.' I flicked away my cigarette. 'But I don't want to get involved. Maybe they'd think I knew him or something, but I didn't. I never met him before last night.'

'A map,' said Г‰tienne quietly.

'Cool, huh?'

Г‰tienne stood up suddenly. 'Can I see it? Would you mind?'

'Uh, not really,' I replied. 'But aren't you waiting for…'

'My girlfriend? Françoise? She knows the way back to the guesthouse. No, I would like to see the map.' He rested a hand lightly on my shoulder. 'If I may.'

Surprised by the intimacy of the gesture, my shoulder twitched and the hand dropped.

'Yeah, sure,' I said. 'Let's go.'

Mute