Excerpt of When the Darkness Swallowed the Sun by Robin Newbold

Chapter 1

Dan kicked off his flip-flops, the white powdery sand enveloped his toes, still warm from another sun-drenched day but looking out to sea an inky, eerie black told another story. This was the stretch of beach where the boy’s head had been split in two with a rock and his girlfriend drowned after apparently having her once pretty head held underwater, leaving a bloated, blackened horror.

He bowed his head, shakily lit a cigarette, horrible habit he’d picked up since… well, he didn’t want to think about that, couldn’t. Let’s just say since he jumped on a plane, made Thailand his home for want of a better word. Dan felt about as far from home as possible, looking away from the sea, up at the stars all a twinkle, felt that ache in his gut, bending double, as if paradise was mocking him. The disco thud from the nearby bars betrayed it was no paradise though and he thought back again to the crime scene photos he’d seen of the eighteen-year-old backpackers, Bill’s eyes as if popping out, the purple gash that was like a ravine through the centre of his forehead. And, as for Corrine, well he wanted to forget, delete like a malicious text from an ex but it was always there, that blonde hair streaked crimson, so much blood he could almost smell the butcher’s shop stink.

Dan inhaled the fag smoke as far into his lungs without gagging, batted at the sweat dripping from his forehead, inadvertently looked at his watch. Always the ticking of the clock, digging nails into his palm as the second hand swept round, reminding him he was on someone else’s time, the Bangkok Daily’s. No one in the newsroom had volunteered for the assignment, didn’t want the hassle, so being the cub reporter here he was. And his squat Australian boss, the Little Ignorant Fucker from Oz – Liffo – wanted answers, a splash, told him sex sells but that murder trumped sex every time, especially a “sexy murder” of two nubile young things as he’d so sickeningly put it. But he couldn’t get his head around it as he flopped onto the sand, inches from the water’s edge, gentle lapping of the waves in his ears, even though the boom of the music in the background felt like some ominous warning. Yeah, Thailand was the wild west and Koh Maphraw, or Coconut Island as everybody called it, a bit dodgy but this? He selected the crime scene photos again in his overactive mind, the ones that’d been invading his dreams, despite the cloying heat he shuddered, though as if in tandem a breeze rustled the nearby palms, ushering in coal black clouds that instantly blotted out the moon, the stars.

Dan was shaking as he stood, that wind again, sending goose pimples riding up his arms and he trod back into his flip-flops, looking one way then the other down the deserted beach, a double murder obviously not good for business, though the beat droned on. Cupping his hands he lit another fag, stomping in the opposite direction to the twinkly lights of the bars and restaurants, the guesthouses, though shacks would be a more accurate description but you didn’t need much here, what with the sun, sea and the other, he knew that. But that’s what made Bill and Corrine’s brutal killing so senseless and that’s why he was heading for the scrubby bit of land well away from the picture postcard bit of the island, the scrubby bit of land where the wonderful Thai police speculate the couple were making out, that someone took a liking to the girl and a fight ensued – Dan trying to find an explanation for the inexplicable. But clambering over some rocks, rocks littered with plastic bottles, old beer cans, cigarette butts and other unmentionables the beach cleaners never got to, he knew it’d been no fight, they’d been butchered, hadn’t stood a bloody chance. Why?

The wind had got up and it carried the sound of the music away, just the sloshing of the sea, shards of lightning periodically splitting the sky, like that cracked forehead and he could sense the coming storm. He turned from the water, stared into the treeline about one hundred metres or so up the beach, thick jungle, though he’d seen it in daylight and knew the foliage barely covered all the crap discarded there, basically an unofficial tip, the unloved piece of the island. It was supposedly out of sight, out of mind and he worried that the same could be applied to Bill and Corrine after hearing some of the stories peddled by locals, that they were pissheads or druggies or that just being farang was enough. Yep, farang, that lovely catch-all term Thais had for foreigners, often spat out like an insult as if all tourists were guilty of something.

Thunder boomed and it heralded the first fat drops of ran, while Dan ducked instinctively but his eyes were fixated on the thicket of trees, almost certain he’d seen the red glow of a cigarette, as if he was being watched, followed. His heartbeat thumped in his ears but instead of heading back to where he thought he’d seen the pinprick of light, he quickened his pace, stumbling over rocks as he went, cursing the fact he was in bloody flip-flops, rubber cutting into the between his toes. Breaths coming fast, threatening to overwhelm him, he rounded the corner of a headland but shook his head at a massive wall of rock, absolutely unnavigable, the darkness complete, no welcoming bars or restaurants here, just boulders one way, thick jungle to the left.

“Fuck,” he said, panting, wiping his drenched face, knowing he’d have to go back the way he came, that he’d have to pass the place where he thought he’d sensed someone watching him, sniffing the air like he could smell the tell-tale cigarette smoke.

The message came back to Dan, the words a bar owner – the man with the unblinking eyes – had uttered this afternoon when he’d found out he was a reporter, that it’d be a good idea if he “left the island tomorrow”. He shuddered again knowing that wouldn’t be good enough for Liffo, that the Aussie veteran had demanded a scoop given the Daily would be ahead of all the “foreign hacks”, wanted a page one splash and no excuses.

He turned back, breathing out, tension in his neck finally easing as he saw the lights ahead but then he wondered if that’s how the two backpackers had felt, that false sense of security on this so-called paradise island. The lone figure silhouetted on the horizon closing fast over the sand posed a more urgent question and he zig-zagged round the rocks up the beach into the trees, blundering through vegetation, feeling the uneven floor rip at his feet as he slipped in and out of the flip-flops, over roots, sending him stumbling but just about managing to stay upright. The jungle was weirdly damp and airless after the beach, panicked sound of his breathing, movement amplified but then he detected noise from behind, the snapping of twigs, the trampling of earth, he was being hunted, staggering around in the dark as the evil closed in, like it had for Bill and Corrine. He turned just as a hand caught his shoulder, a powerful wrenching at his arm, whites of eyes flashing in the gloom and Dan went limp, he had nowhere to run, as if his past had finally caught up with him. Was this karma?