Missing Louise: A missing backpacker, a body and a mystery buried in revolution

By Nicholas Frankcom

A lone backpacker vanishes whilst on the road in South East Asia. With no traces or threads there is only one person Louise Pemberton’s parents can turn to. Her ex-boyfriend. Set against the striking backdrop of Thailand and Laos, an epic search immerses

• Language: English
• Publisher: AG Books
• Release date: Oct 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781789820805

Book preview

Missing Louise

A missing backpacker, a body and a mystery buried in Revolution

Nicholas Frankcom

Published by

AG Books

www.agbooks.co.uk

Digital version converted and distributed by

Andrews UK Limited

www.andrewsuk.com

Copyright © 2019 Nicholas Frankcom

The right of Nicholas Frankcom to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him under section 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

The more information you are able to give us, the more easily we will be able to locate your friend or relative. Thailand is a large country and communications and infrastructure in many parts of the country are not highly developed.

Advice from US Embassy website in Thailand

You should be aware that responsibility for conducting searches overseas rests with the local police force abroad . . . . We cannot use public funds to finance rescue operations for people missing in remote areas nor pay for the recovery or repatriation of the body in the unfortunate circumstances where this may be necessary.

Extract from Foreign and Commonwealth Office leaflet Missing Persons Abroad, March 2009

Prologue

A tinge of fear blunted the morning. Early starts were the worst, the day longer to invite omens. The pre-dawn rise from his stiff military cot knotted the young airman’s stomach into a leaden fist of tension. He was not one for premonition but today felt different, bleak under a sky of wakening sunbeam. The hard mattress kept away dreams from home, dead arms doing little to lighten his mood. Breakfast gulps of caffeine ingested with doses of nicotine did little to break it up. Daybreak sorties were needed for the light, the same light that could map out the flying silhouette from a mile away for all to see. The growing morning sunshine drew out beads of sweat as he waited anxiously beside the wired window. A narrow corridor with framed maps and a cheap water-stained Monet copy provided little distraction outside the colonel’s airless pre-fab office. The single plastic fan circulated stale sweat and flakes of tobacco ash around, collecting from ashtrays overflowing with the stubs left by anxious pilots. He used the time to floss nervously with a bamboo splinter lying to hand. All too soon he would be presented with the deepening furrows permanently etching themselves into the colonel’s forehead. The past month was a black one. Two more eager pilots were missing. Jez, a wide grinning optimist from the cattle fields of Utah, was the latest AWOL. No more would his pale receding matt of hair attract the vicious rays of the sun. Gone right off the radar; his opaque pearl dot vanishing forever. Never now could Jez bed that sweet-smelling valley girl with the rhythmic hips he dreamed of. Any youthful excitement the small group of airmen felt for covert flying was long blurred by the reality of just how shit it could all fall apart. Search and rescue expectations could be left in the hangar with all the other notions of aviation health and safety. They weren’t supposed to be flying so much as a kite, let alone any probing kit capable of snapping pictures two miles beneath.

Within minutes he was back out in the heat negotiating a tight airstrip to allow the powerful twin engines to suck his aircraft high enough to disguise all markings. He allowed his racing mind to touch down before his tightening grip squeezed the controls to bring the craft airborne. Irrigated paddy fields and rural towns quickly gave way to dense jungle. Below, the tall South East Asian trees cloaked many hidden mysteries, the thick canopy smothering crack-shot enemies and concealing far-flung forgotten towns reached through a labyrinth of unmarked tracks. At 3,000 feet the postcard-seductive cloak of green looked more menacing than tantalising. He chewed on the same ulcerated wall of his mouth he was used to tasting these past six months, a new tickle of blood tipping his tongue as he settled into the flight.

Up above the plush carpet of green the young pilot’s concern was to keep alert and try to exercise the mind. Fear boosted the senses, chiselling a clear view of the drop below. He knew that with time his body would tire, that the fuel fear gave would fall away. Round trips could take some hours, especially when straying a few clicks over the border. Radio silence prevailed in the high altitude. There were no airwaves open to air traffic control guidance; no clipped English accent to welcome him back from international airspace. Most traces of danger were buried far below, miles from the cockpit and a whole world from his closed environment of magnetic dials and recycled air. With the risks of war hidden amongst the trees and ditches he needed to remain humanly aware of each danger, to try to use his fear. Rarely did he glimpse any tracer smoke. Amid the clouds a serious attitude mattered most, the need to remain professional and not become detached from the pitched battles fought far below. Peering through the reinforced cockpit glass all he could make out was a mass of dark trees pushing every horizon, punctured only by strutting cliffs and hostile mountains. Before volunteering, each recruit knew there were few clearings providing any safe oasis to land. None long enough to nose down unharmed. Even if luck brought him a paddy field or cleared strip of muddy road a small raiding party would soon take him. Flying across guerrilla-saturated jungle rated as bad as the going could ever get. Forget the Pacific airborne fleet: this was far worse.

The enormous size of the jungles brought an unpredictable natural chaos stretching across countless plains and boundaries. Much of it lay un-charted, too dense and remote to mark down on a map. Too bloody dangerous! Few had need or desire. The main inhabitants were a scattering of hardened tribesmen and lawless scavengers, those with no choice.

Article 56 in the aircrews’ introduction manuals made the risks clear enough for any unlucky souls forced to bail out above the tree-line. Even without a military directive he knew the dank forest seeped danger. The Black Ops guys knew best; many practically lived in netted hammocks surrounded by flies and snipers. They knew that sense of lingering unease the further you strayed from the gravel tracks skirting the trees; away from domestic security, away from camps or hostels. The place carried the scent of death; old traps primed for swallowing legs, venomous snakes and exposure. The animals came in packs, scavenging for all they could find. A half-crushed airman crawling from a hidden pit scored highly on their menu.

A mile above the trees he mastered the controls with the confidence only ex-military aviators could show. His youth belied experience. Civilian training or logged flying hours didn’t include live ammo discharges. Like his assorted collection of eccentric colleagues he was chosen because of countless sorties over the unforgiving terrain. It was airspace he knew, flying zones he zigzagged daily on sorties kept to an exclusive few. The pay was good, inflated by the danger and need to be bloody wary, the money often pumped into a high-octane lifestyle adopted to blur away panic attacks.

The colonel’s instructions for that morning looked promising. He was to keep to one of the quieter sectors. Zone Three flights generally involved high-level photography. Inquisitive lenses produced grainy images of scenes played out far below. Today’s task was a little different; dropping a canister containing some rare Russian document. Who would want such transcripts out here was beyond him. He knew they weren’t intelligence scripts or frontline orders. These were dropped in black bundles. Weapons or medical drops he could understand, bare essentials of jungle skirmishes. Paperwork, on the other hand, written in Russian - there was something in that he might never know.

The coordinates for despatch were very precise and he fully intended to drop down just low enough so that the mile-high cross winds wouldn’t take the weighted canister far from its expectant audience far below. Soon it would be gone, then to hell with it. His curiosity would wane - it always did. Back later to a chilled bourbon, poured over ice in the chaotic mess beside the tarmac. Homely posters and pictures of family to surround him, his own patch of Asia. Not long now.

The young pilots were happiest with sorties in Zone Three. They talked it up as the long-straw bet. Most would grope for the mission tags that might take them that way. If you kept a high altitude then trouble stayed away. You might have to take a dip for any drop, but little more. This was no hero stuff, he didn’t volunteer for that. The problem was that relaxation could set in, more so after smoking strong local grass washed back with the bourbon, his night-time poison born from loneliness and boredom. A temptation was to take in the view and get on with the flying, doing little more than maintaining a steady speed and course. It was so easy to lose that alertness, the essential requirement for combat. If things went wrong with your eye off the horizon the unexpected happened, most of it bad. This was exactly how it now caught him. There was no preparing you for a ruptured fuel-line. Debris probably became lodged in an inlet, maybe a bird, causing an edge to be pushed back into the pipes. Something very sharp must have caught the line; the rubber was reinforced and reliably strong. With the high-octane fuel pumping over the heated engine fins, it was seconds before billows of dark smoke indicated an engine fire. Within a heartbeat the flames had taken hold, severing all control and rendering the plane into a fierce dive. The drone of the engine broke into a stutter, briefly trying to jumpstart, before terminally stalling.

Crashing down in the jungle was the one thing that spiked their heads with naked fear. They could live with much else, so long as it was an each-way bet on making it back. Here every tree represented a sharp pike intent on impaling him to his leather seat. A bowel-clenching descent would rush him to instant death, where treetops and branches could rake and spear the fuselage, rupturing the fuel tank as the plane tore through their midst. The stalling engine was a solid kick to the spine. Black smoke seeped through the vents, clogging his nostrils with the pungent smell of burning rubber. His nemesis was violently unfolding.

The vibrations running through the controls jerked his hands free. Clenching harder, he fought to hold on and steer the plane as far as possible. Pressure pushed back his cheek muscles and brought bile to the back of his throat. All of his senses confirmed the worst whilst his mind raced with the intense surge of adrenalin; he was going to die and probably die fucking horribly. If he survived the initial impact, the chances were that he would sit strapped to his seat and fry. He had to decide whether he should take his chances crash-landing the crate or bailing out. A scan of the horizon gave little comfort. There were no roads, no rivers, just trees. Staying with the plane probably meant suicide, but little alternative remained. Time had moved too fast, leaving the option for bailing out redundant. He gripped the controls, clenching his teeth, unaware that his tongue had been pinned between two nicotine-streaked molars. As the landing gear clipped the tip of the first great Asian Rosewoods, now parallel with the flight-path, he half wondered why he was not dwelling on his life, his young daughter overseas. Wasn’t that supposed to happen? He wanted so much to see the best clips of those closest to him play back in his mind’s eye. No tunnel of light beckoned him to walk into lasting peace, no close relative to lead him home. Nothing. Just a black vortex crashing towards him as his body fell numb. Death was rarely heroic.

Chapter One

I got them to put extra whisky in.

Louise looked around to peer at the figure behind her. She was met with an unflinching gaze directed through two yellowing eyes. The gap between the two front teeth suggested that a high annoying whistle would accompany any speech though in this she was wrong. The pale skin seemed largely unaffected by daytime temperatures pushing over forty Celsius. Sun-bathing was evidently not a strong hobby, nor walking out in daytime hours given the pasty exterior. His fledgling beard was made uneven through tufts of growth sprouting from several facial moles, as if fertilised. Under most circumstances, the ugly geek would have drawn either pity or derision from her, but here he flustered her. She was out of her own environment and had little idea how to handle certain situations. A guy easily swept under the carpet back home could present a real problem out on the road. Deep within she clenched, determined to keep a strong presence against her growing uncertainty. She disliked him all the more for making her do this. The guy might not be an immediate physical threat, though he had that unpredictable weirdness streak running through him.

His scrawny arm held out the small aluminium bucket, a lone hair dancing on his wrist as he did so. Two straws protruded from the ice-filled bucket’s top, tempting Louise to pick one and draw in the sweet intoxicating mix of coke and local whisky. She searched her memory for a name, and thought she remembered it as being John or Jonathan. She was sure it was a ‘J’. Now fully turned to face him, she had the time to take in all that she had remembered. This guy put her on edge, his burrowing eyes almost looking to lick her body. Earlier in the day there was that involuntary shudder. She had first spotted him earlier that afternoon on Lonely Beach, the last remaining traveller enclave on Koh Chang, itself the largest of the Thai Islands. The skeletal creep had been walking along the water line, taking time to letch over any female figure wearing less than a long-sleeved top and knee-length shorts, which was pretty much most of them. It was just Louise’s luck that she should look up at the precise moment when he had been passing her stretch of beach. Even when eye contact had been made, she still had not expected him to wander up and crack some one-liner about there being a crap surf, as if he had been drinking in a wooden-fronted Bangkok club, not sauntering along the edge of paradise. Given the sheltered nature of the cove, there was never likely to be any surf, leaving her with the belief that the creep was either totally insane or wasted when surfing. Probably both. A polite smile and return to her paperback had not dissuaded him. Seating himself within the rim of her shrinking comfort zone, he had first introduced himself (she felt sure that it had been ‘John’ now) and then gone on to talk at length about a conspiracy theory involving the Thai army building a road straight through neighbouring Cambodia’s porous border. Any interesting points were lost in a sea of irrelevant diversions and unnecessary foot movements. He had used breaks in his story to push his toes through the sand, each time ebbing closer to her outer thigh.

Unnerved by his unwanted and persistent attention, Louise had taken her leave shortly afterwards, seeking solitude in her wooden cabin, built on stilts halfway up a steep vegetated hill leading out of the cove. Tired from the strong afternoon sun, she had allowed the rhythm of the fan to lull her into a short, deep sleep. A beach barbeque several hours later, consisting of squid and skewered tiger prawn, revitalised her enough to seek out company and more than a few Chang beers. A couple of Kiwi girls encouraged her to watch some late evening fire juggling at a makeshift beach bar. The Thai bar crew had skilfully hurled the lighted batons in the air to the accompaniment of old-school dance music, lines of pink scar tissue testament to the hours of practice needed. She carefully allowed herself a few more beers, happy in the company of the Kiwis, even accepting a joint rolled with intoxicating Thai sticks. Wholly relaxed, she had found herself giggling at the most benign comments and jokes, content to draw back on the joint and allow life to wash over her for the moment. The tropical beach, fire show and peaceful atmosphere were savoured and committed to memory. She was old enough to appreciate the comparative rarity of such an evening. Even those lucky enough to be on the road still had timetables and structures to follow, sights to see with buses and accommodation to arrange, agendas to be set.

As the show had built towards its finale, word was passed that there was to be a half-moon party at the Jaba, a complex treehouse that served as a bar on the wooded incline to the other side of the single-track road. Casually walking with a mixed group of travellers, she had been totally absorbed in her own thoughts and found that several minutes had elapsed since she last checked on the Kiwis. Although dark, the beach’s only illumination being the moon, with a brief glance she quickly satisfied herself that they must be some way behind. They were certainly out of her limited range of sight. Giving little time for decision, she elected to push on towards the Jaba, safe in the knowledge that there was a small gang of revellers just in front of her plus the odd straggler behind. Her reasoning was that if the Kiwis didn’t show she could always latch on to new groups and conversations. Though never a shy or retiring girl, her confidence was brimming, spurred on by recent independence learnt through travel. Louise then took a further swig from the bottle that she had all but forgotten and moved on, giving more care to her footing in the soft white sand as the sea breeze tried to sway her. Moving over the road, she soon found herself clambering up the few remaining steps to the Jaba without having fully realised it. Her eyes now slightly out of focus, she gently pressed her way towards the crude bar, still firmly gripping her earlier acquired bottle of Chang beer, its bitter tang warming her belly. It wasn’t until she selected a suitable isolated stool and was edging her way over to it that she heard the voice behind her. The two straws were inches from her face, enticing her to have the bucket with added whisky.

With her foggy recollections slowly labelling him as weird and a possible threat, she tried to make sense of the yellow-eyed creep that she now remembered as John. The scrawny over-eager figure hardly seemed to pose any immediate danger to her. Her reservations lay in becoming embroiled in a baloney conversation, something that the Kiwis would soon rescue her from. A vindictive part of her could see the three of them cutting him down with jibes and belittling remarks, something he almost certainly deserved anyway. It wasn’t in her nature, but she had that streak in her this evening. This streak was less vicious than experimental. The confrontation could lead to any number of conclusions. In one sense it would feel good to see them all come up before them, an invisible barrier of tempting selections, then be able to watch which direction any exchange might take. She felt different, giddily reckless and somewhat argumentative. A further side to her personality jostled to be more risqué and adventurous. This enticing element now had the loudest, more persuasive voice within her head and won her inward battle of decisions.

Carefully placing the bottle aside, she approached the bucket, finally having decided that she should accept a free drink in most circumstances. It occurred to her that it might be spiked, but the thought quickly slipped by. Her carefree happiness blunted any sense of danger. She pulled the nearest straw to her lips, smelling the sweet cocktail as she did so.

Just a bit will do me - thanks! she said.

As she was taking a couple of long, smooth draws, John was clearly anxious to fire-start a conversation. He began by speaking very quickly.

I love these buckets! he said. Just imagine if they sold them back in UK bars! It would be mayhem out there for sure. You could each sit with one at pub table and spit beer at each other all night! Actually it wouldn’t be beer, would it? Not with this stuff. You’d all be stir-crazy on Thai whisky and coke - don’t they put some of that home grown Red Bull stuff in as well? They reckon it would be banned back in the UK, five times stronger than the juice there. Gets you dancing though - look at those crazy left-footed fools!

Louise peered in the general direction of a small dance floor surrounded by ornate patched beanbags. A couple of backpackers were engaged in some kind of mock Morris dance, banging their buckets together each time that they passed. A further reveller looked to be shunting up one of the poles that held the roof up. As she took another leisurely sip, she found the climbing figure go slightly out-of-focus. She squinted, hoping that it was the distance and light, but felt increasingly light-headed.

You know, it’s the heat as well, John continued. People spend most of the day running at half-steam trying not to fry, saving themselves to live by these balmy hot nights, just chuck your T-shirt on and off you go and party! You interested in a smoke?

Louise realised that John was now looking back at her. Her ability to make sound judgments was fast deteriorating, though she knew that she should get out. The situation promised to get out of her control. With reflexes and general awareness speeding downhill she knew she must take her leave imminently or risk losing control. A growing top-heavy dizziness as she stood reinforced her desire to get out and away from the wiry shadow standing over her.

I’m fine thanks, she quickly replied. Listen, I’d better be off now, want to get my head down.

Before she had even finished the sentence, Louise was already starting back down the steep decent on her way back to the beach where her welcome cabin awaited. The whisky was fast going to her head, enough to raise a few warning bells from within. It had affected her fast, though she thought that earlier drinks must have played their part in her current predicament. Gingerly feeling for a piece of rope attached to the side of the path, she made her way down, passing a small sea of people still making their way up, their numbers inflated by the narrow path. She remembered the two Kiwi girls from earlier, but found her eyes too heavy and unable to pierce the darkness enough to read faces. All she saw were the feet of many people dancing to a song on the edge of her memory.

Thankful that she had reached the bottom of the slope without mishap, Louise found herself confronting her next obstacle homeward bound. A shallow swamp separated the road from her part of the beach. The murky waters were bridged by a wooden walkway, supported by a series of timber poles, which served in pushing it several feet above the brown swamp. Each pole varied in height from the other, making the walkway resemble a rickety dinosaur’s spine. With the absence of a rail, she gingerly started her slow and calculated passage, groping for any object that passed for a branch. Her logical side argued that a fall would not be met with instant death, but this did little to reassure her. What if she banged her head or forgot to open her mouth? Did snakes swim? The walk, so easy with a clear head in the day, was proving to be her tightrope of ruin. Her legs took each step with less accuracy as a slight shake progressed