The Hunters: Pulp World, #3

By Jim Ford

With friends like these...
Caroline Tate seems to have it all: she's beautiful, married to a wealthy and handsome man, and newly relocated from Boston to an exotic island off the coast of Thailand. But beneath the veneer of perfection lurk secrets of betrayal and tragedy that make her volatile and vulnerable.
When Caroline is befriended by a seductive American widow and a charmingly mysterious Englishman she is drawn into a sinister spiral of manipulation and murder that leaves her fighting for her sanity and her life.
The Hunters is a gripping novel of psychological suspense that hurtles to a diabolically Hitchcockian climax.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pulp Master
• Release date: Jul 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201588090

Jim Ford

Jim Ford is the pen name of an award-winning thriller and horror writer.

Book preview

1

Caroline Tate woke from a dream of blood and snow. She lay a moment, eyes closed, listening to the air conditioner whisper a promise of coolness that it couldn’t keep. 

Caroline opened her eyes. She was alone in the oversized bed. It was morning, but the curtains covering the floor-to-ceiling windows kept daylight from the elegantly sparse room.

She stood, and when she put a palm to the putty-colored wall to steady herself she startled a gecko that clicked like a Geiger counter as it darted behind the hand-carved teak bureau. She no longer needed the support of the wall. The compound fracture that had stolen four millimeters from her femur a year ago was healed. The bolts and rods were a memory and the muscle tone was almost restored by her regimen of physical therapy, but she found the contact with the brick reassuring.

Caroline lifted her free hand to her longish blonde bob, and moved damp strands from her face. Hers was the kind of beauty that other women resented. The effortless kind. The kind that the months of agony and anguish had merely deepened, leaving her more striking at thirty-five than ever before. 

She walked to the window, her right foot lightly scuffing the slate tiles. Her leg was always stiffer in the morning and her limp more pronounced.

With time, she had been told, her body would realign, leaving the asymmetry almost invisible.

Caroline reached for the curtain and pulled it wide. Blinded by the searing light she felt for the recessed handle of the sliding door, rolled it open and stepped out onto the deck, the wall of damp heat leaving her breathless.

She blinked and lifted her face to the sky. Within seconds her skin was as moist as if she were in a steam bath. Gradually her eyes adjusted, allowing her to see the sun falling in hot shards into the vivid aquamarine of the Andaman Sea.

The house was a giant glass box washed up on the white sand of a private beach on the island of Phuket, off Thailand’s west coast. The jungle had been hacked away to allow this intrusion, and it was threatening to reclaim what it had lost.

Grasping liana vines throttled the polite shrubbery the landscapers had planted, and primeval plants pressed their heavy green leaves like leeches to the rear windows of the house. A loamy, fetid smell seeped through the air-conditioning ducts at night, stirring primitive fears as Caroline slept fitfully.

She went back inside, crossed the bedroom and opened the door onto the corridor.

The mutter of the TV from downstairs told her that Michael was still home.

She considered holing up in the room until she heard his car leave, but she resisted the impulse and walked down the stairs to the open-plan living room and kitchen, her bare feet silent on the wood.

More sun.

More dazzling ocean.

More glass.

Not a house that encouraged stone throwing.

Michael stood at the kitchen island with his back to her, dressed in a white shirt and chinos, shoes gleaming. He was drinking coffee, watching a business broadcast on CNN. Asian faces with American and Australian accents. She could see the beads of water in his sleek black hair. He must have showered downstairs after his run on the beach.

Michael was tall, broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped. At nearly forty he still had an athlete’s body. She felt a stab of rage, seeing him sprinting effortlessly across the sand, glorying in his fitness.

He still had not turned, and Caroline walked out onto the terrace toward the infinity pool, the blue mirror of its surface merging seamlessly with the ocean. The grass was deep green. The flowers profuse and purple. The smell of jasmine too ripe and heady for her American nose.

Caroline passed the pool and walked down to the beach, squinting at the sun, cursing herself for forgetting her sunglasses.

She crossed to the gently lapping water, not worried that the bottoms of her linen drawstring pants got wet. The ocean was as warm as tea.

She stared out to sea as she followed the trail of seashells that traced the tideline along the shore.

She felt the stiffness in her leg ease, and the pain that still troubled her in the mornings loosened its grip. The heat and the hiss and suck of the ocean were hypnotic and she walked farther than she usually did.

She turned and was heading home, still pleasantly bludgeoned by the sun, when she looked up and saw herself standing on the deck of the house.

She stopped, disoriented, the balmy ocean fizzing at her ankles.

Then order was imposed. She was looking up at the house adjacent to theirs. Its identical twin. Empty since they’d arrived three weeks ago. But now a blonde woman stood outside the upstairs bedroom, cupping an elbow, smoking. She waved.

Caroline pretended she hadn’t seen her and limped home, suddenly hot and deflated.

2

The taxi dropped Caroline at the entrance to the Bangkok Hospital Phuket. The shimmering white confection, recently refurbished in the Sino-Portuguese style characteristic of the island, looked more like a hotel than an infirmary, with its arched wooden shutters and sweeping Neoclassical pilasters.

It was a Mecca for wealthy foreigners who jetted in for cosmetic surgery. They went under the knife or the laser and spent a few nights in luxurious suites being cosseted by cooing Thai nurses. Then they decamped to elite beach resorts and basked in the sun like iguanas while their bruises faded and sutures dissolved.

Caroline entered the hospital’s enormous, frigid lobby and was subjected to endless smiling and Thai greetings, awkwardly reciprocating the wais, bowing slightly with her palms pressed together in a prayer-like fashion. She felt like a giraffe next to the compact Thais.

She’d been there three times before and could’ve found her own way, but she allowed a young woman in a tight purple dress and teetering heels to lead her past the giant portrait of the Thai monarch in his white ceremonial uniform, and down a wide corridor to the rehabilitation center.

Within a few minutes she was lying on her stomach in her underwear and a smock on a massage table waiting for the diminutive therapist, Nahm, whose bird-like limbs and tiny fingers belied her strength.

But when the door opened a middle-aged man dressed in a pale blue tunic entered.

He pressed his palms together. "Sawadee kap."

"Sawadee kah, Caroline said. Where’s Nahm?"

Nahm she go home to Isaan. Problem with mama.

He didn’t volunteer his name and she didn’t ask. He glanced at her file and hummed.

He came over and looked at her right leg. Elongated it. Measured the one sole against the other.

He applied some gel and started to massage her upper leg. It took her a while to relax, but his touch was soothing, and she closed her eyes as he worked deep into the tissue.

Please to turn over, he said.

She obeyed and again he studied her leg, fingertips reading the scars where the screws and pins had been like Braille.

This it was done in America? he said.

Yes. Boston.

Very good. Very clean.

He worked into her quads and around the knee. Then his hand was on her hip, and he rolled her onto her left side. Nahm had never ventured farther than her leg.

He probed with his fingers then he rested his elbow on her hip and brought his weight to bear. There was a sharp pain and then a sudden release.

He hummed and tapped her hip bone then moved her onto her back.

With the smock still buttoned he placed the palm of his hand on her belly. She felt her abdomen clinch.

Please to relax, he said.

She breathed and tried to calm herself.

Please to breathe long and slowly.

She obeyed.

His fingertips found a spot above her pubic bone, off-center, closer to her hip. At first he was very gentle and she barely felt his fingers, then he pressed hard and she felt a pain so intense it was all she could do not to scream.

Please to breathe, he said.

Eyes shut tight, fists clenched, she breathed.

He applied more pressure and suddenly she was behind the wheel of the car as it skidded off the icy road, hurtling into the tree in an explosion of glass and twisted metal. The faulty airbag in the steering didn’t deploy, and the wheel smashed into her abdomen, killing her baby.

The car flipped and spun and the pain in her leg made her scream as she plummeted into blackness.

Caroline opened her eyes.

The physiotherapist had his back to her, wiping his hands on a towel.

He nodded and waid and was gone.

Caroline closed her eyes and she felt something she hadn't felt in nearly a year.

Something almost like peace.

3

Michael Tate sped up the paved driveway to the house, the plants, big, green and profuse, scraping the doors of his silver Mercedes SUV.

His work day was over early. He’d met with a developer who was ready to raze acres of virgin jungle down on a remote southern beach and build the resort Michael had designed for him.

The developer was a Thai man with first and last names of staggering length and complexity.

Michael had heard that Thais sometimes created their own names, adding in elements on superstitious whim, to placate one of a legion of malicious spirits. Fortunately most of them used nicknames that were simple and, often, Westernized.

So this plump, smiling little man, who wore a bespoke tan suit and a Breitling watch the size of a swimming pool, went by the name of Golf.

Whether he loved the game, or even played it, Michael did not know.

The developer was down from Bangkok, and they met in a plush hotel suite in Emerald Bay where Golf was attended by a silent, sloe-eyed stunner half his age and twice his height.

While Michael screened the computer simulation on his laptop, Golf bounced on the sofa and nodded and glugged the Coke that his concubine regularly replenished and said, Good, good. Fantastic. Yes. Oh yes.

There’d been requests for a few minor changes and then Golf had pressed his palms together in the Thai way, and promised a handsome transfer into Michael’s account by the end of business.

Michael didn’t need to work.

His mother’s grandfather had invented a household appliance that had made his name into a noun, and earned him a one of those colossal American fortunes that had increased in magnitude as it was handed down to his descendents.

Michael’s handsome father had shamelessly married the plain granddaughter for her money, and had gambled, whored and drunk himself into an early grave.

Michael had inherited his father’s looks, but not his habits. He earned his own money and believed that, unlike his profligate parent, he had few vices.

As Michael parked beside their Thai cleaner’s ancient scooter he glimpsed his wife in the living room. But, as he shouldered his laptop and quit the SUV, he saw this wasn’t Caroline.

This was some blonde stranger, dressed in a colorful cloth over a swimsuit. She stood smiling at him as he walked into the house.

Michael, I’m so sorry to intrude, she said in an American accent. I’m Liz Keller. A multitude of bangles rattled on her arm when she wagged a hand at the stolid cleaner who was mopping the kitchen tiles. Noey let me in.

She had one of those husky, breathy voices that would make a shopping list sound like an indecent proposition.

Hi, Michael said, setting his computer down on the table. Can I help you?

Sorry, I’m your neighbor. And your landlady. This made her laugh and she showed her very good teeth. "Now that makes me sound terribly Tennessee Williams, right?"

Michael said, We did the rental booking through the agency, so I wasn’t aware we had a landlady.

Of course you weren’t. But I got in from Zürich last night and I thought I’d swing by and say hi and see that you and Caroline have everything you need.

Yeah, sure. It’s a great house. No problems.

Liz had moved in close enough to him for her to reach out a hand and pluck something from the sleeve of his shirt. She held up a fragment of a purple petal.

An orchid cactus. They’re a considered very auspicious here in Thailand.

She let the petal float down onto the table beside his computer.

Well, Michael, nice to meet you. I’m right next door if you need anything.

She smiled again and turned and flounced out the door to the beach. Her fragrance lingered after her. Something heady and a cloying, with an underlying trace of musk.

Liz Keller looked a little like his wife, but she smelled nothing like her.

4

After Caroline dressed and left the treatment room she felt starved. She had a half hour before the car would return for her, so she sat down in the coffee shop in the hospital lobby and ordered a chicken sandwich and a cappuccino.

The table beside her was occupied by a man in his forties with a mop of auburn hair, worn in bangs that continually needed to be swept back from his high forehead. He sat with his legs crossed at the knee and his right leg jiggled, showing a tanned, sockless ankle, and a stylish espadrille. He had his phone propped up against a salt cellar, and was watching something on its screen, buds in his ears.

After she ordered he caught her eye and smiled, veneers flashing.

Your leg is looking so much better today, he said in one of those posh, Hugh Grantish British accents.

She stared at him. Excuse me?

He plucked the buds from his ears. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be forward. It’s just that I’ve seen you here before and couldn’t help noticing you’re walking far more comfortably.

Caroline was saved from having to reply by the arrival of her sandwich and coffee. The food didn’t look appetizing.

She sipped the coffee.

I’m Charlie, he said. Charlie Hepworth.

Not wanting to appear churlish she said, Caroline Tate.

He wagged a well-manicured finger.

You’re American. He held up a hand. "Don’t worry, I like Americans. Well your sort of American, anyway."

She hid her smile in her coffee cup, sipped and asked, And what sort of American would that be?

He jiggled his foot and shrugged. "Shall we say the refined sort."

You make me sound like one of these, she said flicking a sachet of processed sugar in the bowl on the table.

He barked a laugh. Ouch, I deserve that. Very snobbish of me. But come on, you can’t seriously expect me not to’ve noticed you?

Why would you?

Now, Caroline, let’s not be disingenuous. Someone who looks like the young Grace Kelly is bound to stand out in these parts.

Well, thank you. But I’m no longer young.

"Mnnn, you’re young enough. A spring chicken compared to the leathery old reptiles slithering around here. Anyway, you’d stand out anywhere. He saw her face and wagged his hand again. Don’t worry, I’m not trying to pick you up."

She laughed. I’m not worried.

She took a small bite of her sandwich and grimaced.

That’s pretty bloody inedible, isn’t it? Charlie said.

Yes. She pushed her plate away.

You in a mad rush?

Caroline looked at her watch. She still had twenty minutes.

No. Why?

Are you a picky eater? Any food aversions?

No. I eat pretty much everything.

Goody.

He called over the waitress and spoke to her in what to Caroline’s ear was perfect Thai. He slipped the girl a banknote and she nodded and went out the side exit that led down to the street.

What’s going on? Caroline said.

A little surprise. He scratched his chin. So, a spot of medical tourism, is it? Or a longer stay?

We’re here for a while.

We?

Me and my husband.

And where’s hubby?

Working. She sipped her coffee. And you? You speak the language, so I’m guessing you live here?

Oh, God, you flatter me. I know a word or two of the lingo, that’s all. But, yes, I live here. For the moment. I’ll flit away when I no longer find it agreeable.

And what do you do, Charlie?

He tilted his head winningly. "Such an American question."

And one you’re not obliged to answer.

No, no, he said, waving a hand again, I’m an open book. No secrets. I export jewelry. There’s still quite an appetite in Europe and the States for the baubles from here and Indochina.

He looked up as the waitress returned carrying something in a plastic bag. She set it down in front of Caroline, and opened it to reveal a brightly colored salad.

"Som tum, Charlie said. Green papaya salad with shrimp and peanuts."

Caroline tasted it. Lime. Chilies. Something sweet she couldn’t identify.

My God, she said, this is delicious.

He grinned. The best on the island. From a stall right down on the street. The locals travel miles for it.

She took another forkful. There’s something in here I can’t put a name to...

Probably tamarind.

Yes. Mnnn. Please, can I pay you for this?

He waved this away. I wouldn’t dream of it. Seeing your pleasure is payment enough.

Charlie looked over her shoulder and his smile vanished. He glanced at his watch, grabbed his phone and stood.

Oh hell, sorry, I’ve lost track of the time. I have to be down in Kathu in ten minutes. A bloody visa thing. You enjoy your salad and I hope to see you soon.

He waved and hurried out the exit, swallowed up by the glare.

5

Charlie Hepworth dashed out the door, past the ATMs and the mini mart, and down the ramp to where hundreds of scooters were shoehorned into a triangular parking lot.

As he approached the bikes he passed a hunched woman in brown bush hat and men’s shoes, with a wooden box of lotto