The Day I Died

By Glen Peters

Millions go to Goa every year to indulge in the hedonistic pleasures of this former Indo-Portuguese colony. Some never return.



Set in Goa, this page-turner combines crime, romance and rough beach justice into a story that grabs you all the way, with the action flipping from Wales to Anjuna, once an idyllic fishing village, where mass tourism threatens to overwhelm the local community. Ceri arrives to escape a troubled life in a dead-end Welsh town and finds herself being groomed by the Beachboys. She falls for Igor, a member of the Ukes from Kiev who woos her with his poongi, a musical instrument of the local Banjara gypsies. The two gangs fight it out while the two lovers conduct their dangerous love affair undercover, unleashing a spiral of murder and betrayal. With startling twists and turns, the action races to a shattering conclusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Conrad Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781839784033

Book preview

Part One

Prologue

An open and shut case

A fisherman found me at sunrise, floating on the waves some five hundred yards from the beach.

I was stone cold dead.

My name was Ceridwen. They spotted my red bra top, the only piece of clothing still on me. I was dragged onto the shore like some beached sea creature and my body was covered with a filthy gunnysack until the police arrived.

The early morning sun was already warming up the air around my body and a few seabirds circled, expecting me to be their next meal. I’d have preferred to be of some use to this planet after death rather than being cremated many months after, while they argued about the evidence. It should have been an open and shut case from the start.

The papers back home in Wales said I was ‘just a little tart waiting for an accident to happen.’ The binge drinking, the drugs and the casual sex to get my own way were all part of me carving out a life for myself. What they didn’t print was that no one had ever taught me about survival. Well… nobody I trusted. Not my mam or any of her rotten blokes, who would have tried to shag me given half the chance.

I really didn’t expect to die so young, certainly not on my birthday. The evening had been a blur. I remembered hammering a whole bottle of local hooch, but then the rest of the night had been wiped from my memory. How did I end up as a corpse on the beach I’d come to love so much? I could have done with having Mam around that day. Shit, I was only just sixteen.

I’d remembered reading somewhere that, when the time came to die, most people were quite prepared to pass away, and for most of my time growing up in Fishguard at that dead-end school of mine, living or dying wouldn’t have mattered much. The place was a shithole, but coming here to Goa had changed everything. It was as if I’d been carried off on a magic carpet to a land of limitless possibilities, even for a no-hoper like me.

That land was Anjuna. A beach like many others in Goa, where I spent most of my time, mooching, smooching, making good money, growing up faster than I could have ever imagined. Literally, every day seemed like a year of my life just going whoosh in twenty-four hours. The world was here, with all its excitement and opportunities and yes… snags, too.

Goa’s easy-going boozy ways were thanks to the Portuguese, who ruled the place three hundred years ago. Their Indian descendants just carried on celebrating the culture and Catholic religion, well after the Portuguese were kicked out.

If it hadn’t been for my unofficial husband-to-be and spiritual guide Harpo back in Wales, I’d have never become aware of my Gypsy roots in India. When my mam mentioned Goa as a place for me to go and chill with her, I felt that part of me was going home, giving me a chance to get out of dead-end Fishguard and start another life.

My world centred around Anjuna’s hottest beach bar, the Sunset Lounge. It could be a place of total fun, but there was also the hassle of dealing with some absolute pricks, who came to show off their fake Rolexes and try and pull for the night. It was also HQ for the Beachboys, the local gang that had adopted me for all the wrong reasons, but hey! I was just taking it one day at a time and right then their protection mattered. It gave me almost limitless freedom to grow into a woman, an adult, all in the space of a few weeks.

What wasn’t there to live for?

The Beachboys weren’t saints. If you double-crossed them you were history… a flick of a blade, a guitar string wound around your neck. The only other gang on the beach were the Ukes, probably the most evil gang on earth. These guys were hardened criminals from Kiev, who had fled to Goa to escape their country that was going down the toilet. They could be all smiles one moment and breaking your neck the next, and, if you wanted to work and live on the beach, you had to choose between these two psycho gangs.

Of course, the other official gang were the men in khaki… the pathetic Goan Police Force, trying to keep law and order. They just filled their pockets with payouts and their head honcho Inspector Braganza, topped the payouts up with regular BJs from his favourite female pimp, conniving Karina, who was the real brains behind the Beachboys.

Don’t get me wrong, on the surface this was one of the prettiest places on the planet with its mile of sandy beach lined with coconut trees and the beautiful people from all over the world who’d come to enjoy the sun, the dirt cheap sundowners, the readily available drugs, plus the seemingly simple Goan principle that life is just one big party… but just scratch that surface and you’d see a different world beneath.

So here I am, lying stiff as a board on the beach. All my hopes of starting a great life, becoming Young Beach Entrepreneur of the Year and giving the gypsies someone to be proud of, all dashed to the ground.

But then again, who’d have wanted to stay in Fishguard forever?

Chapter 1

Harpo

I was an unwanted baby and my mam tried to zap my foetus with every trick in the book of old Welsh termination remedies.

‘There’s no way I wanted another brat in my life!’ she told me many times. ‘So just be careful with those plonkers at school, or else it’ll ruin your life. Just like it ruined mine.’

‘Thanks, Mam,’ I’d reply. ‘It’s nice to feel wanted.’

‘If it wasn’t for the thirty pounds Social I get for you, Cariad, you’d be a real liability.’ Mam calling me Cariad, which means ‘Love’ in Welsh, is as close as she ever got to showing affection for me.

The prefab concrete council house we lived in hadn’t been touched by the building department for many years. It stood out like a turd in the snow amongst the others that had been bought by the tenants and sold off to incomers from England, who had painted them yucky pastel colours to disguise their essentially ugly looks.

Maybe it was because I had tough genes that shrugged off rejection, or maybe I was born smart, but I sailed through my early years. I was jabbering away at one year old, walking soon after, and by the age of three I could read. Christ knows how, because I got no encouragement at home. All my knowledge came through the telly, which was on all day long.

Tad-cu had a little fishing boat, which he took me out in every week. It was Grandfather who taught me how to fish for mackerel and dog fish and catch spider crabs. My next door neighbour was a retired lady, who took me under her wing. She allowed me to play in her garden and gave me children’s books she picked up from the charity shops. Fishguard, the old harbour town, was full of them.

Mam always had a smelly incense stick smouldering away in the house. I hated the sickly smell. She’d been to India many times, where she had affairs, I’m sure, with all sorts of weird blokes, healers, fakirs, gurus, or whatever she called them. She told me she’d take me there one day when I was older, so that I’d appreciate my life at home a little more. I never knew my father, but I knew from the only photograph of him that he was a gypsy. My mam had screwed around with him in the hot summer of 1994. I couldn’t quite see it, but Mam told me that I was the image of him, but with blonde hair and tits.

At Fishguard Secondary, that was always in ‘Special Measures’ according to the school’s inspectors, the name-calling started around my ninth birthday. I was never part of any one gang, nor did any kid invite me back to their place to play. Sleepovers were only for the few posh kids. Us council house kids strolled around the deserted pavements every evening in gangs. I’d try to join in by buying favours, like going into the chippie to buy a bag of chips with the occasional change that the kind lady at Number Ten gave me to get a lozenge.

A small bag with salt and vinegar liberally sprinkled over its contents went a long way towards buying me permission to hang around with the other kids for a few hours. I once took on a bet to shag the trumpeter of the school brass band to lose my virginity. I was unimpressed by the experience and the boy was shamefaced forever as he came in his pants well before the act. Yuk! Ych a fi as we say in Welsh. I kept his secret and the lanky buck-toothed girl, who was in the Stryd Mair gang, kept her end of the bet that she would get me into any pub I wanted.

Harpo was the only other pupil at Fishguard High who had gypsy blood and no one picked on him because they’d have been pulverised. Most of the older girls had been his moll at some stage or another. He could have had his pick of anyone. He was dark, mysterious, and never much in school, as he spent a lot of time in juvenile detention.

‘Watch out! Harpo’s about!’ the word went out whenever he was back from detention. In pubs they’d be saying ‘Lock up your chain saws and your daughters.’

In the periods when he was free, the crime wave in Fishguard went sky high as every potential thief took the opportunity to pinch something, in the hope that Harpo would get the blame.

The Deputy Head, Mrs Jones, referred to him as a nice bad boy due to his popularity with the pupils, especially the girls. When he was at school, he was always volunteering for duties which earned him a soft spot with the head, who tolerated him despite the trouble he kept getting into.

Alwyn Hughes, the PE teacher, who considered himself Mister Tough Guy, was the biggest sleazebag of all the teachers. His greasy ponytail, did nothing to disguise his baldness, making him look repulsive. Like a cross between a human and a seal. He kept baiting Harpo at every opportunity, almost forcing him to react, and so he absolutely deserved the regular damage which Harpo inflicted on his car, whenever it was parked out of sight. The deflated tyres, the etched lines on the paintwork, and the Vaseline smears on the windscreen, all helped to inflame the rage that Hughes felt towards us.

The Bell was the only pub in town, run by a freakish hippie couple, who were lax about serving underage drinkers like me. Their folk singing nights were the perfect occasion to go in with your mates and pretend you’d come to hear the awful finger-in-the-ear droning that passed for singing. The red-eyed landlady, who had a face like a guinea pig, would sell us a bottle of cider provided it was served in half pint glasses. This gave us the giggles as we sat in a far corner of the bar, killing ourselves at the awfulness of the sounds.

‘Shit! Unbelievable!’ said my classmate Alison. ‘Pervy Hughesy just came in with a guitar.’ I looked around and saw him. He looked at me and nodded as if to acknowledge my presence. ‘Right, girl, you’re nominated to go to the bar and try and order for us.’

‘No way!’

‘You wanted to come drinking with us, didn’t you?’

‘You scared or something of that perv?’ asked Alison’s friend, who was a year younger than me. ‘Two quid says you’re a scaredy-cat.’

I was on my way to the bar. The singing continued and I hoped that I could achieve my mission under the cover of the chorus that had now begun to take hold. Heave away, haul away, they shouted out to a sea shanty. The guinea pig hadn’t acknowledged me yet, when I felt a presence behind me.

‘Hello, shwmae, didn’t know you liked this sort of music.’ It was Hughes. Yuk! ‘It’s okay.’ I stammered.

‘Look, let me get you one,’ he offered, standing uncomfortably close to me. ‘I’m with my friends. There’s three of us.’

‘Swr, swr, dim problem. No problem. Suz!’ he called to the landlady, ‘a bottle of your weak cider for my friend Ceri, with three glasses.’ The woman obliged without comment. ‘Come and join us. You probably know some of the songs.’ I didn’t answer and tried to smile away the request as I picked up the drinks.

That was when he put his right arm around my waist and I swear he tried to give my right breast a squeeze. I froze, stunned by his brazen approach, but then recovered quickly and scurried away.

‘Thank you would be nice!’ he shouted as the chorus of ‘Heave away’ concluded. The others thought it was hilarious, when I told them.

‘Go get another fondle and we’ll be drinking free all night!’ chortled Alison.

I collected my two quid but continued to feel sick and left the Bell soon afterwards. I stayed awake for most of the night, thinking of how I might get my revenge against Alwyn Frigging Hughes.

The local Enquirer routinely ran stories about Harpo’s court appearances. They could almost have had a special column devoted to him. He was represented by a solicitor named Mr Charles Owen, who must have made a killing out of the Legal Aid fees, defending his client.

Boy stole to save his dog, ran one headline. Mr. Owen, speaking for the defendant known as Harpo, told the magistrates that his client was in a state of inebriation after his pet collie had fallen ill. He thought that the shoulder of lamb from Tesco would provide the necessary remedy.

Boy who hospitalised farmer says he was acting in self-defence, ran another headline, after Harpo said that he was attacked by a farmer for going out with his teenage daughter. And so, the stories ran on and on, which made Harpo a legend in Fishguard.

Whenever he was around at school, he would nod at me and smile. One break time he said loudly for all to hear, ‘Hey, come by ’ere, girl. Anyone calling you a gypo just let me know, huh?’ I nodded and smiled in thanks.

I wished I wasn’t so young. I wanted so much to be Harpo’s girl, for not only did we both have gypsy blood, but we were joined in our hate of Alwyn Hughes.

Then one Friday, I bunked off school and caught the bus to Whitesands, the surfing paradise for people like me. Mam said that, as a Pisces, I was a Water sign, strong and intuitive. I loved the sea and could stay out on the surf for hours without feeling the cold or tiring. The beach, a mile and a half of glorious sand, was empty that day. Life couldn’t be any better.

I’d left my kit bag with clothes and towel on the beach, but when I returned they weren’t there. I scanned the sands around me, but there was nothing. Just nothing. They were worth fuck-all, but I couldn’t get home in my wets.

I walked to the car park in the hope that someone might have seen my bag. The only vehicle there was a van with Clean me I’m dirty scrawled on the back. I walked towards it in the hope that I might see someone in the driver’s seat. As I approached, a guy got out. It was Harpo.

‘Harpo!’ I shouted.

‘Hi, you look wet,’ he responded.

‘Someone’s taken my kit.’

‘Get in. I’ve got it in the back of the van. It’s safer there.’

‘Ugh, you have?’ I said, almost relieved.

‘Yes, now get in the back of the van and change into your dry clothes, while I drive you back.’

‘I don’t understand. What are you doing here? How come you have a van?’

‘Brother’s. I always come here on Fridays to worship the sea. It’s an old neopagan purification ritual.’

I got in the back of the windowless van. He got into the driver’s seat and drove out of the car park, while I fumbled around for my towel to dry my hair.

‘No school today, huh?’ he asked.

‘It’s my birthday tomorrow, so I’m celebrating a day early. Might go out to the Bell tonight for a drink.’ I said, trying to sound very grown up.

‘Ah, good. How old are you tomorrow?’

There was no use lying as he probably already knew. ‘Fifteen.’

‘Oh, cracking on, huh?’ He laughed at his own humour. ‘It’ll be a good year for Pisces you know. Water signs are big this year and you’ll get up to fantastic stuff. Might even get to travel to far distant lands.’

‘Yes, Mam spends a lot of time in India. She wants to take me there. I don’t know what I’d do in India.’

‘You know it’s where our lot came from initially, many moons ago, down the old silk roads and all that.’

‘My dad was a Romany, you know. So, I’m half gypo. Can’t say I fancy India.

Heard it stinks and you catch terrible diseases.’

‘I’d really like to go and discover my gypsy roots. Can’t say I feel part of this place, until I fully understand where I came from. Do you feel a full Welshie?’ asked Harpo.

‘No, I guess not, with all that name calling and people always picking on me.’

I was still rolling about in the van, trying to get changed as it rocked from left to right down the winding country lanes. Harpo kept up the stories about the gypsies and their customs until I noticed that we were stopping in the middle of nowhere, with cliffs all around us. This was nowhere near Fishguard.

‘Where are we?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I thought I’d give you a treat and we’d celebrate your birthday eve at St Non’s Holy Well. This is a really sweet place that goes way back… hey it matches your water sign. After all, we’re both part gypsy and part Celt. So here we are. Is that cool or what?’

I’d never been to St Non’s Holy Well before, but it did send a shiver down my spine as I got out of the van. ‘Here, can I hold your hand as we walk down to the well? These stones can be slippery at this time of year,’ asked Harpo.

He held my hand. It sent an electric shock down my arm. Why was he being so nice to me? He was one of the most desired blokes at school and here he was holding my hand. Why, why, why? I was only just fifteen and he was nearly a man at sixteen.

This must have been one of the most stunning places I’d ever seen or can remember. We were in the middle of a small green field with cliffs and crashing sea below us. Amidst the sound of the waves roaring in from the Atlantic, I could hear the haunting sounds of a seal colony down below. When we reached the Well, we sat down together.

‘Close your eyes.’

I did as he said. In a few seconds, between the sound of the crashing waves, I heard the crying of baby seals.

‘Can you hear the sounds of our past ancestors?’

‘They’re baby seals.’ I replied.

‘No, think beyond those seals and breathe in deeply.’

‘Hmmm, I see what you mean.’

‘Ancient Celts worshipped here amongst these rocks for thousands of years. Just think thousands of years ago, well before Christianity arrived. Amazing! Look, you must wonder why I’ve brought you here.’

‘Yes, but I’m not complaining.’ He put his arms around me and looked into my eyes. I got goose pimples. ‘I want you to be my woman,’ he murmured softly.

‘But,’ I stammered, ‘I’m…’

He put his forefinger to my lips. ‘Don’t say anything, just hold me.’

I was shivering. Was it fear or excitement? Everything had happened so quickly and I couldn’t think straight.

‘My ancestors have spoken to me,’ he pronounced. ‘They say I’ve gotta find the girl I’m gonna marry before she’s fifteen and she’s gotta be a virgin. God, I’ve been watching you for ages… and you’ve got the same blood as me – we’re perfect, like as if you’re my gift from Kali Mai the Hindu goddess. ’

‘I’m just in a daze. I don’t know what to say.’ I burbled.

‘Have you fucked anyone? I mean are you still a virgin? It’s quite important for me to know.’

‘No, I mean yes,’ I said lying.

‘Perfect!’ he exclaimed with a flourish and a thumbs up gesture. ‘This is just so cool. It’s our custom for a man to kidnap a bride of his choosing, who must be a virgin not yet turned fifteen. Can you see what I’m doing?’

‘I’d have to tell my mam first,’ I hesitated. ‘She’ll be a bit surprised, but she’s quite open minded. She’s been telling me to go to the docs and get on the pill just in case, you know, if I take a fancy to one of the douche-bags in school.’

‘No, no this can be our secret until it’s time to start a family.’

‘Hey, that’s way off for me, Man.’

‘No, it’s not that long. With you in my life I know I can settle down and get a job and become a responsible guy and begin looking after you. We can go off to India together and discover the real gypsies, back to our ancestral homelands. Now kiss me.’

We kissed. Not one of those deep-throated French jobs, but a gentle meeting of each other’s lips. The dream was now clearing, and I could see reality emerging from the fog. I’d just been proposed to and it looked like I’d accepted.

‘I’ve got a bottle of cider here in my bag. Let’s celebrate our betrothal.’ He reached into his leather shoulder bag and took a large gulp, handing it to me to do the same. I gulped, too. We continued to drink from the large plastic bottle until I began to feel warm and light-headed. This was my engagement celebration. My feelings were a mixture of joy, fear, shock and anticipation of what might happen next in this bizarre ritual.

‘Feeling good, toots?’ asked Harpo as he rolled over from the stones on to a patch of grass, dragging me down with him.

‘Yes.’ I said. ‘Still a bit in shock.’

‘Let’s stay here and watch the sun go down. Would you fancy a tab, perhaps?’

‘A tab?’

‘Yep, some E. Nice way to celebrate in an altered state.’

‘I’ve never tried it.’

‘Okay, just a half then,’ he said, biting a little blue tablet and handing me the other half. We were both now gazing up at the blue sky and I watched a jet trail crawling across, out toward the west.

‘Harpo, have you done this before?’ I asked. ‘Am I really your first woman?’

‘To be honest, I’ve had a few other girls, quite a few actually, but none I’d have liked to be my bride. I can hear my ancestral voices talking to me loudly in my brain.’

‘If you want to fuck me, it’s okay. I wouldn’t mind losing my virginity to you.’ I heard myself say. Was it the cider talking, or perhaps the early effects of the tablet?

‘This is not about sex, you know. Hell, I fancy you rotten.’

‘And I think you’re hot, too.’

‘I’d like us to practice that tantric thing.’

‘Tantric?’

‘Yeh, like holding off and building up a real yearning.’

‘Like those seventies rock stars?’

‘Yeh, I read about them. They’re into that. It’ll make our big moment seem monumental,’ he said earnestly, and I relaxed, although I was beginning to feel randy as hell.

Harpo told me more about his Neopaganism, which he learned about whilst in detention. It seemed a strange place to learn about world religion. The sun began to set, the sea lit up in yellow and in minutes the air turned cold and it was dark. Harpo pulled out a bulbous object from his satchel and began to blow into it. It sounded weird, like a cross between a bagpipe and the wailing cry of a young baby seal. It reverberated around the cliffs and back again.

‘This is a poongi. The instrument of the Banjara gypsies, thousands of years old.

They still play it today.’

He puffed up his cheeks with air, blew into the mouthpiece, and a loud reedy noise wafted out, sending a shiver down my spine.

‘Doesn’t it put you in a trance?’

‘I’m getting cold now, Harpo, do you have a blanket or something warmer in your van?’

‘Sure, toots, let’s go to the van and play some music. I’ve got some rags you can put on.’

He threw me an old sweatshirt. ‘Bit smelly, I’m afraid, but it’ll do the job.’ He put on some gypsy fiddle music in the van and we swayed outside in our own private, open-air club, whilst the effects of the E began to take control and the music became more bizarre.

Harpo began to take off his clothes whilst he swayed and I followed, garment by garment, until we were both