The Forgotten Sea

by Beverley Harper

  Beverley Harper died of cancer on 9 August 2002. She rests at peace in the Africa she so loved.

  Her ashes lie by the Boteti River in Botswana, below a lodge called Leroo-la-Tau. It means Footprints of Lion.

  It is a special place.

  This simple plaque marks her passing:

  Also by Beverley Harper

  Storms Over Africa

  Edge of the Rain

  Echo of an Angry God

  People of Heaven

  The Forgotten Sea

  Jackal’s Dance

  Shadows in the Grass

  Footprints of Lion

  THE

  FORGOTTEN

  SEA

  BEVERLEY HARPER

  First published 2000 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  This Pan edition published 2001 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  1 Market Street, Sydney

  Copyright © Beverley Harper 2000

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  cataloguing-in-publication data:

  Harper, Beverley.

  The forgotten sea.

  ISBN 0 330 36272 0.

  I. Title.

  A823.3

  Typeset in 11.5/13pt Bembo by Post Pre-Press Group, Brisbane

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  These electronic editions published in 2000 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  The Forgotten Sea

  Beverley Harper

  Adobe eReader format: 978-1-74262-697-0

  EPUB format: 978-1-74262-699-4

  Online format: 978-1-74262-696-3

  Macmillan Digital Australia

  www.macmillandigital.com.au

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com.au to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks online. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About Beverley Harper

  Also by Beverley Harper

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Thanks

  Map

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  This book is, as usual, for the four men in my life

  Robert, Piers, Miles and Adam

  because I love them to pieces

  My sincere thanks to Dr Satish Boolell in Mauritius for taking time out of a very busy schedule to enlighten me on the post-mortem process. I wish I could say I enjoyed it!

  Thanks also to Dr Arthur Beresford, Pathologist (retired), for his editing of the post-mortem scenes and for adding that little bit extra.

  To Sayad Herro, Mauritian taxidriver, tour guide, mine of information and literary critic – thank you.

  PROLOGUE

  She had been beautiful once. Even now, her body bloated with intestinal gases and burnt to a crisp by a merciless sun, shrivelled and puckered from four days’ immersion in the sea, hair matted and tangled, skin peeling, it was still possible to tell that this one had been a classic. One sightless eye stared down through the clear depths of the bay, down through aquamarine water to the sandy bed some four metres below, down to what had been her temporary resting place, until her body swelled and she floated back to the surface. That was yesterday, far out in the shipping lanes, out beyond the breakers’ incessant pounding of the coral reef, out where the leisure cruisers and big yachts, the tankers and liners danced to the music of a restless ocean.

  Watched with curiosity by the ever-hungry seabirds, her corpse rolled lazily with the tide and swell that bore the Indian Ocean from the west coast of Australia to the eastern seaboard of Africa. Sitting on the sodden head, one bird braver than the others had pecked and feasted on a single eye until the ocean’s momentum caused the body to turn face down. The gull had hung around for a while, resting, but in the end took to the air in search of a more accessible meal. The lonely dead thing floated on, uncaring of the vastness, the impartiality and treachery of the sea around her. Darting fish nibbled at the water-soaked skin but, so far, the more serious carnivores had paid no attention to what amounted to a substantial meal.

  At some stage during the night she had passed over the reef surrounding the island, slipping just above the jagged peaks of coral on the king tide of a full moon. In the calmer waters of the bay, with the rising tide behind her, she was eventually returned to the land where she had once lived and breathed. Face down in the fine white sand – a saturated bundle of lifelessness, a macabre reminder of the indifferent hand that fate deals to some and a clear caution against assuming that the here and now will last forever – dawn broke slowly to reveal her pathetic remains.

  Not a pretty sight. Certainly not one that the authorities on Mauritius, that gem of a tourist destination in a trio of idyllic islands once known as the Mascarenes, would wish to become public knowledge. Their carefully nurtured image was of sparkling blue sea, emerald green palm fringes haphazardly angled along pure white beaches, gentle winds whispering through the casuarinas under an azure sky. This was ugly, messy. It ruined the illusion of peace and happiness, pleasure and beauty. This was something to be hidden away, a dreadful secret, shoved out of sight in a dark place to pretend it had never been.

  But the inescapable fact was that it would need to be dealt with. And quickly. With a minimum of fuss. Then, and only then, could the image repair process begin. But before the pretence began to sweep reality under the carpet there were procedures to follow, which would guarantee a flow of rumours. Rumours that were unlikely to reach the laid-back ears of tourists tucked securely in their five-star hotels but stories that would, nonetheless, spread to every corner of the island.

  Sayad Asgarally found her. It was a sight the young fisherman would never forget. He found her just as the sun edged its burning rim over the horizon on the other side of the island, as fingers of light washed the clouds, the sea, the land with the soft colours of another new day.

  As he did every morning, Sayad had let himself out of the house quietly so he would not wake his parents. Like other cottages in the tiny hamlet – all five of them – his was built on a grassy incline that sloped from a tarred road down to the beach. Three cement steps were all that separated the narrow, noisy road from the front door. When truc
ks trundled past, crockery rattled in kitchen cupboards, furniture moved and dust billowed down from the roof as the small two-bedroomed cottage, built mainly from corrugated iron, trembled and threatened to fall over. A wooden verandah at the back squatted two metres or so above the ground, offering uninterrupted views of the beach, bay and the nearby town of Tamarin. Tropical paradise one side, an urban nightmare the other. Sayad had long since stopped noticing either.

  His eyes strained in the half light of dawn to where he and his brother had dragged their pirogue – a couple of hundred metres away, beyond a scattered outcrop of black volcanic basalt – onto the beach. It was something he did automatically every morning, a quick check to make sure the boat was still there. Without it, his livelihood, and that of his married older brother, would be nonexistent. Satisfied that all was as they had left it the night before, Sayad went down the wooden steps to the beach to light the family’s cooking fire. A couple of small sticks was all he needed to boil the blackened kettle. Then he sat on the steps and drank the hot, milky and very sweet tea from a gaudy tin mug.

  His thoughts were of nothing in particular. This was a day like all the others. Up early, out fishing until his stomach rumbled with hunger, back to the beach in Tamarin where the morning’s catch would be sold, then home for a hot meal prepared by his mother. After that, a few hours working on the pirogue or fishing lines before returning to the reef to seek out whatever was on offer in the late afternoon. It was a monotonous life but Sayad knew none other and was well satisfied with his lot.

  In the sweet stillness of early morning, sound seemed to be amplified. A baby bawled briefly next door before finding the soft breast of its mother. In the house beyond that, old man Asgarally, Sayad’s grandfather, was getting his early morning exercise. Sayad grinned, listening to the grunts, moans and squeaking bedsprings. The old man was a marvel, everyone said so. Eighty-two, having outlived two wives, the old boy still greeted each day, and his third wife, joyously and ready for action.

  Sayad fantasised regularly about what took place between men and women – and if he had but known, his grandfather’s ebullient ardour had him well wide of practical reality – but, so far, the closest Sayad had come was a hand on the voluminous breast of Bella from the markets in Tamarin.

  Tea finished, Sayad picked up a pair of rubber sandals and made his way down the steps, across the soft sand to the harder surface where the tide, now turned, still licked and frothed. The day was rapidly getting lighter. In the east, the sun hovered just below the skyline. It would be another thirty minutes before it cleared the jagged, seven-hundred metre peaks of Trois Manelles to warm the western coast. But, as it did every morning, the instant the first fiery fingers appeared on the other side of the island, the shadowy western dawn seemed to burst into energetic life. Sayad noticed that a chunk of driftwood had come in on the tide, quite a large piece. He’d pull it further up the beach and take it home later. Once dried it would be good firewood.

  Halfway between the house and the welcome flotsam Sayad’s steps slowed. Driftwood did not flutter in the breeze. He narrowed his eyes against the sudden flare of sunrise. A bundle of discarded clothes perhaps? A tremor of dread ran through him. As he drew nearer, slowly now, not noticing how little ripples of warm sea water washed over his toes, Sayad was forced to acknowledge that clothes were not supposed to have legs. That old garments should have no curved female form. That long blonde hair, drying in the early morning breeze, would not, as a rule, hitch a ride.

  Sayad was suddenly frightened. He was only seventeen and wanted nothing to do with whatever, whoever it was on the beach. He’d pretend he hadn’t seen it. Reason prevailed. There was nothing he could do about his footprints, which led directly from his house to the girl. The body would be found. The tide was going out. Soon other people would pass this way. Taking a steadying breath, he stopped five metres from the body, unwilling to go closer. Closing both eyes, he sent up a short prayer to his Hindu god, more to give him strength than for the departed soul of the thing on the beach. Turning away, he set off back the way he had come. His cousin, a policeman who worked in Tamarin, lived next door to Sayad. Let him deal with it.

  Francois Prost was having a dream of the very best kind. The woman was young, beautiful and within reach. She did not seem to mind that Francois was overweight, balding and decidedly past his prime. Perfectly painted lips parted, eyes smouldering with passion as she leaned towards him, the message was clear. Francois knew – because it was his dream – that she loved him and was going to beg that he take her, that she was his to do with as he liked. And, oh God, the things he planned to do. Her voice was a musical whisper throbbing with desire but, instead of the words he was longing to hear, strange sounds tore at his eardrums causing him to snuffle and roll over. The dream evaporated and Francois was left with the inconvenience of an early morning erection with nowhere to go, and the unappetising truth that the telephone was ringing.

  Cursing short and hard he reached out and snatched the instrument from its cradle. ‘Prost.’ His throat caught at the unexpected exercise of a voice still muffled by sleep.

  He was unprepared for the hysterical babbling in Creole-accented French that offended his senses to the very core. A Parisian by birth and inclination, Francois rather wished that Mauritians would stick to English. Apparently a body had washed up in a remote bay on the west coast and the police would like it if he could come to the scene immediately.

  Stumbling out of bed and into the bathroom, Francois relieved his painfully full bladder and rued the ensuing loss of his masculine display of virility. He was in a sour frame of mind. Yesterday his sleep had been rudely interrupted by the discovery of another body. A man found in scrub country who had departed the world two weeks earlier. Now this!

  When his long-term friend Dr Satish Boolell, the police medical officer who normally handled all autopsies of suspicious deaths on Mauritius, contacted Francois and asked if he would like to do a six-week locum for him, Francois accepted with pleasure. Paris was wet and cold. He had just retired and was bored. His wife clearly found him a nuisance around the house, his mistress had shifted her affections to another benefactor, and a spell on a tropical island would do nicely. With law and medical degrees, not to mention twenty-five years’ experience as a senior police surgeon in Paris to draw on, Francois was not only eminently qualified to fill in while his friend took some much-needed long service leave, he was also ready and willing to flex his fingers and mind over the clues inevitably left behind when a human spirit goes absent without leave.

  Now, only two weeks into the job, it was clear to Francois that a holiday with an occasional foray into the morgue was not to be. Mauritius had only one police medical officer, and he was it. Yesterday was a case in point. As well as a post-mortem on the two-weeks dead body in the morning, he had dealt with a medical examination of a Creole woman and her thirteen-year-old daughter. The woman claimed that her husband had been consistently buggering both of them – her words. A false accusation as it turned out, the accuser finally admitting that all she wanted to do was get rid of the man and what better way than to enlist the aid of the police in a case she believed, in her ignorance, could not be proved one way or the other. Francois had set her straight with a none-too-gentle physical examination followed by a loud lecture about sphincteral muscles telling their own tale before sending her packing to face charges for wasting police time.

  The daughter’s story, once her mother had been removed from the room, collapsed under questioning. She admitted that she was seventeen, not thirteen, that although she’d been instructed to say certain things about her father, she did not have any understanding of what they actually meant. As the investigation proceeded, it became evident to Prost that the girl was also severely mentally retarded. He sent her home to her father who, he reflected sadly, would more than likely avail himself of her scrawny young body while his wife’s scrawny old one was languishing in prison. Prost was never inclined to think well o
f the poor.

  In the afternoon he’d spent three hours waiting for a man from Bombay to defecate. The Indian had been apprehended at Plaisance Airport on suspicion of carrying drugs. A physical examination of the man’s luggage, clothing, and rectum had yielded nothing but the Customs officers had been adamant and an X-ray had been requested. Francois agreed with their suspicions. On the inside of the man’s lower lip he’d found a tiny, crudely tattooed, cross – a means by which the body-carrier could identify himself to his contact in Mauritius. Francois wanted to let the man go so his contact could also be arrested. The Customs officers said no, that he had been detained for too long which would raise the alarm. It was their way of getting at the Frenchman for taking so long to reach the airport.

  Francois bit back an angry explanation and tersely authorised that the Indian be admitted to hospital in Quatre Bornes for an X-ray. Sure enough, the man’s stomach was shown to contain packets of an unidentified substance. Francois did some quick mental calculations. He knew condoms were often used to smuggle drugs in this manner. The packets looked to be around three centimetres long by two wide. Not easy to swallow. They would need to be inside the man before he checked in at Bombay Airport. It would take several hours to swallow so many. Check-in time in India was three hours before any international flight. The journey itself took seven hours. The man had been on the ground for three more. Figuring that the packets had been inside his stomach for anything up to sixteen hours and could, by now, be unstable, depending on the material from which they were made, it should not be long before his body tried to expel the undigestible foreign objects. Francois could not order the injection of a purgative drug to hasten the process because, even if through no fault of the medication one of the packets burst, then the unfortunate man’s intestine would be flooded with three to four grams of what was probably heroin at somewhere between forty and fifty per cent purity. A lawsuit from the deceased man’s family was the last thing he needed.