Just days after she last saw a girl, known to her friends as Cake, on Pattaya Beach, Ning began to realise the unfolding horrors that shocked Thailand. Ning said she regularly saw the teenager at the beach, where many young women gathered daily, drawn to the Thai resort city’s neon-lit nightlife as an escape from unemployment. On Saturday, the 17-year-old was found dead, her body placed inside a black suitcase and dumped in scrubland beside a railway track.