Bay of Fires (9 page)

“I’ve had a day’s practice driving on the gravel now, if you’re worried about that.”

It would be rude to decline his offer of a lift, but she didn’t want to go with him. Despite the previous night’s intimacy he was a stranger to her. He was waiting for her to do or say something. If he was just trying to be nice for the sake of it, he could save his breath. She wouldn’t be offended.

“Well, if you don’t need a lift…”

“No,” she said. She was surprised to feel sorry for him. “Oh, what the heck.” She walked around to the passenger side of his car. “Follow the road.”

She had not noticed how dirty his car was the other day. Loose newspaper pages and three used coffee mugs cluttered the floor, clothes were strewn across the backseat, and something heavy and metallic shifted back and forth in the boot as the car bounced on the corrugated road. She smelled engine oil and dust. The edge of the bench seat sank away, and she kept sliding toward the door. Head aching, she braced one hand on the door’s armrest and busied herself with sipping the discolored tank water in her water bottle. It was insane how slowly he was driving.

Words to fill the few minutes it took to drive to the boat ramp evaded Sarah. Usually the conversation after the night before came easily to her. Flirty small talk over a final beer and a cigarette as she waited in pale new light for one of the town’s three taxis, making plans she wouldn’t keep. If a man drinking in the Pineapple Hotel’s public bar wasn’t married, you could bet your last buck he either was a sugar cane laborer or a fruit picker, or worked at the Eumundi Barramundi Farm. Sarah would know. She wasn’t proud of this but didn’t care either. When you called the shots, you knew where you stood.

Hall signaled to go around a bend in the road. He took driving seriously, sitting upright and watching the road with his hands in the ten-and-two position. Occasionally he glanced out his window but only for a second. She felt like she was a teenager being driven home from a party by her father. It was very different from being in the car with Jake, who, in the six months she had known him, hadn’t left his vehicle outside the pub once. He nearly wrote it off many times. One night they were fighting about something and the car swerved off the road and wiped out someone’s tin can letterbox. It got caught on the front bumper and clanged all the way home. In the early days things like that made them laugh.

“Abalone Bake Park,” Hall said as they drove past the sunburned patch of grass next to the shop.

“Mmm,” she said.

She remembered most of the night, more than she wanted to if she was honest about it. A swollen half-moon had cast a thick white path of light across the black sea as they sat on the rocks and drank the last of the beers. Behind them the Abalone Bake wound up and people drifted away into the night. Clean salty ocean air blew away the smells of frying garlic and seafood. Waves they couldn’t see gushed and frothed on the rocks, and at some point they sat in a way that their bodies were touching.

Meandering up the gravel road, Hall and Sarah had joked about the murder case and tried to hold each other upright. Neither had mentioned the thing they both knew was about to happen. Between sheets softened from constant washing she had straddled him, pinning his shoulders and arms and hips to the hard mattress with a forcefulness that now made her cringe. The most embarrassing bit was when she pressed her mouth on his neck, drunkenly tugging at the softness under his jaw, and he had pushed her away.

In the morning she had woken up surprised to find herself squinting in the strange predawn light coming through the guesthouse window. Hall was awake, tapping on a laptop. Her mouth felt like the bottom of a birdcage. She needed to use the bathroom. If only she were at home.

Through the thin walls Sarah could hear someone walking around, the hollow sound of a door opening and closing. Jane Taylor would raise her penciled eyebrows in surprise if Sarah came out of the bedroom with Hall. It was out of the question to explain to Hall that this wasn’t the first time she had been an unofficial guest here. He watched as she searched for her underwear at the bottom of the bed, turning away only as she pulled her underpants on. On the floor was the unmistakable silver square of a condom wrapper, torn in half.

In the confined space of the car Sarah tried to breathe inaudibly. She couldn’t bring herself to check if there was a mark on Hall’s neck. His hands on the steering wheel were the closest she could come to looking at him. Patches of rust-colored hair, some of it gray, grew on his knuckles, and his fingernails were longer than hers. She took another little sip of water and wished he would drive faster.

Tasmanian crayfishing laws stated that each person holding a license had to be present when his or her pot was pulled. It was supposed to stop overfishing; a person couldn’t drop six pots a day on behalf of absent friends.

In the boat motoring toward the broken concrete boat ramp, Sarah counted four heads. She was in no doubt they had cleared five pots. She crossed her arms. She wouldn’t say anything. Don knew how she felt about illegal fishing. They’d had the conversation more than once.

Hall stood beside her with the wide-legged stance of a farmer, his shoulders broad above stringy hips. He took a couple of photos. There wasn’t much to photograph; submerged kelp-covered rocks prevented a pure reflection of the sky, and the water looked dirty. Six or seven tinnies tugged at the ropes leashing them to wire cables drilled into the rocks on either side of the bay. Low tide meant the ropes, tied to bow and stern, were too short, and the tinnies jerked as if they were hog-tied.

As the boat got closer, she recognized Erica perched on the bow, waving with her whole arm. Behind her was Sam Shelley. He didn’t wave.

Don cut the engine and Erica jumped off the side, landing in thigh-deep water. Wash sprayed over her as she guided the boat through the shallows. It looked like fun.

“Good catch!” Erica shouted.

Sarah didn’t react. Hopefully Hall would be oblivious to Erica’s double entendre.

“Thirteen,” Erica said. “We would have had more, but an octopus got into Pamela’s pot. Nothing left but two heads.”

“That always happens to Pammy.” Don grinned. “You should put out your pot, Sarah.”

“I’m all right.” The thought of being in a boat and making cheery conversation with the lot of them was abhorrent. She preferred to fish alone.

“I’ve told you I’m happy to put it out for you,” Don offered.

“Where is Pamela?” Sarah asked, pretending to look around. No one answered.

Sarah waded over to the boat and unraveled strands of weed coiled around the propeller, flicking the green ribbons into the breeze. It was beyond her why Don flaunted his readiness to break fishing laws in front of a journalist. He wasn’t stupid. He knew a lot about fish and was an astute businessman. Before they bought the shop Don had sold real estate. He had made so much money from that business that now he and Pamela escaped every Tasmanian winter, flying two thousand kilometers north to their beach house at Queensland’s exclusive Noosa Heads. Their lifestyle was something that most Tasmanians would only ever dream of.

From the bow of the boat, Sam was watching Erica. Her bikini bottoms were showing through her wet shorts. Sarah glanced at Hall, wondering if he had noticed too, but he was busy picking bindii prickles out of his socks.

Don slid his empty trailer down the ramp with the ease of a man who had done it many times before. While he winched the boat onto the trailer, John approached Hall. It was horrible watching her father talk to the man she had just had sex with.

“I’ve written half a dozen letters to the
Voice,
” John said. “No reply. No attention is being paid to that abomination on the point. Who’s running that rag?”

“I’m afraid I’m not up to date with the issue,” Hall said. “Not my area.”

“They’ve painted it Mardi Gras purple. Stands out like cat’s balls. You can see it two nautical miles out to sea. It doesn’t comply with the local environmental plan; that’s what makes me really angry.”

“Let me think of the name of the guy you need to talk to.”

“What’s the point? The
Tassie Voice
won’t publish real news.”

Sarah felt herself deflate. She tried to catch her father’s eye. It was futile. If she did manage to make eye contact, he was just as likely to make a big deal out of it and ask her what she was trying to say.

“Dad, admit your interest,” Sarah said. “He owns a block behind the massive new shack, so he’s not being completely honest.”

Black snake fast, John whipped his head around. “You are missing the point. This is about preservation of local amenity. Corruption, too. If that council isn’t corrupt, it’s stupid.”

Sarah could hear herself in her father. She had even used the same expression when she was angry, accusing someone of not understanding, dismissing their interpretation of a situation. When Dad was riled, he didn’t listen to anyone. Hall didn’t acknowledge the rudeness.

“You’re quite right, John,” he said. “And don’t get me started on the paper. I’ve been there twenty-three years and it’s not what it used to be.”

Inside the cray coffin thirteen creatures writhed, their muscular pincers tied with string. As everyone admired them, Hall began a conversation with Sam. Sarah watched as the situation got worse. It sounded like Hall was writing a story about Sam. Hall was a nice guy; he looked genuinely interested. He made plans to meet Sam at the Shelleys’ shack. Her hands felt clammy and her stomach heaved. What was she doing here?

Sam climbed up into Don’s boat, which was now hooked onto the back of his Range Rover. Don gave Sam directions on where to stow each piece of equipment. Sarah unfolded her map and handed it to Don.

“Show me which way Chloe Crawford walked to the beach the day she disappeared. And where did she ride her bike that morning?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“You headed up one of the search parties, didn’t you?”

Don sighed. He didn’t want to look at the map. Reluctantly his plump index finger landed at the turnoff to the lookout. He traced the dotted line as it curved around the back of the lagoon, past the old rubbish tip and across the two burned bridges, and back onto the graded gravel road that ran parallel to the beach where Anja Traugott was found.

“Chloe rode her bicycle along here. Then she left it at the fishing cottage where her family was staying and took her surfboard to the beach.” Don tapped the map at the main beach, where Chloe had been heading with her surfboard.

“No one knows how far along the beach she walked, do they?”

Don shook his head. “Or even if she made it that far at all. Perhaps she decided to avoid the surf and enjoy the lagoon’s calm water instead. A lot of people do.”

“Hang on. Why does it matter if she went up into the scrub, when she was last seen walking with her surfboard to the beach?” Sarah asked.

“It was a beautiful day. Everyone was outside. But no one saw anyone they regarded as strange. Personally I think someone saw her when she was riding on the Old Road and then took her back up into the scrub. We don’t know.”

It was a popular theory that someone had encountered Chloe in the bush and followed her down. Wild duck hunters, guys taking target practice on beer cans at the old rubbish tip, people gathering firewood or picking wildflowers; there were various reasons why people ventured along the Old Road.

“People saw her paddling the surfboard in the lagoon, did they?”

“There were lots of reports that were never confirmed. People thought they saw her but weren’t sure. It was hot the day she went missing. I’ll never forget it. I was driving back from Douglas River and my right arm got badly sunburnt from hanging out the car window. I never understood what she was doing riding her bike in the midday heat.”

“She wasn’t riding in the midday heat. She dropped her bike back at the rented cottage at lunchtime. That was the last time her parents saw her.”

The black-sand bush tracks would have been cool under gum tree shadows in the morning. Chloe wasn’t reported missing until evening. The first search party carried torches, their vehicles panning the thick bristly scrub with hopeless yellow beams.

Don was remembering incorrectly if he thought Chloe had been riding at lunchtime. Considering he had helped search for her, you’d think he would recall an important detail such as her exact movements on the last day she was seen. It showed how people’s memories could not be relied upon.

“I’m not lying,” Don said.

Sarah stared at him. Why was he being defensive? Chloe disappeared ten months ago. It was long enough for a person to get time frames mixed up.

“What were you doing at Douglas River?” she asked.

“Twenty questions. That’s where we bought the chemical toilet from. There’s a guy there that builds them. And we had been to visit Max,” Don said.

The mention of Max stalled Sarah. Maxwell was Don and Pamela’s only son, a nice guy who she had grown up alongside. He was doing eighteen months at the minimum security prison farm for a robbery motivated by his gambling addiction. It wasn’t a topic anyone felt comfortable discussing.

“Anyway, do you reckon the same person who took Chloe Crawford killed the Swiss woman?” Don said.

“Maybe, maybe not.” Sarah shrugged. “But I don’t think Roger Coker was involved either way. Unlike Pamela.”

“Pammy gets excited, that’s true, but she usually ends up being right about most things.”

“Is that what you think too?”

“Why are you asking me? You were pretty friendly with that reporter last night. Did he tell you any inside information?”

“I wasn’t that friendly with him.” Sarah was aware that up in the boat, Sam was listening to the exchange. He shielded his face from the sun, and she could not see his expression.

“Never mind.” Don chuckled. “There are two kinds of men who wear earrings. Pirates and poofters. He’s not a pirate.”

“He’s not a poofter.”

Hall was walking up the boat ramp. He was only meters away. She hoped Don would not add anything more to the conversation.