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Chief barked again with his nose towards the next islet.

What Baxter saw now made him shiver. ‘Steve, there’s a body hooked on the rocks over there. That’s what the sharks are after.’

CHAPTER TWENTY

Lewis turned quickly and looked at where Baxter’s finger was pointing. ‘Jesus wept, you’re right.’ He put down his rod and started the engine. It kicked into life and he steered
Flora
about in a gentle turn. ‘I don’t like the look of this, Greg.’

‘Neither do I,’ Baxter said grimly. He was thinking of the undercover policewoman’s body and its discovery by fishermen. What if this body turned out to be Latham’s? From this distance, its clothes and its shape looked male.

Then he remembered what Lewis had said about Julie the other day.
Those baggy jeans or shorts and a man’s shirt she gets around in—from a distance you’d swear blind she was a bloke.
Baxter’s heart clenched. Surely it wasn’t her.

‘We can’t just leave it out here,’ he said, and Lewis nodded.

‘I’ll use my radio and have the police at the wharf by the time we’re back with the body in tow.’

‘Lucky you brought it, Steve.’

‘No luck about it. I never go out here without it—you never know when you might need to send a distress call.’

Once Lewis had contacted shore, he took the boat out of the protection afforded by their islet, and into the channel between it and its neighbour. They could immediately feel the difference in the level of swell. Baxter watched on in admiration as Lewis manoeuvred
Flora
towards the other islet. The body came into clearer view.

‘It’s a man,’ Baxter shouted to Lewis at the wheel of the boat. ‘That’s all I can tell.’

He was ashamed to feel a thrill of relief, but he couldn’t help it. Julie was safe.

‘You’ll have to try and hook the gaff into his clobber, Greg. Do it as quickly as you can. The swell will push us hard onto the rocks if we stuff around.’

Baxter hadn’t the slightest intention of stuffing around—he wanted to vacate the Islands as quickly as possible.

The body was lodged facedown on a snag of rock that ran out into the sea from the islet proper. This ridge had been exposed by the run-out tide—it was sure to be covered at full tide. As the boat nosed alongside, Baxter leaned out, got the gaff hooked in the body’s belt and pulled it from the ridge. He could see now that one arm had been bitten off below the shoulder.

‘I’ve got him,’ Baxter said, ‘so go for your life. Let’s hope the shark doesn’t have another crack at him—it’s taken off one arm already.’

‘Good man, Greg.’

Lewis pointed the boat down the channel between the islets and then, using them as some protection against the swell, he steered directly for Moondilla’s wharf, where the fishing fleet usually moored. The shark followed them for some distance, but didn’t come any closer. After a few minutes it disappeared.

‘The shark appears to have left us,’ Baxter said.

‘As long as it doesn’t come up underneath us. If you feel something get at the body, you’ll have to try and lift it into the boat. Think you can do that?’

‘No worries.’

‘Don’t try it unless you have to—the weight of you plus the body could tip you in. Good thing we’ll be at the wharf in a few minutes.’

Baxter hoped the bloody shark would keep away. A few bites could make a real mess of the body, and make identification more difficult for the police.

The shark didn’t reappear, but Baxter’s strength and resilience were beginning to feel the strain of holding the bloated body against the boat. Wanting to distract himself, he looked to shore and saw two police cars tearing down the beach road, their lights flashing, before they pulled up at the wharf.

Lewis had noticed them too. ‘The boys in blue are waiting for us, Greg.’

‘It’s some place, this Moondilla. Never a dull moment,’ Baxter said dryly.

‘You’ve got to admit we had a good morning’s fishing. And not many fishermen return with a human body on their gaff,’ Lewis said, his smile grim.

Baxter gave him a weak grin. ‘Do you know of anyone who’s been reported missing?’

‘No locals. It could be a bloke off a freighter—plenty of them go up and down this coast. Maybe he drank too much and fell overboard.’

Lewis took
Flora
in alongside the jetty and as close to the beach as he could without grounding her. There were quite a few civilians on the beach, but the police had cleared the wharf and a uniformed officer stood at the entrance to prevent anyone accessing it.

Three other officers were waiting on the wharf just above the boat. Baxter threw his forward mooring rope up to one of them, who managed to catch it and make it fast to a pylon. Lewis cut the motor and then left the cabin to help Baxter lift the body from the sea. A grim task, though the stink wasn’t too bad because of the salt water. Chief watched with great interest, but didn’t go near the body.

Once they had it in the boat, they took an end each and lifted it up to the waiting trio of officers, who turned it onto its back.

Lewis swore very loudly. ‘Bloody hell.’ Despite everything the body had been put through, its face was still intact enough
to recognise up close. ‘It’s Jack Drew,’ Lewis said, and Baxter agreed.

The two men looked at each other in amazement.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

‘
Was Drew missing?’ Baxter asked the police trio.

‘Mrs Drew phoned us yesterday morning and said that Jack hadn’t come home,’ a young two-striper answered. He was addressing himself to Lewis, whom he seemed to know and be on good terms with. ‘Considering Jack’s history, we weren’t too worried.’

‘You didn’t worry he was lost at sea?’ Lewis asked, his eyebrows raised.

‘No, because he wasn’t fishing. Well, he had been, earlier in the day, but he was at the Family Hotel in the evening. Before he left for the pub, he told his wife that he needed to meet someone there. That was the last she saw of him.’

Another police car pulled up at the wharf, followed by an
ambulance. Two more officers walked along the jetty to join the trio around the body.

One was Senior Sergeant Cross, and Baxter was disturbed to realise that he seemed to be the highest-ranking officer of the group.

•

Baxter and Lewis gave verbal accounts of their discovery of Drew’s body and its exact location. The investigation heated up when Julie, in her capacity as medical examiner, carried out the post-mortem. Her findings brought more coppers to Moondilla—some came from Bega, while two plainclothes detectives drove down from Sydney.

Julie’s post-mortem revealed that the back of Drew’s skull had been crushed in several places. By drawing a long bow, it was possible to conclude that this damage had been caused by his head coming into contact with rocks at the Islands—but Julie didn’t think this was a feasible explanation. It might have been tenable if there’d been only one or two major depressions in Drew’s skull, but there were at least a dozen. It seemed someone had made certain that Jack Drew was dead before dumping his corpse out at sea.

Both Baxter and Lewis were asked to present themselves for further questioning at the police station. The coppers didn’t waste much time talking to Lewis. He answered a few questions, signed a statement and left.

Baxter was treated very differently. He was led into an
interview room, the kind used for suspects being interrogated about a crime. It was featureless except for a one-way window, and the drab grey walls weren’t conducive to raising one’s spirits.

There were three police officers in the room. Two sat facing Baxter, and a third—Senior Sergeant Cross—sat against one wall. It seemed Cross seldom smiled; he reminded Baxter of a crow waiting to pick up scraps. He certainly did nothing to lighten the mood. The two plainclothes detectives wore suits and ties, and presented a much better image. They introduced themselves and told Baxter they’d come from Sydney.

One asked questions while the other took notes. The substance of the interrogation went as follows:

‘Mr Baxter, can you account for your movements last Friday evening?’

‘If I have to, but I don’t see the relevance. Your question is ill-directed.’

‘Let us be the best judges of the question’s relevance. We have information that you were seen in the vicinity of the Family Hotel at about the time Jack Drew left it. That was between six-thirty and seven p.m.’

Baxter laughed loudly. ‘Is that the best you can come up with? Your informant needs his eyes checked, and you should check your facts more carefully. Are you implying it was me who killed Jack Drew?’

‘How well do you know Elizabeth Drew?’

‘I can’t say that I know her very well, as I’ve met her only twice,’ Baxter said. ‘The first time, she and Drew were having
an argument in the Family Hotel—he backhanded her and knocked her down. I picked her up and then I told Drew he was a mongrel to hit a woman. He threw a punch at me and I decked him. Then I drove Mrs Drew home.’

‘Subsequently you had another fight with Drew, didn’t you?’

‘I wouldn’t describe it as a fight. Drew came out to my place, mouthing off about what he was going to do to me. He was sober this time and he told me he was going to give me a hiding.’

‘So you broke his ribs and put him in hospital?’

‘That’s right. He attacked me and I defended myself. I gave him first aid, called an ambulance and then rang his wife. The second time I met Liz, she came out to pick up her car, accompanied by Julie—by Dr Rankin.’

The detectives glanced at each other. ‘And you haven’t seen Liz Drew since then, or spoken to her on the phone?’

‘I’ve spoken to her, yes—she called to thank me for fixing her husband. If you’re implying that I had a reason to kill Drew because of a liaison with his wife, you’re way off the mark. I had nothing against the man personally. He was simply an ex-pug who thought he was king of the heap and could get away with just about anything. I don’t have any regard for men who knock women about, and Drew paid the price for that.’

‘You haven’t said why you were in town Friday evening.’

‘That’s because I wasn’t in town. At the specific time you refer to, I was having dinner with the Lewis family at my
house out by the river. Even Jesus Christ couldn’t be in two places at the same time,’ Baxter added, with biting sarcasm.

The note-taking detective got up and left the room. He returned in a few minutes and whispered in the ear of the detective conducting the interrogation.

‘It seems your story checks out,’ the interviewer said.

Baxter noticed a scowl appear on Cross’s face, before his expression became carefully blank. Cross was a decent actor, but not quite good enough.

‘Of course it checks out,’ Baxter said. ‘You fellows are way off the mark and wasting your time talking to me. It was a pretty hairy job getting Drew’s body off the rocks and with that bloody great shark close by. I had to gaff him in a good-sized swell and then hold him next to the boat the whole way in.’

At that description, the detectives both looked a bit green about the gills.

‘If you’re finished,’ Baxter said, ‘I’ll go now.’

‘We’re nearly done,’ the interviewer said. ‘Just a few more minutes.’

Baxter looked at each of the three officers, his eyes lingering on Cross. ‘I haven’t been here long,’ he said, ‘but it’s common knowledge that a certain well-known person in this town was out to get Jack Drew. This person has the hots for Mrs Drew. I’ll bet that he and the fellow who gave you the false and misleading information about my movements are one and the same. Or that the informant is a close associate of his. Either way, he’s the one you should be grilling.’

‘Why would this man pick on you?’

‘Because I make a good fall guy to take suspicion off the bloke or blokes who killed Drew,’ Baxter said. ‘Then there’s the fact that I publicly humiliated him.’

‘How did you do that?’

Baxter allowed himself a small smirk. ‘He tried to deck me, so I gave him a kick in the behind. Ask anyone in town—it’s common knowledge.’

The note-taking detective handed him a sheet of paper on which were drawn the six islets of the Islands. Then the interviewer said, ‘Mr Lewis told us that this cross marks the spot where you sighted Drew’s body and from which you recovered it. Is that your reading of the correct location?’

‘Absolutely,’ Baxter agreed, smiling. ‘There’s only one small discrepancy.’

‘Yes, what’s that?’

‘Neither Steve nor I actually discovered Drew’s body. It was my dog Chief who noticed him—Chief’s got a fantastic sense of smell. Us blokes were too busy reeling in and cutting my line because there was a tiger shark on it. Chief barked and pointed his nose towards the next islet, and I looked and saw the body. That’s if you’re interested in getting the story absolutely correct. If my dog hadn’t barked, we might have left Drew where he was. It’s a tricky place to be with a decent swell running.’

‘Thank you,’ the interviewer said, keeping his tone professional although his lips were tugging up at the corners. ‘You
did a great job getting Drew’s body back here. I doubt we’ll need to talk to you again.’

‘I hope not, because you’d be wasting more of your time.’ This seemed to Baxter like a good opportunity to find out more. ‘Nobody’s told me,’ he said, ‘but I’m interested to know how Drew died. What killed him?’

‘The back of his head was crushed. He’d been hit many times with something heavy, like a piece of pipe or a club of some description.’

Baxter immediately thought of Verna Graham’s husband, Bob.
He was found with a fractured skull. It supposedly happened when he fell overboard.

‘He was, eh?’ Baxter asked. ‘Hit from behind? Maybe by someone who wouldn’t face him front-on. I sure hope you nail the creep. Drew wasn’t a great man by any stretch, but he didn’t deserve to end up the way he did. And the talk was that he’d improved since the last walloping I gave him. Liz certainly thought so.’

Just before Baxter left the room, one of the plainclothes detectives winked at him. This made him wonder if the entire interrogation had been a ‘snow’ job—after all, the whole thing had been utterly absurd.