Bay of Fires (16 page)

“The Crawfords weren’t excited to talk to me, but they were accommodating. They still hope their daughter will come home. Let’s talk about something else.”

“I can’t get it out of my head.”

“It would be frightening, finding a dead body.”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “I spoke to the Swiss woman, probably on the day she died.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“She asked directions to the rock pool.”

“Go on.”

“I’d been at the rock pool that morning. It was filthy. Some loser cleaned his fish in it.”

“You told her that?”

“No. That’s the point. I didn’t tell her that. There was no point her trekking up there. You couldn’t swim in it. It stank; flies and dried guts over the rocks.”

Hall shifted down to second gear, doubling the clutch so the engine gave a satisfied hum. So that’s what was bothering her, kept drawing her to that desolate stretch of beach in half-light and rain.

“You wouldn’t be the first person to blame yourself for someone else’s act of evil.”

“I don’t blame myself.”

“Guilt is a waste of time. When your number’s up, it’s up.”

“I don’t agree. That’s too fatalistic. People have to be responsible for their actions.”

“So Anja Traugott is responsible for choosing to walk on the beach the day a sexual predator goes hunting.”

“You reckon that’s what happened to Chloe Crawford, too?”

There were five scenarios Hall had listed in his notebook. Chloe was run over on the Old Road and fell down a steep embankment; possible, but where was the body? Tasmanian devils were capable of eating an entire corpse, bones, hair, and clothing. They rarely left any scraps when they dined. But where was the surfboard? Scenario number two: Chloe was run over, and the motorist panicked and hid her body; unlikely. Three: misadventure, she fell down a mineshaft or drowned; again, where were her surfboard and gear? Four: misadventure, but someone found her surfboard and kept it, and was too scared to come forward following the media attention. Five: foul play was the likeliest scenario. Chloe Crawford was practically a child, so it was not likely that money had been a motive. The suspected rape and murder of the Swiss woman, who had a similar build and appearance, reinforced the likeliness of this scenario. Anja Traugott’s autopsy would help confirm this theory. Unfortunately, it was not likely that Chloe had simply run away. Hall wished it were as simple as that.

“Sorry to say it but yes. Foul play is the most likely. If it wasn’t the case, some trace of her would have turned up by now.”

“Foul play,” Sarah repeated.

B
umping along in the Holden, Sarah listened to Hall sing. He wasn’t a good singer. No range, he hissed every “s” sound. It was awful. And he had got the lyrics wrong. She looked out the window and wondered if he even knew he was singing. They might have slept together, but he was still a stranger.

Listening to him, she tried to swallow the laughter pressing inside her. It was no good. She didn’t want to laugh at him but she couldn’t help it. The more she tried to hold it in, the more she wanted to laugh. When she did, it startled Hall enough to make him put his foot on the brake.

“Is that your real laugh?”

She nodded.

“What? My singing bothering you?”

“You’re really bad.”

He kept singing.

They were going on a date. An old-fashioned date. She wasn’t really a date person, but she had washed her hair and borrowed a shirt from Erica. All hers were dirty; she hadn’t bothered to do any washing since she left Eumundi. They would end up at one of those quaint tearooms on an old dairy farm, sitting at a wrought iron table with sandwiches and pots of tea in the shady garden. Maybe they would stop at the cheese factory café for a coffee on the way home.

She had been on only one date with Jake, if you could even call it that. They biked along the winding Yandina road to Coolum and ate fish and chips in a park beside the beach. That was nice. Afternoon rain drenched them as they rode home, heavy Queensland rain that fell in sheets from a ripe purple sky. They took turns at riding in front. Every time a car went past, dirty road water sprayed over them. It was fun. They had fun together. What had she done? What was wrong with her?

“You okay?” Hall glanced over. “You look sad.”

“Yeah.” Sarah had forgotten where she was. She tried to think of something to say before he asked any more questions. Lately even the briefest kind word could make her throat close up, that strangulating feeling of needing to cry. She asked him a question about the murder investigation. While he spoke, she focused on the dirty windscreen. Splayed insect legs and wings fringed the wipers like broken lashes.

A couple of kilometers before the St. Columba Falls, Hall turned right onto a bumpy dirt road. A squat weatherboard farmhouse with picnic tables on its narrow verandas came into view. At least twenty motorbikes were parked out the front. Disappointment seized her; she had been here before. The pub was a waterhole for the local dairy farm workers. It served schooners and counter meals, and, for one dollar, punters could purchase a stubby of beer slops to feed to a leathery pig housed in a wooden shed.

“The Pub in the Paddock.” She didn’t undo her seatbelt. “I haven’t been here for years.”

“We don’t have to eat here if you don’t want to. I can do my story and we can go somewhere else.”

“So you planned to have lunch here?” Her girlish fantasies of a country garden picnic, or a glass of wine and some delicious cheddar cheese at the Pyengana cheese factory café, were embarrassing. He was waiting for her to speak. “It’s fine,” she said, and it sounded insincere. “Really, it’s great.” That sounded worse. She pulled at the door handle and it flipped back and forth. “You’d better help me open my door.”

Inside, the pub smelled of yeast and hot chips, stale tobacco, and pine air freshener. A television set above the bar blasted commentary from a dog race. Blinking into the dimness, Sarah felt exposed. Her white shirt was too ruffled, her handbag cumbersome. She shifted it from one hand to the other and smacked her lips, greasy with Erica’s lipstick in Cotton Candy. Slowly she wiped her hand across her mouth to remove it.

Bikers paused at darts or pool, expressions hidden behind facial tattoos and beards. At the bar, a flannelette row of farm workers peered from beneath caps. There was only one other female in the room, a ruddy-cheeked woman eating lunch at the bar.

Hall ignored the empty tables by the far window. He sat on a green bar stool and swung sideways, one foot on the rung, the other on the floor.

“What’s your party poison?”

The blokes on the other side of the bar listened with undisguised interest.

“Coke.”

“Have a beer with me. Or a wine if that’s what you prefer…”

The punters turned to Sarah to find out what drink she wanted.

“So what’ll it be then?” The barman patted the bar mat, pleased to play a part in the performance.

They decided on Boag’s Draught and watched as the barman cradled two glasses under the beer tap, moving them side to side, working the liquid into a perfect creamy dome.

They should have gone fishing. Away from these busybodies, who weren’t even pretending not to eavesdrop, there would be heaps of things to talk about. They should have gone fishing, or walked up to the rock pool, or taken the canoe out on the lagoon. Even a game of Scrabble in the shack would be more fun than this. She noticed his ring then. It was plain, a dull silver band exactly like a wedding ring, but worn on his right hand. It hadn’t been there before. Hall cleared his throat and she looked at him expectantly.

“Tell me something about yourself,” he said.

It was the type of question that irritated her. How on earth was she supposed to reply? He was a journalist; surely he knew a better way to open a conversation.

“It’s funny. What do people really want to know when they ask that question?” Her voice was straining to be calm the way her mother’s did when her father wasn’t listening or had forgotten to do some mundane task. “I don’t like lazy people. I like fishing. I sleep with my mouth open. But you probably already know that.”

She laughed but the sound lacked any real humor.

“No one wants to hear that kind of boring stuff.” He sipped his beer. “Surprise me.”

No question about it, she could surprise him. But did he really want that? The last man she had surprised had not enjoyed the experience. There was a fine line between surprise and shock. How about if she told him that she had lost count of the actual number of men she had slept with once she clocked fifty. That three of them had been guys who were employed under her supervision at the fish farm. Jake had called her a sexual predator when she told him that after a few too many one night. At the time she had thought he was joking.

“Tell me something about you,” Sarah countered.

Hall was happy to talk about himself. He told funny stories about people in the newsroom where he worked. He made a joke about his ex-girlfriend who now ran, with her new boyfriend, a pub called the Ball and Chain Inn. Sarah had drunk there before. It was a beautiful heritage building opposite Civic Square. It was what he didn’t say that interested Sarah. He was leaving something out.

Sarah knew what it was like to miss someone when you knew you shouldn’t. On Christmas Day she had taken Erica’s mobile up behind the tank stand and tried to call Jake. It was the only place where there was coverage. Jake hadn’t answered; it went straight to his message bank, and she hung up. What would she have said anyway? She wasn’t going back. Sarah took a slow breath, immobilized with guilt. You could apologize for punching your boyfriend in the face, but it didn’t undo the act.

Hall was fiddling with his cutlery, trying to unravel it from the paper napkin, when their lunch arrived. On Sarah’s plate a T-bone soaked in pepper sauce took up most of the space. The lettuce, tomato, and slithers of purple onion looked fresh. She remembered the Pub in the Paddock was known for serving prime steak. Her plate certainly looked healthier than Hall’s lunch; deep-fried curls of seafood sat in a cane basket with a packet of tartar sauce balanced on top. He whistled in appreciation. A crinkle-cut chip fell off and Hall stuck it in his mouth.

The food was good quality and the beer was cold. They ordered two more beers and talked easily while they ate. He was interested in fish farming, in particular whether or not it was sustainable. From the stickers on his car she suspected he was a hardcore greenie and she censored some of her opinions. He also asked her about crayfish smuggling. Ten years ago he had visited the Bay of Fires to report on six square holes that had been dug on the main beach. They had appeared overnight, during winter, when the area was particularly desolate. Two meters deep and evenly spaced; at the time the holes were believed to be the site of a well-planned drug delivery. Now Hall wasn’t sure.

“I remember that!” Sarah said. “I was at the shack when it happened.”

She wondered if they had walked past each other on the beach, driven past each other on the road. Behind her, someone shoved coins into the jukebox, and Cold Chisel’s “Flame Trees” began.

“Enough about me…tell me, why did you end it with your boyfriend up north?” Hall said. “Or am I being too nosy?”

She was expecting the question, but when it came, she couldn’t think of a short answer. Her brain tried to unscramble the strands of events leading up to her departure from Queensland. She didn’t want to lie. She might have mentioned Jake the night of the Abalone Bake, but she couldn’t remember. That was the problem with one-night stands that didn’t end when they were supposed to.

“Put it this way. Something happened with Jake that irrevocably changed the situation. Nothing more to say.”

Sarah glanced at Hall and then looked away quickly. It wasn’t an outright lie, but she knew she was misleading him.

“I get it,” Hall said.

She appreciated that he didn’t make a big deal out of the subject. It was a shame they didn’t catch up last night at Simone’s party. Hall would have been a good person to have a few New Year’s Eve drinks with. He wouldn’t carry on the way most other people did, hugging and kissing each other at midnight like there was something to be excited about. She had walked to the Shelleys’ with Erica and Steve, half-thinking that when Hall turned up she would see if he wanted to come fishing with her. She had waited for what seemed like ages before she left.

Fishing alone last night was not as enjoyable as it usually was. She had cast out halfheartedly, listening to the music and laughter of the party drifting down the hillside. Her efforts had been a waste of time, but still, fruitless fishing was better than enduring the forced merriment of New Year’s Eve. Finally, she carried her empty fishing bucket home. From the beach track, she could see the party. Candles and lanterns lit the garden. Sarah almost returned, but she had spilled a container of bait on her jeans and could smell it. She wondered if Hall had had a good night.

“Was it a fun party?” she asked.

“I think so. I had an early one in the end.”

Sarah smiled. “Me too.”

They had almost finished eating when Hall leaned across the bar and addressed the barman. Sarah didn’t hear what Hall said.

The barman was thoughtful as he opened the glass washer.

“There is a guy who sounds like him. Doesn’t come in much. Doesn’t talk to anyone. Just puts twenty bucks in the slot machine and drinks his beer and goes.”

They watched the barman wipe inside the glass washer. His arm jerked as he rubbed at some hard-to-remove gunk at the back and the machine rocked, making an embarrassing squeaking noise that sounded like Hall’s bed at the guesthouse.

“Who did you just ask him about?” Sarah murmured.

“Nothing much…just another story which will probably fall over.”

Hall finished his beer. She wondered if he was thinking about the squeaky bed. For something to say, she told him about Roger and the Tasmanian devil that had been tossed onto his porch. Hall murmured something about vigilantes but didn’t comment further. She sounded like Pamela and her mother cloaking their gossip with pretend sympathy.

“The burnout marks on Roger’s driveway were continuous,” Sarah added.

“So?”

“It’s impossible to do a continuous burnout in an automatic; the tire rubber stops burning briefly as the gears change. You have to hammer it in first to do a good burnout. I’ll show you later.”

“No thanks. My car doesn’t like doing burnouts.”

“The point is, there are only three manuals in the Bay of Fires at the moment. Yours. Roger’s Valiant. And Bunghole’s Hilux. And you weren’t driving anywhere after the Abalone Bake.”

“You’re an undercover detective,” Hall joked, but he made a note in his spiral notebook.

She was relieved when Hall stood up and pulled his wallet out of his pocket. The date was almost over.

“How much do we owe you, mate?”

They waited while the barman searched for their tab on a cork board at the end of the bar.

“Thirty-three dollars will do it.”

Hall opened his wallet and looked inside. It seemed like he was waiting for her to do something, so she reached into her bag for her purse. She handed Hall a twenty-dollar note, which he accepted. There was no automatic credit card machine, just the old-fashioned card cruncher. The barman arranged a yellow page and swiped the imprint of Hall’s card. Hall explained why he was there. He described the story he wanted to write about the pig as a color piece. He sounded more excited about it than he had explaining it to Sarah earlier in the car.

“Does he still drink beer?” Hall asked.

“She. Alice’s all woman. And she’d drink any of these guys under the table if we let her.” He pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the bikers throwing darts.

“Is that right?” Hall wrote in his notebook.

“My word. The weekend before Christmas she left Boonie for dead.”

“No way, mate.” Hall’s voice became deeper and his vowels slowed in imitation of the bartender’s rural drawl.

“Mate.” The bartender nodded. “I wouldn’t lie. She drank seventy-six full-strength stubbies in the one session. She dropped after fifty-four, but she’s a trouper, Alice; she kept going lying on her side.”

“That’s disgusting,” Sarah said.

“You’re telling me.” The bartender grinned, but he was missing the point.

Hall negotiated a free bottle of beer for the pig since he was going to do a story on it and they went outside. As they walked toward the pig’s paddock, Hall slid the twenty-dollar note into the back pocket of Sarah’s jeans.

The pig was asleep and looked dead. Her head lolled back, and the elongated nipples on her rubbery black belly touched the dirt. Flies hopped across wiry hairs on her back. A sign in front of the pen stated,
Hi, I’m Alice! Geez I’m dry. I’d love a beer.