Bay of Fires (31 page)

Sarah frowned. “Is that right?”

She walked away.

On her way home Sarah skirted the campsite. The abalone shells were gone. Either the ranger had taken them or Bunghole had disposed of them.

In the morning Sarah woke before her watch alarm sounded. She dressed and walked down to the shop to wait for Hall. As she stood in the shadows, listening to nests of baby currawongs awaken, she heard Don. Braced over the rubbish bin, Don vomited with doglike yelps. He still wore his firefighting hard hat. Sarah moved away, treading lightly on the gravel. She had no intention of holding a conversation with a pissed bloke right now.

A clang sounded as something hit the ground. He must have knocked one of the signs over. If that wasn’t enough to wake Pamela, Don’s slurred voice carried loudly. Despite her disappointment with him, Sarah smiled when she realized he was singing a beer ad jingle. Good for him. She had known him all her life and never seen him drunk.

“Ya gotta work, work. Working hard, hard.”

The side door opened.

“You’re useless.” Pamela’s voice was harsh in the soft dawn.

Don kept singing. “Sweating in the sun—”

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Sarah peered around the corner to see Pamela march over and grab her husband by the arm. Her hair was tied with a scrunchie. Without makeup her face was colorless.

“Working up a thirst. A man…a man needs a beer…”

Pamela and Don lurched toward the stairs. Don was a big man; it would be interesting to see how she planned to get him up the steps.

“A man needs a beer, now he’s done his work.” His voice cracked as he sang.

Above the banksias lining the road to the point, Hall’s red cap bobbed. He was minutes away. Pamela would be embarrassed if Hall saw her outside in her nightie, berating her drunken husband. Sarah contemplated stepping forward, helping Pamela get him inside. She peeped around the corner. Don leaned on the stair railing, pointing at Pamela as he sang.

“’Cause every man deserves…a Boag’s Draught.”

“You’re going to get more than that in a minute, boy.”

“I need a smoke.”

“You don’t smoke.”

“We’re celebrating…hey, hey, the fire’s out.”

Pamela followed him up the steps.

“Celebration’s over.” The door slammed.

Hall’s and Sarah’s feet crunched on the light layer of ash covering the road up to the old tip. Bullet hole–riddled tin sheeting was all that remained of the
No Shooting
sign; the wording was burned away. As they closed in, the air, warm from the charred ground, left a smoky aftertaste at the back of Hall’s throat. Beside the track, yellow banksias and delicate blue wildflowers were dusty, blending with the muted browns and greens of the bush floor.

The tip was a moonscape, an old-fashioned apocalypse. Fire had devoured the plastic bags of household waste in the rubbish trench. All that remained was the metal frame of a cast iron hospital-style bed, a melted 1960s fridge, and two partly burnt-out vehicles. Without speaking, they moved toward the sedan-shaped car. Up close Hall could smell the sickly stench of burnt rubber and melted plastics.

“It is Roger’s,” Sarah said. “My God.”

Hall followed Sarah toward it and then stopped before he got too close. He could hear his editor’s voice repeating the words “crime exclusive” and “front-page spread.” On the ground around the car lay five or six empty beer cans, brittle from the heat.

It was Sarah who climbed down into the pit, balancing on a fridge carcass, and peered inside the dirty wreckage.

“Nothing,” she called, adding, “It’s still warm.”

“The boot,” Hall said.

The boot lid was warped and poking up at an unusual angle. Sarah stuck a stick into the gap and paused.

“Shouldn’t we wait for the police?” she said.

“They’ll be here soon…but not soon enough if Roger’s still alive in the boot.”

“Good God. I hope he’s not alive if he is in here.”

A metallic crunch echoed into the silent bush as Sarah wrenched the boot open. Hall felt sick in his guts. Crazy, fearsome thoughts pulsed through his mind. He wanted to get the hell out of there, wondered if she knew how gutless he was, and imagined Roger cramped in the boot in terror, yelling futilely as the car incinerated around him.

Despite himself, Hall looked inside. The boot was empty.

“What now?” Sarah’s voice echoed up into the bare treetops.

“We need to report Roger missing. At this point, as far as the police are concerned, they’ve got a small bushfire to investigate, not a missing person. You do it.”

He found the local police station number in his phone and handed the mobile to her. While she placed the call, Hall inspected the car. It was destroyed. The leather seats were burned down to the springs and the glass shattered. The tires were melted into lumpy rubber mounds. One of the wheels was missing. On the ground beside the trench was a spider lug wrench, the old-fashioned crossbar sort that loosened tire bolts. Hall couldn’t think what else to do, so he took out his camera and started taking photos.

Bravado and common sense eluded her. As Sarah circled the rubbish trench and Roger’s burned car, sounds magnified: wind whistled in the canopy, Hall’s camera clicked. Roger was dead. Once again, someone had asked her for help and she had done nothing. She fell to her knees, trying to breathe.

Across the dump yard Hall called, “Are you okay?”

She waved him away, pretending to look at something in the pit. She felt his hand on her shoulder and cringed. It was embarrassing and she ignored him.

Hall did not take the hint. Instead, he tried to hug her, pressing her face against his shirt. She could feel his crumpled chest hair through the cotton.

“I’m here for you,” he said.

She laughed and he mistook it for a sob. It was like the script of a bad movie.

“Listen,” Hall said. “I’ve thought about this a lot. You need a fresh start. You’re welcome to stay with me in Launceston while you find a job. I’ve got a spare room.”

His tone was too passionate. The laughter dissipated from her throat. “No chance.”

Hall looked hurt.

“I’m not looking for a boyfriend. I don’t want to get involved.”

“We are involved.”

“The first night we met I told you I wasn’t after a relationship.”

“Come on.”

“You could do better than me.” Sarah stepped back from the intensity of his gaze.

“Don’t feed me lines like that.”

“I’m not convinced one person should have to fulfill another person’s every need.”

They stared into the trees. Glimpses of the lagoon were now visible through the singed bush. It was a crap thing to do, but she walked away. He didn’t follow immediately. It wasn’t until she was well onto the sandy track leading to the main road that he caught up.

Sarah was walking so quickly up the road Hall could barely keep up without running. Someone was coming down the road toward them. It was Sam, his arms pumping and shorts hanging low over his hips. Sarah would have kept walking, but Hall grabbed the edge of her T-shirt and made her stop. He wanted to talk to Sam, and he didn’t want Sarah to end the morning like this. Surely she could wait five minutes.

“Did you watch the fire with your telescope?” Hall asked Sam. “How did it look?”

“Couldn’t see much.”

Hall tried to ignore Sarah, who was shielding her eyes and looking toward the Coker place. Involuntarily, Hall followed her gaze. He could just make out the green roof and the stretch of grass in the front yard. There was nothing moving in the garden, nor on the porch; nothing to suggest Roger was home.

“I suppose the telescope doesn’t see that far,” Hall said, turned back to Sam.

“Want to bet? You can see inside cars coming down the straight.” Sam pointed at the distant road. “See who’s driving. I saw you two making out in the canoe on the lagoon a few days ago. Near the bridge. Bet you thought no one saw you.”

“You’re creepy,” Sarah said, and Hall laughed.

“I’m not creepy. Coker, he’s creepy.”

“Roger is a good man.”

“Mom reckons he was trying to peep at her.”

“I have to go.”

“Yesterday. He was on our road.”

“He was going to drop a line in.”

“He had no gear on him.”

“What time, Sam? Which way was he walking?”

“After lunch. Heading away from here. North. That’s Mom, though.”

“Your mother is an idiot.”

“Sarah.”

Sarah pivoted on the gravel and jogged off up the road. Hall and Sam regarded each other.

“Alley cat,” Sam said.

“Watch yourself.” Hall flinched at the harshness in his own voice.

“Easy. Just saying she’s got a temper. We both know about that.”

“What?”

“You’re not the only one who’s been for a ride in her canoe.” Sam nodded. “Don’t worry. It was before you got here.”

“What a thing to say.” Hall felt sick.

“Ask her.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Hall didn’t wait to hear anything else. He walked up to the guesthouse, panting roughly, as though he had been punched in the guts.

Gravity pulled Sarah down the steep driveway faster than her legs could move her. By the time she got to Roger’s gate, her blood was pumping so hard around her body it drowned out the sound of the ocean.

The front door was swinging open. Inside, the house smelled like cat urine and wet towels. A teapot was on the table, and the remains of a meal—toast crusts and soup. A bucket in the sink catching drips from a leaking tap was overflowing. She shouted Roger’s name, running from the kitchen to a bedroom to the built-in front veranda. In the front room her legs became wobbly. Sunshine illuminated the closed floral curtains, and the room glowed yellow and rosy. It was too warm, and her vision reeled sideways, forcing her to slide down to sit on the doorstep between the two rooms. Where was he? She blamed herself. Why couldn’t she get it right for once?

The heat of Roger’s sunroom, the strange subtropical glow from the curtains, the adrenaline flooding her veins, and the lack of sleep and dizziness overwhelmed every sense. Vomit clogged her throat. Inside her head, Jake’s mocking drawl was loud. Everything he said, all those things, the things that other people thought about her, shouting out her problems from the Pineapple Hotel front stairs. Foul-mouthed lesbian. Fuck like a man. Fugly bitch. Ball breaker. That’s what they call you. Goldfish. You eat your young. Maybe that nickname suited her. Anyone weaker than her, somehow, she betrayed.

A
flock of birds dipped shadows across the road and disappeared over the hill. There was a faint taste of something foul in the air. Hall’s eyes stung. Once the birds were gone, there was no other sign of life, no boat in the bay, no sound of a car or of distant children playing. No sound at all except the dull churn of wave and ocean wind.

He kicked the gravel with each step toward the guesthouse. In the paddock the two brown mares were running, circling the electric fence perimeters of their enclosure. Dirt beat from the earth under their hooves. They went round and round, their manes tossing from the exertion. They shook their heads and whinnied. The sound was lost in the ocean’s white noise, and the horses’ performance was an unnatural mime.

Hall stopped at the guesthouse long enough to pick up his car keys and a bottle of water. The laptop on his bedside table looked ominously shut. He had not filed sufficient copy for days, but his thoughts were too scattered for him to care. As he passed through the kitchen, he noticed that the stack of board games, usually piled neatly on the bookshelf, had been rearranged. Scrabble was on top, precariously positioned so it looked as if it might slide off onto the floor. Hall marched over to straighten it. The cardboard lid had not been fitted properly. He took the lid off and was about to refit it when he noticed inside, on top of the board and the plastic racks for the letters, a piece of paper that had been used to record a score. Two columns of numbers, two sets of initials. It had been a close game. JA had beat JT by only four points. Hall crumpled the paper into a tight ball and tossed it in the bin.

Hall drove by the boat ramp and over a stagnant creek, barely seeing the road as he tried to sort his thoughts. Some were factual and easy to process: Pamela had seen Roger driving up to the tip yesterday afternoon; Sam had seen Roger walking past their shack, toward the unprotected northern beaches, around the same time and without fishing gear or a car. From what Sarah had said, this was a man who rarely left his cottage. And somewhere beyond these blustery empty beaches, where no one fished or camped or swam, Roger Coker’s father had committed suicide. The man had put a gun to his head. Not just any gun; when John Avery confirmed the story, he had described a twelve-gauge duck-hunting shotgun. Those things didn’t shoot one bullet. They fired a cluster of pellets. The idea of a man doing that to himself made Hall feel physically sick.

Hall’s other thoughts didn’t make as much sense. He went over everything Sarah had said to him, and he to her, trying to work out where it went wrong. But it hadn’t gone wrong, had it? If she was fooling around with that kid before he even got here, there hadn’t been a chance. Sam was full of shit. Trying to impress him and being gravely mistaken. But what if he was telling the truth? Stuff like that did happen. No wonder she was so aloof. Quite simply, she was not who he thought she was. He didn’t judge her for that; who was he to say who someone could and could not have sex with? Hall had had his fair share of regrettable nights. It was his own naïveté that was making him slam the gears of his car and drive so fast that gravel sprayed up on his car’s paintwork. Years of trusting his gut instinct had served him well; how could he have missed this?

And the Scrabble score sheet. What on earth had possessed him to pick up that piece of paper? If John Avery and Jane Taylor were having an affair, Hall did not want to know about it. It all made sense, though—John’s sneaky appearances around the guesthouse, Jane’s cagey references to her so-called private life. He felt sorry for Flip, too. With an empathy that surprised him, he felt sorrier for Jane. The couple of times Hall had seen Jane and John together, the professor had barely acknowledged her. That was cruel.

He forced himself to focus on Roger. The man had been missing, in effect, for seventeen hours. It was not a story. Suicides and suicide attempts were not reported. If a man threw himself into the gorge beneath the disused Duck Reach power station, you reported that a businessman was missing and his car had been found parked on Duck Reach Road. If a well-known person was found dead in his home, it took no more than three paragraphs to inform readers. No need to elaborate, and you never printed how he did it in case copycats took inspiration. The unwritten rule on suicide reporting was about the only time the media formed a united ethical front.

Past the last fisherman’s cottage the gravel narrowed and then petered out. Rain had churned sand channels in the road. Farther along a closed gate blocked his path. Hanging on the gate was a sign that read
Trespassers Prosecuted.
Sarah had reckoned that the farmer hung it to keep the tourists out. The gate wasn’t locked, and he let himself through. As the car bumped over the tussocks on the track to the exposed northern beaches, Hall checked his mirrors. There was no sign of any farmer. If it was true about the destroyed middens, the farmer might become trigger-happy if he spied a journalist on his land. He looked in the rearview mirror again. The sky above the bald paddocks was tinged with an indefinable redness, almost as translucent as smoke.

Hall’s phone rang as he negotiated his way across the final barbed wire fence between him and the beach. His slacks caught, tearing on the wire, as he pulled his phone out. Elizabeth. Damn it.

She wasn’t happy.

“I’ll have some stuff for you later today,” he promised.

“I loved yesterday’s story about human bones washing up on the beach. But today we’re reporting that they were actually seal bones, Hall.”

“Yeah. We probably should have been more upfront about the likelihood of the bones being animal,” Hall said.

“That’s not what I’m saying at all. You could have dragged that one out a bit longer.”

Hall took a breath. He exhaled. “What, and give Apple Isle TV the chance to clear it up for us?”

Today’s story on the bones, which combined Hall’s reporting with the police editor’s confirmation that the bones were seal bones, had made page five. When they were possible human remains, the story had been a front-page screamer.

To move the conversation along, Hall described the fire and the photos he had taken of Roger’s burned-out car. Elizabeth, agitated, cut him off.

“The devil guy? What was his car doing there?”

“Not sure yet.”

“He lit it.”

“Don’t know.”

“Well, what have you got? Did anyone die? Anyone injured? Otherwise it’s just another bushfire.”

The fire alone didn’t have legs; he didn’t need Elizabeth to tell him that.

“I’ve got a few warm fuzzies you’ll like,” he said.

He had shot the rural fire crew eating pies donated by Pamela, and the grinning blackened faces of a couple of local blokes who had strapped a ten-gallon drum of water to their truck to fight the flames. Feelgood stories about community spirit and everyone rallying together were the lifeblood of a regional tabloid like the
Voice.
Grisly headlines, rate increases, election results, and political scandals had their place, but it was names and faces that people wanted to see in their newspaper. The stories coming out of even such a minor rubbish fire were perfect warm fuzzies.

They weren’t having the desired effect on Elizabeth.

“Warm fuzzies, that’s cute. You should write down expressions like that. Hang on a sec…” Elizabeth’s voice became muffled as she spoke to someone in the newsroom. “It’s what I thought,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve got nothing. I need a front page by lunchtime.”

It was a slow news day and she was panicking. Her anxiety and desperation were audible. Hall exhaled loudly enough for her to hear.

“Stop barking at me. Front page doesn’t go to bed until six.” Elizabeth’s problem was that she couldn’t trust journalists and photographers to bring in the news.

Some days there wasn’t any earth-shattering news. Those were the days when you gave your good space to the warm fuzzies. If Elizabeth would bother to spend a few hours on the street talking to her readers rather than breathing down the necks of journalists, she would learn that readers didn’t want to read about doom and gloom every day.

“Don’t tell me how to do my job, Hall.”

“What do you want me to do?”

Elizabeth was defensive. “I can get any of the cadet reporters to fill my pages with human interest stories. You’re a senior journalist and we need serious copy, Hall.”

Hall began to speak but she interrupted.

“Listen. You said the loner had his car firebombed. Sounds like he did it himself. Serial killer suspect starts fire. Police suspect destruction of evidence. There’s your story.”

“Complete fabrication.”

“It’s not. You said yourself he might have lit it.”

“I didn’t say that, Elizabeth.”

“You didn’t
not
say it, did you?”

She was a bitch. Hall told her he would get back to her and ended the call. It was people like Elizabeth who were responsible for the degradation of newspaper content. Yes, there was an art to finding an angle in an impossible story, but writing headlines before the journalist had the story was crap. Entertainment masquerading as journalism. He was half a kilometer down the beach before he remembered what he was supposed to be doing there.

Sarah was pretty good at predicting unusual weather patterns, but the dust storm took her by surprise. A foul westerly had been forecast; she did not know, however, that the farmer had plowed his turnip paddocks right before Christmas. Inside the shack, with a T-shirt covering her mouth and a snorkeling mask protecting her eyes and nose, she watched the murky sky as she built a card castle at the kitchen counter. Dust rushed up from the earth with each gust, billowing like dirty petticoats. Erica closed the windows and shoved towels along the base of the doors, but it was no good. Charcoal dust crept in. It coated the furniture and couches, blackened the pillows and duvet covers, settled on every surface, even in the cutlery drawer. Erica started cleaning and then stopped.

“This is driving me nuts,” Erica said.

“Wait until it’s over.”

“No. Not the weather. You. You’re sulking again. I’m sick of it.”

“Go away.”

“I won’t. Mum told me to leave you alone, but I’ve had enough. What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing.”

Erica made an overly loud, exasperated sound. “You’re freaking weird about the murder. We all are upset by it, but no one else is riding their bike up in the spooky bush trying to get themselves killed, hanging around the crime scene, talking about it every night while they drink themselves stupid. And what is it with Roger Coker? You never cared about him before.”

Sarah nodded.

“But it’s more than that.” Erica lowered her voice. “Whenever you think no one is watching, you have the saddest expression on your face, like you’re about to burst into tears any second.”

Sarah struggled to hold her composure. Leaning over the table, she cradled her head in her hands. She groaned quietly and the movement rocked the table. The card castle collapsed onto the floor.

“Oh dear. I wasn’t trying to make you cry.”

“I’m not. Leave me alone, Erica.”

Outside the scrub rattled and the ocean seized in colicky fits. Under a hazy sky the world was in shadow. Erica dragged a chair over and sat next to Sarah, close enough that her bare knees pressed on Sarah’s leg. Sarah didn’t move away.

“I won’t,” Erica said, draping an arm over Sarah’s shoulders. “No matter what you say or do, I won’t leave you alone. I’m your sister and you’re stuck with me.”

“Are you trying to make me feel better?” Sarah muttered.

Erica laughed. “See, you’re making a little joke already. Now talk to me.”

“All right.” Sarah’s voice was barely audible as she listed everything that had happened in the past month. “I punched my boyfriend in the face. I’m responsible for the loss of three thousand kilograms of prime barramundi. I told Anja Traugott to take a hike up to the rock pool even though I knew it was revolting and full of fish guts. I drink, it makes me feel like shit, and I drink more. And I’ve ruined whatever friendship I had with Hall. Do you want more?”

“Well,” Erica said. “There are a few worrying items in that list. But a lot is not your fault.”

“Breaking Jake’s nose?”

“Maybe he deserved it.”

“You’re not supposed to say that,” Sarah said.

It was uncomfortable to verbalize what had happened but it was also a relief.

“I’m worried it will happen again,” Sarah mumbled.

“That you’ll hurt someone?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you ever hit me? No. And I’m the most annoying person you’ll ever have to put up with.”

“You’re very wise, Erica.”

Erica smiled kindly. “You won’t do it again. You’re a gentle, good person. I know you better than anyone.”

Sarah looked into Erica’s eyes, feeling a familiar strangeness as she remembered that their eyes were the exact same color and shape. It was like looking into a mirror.

“I’m sorry I’ve been such a grump these holidays,” Sarah said.

“And I’m sorry for not being more sensitive.”

They laughed. Their glance conveyed an unspoken agreement on the oddness of their heartfelt talk. Despite feeling weird and emotional, the conversation was nice. Sarah bent down to pick the cards up off the floor.

“I still think you’re annoying,” Sarah said.

“And I still think you’re unhygienic and obsessive about fishing.”

“Good.”

Sarah finished collecting the cards and split the deck in two. She handed half to Erica and, without discussion, they each began laying out cards in formation for a fast-paced game which they had played since they were children.

Hall strode down the beach toward where he suspected Roger Coker had gone. The coast was wilder up here, low-lying rocks pounded by frothy, dirty swell. Bleached ryegrass and clumps of sharp cutting-grass grew next to the beach. The banksia and casuarina trees and ground-covering honeysuckle vines that grew around the other beaches were missing. Except for one giant, gnarled gumtree, the farmer had cleared his land to the waterline. In front of Hall the northern sky was clear. Behind him, above the paddocks, the sky was dark.