Bay of Fires (8 page)

It was a funny story and Sarah laughed. But what was he thinking? Everyone knew you didn’t talk about your ex-girlfriend when you were chatting up a woman.

Sarah stood up. “Do you want to see the fishing shack where the girl who disappeared last summer was staying?”

Hall did, but he would have preferred to see it in the morning. He needed to get some sleep. He had a lot of work to do tomorrow. Sarah didn’t wait for him to answer. She was already walking across the rocks, carrying the Esky.

The shack was one of three timber huts overlooking the gulch. It was uninhabited, Sarah told him. The other two shacks had been let to holidaying families, as usual, but the one where the Crawford family had stayed remained vacant. There was a padlock on the door but they did not go close enough to look. It was spooky, hiding behind the gum tree with Sarah, peering out at the derelict hut. Boats screeched eerily on their moorings in the little harbor and he could hear tiny rapid waves lapping the sand. A curtain inside the shack was partly open and Hall fancied he saw something looking out at them.

They shared the last can of beer, passing it back and forth. When the can was finished, Sarah crumpled it with both hands and stowed it in her Esky with the other empties. She turned to leave. Hall picked up the Esky and they followed a sandy track back toward the road. It was not a bad thing that they had run out of beer.

The walk back to the guesthouse seemed to take a very short time. In his bedroom he opened the curtain to let the moonlight in and slid the window open so they could hear the waves crashing below. As long as he had had at least six drinks, he had the confidence to know what women liked. Anything less and he found himself walking home alone to open a bottle of red wine and switch on the television. Tonight he had drunk more than enough. He sat beside her on the bed and began his routine. It started with soft kisses on her cheek and neck, his fingers gently tugging the ends of her hair. The second stage involved the removal of clothing, and this he did gently too, one button at a time, one garment at a time. Sarah was wearing a flannelette shirt with the pocket ripped off. Underneath, her skin glowed in the soft light. He undid her hair elastic band and loosened her hair. It was longer than he thought it would be; honey-golden waves that smelled freshly washed. Her plump lips smiled each time he touched her. Most alluring to Hall were her eyes, those hazel eyes watching him kiss her, conveying both intelligence and a heartbreaking vulnerability. She was beautiful and he told her so.

“You don’t have to talk me into anything.” She pulled him onto her.

Hall tried to remember the things that women liked, but Sarah’s exuberance made him forget. The bed was old and rocked against the wall. It was loud. He thought about making a joke, but she was ignoring the noise. In the silent guesthouse the banging of hard wood on plywood was excruciating. He couldn’t believe that he was thinking about Jane Taylor right now, but the guesthouse owner would have to be deaf not to be awakened by the racket. He braced the bed head with his hand until Sarah was still.

In the morning he boiled water on the gas stove for coffee. Sarah watched the ocean with her back to him.

“Such a contrast of color,” he said. “Those reddish granite boulders and the ocean. Makes you want to run down and jump right in.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe not. It’s always colder than it looks.”

“Yes.”

He tried a different topic. “I heard there were middens in the area; where are they?”

“Don’t ask me. That’s a can of worms.”

He couldn’t recall much of what they had talked about last night. He remembered swaying up the road and trying to scare each other with tales of serial killers. He remembered standing outside the guesthouse and contemplating inviting her in for a cup of tea when she grabbed his hand and led him up the ramp. The floor creaked with each careful step, and he put a hand over her mouth to muffle her giggles.

While he waited for the kettle to boil, he read the signs on display. The sign above the sink said
Wash, Dry, and Put Away Your Dishes.
The signs on the fridge said
Name Your Food
and
Complimentary Milk in Door is for Tea and Coffee Only.
There was no sign outlining Jane’s policy on unofficial guests. He was relieved when he heard the guesthouse Land Cruiser wheels skidding across damp grass as Jane left to meet the bus coming from Launceston.

H
igh sun filled the shack with a light so bright it hurt Sarah’s eyes as soon as she removed her sunglasses. She forced a casual greeting, hoping they would assume she had been out fishing.

“Catch anything?” Her father didn’t look up from his muesli.

“It’s too early to tell,” Erica said.

Sarah ignored her and poured herself some tea.

On the counter beside the Weet-Bix box the newspaper was open. The headline announced
Murder in Paradise.
Below it was a half-page color picture of Honeymoon Bay, obviously borrowed from the newspaper’s travel archive. It showed the teardrop-shaped cove on an aquamarine, breezeless, waveless day. But the
Voice
was such a rag; it wasn’t even the right beach. Honeymoon Bay was three or four beaches around the coast from where the body was found. The tiny photograph of Anja Traugott was unflattering; she wasn’t smiling, yet the Swiss woman still looked pretty. Sarah stared into the newsprint face. Her bowels contracted. She winced; the pain was worse than was warranted by the alcohol she had drunk. God, what was wrong with her?

And there was his name. Hall Flynn, the journalist she wished she hadn’t met. It was late when she arrived at the Abalone Bake, and she had drunk several cans of beer quickly, watching as everyone clamored around Hall. How bored they must be with one another, she remembered thinking. But she was no different. A few drinks and an aversion to a ridiculously jolly walk home with Mum and Dad was all it took. Company was all she had desired, not sex with a middle-aged man she had only just met. He was probably married, for all she knew.

At least she hadn’t spent another night lying in bed, staring into the darkness, regretting things that were impossible to change. She started reading the article.

The language was dangerous. Hall Flynn used words such as “mutilated,” “autopsy,” and “massive manhunt.” Emotive phrases such as “frenzied attack” and “second woman to go missing” prompted Sarah to swear quietly. Hall Flynn had interviewed Jane Taylor.

“We’re in shock. Who walks onto a beach, kills someone, and walks off?” Jane was quoted as saying.

The next words Sarah read caused bile to rush up the back of her throat. She swallowed. A bag had been found near the rock pool. A striped canvas bag. The article did not specify the color, but Sarah knew it would have red and white stripes. She had seen the bag when she spoke to Anja in the guesthouse.

“What does it say?” Erica leaned over Sarah’s shoulder.

“You can have it when I’m finished.” Sarah put her hands over the page. It was a childish gesture, but she wanted to read the article alone.

Chloe Crawford’s family had refused to comment. Sarah wondered how Hall had approached that conversation. Not an easy interview. The parents were from Zeehan, a mining ghost town on the west coast. They had remained in the decrepit fishing cottage that they were renting for three months, leaving only when their money ran out. Pamela said they had walked every beach, hiked around the back of the lagoon, visited all the old mineshafts searching for signs of their daughter. Twice a day the father drove the Old Road, where Chloe had cycled the morning of the day she disappeared. Together they stood on the beach where she might have died, gazing out to sea. They didn’t make any friends; Pamela thought they blamed the community for their daughter’s disappearance. She said after having met them she wouldn’t have blamed the daughter for running away. Bible bashers, she described them. They left without saying good-bye, without knowing what had happened to their daughter.

Sarah frowned at the newspaper. “That’s annoying. It doesn’t say anything realistic about how Anja’s death might have happened. Or how long she was in the sea. She could have been thrown off a boat twenty nautical miles out to sea; the current runs strong enough to drag her back in.”

“No one would hear your screams out there.” Erica was studying her reflection in the mirror, and she did not look up.

“Maybe she wasn’t even murdered. Maybe her injuries were from shark bite. If she was walking around to the rock pool, she could have slipped in.”

“Several sharks, from your description of the corpse.”

“The kelp is so thick around those rocks it would be very difficult to climb out. Swiss people can’t swim. I would struggle to swim back to the beach from there.
You
wouldn’t make it.”

“Whatever,” Erica said. “The woman was raped. By a violent psychopath who hates women; that’s what everyone is saying.”

“Pamela’s not everyone.”

“They found her wallet. He wasn’t after that. Unless he was disturbed while he was on the job. But you’d think if someone was close enough to disturb them, they would have heard something.”

Although Erica’s comments were not baseless, her attitude was flippant. Sarah stared at her sister, who was still gazing into the mirror. It was an old mirror, bordered with shells that Erica had glued onto it one long-ago winter’s afternoon. As a teenager Sarah had accepted that her younger sister existed within the confines of an expansive comfort zone. Erica’s life experience had been rose-tinted. She was a person whom people wanted to be around, a woman who was nearly always happy, who was beautiful and who found most things agreeable. There was nothing wrong with that. It wasn’t Erica’s fault. But it gave her a limited perspective.

Yesterday Erica had vowed not to walk on the beach alone until the killer was caught. Sarah draped her bath towel around her neck and tugged on the ends harder than was necessary. This wasn’t an Agatha Christie plot, something that could be solved by puzzling over the breakfast table. Maybe if Erica had seen the body and could still smell the stench of decomposing human flesh, she would shut up about it. Like the smell of rotten prawns or the urine-soaked lane behind the Pineapple Hotel, death’s scent lingered in Sarah’s nostrils and the back of her throat.

Erica didn’t know the full story. Only Sarah knew the rock pool was foul with fish waste that day. It didn’t change anything, and they didn’t need to know.

Sarah pressed her forehead against the salt-streaked window, the glass warm on her skin. There was no wind, and waves were breaking neatly on the beach. Sufficient swell curled across the reef beyond the point; there might be something biting out there.

As she watched the waves she noticed a solitary figure in a green army jacket throw a line off the rocks. You had to observe him carefully to see if he was getting anything; he moved each fish from his line to his bucket without his usual jerkiness. Most people watching Roger fish would think he had caught nothing. Sarah knew this was exactly what he intended.

A towel collapsed over Sarah’s head. A pair of hands slammed her shoulders. She jolted and gasped.

“Did I scare you?” It was Erica.

“That’s not funny.” Sarah was furious.

“Sorry.”

“Bring back the serial killer.” Sarah kicked the chair out from under her so it screeched on the linoleum floor. “I’m going for a shower.”

“No showers please,” John called as Sarah headed for the bathroom. “The tank’s only a quarter full.”

Sarah went to the beach to bathe. Cold water temporarily relieved unwanted thoughts. Underneath, coolness eased the throbbing in her head and washed away the alcohol’s clamminess and the limpid softness of a stranger’s fingers on her body. She flipped and rolled, blowing bubbles as she shimmied along the ocean floor. Sarah stayed underwater until her lungs tightened in need of oxygen. As she finally came up for air, she saw that she was not the only person in the water.

Whitewash frothing around her, Simone Shelley was bent over a wave ski. Her drenched sarong clung to the pink bikini she wore underneath. Short, steady waves battered the board against Sam’s legs as he held it steady for his mother to climb on. They hadn’t seen her. Sarah kicked slowly, swimming toward the submerged rock islands to hide. She watched as Sam guided his mother through the relatively calm water between the rocks, wading out until he was chest-deep. With a shove, he set her adrift. Simone laughed, and the sound, silvery and girlish, drifted across the water to Sarah.

Sarah swam behind the rocks. She had no recollection of what had happened on Christmas Day with Sam, and she was too ashamed to face him. At least she could remember last night more clearly. She had barely spoken to Hall when they went back to the guesthouse. He had tried to talk to her; she had focused on the job. She didn’t like talking in bed. Jake was the same. It was one thing they did well together, especially if he was sober. He was fit and could do it several times in a night. They did it anywhere. Once they did it on the ground next to the vegetable patch she was building. Far beyond the mango tree’s luscious canopy, the cloudless sky was enormous. Pungent smells of decomposing garden beds and Johnson’s topsoil mix gave her a physical sexual memory that remained impossible to erase. Damn it. She was as useless as any bloke she knew. Given the chance, she would sleep with Jake again, despite everything. The knowledge made her angry.

She forced herself to swim. Slicing through the water, she took long deep breaths and focused on her stroke until it physically hurt. When she stopped, she was about two hundred meters away from the beach. Behind the break, where sharks and unpredictable currents made others afraid to swim, the solitude was therapeutic. Ocean breezes flicked shouts from the beach upward in pleasing distant puffs, as inconsequential as the faraway squawks of seagulls.

At the base of the granite headland was the cove where Anja Traugott had sunbathed topless in the days before she died. Scrubby green bushes protected a tiny patch of white lapped by blue. Anja had folded a white T-shirt over her eyes and dozed. Breasts bare and open palms facing the sun, she wore nothing but the polka-dot bikini bottoms that were on her corpse. Everyone knew this because Don, walking the beach on his chiropractor’s orders, had almost tripped over her. Pamela had told the story again last night.

“He was so embarrassed. You can just imagine Donald trying to sneak away, so big and clumsy.”

Flip and Erica had laughed. Don, listening as John described a recent lecture he had delivered on the history of Chinese settlement in the area, pretended not to hear. Pamela had gleaned a lot of information from someone who had apparently seen nothing more than a glimpse of a topless woman, but no one commented on this. The conversation had turned to the pressing concern of melanoma risk.

“I’ve always said, Europeans have no clue about the hole in the ozone layer. Everyone sunbathes nude in Europe—I always did as a girl during vacations in the Mediterranean—but it just isn’t safe this far south,” Pamela had said.

Sarah swam toward the cove. She lay against a rock that, under the midday sun, was almost too warm. Disjointed, uncontrollable images swam blindly through her head: Jake’s angry voice shouting across the Pineapple Hotel pool table, waking up in the sand dunes on Boxing Day, Jake’s flatmate slamming the door in her face when she went looking for him, her own loud voice opining to Hall last night. Stuff it. You couldn’t change the past.

Eyes closed, she dug her nails into the lichen until they were gritty with sand. She swallowed and swallowed again, searching for something else to think about. There was a collection of shells in the shack, gathered years ago on long walks around the national park’s empty beaches and rocky points. She tried to remember each one, visualizing the milky surfaces and brownish corrugations until her mind stopped racing. Cuttlefish, pen shell, fan mussel, cone shell, angel’s wing, bubble shell, screw shell, smoky Venus, butterfly, cowrie, witch’s fingernail; each appeared briefly in her mind.

Soothed by the silent recitation, Sarah pushed herself off the rock, ignoring the flecks of lichen and sand stuck to her. She peeled down her one-piece and inspected her body. Ugly stretch marks clawed her breasts, a reminder of the weight she put on the winter she fractured her ankle and couldn’t exercise. Her abdominals were hard and white. She reclined slowly onto the sand, her abs taking her weight. She took pleasure in their strength.

Above the beach, the row of shacks hobbled along the hill blurred between the bright sunshine and acres of blue sky. Was anyone watching? Everyone owned a pair of binoculars to spot wildlife. Dolphins followed the waves close to the beach, mollyhawks swooped over dark shadows of mullet schools moving through the shallows, and, twice a year, pods of whales passed. Any movement on the sand was enough to raise people from their armchairs; a lone surfer far down the shore break would arouse mild interest, and a few guys towing each other in a donut suspended behind their tinny was sufficient. A couple of shacks had telescopes installed on their decks, sweeping metal barrels that could see sailors moving on the deck of a Sydney-to-Hobart yacht sailing kilometers out to sea. Sarah turned her palms upward, the sun hot on her chest, her toes buried in warm sand.

It was funny how people looked so different in daylight. Hall’s long sideburns and aviator sunglasses had seemed like a stylish retro nod last night; today the bristly sideburns looked unkempt and the plastic glasses cheap. His business shirt was un-ironed, his trousers too long and the bottoms frayed and dirty where he had trod on them. He had more freckles than she remembered, and more gray in his reddish hair, which was damp. She was close enough to smell the citric sweetness of his shampoo. He wanted to know where she was going.

“Nowhere. Just to the boat ramp. Dad and Erica were checking their cray pots.”

He slapped his hand on the roof of the vehicle and told her to get in. She hesitated. In the paddock behind his car, bunches of fraying yellow ryegrass swayed above dusty clumps of turnips uprooted for the cows to eat.

“What’s the matter? Are you feeling bad for taking advantage of me?” Hall’s deep voice reminded her of the announcer on Eumundi Classical FM. “It’s okay. I’m not holding it against you.”

He took off his glasses, and his green eyes fixed on her. Sarah forced a chirpy laugh.

“Judging by how hungover I was this morning, I think it was the other way round.”