Bay of Fires (12 page)

His hands on the bonnet of her car. In the headlights, his eyes hollow, his nostrils flared. Faceless witnesses watching from the dark edges of the Pineapple Hotel car park. His sour beer breath spittle on her face and his index finger drilling her chest. Riding mountain bikes and renovating had made her biceps strong, and when her fist smashed his nose, it popped like a balloon. Blood spurted and he hopped backward across the car park in surprise. Shouting profanities, he ran toward her and knocked her to the ground.

Pinned on the wet asphalt underneath Jake, she tried to turn away from the blood streaming from his nose. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and forced her to look at him. He put one finger against his nostril and did the fisherman’s whistle, snorting blood over her hair and face and neck. She could taste it, the salty warmth mixed with sweaty rain and wet tar.

Maybe if Sarah had stopped then, had closed her eyes and waited until he heaved himself off her, maybe things would be better now. Tit for tat, they both got what they deserved. Instead she had kneed him hard in the balls, and when he was in the fetal position, howling, she had straddled him and managed to smash his face with a closed fist before someone pulled her off him.

Elbows on the kitchen bench, she dropped her head, her shaking, cold fingertips barely holding its weight. Shame engulfed her. Her chest tightened, and for a moment she thought she was going to cry, but no tears came, just a raw, soundless sob, like a person who had been shot in the lung.

T
he police had a suspect. The detective wouldn’t give Hall his name but said it was someone they had spoken to in regard to the murder of Anja Traugott and the disappearance of Chloe Crawford. Hall called Ann Eggerton, the police media officer. She confirmed that the police were talking to a man who lived on the east coast, was unemployed, and had prior convictions.

“Give me a break, they have a suspect,” Hall jeered. “I bet they’re blaming some poor bloke who’s got no more criminal record than you or me. It’s bullshit.”

“No. They’ve picked him up three times for poaching crayfish and he’s been convicted twice.”

Hall grinned down the phone. Gotcha.

Company expenses wouldn’t cover the cost of renting Jane’s room for a fortnight, Hall knew that. But he deserved a break, and it would be good to have somewhere with generator power to charge his laptop and write his stories. After all, it wasn’t like he could type them up on the picnic table outside Pamela’s shop.

He thought Jane might have sounded more pleased about the arrangement.

“Suit yourself.”

“I’ll pay for two weeks,” Hall said. “I’ll have to go back and forth to Launceston, but I might keep some gear in there. You don’t have to clean it when I’m gone.”

“Wasn’t planning to.”

“Fine.”

Hall sat down and Jane watched him, her face contorting as though she was chewing the inside of her cheek.

“I don’t want charity.”

“Good. I wasn’t planning on giving you any.” He opened his notebook, studying it until she marched away.

Hall was reading the paper at the big table, circling typos. Page seven had five; one case used
their
instead of
there.
It was ridiculous. Shame on every one of those subeditors. Attention to detail had gone to the dogs since the
Voice
downsized from broadsheet to tabloid. A man’s voice greeted him and he startled, spilling hot tea that made the newsprint run. It was John Avery, smiling that wide white grin so hard he appeared ill at ease. He must have come up the inside staircase. Hall introduced himself again, in case a memory lapse was the cause of John’s discomfort.

“I know who you are, Hall. Everyone does. And I still haven’t given you my book,” John said. “Maybe it’s of no interest.”

“
Trail of the Tin Dragon…
Was that the name?”

“Yes, quite right. This was the entry point; the Chinese miners made their way across to the Blue Tier from here. It’s an interesting story.”

“I’m very keen to read it.”

“Well, in that case, swing by this evening. I’ll have it ready for you.” John backed out of the guesthouse. “In fact, stay for dinner. We have a few friends coming over. Just another barbecue.”

“What can I bring?”

“Nothing. I’m a wine connoisseur, you see. Amateur. But I’ll open one of the reds I’ve been saving.”

After John left, Hall folded up the sodden newspaper and boiled the kettle again, pondering what he knew about the man. He was a senior lecturer in history at the University of Tasmania’s Launceston campus but had not taught any classes for a while. At the Abalone Bake, Flip had mentioned her husband was working from home on a research project of some kind. She had added that it was her income as a pharmacist that permitted him to do so. So, John worked alone; he knew the area’s topography, aboveground and below; and he had a bad temper. Hall had noted this at the boat ramp when John snapped at Sarah. A bad temper didn’t make him a murderer, though.

He was surprised at how pleased he was at the chance of seeing Sarah again. From what he could tell, she was not his type. The woman was obsessed with fish. The topic had snuck its way into nearly every conversation they had had.

Sarah called herself a fish doctor. In southeast Queensland she ran a barramundi farm where they grew fish from babies into four-kilogram adults. They produced four hundred tonnes of fish each year in huge purpose-built ponds in the middle of paddocks. He had heard of fish grown in cages in Bass Strait and the Tamar River, but not in paddocks. According to Sarah, the advantage of land farming was that the environment could be controlled, which meant higher stock intensity. Ocean-based fish farms were cheaper to run, but you were at the mercy of the ocean’s unpredictable weather patterns. It was scientific, and she hadn’t dumbed it down as she talked about water quality and grading fish.

“Grading is sorting them by size. Fish are cannibalistic. If you have three fish of different sizes, all of a sudden you have one big fish,” she had explained. “I know the fellas aren’t doing their job if I see a monster fish swimming around in one of my tanks.”

He had laughed although he suspected she wasn’t joking completely. It was only when she was speaking about fish or fishing that she maintained eye contact with him.

Hall checked his watch. Four hours until dinner. He made a mental note to remember to ask John for the book before he mentioned it; otherwise John might think Hall was there only in the hope of bedding his daughter.

Hall knocked on the door of the green Fibro cottage. While he waited he patted a silky black cat purring around his leg. Something scurried under a broken sofa on the porch next to him. He glanced over his shoulder. He couldn’t help it. This place reminded him of a job he had done early in his career in the Dover Street public housing. The guy he was looking for had shoved him so hard on his arse that his back still ached weeks later.

“Snake weather, this is.”

Hall spun around. Roger stood in the long grass, a shovel in his hand. His buttoned-up shirt was frayed at the collar, but it was tucked neatly into his jeans. He seemed friendly.

“Black snakes. You seen one?” Roger continued.

“No. I’ve been told to be careful.”

“Especially on the high rocks at the back of the beach. That’s where they sleep. They’re all poisonous down here. Venomous. Leave them alone and you’ll be okay.”

Hall introduced himself and explained he wanted to interview Roger for a general story on people in the area. It was almost true.

“What for?”

“The
Voice.
I’m a reporter.”

“I won’t bother, thank you,” Roger said.

Roger opened the door to his cottage. Hall caught a glimpse of a tidy kitchen sink and a wall calendar showing a native bottlebrush.

“The snakes are more scared of you than you should be of them,” Roger said before closing the door in Hall’s face.

In the Averys’ kitchen the women swooped. Pamela perched Hall on a wobbly stool, Flip poured his beer into a glass, and Erica gave him a papery biscuit smeared with duck pâté. He didn’t know whether to bite it or shove it in his mouth at once; the risk with biting it was that it might crumble everywhere. Better to eat it whole, he decided.

His mouth was full when Pamela said, “Everyone’s wondering whether or not you’re married.”

It meant either they knew something had happened between him and Sarah and consequently thought he was the kind of man who cheated on his wife or, on the contrary, they were trying to set him up with her. Either scenario was embarrassing. He chewed the biscuit slowly, watching them wait for his response. In Erica he could see what Flip had looked like as a younger woman. They had the same neat brown hair and delicate features, the same self-assured smiles. Air hostess smiles, he thought, remembering that Sarah had said her sister was a flight attendant for Qantas. Women with that kind of smile made him nervous.

“Never been married.”

“You’re a bachelor,” Pamela said.

Behind her on the wall was a poster showing a multitude of brightly colored fish. It advertised a fishing reel: at the bottom were the words
It will catch them every time.
Hall chewed another biscuit and waited for the follow-up question. It would be one of two: either whether he owned his house or how much he earned. The question about whether he wanted children usually came later. It was part of the reason why, when he broke up with Laura, he had decided to date only women under the age of thirty. Of course there were other benefits to dating younger women, if you could call what happened between midnight and dawn dating.

“Sarah said you’re originally from Buckland. Are your family still on the farm?” Erica opted for the asset question.

“Just my father. Mum died a few years ago.”

He smiled kindly while they searched for a change of subject.

Watching Sarah during dinner, he doubted she had put them up to it. She didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would care; she hadn’t even changed her clothes for the meal. Her hair was pulled back in a clumped salty ponytail, and her black T-shirt promoting the 1997 World Aquaculture Conference was at odds with the creamy color palette the other women were wearing. Her face was more delicate than he remembered, a prettiness diminished by her gruffness. Apart from recommending Flip’s hollandaise sauce, Sarah hadn’t spoken to him all night. Maybe it had been presumptuous of him to come.

When he arrived, Sarah had been standing out the back with John and the other men, drinking beer around the barbecue. Now she was shooting off opinions on every topic. Apparently Erica’s partner, Steve, had installed the shack’s new chimney incorrectly.

“Rattles. Kept me awake all night. I couldn’t sleep,” Sarah said. “There’s a few things around here I need to fix.”

“You like fixing things?” It was the first time Hall had spoken to her directly that night, and he immediately regretted the lameness of his comment.

“Love it. Forget tidy modern homes. Give me a diamond in the rough any day.”

Someone else interrupted before Hall could reply. He concentrated on the delicious food. Before long the conversation turned to the two missing women.

“Chloe Crawford was such a pretty thing and polite, too,” Pamela said. “She came in to the shop a few times. Actually, I think she was having a little flirtation with Sam Shelley.”

“I remember you saying that,” Flip said. “Didn’t Simone put a stop to it?”

“That’s right.” Pamela laughed. “The two of them were eating ice cream on the bench outside and Simone turned up and took Sam away. The poor kid. He can’t even have an ice cream with a girl.”

From what Sarah had told him at the Abalone Bake, Hall knew Simone was a wealthy widow who made her money running a home furnishings import business. She shopped in Indonesia and Thailand and shipped items back to Australia and the States. Her late husband, who was Australian, had owned the dirt on which her beach house stood. Immediately after his death she had demolished the old Fibro beach shack on the site and built the glass and green copper structure. Her son was being educated in Hobart—at a boarding school. Given her circumstances, Hall could understand why she was a bit overprotective of young Sam.

Toward the end of the meal Sarah started an argument with Don over whether yachtsmen deserved to pay for their own rescue operations if they ran into trouble on the ocean.

“Some yachtsmen are decent sailors, I agree with you, but many are just lunatics who expect the taxpayer to pick up the tab,” she said. “No, no, I’m not talking about Simone Shelley’s husband, so don’t bring me into that one,” she added to Pamela.

“I didn’t say anything,” Pamela said.

“Pammy doesn’t need any help moaning about Simone Shelley.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Pamela said.

“Nothing.”

“Shut up, Donald. You’re drunk.”

“No I’m not.”

“You’ve drunk two bottles of red. No one else is touching it.”

“I’m not counting your drinks.”

“You don’t need to. I’ve had two champagnes.”

In the silence Flip piled calamari and crayfish onto Hall’s plate from platters on which parsley sprigs had been arranged around fleshy white meat and prawns with gleaming dead eyes.

“Give me a break,” Don said.

“We’ve had a nice night,” Flip said. “Come on.”

“No, I’m sick of him. He’s always like this.” Pamela’s voice cracked.

“Like what? I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Of course you haven’t.”

“My darling wife, I’m going.”

“Where? Prowling around on the beach, looking for half-naked women to perve on? You won’t find any out there tonight, sorry to disappoint you. They’re all dead.”

“Now listen here, Pamela. I’m going home to bed.” Don’s voice was controlled, but his lips were stiff as they ejected each word. “To be honest, I’m getting a bit tired of hearing your opinions. Everyone is.”

“Go, Don, let it rip.” Sarah laughed, and Hall realized she was drunk.

“Hush, Don,” Flip said. “Everyone’s a bit worn out from this…thing.”

The door closed behind Don. John started to follow him, but Flip pushed him back into his chair. He glared at her.

It was clear these people were not used to confrontation. They seemed shocked, like witnesses milling around the edge of the highway after a car crash, not sure whether to comfort one another or leave the scene. Flip patted Pamela’s hand, and Steve had bowed his head in his hands as if he were praying.

Hall excused himself to visit the bathroom. John gave him directions: go to the end of the veranda and it’s the blue door.

“Don’t get locked in there.” Sarah grinned.

As Hall stepped outside, he could hear Sarah laughing. Hall smiled. She could not have been that intoxicated at the Abalone Bake if she remembered his story of being locked inside the city park toilet block. At a dinner party once, he had told the tale and it had made Laura cross with him, as though there were something embarrassing about being accidentally imprisoned in a lavatory. Sarah was not so highly strung.

When Hall returned from the bathroom, Sarah was stacking the plates. Hall helped. Superficial chatter around the table concealed the discomfort caused by Don’s exit. In the kitchen Hall placed the plate stack he was carrying on the bench. He was tired. He felt slightly sick from the rich food. He had never seen so much seafood on one table. Years ago, he recalled, a guest at his family’s farm had brought a crayfish and his parents had not known how to eat it.