Bay of Fires (32 page)

There were no footprints in the gravelly sand, but that didn’t mean anything. Hall hiked for nearly an hour before he saw someone in the distance. Sharp midday sun made it hard to tell if the figure was moving toward him, let alone if it was human. As he got closer, he saw Roger slumped on a rocky outcrop. For a horrible moment Hall thought he was already dead. Roger’s hand moved. Sand stuck to his wet jeans, and one arm of his cotton shirt was torn. It was the first time Hall had seen Roger without a hat. His cropped hair was soft-looking, like a newborn bird’s down.

“We’re getting you home, mate.”

Roger was parched. He drank the water Hall handed him with thirsty gulps, his eyes dull like stagnant pools. After he drank, he smiled at Hall, the motion threatening to split the chapped skin of his lips.

“Last night was a dangerous night to be down here on the rocks…not much of a moon,” Hall began, but Roger wheezed deeply when he tried to answer.

Hall considered again the scenarios that had kept him awake last night. Did those louts from the camping ground rough Roger up and set his car on fire? Did Roger light the fire? And what was the lug wrench doing there? You didn’t see that old style very often, and certainly not discarded on the ground at a rubbish tip.

Roger was dragging his feet in the sand. It wasn’t clear what had happened, but asking a man why he had run away from home was like asking bereaved parents how they felt about their daughter being murdered.

It was a slow walk back. Hall held Roger’s hand on his shoulder, taking the man’s weight. They were the same age, but Roger’s weather-stained hands and secondhand clothing made him seem decades older. It was getting harder and harder to breathe; the air was dry and dirty. It was gusty, too; in the distance black shadows bounced over the paddocks. Hall watched them for a while, blinking and rubbing his eyes, before realizing they were walking into a dust storm.

When they got back to the car, Roger sat down on the grass and took off his sneakers. He tipped the sand out of each shoe and turned them over, studying the soles. The air was thick with fine dirt. Hall covered his mouth and nostrils and told Roger to hurry up. He had seen colleagues gain a second wind on hiking expeditions, and the comedown from that deceptively exhilarating confidence could be more debilitating than the initial exhaustion. Roger tried to put his sneakers back on, but his feet wouldn’t go in properly. Eventually he stood up, his heels hanging out the back of each shoe. The effort fatigued him. He gasped with each breath.

Steering the Holden across the paddock, Hall tried again.

“What were you doing up there, Roger?” Hall hoped he did not sound like he was fishing for a story. Fact was, a story was the last thing he cared about right now. “I was worried.”

Roger didn’t answer right away. “Is that why you came looking for me? Thought I was shark bait?”

“I don’t know.” The truth sounded melodramatic, like Hall was trying to be a hero.

“Anything left?”

“None of the shacks were burned. Your place is fine. The fire was out by midnight last night.”

Roger plucked at a frayed patch on the knee of his jeans with shaking fingers.

“Your car’s gone,” Hall added. Roger didn’t respond.

As they rolled back across the paddock, Roger slumped against the window. Hall turned the music off to let him sleep. They were back on the gravel road when Roger spoke again, startling Hall.

“They hate me. Those fishermen. Hate me.” Fatigue stripped his voice of any timbre. The man was wheezing. His body hunched around his neck, and he muttered about a range of disconnected things. Hall drove even more slowly, trying to isolate meaning in Roger’s rambling monologue. “One of their kids shot my tire out while I was getting rid of the rubbish. He thought I didn’t see him. I saw him.”

“And then what happened?”

“I tried to change my tire. The nuts were too tight. And they were watching me. Yelling at me. My hands were shaking and I couldn’t turn the nuts. When they threw the match into the rubbish trench, I bolted. I left my car there. I was scared.”

“Right.”

It made sense. Hall could imagine Roger’s anxiety, taking his rubbish to the tip and running into a gang of campers. How frightening, to have your car tire blasted with a bullet. He could imagine Roger’s terror as he crouched beside his car, bravely trying to turn stiff bolts with his wrench while Bunghole and his mates looked on, jeering, smoking, making threats. Up there at the tip, surrounded by silent unforgiving bush, the man would not have stood a chance against that mob mentality. At least they let him run away. But then what? They fought the fire alongside everyone else. They celebrated when it was extinguished. Was it too much of a leap to think that people capable of that could be inclined to cover up the murder of two young women?

“They say I killed those women. I didn’t. I told the American lady I saw her boy. ‘Shut your mouth,’ she told me.”

“Do you mean Simone Shelley?”

Roger twisted his neck around and looked at Hall as though he were stupid. “Yes. That’s what I told you. She said, ‘Shut your mouth.’ And that is not a nice thing to say to someone.”

“Roger, where did you see her boy?”

“I saw him following that woman. The foreign one. She walked all the way up the beach and he did too, a long way behind her. Then he disappeared into the rocks above the rock pool. I was fishing off the rocks. I heard them yelling at each other, too. That is what I told her.”

The air was thick with dust and Hall switched on his headlights. The Holden was not airtight, and even with the windows and vents shut, black soot choked the cabin. The scene Roger had described was vivid in Hall’s mind: the old fisherman watching the young man trailing the beautiful Swiss woman along an empty beach. Hall passed Roger’s cottage and drove hard through the dust until they were on the other side of the national park. He took Roger to the St. Helens hospital and left his own mobile number as the contact.

Returning to the Bay of Fires through the dirty smog, Hall wished he had stayed in town. A hotel on the high street had a vacancy sign out front. Instead, here he was, driving so slowly the dashboard chattered, sensitive to every gravel corrugation. Visibility was poor; he couldn’t see the posts on the side of the road.

He was relieved when he finally turned into the Averys’ backyard. He slammed the car door and ran toward the shack, kicking over one of the succulent pots in his blind hurry. Someone was holding the door open for him. They must have heard his car arrive, loud in the eerie silence. He ducked inside, his eyes watering, dirt clinging to the corners of his mouth.

“Are you insane going out in this weather?” Erica asked.

“I need to talk to Sarah,” he said.

For once Erica did not annoy him. She put on her earphones and disappeared into the bunkroom. Hall sat beside Sarah on the couch under the window. Outside, trees were dark smudges in the dust storm, the ocean shrouded in unnatural, unshifting fog. He could feel the tension in his neck, stiff and gnarled as tree roots. Rehearsing this conversation in the car, he had planned to start gently, to let her confess. If she didn’t want to talk about it, fine. After all, it had happened before they met. Days before they had met. Four days. His words rushed out as if he were a jealous schoolboy.

“Sam Shelley said he had sex with you.”

“Is that what he said?” Her half-grin was furtive and hopeless, like that of the no-hopers lining the bench seat outside the Court of Petty Sessions. She already knew how this conversation was going to end.

“So it’s true then?”

“I can explain.” Sarah crossed her arms. “I have a problem…”

“I don’t want to know.”

“A problem with alcohol.”

Hall clasped his hands while she described her lack of self-control after three or four beers, of waking up under a tree or on a park bench, of encounters with people whose names she did not know. These were stories he had heard before, from colleagues or mates. It was pathetic.

“That night with Sam. It was Christmas. I drank too much. I don’t even know what happened.”

“Okay.” Hall tried to breathe slowly. His hands were clasped as if in prayer. He shoved them into his pockets. Conscious of Erica in the next room, he kept his voice low.

“Sam’s saying… Well, he didn’t say. He is implying that he had sex with you.”

“No.”

“So he’s lying?”

“Just go…” She had her back to him so he could not be sure, but it sounded like she was crying. Anger rooted him to the spot.

“I feel sick,” he said.

She dismissed him with a wave of her hand. The mildness of the gesture infuriated him and he forgot to lower his voice.

“He’s boasting about it. He told me, ‘Don’t think you’re the only one to ride in her canoe.’”

Girlish laughter came from the bunkroom. Sarah spun around, flushed with embarrassment or anger.

“Hall, it’s none of your business.” For a fleeting moment, as they glared at each other, he experienced a surge of sexual desire for her. It did not last. “Get out of here.”

The shack rattled as he strode toward the door. He opened it roughly, and the doorknob came off in his hand. Damn it, everything was going wrong.

“I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m in shock. And for what it is worth, I don’t care. Okay? I don’t care. I was just surprised, that’s all.”

Hall placed the doorknob on the windowsill beside the door. Ashamed, he stepped out into the black afternoon. The sun gleamed like a fuzzy ball of light behind dark gauze. He didn’t know if he could bear to see Sarah again.

“You did what with Sam Shelley?” Erica emerged from the bedroom while Hall thundered down the veranda.

“Shut up.”

“Slut!” Erica clapped her hands. Tears made stripes on the light dust that had settled on her face. It wasn’t funny. “I want details.”

“I don’t know any.”

“Does his mother know?”

“Of course. I asked her permission first.”

“How drunk were you?”

“Paralytic.” Sarah didn’t tell Erica about waking up in the dunes on a pillow of her own vomit. “Really drunk.”

Sarah looked around the shack for something to do, a task to immerse herself in, but there was nothing. The storm was not abating, so there was no point in cleaning. Usually she enjoyed an argument. Not this one with Hall. It would be crazy to go outside while the air was thick as mosquito netting. Breathing would be like suffocating.

Hall knew. Who else would find out? She couldn’t defend herself when she couldn’t remember a thing that happened. She wrapped her arms around her stomach and rocked back and forth.

“What am I going to do?” Sarah murmured.

“You remember nothing?”

“Not a thing.”

“Hall will get over it. He cares about you.”

Erica leaned her face against the window, gazing toward the point and the Shelleys’ holiday house.

“He’s a slimy kid…he’s always looking at my boobs.”

Hall was struggling to breathe normally when he knocked on the Shelleys’ door. He took the wet cloth Simone handed him and wiped his eyes first, then his nose and mouth. The cloth blackened. She didn’t comment on the strangeness of his being out in the dust storm.

“I’ll get to the point, Simone,” Hall said. “I think Sam knows something about Anja Traugott’s demise.”

“First that revolting lunatic accosts me on the road. Now you accuse my son of murder.”

“I didn’t, actually.” Hall controlled himself. “You’d better let me come in.”

He followed Simone into her main room. She had covered her couches in sheets; everything else was coated in black dust. Sam was sitting on one of the couches.

“Sam saw her fall into the ocean.” Simone’s words rushed at Hall. “He didn’t push her. He dived in after her but couldn’t find her. It would have been impossible, with the depth and currents at the point.”

Stunned, Hall sank against the sheet-covered couch. Any uncertainty he had had about the verity of Roger’s account of Sam’s presence on the rocks when Anja disappeared vanished. He had almost hoped that Roger was deluded. Instead, all this time, Simone and Sam possessed information that could have alleviated everyone’s fear.

“Why have you not told the police?”

“I only just found out. He just told me. He was scared. He’s a kid, Hall. I’ve tried to do the best I could on my own—”

“Stop it. There’s plenty of single mothers who have it tougher than you.” Hall needed to think. “Sam. What were you doing up there?”

“I’m not a murderer.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I got there. She was already there. She was climbing up the rock, one of the slippery ones, and she fell. Banged herself up over the rocks as she slipped down. Disappeared into the kelp.” Sam picked up a basketball and tossed it from one hand to the other.

“Continue,” Hall prompted.

“I dived in. Dived down deep, swam out, I couldn’t find her. Waves were rolling, huge sets smashing the rocks. I was scared.”

“Why did she fall?”

“Maybe I frightened her. She got a shock and slipped.”

“You’ll need to think of a better story than that, boss. That won’t cut it with the cops.”

“I’m telling you the truth.” Sam’s voice cracked.

“Why would he lie?” Simone put both her arms around Sam.

“Why did you keep this to yourself, Sam?”

“Who would believe me?”

Hall stared at the kid. The illogicality of Sam’s and Simone’s statements irritated him. “That’s not the point. No one is accusing you of murder. But you could have saved everyone the effort of looking for Anja’s killer. Her parents…the grief they have endured…”

“I couldn’t. They wouldn’t believe me.”

“Why not?”

“Please, Hall,” Simone said.

“Why not?” Hall repeated.

Sam shrugged away his mother’s embrace. He described how he had followed Anja to the beach and watched her sunbathe topless, more than once. On one of these occasions Don Gunn had caught him, and there had been a confrontation between the two men. Don had forced him to apologize to Anja. She had become angry and called him a pervert.