Bay of Fires Read online

  “Twenty questions. That’s where we bought the chemical toilet from. There’s a guy there that builds them. And we had been to visit Max,” Don said.

  The mention of Max stalled Sarah. Maxwell was Don and Pamela’s only son, a nice guy who she had grown up alongside. He was doing eighteen months at the minimum security prison farm for a robbery motivated by his gambling addiction. It wasn’t a topic anyone felt comfortable discussing.

  “Anyway, do you reckon the same person who took Chloe Crawford killed the Swiss woman?” Don said.

  “Maybe, maybe not.” Sarah shrugged. “But I don’t think Roger Coker was involved either way. Unlike Pamela.”

  “Pammy gets excited, that’s true, but she usually ends up being right about most things.”

  “Is that what you think too?”

  “Why are you asking me? You were pretty friendly with that reporter last night. Did he tell you any inside information?”

  “I wasn’t that friendly with him.” Sarah was aware that up in the boat, Sam was listening to the exchange. He shielded his face from the sun, and she could not see his expression.

  “Never mind.” Don chuckled. “There are two kinds of men who wear earrings. Pirates and poofters. He’s not a pirate.”

  “He’s not a poofter.”

  Hall was walking up the boat ramp. He was only meters away. She hoped Don would not add anything more to the conversation.

  A Hilux truck towing a blue and white powerboat approached. Bunghole. He leaned out his window and waggled his fingers in their direction. Don didn’t react. It was difficult to tell whether Don even saw Bunghole; his eyes were hidden behind reflective sunglasses and his thick red-skinned face was immobile.

  “I heard you and Bunghole had words,” Sarah said.

  “Not really.”

  “Come on, Don. Everyone heard you.”

  “The problem with Keith is he thinks he can do whatever he likes. He continually puts his pot too close to other people’s. He knows he’s doing the wrong thing.”

  The Hilux reversed. Bunghole swore as he accelerated too hard and the wheels spun in the sand. Hall pulled Sarah out of the way. She wasn’t about to be run over, but it was a nice gesture.

  Hall and Sarah stood in the dusty wake of Don’s trailer, seagulls squawking and circling the fish scraps on the beach.

  “I was going to get an ice cream,” Sarah heard herself say. “Want one?”

  In the shop Hall peered at the collection of greeting cards displayed between the newspaper stack and licorice laces and the till. Each card had a photograph of a local scene glued to it. Sunsets, pristine white beaches, layers of blue-shaded water; snapshots that fell well short of being artistic, in Sarah’s view. Some were supposed to be comical: crayfish wearing Christmas-themed oven mitts or holding barbecue tongs. The words Photography by Erica Avery were printed on the back of each, along with the location or a description. Pamela sold them for five dollars each.

  “Those ones walk out the door.” Pamela arched an eyebrow as Hall examined a crayfish card. “They’re hilarious, aren’t they?”

  “I like this one. What beautiful photography.”

  Hall held up a card that depicted the three fishing shacks near the wharf. The image had been taken from a boat in the ocean on an overcast day, and the dilapidated trio of huts, with their shabby weatherboard and rusted corrugated iron roofing, appeared to Sarah as if they were at the world’s end. The shack closest to the dune, the one with the blackened brick chimney and pink geraniums, was where the Crawford family had stayed. She had a vague memory of looking at it last night with Hall.

  Sarah directed Hall to the ice cream freezer before Pamela could get started on Chloe Crawford. A chill puff of air rose from the freezer as Hall slid the lid open and chose an ice cream called Gaytime. He didn’t make a joke about it, either.

  “I can’t decide,” Sarah said, and Hall closed the freezer lid.

  Condensation fogged the glass so she couldn’t see in. On the sign above the freezer, half the ice creams were crossed out with thick black pen.

  “I felt sick when Erica told me what Roger Coker said to you when you were fishing,” Pamela called to Sarah as she took Hall’s money.

  “What did she say?” Sarah selected a small container of Valhalla triple fudge ice cream.

  “He said that you’re next, didn’t he? I wouldn’t pay too much attention to him, but I hope you’ve told the police. Don was furious when I told him.”

  “It wasn’t like that.” Sarah watched Hall leave, the plastic strips hanging in the doorway slapping behind him.

  “I don’t want him coming in here,” Pamela asserted. “Look.”

  Pamela pointed to a thirty-centimeter gap on a bottom shelf at the back of the shop. Packets of pink toilet paper were stacked on one side of the empty space, cans of mosquito repellent and fire starter coils on the other.

  “If people want a can of Whiskas, it’s in the storeroom. They can ask me.” Pamela’s lips compressed into a fuchsia-colored pout. “Roger Coker can drive to town to buy his cat food now…and anything else he needs.”

  “Now you’re acting crazy,” Sarah said.

  “Darling, don’t be like that.” Pamela played with the tips of her hair. “I’m not having it. We’re not all imagining things, Sarah. I think you’re foolish, fishing alone down at the point in the dark. There’s no one around to help you. Donald said he saw you on Tuesday night.”

  “I didn’t…”

  “You’re not being careful, darling. I worry about you and Erica. How well do you really know someone?” Pamela pointedly looked at the empty doorway and back at Sarah. “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart,” she added, gently, when Sarah offered her some coins.

  Eating ice cream as they rocked on the park swing set, Hall told Sarah he had been invited baitfishing that afternoon with Don. There were many responses she could have made. She could have pointed out that nets caught entire schools of mullet or parrot fish, as well as seahorses and crabs that didn’t survive. She could have questioned the point of sacrificing several kilograms’ worth of decent table fish just to catch one kilogram of crayfish. Instead, she made a pathetically female comment.

  “Erica’s going.”

  When he didn’t say anything, she felt the need to explain.

  “I don’t know why I said that,” she admitted. “About Erica. She might as well be married.”

  “Right.”

  “Erica and Steve have been together forever. They’re in the honeymoon stage, all the time. Very close. Like that.” Sarah held up crossed fingers to show Hall how close Erica and Steve were.

  “I get the picture.” Hall looked uncomfortable.

  Fat March flies rose and fell around the melted ice cream on her hand, looking for somewhere to land. Hall swung back and forth, his sneakers dragging on the ground. Some children ran into the park and climbed up the slide. A family came up the beach track, the father lugging buckets and spades and beach chairs, the mother carrying two small children, both crying. It was too hot to be at the beach, and she felt their agitation.

  Hall spoke before she could say another stupid thing.

  “I can’t eat those triple fudge ice creams. They’re too rich for me.”

  “If you’re going to have an ice cream, you might as well indulge.”

  “I agree. I’m glad you’re not one of those women who count calories.”

  His comment implied longevity and that her personality traits might actually matter to him at some point in the future. But maybe she was overthinking things. She scraped the last bit of ice cream out of the container. While she enjoyed the last mouthful she snapped the wooden spoon in half.

  “You’ve done a number on your finger,” he said.

  They looked at her left hand. Her index fingernail, what was left of it, was black. Raw flesh on her fingertip was covered by a translucent sheen.

  “Dodgy hammer,” she said, and he laughed. “I was renovating an old Queensland
er I’ve got up north.”

  His warm laughter encouraged her to talk as much as uncomfortable silences did. She described the house and the work that she had done. She had been installing a section of heavy wrought iron balustrade when she hurt her finger. Hall was still looking at her hands. Calloused fingers and dirty nails; he was probably repulsed by the thought that they had touched his naked body last night. She crossed her arms so he couldn’t see them.

  The fluty sound of children singing drifted across the park as Sarah and Hall rocked on the swings. It was peaceful until Sarah realized that the children were singing, to the tune of the “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” song, about Roger being a serial killer. When they were little, Sarah and Erica had loved that lilting tune.

  “Do the police reckon it’s him?” Sarah asked.

  “His name hasn’t been mentioned specifically.”

  “He didn’t have to report it. He could have left the body on the beach and the next high tide would have removed it. Or parasites and sea crabs would have demolished the evidence.”

  “How well do you know him?”

  “Not well. I’m happy to fish with him. I’m as guilty as anyone of giving the guy shit. He is a freak. When we were kids we used to dare each other to sneak up to his house.”

  It was a story she could tell Hall. Max Gunn, Pamela and Don’s son, had called the dare. There was a rumor that Mrs. Coker kept a pet black snake under the veranda and fed it fish heads and dead rats through a hole in the boards. It was supposed to be seven feet long with the girth of a four-kilogram salmon. One bite and you’d be dead; no time to drive to St. Helens for help. Sarah was close enough to smell the cat piss coming off the sunken couches out front when Roger opened the door. Spittle came out of his mouth as he yelled at her to clear out. His urgency warned of high summer mating season and aggressive snakes. She sprinted toward the gate Max held open, trying to ignore the bindiis piercing her feet.

  “The thing was, there was no snake,” Sarah told Hall. “There was a wasp nest he was worried about. His mum had a thing against snakes; she used to make him shoot them.”

  Hall half laughed but didn’t make any other comment. His feet dragged arcs on either side of the swing.

  “There’s a story in that, too.” Sarah couldn’t stop talking. “Mrs. Coker hated snakes. Even had a dead snakeskin hanging from the front fence to warn other snakes not to come into her yard. She was a nut. She died after she got bitten by a baby black snake which she disturbed in the wood stack.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yeah. The bite itself might not have been fatal, but the shock stopped her heart.”

  In the silence that followed she could hear her own uneven breaths. She wished she hadn’t told him the story; there was no point to it. At least she hadn’t told him how the game of dare had ended. She and Max had run from the Coker house to the lagoon. They swam and afterward climbed into a rock cave. In the damp half-light she had dared him to kiss her and had steered his childishly plump hand inside her bathing suit.

  Afterward she had felt ashamed, as though something incestuous had happened. She had swum across to the dark cold water on the other side, where she knew he was scared to swim, pulling herself out on rough rocks slippery with the slime in which the fish bred. It hurt his feelings, but she avoided Max after that, refusing to accompany him and Erica when they flew his kite, not talking to him when Pamela and Flip cooked dinner for their families together. The rest of that summer she had devoted to running, jogging shin-shattering lengths of the beach and pounding the sandy fire trails until her lungs felt like they were made of mulch. It was not until years later that they had started talking again, over beers in the university bar.

  Hall seemed to be waiting for her to say more. To change the subject she said, “Anyway. Enough about me. Tell me about one of your favorite stories that you’ve worked on.”

  Hall liked the question. He told her about a ship’s bell that was found following a house fire in the Launceston suburb of Windmill Hill. Experts from the museum traced the bell to an iron steamship that had set sail from London for Hobart in the 1880s. The steamship was last sighted by a sealing sloop off Tasmania’s northeast coast. Weather records from that year showed that gales had lashed the coast with waves so strong they broke the glass of the Derwent Lighthouse at Iron Pot, ninety feet above sea level. It was thought there were no survivors, but the finding of the bell proved otherwise.

  “I love my job when I get a story like that,” Hall said. “Rewriting history.”

  Sarah understood Hall’s passion. She felt the same fascination with her fish. When you were immersed in satisfying work, it could feel like the most important thing in the world.

  She swung a little bit on the swing. The park was now empty except for the two of them. A light breeze swept off the ocean and the flies had gone.

  That night Sarah couldn’t sleep. To halt the crazy thoughts trapped in her head, she ran through the process she had taken to restore the iron balustrade of her house. The job of dismantling and carrying the balustrade into the backyard for sanding and painting had been harder than she anticipated. Jake had helped her number each panel. If you neglected to do this, the guy at the hardware shop had advised, it would be an impossible puzzle to resurrect. There were seventy-eight pieces, each heavier than the last. When the backyard was a graveyard of white squares, she and Jake had swung their legs from the empty balcony and drunk beer and watched the pink galahs perched on the frangipani’s bony branches.

  Locking up that house to come back to Tasmania was hard. There was plenty of work to do; it needed foundation repairs, she had patched the roof but was only halfway through insulating it, and she hadn’t finished painting the window frames. Jake said she had used him for free work. That was bullshit. She would have done it without him.

  Instead of herself she focused on the murderer. She imagined a man sitting on a brown couch in a room lit by a game show flickering on a portable television set. He would be drinking a can of Wild Turkey, one hand parked in the hairy space between his hip and groin, his eyes too intelligent for the surrounds. On the coffee table would be a small wooden bowl containing chopped marijuana, which he would smoke from a homemade plastic bottle bong, his hands thin and shaky as they held the lighter. His unmade bed would be visible through a doorway, piles of unwashed linen beneath curtains he never opened.

  It was an odd psychology, to calm oneself with thoughts of a violent offender. Strangely, it worked, and she drifted into a dreamless sleep.

  Growing beside the road were red waratahs and flexing kangaroo tails which blurred in Sarah’s peripheral vision. The air above the sandy fire trail was hot, the bush floor so dry it was crackling. Bushfire weather. Sand was a difficult surface to ride on; the wheels slid and the gears on the bike were rusty and didn’t always work. Ordinarily Sarah would have cut her losses and turned for home. It was as though she was addicted to tracing the last paths of those two women. There was nothing logical about it.

  At the rubbish tip she paused. She leaned her bike against a gum tree and strolled into the dump area. Two trenches in an L shape were half full of junk. It didn’t smell too bad, not like the city tip. She peered in, looking for interesting rubbish. There was an old bed headboard, a discarded cray pot, a stained mattress with wire coils poking out, a rusty fridge, and black plastic bags of domestic trash. Nothing that looked suspicious.

  As she rode away from the tip, Sarah thought she saw a movement, a flash of color in the bushes. But then it was gone. Her imagination had been active since she saw Anja Traugott’s body. How far Chloe Crawford had ridden along this road was unclear. Somewhere between the turnoff from the main gravel road and the first burned bridge, along an almost uninhabited stretch of the Tasman Sea, Chloe had vanished. The police had pulled everything out of the old dump and didn’t find her body, surfboard, or clothing. But the tip was too obvious. According to Hall, if the two cases were linked, the killer was clever, methodical, and careful
to cover his tracks. This kind of psychopath would traipse through acres of eucalyptus scrub and prickly wildflowers to find the right spot to torture and dispose of his victim.

  Anja Traugott had not been killed for her money. Police found her wallet containing fifty dollars in her bag at the rock pool. Her attacker was creepy; he had taken the bikini top as a memento. Unless it had fallen off in the ocean. Maybe he had wanted to take the wallet but was interrupted. Perhaps she fought back harder than he anticipated. Hall reckoned it was an accident that the Swiss woman’s body was found. The murderer might have thought that currents would drag the body out to sea, where the great whites would eat it. There were often shark sightings around here. Hall’s theory could be correct, but it depended on where exactly Anja entered the water. From the headland near the rock pool the current sucked straight out to sea. Closer to the shore was a trough that swept directly along the coast. Based on this, you could rule out Roger Coker, Bunghole, and anyone else who knew how the currents ran. Any fisherman worth his weight in mullet understood the complexities of the currents.

  In the canopy above, the bush birds had halted their eerie calls. Sarah slowed her breathing and tried to hear what had silenced them. Sometimes the appearance of a black snake quieted the birds. Apart from dry winds rustling leaves there was nothing. And then she heard it. Rubber sliding on sand; it was unmistakable and it was getting closer. Someone was riding up the track behind her. She changed down a gear and picked up speed. They wouldn’t catch her, not likely; she had plenty of energy. The problem was this road was a dead end. The bridges had burned years ago, and it was impossible to cross any of the rocky gullies with a bike. Unless she ditched the bike and went cross-country, the only way out was the way she had come in.

  Her fear felt strange; it was laced with excitement. She continued riding, listening to the sound of the stranger closing in on her. Where the road widened, she stopped. Through the bottlebrush she glimpsed the cyclist pedaling hard with his head down. He was moving quickly, not an easy thing to do on the sandy track, which meant he was as fit as Sarah, if not fitter. He emerged, and she wished it were the murderer.