Bay of Fires

by Poppy Gee

  “Do something, Donald!” Pamela handed Don a metal barbecue spatula.

  “No,” Jane shouted as Don hit the black dog.

  He belted the animal’s back several times with the metal instrument. It made a hollow whack and pierced the skin. Blood spurted across black fur and the dog cried.

  “Enough, you piece of shit,” Jane told Don as she scruffed the dog’s neck.

  “Control your animal!” Pamela yelled.

  “Who do you think you are?” Jane called over her shoulder as she dragged her whimpering animal out of the park.

  Don looked confused, standing there holding the spatula with his mouth open as though he didn’t know what he was doing. Everyone slunk away, and Pamela turned on her husband.

  “What were you thinking, Donald?”

  “You gave me the bloody spatula.”

  “That was psychotic. She’ll press charges.”

  “Shut up. Just shut up.”

  Jane let the dog go as they walked up the hill. It trotted along by her side, its tail down. Her handbag slapped against her leg, forgotten. From the rocks Roger Coker watched the spoiled gathering. The man was motionless, as much a fixture on the landscape as the granite boulders and scraggly banksias.

  “They’re a bunch of dickheads, if you haven’t worked it out yet.” Sarah pressed a beer into Hall’s hand. It was fresh from the Esky and cold water trickled down his arm.

  “Is that right?” She didn’t seem to care if anyone heard her.

  “They’re mad; there is a group of them going round telling everyone not to swim in the lagoon. They think it’s too close to Roger Coker’s house, and it’s hidden from the road, so therefore they deduce that’s a possible murder site.”

  Hall laughed, although he could see she was partly serious. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine. Why?”

  “Some people get posttraumatic stress disorder after seeing what you saw.”

  “I’m not as fragile as I look.” She tilted her head back and finished the last of her beer. “Help yourself when you want another.”

  They watched the park empty. The dog fight had ruined the mood. Simone Shelley smiled at Hall as she walked past him, looking for her son. Sam was with some of the older kids milling around the swings. Sam stood out, his blond good looks and substantial physique setting him apart. He was better dressed, too; his khaki shorts and T-shirt looked newer and more expensive than what the other kids wore.

  “I’m staying for a bit,” Sam told his mother. “I’ll be up in an hour.”

  Hall didn’t hear what she said, but Sam reluctantly followed her out of the park. Everyone was scared to be alone tonight. Standing with Sarah in the long twilight’s soothing dimness, Hall did not want to return to his empty room. As though she could read his thoughts, she suggested they take a nightcap down to the water’s edge.

  “And then I’ll walk you home,” she said. “It’s not safe to walk on your own in these parts. Too dangerous.”

  “Very kind of you.”

  She grinned, revealing a dimple in her cheek. His confidence had diminished since he turned forty. These days it took a dozen games of pool, sixty bucks’ worth of bourbon and Coke, and the Batman Faulkner Inn’s jukebox had to be playing the right kind of song for him to muster the courage to leave with a girl. He always went to their place, and he never brought them home. Somehow, as pointless as it was to think this, it felt a betrayal of Laura to bring another woman into what had been their bed.

  Right now Hall was far too sober to consider having sex with anyone. He liked the straight-talking country girl sitting next to him, and common sense told him to say good night. Cut his losses before he made a fool of himself.

  It was her smile that made him stay. Her smile was easy, glad, as though she had nothing more pressing on her mind than enjoying a cold beer on a warm evening.

  It was hard to tell how late it was. The sky above the ocean was brighter than in the city. There was a chance it was almost midnight; the sun did not set until nine o’clock and it wasn’t dark until an hour after that. The grass, rocks, and sea had melded into one. Hall looked over the ocean, drinking Sarah’s beer as he listened to the waves rolling. He couldn’t tell if Sarah was drunk; her speech was clear and she was steering the conversation. Earlier she had told him that men found her intimidating. Now she was saying she would make a good mistress.

  Hall said some silly things too which he knew, in a vague drunken way, he would regret in the morning. He told her an old story about the time he and Laura were locked inside the public toilet block in the city park. The toilets were notorious for attracting unsavory characters, and Hall had stood outside the cubicle door while Laura was in there. The caretaker, not realizing they were inside, locked the padlock. It was a winter evening, and they were stuck there for three hours, rattling the gate and calling out, until someone came past to help them. Hall had been so young then, barely thirty years old.

  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.

  Chapter 4

  High 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.