by Poppy Gee
“When you look at this view, you wouldn’t think anything bad could happen around here,” Hall said.
“Maybe it didn’t,” Darlene sighed. “Maybe they both just drowned.”
“I reckon Chloe Crawford ran away,” said one of the teenage girls standing nearby.
“No. Not from here.” Darlene stretched her legs out. “It’s ninety kilometers back to St. Helens. There’s no bus or taxi. Someone would have seen her if she tried to walk out.”
“Someone could have picked her up,” Hall suggested. “I doubt it though. Why would she take her surfboard but not a bag of clothes?”
Bunghole was surprised when Hall mentioned Gary Taylor.
“Gary Taylor? There’s a name I haven’t heard for a while. Darlene—you’ve had three kids since we saw him last,” Bunghole said. “Speed was the name he called himself. I used to drink with him, years ago, at the top pub before it burned down. Someone said he left with his girlfriend. Who knows? He didn’t check in with me before he went.”
“Did you like him?”
“I drank with him.” Bunghole softened. “I felt sorry for his missus. After Speed left, I used to take her a bit of crayfish or flathead if we had some to spare.”
“You were sweet to do that, love.”
Five children played on a canoe in the lagoon. They were having fun, shoving one another into the water. A yellow station wagon, with surfboards on the roof, carefully entered the campsite. Music thumped from the vehicle’s open windows. A group of young people jumped out. Bunghole stood up and told them to put his ice and beer in one of the Eskies.
“What kind of shenanigans will be happening down here tonight?” Hall addressed Darlene. They’d answered all his questions so far, and given him a beer, and he didn’t want the entire conversation to be about the investigation.
“We’ll have fun,” she said. “We always do.”
“I’m going to stick my head into Simone Shelley’s place,” Hall said.
“Oh, yeah.” Darlene was ambivalent. “She has a party every year. She always asks us, but I think we’re a bit crazy for that lot. What do you reckon, love, do you think they could handle us?”
Bunghole chuckled. “It might be a bad move.”
Darlene laughed too. A little girl ran out of the water and stood in front of her, shivering and whining.
“What?” Darlene looked at her. “What’s your problem?”
Hall thought she was going to reprimand the child. Instead, Darlene put her can in the drink holder of her chair and went to the tent area. She returned with a beach towel, which she wrapped around the child. When she was seated again, with the girl nestling on her lap, she turned to Hall.
“You know what scares me, Hall? The person who did this is going to get away with it.” Darlene took a long drink of beer. “It’s just the feeling I’ve got. In this world, some people always do their time and other people never have to face the music. It’s not fair, but more than that, it just makes me sick when a person has done something as evil as this.”
Hall parked his car at the guesthouse and walked along the cliff path that led to the Shelleys’ holiday house. After drinking a second beer with Bunghole at the campsite, he was later than he intended to be. He went through the motions: he accepted a glass of champagne and a canapé from Simone, he greeted John and Don and met some of their friends, he patted the Averys’ dog when it snuffled up against his leg, and he helped himself to a plate of salad and barbecued meat from the buffet table. The whole time he looked for Sarah. He had known it the minute he walked into the garden—she was not there.
Hall was standing with the other men around the fire, making small talk and swapping stories, when Erica confirmed what he already knew.
“She was here for five minutes and then she went fishing,” Erica said. “She’s very unsociable.”
Hall ate a forkful of potato salad. He pushed the food around on his plate as he chewed. “Did she mention anything about tomorrow?”
“Your field trip to the back of beyond?” Erica grinned. “She knows about it. You do realize nothing will be open on New Year’s Day, don’t you?”
“Where I’m going they’re expecting me.”
“Well, that sounds very nice.”
Hall remained with Erica while he ate. She was easy to listen to; she smiled and laughed a lot. She didn’t ask him any work-related questions or mention Sarah again, and he appreciated it. She told him that, when she was a teenager, she had done work experience for a week in the Tasmanian Voice’s photography department. She loved taking photos. She had accidentally got the job at Qantas after applying alongside a friend.
“Working for Qantas is great, don’t get me wrong. I like looking after people,” she said. “And not many employers let you take four weeks off in the middle of summer.”
Steve joined them and chuckled as he heard Erica’s comment. Hall had not had much of a chance to speak to Steve, but he seemed like a good bloke. A few minutes ago, while Hall was listening to Erica, he had seen Simone fussing over Steve. Hall had a feeling that Simone’s flirtatiousness was something he and Steve might have a bit of a laugh about, if ever it came up in conversation.
“Mate, I take it you’re not on holiday for as long as Erica?” Hall said.
“I wish. I used up all my annual leave on a ski trip,” Steve said, smiling at Erica as she slipped her arm through his.
Hall found himself looking around the garden once more for Sarah. She had not come back. He excused himself and walked over to where Simone sat. He thanked her and said good-bye. He explained he had an early start the following morning and that he had been up since five a.m. No one seemed to mind, and he didn’t care if they did. He was more disappointed by the evening than he cared to admit.
Outside the Shelleys’ garden, Hall peered down the track that led to the beach. Tree branches on either side arched together to form a dark passageway. He couldn’t see the ground. Somewhere down there on the dark rocks, Sarah was standing alone next to the pounding sea. Damn, if only he had not paid the campers a visit tonight.
He didn’t mind missing New Year’s Eve. It seemed his choices these days were either to drink copious amounts of alcohol in a crowded bar or in the home of a work colleague, or watch television coverage of the fireworks exploding off the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the solitude of his lounge room. At least tomorrow he would wake up with a clear head for the drive to Pyengana with Sarah. Who knew—maybe she was thinking the exact same thing.
Early on New Year’s morning the sun was like a huge ball of molten lava rising on the ocean horizon. It was breathtaking. Watching it from the water’s edge, Hall didn’t move in time. The wave was swollen and it smashed hard across the rocks. It was too late to run. The force knocked him sideways. Fortunately his camera was looped around his neck, but it still slammed against the granite as he fell. He scrambled for higher ground, his hands clumsy. It was only when he paused to glance back at the sea that he saw Roger Coker watching him.
“Be careful,” Roger said. “Not safe where you were standing.”
“You’re telling me.”
“People die, get washed off the rocks.” Roger giggled. “More chance of that than being murdered. Everyone forgets.”
Roger’s eyes were bluer than the ocean. His were eyes that were used to looking—not being looked at. He shifted his gaze from Hall’s stare.
Before Hall had time to think of a leading question, or even to wish him a happy New Year’s day, Roger was gone. He waved as he walked away; he knew Hall was watching his back.
Hall cut across the rocks and followed a track that eventually joined the gravel road. Enjoying the cold, salty air, he strode along until he reached the gulch. There was no sign of anyone. He went to the end of the jetty. Across the water were the three fishing shacks. Cars were parked out in front of the first two, and beach towels hung from wooden chairs lined up on either side of the doorways. It was still early—probably everyone was asleep. Try
ing not to feel nervous, he walked back along the jetty and up the slope to the hut where the Crawfords had stayed. Being careful not to squash a pretty geranium, he pressed his face to the dirty glass window. Inside it was basic. There was a table, a double bed, and a bunk. A vase of fake yellow daisies was set on the table.
“What are you doing?” Hall heard a man shout. “Clear off.”
Hall jumped. A big fellow glared at him from the open window of the next shack. Hall decided not to bother explaining he was a reporter. He waved and walked as fast as he could back to the road.
A chill wind shredded the tops off waves, tossing water high and fortifying the air blowing across the rocks with salty sleet. Hall shivered.
“Colder than a witch’s tit,” he said, and Sam chuckled.
He didn’t know why he said that. It was not an expression he ordinarily used. In fact it was one of Dan’s expressions. Dan often used rude clichés to describe things: a difficult shot on the eight-ball table was tighter than a nun’s nasty, and when it was time to leave he said he was off like a Jew’s foreskin. He didn’t care who heard him. Watching football once, Dan had told Laura the Hawks were so useless they couldn’t get laid in a whorehouse. Later she told Hall how much she disliked Dan. That was one of the issues that still rankled Hall. When the hell did Laura decide she could put up with the gutter talk?
Forcing himself to focus, Hall positioned Sam. Framed by ocean, it was a decent shot. Sam pretended to hurl the empty Coke bottle over the edge as Hall took the picture. At first Sam smiled without showing his teeth. After a few shots, he relaxed and grinned more naturally.
Sam shook his hair out of his eyes. “I like the clicking sound your camera makes.”
“It’s fake. That sound you hear is actually recorded. That’s the sound people think cameras should make, the way they used to sound. This is a digital camera, so it should be silent.”
“Cool.”
“So who do you reckon did it, Sam? Off the record. Old mate from the green cottage?”
“No.”
“Don from the shop?”
“He’d like to do something like that, but he wouldn’t want to get his hands dirty.”
“His wife?”
“No.” Sam laughed.
“Raped, bashed, thrown into the ocean alive. Who is capable of that?”
“Stop. I feel sick.”
Hall stopped shooting. Sam was no longer smiling.
“She’s an idiot. Walking around on the rocks, right up close to the ocean. You can get washed off like that.” Sam clicked his fingers. “My dad drowned, and he could swim. He played water polo for Australia when he was my age.”
“Is that what you think happened to Anja?”
“I don’t know.” Sam struggled to control himself. “Who do you think did it?”
“I’ve got a fair idea.”
“You’re full of it.”
“I know.” Hall grinned and took one more shot.
Hall warned Sam not to talk to any other reporters about the bottle story. He said it out of habit more than any genuine concern; it wasn’t as though Sam had a personal interest in receiving media attention.
“This will be in Saturday’s paper. After that I don’t care who you talk to.”
The last shot Hall took was not of the ocean or of Sam. Instead, he turned around and focused the lens on the row of the shacks scattered along the hillside overlooking the sea. The guesthouse was the highest dwelling; the round roof huddled in the heath and clematis like an owl on her nest. Roger Coker’s green roof was barely visible. The Averys’ blue shack, fenced neatly on all sides, was set farther back than the others in the row.
Hall sat on the hard wooden chair at his desk in the guesthouse. He was due to pick up Sarah in half an hour. He dialed Allan Bennett’s number again. Even though it was New Year’s Day, Hall did not want to waste any more time. This time the phone was answered.
Bennett was chatty and he insisted Hall call him Benno. They had a jovial conversation about a range of things in no way connected to the murder investigation. Finally Hall asked Benno if he knew of a reclusive person who lived on the east coast and had several crayfish poaching convictions.
There was a pause.
“I don’t know him, but I do know of a man who fits that description,” Benno said. “A large, red-haired bloke who lives in a cabin somewhere in Goulds Country. That’s the old tin-mining bushland about seventy-five miles back from the coast.”
“Okay.” Older Tasmanians usually measured in miles, as opposed to the newer metric system. Hall made a rough calculation in his head and jotted down one hundred and twenty kilometers. He was driving near Goulds Country with Sarah later today. He’d better make sure he had enough petrol.
“Have you considered that sometimes a man has his reasons for not wanting to be found?” Benno said. “There might be nothing illegal in that.”
Sarah was waiting for him in the shadow of the concrete tank. It was the first time he had seen her wear something other than shorts and a T-shirt. Her white shirt accentuated her tanned skin and her snug jeans showed the curve of her hips. She strode over to his car, climbed in, and slammed the passenger door. The powerful way she moved was that of someone very sure of herself.
“Happy New Year,” he said. “I was sorry not to see you last night.”
“Did you go to Simone’s?”
“Just for an hour.”
“Oh,” she said, and he wondered what she was thinking.
It felt good to leave the coast and its rutted gravel roads behind, to accelerate on sealed roads through the grassy fields and old tin-mining villages where no one was worrying about shameless crime scene voyeurs or whether a strange man on the beach was a pervert or not. It felt even better to have Sarah sitting beside him, her bare arm stretching in his direction along the back of the bench seat. They were almost identically proportioned, he remembered. He had been vaguely conscious of this as they stood face-to-face when they first met in the dune. Usually he had to look down to make eye contact with women. When he kissed her on the rocks after the Abalone Bake, it was confirmed; their hips and chests fitted neatly together. The memory was arousing.
Hall turned up the volume on the car stereo. It was one of his favorite songs, Lee Kernaghan’s “High Country,” and he sang along, fingers tapping on the steering wheel. It was pleasant to be with a woman who didn’t talk constantly. Laura had liked to listen to Radio National and comment on what they were discussing, which meant Hall missed hearing the next thing they said. Sarah didn’t talk at all. She crossed her arms and watched the road. When he had woken up beside her in the guesthouse, her sleeping body had been supple, her toned muscles malleable around him. He wondered if she would come back again.
She exhaled and uncrossed her arms.
“Are you okay?” Maybe she was bored.
“Yeah.” She looked out the window. “Is it hard interviewing people about awful things?”
Hall was surprised. “Sure. They’ve been interviewed so many times it can be difficult to get them to say something new.”
“No, I mean, do you feel bad for asking?”
“Feel bad?” He didn’t really think about it; if a phone call needed to be made, or a question asked, he did it. It was his job. She might think he was unfeeling if he admitted that. “Yes, it can be difficult sometimes.”
“How horrible.”
“Sometimes it’s not. People want to tell their story. When I was a cadet reporter, I had to do doorstops at three in the morning, usually after someone’s kid wrapped himself around a telegraph pole. There was probably only twenty minutes between when the police broke the news to them and I turned up. That was tough.”
“I’d shut the door in someone’s face.”
“Some did. You knew when you knocked on the door how you were going to be received. The nicer the house, the shorter the time the door remained open. You have to be quick.”
“Rich people don’t talk to report
ers?”
“Educated people don’t.”
In Hall’s experience, working-class people were more likely to welcome you, offer cups of tea and candid comments, and lend photographs of their dead or injured children. One time Hall left with a family’s photograph album. He told the grieving family it was to allow his editor to select the photo they were running of the boy bashed to death outside a Launceston nightclub. In truth he took it to prevent any rival news outlets from obtaining a photograph before the Tasmanian Voice went to press.
“The Crawfords weren’t excited to talk to me, but they were accommodating. They still hope their daughter will come home. Let’s talk about something else.”
“I can’t get it out of my head.”
“It would be frightening, finding a dead body.”
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “I spoke to the Swiss woman, probably on the day she died.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“She asked directions to the rock pool.”
“Go on.”
“I’d been at the rock pool that morning. It was filthy. Some loser cleaned his fish in it.”
“You told her that?”
“No. That’s the point. I didn’t tell her that. There was no point her trekking up there. You couldn’t swim in it. It stank; flies and dried guts over the rocks.”
Hall shifted down to second gear, doubling the clutch so the engine gave a satisfied hum. So that’s what was bothering her, kept drawing her to that desolate stretch of beach in half-light and rain.
“You wouldn’t be the first person to blame yourself for someone else’s act of evil.”
“I don’t blame myself.”
“Guilt is a waste of time. When your number’s up, it’s up.”
“I don’t agree. That’s too fatalistic. People have to be responsible for their actions.”