Bay of Fires (35 page)

Sarah’s sneakers sucked against the wet sand on the edge of the lagoon. Half a dozen men and women loitered around the smoldering campfire. She reconsidered instigating the confrontation. They were leaving, after all. Roger was in the hospital and would be safe tonight.

But the campers would return at Easter, and again next Christmas. She had come down to the campsite to speak her mind and she would do so. They’d tell her where to go. They were probably pissed already. It was widely known the wives drove everyone home at the end of their holiday. Sarah crossed her arms and waited for someone to turn around.

Bunghole saw her before the others did.

“To what do we owe this lovely surprise?” He grinned sarcastically as he threw some camping equipment into the back of his Hilux.

His smile slid off his face as Sarah let him have it. She didn’t hold back, even when his wife came over and positioned herself between them. Darlene was a big woman, and Sarah took a cautious sideways step. She had seen women fight inside and outside the two Eumundi pubs. It was ugly; they ripped hair and clawed fingers into each other’s eyes and noses.

“Anytime I see you, or hear you’ve been anywhere near the Coker property, you’re going to get it.”

Bunghole nodded. “And you’re going to give it to me?”

“Don’t underestimate me.”

“Coker is a bad egg,” Darlene said. “Face it.”

“He’s not.” Sarah couldn’t believe how calm she was being. This was going well. “Physically, Roger Coker would be incapable of killing. He’s got one good arm that shakes all the time. He can barely get bait on his hook.”

No one spoke. Sarah looked around. Most of the campers did not make eye contact with her. Darlene, at least, looked sympathetic, just as she had that day outside the shop when Bunghole’s milk carton almost hit Sarah in the head. Were they finally getting it? When they plotted to hurl road kill at the Coker cottage, when they attacked Roger’s cats, when they accused him of murder, had they harbored the suspicion that they were mistaken? She had not expected them to be receptive to her. She wondered if they regretted their action. Perhaps they finally saw their suspicion of Roger as a misplaced diversion from another night swatting mosquitoes around their campfire.

“If you’re done, you can get the fuck out of here,” Bunghole said.

So that was how he wanted to play it. Fine.

“By the way, did I see the ranger out here the other day?” she said.

“I dunno. Did you?”

“Wonder how he knew about you? Must have had a good tip-off.”

Hands on her hips, Sarah waited for one of them to speak. She wasn’t sure, but it could have been Darlene’s sister who threw the first can. It hit Sarah on her arm. Someone else threw a rubber thong which slapped the side of her head. Her body stiffened with rage, but their laughter pushed her back. She jogged out of the campsite, taking a shortcut through yellow buffalo grass that whipped her bare legs.

Hall’s gear was in the Holden; he’d paid Jane in full. She knew he was standing there, waiting to speak to her, but she betrayed no sign of it except for pulling weeds faster than before.

“Jane,” he began. He wanted to say good-bye and wish her well. Her hospitality had been decent, in its own unique way.

Jane swung around. Sweat shone on her reddened neck. It had dampened the armpits of her T-shirt. She wiped her hands on her jeans and took a breath.

“Life’s too short to beat around the bush,” she said.

“Let sleeping dogs lie,” he offered.

He had a gut feeling about what she was going to say, and he didn’t want to hear it.

Jane was speaking to the sea. “The other night, when we both drank too much, that was a mistake. I’ve apologized to you already.”

“Water under the bridge,” Hall said, reverting to feeble clichés in his foreboding.

“Hang on. I’ve always spoken my mind. I think you know I am interested in having a relationship with you.”

Hall was speechless. He felt ill. It was childish, his reaction. It wasn’t as if Jane had given an explicit description of what they could do sexually together. She wanted his company. Nothing wrong with that, he repeated silently. Inside his pockets, he rubbed his sweaty fingertips together. More than anything else, he felt deeply sad for her.

“I’m so sorry, Jane,” Hall said.

“Fair enough.” Jane nodded.

A heavy silence hung between them.

“This is not the life I would choose if I had a choice,” Jane said.

Hall looked around, trying to understand her. Her mature garden was full of delicate beauty—the fragrant herbs, the flowering succulents, the lavender and yellow roses. But there was also the hard stubby grass and faded house with its broken windows and, downstairs, the bedroom she had slept in alone for far too long.

“But it’s my life. I don’t want it screwed up,” she said. “Appreciate it if you could keep this to yourself.”

“Of course.”

“You get what I’m saying, Hall? I have a private life.”

She almost smiled, watching Hall to see if he comprehended her implication. An image of her and John Avery making love appeared in Hall’s mind. Did she discard her crankiness with the faded red flannelette nightshirt he had seen flapping on the Hills Hoist? He could not imagine her being warm and cuddly. He almost shuddered.

“I understand,” Hall said. “And I assume you are not speaking about Gary.”

“I am not talking about Gary.” Jane started digging again. “No. He’s a bag of shit.”

“We all have our regrets, I guess,” Hall said.

She dug and tossed the soil a few more times before shoving the fork in hard. “I’ve never had a man who didn’t let me down.”

“You’re an angry woman, Jane.”

She shrugged.

“You have to get over it,” Hall said.

She didn’t answer.

He added, “It’s not healthy to be so angry.”

“People have said to me, ‘Are you planning on being this bitter for the rest of your life?’” Jane said. “Maybe I am.”

“Jane…”

She flicked her hand in his direction, dismissing him. “You’ve made yourself heard.”

Poised on a rock beyond the old jetty, Sarah looked like a fisherwoman in a painting of a nineteenth-century fishing village. The bare wooden jetty, the empty sea, and the muted green vegetation that matched her clothing conveyed a peaceful sadness. From his position up on the road, Hall recognized her powerful swing as she cast out. There was no way she could avoid him. He cut through the yard of a vacant shack and followed the winding track down to the sea. He moved slowly, carefully picking delicate pink flowers with tiny thorns that cut his fingers, navy blue blooms, and cottontails. The task gave him time to collect his thoughts.

In Launceston his rundown house had rooms with bay windows overlooking the gorge cliff grounds. From the wooden verandas you could hear gum trees rustling and peacocks calling out at dusk. His house had broken balustrades and five blocked chimneys. It needed fixing, a diamond in the rough. That was what he wanted to tell her. But first he needed to tell her everything that Simone had told him.

When Sarah greeted him, she seemed agitated. She kept looking across to the wharf and up at the track Hall had come down, as though she expected someone to be following her. No one was.

She continued to fish as he updated her on Roger’s condition in the hospital. He was sick, still not breathing properly, but it was not pneumonia. She seemed pleased that Roger’s illness was not as severe as they first thought, although she did not say so.

Two days had passed since their confrontation about Sam Shelley. He could see she was no longer angry, but her indifference hurt him more. He had thought about penning his thoughts. He said things better on paper than he did face-to-face.

“Simone confessed everything,” Hall blurted out. “I know what happened to Anja and Chloe.”

He explained almost everything Simone had said in the Mercedes. Sarah listened, her forehead creased with worry, and he decided he would not tell her he was certain that Chloe Crawford’s body was in the mineshaft behind the tip. Knowing Sarah, she would hike up there and take a look. It would not be good for her. Sarah had seen one dead body and that was enough for anyone.

She cut him off. “Why are you talking to me about all this?”

There was no way to put it except bluntly. “Simone is threatening to have you charged over Sam.”

“Is this an ultimatum?” Sarah’s lip curled and he could see her blood-red gums.

“God, no.”

“Well what, then? I don’t care what you do. Why are you even telling me?”

“I’m telling you that I know what happened to Anja and I think I’ve located Chloe’s body and I’m not writing the story. I’m not following it up.”

“Slow down. Are you insane?”

Hall knew he was rambling as he explained his plan. He would do as Simone suggested, and let the police work out the details. Perhaps Chloe’s death would look accidental; that would depend on the forensics. He felt sorry for Sam. Simone deserved to stand trial as much as Sam did, but Hall doubted she ever would.

“She was awful, Sarah,” Hall said. “I’ve never heard a woman be so callous, so cruel.”

“Sounds like you’re blowing a good story,” Sarah said.

Hall stared, frustrated with her lack of emotion. “Sarah, breaking this news would be any journalist’s once-in-a-lifetime story.”

“Don’t do this for me, mate. I’m not worth it.”

He grabbed her hand and she snatched it away. He felt stupid, a schoolboy making a fool of himself.

“Why are you acting like this?” he said.

“Like what? You got what you paid for. I never false-advertised.”

“Don’t be crass.”

“Please go.”

Her voice sounded emotionless, the way it did whenever she spoke to Bunghole. Hall stalled, tasting the salt spray on his lips, watching how the afternoon sun dimpled the water. The beauty of the afternoon ocean heightened his disappointment.

There was something else he had planned to tell her. It was none of his business. But a tiny part of him hoped she didn’t really want him to leave. If ever they were to have something more together, he had to be brutally honest.

Using gentle language he explained about John and the key. He kept his eyes on the sea as he outlined his embarrassing initial suspicions and his regrettable secondary suspicions when he found the score sheet in the Scrabble box. Sarah listened, nodding, winding and releasing her fishing rod.

“I know about it, Hall.”

“You do?”

“Can’t believe they’re still at it. Yuck. It’s been going, on and off, for twenty years.”

“Oh.”

“Mum and Erica don’t know. I always thought they didn’t need to.”

He put a hand on her shoulder. Her torso shook as she wound the reel in. It was still shaking as she released it. Gently, she removed his hand.

“Hall. Go back to town and your teenybopper girlfriends. I’m not interested in you anymore.”

Hall left her alone on the rocks. As he walked up to the guesthouse, he hoped not to pass anyone. If he had to speak, even to say hello, Hall feared he might cry.

Sarah glanced at the wildflowers Hall had left on the rock for her. The bunch was tied with a piece of plaited dune grass. No one had ever given her flowers.

Her head hurt, worse than the meanest hangover she had ever endured.

What a shocking turn of events. Simone and Sam Shelley. If someone had suggested it to her at the beginning of the summer, Sarah would have laughed in their face. But now it didn’t seem so farfetched. A drunken flashback of Sam in her hire car on Christmas Day began to form in her mind. Sitting beside her, Sam had mentioned his mother in some peculiar context. Sarah could not remember exactly what he’d said, except that she had felt uncomfortable, which made her suspect he had spoken of Simone after their physical encounter. What Hall said was true: if Sam did push Anja into the ocean, if Sam did suffocate Chloe and dispose of her body, it was impossible to prove. Regardless, Hall was mistaken and deluded to keep this theory from the police.

Whether the murder case went to court or not, Simone Shelley might hold Sarah’s encounter with Sam over her head forever. The realization startled her enough that she slacked the line and lost a decent chunk of bait.

The only non-depressing thing about the conversation with Hall was his news about Dad and Jane Taylor. Hall’s demeanor was severe and churchlike as he described the affair, as though he were informing her that someone had died. Sarah had never been entirely certain about the relationship between Jane Taylor and her father. It was something she tried not to think about.

There had been funny things over the years that could have exposed an unpleasant set of circumstances. These oddities, such as nice bottles of port or gin going missing from the liquor cabinet which neither Sarah, Erica, nor their mother had a plausible explanation for, or their father’s unexplained absences from the shack, his habit of taking long walks late in the evening, could easily be dismissed as inconsequential. It was easy enough to tell herself she was imagining any familiarity in the interactions she had witnessed between her father and the guesthouse owner.

Sarah sighed. Long ago, when Sarah was fifteen or so, she had been staying alone at the shack with her father. John had kissed her good night and gone for a walk, as was his custom. When she woke early to go fishing, he was not in the shack. It had not bothered her until, casting her line from the headland, Sarah watched her father emerge from the track that led up to the guesthouse. Father and daughter eyed each other. Their ensuing conversation revolved around the safe topics of fishing and ocean conditions.

Hall was right about one thing: it wasn’t anyone else’s business. There was no sense in living your life worrying about how other people lived theirs. And maybe Sarah’s mother knew but chose to ignore it.

She wondered if Hall had been expecting to cast a line with her. She had not offered him any of the raw chicken she was using for bait when he picked up her spare rod. Her decision was made. She was satisfied that he had helped Roger, but there was an implication in the way he told her about it that suggested she should be grateful to him. He had paused after he told the story, as though waiting for her to provide the conclusion. Sarah had merely nodded. Hall had done what was required, that was all.