Something Fishy

by Shane Maloney

  I slid back into the gap between the hull and the freight and got my hands around the shaft of an oar. I lay there, staring up at the blackness of the covering tarpaulin. Oar clutched to my chest like a quarterstaff, I awaited developments.

  We rocked across broken ground, then stopped. The cabin door opened. It snicked shut. The hitch fastenings of the trailer squeaked and clattered. The trailer moved backwards, bumpity-bump.

  Now, I told myself. Go for broke. Toss the tarp aside, jump out of the boat, run, head for the highway. If tackled, clobber Syce with the oar, keep running, find somewhere to hide.

  As I began to rise, the front of the boat jerked upwards. The top of my head slammed against the stern of the dinghy. The boat slid off the trailer, scraped across a hard, uneven surface and splashed into the water. It bobbed, righting itself, then rocked again as Syce jumped aboard.

  I lurched upright, oar at the ready. But the tarpaulin didn’t rise with me. Syce was standing on it, yanking the rope toggle to start the outboard. I pushed upwards against the unyielding sheeting, and flung myself recklessly in the direction of the stern. Flailing with the oar, I tried to bat the slippery plastic aside.

  The motor fired. The boat rocked in the swell as it chugged forward. I bore upwards, jerking like a frog in a sock and tried to hoppo-bumpo the helmsman into the water.

  Syce must have thought I was Tony, rising from the dead. Or some avenging spectre in black plastic.

  ‘The fuck?’ he said.

  Spooked or not, he had a firm grip on the tiller handle. I bounced off him and sprawled backwards onto the roll of mesh, scrabbling free of the tarpaulin.

  Syce was an ominous presence in a wrestler’s stance, arms spread, legs akimbo. I teetered on the mesh roll, the tarp wrapped round my shins, firming my grip on the oar. Lit by the phosphorescence of the sea, we confronted each other down the short length of the bobbing boat.

  ‘The fuck are you?’ demanded the dark shape.

  That was for me to know and him to find out. Kicking free of the tarp, I lunged forward and took a swing. Syce dipped and the oar whistled over his head. He snatched it and tried to wrench it from my grip.

  We see-sawed back and forth, fighting for ownership of the oar, the boat pitching beneath us. We were about fifty metres from the shore, moving parallel to it. Then Syce pushed instead of pulling and I felt myself toppling backwards. It was the Frisbee incident revisited.

  ‘Mamma mia,’ I thought. ‘Here I go again.’ I let go of the oar and dived overboard.

  The sea was bracing cold, pitch black. I kicked hard and made as much distance as possible before broaching the surface. When I bobbed up, whooping for air, the boat was already turning. The vibrations of the propeller hummed in my ears as Syce gunned the throttle. The swell rose beneath me and the low outline of the shore reared at the periphery of my vision. I struck for the land, clawing at the water with a frenetic overarm.

  The tempo of the outboard increased, closing fast. The sea was dark, the land darker. The boat sliced through the water, bearing straight at me. I filled my lungs and dived. The hull brushed my shoe and I kicked harder, deeper, lungs at full stretch, ears popping.

  I broke the surface in the wake of the boat and immediately resumed my wild stroke for the shore. The boat came around, Syce trying for another pass. But before he could reach me, I was taken in the grip of a wave, hoisted aloft and pitched towards the shore.

  The swell dropped, then rose again, clutching me to its heaving bosom. Directly ahead, just metres away, white water slopped over a shelf of jagged rocks. The rocks were mottled with seed mussels, thousands of tiny shells, sharp as razors.

  For the moment, I was flotsam. Soon I would be jetsam. The difference being a fractured skull, a broken spine, a ruptured spleen and multiple lacerations.

  The fatal shore rushed towards me. I hit it chest-first and rocketed forward, careering across slimy straps of wet leather. A bed of uprooted kelp. Limbs flailing, I skittered like a buttered duck. The wave subsided and my fingers closed around a projecting knob of rock. I dragged myself upright. White water streamed around my shins, trying to drag me back. I tottered forward, escaping its pull.

  Somehow, miraculously, I was alive and ashore. I bent, hands on knees, shivering and retching. Then, I looked back to sea. Thirty metres away, the dinghy sat low in the water, a grey smudge. A dark shape crouched at the stern, arm on the outboard rudder, watching me.

  I turned and headed inland, wading and hobbling across the pitted table of exposed rock. My shoes squelched and my ankle throbbed but I was well on my way to the highway, to a passing car, to the police.

  I would have been, at least, if a cliff wasn’t blocking my way. A sharp incline of crumbling sandstone, it rose almost vertically from the rock shelf. I groped along its base, sloshing through ankle-deep water, looking for a way up. It crumbled at my touch, showering me with sand and pebbles.

  The boat was still there, outboard idling, Syce watching. My landing place was a shallow bite mark in the encompassing cliff, a dead-end street.

  I started to scramble up the cliff, clefts and crannies crumbling under my weight. The putt-putt of the outboard came across the water and I glanced over my shoulder. The dinghy was moving, heading back the way it had come. I kept climbing.

  The cliff face had all the substance of a coffee-dunked donut. I slipped back, advanced, slipped back again. Gradually, I gained height. Nearer the top, stunted vegetation sprouted from the loose rock. Seizing roots and stems, I worked my way upwards, clinging like Spiderman to the friable rock.

  Eventually I reached the top. Greyish waist-high bushes extended for as far as I could see, melding into wind-bent trees at the top of a far incline. A figure was wading through the scrub. He was holding a long thin object.

  Syce. He must have put the boat ashore.

  Bent almost double, I fled along the clifftop and picked my way through the maze of bushes. But the soft ground gave way beneath my feet. Slithering downwards, riding my backside, grabbing anything within reach to slow my descent, I found myself back at the bottom of the cliff. A cascade of pebbles and sand rained down on my head. Syce was close, moving fast. A wave broke across the rock platform and lapped at my feet. The sea was my only way out.

  Desperate for deeper water, I hobbled and limped, winced and pirouetted through the rock-strewn shallows. I stubbed toes, lost my balance, tripped and stumbled. The grunts and curses from above told me Syce was coming fast down the incline. A few more seconds and he would be at the bottom, raising the shotgun, getting a bead on me.

  Water flooded my nose and mouth. I sank into deep water, a hidden rockpool. A wave washed over me and I grabbed the jutting rim of the pool, looking back in terror.

  Syce had stopped, pulled up short by my sudden disappearance. He cast around, trying to spot me in the churning water. I held tight and ducked as the next wave passed over me. Syce advanced, scanning the roiling shallows. A bigger wave broke, sending water surging to his thighs. He swayed and teetered but held his ground. I gulped down a lungful of air and another wave washed over me.

  The rock pool was maybe a metre and a half deep, jacuzzi-sized. I clung to the overhang, willing myself invisible, daring to raise my head only in the brief intervals between waves. Gasp, duck, cower. Gasp, duck, cower.

  An eternity came and went. My teeth began to chatter. The tide was going out. If I stayed where I was, I would soon be exposed. Syce, if he was still there, would walk across the rocks and shoot me dead. I risked raising my head a little. Syce was not visible. But that didn’t mean he’d gone.

  Taking a punt, I edged my way to the seaward extremity of the rock pool. Then, flat on my belly in the surging foam, I slithered out towards the ocean.

  A wave broke over the rocks and the ebbing tide sucked me off.

  Nostrils at the waterline, I breaststroked along the edge of the deep water, rising and falling with the chop. The water was deep and dark, cool and creepy, but it was infinitely better than
being shot.

  The land lay to my left, about fifty metres away, so the current was running east in the general direction of Lorne. This was good. Once I’d put a bit of distance between myself and Syce, I could swim ashore. After that, all I had to do was make my way uphill to the Great Ocean Road, follow it to human habitation, sound the alarm and collapse in a convulsing heap.

  The land loomed, a sheer wall, the sea foaming at its base. With no immediate opportunity for landfall, I rolled onto my back and sculled, letting the current carry me, conserving my strength for the push to shore. My shorts clung to my thighs, chafing the skin, and my ankle throbbed faintly. The leather of my watchband had shrunk, tightening around my wrist. My mobile phone and flashlight were long gone, dropped in the dinghy during my tussle with Syce. But I still had Tony Melina’s cross tucked in my change pocket.

  I heard a faint putt-putt, the signature of Syce’s outboard. Treading water, I strained to get a fix on its position. Cool currents swirled around my legs. Gradually, the sound grew fainter, then faded away entirely.

  The land, too, was fading. With a sudden sense of urgency, I struck for the shore, freestyle now. The continent appeared to be receding. I slogged on, pounding at the water. Face down, arm over, turn and breathe. Face down, arm over, turn and breathe.

  Urgency became panic. Despite my efforts, I was making no progress. I was panting, unable to suck down enough oxygen. My pulse was racing and so was my imagination. I was electric with fear. Freaking out, big time. Gripped by the gut-wrenching terror of a man adrift at night in the bottomless abyss, a puny speck in the immensity of the inky ocean. Shark bait.

  Even now, a great white or a blue pointer was rising from the deep, circling for the kill. It would strike without warning, hit me like a freight train, clamp its monstrous jaws around me, shred my flesh with merciless, serrated teeth. Then others would join the attack, a pack of them, whipped to a frenzy by the blood in the water. My blood. Even now, myriad minor abrasions were spreading my scent, sounding the dinner gong.

  A shark, or something worse. Some nameless horror from the primordial depths. A creature of suckered tentacles or poisonous spines. Anyone familiar with the leading personalities in the NSW branch of the Labor Party would know exactly how I felt.

  Onwards I thrashed, adrenalin, sea water and my own asthmatic gasps roaring in my ears. Whatever they are, I told myself, you can’t outswim them. Don’t exhaust yourself trying. I slowed down, shifted to sidestroke, focused on the blurred smudge of the land. Specks of light showed along the coast, some of them moving. Houses and cars, all just beyond my reach. I let panic settle into mere hysteria, then struck again for the shore, aiming for a ragged line of white, the slosh of waves on rocks.

  Churning through the black water, I collided with a pedestal of nubbled stone. It was slightly below water level, table-sized and flattish. I scrambled onto it. For several minutes, I knelt there, clinging to its uneven surface. My chest was heaving and relief surged through me.

  When the gasping subsided, I climbed to my feet and took my bearings. Ankle-deep in the encompassing briny, I must have looked like a try-hard Jesus pausing for a leisurely look-see on my way across the Sea of Galilee.

  The shoreline proper was about two hundred metres away. Here and there in the intervening water, dark patches could be faintly discerned, fragments of submerged reef. If the tide continued to fall, it might eventually be possible to get ashore by jumping from rock to rock. I decided to wait and see.

  No man is an island, according to the constitution of the Australian Labor Party, but I certainly felt like one. At the very minimum, I was a shag on a rock. A shivering shag in sodden shoes squatting on an almost invisible rock, water swirling around me, waiting for the tide to ebb away.

  ‘Aarrkk,’ I cried, just to hear my own voice, reassure myself that I was still alive. ‘Aarrkk.’

  I raised my watch to my face. Waterproof to 30 m, it said. 1:33 a.m. Four hours since I’d got myself lost in the bush. For most of that time I’d been in imminent danger of being discovered, mutilated, shot, drowned or eaten by killer whales. By comparison, being perched on a semi-submerged rock waiting for the tide to ebb was a moment of quality solitude, an opportunity to reflect on what I’d seen. My chance for an end-of-year stocktake.

  I reviewed the contents of my mental in-tray.

  Rodney Syce was hiding in the Otway Ranges. He was calling himself Mick, growing marijuana and processing poached abalone for Jake Martyn, celebrity eatery proprietor. The two of them had abducted Tony Melina, a less celebrated but evidently cashed-up restaurateur. Someone called Phillip Ferrier was involved too.

  On the promise of a cash pay-off and Martyn’s help getting out of the country, Syce had tortured Melina, forced him to sign certain documents, then murdered him. He was currently in the process of dumping Melina’s body in the sea.

  Had Syce been hiding in the Otways ever since the Remand Centre break-out? Was the restaurant owner involved in the escape? If so, how? And why?

  It was a bizarre scenario. Too bizarre.

  A new fear suddenly took hold of me.

  This was a story that strained credulity to the limit, even mine. How could I expect anyone else to believe it?

  My credibility with the Victoria Police was not exactly money in the bank. Surely they would conclude that I was having one of my periodic visions. Maybe even that I’d mislaid my last marble.

  How could I convince them that I was telling the truth?

  What evidence could I produce?

  Syce had doubtless rolled Tony Melina overboard by now, so there was no body. I had no idea how to find the camp again. And judging by what I had seen of him, Jake Martyn wasn’t likely to fess up the moment the coppers put the question to him.

  No evidence, no admission, a lunatic witness.

  I rummaged in my pockets as if they might possibly contain some means of proving my story. Or some means of getting off that damned rock. An inflatable life-raft, a signed confession, a map of the Otways with X marking the spot.

  I found $125 in notes. Waterproof polymer banknotes, thanks to the cutting-edge washing-machine-proof technology of the Australian Mint. A half-full pack of Tic-Tacs. And Tony Melina’s little gold crucifix.

  It was circumstantial at best, but it was the only hook on which I could hang my credibility. Rita would be able to identify it. She could also attest that he was missing, whereabouts unknown. And the fact that I possessed an item of Tony’s personal jewellery might persuade the police at least to investigate.

  Poor Tony. He slept with the fishes tonight. At least he was getting some rest, which was more than could be said for me. I slipped his little Jesus back into my change pocket and gave it a reassuring pat. Then I ate the Tic-Tacs.

  An hour passed, making no effort to hurry. My shirt began to dry out, the accumulated heat of the day radiating from the nearby landmass. The air was balmy, the ambient temperature still in the high teens. Little by little, the water level receded. My plinth became a pyramid. Add a deckchair and a daiquiri, I could have sold tickets.

  Time crawled. I flexed my knees and windmilled my arms, shag-aerobics to keep myself from cramping up.

  An archipelago slowly emerged from the sea, a path of stepping stones leading to the tide-exposed shore. Problem was, it fell far short of my perch. Walking ashore dry-shod was off the agenda. Apart from the fact that my shoes were soaked, the nearest visible outcrop was a good hundred metres away.

  At 3:40 a.m., I climbed down from my shag-roost and lowered myself into the water. A hundred metres was nothing, after all. Four lengths of the pool at the City Baths. A mere bagatelle.

  Small beer but big trouble. A powerful current was surging through the channel. For every metre I advanced towards the shore, I was swept five sideways, a cork in a stormwater drain. I tried to fight my way back to Whelan Island but soon lost the battle. Again, I was being swept out to sea.

  I pounded for the land, relentless, determined. Kick, st
roke, breathe. Kick, stroke, breathe. Thirty strokes, fifty, a hundred. My arms turned to lead and still I kept clawing at the water. My thighs were red-raw but still I waggled them. I shucked off my shoes, hoping it would help.

  It didn’t. I was going nowhere fast. Nowhere I wanted to go, at least. The current was running parallel to the shore, dragging me with it. The land remained in view, contours rising and falling as it rushed past, but I couldn’t reach it, try as I might.

  You’re finished, Murray Whelan, I told myself. This is it. You are going to die. And for nothing. By the time your body washes ashore, if there’s anything left to be washed up, Syce will be long gone.

  The sea wanted me bad and I no longer had the strength to resist. Water filled my mouth and visions flooded my mind. Deeds regretted, hopes unfulfilled, a terrible sense of waste. All the usual shit. And worst of all, the gut-wrenching, aching realisation that I would never see my little boy again.

  I shuddered, gasped and groaned. Then, marshalling my strength, I made one last effort to reach the land. If I was going down, I’d go down fighting.

  I went down.

  Jesus, it was dark down there. My lungs were burning. My arms were flailing. My hand struck something slimy and ropy. A slimy rope. I grabbed it and hauled with the last of my strength.

  Blood raged in my ears and a glowing ball of white rushed towards me out of the darkness. It grew larger and larger until it filled my entire field of vision. The mystery of life and death was revealing itself to me.

  It struck my head with a hollow bonk. I broke the surface gulping for air and discovered that the secret of the universe was a basketball-sized polystyrene sphere. I grabbed it and clutched it to my chest.

  Christ alone knew how long I hung there, and He wasn’t telling. A bamboo cane extended from the centre of the bobbing white ball. A limp scrap of orange plastic hung at its far extremity. I was clinging to the marker buoy for a crayfish trap.