by Poppy Gee
She forced herself to swim. Slicing through the water, she took long deep breaths and focused on her stroke until it physically hurt. When she stopped, she was about two hundred meters away from the beach. Behind the break, where sharks and unpredictable currents made others afraid to swim, the solitude was therapeutic. Ocean breezes flicked shouts from the beach upward in pleasing distant puffs, as inconsequential as the faraway squawks of seagulls.
At the base of the granite headland was the cove where Anja Traugott had sunbathed topless in the days before she died. Scrubby green bushes protected a tiny patch of white lapped by blue. Anja had folded a white T-shirt over her eyes and dozed. Breasts bare and open palms facing the sun, she wore nothing but the polka-dot bikini bottoms that were on her corpse. Everyone knew this because Don, walking the beach on his chiropractor’s orders, had almost tripped over her. Pamela had told the story again last night.
“He was so embarrassed. You can just imagine Donald trying to sneak away, so big and clumsy.”
Flip and Erica had laughed. Don, listening as John described a recent lecture he had delivered on the history of Chinese settlement in the area, pretended not to hear. Pamela had gleaned a lot of information from someone who had apparently seen nothing more than a glimpse of a topless woman, but no one commented on this. The conversation had turned to the pressing concern of melanoma risk.
“I’ve always said, Europeans have no clue about the hole in the ozone layer. Everyone sunbathes nude in Europe—I always did as a girl during vacations in the Mediterranean—but it just isn’t safe this far south,” Pamela had said.
Sarah swam toward the cove. She lay against a rock that, under the midday sun, was almost too warm. Disjointed, uncontrollable images swam blindly through her head: Jake’s angry voice shouting across the Pineapple Hotel pool table, waking up in the sand dunes on Boxing Day, Jake’s flatmate slamming the door in her face when she went looking for him, her own loud voice opining to Hall last night. Stuff it. You couldn’t change the past.
Eyes closed, she dug her nails into the lichen until they were gritty with sand. She swallowed and swallowed again, searching for something else to think about. There was a collection of shells in the shack, gathered years ago on long walks around the national park’s empty beaches and rocky points. She tried to remember each one, visualizing the milky surfaces and brownish corrugations until her mind stopped racing. Cuttlefish, pen shell, fan mussel, cone shell, angel’s wing, bubble shell, screw shell, smoky Venus, butterfly, cowrie, witch’s fingernail; each appeared briefly in her mind.
Soothed by the silent recitation, Sarah pushed herself off the rock, ignoring the flecks of lichen and sand stuck to her. She peeled down her one-piece and inspected her body. Ugly stretch marks clawed her breasts, a reminder of the weight she put on the winter she fractured her ankle and couldn’t exercise. Her abdominals were hard and white. She reclined slowly onto the sand, her abs taking her weight. She took pleasure in their strength.
Above the beach, the row of shacks hobbled along the hill blurred between the bright sunshine and acres of blue sky. Was anyone watching? Everyone owned a pair of binoculars to spot wildlife. Dolphins followed the waves close to the beach, mollyhawks swooped over dark shadows of mullet schools moving through the shallows, and, twice a year, pods of whales passed. Any movement on the sand was enough to raise people from their armchairs; a lone surfer far down the shore break would arouse mild interest, and a few guys towing each other in a donut suspended behind their tinny was sufficient. A couple of shacks had telescopes installed on their decks, sweeping metal barrels that could see sailors moving on the deck of a Sydney-to-Hobart yacht sailing kilometers out to sea. Sarah turned her palms upward, the sun hot on her chest, her toes buried in warm sand.
It was funny how people looked so different in daylight. Hall’s long sideburns and aviator sunglasses had seemed like a stylish retro nod last night; today the bristly sideburns looked unkempt and the plastic glasses cheap. His business shirt was un-ironed, his trousers too long and the bottoms frayed and dirty where he had trod on them. He had more freckles than she remembered, and more gray in his reddish hair, which was damp. She was close enough to smell the citric sweetness of his shampoo. He wanted to know where she was going.
“Nowhere. Just to the boat ramp. Dad and Erica were checking their cray pots.”
He slapped his hand on the roof of the vehicle and told her to get in. She hesitated. In the paddock behind his car, bunches of fraying yellow ryegrass swayed above dusty clumps of turnips uprooted for the cows to eat.
“What’s the matter? Are you feeling bad for taking advantage of me?” Hall’s deep voice reminded her of the announcer on Eumundi Classical FM. “It’s okay. I’m not holding it against you.”
He took off his glasses, and his green eyes fixed on her. Sarah forced a chirpy laugh.
“Judging by how hungover I was this morning, I think it was the other way round.”
“I’ve had a day’s practice driving on the gravel now, if you’re worried about that.”
It would be rude to decline his offer of a lift, but she didn’t want to go with him. Despite the previous night’s intimacy he was a stranger to her. He was waiting for her to do or say something. If he was just trying to be nice for the sake of it, he could save his breath. She wouldn’t be offended.
“Well, if you don’t need a lift…”
“No,” she said. She was surprised to feel sorry for him. “Oh, what the heck.” She walked around to the passenger side of his car. “Follow the road.”
She had not noticed how dirty his car was the other day. Loose newspaper pages and three used coffee mugs cluttered the floor, clothes were strewn across the backseat, and something heavy and metallic shifted back and forth in the boot as the car bounced on the corrugated road. She smelled engine oil and dust. The edge of the bench seat sank away, and she kept sliding toward the door. Head aching, she braced one hand on the door’s armrest and busied herself with sipping the discolored tank water in her water bottle. It was insane how slowly he was driving.
Words to fill the few minutes it took to drive to the boat ramp evaded Sarah. Usually the conversation after the night before came easily to her. Flirty small talk over a final beer and a cigarette as she waited in pale new light for one of the town’s three taxis, making plans she wouldn’t keep. If a man drinking in the Pineapple Hotel’s public bar wasn’t married, you could bet your last buck he either was a sugar cane laborer or a fruit picker, or worked at the Eumundi Barramundi Farm. Sarah would know. She wasn’t proud of this but didn’t care either. When you called the shots, you knew where you stood.
Hall signaled to go around a bend in the road. He took driving seriously, sitting upright and watching the road with his hands in the ten-and-two position. Occasionally he glanced out his window but only for a second. She felt like she was a teenager being driven home from a party by her father. It was very different from being in the car with Jake, who, in the six months she had known him, hadn’t left his vehicle outside the pub once. He nearly wrote it off many times. One night they were fighting about something and the car swerved off the road and wiped out someone’s tin can letterbox. It got caught on the front bumper and clanged all the way home. In the early days things like that made them laugh.
“Abalone Bake Park,” Hall said as they drove past the sunburned patch of grass next to the shop.
“Mmm,” she said.
She remembered most of the night, more than she wanted to if she was honest about it. A swollen half-moon had cast a thick white path of light across the black sea as they sat on the rocks and drank the last of the beers. Behind them the Abalone Bake wound up and people drifted away into the night. Clean salty ocean air blew away the smells of frying garlic and seafood. Waves they couldn’t see gushed and frothed on the rocks, and at some point they sat in a way that their bodies were touching.
Meandering up the gravel road, Hall and Sarah had joked about the murder case and tried
to hold each other upright. Neither had mentioned the thing they both knew was about to happen. Between sheets softened from constant washing she had straddled him, pinning his shoulders and arms and hips to the hard mattress with a forcefulness that now made her cringe. The most embarrassing bit was when she pressed her mouth on his neck, drunkenly tugging at the softness under his jaw, and he had pushed her away.
In the morning she had woken up surprised to find herself squinting in the strange predawn light coming through the guesthouse window. Hall was awake, tapping on a laptop. Her mouth felt like the bottom of a birdcage. She needed to use the bathroom. If only she were at home.
Through the thin walls Sarah could hear someone walking around, the hollow sound of a door opening and closing. Jane Taylor would raise her penciled eyebrows in surprise if Sarah came out of the bedroom with Hall. It was out of the question to explain to Hall that this wasn’t the first time she had been an unofficial guest here. He watched as she searched for her underwear at the bottom of the bed, turning away only as she pulled her underpants on. On the floor was the unmistakable silver square of a condom wrapper, torn in half.
In the confined space of the car Sarah tried to breathe inaudibly. She couldn’t bring herself to check if there was a mark on Hall’s neck. His hands on the steering wheel were the closest she could come to looking at him. Patches of rust-colored hair, some of it gray, grew on his knuckles, and his fingernails were longer than hers. She took another little sip of water and wished he would drive faster.
Tasmanian crayfishing laws stated that each person holding a license had to be present when his or her pot was pulled. It was supposed to stop overfishing; a person couldn’t drop six pots a day on behalf of absent friends.
In the boat motoring toward the broken concrete boat ramp, Sarah counted four heads. She was in no doubt they had cleared five pots. She crossed her arms. She wouldn’t say anything. Don knew how she felt about illegal fishing. They’d had the conversation more than once.
Hall stood beside her with the wide-legged stance of a farmer, his shoulders broad above stringy hips. He took a couple of photos. There wasn’t much to photograph; submerged kelp-covered rocks prevented a pure reflection of the sky, and the water looked dirty. Six or seven tinnies tugged at the ropes leashing them to wire cables drilled into the rocks on either side of the bay. Low tide meant the ropes, tied to bow and stern, were too short, and the tinnies jerked as if they were hog-tied.
As the boat got closer, she recognized Erica perched on the bow, waving with her whole arm. Behind her was Sam Shelley. He didn’t wave.
Don cut the engine and Erica jumped off the side, landing in thigh-deep water. Wash sprayed over her as she guided the boat through the shallows. It looked like fun.
“Good catch!” Erica shouted.
Sarah didn’t react. Hopefully Hall would be oblivious to Erica’s double entendre.
“Thirteen,” Erica said. “We would have had more, but an octopus got into Pamela’s pot. Nothing left but two heads.”
“That always happens to Pammy.” Don grinned. “You should put out your pot, Sarah.”
“I’m all right.” The thought of being in a boat and making cheery conversation with the lot of them was abhorrent. She preferred to fish alone.
“I’ve told you I’m happy to put it out for you,” Don offered.
“Where is Pamela?” Sarah asked, pretending to look around. No one answered.
Sarah waded over to the boat and unraveled strands of weed coiled around the propeller, flicking the green ribbons into the breeze. It was beyond her why Don flaunted his readiness to break fishing laws in front of a journalist. He wasn’t stupid. He knew a lot about fish and was an astute businessman. Before they bought the shop Don had sold real estate. He had made so much money from that business that now he and Pamela escaped every Tasmanian winter, flying two thousand kilometers north to their beach house at Queensland’s exclusive Noosa Heads. Their lifestyle was something that most Tasmanians would only ever dream of.
From the bow of the boat, Sam was watching Erica. Her bikini bottoms were showing through her wet shorts. Sarah glanced at Hall, wondering if he had noticed too, but he was busy picking bindii prickles out of his socks.
Don slid his empty trailer down the ramp with the ease of a man who had done it many times before. While he winched the boat onto the trailer, John approached Hall. It was horrible watching her father talk to the man she had just had sex with.
“I’ve written half a dozen letters to the Voice,” John said. “No reply. No attention is being paid to that abomination on the point. Who’s running that rag?”
“I’m afraid I’m not up to date with the issue,” Hall said. “Not my area.”
“They’ve painted it Mardi Gras purple. Stands out like cat’s balls. You can see it two nautical miles out to sea. It doesn’t comply with the local environmental plan; that’s what makes me really angry.”
“Let me think of the name of the guy you need to talk to.”
“What’s the point? The Tassie Voice won’t publish real news.”
Sarah felt herself deflate. She tried to catch her father’s eye. It was futile. If she did manage to make eye contact, he was just as likely to make a big deal out of it and ask her what she was trying to say.
“Dad, admit your interest,” Sarah said. “He owns a block behind the massive new shack, so he’s not being completely honest.”
Black snake fast, John whipped his head around. “You are missing the point. This is about preservation of local amenity. Corruption, too. If that council isn’t corrupt, it’s stupid.”
Sarah could hear herself in her father. She had even used the same expression when she was angry, accusing someone of not understanding, dismissing their interpretation of a situation. When Dad was riled, he didn’t listen to anyone. Hall didn’t acknowledge the rudeness.
“You’re quite right, John,” he said. “And don’t get me started on the paper. I’ve been there twenty-three years and it’s not what it used to be.”
Inside the cray coffin thirteen creatures writhed, their muscular pincers tied with string. As everyone admired them, Hall began a conversation with Sam. Sarah watched as the situation got worse. It sounded like Hall was writing a story about Sam. Hall was a nice guy; he looked genuinely interested. He made plans to meet Sam at the Shelleys’ shack. Her hands felt clammy and her stomach heaved. What was she doing here?
Sam climbed up into Don’s boat, which was now hooked onto the back of his Range Rover. Don gave Sam directions on where to stow each piece of equipment. Sarah unfolded her map and handed it to Don.
“Show me which way Chloe Crawford walked to the beach the day she disappeared. And where did she ride her bike that morning?”
“Why are you asking me?”
“You headed up one of the search parties, didn’t you?”
Don sighed. He didn’t want to look at the map. Reluctantly his plump index finger landed at the turnoff to the lookout. He traced the dotted line as it curved around the back of the lagoon, past the old rubbish tip and across the two burned bridges, and back onto the graded gravel road that ran parallel to the beach where Anja Traugott was found.
“Chloe rode her bicycle along here. Then she left it at the fishing cottage where her family was staying and took her surfboard to the beach.” Don tapped the map at the main beach, where Chloe had been heading with her surfboard.
“No one knows how far along the beach she walked, do they?”
Don shook his head. “Or even if she made it that far at all. Perhaps she decided to avoid the surf and enjoy the lagoon’s calm water instead. A lot of people do.”
“Hang on. Why does it matter if she went up into the scrub, when she was last seen walking with her surfboard to the beach?” Sarah asked.
“It was a beautiful day. Everyone was outside. But no one saw anyone they regarded as strange. Personally I think someone saw her when she was riding on the Old Road and then took her back up int
o the scrub. We don’t know.”
It was a popular theory that someone had encountered Chloe in the bush and followed her down. Wild duck hunters, guys taking target practice on beer cans at the old rubbish tip, people gathering firewood or picking wildflowers; there were various reasons why people ventured along the Old Road.
“People saw her paddling the surfboard in the lagoon, did they?”
“There were lots of reports that were never confirmed. People thought they saw her but weren’t sure. It was hot the day she went missing. I’ll never forget it. I was driving back from Douglas River and my right arm got badly sunburnt from hanging out the car window. I never understood what she was doing riding her bike in the midday heat.”
“She wasn’t riding in the midday heat. She dropped her bike back at the rented cottage at lunchtime. That was the last time her parents saw her.”
The black-sand bush tracks would have been cool under gum tree shadows in the morning. Chloe wasn’t reported missing until evening. The first search party carried torches, their vehicles panning the thick bristly scrub with hopeless yellow beams.
Don was remembering incorrectly if he thought Chloe had been riding at lunchtime. Considering he had helped search for her, you’d think he would recall an important detail such as her exact movements on the last day she was seen. It showed how people’s memories could not be relied upon.
“I’m not lying,” Don said.
Sarah stared at him. Why was he being defensive? Chloe disappeared ten months ago. It was long enough for a person to get time frames mixed up.
“What were you doing at Douglas River?” she asked.
