Bay of Fires

by Poppy Gee

  They followed the coastline south, passing the guesthouse on the headland and the row of shacks nestled above the beach. Where the rocks ended and the sand began, a figure was running by the water’s edge. As the boat approached, Hall recognized Sam Shelley, his long legs striding through the white wash. Even more interesting was the figure behind him. It was Simone, her sarong tucked into her bathing suit. Sam kept turning, glancing over his shoulder at her. Either they were racing, or she was chasing him. It reminded Hall of those vibrant, outdoorsy types of images used in cigarette advertisements in the eighties, before the tobacco companies were banned from having people in their ads.

  In line with the lagoon, Don cut the engine. He pointed out the landmarks relating to the Anja Traugott and Chloe Crawford cases. It was interesting to see the land from the perspective of the ocean.

  Don’s observations were things Hall had heard before. Hall let his mind drift, nodding agreeably as the older man spoke. Don’s way of speaking was unhurried; he was confident he would be listened to. Hall’s father had been a man like that, a man quietly satisfied with his self-sufficient farm, his cattle dogs, his keen sons, his hardworking, uncomplaining wife. Such measured parlance was not a characteristic that you would expect of a man with such a verbose wife as Pamela. You would think Don would need to blurt out his thoughts in order to make them heard.

  The boat drifted toward the beach, positioning them in line with the Coker block.

  “He doesn’t do himself any favors, that one.” Don nodded toward the green cottage.

  “Roger Coker?”

  “Queer.” Don’s tone implied this was a bad thing.

  “That’s okay, isn’t it?”

  “Son, I’m not going to give you a biology lesson.” Don chuckled.

  Right then Hall remembered where he had seen Don Gunn. It was in June 1994 at an Ulverstone rally titled “Say No to Sodomy.” That was nearly ten years ago, but Hall’s recollection of dates and political events was as precise as his capacity to remember names and faces. In any case, that date was an easy one to recall: it was the year the state’s anti-gay laws were repealed by the United Nations Human Rights Committee. Oh dear. Hall wouldn’t have picked Don.

  “Now I know where I’ve seen you before.” Hall snapped his fingers. “You spoke at a rally at Ulverstone alongside Pauline Hanson years ago, didn’t you?”

  Usually the mention of Australia’s most prominent redneck politician provoked eye-rolling and sniggers, but Don nodded amicably, unembarrassed.

  “I was toying with the idea of running in the state election at the time. It didn’t pan out. In hindsight I probably would have won a seat.”

  “There were three rallies across the state. I covered them all.”

  “Ulverstone was our best event. We kept the idiots out.”

  At the Hobart rally the police, for some reason that was never explained, had opened the doors and two hundred protesters had barged in, ending the meeting. Following this, the Launceston and Ulverstone rallies had charged a five-dollar entry fee, which had minimized the disruptions, although almost three hundred protesters held a candlelight vigil outside the Ulverstone rally. It was a topic that had divided the state.

  “Well, it was a controversial issue.” Hall emphasized the past tense.

  Don shrugged. “You see, it’s not what people do in privacy. That’s not what everyone was concerned about. It was the age of consent that was the problem. And now it is legal for depraved men such as Roger Coker to sodomize very young boys.”

  “You mean pedophiles in general, not Roger Coker specifically, I assume,” Hall said.

  “Hall, I do mean Roger Coker. And I don’t think his interest stops at young boys, either. He used to sit in those sand dunes for hours, and I can tell you he wasn’t bird-watching.”

  “Geez, Don, that’s a big call.”

  “Well, you’re the journalist. These are the things you need to be aware of.”

  Don switched the key too fast and the engine snarled. He muttered something about not flooding the engine and sat there, twisting the gold mesh of his watchband around his wrist.

  Sarah executed a perfect pin drop in the center of the rock pool. Seal-swift, she sucked a mouthful of air then kicked her way to the bottom. Hall didn’t want to follow. He felt jumpy today, as though he had drunk too much coffee when in fact he had drunk only one cup. There was no need to be nervous. From the moment he had jumped off the back of Don’s boat, which she had held steady in the surf, she had acted as relaxed as if they had been friends for years. She wasn’t one to complicate things; he should follow her lead.

  Her dark shape circled the rock pool. The water looked inviting. Shades of green shot with crystal twirled above a subtropic rock reef, an ecosystem protected by granite walls. As Hall watched, the water changed color continuously: bright emerald switched to cool aqua; one moment the water reflected the blue sky before becoming as transparent as drinking water. A gap in the rock pool floor led to the ocean, and bubbles rose with each oceanic pulse.

  Hall leaned forward trying to see. Sarah was no longer circling; her body remained head down at the bottom of the pool, her legs dangling upward. Impressive lung power. She could probably cut it as a synchronized swimmer, not that he would say that. She’d bite his head off. She emerged laughing, snorting water from her nose.

  Above the rock pool was a cave. It was the kind of cave Hall would have liked to know about as a kid. Pirate games, castaway, the perfect hideout from where the rock pool could be secretly viewed. It was in this cave, Sarah said, that Roger Coker had slept for two nights when he ran away from home as a teenager.

  Dripping water, Sarah sprawled beside him on the rock. Her body language was encouraging. When they first met she had covered her body with a towel after every swim; now she didn’t bother. Instead of a bathing suit she was wearing what looked like an aerobics bra and sporty bikini pants. Her stomach muscles rippled every time she moved. They looked out to sea, attempting to distinguish distant whitecaps from the sails of the returning Sydney-to-Hobart yachts. At the bottom of the rocks, burnt-orange-colored kelp thrust up with each wave.

  Arriving at the Bay of Fires last week, Hall had seen scrubby vegetation in shades of muted green, spiky dune grasses, a murky lagoon, and sea too cold to swim in. It looked different now. The Bay of Fires had a beauty that was not apparent on first glance. He remembered thinking the same thing when he visited here for the day with Laura. The open ocean, and the way the tree-covered mountains sat humble and untouched beneath the big sky, had gladdened him. That was a year before the breakup, and probably Laura had not even thought of sleeping with Dan. There were signs that she wasn’t happy. It had taken Hall a long time to acknowledge this. For instance, that weekend she had not liked the motel he booked in a fishing town farther down the coast. She complained to reception that the bath was not clean. She hadn’t liked the lunch he packed; he couldn’t remember what it was now, but he recalled her feeding bits of it to the swans. And when they arrived back in Launceston, she had called him the “traveling companion of the year.” He was flattered; then he realized she was being sarcastic. Apparently he had not initiated one piece of conversation during the three-hour drive. Hall had thought they were enjoying a companionable silence.

  One thing he now knew for sure was that when a man was crazily in love with a woman, he wasn’t an idiot for not seeing that she didn’t love him in the same way. Laura should have told him how she felt. Not all women would be deceitful—Sarah’s honesty, he imagined, might be brutal.

  It caught him off guard when Sarah mentioned she was considering returning to Eumundi at the end of the summer. Maybe he had misread the situation, but he thought she was looking to start a new life in Tasmania. The conversation during their pub lunch had been clear; her ex-boyfriend had physically abused her. Something irrevocable had happened and she could never return. She hadn’t gone into the details and Hall had not pressed her. It wasn’t his business. But she could
n’t go back. Hall had written feature articles on the subject for the weekend paper; a woman returned to her abuser on average eight times before she left for good. She should not go back.

  “Men who don’t respect women never will,” he said.

  He took her silence for agreement and added, “People don’t change, Sarah.”

  She nodded. She picked up a shell and threw it into the sea.

  “Do you want to go back to the barramundi farm?” he said.

  “Not an option.”

  “So sell the house.”

  “Renovator’s dream. I wouldn’t get jack for it.” Sarah climbed up to the jumping rock. “You coming?”

  He didn’t want to jump into the rock pool. He had never liked jumping off rocks or bridges. Reluctantly, he followed her over to the edge, took a breath, and jumped. In the seconds he was in the air he noticed a flash of color moving across the tops of the rocks. Someone else was there.

  Chapter 8

  The day after the press conference, Sarah wanted to show Hall the rock pool. Hall had already planned to go boating with Don, so Sarah arranged with Don to drop Hall off at a precise point at the other end of the long beach. From there, it would be a short climb across the granite boulders to the rock pool. She could have gone in the boat with them, but she wanted to jog instead. It was pleasant running on the beach and she did not stop; she ran past all the shacks and the lagoon, she avoided a dead fairy penguin lying in the sand, and she only glanced briefly at the place where Anja’s body had washed in.

  She ran along the hard sand, through the white light that poured down everywhere on the beach, and her muscles and lungs began to hurt. Always, when she exercised, Sarah felt a sense of righteousness in the pleasurable pain. Forcing her body to do intense exercise was good for her. She concentrated on her breathing and let her rhythm slow into a steady pace. In front of her, as far as she could see, the beach was empty. There were no other footprints.

  Yesterday, noticeably absent from the press conference was Roger Coker. Sarah had overheard several comments on this as she waited with the onlookers, who were all agitating for something to happen. Deliberately, she had stepped closer to Bunghole and his mates.

  “Anyone would be here unless he had something to hide,” Bunghole had said.

  Sarah had pointed out that, on the contrary, killers usually made a point of coming to gatherings like this.

  “Look around,” Sarah had said.

  Bunghole had not answered her but someone else had said, “He’s mad as a cut snake. Madder than his old woman.”

  It was true—Mrs. Coker was mad. Sarah had once heard her swearing at Mr. Coker as he dragged driftwood up from the beach to burn as firewood. Crowlike, with her hunched back and a neck that swiveled with rough jerks, she hurried him along with language fouler than any Sarah had ever heard. Of course, she had heard worse since working on the fish farm.

  At the press conference Sarah had positioned herself behind Don so the panning cameras couldn’t film her. It had been interesting watching the crowd’s interest in the television crews. Some people must have come straight off the beach as soon as they heard something was happening; beach towels hung from their necks and zinc smeared their noses. Others, such as Erica, who was wearing lipstick and a nice skirt, had had time to dress up in case they appeared on the news. Sarah had studied each face.

  What she had told Bunghole was true. Someone at that press conference was a killer. One of the campers was her bet—and she had not ruled out Bunghole. He was vile. As she had searched each face in the crowd for a sign of guilt or secret pleasure, Bunghole had bared his tongue lewdly at her. Sarah had stepped sideways so he could no longer see her.

  Two other people had behaved inappropriately at the press conference in Sarah’s opinion—Sam and Don. Cross-armed and cocky, Sam had grinned at Sarah the entire time. It was irritating. Holding his arm was Simone, her head dipped so her wide-brimmed hat hid her face. Don and Sarah’s father had calmly discussed a turn in the stock market; the ordinariness of the topic was as discomfiting as the enjoyment on the faces of the campers. When someone muttered something about Roger, Don had turned to acknowledge the comment. Sarah had seen his face; he had been smiling. It was a nasty smile, that of someone who knows he did the wrong thing and is glad about it.

  The silence was uncomfortable when Anja Traugott’s parents had walked out of the shop. Crossing the park, the Swiss couple had looked out of place, from another time, like characters in a children’s fairy tale. Their skin was pale and their clothes were dark. The father had answered the media’s questions in halting English, but it was Anja’s mother who Sarah could not get out of her mind. She had gazed beyond the gabbling reporters, her eyes shifting to each onlooker, one by one. The mother’s face was contorted with rage and sorrow. It was a heartbreaking combination.

  As Sarah ran, she imagined explaining to Anja’s mother the conversation she had had with Anja. I’m sorry, Sarah silently rehearsed. I told her to go there.

  What did Sarah want? Their forgiveness? It was a conversation she would never have. Her words of regret were of no use to the Traugotts.

  Throughout the press conference Hall had been in professional mode. He had remained on the edge of the media scrum and listened without looking, his head bent to his chest. Occasionally he had scribbled something in his notebook. She found his detachment attractive. When the press conference ended and the woman in charge had led the Traugotts away, an immaculately groomed woman approached Hall. They had spoken for a few minutes. Sarah noticed that the woman wore high-heeled pointy-toed shoes that sank into the earth as she walked away.

  Sarah wondered what the woman had said to Hall. He had left before Sarah could speak with him. Thinking it over now, as she jogged along the beach, she knew she wouldn’t ask him how well he knew that woman. That would be embarrassing.

  The other annoying thing that had happened at the press conference involved Simone. Sarah had approached her, planning to engage in some friendly small talk to make up for the awkwardness in the shack the other night. Simone had greeted Sarah, and then, almost immediately, Simone’s attention was diverted to a good-looking man who was coordinating one of the news teams. With his suit and gelled hair, he exuded importance. He had smiled at Simone and placed a hand on her arm.

  “Excuse us.” He had barely glanced at Sarah.

  Neither had Simone. They had marched across the park to where the Apple Isle TV news team gathered beside their vehicle.

  Despite that it was now a day later Sarah still felt slightly rebuffed. Maybe Flip and Pamela were right about Simone—she was more interested in receiving attention from men than holding a conversation with another woman.

  At the end of the beach Sarah stripped off her T-shirt and running shorts and strode into the water. She let the waves smash around her legs while she got her breath back. There was a boat one kilometer down the coastline, but it was too far away for her to tell if it was Don’s vessel. She turned her back on the ocean and surveyed the beach.

  Today, she had not stopped as she passed the place where Anja was found. She imagined the Traugotts standing there, looking across the whispering grasses to the empty beach, holding hands, tying their flowers to the driftwood so they wouldn’t blow away. The man and the woman, forced to visit this island at the bottom of the world where their daughter perished. For them, Tasmania would be forever a place of death.

  That morning the paper ran four pages on what it was calling the Bay of Fires Killer. There were photos of the Traugotts: standing alone looking at the headlines on the sign outside Pamela’s shop, surrounded during the press conference, their tear-streaked faces bent together. There was also an incredibly beautiful photo of Anja which Sarah had not seen before. In Hall’s article it was revealed that the police had a suspect. An east coast resident who was helping police with inquiries, whatever that was supposed to mean.

  Hall had refused to name names when Sarah had asked him about it the other
day. He would not even say whether she knew him. It was creepy, not knowing.

  Sarah waded out of the water and stretched her body across a warm flat rock. Fatigue caused her eyes to sting momentarily as they shut. Light pricked the darkness beyond her closed lids. Things she thought she had forgotten wafted through her sleepy consciousness: how Tasmanian summer sun never feels hot until a person is sheltered from the wind, the silence of a beating ocean, the deliciousness of unresolved desire.

  Since the first night Hall had not touched her. Insecurity made her analyze their first night together, rehash each bit she remembered, until she wasn’t sure what was real or imagined.

  Jake said she fucked like a man. Although that was anatomically impossible, his meaning was clear. She wasn’t soft or seductive; in bed she liked to ask for what she wanted. Apparently this was not a turn-on.

  There had been opportunities for Hall to make a move. Maybe he wasn’t interested in her in that way.

  Erica said she was overthinking it. “Unbutton your shirt and he’ll take care of the rest of it,” she had advised. But that was the kind of demanding, intimidating behavior Sarah wished to avoid.

  He liked her. Why else would he follow her down to the gulch in the dark, stand beside her for hours catching nothing?

  The sun delivered a hot assault to her back. The sound of a boat engine drifted across the water. She opened her eyes. It was Don’s boat. She ran into the shallows and waved so they would see her.

  How many times had she sat above the rock pool as a teenager staring out to sea? Past Sloop Rock and the shadowy kelp fields the ocean’s blueness merged with sky. Hours and days when perfect swimming weather meant there was no point fishing. Diving to the bottom and swimming in tight circles to see the baby bull kelp, the starfish, and the cold-water coral growing in the underwater garden.