CHAPTER 7

Marakai Mining’s Public Relations Director, Karene Bickerstaff, was pretty much what Clem had expected. Dyed-blonde hair, tied back tight with not a strand out of place, a stiff-collared light blue shirt that sat pertly at her neck and a string of tiny pearls.

Karene picked up her chardonnay and sipped.

‘Ew,’ she said, plonking it down on the table. ‘That’s it, I’ve tried them all now. Every wine in every pub in this godforsaken town. All of them vinegar.’

Clem was disappointed. She needed Karene to sink a couple more glasses, loosen those lips. Helen had said she liked a drop.

‘Are you sure you’ve tried the sav blanc? I had a glass here a week ago and I thought it was drinkable.’ Clem was making it up, still hopeful.

‘Not that dreadful Yalumba?’ Her face pinched like it was caught in a door.

‘No, no, something else. I can’t recall the name…’

Karene persevered with the chardonnay, which would clearly have to do, and began recounting her day escorting a bevy of state MPs around the proposed mine site.

‘It’s like hosting a bunch of bored children on a school excursion to see a patch of empty dirt,’ she said, holding her head. ‘Draining.’

Eventually Clem managed to shift the conversation to Helen.

‘Doesn’t matter what your politics are—sad, just sad,’ said Karene. ‘I guess the signs were all there, though.’

‘Really?’ Clem sat up straighter. Had she finally found someone who’d noticed something?

‘Oh yes, you see Marakai Mining are big donors to the Healthy Minds Institute. Big donors.’ She closed her eyes and nodded. ‘We sponsor the management training program they put on for businesses. The first day is all about understanding the symptoms, day two is how to manage them. That part’s a bit of a joke, though—I mean who can afford flexi-time and quiet spaces? The public service perhaps—hardly realistic anywhere else.’

‘What symptoms did you see in Helen?’

‘Oh you know,’ said Karene, flicking a hand in the air. ‘She seemed irritable, that sort of thing.’ She took another sip. ‘It’s the little things.’

If Helen was irritable it might well have been Karene that irritated her, thought Clem.

‘She certainly took offence at anything I had to say, but you see all I could do was give her the facts: freshwater turtle habitat disturbance will be minimal. We engaged two independent consultants and they both say the same thing.’

‘Independent? Hired? Bit of an oxymoron, don’t you think?’

‘Oh come on, Clementine, you must know the drill, you’re a lawyer’—another sip—‘Sorry, sorry…Were a lawyer. Do you still practise?’

‘Yes, but I only have one client—the white-throated snapping turtle.’

Karene chuckled, ‘I expect you’d have trouble getting your invoices paid, then. But I guess the Galimore Foundation pays your fees?’

‘Nope. I’m pro bono. The foundation pays the law firm handling the appeal and, of course, for the independent scientific study that indicates catastrophic habitat destruction.’

‘Like I said, girlfriend, no such thing as independence.’

Surprisingly, Karene had finished the glass of vinegar already. Great, thought Clem. Time for another. ‘How about I get you a glass of that sav blanc?’

‘Oh well, what’s the harm? I’m out of this hole tomorrow—good reason to celebrate.’

Clem went to the bar, approaching from the side, away from the line of men in filthy jeans and high-vis work shirts. She ordered a soda water for herself and a glass of the house sauvignon blanc—‘Yes, a large one thanks’—flicking through her wine app as she waited. She found what she wanted and committed it to memory as the barman set the glass on the bar. She handed him her credit card to start a tab and carried the two glasses back to the table. Karene was scrolling through her Twitter feed.

‘Dear God, Canberra’s going mad today,’ she said. ‘I swear, if there’s a spill I bloody hope the leadership goes to someone who understands corporate imperatives. I mean, how the hell is this country going to survive otherwise? Fairy dust?’

Clem put the glasses down on the round table. ‘There you go, 2013 Peringel from Margaret River.’

‘No! You’re kidding me. I didn’t see that on the menu.’

‘I know the barman. Told me he keeps a few specially,’ she lied. ‘But only for those that know to ask—wasted on the rest of these philistines.’ Clem glanced towards the rowdy bunch at the bar.

Karene took a sip of the stock standard, no-name house wine, closing her eyes as she swallowed.

‘Oh my God, you’re a magician.’ She took another gulp. ‘Mmmm,’ she said, eyes still closed.

Clem smiled to herself. ‘What say we order dinner?’ she said, hoping to extend the evening.

‘I could go a medium-rare rib fillet with a nice, full-bodied shiraz. Could you conjure one up, maybe?’

‘Think I might know the secret code.’

Karene was drinking the house red like cordial. The rib fillet was more well-done than medium-rare and the chips tasted like they’d been baked for two days, cooled and then blowtorched. Karene didn’t seem to care anymore. Now’s the time, thought Clem.

‘You know I’m totally with you, Karene, on the Federal leadership…you know…about corporate imperatives…’

Karene forked another piece of steak into her mouth.

‘Mmmm, well, sadly very few in your environmental circles get it.’

‘…get industry moving, revenues flowing, wipe out the deficit,’ said Clem.

‘Absolutely! Healthcare, education, welfare…nothing happens without taxes and mining royalties.’ There was a pause while Karene chewed. ‘Gee, you’re different from Helen,’ she remarked, shaking her head. ‘I mean, I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but tree huggers who believe in magic puddings are all too common.’

Clem ignored the slur. ‘So I imagine there’s a lot riding on the port development—’

‘Well, there is a little thing called the share price…’

‘And if that gets a lift, there’ll be a decent bonus all round, I’d guess.’

‘And well-earned too.’ Karene plonked her wine glass down clumsily onto the cardboard coaster so the glass toppled and half the remaining wine sloshed over onto the table. Clem quickly had it replaced, with a wave and a wink to the barman.

‘So I suppose Scott Stanton-Green will do pretty well out of it.’ Clem had researched him: Marakai’s Director, Infrastructure and Operations, the senior executive in charge of the port project. His performance plan would be heavily weighted towards port milestones: EIS acceptance, government approvals, construction commencement, on-time completion of each phase. Before Marakai, he’d been at Meatco. There’d been a scandal—brown paper bags to foreign officials in return for contracts. If he’d been involved in that sort of skulduggery who knew what else he might be capable of. Clem had lined up a meeting with him the next day but she hoped Karene would know something.

‘Hey, it’s been a good night so far, why spoil it by mentioning the Hyphen.’

‘Not a fan?’

‘Look, I’m used to being the only female around the executive table and I expect a level of boorishness, I’m not precious, but, oh, Clementine, SSG takes it to a new level.’

‘I wonder how involved he was in the Meatco scandal…’

‘I’ve heard a few whispers,’ she said, leaning towards Clem with her fork in the air. ‘None too savoury, either.’

‘And?’

‘Up to his eyeballs.’

The door to the donga opened directly into an open-plan area. Clem looked to her left: rows of workstations that stretched down three lengths of shipping-container-width office. The air was chilled and everything was plastic. Grey vinyl floor, grey furniture, large windows and the light of a cloudless summer day drowning the unnecessary glow from the fluorescent light boxes. Coal miners’ offices—wouldn’t be too worried about saving energy, she supposed.

A woman got up from her desk to show Clem through a door to a meeting room on the right. Table and chairs to seat about ten, a bench just inside the door with a kettle and a tray of coffee mugs, a map rack and satellite photos Blu-tacked to the walls. A television attached high on the far wall, sound muted, was playing the lead-up to the One Day International against the Kiwis, due to start shortly at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

She sat and waited, fully expecting the royal brush-off from Karene’s king of boor. She set herself a goal: make it to five minutes and you never know what might happen.

But how? She couldn’t steal the mayor’s thunder by mentioning the deal she’d suggested: that had to be a victory for the mayor if she was going to get any further down that road. She had Karene’s hearsay on Stanton-Green but nothing substantive. Make it up as you go was not her preferred approach, it made her uneasy, but none of the plans she’d dreamt up on the drive out seemed to stack up.

She waited another two minutes, got up and poured herself a plastic cup of water from the bubbler in the corner, stood looking at the satellite photos. The first couple looked like they might be the mine site area at different zoom levels. The next two followed a winding line of thick trees—Piama Creek, the proposed route for the railway and road. She moved along the row of photographs, the creek widening to become a river until she came to a sharp kink, the one just after Helen’s house about a kilometre before the river met the bay. She took a step closer and peered into the photograph. She could make out Turtle Shores’ roof and the large WAGSS headquarters shed in the backyard. A lump rose in her throat and she sat back down.

Everything about this room—the maps already prepared and draped neatly on the rack, the fresh new office chairs, the upturned tray of mugs ready to go—all of it screamed inevitability. And the photographs tracing the creek from a satellite in space were like the view from a fighter plane—an armoury in Iraq, a Taliban base in Afghanistan—she almost expected a pilot’s voice over the static: ‘target locked’. Her stomach sank at the sheer scale of the task that had fallen to Helen and her plucky little band. And what the hell was Clementine going to do about it? What the hell could she do about anything? And who in this metal capsule of an office, this outpost of empire, the spreading dominion of Marakai Mining, even cared the slightest fig that Helen was dead?

She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath.

Helen had sat here and not been daunted. She had met the challenge head on.

Clem breathed out to the count of ten, snapped her eyes open, lifted the water to her lips and drained it, crushing the empty cup in her fist. Then the Hyphen walked in.

‘Oh for fuck’s sake!’ he said in a voice way too big for the room.

She jumped. Stanton-Green was glaring at the television, standing there in a chambray shirt, camel moleskins and brown steel-capped boots—huge, out of proportion to his height, which she judged to be just under six foot.

‘Finch. First ball! Fucken loser.’

On the screen the Black Caps were getting around the bowler, back-slapping and hooting in their dinner suit uniforms. The camera flicked to Aaron Finch, on the long walk to the boundary, head bowed.

He likes cricket. The boor likes cricket. It was something. A start, at least. She reached across the table and grabbed the remote, flicking the mute switch off. The roar from forty thousand fans filled the little meeting room in the grey donga on this nondescript piece of dirt a thousand kilometres away. The Hyphen barely even glanced at her, eyes glued to the screen. The replay showed Finch pushing forward, an inside edge and the ball cannoning into his leg stump.

He slumped into a chair opposite Clementine, swinging it around towards the television so she was looking at him in profile. A little overweight, not a lot. Tightly curling hair clipped into submission, tiny ears.

‘Shit. That just cost me five hundred.’

‘You had Finch for top score?’

‘Yep.’

‘Jesus.’ She let out a low whistle. ‘One ball, five hundred gone.’

‘Still got a thou on Australia for the match,’ he growled as Steve Smith made his way out to the crease, kicking up his heels in a jogging burst, shadow-batting at phantom balls, adjusting his eyes to the light, a gathering wall of concentration.

‘Early days, early days,’ said Clem. ‘Plenty of talent to come, including this guy.’

Stanton-Green was a big punter. And apparently not averse to a bit of corruption—a man who would play the odds, take a risk, give in order to get…even if it was outside the rules. A plan began to take shape. A conversation she could manoeuvre somehow: risk and return…angling towards payment for favours…you scratch my back…She didn’t know the detail, but she had the broad outline.

They sat there while Smith soaked up the rest of the over. During the ad break Clem made some comments about team selections to keep him interested, then Smith and Warner began to crank it up, keeping the strike turning over, boundaries starting to flow, a run a ball for the next six overs. She’d long passed her five-minute success threshold and even though they hadn’t spoken a word about the turtle or Helen, Clem could sense the longer she bonded with the Hyphen over the game, the greater the chance she had of learning something.

She made a comment on the field-setting—‘not sure why the Kiwis don’t put a third man in’—and as if they’d heard it, the commentary team began to express a similar opinion. The Hyphen looked at her properly for the first time. A slightly bewildered look.

Finally Warner was out in the ninth over, playing on to Ferguson, but Smith was well set at the other end and progressing with trademark intensity. She’d been sitting there sharing the cricket with the Hyphen for over half an hour. He’d probably have to go shortly, actually do some work, so when the ads came on she flicked the remote to mute, reached across the table, hand extended and announced herself, ‘Clementine Jones,’ for all the world like she was meeting him in the Marakai corporate box, beer in hand and a platter of beef bourguignon party pies in front of them.

He gripped her hand. ‘Scott Stanton-Green,’ he said. ‘You’re the new turtle woman, then?’

The way he spoke, the cursory question—it seemed he hadn’t bothered to look her up, didn’t know her past. She found herself wondering if this would always be the first thing she thought of whenever she met someone. Regardless, she kept her game face on—time to front up to the first delivery.

‘Yeah,’ she said, trying to sound uninterested in all things turtle.

‘Hmmph,’ he sniffed. ‘Bit different to the last one.’

There was something about the way he said it, it was subtle, but it seemed like he’d been offended somehow by Helen, some sort of personal affront. Had he been rebuffed by Helen in some way? Or was she just overthinking it?

‘Helen didn’t like cricket?’

‘Fucked if I know. Barely spent two minutes with her, thank Christ. Looked like she’d be as much fun as a wet sock.’

He said it with a snarl and Clem’s suspicion grew. It was a long shot, little more than a possibility. But it got a head of steam up and ran away like a freight train in her head: had the Hyphen offered Helen a bribe? Which she had then refused? This man with a reputation for corruption and a truck-sized drive to win, a big-punter high-stakes edge-of-the-envelope risk-taker? Had Helen refused to play ball? Had she threatened to expose him and his crude offer?

‘Yeah, only met her once but she struck me as a bit of a wowser,’ said Clem, chumming it up.

‘So, you got anything riding on the game?’ he asked.

He saw her as a player. Good.

‘Shit yeah,’ she lied. ‘Not in the same league as you, but I’ve got fifty bucks on the win and twenty for Starc as man of the match.’

‘Nice odds for Starc?’

‘Yeah. Ten to one. Mortgage could do with a boost,’ she grinned. Yes, Scottie, I’m poor.

He looked at her carefully. ‘Like the horseys?’

‘Used to. Had a system on short-priced favourites for a place. Didn’t do too bad, built up a kitty over a few years. It’s a numbers game, though…I wouldn’t know a pony from a platypus.’ Her father had bet in accordance with a strict set of rules every weekend, until her mum had put a stop to it and made him cash out. Clem knew the details; she could recite how it worked if she had to, make up a story to go with it.

‘Ha! A system. That’s nice. Wanna share?’

She recounted the rules, described the slow grind of big punts for small gains. ‘Took me three years to make two cents,’ she laughed.

‘Gave it away, though?’ He was testing her, she could feel it, checking to see if she could be trusted. Not that there was anything at stake—there were no witnesses here.

‘Yeah, had to—lost my kitty, all of it, in a moment of stupidity. Got drunk one night at the casino and put it all on red. Took me years to get to that point, years, and I lost the heart for it after that. Bloody hell, I could use that dough now, though,’ she said shaking her head ruefully. Hint number two, Scottie-boy.

‘So whaddya do for a crust?’

‘This is it,’ she said, palms up, holding air for a moment, down again on the table. ‘The turtles.’

‘Geez, that wouldn’t pay much.’

Come clean, Clementine—he’ll look you up as soon as you leave here; let him in, let him in. She exhaled a long breath through pursed lips, clenched her teeth tight—the whole performance for this guy…Only it wasn’t a performance, and the idea of talking about it here, to this man—it made her feel nauseous.

‘Well, I used to be a lawyer but there was another drunken misadventure.’ She lowered her eyes, then lifted them back to his face—he was intrigued, intent. ‘Killed a woman on the road. Nobody’s all that interested in taking me on anymore.’ She gave a sour grin. ‘Bit of a stench about me.’

‘Shiiiit. Criminal lawyer?’

‘No, commercial—business clients, contracts, whatever.’ She avoided the word ‘corporate’, it made her sound too sharp.

The Hyphen drummed his fingers on the table in an even gallop. They were big, fat and, like his feet, out of proportion for a man who wasn’t that overweight.

‘You seem to know about cricket. Fuck the law, you could bloody get on the fucken commentary team for Channel 9. They’re looking for females these days,’ then he laughed, like it was the greatest joke—that a woman might be paid to speak about sport.

Clem laughed along, tedious as it was. He’d really cracked himself up with his own wit.

‘Listen, Jones…’

‘Call me Clementine.’

‘Clementine then,’ he said, nodding. ‘I like you. You’re a good sort.’

‘Thanks Scott.’ First-name basis now, and suck, suck, sucking for all she was worth—the only way to go with an ego this size.

‘So, what say we cut the crap?’

‘I should talk to you about the turtles, though,’ she said weakly, trying not to give up too easily but so, so hot for cutting the crap.

‘Yeah, yeah. I know all about the bloody turtle with an arsehole for a mouth—I’ve done my homework,’ he said, waving a hand dismissively. ‘But why so serious? More to life, yeah?’ He leaned in closer, staring intensely at Clementine, weighing up the odds, deciding, about to make his move. ‘I’ve got this gelding, see—Meat the Magic. He’s doing well. How about I cut you a share?’

She smiled tentatively, attempting something cautiously gleeful. ‘Did you just offer me a share in your racehorse?’

‘Well, a share in some of his winnings—and you’re in luck, he just happened to score last weekend—I can cut you in. Might help you get through until you can get back into some money.’

‘But…’ she shook her head, a look of awe and appreciation towards the great man. ‘I don’t understand…that’s just… ridiculously generous.’

‘Not really.’

‘Why?’

‘Cos you can scratch my back too, if you get my drift.’

Clem nodded, every muscle of her body signifying to the Hyphen that she understood the game, the way the ball swung in the air, seamed off the pitch, spun past the bat…smacked into the keeper’s gloves. ‘Right. So you want the road humps smoothed? For the mine, the port and all the rest of it?’

He nodded.

‘You want the turtle stuff to go quiet?

He kept nodding.

She leaned back in the chair. ‘This is sounding too easy. What’s the catch?’

‘No catch.’

‘So why the hell didn’t Helen go for this?’ she said, looking bewildered but feeling sick—she didn’t want to sound like she was fishing, but she had to know more. ‘What the fuck was wrong with her?’

‘Like I said, fucked if I know. Silly bitch wouldn’t know her arse from her elbow.’ Clem felt a flush of heat rising in her cheeks. ‘But you know, it’s like so many people,’ he said, his face sliding into philosopher mode. ‘Virtuous people, self-righteous, stuck-up people: so far from the action they’re not even in the game, right?’

She nodded.

‘Just…irrelevant. Like a moth in the headlights—next thing they know they’re up against the windscreen with their arse through their brain.’

The image was shocking, breathtakingly shocking. Had he been there when Helen died? Watched the killer do the deed? Done it himself? Was he getting a sick thrill out of playing around with the visual?

She forced the image of Helen at the base of the quarry out of her mind, swallowed hard—finish this Jones, and get the hell out of here. ‘So, maybe we run out of money to pay the lawyers, drop the legal proceedings…sneak in some doubt about the science, leak it to the media? For authenticity, nothing too high profile,’ she offered. He was slow-nodding, a smile growing wider. ‘A gaffe to a journo to make us look silly…that sort of thing?’

He sniggered. ‘Now that’—he waved a finger at her, grinning—‘that would be a fucking man of the match performance.’

The four-wheel drive was facing towards the street, already hooked up to the boat trailer. In the dash to hide underneath it on Friday night, she’d lost her house keys. She scanned the concrete driveway, the grass alongside. Nothing.

Shit. He must have found them.

Ralph appeared at the front door in navy Stubbies and a white terry-towelling bucket hat. He swayed down the stairs with his stiff, heavy gait. Arthritic knees or hips or something, big brown sandals with slabs of rubber underneath. He reminded Clem of her grandfather, although Ralph was a much bigger man. Big enough even in his seventies to overpower a sixty-year-old woman, she thought.

‘Good day for it,’ she said from the front yard.

‘Yes, she’s turned out quite nice and the moon’s right too. Fish’ll be biting like puppies on a shoe I’d reckon.’

The moon. Was this an oblique reference to Friday night?

‘You didn’t happen to find a set of house keys did you? I’ve lost mine. Thought I might have left them here when we met the other day.’

‘Nah, didn’t notice any,’ he said, pulling up in the exact place he’d relieved himself the other night, looking concerned. ‘Let’s have a look.’

He bent down, leaning on the trailer, scouring under the boat, making quite a show of it.

‘Ah well, looks like I’ve left them somewhere else,’ she said.

‘Bloody nuisance, losing your keys,’ he said.

An hour later and they were bobbing about on a turquoise stripe in the Great Sandy Straits. With the gentle breeze the sea tilted and peaked, making a playful chinking noise against the sides of Ralph’s tinny.

‘Now,’ said Ralph, ‘when you feel a nibble, like a pecking action’—he demonstrated with his hands—‘could be a nice whiting or bream or flathead or something, then you straight away give it a hoik.’ Ralph jagged his fishing rod up aggressively. ‘And don’t let any slack on your line, just start winding before you drop that rod tip. If ya give the fish any slack that’s their chance to throw the hook.’

Clementine nodded, practising the jab action.

Ralph caught three fish before Clem finally managed to hook one. She’d had several bites with nothing to show for it but this time, as she jerked the rod in the air, she felt with a sudden thrill the added weight, the full-bodied tug on the line.

‘Yep. That’s it, you got him, wind it in,’ Ralph cried.

Reeling in fast, feeling the unmistakeable flap and urgency of the fish battling in the depths below.

‘Ease up!’ said Ralph. ‘You’ll rip the bloody hook out of its mouth.’

The first sight of it in the deep: a flash of white, darting and jerking against the line, then the frantic flip of its tail splashing against the surface.

She swung up, the rod flexing, the fish swinging through the air in an arc, arriving with a plonk in the bottom of the boat, writhing and jumping at her feet, glimmering pink on silver, flanks glistening in the sunlight.

‘Nice little bream,’ said Ralph, reaching for the line and manoeuvring the fish into the bucket.

With a rush of hope she asked, ‘Is it big enough to keep?’

‘Oh yes, he’s well over thirty centimetres, see,’ he said, holding a ruler close to the fish. Its little mouth was grabbing at the air, gills desperately cracking open and shut, eyes wide with shock. She felt a pang of regret—that this plucky little creature’s struggle to live would end now—but alongside it, the thrill of the catch, something primitive and satisfying, a feeling of connection with the natural world and the cycle of life—a long way from the chilled aisles of a supermarket.

They fished for an hour and she pulled in another one: a whiting this time, without the fight of the bream but slender and elegant, yellow strips highlighting its tubular shape. And they spoke a little, every now and then, Ralph mostly about Selma and how much she used to love fishing.

‘But doesn’t she love eatin’ them though, a nice whiting fried in butter!’ He smacked his lips and grinned, a sparkle in his eyes that Clem imagined had been more frequent when he was a younger man.

‘Nothing better,’ said Clem, trying to sound like she knew all about it. ‘Don’t know how anyone could be a vegan. Seems to be all the rage, though.’ Hanging out the bait, hoping to bring the conversation around to Helen.

‘Hmph, bloody vegans. Them and the safety freaks, ruining the country. Kid can’t even climb a tree these days without a rubber carpet underneath. In my day…’ Ralph launched forth on riding free in the backs of utes, billy carts hurtling down hilly streets, his brother breaking his wrist after colliding with a parked tree. ‘Never done ’im any harm. Soft, kids of today, soft.’

By the time they headed back, she’d gained very little by way of information pertinent to Helen’s death but had made great strides in building a relationship with Ralph.

Standing there with the water rippling around her ankles as he winched the dinghy up onto the trailer, she watched another boat about fifty metres away, two men aboard. It stopped at a white buoy and the man in the bow began hauling on a green rope, pulling up a rusty brown cage from the shallow waters. A crab pot, she guessed.

‘Ever do any crabbing, Ralph?’ She’d love a mud crab; maybe Ralph would sling one her way now they’d become mates. It might pay off somehow in other ways, too, she thought.

That was partly why she was so shocked by the story he told next. The implied violence of it.

‘Oh yeah. Mad not to here. Got some decent bait now, too, with these fish heads,’ he nodded in the direction of the bucket. ‘Mind you, I did hear a story once about crab bait.’

‘Yeah?’

He continued strapping down the boat on the trailer, speaking from underneath his terry-towelling hat.

‘Well, there was a fella, Crabpot Kiernan they called him, old bloke lived up north somewhere in a little shed. I believe it was somewhere near Topper’s Inlet but no one ever really knew exactly where—old Crabpot kept the location pretty tight. Had solar panels up there, a generator, chest freezer and not much else, so they reckon.’

Ralph stood with one elbow on the side of the dinghy now, looking dreamily out onto the water.

‘Not surprising really. He had a few skeletons best kept in the closet, so to speak. Been inside for a bit from what I heard.’ He nodded for emphasis. ‘Well, he was a magician with crabs, see. Used to sell ’em to the locals. Turn up with half a dozen. Get twenty bucks each for ’em.’

Clementine was wondering where the story was going when Ralph swivelled his eyes towards her. She noticed the red veins and the way they protruded—a little like a lizard. He had both elbows on the gunwale now, leaning forward and locking onto her.

‘He used what he had in the freezer, eh.’

‘For bait?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What, mullet or something?’

‘Nah,’ said Ralph, evidently enjoying himself now, ‘human flesh.’

Like a punch to the diaphragm, she felt the air going out and nothing coming back in.

He grinned an ugly smirk and cackled, watching her, wanting to see her revulsion, feeding on it.

‘Yeah, good one,’ she managed, half-heartedly.

‘Nah. Fair dinkum,’ he said, holding her gaze for an uncomfortable moment.

Suddenly the afternoon sun was burning her face, heat coming up from the boat ramp into her rubber thongs. It was a deliberate scare campaign. He’d planned on telling the story all along, the bastard.

They drove back to his place in silence and she helped him hose the boat down, thanking him for her first fishing experience. Ralph was unnaturally chirpy, having had his little victory.

As she walked towards her car, Ralph followed. She was opening the driver’s door to get into the cab when he gripped the edge in his big, meaty hand and leaned into the shaded interior, pulling something from the pocket of his faded Stubbies.

Keys. Her keys.

He held them up between thumb and forefinger, dangling in front of her face.

‘Don’t forget these, Ms Jones.’

A big lump of anger formed like a fur ball in her throat. She reached up to take the keys and the moment her fingers clasped around them, he swung his other hand up, grabbing hers, pulling her close. Strong. Definitely strong enough to shove a woman over a cliff.

Centimetres from her face, eyes flashing, he growled, ‘Don’t ever come creeping around my yard again, girl. Don’t even think about it. Or mark my words, I’ll do more than just piss on ya.’