Chapter 7

There was a great story on Apple Isle TV news last night,” Elizabeth said as soon as Hall answered his phone. “Vigilantes frustrated with police have taken the law into their own hands following the unsolved murder of Swiss backpacker Anja Traugott. A local man has been victimized with a dead devil thrown at his house in the night. Furthermore, a piece of graffiti at the nearby wharf accuses the same man. Police plead for calm.”

The last bit Elizabeth said sarcastically.

“I’m assuming Apple Isle TV gave no attribution to me.” Hall had not seen the previous evening’s news bulletin.

“Why would they? That piece you filed barely covered the facts. I gave it a rewrite myself—the chief sub didn’t know what to do with it. But still, the TV news had a much stronger story than we did.”

Of course the chief sub wouldn’t touch it. He didn’t want to be sued for fabrication.

“I’m not comfortable with beating—” Hall said.

Elizabeth interrupted. “If you’re not filing, there’s no point you being there, is there? As much as I’d like to give you a company-sponsored beach holiday.”

After the phone call Hall slammed his car door hard. He used so much force that the side mirror cracked, which made him more irritable.

A good story took groundwork—talking to locals, waiting for people to return your calls. The vultures at the television and radio stations often let newspaper journalists do the grunt work for them. He felt worse because the devil story should not have appeared in the paper at all. Vigilante stories encouraged destructive behavior, copycats and the like. The problem was that Elizabeth had called him five times that day. It was a slow news day and she needed something.

Why was he even surprised? Hall had known when he typed it up it would get subedited into a sensationalized version of the facts. Unfortunately, that was what sold newspapers—and kept people tuning in to the six o’clock news.

  

From Pamela’s kitchen window, Hall watched the crowd gather in the park. Milling around the two policemen in the center, the radio girls clutched handbags and microphones as their heels sank into the grass. Near the road the Apple Isle TV crew waited beside their company car; the cameraman smoked and the producer wrote on his clipboard. Hall knew the presenter, an attractive woman who was peering into a side mirror and rubbing makeup on her jawline. Anyone who’d ever had a drink with her knew the only thing she cared about was to get a job with CNN. A car rolled down the hill and everyone looked up. It was a black four-wheel drive and it didn’t stop. The media pack resumed their conversations, and Hall’s toes curled in his leather boots.

Behind him at Pamela’s kitchen table sat Anja Traugott’s parents. They were a slight couple, their faces bleached of emotion. They drank coffee silently as Pamela and the police media officer, Ann Eggerton, discussed the problems of designating an official nudist beach.

“I’m not a prude, but it’s the caliber of person it attracts that bothers me,” Pamela was saying. “Flashers and perverts and the like.”

What a ridiculous topic to be discussing while two bereaved parents sat by, waiting to beg the public for information on their daughter. Hall took a hard bite out of his bacon and egg roll. The paper had sent down a photographer, and he was using his zoom lens to shoot the locals who were lingering at the edge of the park. Some shifted in the hot sand on the beach while others hung back behind the swings and slide, all curious to see the parents of the murdered woman. As Hall watched, the Apple Isle TV presenter marched over to her cameraman. Whatever she said made him slide his phone into a pouch on his belt and heave his camera onto his shoulder. If she’d known about the exclusive shots the Voice’s photographer had just taken inside Pamela’s kitchen, she would have been furious. The thought made Hall grin.

The photographer had taken some great shots of the grieving parents, candid pictures that told a thousand words. The only photograph Hall still needed was a decent one of Anja. Her parents had supplied a photo which the police had distributed. It lacked personality. Anja had worked in a bank, and the photograph looked like it had been taken for professional purposes.

A chair squeaked against the cork floorboards as Ann Eggerton stood up.

It was time.

Hall held open the colored plastic strips while the Traugotts trundled out. Mrs. Traugott’s eyes were bloodshot, her face taut. She had cried the entire time Hall had interviewed her. Now she held a white handkerchief to her chest with both hands; it would have made a good shot. Mr. Traugott retucked his black shirt into his black slacks. He nodded at Hall. Earlier, tears had streamed down his face as he tried to verbalize, in someone else’s language, how it felt to lose his daughter.

“What went through your mind when the Swiss consulate told you it was likely that the woman found on the beach was your daughter?” Hall had asked. It was one of his least favorite questions; the answer was so obvious it often angered interviewees. Hall filled three pages with notes and decided it was enough; this story would write itself.

“I better go and see what’s happening out there.” Pamela flipped her Closed sign around and sighed as though she had no choice.

As Hall followed the group across the grass, he noticed John Avery standing among the onlookers, one hand on the shoulder of each of his daughters. Hall couldn’t see Sarah’s face, but as he passed, John pulled Sarah and Erica closer together and spoke into their ears. Flip stood off to the side, her hands shoved inside the pockets of her shorts, an uncharacteristically boyish stance. Simone and Sam were there too. They were standing closer to each other than a mother and teenage son usually would, their bare arms touching. Disconcerted, Hall looked twice at them. There was still space between them, and perhaps they were simply scared, but their stance gave the impression of two people very much physically aware of each other. It was a fleeting impression and then it was gone, and Sam was slouched beside his mother, looking bored while she glanced around for someone to talk to.

The press conference began. Ann Eggerton introduced the mayor, the senior inspector, the Swiss consular officer, and the Traugotts and handed out a press release, which Hall put in his pocket without reading. The senior inspector explained that toxicology reports showed there were no drugs or alcohol in Anja Traugott’s body at the time of her death. The cause of death was drowning; the examination of her body was continuing, however. He explained that it was difficult to clarify what injuries had occurred before or after she drowned. The senior inspector was tactful in the presence of the Traugotts; the real aim of the press conference was to encourage members of the public to come forth with new information.

Hall stood a few paces behind the jostling reporters as Mr. Traugott answered their questions in broken English. Mrs. Traugott said nothing; Hall was not sure how much she understood. Twelve minutes later the media officer thanked everyone for coming and the pack surged around the Traugotts. Two uniformed police officers steered Mr. Traugott away as strangers tried to press cards into his hand. His wife was already gone.

“We’re finished for today.” Ann Eggerton often became flustered at large press conferences. She held her hand up, indicating the press needed to back off. “You all have what you need.”

The Apple Isle TV producer nodded as Hall left the park; Hall kept his sunglasses pointing straight ahead.

His Holden took four attempts to start. Glancing up, Hall saw Simone Shelley talking to the Apple Isle TV producer. A wide straw hat hid her face. He eased the gear stick, glancing once more at them in the rearview mirror as he drove away.

  

Hall spotted the flowers as soon as he got out of his car. Roses, tied to a heavy piece of driftwood. They looked fresh. Bingo. Taped to the plastic wrapping was a large photo of Anja. It looked like it had been taken on a summer camping trip: she was tanned and happy; there were trees and a river in the background. He couldn’t have hoped for a prettier photo. So much better than the passport mug shot the Voice and every other media outlet had been running.

Carefully Hall peeled the photo away from the flowers and slipped it into his pocket. In his room at the guesthouse he scanned and e-mailed it to the office. Afterward he held the photo for a minute, thinking, before putting it safely away in his laptop bag. Other reporters could track down their own photo. Wind could easily be blamed for its loss.

  

Sitting at his desk in the guesthouse, Hall read over his list of the people who attended the press conference. Beside each name he noted who that person suspected of the two presumed crimes.

Each person he had interviewed in the past week had happily made an off-the-record suggestion. Often these revealed more about the accuser than the possible killer. Most of the wealthy folk in the shacks thought it was one of the blokes who camped and fished at the lagoon. Hall had interviewed many of them, although it was difficult to speak to them all. Several times he had found the camps empty, everyone fishing or swimming or boating. For their part the fishermen thought it was either Roger Coker or Don Gunn. Pamela had changed her mind; currently she suspected Gary Taylor, although from what Hall understood, she had not seen him for more than a decade.

Simone Shelley had laughed that throaty laugh when Hall pressed her for her thoughts on a suspect. He had sat beside her for a short time on the beach, where she was relaxing, holding a book, watching her son surf.

“That’s not the way to make small talk with a woman, Hall,” she said. “You could ask me what I am reading; that would be nicer.”

He glanced at her book. Señor Barton’s House. It was not a title he recognized.

“It’s about a utopian Australian settlement that was formed in Paraguay in the 1890s,” she said. “The New Australia, they called it.”

Hall was intrigued, but he refused to be diverted. Simone had a way of derailing a conversation, quite charmingly, so it would not go where it needed to go.

“Simone, you’re levelheaded,” Hall said. “What happened to those women?”

She sighed and stretched her legs on her towel, pointing her painted toenails into the sand. She had lovely legs. “I think humans underestimate Mother Nature, Hall.”

Only one person suspected John Avery.

“Have you interviewed Dr. Avery?” Sam Shelley had said when he gave Hall the bikini top.

Hall had said yes. He thought he had. But later, as he filed his breaking story on the dead woman’s bikini washing to shore, he realized that although he had spoken to John Avery many times, he had not actually interviewed him or quoted him in any article. It rankled Hall that Sam had noticed this and he had not. He stared out the window until his screensaver flashed.

   

John Avery had taken the gas bottle into St. Helens to be filled, Sarah explained as Hall followed her around the side of the shack. A glass of red wine was beside her tackle box on the wooden table. She picked it up and sat down, gesturing for him to do the same.

“Went diving earlier. Did a bit of redistribution. Relocation project, you could say.”

“You did what?” Sitting across from her, he could smell the wine on her breath.

“Along the back wall of the gulch, north of where I took you fishing, best real estate.” She didn’t check to see if he was following her erratic conversation. He grinned as he realized she was drunk; it was the middle of the afternoon. “Most successful crays live in those sea caves. Deep and quiet, good views. Fat cats of the sea. You didn’t see any buoys near there, did you? No one puts their pots there. Too stupid. They get enough, though. Not tomorrow. Nothing tomorrow. Should have left them one, just to let them get excited. Oh, well.” Sarah laughed, and when the effort made wine splash out of her glass, she flicked it off her hand and laughed some more. “Oh, well. Maybe I’ll be kinder next time.”

“You took everyone’s crayfish out of their pots?” Hall said.

“Yep. Released them.”

There was a big straw hat under the table, a sombrero, and she put it on. She wasn’t as tough when she was drinking; the dimple was ever present and her skin flushed in a girlish way that made her freckles seem brighter. She tightened the hat string under her chin, jumped up, and handed him her half-full wineglass.

“You have mine,” she said.

An empty mug lay on the grass and she poured a dash into it, swished it out, and then poured herself a generous measure. The bottle label stated it was a Peter Lehmann Stonewell Shiraz from 1992. He wondered if John knew she was drinking it.

“Pamela was telling me about those middens,” he lied, feeling only slightly guilty.

“She knows jack.” Sarah took the bait. “I’ll tell you.”

Hall nodded encouragingly and sat back to enjoy the glass of wine.

  

The rock wall was exactly where Sarah had said it would be. It was positioned between a new barbed wire fence that marked the perimeter of Franklin’s Apple Farm and an unprotected beach. The rocks were football-sized stones that would have been gathered from the paddocks behind. There were days of work in that rock wall. The farmer would have parked his tractor in the middle of each paddock and loaded the trailer with as many rocks as the suspension could handle. Driven the tractor over to the edge of the property and unloaded. Days of backbreaking, repetitive work.

Too much effort just to build a wall in the middle of nowhere.

Hall recalled what he knew about the farm. He was fairly sure it was owned not by one farmer but by a superannuation consortium. It was old, the original apple orchard established on the site in the 1880s. The main entrance was on the other side of the property, on Anson’s Bay Road, where the original homestead and packing shed still existed. Here on the fringe Hall estimated fifty head of cattle were run, probably just to keep the grass down. Neat bushy lines of the orchard were visible on the distant hills.

Not far out was the granite island where, Sarah had said, the Aboriginal people had caught seals. Apparently the people from the Tasmanian east coast were the only Aboriginal people in Australia who swam. Sarah reckoned that underneath the farmer’s rock walls had been the middens. It was the right location for a shell midden site. Hall had seen some on the southwest coast. They were deep round pits, ten feet wide and ten feet deep, and contained thousands of sun-bleached mussel and abalone shells. Sometimes they contained the remains of cooking fires, tools, bird or animal bones. They were an archaeological treasure chest; you could tell what time of year the Aboriginal people used the midden from the type of bird bones found there.

He stared at the man-made rock wall, imagining the site of feasts and long-forgotten conversations. As well as being a dining room, the middens doubled as an animal trap. The Aboriginal people used to arrange bait along the edge of each pit and hide inside. When an unsuspecting seabird set down on the bait, it would have been thumped on the head.

Sarah said she had seen the middens there, had walked up to them every summer until the farmer covered them. Hall believed her. Unfortunately, the only way to confirm a shell midden had existed there would be to remove every rock. Even then, if the farmer had any brains, he would have bulldozed the original formation and destroyed the pits. In reality whoever owned the farm had little to fear, so the destruction would have been pointless. It was unlikely an Aboriginal land rights claim would be made, as there were not many, if any, survivors of the east coast tribe. Fear fostered such an ugly reaction.

Hall drafted the lead in his head, then the second and third paragraph, and listed who he would speak to before he acknowledged the futility of writing a story like this. Destruction of the middens would be impossible to prove and defamatory. Hall’s political leanings had caused trouble in the newsroom before. He already had two letters of warning sitting in his desk drawer. Last year when he received his first warning for his editorial on the Franklin River loop road, he had thought the chief of staff was fooling around. Even when he received the second written warning, he had found it hard to be apologetic. This time it was clear-cut; he had refused to write a story about a woodchip company donating money to a primary school. Elizabeth did not see his point that the story was an advertorial.

Three warnings and you were out. Hall didn’t love his job as much as he used to, but he didn’t want to lose it. He photographed the rock walls with the ocean behind them, and then again with the paddocks behind them, and recorded a description of the area in his notebook. That was all he could do for now.

  

Jane poured a large serving of gin over ice cubes and added a drizzle of water from the tank-stand tap. She took a sip and smacked her lips.

“Good. I needed that.”

Hall arranged sausages and onion rings on the barbecue plate. It was handmade, a blackened metal square resting on three walls of charred bricks. He had spent twenty minutes arranging wood underneath it, trying to get the temperature right. Jane didn’t offer advice and he was glad. The sausages were the cheap supermarket variety, he noted from the packet. He should have organized some fish. Never mind. Food tasted better when it was cooked outside. The meaty smell reminded him of camping trips by the farm dam during school holidays. One of his brothers would simmer lamb chops on an open fire while the rest of the brothers swam and built wobbly rafts from dead wood.

Jane hadn’t mentioned it, but he knew she was worried. Agitation motivated each movement she made—the steady gulps of gin, the flick of her finger as she tapped ash from her cigarette. Nothing about her was still. When she wasn’t drinking, she propped her glass in a potted plant and added wood to the fire or flipped the onion rings around the hot plate. Even her hair kept moving, the wiry coils undulating out from the bun.

He felt sorry for her. There was talk her estranged husband had been seen near the old jetty in a faded bronze Ford utility with unpainted panels on one side. He was hard to miss, a beefy redheaded bearded man. Apparently he had driven up the tip road. Several people had noted the dust cloud rising behind his car as it traveled down the straight road running beside the beach.

“Can anyone believe that man turning up now?” Pamela had said. “You wouldn’t read about it.”

John Avery said Gary Taylor had been working in the mines on the west coast. Erica Avery thought he was doing time at Risdon, a maximum security prison near Hobart, although she was not certain of his crime. No one said anything pleasant about the man. Years ago when Gary Taylor lived at the guesthouse he owned a runabout dinghy. More than once he had been spotted lurking near other people’s buoys; those were the days when empty pot after empty pot was pulled and nobody caught anything.

Hall had mentioned to no one his suspicion that Gary Taylor was living a lot closer to the Bay of Fires than anyone realized. He still had not been able to confirm whether Taylor was the twice-convicted crayfish poacher the police were interviewing in relation to the murder investigation. There were several unemployed men in the area with this type of record. Certainly Pamela was right in saying it was a bit strange, Gary turning up now after all these years. But there was a difference between news and gossip. Jane’s bitterness suggested to Hall that Gary Taylor had left her for another woman. If this was the case, he didn’t know why everyone persisted in discussing him. It was cruel; losing your partner to someone else was a pain Hall understood all too well.

The heat from the wood fire hurt his legs and forced him to stand back. He drank beer and watched fat stream out of the sausages. Jane folded a slice of white bread around a sausage, squirted tomato sauce on top, and handed it to him.

“Sorry,” Jane said.

“It’s fine. I like sausage sandwiches.”

She frowned. “No. Sorry I’m not much fun tonight.”

“What’s on your mind?” Hall felt disingenuous. Casual dinner conversation was not the entire reason he had agreed to eat with her.

“Nothing.”

Jane finished her drink. She held her liquor well. He had noticed her sipping gin during the afternoon while she washed salt from the windows. It was understandable she would want a drink. That morning her final booking had canceled. She had asked Hall to proofread a flyer offering her services for ironing and cleaning.

They talked about the middens while they ate. Jane didn’t blame the farmer for covering them up; Hall was not interested in arguing. She snorted when Hall mentioned Sarah’s concern that certain people in the area took more than their fair share of sea spoils.

“I don’t have a lot of time for Pamela and Don Gunn but I can tell you this: their catch is not a drop in the ocean. They don’t eat that much. And it’s not like they’re taking it to sell in their Chinese restaurant or something. Sarah Avery was complaining about that, was she? Everyone’s got their axe to grind,” Jane said.

Eventually the conversation returned to the murder.

“You know,” said Jane, scraping the spatula along the barbecue plate, “some of the bus drivers coming down from Launceston have been telling people where the beach is. They’re making a big deal out of it, like it’s a tourist attraction.”

Hall stoked the fire but watched Jane’s face as he said, “I’m more interested in that fellow driving the bronze utility.”

“You know who it is.” Jane sucked her lips in.

“Why do they call him Speed?”

“Don’t be mistaken. He’s not stupid. Gary’s got it all happening up here.” She tapped the side of her head. “Everyone from Ringarooma speaks slowly.”

Without prompting, Jane outlined the brief, bitter history of her marriage. Gary Taylor could be blamed for pretty much all of Jane’s problems, from her childlessness to the backbreaking hours she worked to keep the roof over her head.

“Nineteen is too young to marry,” she said. “Look at me now. I’m stuck here.”

“How did you meet?” Hall asked.

“God, a long time ago.” Jane poured herself another drink. “Raspberry picking. Sounds bloody romantic, doesn’t it? It was a summer job for a gang of us kids. You picked all day, drank all night. We all camped out in the farmer’s shed and I tell you, once the lights went out, some of those blokes were like a bunch of goanna lizards, crawling over each other trying to get a bit, not caring who it was with.”

Hall cringed. It sounded dreadful.

Jane laughed. “Gary took me under his wing. He was older, twenty-two. He said, ‘You’re too special for those louts to get their hands on.’ We liked each other. Had the same sense of humor.”

Her cheeks flushed, which Hall assumed was from embarrassment at having spoken so candidly.

“‘Special.’ I’m not the first girl to fall for that line.”

“I’m sorry that your marriage ended.”

“I don’t even think about it anymore,” Jane said. “Don’t worry about me. I still have a personal life.”

“Do you think it is strange that Gary has turned up after so long?” Hall knew more about Gary Taylor than his question implied, but he was undecided on how much to tell her.

“Do I think it’s strange Gary turning up now? Nothing that man does will amaze me. Look, he read something in the paper… something I said. He’s full of it.”

“So you’ve spoken to him?”

“Yeah.”

“What else did he say?”

“Drop it. You’re barking up the wrong tree. Gary’s not your man.”

“I have never said he was.” Hall sighed. “All this angst. If only beautiful young girls didn’t go walking on the beach alone.”

“Well, they shouldn’t. Girls who don’t want trouble shouldn’t go running around screaming for attention.”

There was a hard edge to Jane’s voice. Hall waited for her to say more, but she only shook her head. She flicked her cigarette lighter on and off and smiled for the first time that evening. “I nearly forgot. I was talking to someone who is angry with you.”

“Yeah?”

“Apparently you weren’t supposed to put that thing about Roger Coker in the paper. Vigilantes throwing Tassie devil road kill at people’s places.” Jane laughed and lit a half-smoked cigarette she had put out when they started eating. She blew smoke toward the ocean. “You reporters, you’re all the same. I better be careful what I say.”

Hall swallowed the froth in the bottom of his stubby. “What else did Sarah say?”

“She was yapping on. Reckoned you tricked her into saying something. She’s worried Roger Coker’s going to be hassled even more now. It was all over the TV last night. I said who gives a rat’s? You can’t worry about other people.”

Jane propped her pointed boot on a stump of wood. He hadn’t picked her as someone who enjoyed telling a person something they wouldn’t like to hear. A mosquito pricked the back of his neck and he slapped at it in disgust.

“If people don’t say it’s off the record, how the hell am I supposed to know?” he muttered.

A fat round moon was high over the ocean horizon. Darkness, unfortunately, was hours away. Hall opened another beer and sat down next to Jane. There was no point taking his frustration out on her. Her wanting to talk about someone else’s problems for a change, he couldn’t hold that against her.

  

It was nearly midnight and Hall was getting ready for bed when he heard a male voice coming from somewhere in the guesthouse. It was muffled and for a moment he could not be certain he had heard anything at all. He opened the door to his room carefully, so it wouldn’t squeak, and listened. From deep within the guesthouse he heard the shuffling of furniture on floorboards, followed by Jane’s laughter. Perhaps she was listening to her transistor radio. He shrugged off the thought that something was not quite right and leaned out his window.

Ten minutes later he was still gazing at the night sea, conscious that the guesthouse was now silent, when he saw a solitary figure moving down the empty road. In Launceston he wouldn’t have noticed a person walking at night on an unlit street. Here it was clearer. He recognized her posture first; striding out, her back erect. It was Sarah. Her fishing rod bounced against her shoulder as she walked.

By the time Hall had tied his bootlaces and crossed the guesthouse yard, she was no longer in sight. He waited until he was well away from the guesthouse to call out.

“Anyone feel like coming fishing with me?” His voice sounded strange in the silent night, as if it belonged to someone else. There was no answer and he couldn’t help feeling foolish.

“Hello?” he called less confidently.

At the shortcut to the gulch, she was waiting for him. She must have been standing there for several minutes, listening to his footsteps crackle on the gravel, hearing him breathe and cough and look for her.

“Boo,” she said.

“Hope I didn’t scare you.”

“You wish.” Her teeth gleamed in the moonlight; he liked the way they weren’t perfect, one front tooth leaning against a corner of the other. Her sister had perfectly straight teeth. Sarah had told him that her sister had worn clear braces, which cost twice as much as normal metal ones, but they had been necessary as Erica was a promising ballet dancer as a teen. Apparently metal braces could be detrimental to a dancer’s prospects in competitions.

“You’ve got balls, wandering around out here by yourself at night.” Immediately he wished he had not used that expression. “You’re gutsy.”

“Not gutsy. Just extremely fit.” She had mentioned that one of the reasons she had been unconcerned about approaching him on that first day on the dune was that she knew she could outrun him. Did that mean she thought he looked unfit? He touched his stomach; it wasn’t as hard as it used to be, but it wasn’t all that soft, either. Maybe she noticed the move for she added, “You look pretty fit yourself, so I guess we’re safe tonight.”

They walked past the gulch and onto a slender stretch of sand called Witch’s Cove. At the end of the beach they sat on a rock, facing the sea. Sea lice glowed like tiny fairy lights in the body of each wave.

“That article about Roger. I regret that it ran.”

He explained about his impatient editor and the news cycle pressure. He kept it brief; he didn’t want to give her the impression that his work colleagues did not respect him.

“No worries,” she said.

“Jane mentioned you were upset about it.”

“I don’t upset that easily, Hall. I’m worried about Roger though.”

She leaned back against the rock. In the moonlight her hair had the reddish hue of an Antarctic beech in summer. He wasn’t sure, but the way the fabric of her shirt was sitting it appeared that she wasn’t wearing a bra. He wondered if she was expecting him to take the lead. Without alcohol dulling bravado he felt as though he was on stage and about to be judged, like the bulls in the livestock show at Agfest, blinking at the audience, not comprehending what was expected of them. The rock was digging into one of his legs and it hurt.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“Tell me. You’re acting weird.”

He felt like a boy on a first date.

“Are you married or something?” she said.

“No!”

“You think I’m ugly and wondering why you got with me the other night?”

“No!”

How could he explain to this confident woman that he had not made love sober for seven years? The problem was not that he was worried he couldn’t perform; it was that he would disappoint her. That afterward she might lie beside him, cuddling in his arms, but secretly be thinking that she had had better. Ragged with frustration at himself, he turned back to her. It was too late. She was picking up her fishing rod.

  

In the kitchen, waiting for his tea to steep, Hall munched Vegemite toast and watched Jane follow her black dogs down the beach track. The bigger one was older and limped, trying to keep up with the younger one, which raced toward the surf. Jane put a hand to her mouth, probably whistling through two fingers, commanding the pup to wait. He did not. It was the younger one that Don had smacked at the Abalone Bake. Hall had checked the wound on the dog’s back, a neat two-inch cut. It had healed faster than he’d thought it would, aided, he supposed, by daily saltwater swims.

This morning Hall planned to knock on Roger’s door again but it was still too early; the sun had barely come up. He looked for something to read or do while he had breakfast. There was a pack of cards beside the stacked board games and he took them down, dealing himself a game of patience. It was hard to concentrate, his thoughts returning to Sarah. He was a moron. Last night he should have just grabbed her and kissed her, properly, how he wanted to. How many chances did a man need?

A door closed somewhere in the depths of the guesthouse. Hall put the cards down. He was about to go down the internal staircase when instinct urged him to look out the kitchen window. In the garden below, a man wearing running shorts and a T-shirt was bent over, rooting around in the wood stack beneath the tank stand. The man stood up, glanced around as if to ensure no one was watching him, and walked up the hill toward the road.

Hall exhaled slowly. It was John Avery.

He finished his tea, watching Jane run the dogs through the white wash. He wouldn’t tell her, not yet. There was no sense in scaring her unnecessarily. And for all he knew John Avery was merely returning some firewood or something. It was nothing that could not be sorted by a few deliberate questions addressed directly to Dr. Avery.

  

As Hall washed his breakfast dishes, he spotted Roger Coker lumbering across the rocks. Abandoning the soapy water in the sink, Hall grabbed his notebook and jogged down the beach track.

People had said that Roger smelled like cat urine, that his hands were abnormally large and one of them was missing two fingers, that when he looked at you he didn’t blink and it made you feel like he could read your thoughts. Hall had not believed any of it, had attributed it to the witch hunt he was witnessing. The first time he knocked on Roger’s door he had not detected the smell on his body, combined as it must have been with the cat-reeking veranda. Now, crouched next to Roger on the rocks, he had to shuffle back as the sour odor sickened him.

Hall didn’t describe the profile piece he wanted to write on Roger. Instead he talked about the history of the area and how Roger must know a lot about it, having lived here all his life. Roger stared unblinking at Hall, his hands tying a knot in his fishing line. When the knot was tied, he propped the rod on the rock.

“Yep, lived here all my life. Probably die here, too. My old man said his last prayers a few miles up that way.” Roger nodded back toward the gray beach and whitecapped surf. With two fingers shaped like a gun, he tapped his head. “Tock. Gulls and sea eagles had eaten most of him by the time we found him.”

“Is that right?”

“Mum said that was what he always wanted.”

Hall made a perfunctory sound.

“To get eaten by birds—that wasn’t what he wanted.” Roger’s chuckle turned into a hoarse cough. “No, he didn’t want to live for a long time.”

Hall had heard the rumor about Roger Coker’s father from more than one person. Apparently he had taken his own life on the bluff when Roger was a boy of ten or eleven. Hearing it from Roger was humbling.

“Sarah said your father was a carpenter?” Hall said.

“Yes. But he never got his papers. That was his problem. He was hopeless, my mum said. He couldn’t finish things. He built a boat once. Just a small dinghy. It leaked. It’s in the bottom of the lagoon somewhere.”

Hall laughed with Roger. This could make a really lovely, insightful story. A story that changed people’s perceptions. Somehow, Roger had decided to trust him. Hall tapped his notebook.

“Maybe you could talk to me about fishing in the area?”

Roger stood up. He was taller than Hall. As if to fend off Hall, he held both hands up. The palms were flat and wide, his fingers flared.

“You shouldn’t talk to strangers,” Roger said. “Off I go.”

As Roger lumbered away across the rocks, Hall could not stop himself thinking about the size of his hands. Roger might not be a muscular man, but even with several fingers missing, those hands looked capable of snuffing the life out of a person.

  

Once they were clear of the wharf, Don wound the throttle up. Hall had no idea how fast they were going in boating terms but it felt like a hundred kilometers an hour: the speedboat was skimming the water. Wind rushing on his face, hand steadied on the bow, Hall momentarily reconsidered putting his hand up the next time the chief subeditor job was offered. It paid at least ninety thousand a year, which was a thirty percent increase on what he was currently earning. With that kind of money, he could afford to purchase a small but sexy speedboat.

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 couldn’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.