Bay of Fires Read Online Free Page B

Coffee, $2. Sarah vaguely recognized them; they belonged to an extended family who had camped at the back of the lagoon from Christmas until Australia Day ever since she could remember. The woman straddled the picnic table’s wooden bench. She held a pie in front of her mouth with two hands and a can of Coke was wedged between her sprawling thighs. Her wide bra straps cut into sunburned skin flaking off her shoulders. Unfortunate looking, or salt of the earth, was how Mum or Erica would describe a woman like that.
    Everyone did it, made assumptions without bothering to find out the truth. Until she moved up north she had thought it was a Tasmanian characteristic, the result of living in an insular place. Of course it wasn’t. More than once Sarah had been mistaken for a lesbian. She kept her shoulder-length hair slicked away from her face and held back with a plain rubber band. She never wore makeup, and her clothes were functional: bobbled T-shirts left over from her university days or aquaculture conferences. Jeans and old clothes were practical when you were feeding fish.
    The woman outside the shop was speaking through a mouth full of pie. It was hard to tell if the two men were listening. They smoked and drank iced coffees while looking down the road. The short man finished his drink and popped the carton under his foot. He tossed it through the air toward the bin as Sarah approached. Milk droplets rained in front of her.
    “Bunghole, you’re a bastard,” the woman said, adding for Sarah’s benefit, “Sorry, love.”
    “No problem.” Sarah forced a smile.
    Keith Gibson, known to everyone as Bunghole, was jockey-small with a solid beer gut. He wore a blue wifebeater and tight grubby jeans that slunk down over his flat bottom. He wasn’t looking at Sarah; he was distracted by something happening on the other side of the road. A policeman Sarah had not seen before leaned on the open door of his car, staring down the gravel toward the boat ramp. There was nothing to look at except an empty paddock of yellow clumpy grass on one side and shabby peeling paperbarks hiding the beach on the other. Parked in the black sand at the top of the boat ramp was an empty boat trailer attached to a dusty sedan. Sarah pushed her way through the multicolored fly strips; Pamela would know what was going on.
    Coins clunked on Pamela’s counter. “Here’s your change. Sixty cents. Where are your manners? Good boys. Thank you.” Pamela spoke to the young boys she was serving as though they were her own children. She turned to Sarah, her blond bobbed hair swinging as she shook with excitement.
    “Sarah. Sweetheart. Your mother told me what happened. I can’t believe it. You poor thing.” Her fingertips were flashes of vermilion darting through the air. “You know, I saw Roger Coker lurking in the phone box when I opened the curtains this morning.” Although there was no one else in the shop, Pamela lowered her voice. “I said to Donald, he’s probably ringing the sex line.” She put her hand over her mouth and laughed. “I can’t believe I said that, given what’s happened today. No one can believe it; murder in paradise. Two murders in paradise.”
    Sarah picked up a bottle of Hartz mineral water. There was no point trying to speak until Pamela had finished.
    “My heart goes out to the Crawfords. I can’t imagine how they’re feeling. The same beach where Chloe was last seen. The same jolly beach.”
    Australia had fixated on Chloe Crawford’s disappearance. Her family had rented one of the fishing shacks down at the wharf for a week last summer. Sixteen-year-old Chloe had taken one of the shack’s surfboards down to the beach late one afternoon, the hazy hour before dusk when anyone who knew better would not dare to swim for fear of sharks. From what Sarah could remember from the news coverage at the time, Mr. and Mrs. Crawford were bush folk. He had a massive beard; she wore her hair in two long plaits. Chloe was