Bloke, page 23
I’d never seen Dominic work with so much enthusiasm but I had to rein him in a bit to make sure he didn’t get the crap on his clothes. ‘We’ll burn those jeans you’re wearing too,’ I said.
‘But they’re me Billabongs.’
It was my turn to stare at him. ‘Did anyone see you loading the stuff into Stoker’s boat from your ute?’
‘Don’t know. It was early.’
‘Dawn?’
‘About.’
‘When?’
‘Couple of days ago.’
‘And when did Stoker and Baras go out?’
‘Last night, not sure.’
‘And no one started looking for them when they didn’t come back to port? So when did you know about Baras?’
‘The salmon boys came back to town after they found him on the beach.’
‘And what about Stoker?’ Dom shrugged. ‘Dom, you’ve got to keep quiet about cleaning the ute, we could both get into shit. I’m going to chuck a bit of firewood and crap in there, make it look as dirty as normal.’ Dom wasn’t worried about the reflection I’d cast on his ute, he was still grieving for his jeans … and they weren’t even burnt yet.
‘What will they do to me?’
‘No one knows. It’s hard to figure out what they’re hunting for. But they’re certain to be more interested now. Every boat and car in port is going to be searched unless they believe Baras died by accident. And that’s unlikely.’ I looked at Giovanna. Her ex-husband was dead, probably murdered, but it was hard to read her face. She seemed to be more concerned about Dom. It might hit her later. She must have felt something for Baras once, the world traveller and art-connoisseur-cum-criminal-cum-corpse.
‘They reckon the hose got wrapped around his throat. Got tangled somehow.’ I wish Dom had let us in on this earlier. But a man worried about his jeans can be forgetful.
‘Thanks, Dom. Strangled by the hose. Bullshit.’ I looked at Giovanna and she just looked back, a tired, deflated, grim and sorrowful look.
The inquest would be interesting. In fact the doctor had probably already established if he’d died in the water or out of it. If he was in the water and he did suffocate and it wasn’t the hose, then … But that would have to wait. Time to get rid of Dom and see to Vanna.
‘Maybe it’s time to get back, Dom,’ I suggested. He looked pleadingly at Giovanna.
‘He can stay here, Jim,’ she said.
‘They’ll come out here looking for him.’
‘That’s all right, he’s my cousin. It’s a family visit.’
Dom relaxed but I tensed. There was nothing more sure to bring the spotlight back on me, and I was the one who would be in the gym if that’s the victim they chose.
She must have read the thought. ‘It’s different this time, Jim. They’ve got all that stuff about Stoker’s boats and they know the Long Sue business points to Baras. That’s why they were looking for him.’
‘And Stoker and Bob and Dom and me.’
‘Well, we’ll look at that when it happens. Dom’s not going back into town while people are drowning. And neither are you. I’m going.’
‘Vanna you can’t. He was —’
‘I know who he was. He was a prick and he died like a prick. I’m going to see Madeleine. Stoker’s still out there somewhere.’
I followed her out to the car, intending to plead for her not to go into town.
‘They’re not after me, Jim, but who knows what they’re after. The coroner has a clean sheet. As you say, he can investigate every boat, every car, the tax records of anyone they choose. You and I don’t count. Especially you. You don’t pay tax.’
‘Maybe that’s a good reason for them to —’
But just as she was getting into the car, a near-new Toyota came bucketing down the track and swung in beside us. I grabbed Giovanna’s arm to haul her out of the car before I recognised Madeleine. Even so I drew Giovanna from the car so that we stood with that in between us and the widow.
‘Relax, guys, it’s me again.’ She was using the same bluff tone but it had lost its resonance, its bluster, she was a pricked balloon.
‘Have they found Stoker?’ Giovanna asked.
‘No,’ Madeleine replied, reaching into the car. I gripped Giovanna’s arm. ‘And they won’t.’ She took something from her purse and I coiled. She slapped it on the bonnet of the Toyota. ‘This is his pager. He keyed the code yesterday at five o’clock but didn’t leave a message. Only he and I know the code. He must have had something to say. It wasn’t like him to ask me to get milk on the way home. I bet that’s the end of happy hour at Seal Rocks.’
Giovanna swept out of my grip and grabbed her old schoolmate and they clumsy tangoed and Madeleine burst into tears like a sea lion. My jaw dropped. It was something you could never imagine.
‘There there, Mad, there there.’ That’s actually what Giovanna crooned to the big woman, ‘There, there.’ What hopeless, inadequate, totally comforting idiocy was that?
‘And you lod one too,’ the big woman bawled.
‘We don’t know he’s gone yet.’
‘He … glub glub … he’b gone all … glub bleb.’
‘There, there,’ crooned Giovanna and my heart broke for her goodness. All she’d ever wanted was to get away from this place, this place of death, and I’d dragged her back. ‘There, there.’
‘E wod a prig of a mand but I lud thad prig.’ She had good lungs, that Madeleine, but it meant that when wet her words gurgled like cloudy washing-up water. Peas and onion rings blocking the sink. Why think of that? I was in shock.
I went around and put a hand on both their shoulders.
Madeleine wheeled about and clasped me. Truly it was like wrestling a wave-drenched sea lion.
‘I’d soddy Jib. Aldid bullshid, all thid crab, nobun …’ But then she let me go, straightened up, and seemed to shrug her massive shoulders where the peroxided curls bobbed in a damp clump. ‘Sorry, sorry. Just couldn’t face the town.’ Sniff, slurp. ‘Started driving, wondered where … and came here.’ Her face crumpled again for a second and Giovanna went to there there her but she held her off. ‘No, I’m all right now. Got that out of the way. Got a beer? A long-neck, preferably.’
She headed for the verandah and we were towed in her slipstream. Dominic’s back was disappearing just as we rounded the corner.
‘Hi, Rooter,’ Madeleine called after him. ‘Know them calves anywhere.’ Dom continued on his way. The lad was nervy. Madeleine had that effect. Even in widowhood. Perhaps especially in widowhood.
‘I’m sorry about Baras, Vanna, even —’ Madeleine began.
‘Don’t worry, I can’t pretend I’m … But it’s the shock. That someone would …’
‘So that’s what you reckon too? Diving accident, my eye,’ I said, and looked from Giovanna to Madeleine, wanting to ask her a very obvious question.
‘What are you staring at, Jimmy boy?’
People seemed to have trouble with my name.
‘Transfixed by a beautiful woman or wondering who killed who? Which diver done what? Well, forget it. Stoker’s a coward. Everyone was scared of him but he was a genuine squib. He couldn’t have done that without stuffing it up. Couldn’t tap his finger with a hammer without running to mummy. No, the Stoker’s gone too, and whoever done it is a very strong man.’
‘And good in the water,’ I added. We looked at each other. Silenced by our thoughts. Dom came to the flywire screen. Even he was thinking.
Madeleine told us she’d got a call from an ambo mate. Baras had drowned. Choked and drowned. The preliminary examination found a combination of suffocation and drowning, bruising to the neck consistent with pressure from a hose being dragged by a boat. It had happened before, a couple of times. So the records revealed.
The fishing town of Nullakarn was aghast with speculation. Almost everyone in town was associated with the fishing industry and had approximately three hundred different stories of horrible death by water. Fishermen and weekend sailors all worked on their favourite theory. Some searched the island, some checked the beaches and estuaries; the bank agent had checked the records in the town’s automatic teller, but no sign of Stoker.
Estuary and beaches, bullshit. Suddenly I knew where he was. Or where they were. ‘Come on Dom, Vanna, get some sea gear, I know where they are.’
‘They?’ she asked.
‘Yes, you know the other one. I saw you think it. Down near the Sheers.’
twenty
We raced into town and loaded some extra gear in Petrel Head. Once out of sight of the headland I set up a searchlight on the bow and turned off the marine radio. I’d explained where we were going and why but both Giovanna and Dominic were incredulous. The sea was nasty, had been for twenty-four hours, one of the reasons the diving accident theory gained acceptance. By everyone except Nullakarns and people who knew the sea.
‘We’ll never get anywhere close to the Sheers,’ Giovanna argued.
I turned Petrel Head back into the sea and plugged her into full throttle.
‘Give me that,’ she said, grabbing the helm. ‘Enough dead sailors already.’
It took us two and a half hours to make it down to where the Sheers erupted out of the sea like a varnished wall. The sea had broken over the bow the whole way and we were exhausted. The bilge pump was going flat chat. The evening approached but still the westerly ripped and mangled the oncoming sea.
I got Dom training the searchlight on the shore. It was still too light to be of much use but it kept him from shitting himself.
‘There’s not going to be anyone there, Jim, look at the break,’ Giovanna said.
‘The bat cave, perfect place for pirates. They wouldn’t have been able to search there,’ I said, ‘but you could swim in from the sea.’
‘What, Stoker?’
‘If he had help.’ She stared at me but didn’t ask. No one wanted to put a name to it.
‘Shit, shit,’ screamed Dom, ‘there’s a man.’
We brought the Petrel Head about so that our bow protected us from the swell yet still allowed us to remain close to the reef. And there was a man. A dark figure standing in the boiling surf, holding something.
I already had wetsuit pants on and now hauled the top on over my T-shirt. ‘Give us a line and feed it out to me,’ I yelled above the roar of the surf. ‘Not too much slack or it’ll pick up the weed and drag me down.’
‘Here, take the knife.’ Giovanna rushed forward and velcroed a sheathed knife to my forearm.
‘Don’t stay here if I have to swim for the cave. Go back and get a bigger vessel. The sea’s getting worse.’
‘Jim,’ she pleaded over the racket of wind and sea and motor.
‘You know she won’t last out here all night. If I have to go ashore you have to get out. Have a look at the sky. It’s going to shit itself soon.’ She never even glanced over her shoulder.
I didn’t want to look at her. Just slipped over the stern and struck out for the reef. The rope hauled at my waist but I felt it relax and I turned to see Giovanna hold the helm with one hand, push Dom aside, snatch the line from him and begin feeding it to me.
Now that I was in the water I couldn’t see the man standing on the reef. Waves were breaking over my head and bull kelp writhed around me like great flat pythons. Finally I surged onto the reef and hauled myself along by kelp anchors until I reached him and discovered he was standing in a hole just big enough for two people. I didn’t want to tie my safety line to anything in case it got tangled, so I just clasped a kelp stem between my legs and hung onto two others with my hands. Still the force of water breaking over my head was almost too much for me to withstand. I wouldn’t last here five minutes.
In a break in the sea I looked up and Bob was staring at me, Stoker, clasped in his arms, dead and white as marble.
‘Come on, Bob, let him go,’ I said gently. ‘Grab the line and they’ll haul us back to the boat.’ The sea broke again and I was under the water for half a minute. I couldn’t hold here forever. ‘Bob, come on, let him go.’
‘Tied,’ was all he said.
Tied what? I let go of the kelp and hauled myself toward them and hung onto Stoker’s leg. ‘Come on, mate, come on, let him go,’ I yelled, but he just looked past me, out to sea. And then I saw the rope looped tight about both men and tangled impossibly in the kelp and stretching tight as a drum where it was caught on something below.
Bob was held fast in the pothole but I couldn’t work out how he had survived so long. I was nearly gone already but I had to do something. Immediately. Right or wrong. One more wave and I’d be washed away from them. I slashed at the line tying Bob and Stoker to the kelp but as soon as that restraint was released the next wave washed them away from me toward the cliffs. As I went after them I felt my own line being fed to me. I was within inches of grabbing Stoker’s leg when a massive wave lifted all three of us, washed us over the reef and in against the cliff.
Where the sea met the cliff its giant force heaved vertically ten metres or more. We were thrust upwards as if in a giant lift, and then sucked back down. My safety line tangled in kelp and the next surge held me and my burdens on the bottom and tore at my neck and waist. I was going to drown. I cut the line in one slash, hoping I’d breathe air again.
But as soon as we were free of the line, the next wave lifted us in one sickening lurch twelve metres up the cliff face. As it retreated we were sucked down like water in a drain. We were free of the tangled lines but without contact to the boat. We were on our own. I couldn’t see the Petrel Head – but I hoped Vanna would trust me and her own knowledge of the conditions and had left to get help.
I used the piece of rope about my waist and tied a crude knot about Bob’s line and then began to haul myself hand over hand from one bull-kelp anchor to the next. Dragging the three of us was torture. The rope was cutting into my waist and their dead weight was wrenching at my shoulder joints. With every wave we’d be lifted up the glass wall and sucked back down to inundation and the strangling kelp. One stem, another, haul, drag. Screaming ascent, sickening fall. Untangle myself. Haul, drag, clamber. Grinding inch by inch. Rushing ascent, hiatus, plunging fall. Haul, drag, clamber.
It felt like I’d been doing this for an hour but it might have been ten minutes – I had no way of telling – before I felt the difference in the water pressure. We must be opposite the cave. The sea had stopped climbing the wall and I could feel the waves wanting to take us further inshore. I let them. We were bundled and dragged and tossed like three dead seals in a net. I just let it take me, partly because I knew where it was going.
It was almost dark but then with one final surge I felt us dumped on a pebbly shore. I got to my knees and hauled the two bodies up the incline until I felt that the coarse moraine of the shore was dry, and looking up saw the lip of the cave loom in silhouette above us.
I rested for a minute, and could have slumped there in sweet relief, but roused myself and dragged and hauled the two bodies until the floor of the cave gave way to coarse sand and levelled off. Finally I submitted to the pain and exhaustion and lay gulping at the air, my fingers fumbling to untie me from my burdens. I sat up, feeling an incredible sense of freedom to be independent of the other two at last. And alive. I listened and thought I could hear a boat motor but it may have been wishful thinking. It was almost pitch-black in the cave and the only thing I could see was a last glimmer of bruised lemon where the horizon was clawed by the crests of waves.
It was Bob who’d told me about this place. He’d camped in it a couple of times. In fair conditions you could examine an ancient coral encrustation on the reef at the entrance. Something about the combination of the ocean and a tiny trickle of fresh water had created unique reef conditions. According to Bob, there were weeds and sponges here that – water, there must be water here. I looked around but it was as dark as a wombat’s guts. Bats twittered their disapproval.
‘Flares.’ Bob’s disembodied voice? I strained to hear above the booming echo of the sea. Was that a voice? Did I hear that?
‘Flares. In a box, at the back.’ I was so shocked I didn’t even check to see if he was all right, but scrambled on all fours and felt along the back wall. The cave must have been as big as a church. At last I found the box, and unclasped the latches and fumbled inside. Bottles, packages, and then a small plastic box. Bet it’s matches. And it was, in a waterproof case. Good old Bob. Thought of everything. Maybe one too many things. I struck a match and searched the box and found a bottle of water, and some biscuits – and … yes, the flares.
I lit one and a lurid crimson phosphorescence illuminated the high chamber of the cave. Strange figures danced on the walls as I crept back to Bob and placed the flare upright in the sand.
‘You all right, mate?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I thought you must have drowned back there as we crawled along the cliff.’
‘Nah, buggered.’
‘Bob, mate, what happened?’
Bob said nothing. I could hear his breathing, see the crimson outline of his jaw and tangled hair, the hectic glint of his staring eye. I waited and looked about the cave. There were figures on the walls, seeming to dance and lurch in the sputtering comet of the flare. Men and women, dogs and sharks, spears and nets. We were surrounded by another world, another existence.
‘He died,’ Bob said at last.
‘Baras?’
‘Nah, we killed him. Stoker. We got washed into that pothole, trying to make the cave, and then the line got tangled and we were stuck. Tried to cut us free but lost the knife when a wave hit us.’
He was silent for a long time and I stared at his stark profile, wondering what I could possibly say to reassure him.
‘Stuck there,’ he began again. ‘Could stand up but the sea broke around us. Over us sometimes. We ditched our tanks. Stoker got cold so I held him. Might be dead.’ Dead all right. Stoker was on his back, one arm, empty of its saviour, gesturing to the roof of the cave as if in earnest philosophic conversation with the cave spirits.
