Chapter 29
I stand in our front doorway, dazed. The lights are all off. Jessie emerges from my bedroom, tail wagging lazily, still half asleep. I pat her absentmindedly, and she leans against my knees, yawning. She trots back to my bedroom, looking over her shoulder, waiting for me.
I don’t follow.
Instead I shuffle to the dining room table, thinking of all the times my father sat here, sharpening his fishing knife.
I never really sat at this table. I preferred the floor, the couch, anywhere that felt safer.
Some days, I just hid in my room, curled up and hoping not to be noticed.
But the nights were worse. If Dad was in one of his dangerous moods, Mum would bundle us into Heath’s room instead.
Heath always gave Mum and me his bed, curling up on the floor in a nest of spare blankets.
After she was gone, Heath continued this.
He’d quietly shepherd me to his room, letting me sleep in his bed whenever Dad was in one of his silent rages, while he took the floor without a word.
Later, we slept in the cabin to get away from him.
Even after Dad was gone, I never sat at his table.
Like the boat, the table was his. I press my fist into the wood, and I swear I can still feel his rage rumbling through it.
I’m sure I see the outline of him, sitting there, oblivious to everything but his anger.
Sharpening his knife, over and over. I’m sure he thought that the more he sharpened it, the safer he’d be.
He was wrong.
They never recovered the knife. Or him.
I think of Terry Hargrave, and the afternoon he shoved my dad through the screen door. How Dad went missing a week later. I’m glad Terry did what he did. Thankful.
I lower myself into my father’s chair, resting my forearms on the table. I stay that way until the car pulls into the driveway, its headlights blasting light through the house. Jessie barks twice, emerges from my bedroom, listening.
I close my eyes. I empty all the air from my lungs, lower my head, and wait. An image comes to mind: my grandfather as a young man, fishing the back beaches of Kangaroo Bay, wanting more. And here it began, our long legacy of violence.
Their filthy blood.
Heath’s blood.
My blood.
My eyes snap open. I push back from the table, my head hot and spinning as keys rattle in the door and Heath steps inside.
“Min?” He flicks the lounge room light on. “What’s wrong?”
I don’t answer. His footsteps quicken until he’s kneeling at my side. “Are you hurt? What is it?”
I shake my head. He pulls out a chair, sits down, peering at me anxiously. Jessie hops on the couch, sighing before she closes her eyes.
I place my palm on the wood. “I know what you’re doing. At night.”
He blinks slowly, waits.
“I followed you. First to the beach…then to…”—my voice drops—“the weigh-in on Neptune Road.”
Nothing.
Then he leans back in his chair, scratching his jaw.
“You’re bringing the sharks in,” I say. “Aren’t you?”
When he doesn’t answer, I look away, watching Jessie sleep. “It’s illegal to hunt a great white. They’re protected, but you know that.”
Jessie sleeps peacefully on her side, golden chest rising and falling with each gentle breath. “You know what’s also protected?” I turn back to Heath. “Abalone.”
“The house there and that back shed…I know who it belongs to,” I continue, thinking of that squat house with the kelpie tied up on the porch. “Terry Hargrave. It’s his place.”
Silence. “So you use the family boats as a front for the real businesses? The Deep Sea, the Reel Easy, and the Titan,” I prod, losing patience now. “Illegal shark fishing. Abalone poaching. Terry, you, Luke…Trav.”
“Dad.”
I lift my head.
Heath rubs his beard. “Dad and Terry started it, back in the day. Luke’s dad, too. Hell…” He pauses, frowning. “Lot of the boys around here were involved. Still are.”
“That’s why you hate the tourists. Don’t want them sniffing around.” I pause, stomach churning, thinking of Chris, then Rachel. “Don’t want them taking your abalone…” I lean forward. “Tell me about Rachel Sutherland.”
“She was a poacher.”
“So are you.”
He sniffs, “It’s different with us.”
“Is it?”
“It runs in our blood, Minnow.”
“…Maybe it’s time it runs out.”
His eyes flick to mine. “I know you,” he says simply. “And I know you don’t mean that.”
“Tell me about Rachel,” I repeat. “She grew up here, did you know that?”
He nods. “I don’t remember her back then. But she knew the right spots around here.” He hesitates. “It wasn’t the first time we’d seen her.”
“But it was certainly the last.” I stare at the table. “Had you spoken to her before?”
He nods reluctantly. “Yeah. Luke and I had some words with her. Same with Trav and Terry.”
She pissed off a few people in town.
“You were pissed off she was poaching abalone.” I can’t help but smile. “From you.”
“Hey.” Heath leans in, gently tapping my knee. “Abalone poaching is dangerous. We all know it. We all take risks.” He sighs. “She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It happens.”
“What do you know about Hannah Striker?”
He hesitates.
“Heath?”
“She was a courier.”
The words ricochet off the table. She was a courier. She was a courier.
I’m transported back to the abalone facility. I’m staring at the Cryovac bags and wondering, How the hell do they export all this?
I see Hannah’s mum, sitting in her rocking chair, explaining, She traveled a lot. Up and down the coast.
“How did she do it?”
“We sell it domestically. Interstate. Never overseas.”
“How?”
“We vacuum-seal it. Transport it by car to wholesalers, food markets, duty-free shops in Sydney and Surfers Paradise,” he confesses, before pausing. “In Melbourne, though, we sell direct to one source.”
“Down Under Diving.”
He arches a brow. “Yes. The owner has a network of buyers.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, taking it in. “Hannah was an abalone courier.”
“Not just abalone,” Heath admits. “With the sharks, we sell the jaws and fins. And the teeth. You can charge thousands for the jaws, especially.”
The jaws.
I sink in my chair. The jaws in Hannah’s room. What if no one sent them? What if Hannah simply kept them for herself? But then I think of the shining teeth left for Chris, left for me. And the video sent to Rachel.
“I spoke to Hannah’s mum,” I finally admit. “Hannah was friends with Donny Granger. The guy you don’t remember,” I add pointedly. “Was he a courier, too?”
“I never knew him,” Heath insists. “I never met Hannah, either. But I did ask Terry about it.”
“And?”
“Yeah,” he says shortly. “He admitted that Hannah worked for Luke’s dad…and Donny worked for ours.”
I lean back, relieved, piecing it together.
“So Donny and Hannah were members of Down Under Diving in Melbourne. They met Dad there. Maybe they found out he was selling the abalone. And maybe they offered to courier.” I pause.
“That’s why no one saw Donny here. He would have been in and out. And anyone who did see him here…”
Wouldn’t have told the police, because they knew what he was doing.
“Then why would Dad kill him?” I ask.
“I honestly don’t know,” Heath says. “I woulda been sixteen, seventeen at the time. I never knew Donny. I never knew Hannah, either. Yeah, I told Rachel off a few times, but that’s it.” He pauses. “I’m sorry she died.”
I bite the inside of my lip, dig into my pocket for my phone, pulling it out. “Heath. There’s a video of Hannah’s attack.”
“What?”
Wordlessly, I aim the screen at him. He frowns. “Do I wanna see this?”
“No, but you’re going to.”
I press Play, watch it with him. Looking from him to the screen, the screen to him. That feeling rises again: I’m missing something. There’s a clue in the video. I know it. But what?
I frown at the screen, taking in the gory details. Hannah raises an arm to fend off the shark. It takes her under.
“If Hannah was just a courier…” I say, “then why was she in the water?”
But Heath’s not listening, he’s staring at the screen, eyes glassy with that hollow look that comes from staring too long at something you wish you hadn’t. His mouth falls open, face pale as he inches back. “Bloody hell.”
I watch him carefully. I think of Trav eyeing the bloodied surfer.
Of Luke chopping hunks of roo meat in the cabin, whistling as he did it.
Of Terry punching my dad on our doorstep, watching his head rattle on the floor with a satisfied and righteous nod.
Of the men in the shark shed, clutching stubbies and boiling with violence. All the blood boys in the woods.
I’m not that surprised Heath is hunting sharks or poaching abalone. Some would see it as an offense. He sees it as his birthright.
Isn’t that what he said about Jonah on the beach?
That’s my son’s legacy.
Our family has been fishing these waters for three generations, soon to be four. It’s ours, and if Heath bends and breaks the rules…are they truly broken? They were never our rules, anyway. It’s a lawless sea. For us.
I’m not sure if he’s right or wrong.
I watch him pale at the video, and I know he’s never seen it before.
“What do you know about Chris?”
He frowns. “The journalist? He called me after Rachel’s attack. Asked for a comment. I said no.” He shrugs. “That was it.”
“He went missing.”
“I heard.”
“And?”
“And nothing, Min,” he insists, voice final. “Wasn’t his car found up north, anyway? In Violet Town?” He stretches the words. “There’s some bad sorts up there.”
“And here.”
“We’re not bad people. These beaches belonged to our grandfathers, our dads…now they’re ours,” he pauses, before adding, “Mine.”
Silence.
I wait, watching his face harden as he stares at the table. And I wonder if he, like me, can feel the echo of Dad’s violence—rumbling through the wood like a current. Is Heath remembering himself as a child, losing the daily war against Dad’s rage, and the battle to protect us from it?
“One day, they’ll be Jonah’s, just like they should be,” my brother continues softly. “God knows I fought for them.”