Something Fishy by Shane Maloney Read Free Book Online Page B

Island. I went past a tourist information booth and a flower farm, down streets with nautical names, following the road through the sand dunes to the rectangle of asphalt beside the Woolamai lifesaving club.
    A half-dozen vehicles were parked overlooking the beach. Sedans, tradesmen’s utilities and a panel van with roof-racks. Solitary men sat in two of the cars, gazing out at the monotonous pounding of the surf. Sad, lonely fucks like me, pining their lives away.
    Should I ball my fist and bang on their windows, I wondered? Tear open my shirt and display the scar where my heart had been torn out? Defy them to outdo my wounds? Squat with them in the tufted dunes and howl like a stricken animal at the rising moon?
    I lit a cigarette from my emergency pack in the glovebox and sat on the topmost plank of the wooden steps leading down to the sand, shoulders hunched against the deepening chill.
    Aeons ago, I’d surfed here at Woolamai. Driven down with friends from university, spent a weekend catching the break that unfurled beyond the sandbank. But tonight the waves of Woolamai were not surfable, not by me anyway. They reared up, menacing black walls, their crests shredded by the wind, their glassy surface bursting open as they smashed against the shore.
    The cigarette made my head spin. I gave it the flick and plodded down the steps to the empty beach, hands buried in my pockets. When I reached the edge of the water, I took off my shoes, stuffed my socks inside, hung them around my neck by the laces and rolled my pants to the knee.
    Talk about a fucking wasteland. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We were going to have a daughter. There would be the father, the mother and the children. An affectionate, intelligent, playful, semi-blended family. We would adore each other. The big brother would cherish his little sister. She would worship him. The father would be a competent provider, the beloved butt of his children’s teasing. The mother would outshine him and he would glory in her accomplishments. They would all live happily ever after.
    Then had come a man on a Kawasaki racer.
    The man of my dreams.

Rodney Syce was a light-fingered chancer with a tendency to lose his grip when things got slippery.
    The third child of a Darwin construction worker, he was sent to live with elderly relatives in a one-silo town in Western Australia’s wheat belt in 1974, after his mother was killed by flying debris during Cyclone Tracy. At fourteen, he was already in trouble with the law. Illegal use of a motor vehicle was the first entry in a ledger that grew to include breaking and entering, possession of stolen goods and trespass. The juvenile court gave him good behaviour bonds and suspended sentences.
    I knew this because I’d made it my business to find out.
    The cops had told me a certain amount, of course. In the beginning they were falling over themselves to keep me in the picture. Later, when the search became a long-haul operation, they were much less forthcoming. But by then, I’d started making my own enquiries.
    Call it a kind of therapy. Or fuel for speculation in the absence of news. Information is currency, they say. I wasn’t sure what the facts I was gathering could buy me. Not peace of mind, that’s for sure.
    I collected newspaper clippings and studied video footage. Read court transcripts. Talked to lawyers, journalists and jailbirds. Pulled what few strings I could still lay my hands on. Assembled a file. Sifted it. Pored over it deep into the night.
    Height: 168 cm. Weight: 75 kg. Eyes: dark brown. Distinguishing marks: nil. Criminal history: extensive.
    At seventeen, Rodney Syce quit school and headed for Queensland, and a string of short-lived rouseabout and labouring jobs on cattle stations. His first taste of jail came at nineteen, two months for assault and robbery after he rolled a drunk at the Cloncurry races. The magistrate was less exercised by the ninety-seven dollars lifted