Confused, Abby turned each magazine over and spread them out on the bench, a jarring clarity taking hold. Y-Mag, Boyz, Truck Stop, Man O Man. Her mouth opened slowly like a wound, the real wound on her left thumb forgotten and gathering blood. Panic drifted in like smoke as her eyes danced wildly over naked men. Some were flexing for the camera, others were locked in each other’s arms, kissing passionately. On another, four black men with their faces cropped out stood over a young white man, whose hands were pressed together, as if he was begging or praying.

Later, as she revisited the moment over and over in her mind, she’d think there was something almost laughable about it. She’d picture herself frozen in a strange tableau: a woman in a dark-green apron, a blood-soaked surgical glove wrapped around one hand, the half-skinned corpse of a possum on the work bench, and a copy of Stud-Fucker open before her, a perfect thumbprint of blood in the bottom left-hand corner of the centrefold.

But now, she wanted to undo the past five minutes of her life. She shoved the magazines back into the first-aid kit, taking no care to put them in the same order as she’d found them. That didn’t matter. She just wanted them gone. She slammed the lid shut, returned the kit to the space between Ray’s bench and the wall, and went inside to find a bandaid.

13

THE WIDOW

‘This is what we know,’ Detective Eckman said. ‘This morning we got a call from Ben Norbo, who owns the bait stall down on the promenade. He told us he’d found what he thought was an abandoned car at Beech Tree Landing.’

Kate and Fisher sat across from her, on the other side of a coffee-ringed desk in a back room of the Belport Police Station. There was a small window that gave an obstructed view into a damp concrete lane running between the station and the house next door. It was raining again. It had hardly stopped since they arrived in Belport.

‘The car was submerged at the bottom of one of the boat ramps, as if someone parked it at the top, slipped it into neutral and watched it roll in,’ Eckman continued. ‘Ben was launching his Riva Aquarama and nearly tore up the hull before he noticed the car in the water.’

‘Riva Aquarama?’ Kate asked.

‘A kind of boat,’ she said. ‘At first Ben assumed, as we did, that the car had been dumped by some kids after stealing it and taking it for a joy ride. It happens more than you might think. They hot-wire a car from the mainland, scrape enough money together to bring it over on the ferry and then cut lose. Sometimes they dump it, sometimes they burn it out. We thought that’s what this was.’