Page 18 of The Sirens
17
LUCY
FRIDAY, 15 FEbrUARY 2019
It is after midnight when Lucy finally puts down the diary.
She stands at the bedroom window, watching the silver play of the moonlight on the waves. The scene is beautiful, like one of Jess’s paintings, and yet dread worms inside her. She can’t get that image out of her head – her older sister, younger than she is now, holding hands with a grown man. Part of Lucy longs for it to be false; a story that the teenage Jess – flush with hormones and infatuation – has told herself. But she knows it’s true, feels it within her bones.
For most of her life, Jess has been a riddle to her, and now that the answer is here, in these very pages, Lucy can’t bear to read on. Perhaps it would be better to close the diary for good, to put it back inside the eaves and out of sight. To throw it into the sea. Then she won’t have to know, she won’t have to read about what this man did to her sister.
And anyway, how would Jess feel if she knew that Lucy was reading her teenage diary? Guilt shifts inside her stomach. She would be furious, Lucy knows, at such an intrusion.
What will Jess say, if she finds out what Lucy has done? She doesn’t have the words for it: the desperation to feel close to her sister, the longing to peer inside her mind as if she, Lucy, will find herself reflected there.
Sighing, she opens WhatsApp on her phone, returns to her conversation with Ben. She can’t help but think about him, after reading what Jess has written about Hennessey. Her sister’s words hum with the exquisite torture of first love. Lucy herself felt that way, not so very long ago.
Had Ben known, she wonders now, the strength of her feelings for him? Had her desire been as obvious in her text messages as it is in Jess’s diary, burning bright in every word?
Had he ever felt the same?
She decides that it doesn’t matter. He never deserved her in the first place.
She’s scrolled up far enough in the WhatsApp thread to reach the picture she sent. A woman in a dark room, light falling across her vulnerable, open body. Her eyes wide, almost pleading. A woman she no longer recognises.
She inhales, steeling herself, and deletes the conversation.
Lucy sits on the sand dunes at Devil’s Beach. It’s a little after eight in the morning; the sun on the waves is an apocalyptic red.
The email arrived an hour earlier, the notification waking her from a fitful sleep. Since then, Lucy has read it at least twenty times. It’s as if she has fallen through a trapdoor into someone else’s life.
Now, she murmurs the words aloud, as if doing so might make them feel real.
On Monday, 11 February 2019, the University received a complaint that you entered the accommodation of a fellow student without permission and assaulted him (the Complaint). Following the Complaint, the University attempted to contact you on several occasions but did not receive a response. Accordingly, pursuant to the Student Conduct Rules, you have been suspended from the University for a period of two (2) weeks while an investigation into the Complaint is conducted. You are not permitted to attend campus or access the University’s online facilities during this time. Should you wish to appeal the suspension, you may do so according to the procedure enclosed …
Her pulse slows to a surreal thud, the sound of it filling her ears.
Suspension, with expulsion likely to follow.
She tries to summon details of her life at Hamilton Hume, the life she’s worked so hard for and which now seems in jeopardy. She’s dreaded this moment even as she has, in some ways, hastened its arrival. All those calls from the student welfare office, all those voicemails. She never answered, she never phoned back; too seized by inertia to even attempt to defend herself.
But really, what could she have said? There is no question that she attacked Ben. There will be CCTV footage of her opening his door; there will be the testimony of Nick, who heard Ben cry out and saw Lucy leave his room.
Not to mention the fact that she had fled.
She opens the second attachment; the appeals procedure. Requirements and deadlines wash over her. She could, she supposes, see a doctor; try and get a diagnosis for her sleepwalking condition. Perhaps with a medical report, she could demonstrate that she’d had no control over her actions, that she hadn’t intended to hurt Ben.
But hadn’t she?
The more she thinks about it, the more she feels that something subliminal had directed her to his room that night. She had known, after the meeting with the student counsellor, that he’d face no consequence for what he did to her. She knew that he would hide behind his wealthy background and his lawyer father.
And perhaps something inside her had cracked. All her life, she’d taken for granted that doing the right thing – being conscientious and kind and considerate – would be rewarded; that official procedures and processes could be relied upon. That there would always be a number to call, a person to report to, an answer to every question. That facts would always, inevitably, prevail.
But she’d been wrong. When she sought help through the proper channels, the procedures , no one gave her a gold star or thanked her for asking nicely. Instead, they wanted her to keep being nice, to put Ben’s feelings – his reputation, his future – above her own. They wanted her to go away.
Though she’d been sleepwalking that night, in a way, she’d also woken to some essential truth. For the first time, she’d experienced the world and its injustice; the way the cards are stacked against her, just because she’s female. (She doubted anyone had implored Ben to think of her future.)
With this awakening, there’d been something else, too. A new awareness of her power. Freed from her prior inhibitions – from the compulsion to be nice, to be a good girl – she’d become something she could never have imagined being. She’d become … dangerous.
Suspension . In some ways, it is a strange relief. There is no more waiting, no more uncertainty. Here is her fate. Something loosens inside her, and with it there’s the realisation that she doesn’t miss Hamilton Hume the way she thought she would.
She doesn’t miss the claustrophobic press of her neat dorm room, she doesn’t miss the jostle of bodies in the university bar, the male students with their misplaced confidence. She’s not even sure that she misses Em, especially after the last conversation they had.
It’s not like he actually put it on TikTok himself … maybe you two can find a way back from this.
The only thing that had mattered – that now fills her with longing – was the work. That’s what she has missed over the last week: the satisfying yield of the keyboard under her fingers as she constructs precise, careful sentences; the throb of excitement as a story takes shape.
But if her time in Comber Bay has taught her anything, it’s that she never needed university to hone her journalistic instincts. They’ve been there all along, driving her forward.
She considers the existential doubt that has plagued her since fleeing university. Her fear that her life’s ambition – to uncover the truth, through careful reporting – is na?ve; a fool’s errand.
And yes, sometimes, people look away from inconvenient facts – just like the student welfare officer did when Lucy told her what happened with Ben. Most people just want an easy life. It’s unsettling when someone starts pulling apart the stories we’ve stitched together, the things we tell ourselves for comfort.
As a mother of a son myself …
The counsellor hadn’t wanted to accept what Ben had done to Lucy, or the idea that countless other young men – even, perhaps, her own son – might be capable of doing the same thing. It was too distasteful, too frightening, and so she’d turned away from it.
But just because other people are frightened of the truth doesn’t mean that Lucy has to be. She can choose to be brave. Lucy stares out at the horizon, at the billows of sand that give way to slick gold near the water’s edge. The mud-coloured seaweed, strewn with gleaming bluebottle jellyfish. Today is overcast and the water is grey beneath the blind white sky. Muscular waves shimmer and roll towards her, kicking foam skyward.
When she’d arrived three days ago, and first seen the familiar image on her sister’s canvas – the two girls, the Naiad with its mermaid figurehead – it had been easier to dismiss it all as a coincidence. To doubt her own memory, her own senses. Perhaps she’d known of the Naiad already, perhaps her sister had told her about her latest project, on that last, brittle Christmas visit?
But there’s no denying it now she’s read Jess’s diary and seen the ghosts of her own mind captured in her sister’s handwriting, twenty years ago.
I think her name’s Eliza. I dream about her.
Lucy doesn’t know where Jess is, or why she was drawn to this town, with its drowned women and disappeared men. She doesn’t know why they share such disturbing dreams or why they’re lured to water in their sleep.
But there’s that taste on her tongue, chemical-sweet: the heady rush of mystery, of a puzzle to solve.
She knows how to do this. How to investigate a story, how to pull together disparate threads and find the truth. And no one – not Ben, not Hamilton Hume – can take that away from her.
Besides, until Jess returns, it’s all she can do.
Possible explanations for Jess and I having the same dreams , she writes, then underlines.
One: Folie à deux, i.e. a shared delusion. Seems unlikely as two people need to be physically together to participate in the delusion.
Two: Genetic memory. Again, seems unlikely as not scientifically proven. Speak to Mum and Dad about convict ancestors?
She frowns at the last sentence. She’d read a Wikipedia article about genetic memory – a traumatic memory that somehow becomes embedded in the human genome, passing through the generations like a disease. But the theory is controversial, and in any case, it would presuppose that someone survived the shipwreck.
She stares past the breakers to where the rocks jut out from the grey sea, hunched like human figures. She imagines the Naiad splintering on those rocks. Two girls, one blind, dragging themselves to shore, feet raw with cuts, hair in great wet ropes down their backs.
She looks to her left, to the cliff that juts into the sky. Devil’s Lookout, its cratered face turned to the waves. How many lives has it watched slip away, over the years?
The prisoners of the Naiad ; the eight missing men; even, perhaps, Baby Hope’s mother …
It’s as if there really is something devilish at work here.
The need to understand, to find her own place in the puzzle of Comber Bay, burns inside her. It’s all she has.
Lucy stands, giddy with purpose. She knows where to go, where to begin her search for the link; for the thread that will unravel the knot of this place.
But first, she kicks off her shoes so that she can feel the sand beneath her feet. She sidesteps gleaming lobes of shell, tangled cauls of seaweed. She can feel the moisture working its way into her skin, changing her, but something pulls her forward, prevents her from turning back.
The waves drape themselves like lace over the sand, and she’s so close that she can feel tiny droplets of spray landing on her skin.
Lucy closes her eyes, savouring the sensation. Somewhere, a seagull cries. All the while, the ocean pulses steadily against the shore.
Who else has stood here, in her place?
For a moment, she’s certain that if she reaches out a hand, she’ll find someone standing next to her. The girl with the unseeing eyes. Eliza.
Deirfiúr.
Sister.
She opens her eyes and finds she is alone. But the feeling remains.
* * *
Lucy climbs down from the bus, grimacing at the smells of petrol fumes and old rubbish. The depot at Sydney’s central station has seen better days: the signs are vivid with graffiti and she can feel a wad of chewing gum sticking to her shoe. It’s 3 p.m. – not trusting herself to drive, she’d caught a morning bus from Batemans Bay and, six hours later, heat has settled like a thick cloud over the city.
She hasn’t been to Sydney since she visited Jess in 2017. Walking down George Street, she passes bookshops they’d browsed in, a gelato place where Jess had bought them ice cream. They’d grinned, realising they shared the same favourite flavour – pistachio.
Where had it all gone wrong?
Blinking the memories away, she lets herself be propelled forward by the crowd of office workers, students and tourists, swept along in a current of sneakers and tote bags. After the quiet of Comber Bay, the city seems to blare with noise and colour: cars screaming past, the tick-tick-tick of the traffic signals, even the distant caw of the seagulls set her pulse rising. She feels a brief burst of longing for Dawes Plain, for the open sky. The city makes her feel both exposed and claustrophobic.
She adjusts her backpack, wincing with each step. It’s been hours since she stood on Devil’s Beach, but she can still feel the sting of saltwater on her toes.
The State Library of NSW rises in front of her, a sandstone behemoth. With its sweeping entrance and ionic columns, it brings to mind an ancient temple, erected to honour the gods. Inside the foyer, the atmosphere is suitably reverent. The spines of countless books glimmer from the shelves, catching the sun that pours in from the skylight. She breathes in the smell of dust and old paper, draws strength from it.
She walks across to the registration desk, wincing as her trainers squeak on the tiled floor. The tables are filled with students and professionals, tapping fluidly at their shining laptops. One woman in particular draws her eye – her hair is short and blonde, like Lucy’s own, but cut into an elegant pixie style. She wears headphones and a lanyard around her neck. Lucy fancies that she’s a reporter, transcribing an interview with a source.
The man at the registration desk gives Lucy a visitor’s pass and directs her to the microfilm collection in the Governor Marie Bashir Reading Room. Once she’s settled at the computer, the library’s archive of digitised newspapers on her screen, she takes a breath and opens her notebook, double-checks the names and dates.
1960 – Samuel Hall, priest, 65
1966 – Pete Lawson, veteran, 28
1973 – Bob Ruddock, tradesman, 44
1977 – William Goldhill, chef, 54
1981 – Daniel Smith, unemployed, 21
1986 – Alex Thorgood, teacher, 34
1990 – David Watts, solicitor, 39
1997 – Malcolm Biddy, unemployed, 37
There they are, The Eight.
They represent a range of ages and occupations, and while she knows from the podcast that some of the men – Ruddock, Lawson, Smith and Goldhill – were local to the area, the rest were visiting from out of town. Thorgood was from Melbourne, on holiday with his sister after the loss of his wife and child in a house fire earlier in the year. Biddy was an unemployed itinerant travelling around Australia. Watts was a Sydney-based barrister, visiting the area with a view to purchasing a holiday home.
She thinks of Bernard Smith’s frenzied diagram, the mess of names and arrows. No wonder he hadn’t been able to find a link between the men. They’re missing, and they’re male – that’s it, as far as Lucy can see.
She decides to start with the most recent disappearance, in 1997 Malcolm Biddy, 37, unemployed. She plugs his name and the year into the search bar.
An article from the South Coast Examiner dated 5 October 1997 announces his disappearance. He was last sighted in the early hours of the morning, it says, walking along Bay Road, in the direction of the shore, a kilometre from where his campervan was parked. But there’s scant information about Biddy himself, beyond what she’s already learned from the podcast. Mr Biddy, the article reads, of no fixed address, had arrived in the area only weeks before. Locals describe him as a ‘quiet but friendly’ man who kept to himself.
Lucy clicks out of the article and navigates to the next result, from the Sydney Morning Herald , dated January of the following year.
I NVESTIGATION LAUNCHED AFTER GRISLY DISCOVERY IN MISSING MAN’S CAMPERVAN
NSW Police were called to Batemans Bay Depot last week after a Eurobodalla Shire council worker reported finding suspicious materials in the vehicle of Malcolm Biddy, 37, who has been missing for three months. Mr Biddy’s vehicle, a yellow and white Dodge A100, was towed from Bay Road, Comber Bay, on Friday. A spokesman for the council says that a letter was sent to Mr Biddy’s sister, the vehicle’s registered owner, but when no reply was received the van was removed.
A worker then phoned police after noticing weapons, including a rifle which the Herald understands to be unlicensed, in the van’s backseat. A police spokesman said yesterday that an investigation has been launched after a search of the vehicle unearthed further unlicensed firearms, as well as material depicting child sexual abuse. The spokesman refused to comment on whether the material might be linked to Operation Fern, revealed yesterday when Australian Federal Police announced that 10 arrests had been made in relation to an alleged nationwide paedophile ring.
Mr Biddy has not been seen since 5 October last year, when he was sighted walking in the direction of Dev-il’s Beach in the early hours of the morning. Police have said that they are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances surrounding Mr Biddy’s disappearance. They did not comment on whether Mr Biddy’s case is thought to be connected to other disappearances in the area, including David Watts in 1990 and Alex Thorgood in 1986. Police have asked that anyone with information about Mr Biddy’s whereabouts contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
Lucy feels the creep of disgust at the horrifying words. Material depicting child sexual abuse. Paedophile ring. The picture of Malcolm Biddy accompanying the article is small and blurred, but she makes out long, tangled hair, a grimy bandana. He looks hippy-ish, benign, which makes his alleged crimes somehow worse.
But it feels like a starting point. Is this what links The Eight? Had someone decided that the world would be a better place – a safer place – without them? Like any true crime devotee worth her stripes, she’s familiar with vigilante killers. The most famous is Pedro Rodrigues Filho, who was apparently the inspiration for Dexter. Maybe someone has been doing something similar in Comber Bay all these years, luring his victims to the shore before disposing of them, the sea providing the perfect cover …
But she’s getting ahead of herself. She has no evidence that any of the remaining seven – she thinks of Ryan Smith’s brother Daniel with a twist of guilt – were involved in criminal activity.
She needs to be cautious, meticulous; careful to eliminate confirmation bias.
Next, she searches for David Watts, the solicitor. There’s an effusive obituary from a trade publication called The Lawyer . There’s also a hit from The Australian from 1989, but when she opens it she sees it’s not an article at all, but a correction. Had the paper printed something that David Watts – a successful lawyer – hadn’t liked?
Lucy’s pulse climbs as she begins to read.
The Australian published an article on 7 August 1988 about solicitor David Watts and the death of his girlfriend Christine Cara that year. In it, we made several accusations about his character. We spoke to people we now accept were not informed about the case and failed to include evidence that Mr Watts was not involved in Ms Cara’s death and that it was likely a suicide. We accept we failed to properly inform Mr Watts of what the article contained and as such denied him a proper right of reply to its contents. The Australian accepts the story was rooted in inaccurate statements, given by third parties who had reason to target Mr Watts with misinformation. We apologise wholeheartedly to Mr Watts, undertake to never repeat the allegations, and have agreed to pay him damages.
Christine Cara. She knows that name. A quick Google search refreshes her memory: the doe-eyed model with coiffed hair and slender good looks. The daughter of Italian immigrants, she’d taken up modelling to put herself through nursing school. She’d just become the face of David Jones, Australia’s premier department store, when she died after falling from the balcony of her high-rise Bondi apartment in 1988. Her boyfriend, Sydney lawyer David Watts, was the only witness to her fall.
The same David Watts who disappeared at Comber Bay two years later.
Cara’s eyes – wide black orbs – stare out at Lucy from the computer screen. At the inquest into her death, Watts had given evidence that she was unstable, a drinker. That he’d wanted to end their relationship, and that she’d responded with a threat to take her own life. It hadn’t mattered that Cara’s Catholic parents had sworn that she would never commit suicide; that it was against their religion. Allegations that she may have been pushed were never substantiated and never pursued. The coroner’s ruling had been suicide.
She rereads David Watts’s obituary in The Lawyer.
David had struggled with his mental health in recent years, following a tragic personal loss.
Out of eight missing men, that’s two – so far – who are connected to alleged criminal acts. Specifically to violence against women and children.
She checks her notes from episode one of the podcast. Watts had purchased a six-pack of beer and fishing bait from the general store at dusk. He’d told the owner he was going to fish from the rocks at the base of Devil’s Lookout. The owner had warned him not to fish alone at dusk; Watts had said he was meeting someone, but Lucy can’t find any details of who that might have been.
She thinks again of the twisting stone steps at the back of Cliff House, of the network of caves that form Devil’s Lookout. Even though she’s miles from Comber Bay, surrounded by the whirr of computer monitors and the clack of keyboards in the State Library, her skin tightens, as if brushed by sea air.
After finding little on the other missing men – though the South Australian priest, Samuel Hall, had at one stage worked at a church which faced abuse allegations thirty years later – Lucy turns the page of her notebook.
There’s a heaviness in the pit of her stomach, a reluctance. It has been invigorating, somehow, to read about the disappearances; to comb through old newspaper articles and draw connections between them. Her brain has felt sharp and clear, doing what it does best.
Immersed in research, she’d forgotten about the dreams. Forgotten that someone else’s memories, their fears and thoughts and hopes, seem to have become entangled with her own. The Eight – they’re only half of the puzzling whole, the first part of the riddle.
She shivers, remembering the words from Jess’s journal.
In the dream I’m her sister, I think, but it’s Eliza that I can see. I dream that the ship is sinking … women around us are screaming, crying. Some of them are singing …
Lucy places the Sydney Gazette 1800–1820 microfilm into the reader.
She squints into the lens as she scrolls through issues of the Gazette. She knows that the Naiad sank in 1801 but doesn’t have an exact date. Her eyes begin to water as the cramped print blurs past. She scans for mentions of the South Coast area, but so far there’s just a report of a drowning near Batemans Bay in 1816, a suspected shark attack in 1811. The words ship and fleet jump out at her, but she zooms in only to find reports of the progress of Lord Nelson’s fleet in the Mediterranean. Nothing about a local shipwreck.
And then. Monday, 5 May 1801.
Calamitous shipwreck.
She scrolls down to read the article, the blood throbbing in her ears.
It is our melancholy duty to report the loss of the female prison ship NAIAD, wrecked off the coast of New South Wales on or about 11 April 1801, with the estimated loss of over 100 lives.
The NAIAD departed the Cove of Cork in October last year, bound for Sydney, carrying 83 female convicts and 22 crew. She was commanded by Capt. R. Barker, who had prior sailed the barques ANDROMEDA and RELIANCE, also from Cork, to New South Wales with no incident, though it is to be noted that a good number of the convicts perished on the latter journey.
At about 3 o’clock in the morning on 11 April, a ship was sighted a mile out to sea, impaled on the reef and sinking rapidly. Later that morning, a native woman discovered five bodies washed to shore.
Since the tragedy some twenty bodies – the majority of the male crew – have been recovered ashore and interred at the settlement in Batemans Bay. A search is underway for survivors, after several women were sighted in the vicinity the vessel was last seen.
She reads the next edition and the next, but Lucy can’t find any further mention of the shipwreck, or whether any female survivors were ever located.
But it could be a possibility. An answer.
She kneads her temples, as if to untangle the mess of her thoughts. To separate fact from conjecture and fantasy. She thinks of the mermaid figurehead that she’s seen through Mary’s eyes; the same figurehead in the etchings of the Naiad. She traces a circle on the back of one hand. She has felt Eliza’s fingers in hers, the damp heat of her skin. Mary’s memories have become her own: the rich gold smell of farls cooking above the hearth fire, the bite of wet rock against her cheek. Lucy runs her fingers through the bristles of her hair. She studies her hand on the computer mouse, the knuckles with their silvered streaks.
There is no logic to this, no reason. The potential explanations she’s written so carefully on the lined paper of her notebook stare up at her, mocking.
Her palm on the mouse is sweating. She looks about her: the desks closest to hers are empty, reality receding. As if other people sense her, an interloper in time. The glare of the overhead lights, the humming machines, even the books stacked silently on their shelves: all of it feels as temporary as mist.
She scrolls through the subscription resources on the library intranet until she finds the one she’s looking for, the Convict Record Database. She navigates to 1800 and scans the names of the ships that left for NSW that year. The William Pitt , the Tellicherry .
There it is, the Naiad. She finds the list of passengers.
Jane Adams
Margaret Black
Elizabeth Dean
Catherine Fitzpatrick
Bridget Foley
Sarah Hagarty
Anne Hagarty
Her pulse thuds as the names roll past.
Eliza Kissane
Mary Kissane
There they are, as inevitable as the next beat of her heart.
They are real.
The edges of her vision flicker, and she is aware of her body growing soft and jellied, then the juddering impact of the floor.