Along the cliff the duo traveled, the wind in their fur. Kitty Koala held her breath as she snuggled against Terence Tiger's soft coat. Each giant boulder vibrated with alarm. Each tiny pebble quivered underfoot. Kangaroos bounding to the crime scene covered the eyes of their curious joeys, while overhead a flock of galahs streaked the sky a wild pink. When there was trouble at Black Swan Point, the bushland creatures were the first to know.

A crowd of animals had gathered in the driveway of the Siddells' ramshackle cottage. No sooner had Terence arrived than the tiger pricked his sharp ears. From underground a whimpering echoed: "Boo-hoo-hoo!" Then, goodness! A little furry nose popped out of a burrow. "Why," Kitty exclaimed, "it's Wally Wombat!"

"Wally," said Terence breathlessly. "Whatever has happened?"

"Oh dear!" sobbed the usually gruff wombat. "Poor Ellie Siddell..."

Terence raised an eyebrow.

"Well," Wally murmured, slightly shamefaced, "I guess you've heard about her torrid personal life?"

Kitty blushed, wringing her paws. Ellie was a nurse at the local veterinary clinic, a fun-loving girl and strikingly pretty. But every local pet, recently vaccinated, had a story to tell about Ellie and the debonair vet. No matter that Graeme Harvey was married with three children -- half the dogs in town returned from being fixed with some humiliating anecdote involving the couple's lunch-hour exploits.

A tear rolled down Wally Wombat's fur. "She was still a lovely girl, a lovely, gentle girl!"

Terence and Kitty glanced at each other. Rushing to the Siddells' window, they peeked inside. "Turn away, Kitty!" implored the tiger. "Please don't look!" Ellie's room, with its blue rosebud wallpaper, bore evidence of a deadly struggle. The cosmetics covering her dressing table had been strewn sideways; an evening dress hung on the wardrobe door, horribly slashed. Why, even some small china ornaments on the windowsill -- a turtle, a bunny, a kitten -- were cracked, or shattered to dust.

Terence Tiger covered Kitty Koala's eyes. He could hardly bear to look himself, yet somehow he managed. It was as if a wild -- well, frankly -- a wild animal had been at work here, the tiger thought. "Who could have done such a thing?" He stared across the horizon. At the bottom of the cliffs, black swans sang mournfully. The stately birds dipped their long necks in and out of the water, arching, straining: an ocean of question marks.

The road along which Thomas and I were traveling was cut clear into a cliff face. Rude shadows of electricity poles and gum trees flashed across the windscreen. I lifted my skirt. Peeling off my panty hose, I examined new luminous veins running along the insides of my thighs. Thomas liked the way that primary-school teachers dress. Each morning, he claimed, teachers imagine what the children would like them to wear. "I have seen grown women in party frocks with ribbons in their hair." A posse of Alices who took a wrong turn. As my hand crept higher, Thomas's driving deteriorated. I concentrated on the scenery: the boulders could be tiny or like the buttressed walls of a cathedral. Some were very curvaceous, almost bulbous. "I spy a granite elephant complete with a trunk." I giggled. With my little eye, rocks also formed shapes like mouths, like tongues, like pornographic things.

Opposite these Rorschach cliffs, a huge sign, the shape of a fat court jester, appeared in the driver-side window. The jester, in medieval dress and dark sunglasses, trumpeted cheap deals on color TVs and jacuzzis two kilometers up the road. As it happened, Thomas was also wearing sunglasses and as he turned, smiling at me, a picture of the duo lined up. Thomas, so handsome in his finely cut suit, was the first person you'd expect to be doing this. He was middle-aged, for a start, with his every feature perfectly symmetrical. He looked like a lawyer, and in fact he was a lawyer. And from his office he'd called the staff room during recess, confirming room service for lunch. "I'm going to rent a bed by the half hour," he'd promised. "There'll be peepholes in every wall, and a scoreboard outside the door." He'd then left work early. Dumping his briefcase in the backseat, he'd driven out of Hobart -- a city that still looked, from the top of Mt. Wellington, like a nineteenth-century oil painting. Sunlight soaked the clouds and purple hills soared in every direction. Hobart still looked like a triumphant oasis. And with his wife away publicizing her book, Thomas had left the city and sped toward the savages.

Laundry drying on a balcony railing now introduced the Sand and Waves Tudor Motel: a two-story slab of asbestos with exposed black beams. As a means of jazzing up the Tudor theme, each door had once been painted a different pastel color. Closing my eyes, I could almost smell the sheets. The pungency of fishermen's orgies and mermaids gone bad. "We'll rent a waterbed from some old seadog," Thomas had said. "We'll lock ourselves away, a musty Bible in the drawer in case it all goes horribly wrong." A lawyer is as interested as any criminal in how to sideswipe a rule: this affair was to be kept away from the sentimental. We only met like this, Thomas kept reminding me, to alleviate boredom. I hooked my fingers around the elastic of my underpants, and turning from him, started to slowly wriggle free. A philosopher he admired proposed that facing the finality of death helped people make something of their lives.

"Leave on your heels," Thomas suggested.

I took off one shoe and tried to slide the tiny underpants past my ankle. The trick was to act nonchalant, almost as if Thomas weren't there. He slowed, sensing I had some problem. Under scrutiny, I finished the maneuver and folded my hands in my lap.

"Bravo." Leaning over, laughing, Thomas kissed my neck. Another jester appeared, marking the driveway. Considering the motel's signage, it would be too much to wear sunglasses checking in. He kissed my neck and we drove straight past.

"Are we there yet?"

"Kate, don't pout." He leaned harder on the accelerator. "I've been thinking about this all morning. I know exactly what I'm going to do to you."

"I don't mind that much if we just go back there."

He paused. "We can do slightly better."

I stared at the tiny piece of black cotton now lying by my feet. I'd waited for Thomas in a back lane, eavesdropping as the little girls on the other side of the fence conducted wedding ceremonies: "Do you promise to love him for the whole of your life? Okay, then you can throw away your flowers...Kiss! Now, it's nine months later in the hospital. You play peekaboo." The boys were elsewhere, pretending they could fart dangerous nuclear weapons. One of my students had just been reported for pulling down his pants, trying to "bomb" an old woman walking past the school gates. The day before I'd accompanied him to the principal's office, and it made me awfully sad to see this scrawny kid, with barely anything which gave him pride, enter her room a bright-eyed hero, and leave again chastised and vengeful.

I opened my handbag, depositing my own stray underpants. "Was Veronica excited to be getting away?"

"Yes," Thomas answered. "Thank you for inquiring." Clearing his throat he added coolly, "Of course Lucien will miss her. Although I guess you'd know that as well as I would."

I ignored him. "How is your wife's book being received?"

"It's selling well."

Glossy copies of Murder at Black Swan Point, which detailed Ellie Siddell's bizarre 1983 murder, lined the windows of all Tasmania's bookstores. On the cover a row of swans swam in formation; all black but for one, which was bloodred. Then there was the title in white scrawl -- after you mutilate someone, apparently, your handwriting turns to shit. It was supposed to look as if a psychopath, holding a piece of chalk in his fist, suddenly decided to scrape the title along a prison wall.

I stared out the window. In the book's photos Ellie Siddell was a slightly awkward girl, always smiling. I'd grown up in Hobart with girls like Ellie. Girls hardwired to be sunny, even if they were cast out -- at some crucial fourteen-year-old moment -- for still being so immature. I imagined, later, when all the girls were seventeen and about to finish school, Ellie was mysteriously forgiven; and, more than that, deemed beloved by her former torturers for being so funny and dopey, for reacting to their teasing with a delayed, but full-blooming blush. Ellie, oddly drowsy, with a walk so languid, just before anyone realized a slow, sleepy walk might carry great appeal. She finished school badly and went to stay at her parents' country house, to look after their horses. The vet offered her a part-time job, and her parents gave their approval. The vet was upstanding. They knew him and his wife; she came from an old family. And Ellie had always loved animals. She'd brought countless baby birds home, feeding them honey with an eyedropper. She'd constructed leaf hospital wards for ill caterpillars. Her parents hoped this job would be good for her confidence. Their big girl. Their big, sweet girl -- Dr. Harvey would look after her. He would stand right behind her at the end of the day, taking her pretty hands in his and washing them carefully in the sink as Ellie giggled. Then he'd unbutton her blouse one button at a time, with wet fingers, before leading her into the reception area to lay her down on the couch.

"Put your shoes on, will you." The car slowed again, and we drove through a high wrought-iron gate into a circular driveway. White gravel crunched under the tires; a flurry of pebbles rose like sea spray. I caught my breath. In front of us loomed a white mansion with a wide veranda. It had been built for Tasmanian gentlefolk in the 1870s, then converted to a luxury bed-and-breakfast a century later. The building was brimming with pride: a gingerbread house, iced lovingly, bord... --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.