The Shark That Ate Tommy Shoalhaven

By David Hocking

On a Spring morning of cloudless blue sky off Cottesloe beach, Western Australia, a teenage boy is killed by a great white shark. Tommy’s earthly business, however, is far from over – and so begins an oceanic odyssey of leviathan proportions for Tommy’s ghost, now cocooned within the shark’s body.

Two years later, as another great white is the suspected culprit for a series of attacks along the same stretch of coastline, a local marine biologist and his assistant think they see a pattern to the carnage and hatch a crazy plan. But they’ll need some help.

Are you ready to enter the water?

This is one of the themes swirling through the minds of Gaff and Will as they sit around, one night, quaffing home-made moonshine. Considering that one man is dead and three others are lucky to be alive they begin swapping theories as to why a giant shark is menacing Perth beach-goers...until Gaff has an epiphany that will drastically alter the shape of their future.

In a cottage dwarfed by eucalypts in one of Perth's inland suburbs a weather-worn woman toils quietly making costume jewellery, which she packs and despatches to internet customers. She doesn’t swim anymore but unknown to her she has a key role in the drama that is unfolding along the coast.

Meanwhile, the shark, despite the strange force that is within it, has answered the ocean's call. It has travelled across the Pacific Ocean to California and back, before ending up in South Africa another year later. Sometimes it was in control and at others it was propelled by the force – which it recognised had been with it since it killed that skinny seal-thing, way back in what it and members of his ‘seam’ know of, as ‘the great shallows of the east’.

Gaff and Will have a plan, but they need to action it quickly. The people of Perth panic, conjuring up plan after plan to capture and kill the monster - and stay out of the water, but time is running out for the shark.

Do you believe in life after death?...

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781922022394

Book preview

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1    

The first of November. Spring had only just begun in sunny Perth and a pair of streamlined goggles dangled limply from the young man’s hand. He left the change rooms and walked out into the stark West Australian sunlight before stepping on to the beach feeling like things might be different, come tomorrow. It wasn’t that late but the sand was already warm and any nerves he had regarding tonight’s fateful meeting would be put to good use today. Tommy was 16 years old.

Any kind of sea breeze was at least three hours away, if it was to arrive at all, and the mid-morning sun embedded a flat Indian Ocean with a shade of blue that compelled tourists to stare at it. He wasn’t even training today, well not really, and now that he was on the sand it felt as if the morning’s swim would prove to be an act of physical relief – proof that he was older in the world.

The first touch of water was a shocking contrast for his feet but the boy relished the fire-quenching cold. He waded out until his balls had come to terms with the temperature and he pissed hard inside his Speedos in celebration. When he was shivered and done, he placed his goggles over his eyes and made a final stretch by clasping his hands above and behind his head. He felt great today and how blue was this water? He took a large breath, then another, before he dived forward from a single step and came up swimming the long slender strokes that made him faster through the water than most. He swam out to sea while the pale blue sand of the bottom dropped away beneath him. When he considered himself to be far enough from the shore he began a right-hand turn that would see him swim north for at least one kilometre.

‘What a perfect day,’ he thought.

He was 100 metres from his favourite stretch of beach in the world, North Cottesloe, and he was in such a good mood that, rather than take a breath and add four more strokes to the tally, on a sudden impulse he sucked a harder gulp and plunged his next stroke directly downward.

Tonight was the night so why not celebrate for a moment?

A lady walking her dog along the footpath above the beach saw the whole thing. I saw him swimming free-style. Then he kind of paused for a second and then duck-dived, she told police afterwards. …like he wasn’t in a hurry.

Tommy was the only person that far from shore which was why she noticed him at all.

True enough, Tommy twisted his body over the top of his left shoulder and dived until his feet began to follow him beneath the surface. He left no splashes – he only did it to have a look anyway – yet in that moment he knew things weren’t right. The water was clear and Cottesloe blue but when he opened his eyes through the bubbles he only had time to throw his arms up in useless defence. The top jaw of the shark slammed into Tommy’s right hand before clipping the top of his forehead, smashing him back toward the surface with horrendous force. Suddenly he was all bent-up and viciously twisted inside the shark’s mouth. A torrent of noise filled his ears as his body was squashed against massive gill rakers. Tommy knew what was happening to him but he had nowhere to go. He was immediately desperate for air and he never had time to register that one of his legs was missing below the knee. Then, out of nowhere, the young man’s shock transformed into utter disgust and then a raging anger, for the light was coming; the light was coming.

‘Not today…’ Tommy begged inside his head. ‘…please, not today…’

But water and blackness rushed at him, squeezing the life from the boy whose neck had been broken in the attack and Tommy spent his last moments unable to move. He was curled up in the dark; drowning, dying and dead. He lost consciousness at the same time he slipped into the lukewarm gullet of the animal. Eaten alive. The great white shark that carried him turned away from shore and headed out to sea, ready for the journey ahead.

The ocean felt right to continue to the south and to the other great east this year, which is what he planned to do.

Of course, none of the terrified human onlookers at the cafe could know that. All they saw was a huge white pointer explode from the water and suddenly there was nothing of the young man who only moments before had existed. But there was only one place he could have been: swallowed like Jonah into the belly of his whale. Swallowed and gone forever.

2    

On the ocean-side of Rottnest Island it was a perfect day to be on the water but the boys were having a dog of a time. Paul McCaffrey, or Gaff, as he was known at work, wore a mask and snorkel and was in the water at the back of the boat where he was attempting to unravel a video cable. Dr. William Zantuck, Gaff’s boss, stood on the duckboard above him, waiting earnestly for his report.

Before he became a scientist Will spent years prawn trawling in the waters of northern Australia, but eventually he desired to help save the oceans and not continue to rip life from them. Having long-since achieved his doctorate, these days he was employed as a Fin Fish Researcher for the Western Australia Department of Fisheries (known simply as Fisheries), the authority charged with the management of WA’s fish, marine and aquatic resources in a state with more than 10,000 km of coastline. As part of his project he and Gaff were attempting to capture video footage of schools of samson fish and, more specifically, the spawning aggregations that they formed.

Normally Will was completely adept behind the wheel of any vessel but on this particular morning a mild southerly breeze countered a stronger than normal northern current, dragging the video line under the stern of the boat. Unusually, and unfortunately, Will had clicked the throttle of the 25-ft boat, Duglass, into gear without checking if they were clear and the cable instantly coiled around the prop. He cursed as soon as he did it. Underneath the vessel Gaff couldn’t believe the scale of the tangle. They were drifting in about eighty metres of water, a few kilometres west of Rotto, as the island’s affectionately known, and despite the offshore clarity there was no way Gaff could see the bottom beneath him.

‘Oh shit, Will,’ he blurted in frustration, after pulling the snorkel from his mouth. His mask threw a deep nasal tone into his voice. Will raised his hands in a gesture of hope that perhaps the tangle wasn’t too bad. Gaff looked up at him and shook his head. ‘…nup, I’ve gotta’ cut it, mate.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yeah. We’ll be here all day otherwise and I haven’t got enough fat on me for that.’

Will cursed but if Gaff said it needed cutting then it needed cutting. The scowl on his forehead was easily visible inside his mask and Will screwed up his face in sympathy. He’d been in the same situation himself more than once, with prawn nets mostly, years ago, but he was disappointed. The severing of the line officially put an end to the day’s work.

Will leant over the transom and handed down a filleting knife. Gaff replaced the snorkel in his mouth and submerged beneath the duckboard again.

Unlike Will, Gaff was neither a doctor nor scientist, more a technical expert of anything electrical that was used in the water and, by default, despite his vices, he was Will’s chief side-kick. Thirty seconds later he re-surfaced with a bundle of now useless video cable that he began tossing on to the duckboard.

Bobbing in the blue at the rear of the craft, Gaff hauled up the remainder of the cable, eventually passing Will the large black canister that held the video camera. With his job done, Gaff slid the mask up to his forehead, wiped the snot from his nose and mouth and looked up for a reaction to his rather violent solution of the problem. Will was ignoring him, which Gaff thought was unusual, given the cost of the dead video line that lay dripping at his feet. Instead, Gaff observed his boss standing on the duckboard above him, side on, staring intently down at the deck with one ear pinned to the radio chatter that had begun on VHF16 – the emergency channel. Gaff watched the concerned look on Will’s face from where he floated.

‘Someone trying to talk to us?’

‘Not really,’ Will replied, with some level of concern. He turned to face Gaff and swept his eyes over the water around him. Having seen plenty of big sharks at the back of many a trawler, with what he’d just heard on the radio he was eager to ensure nothing like that happened to be nearby.

Having freed the prop, Gaff was holding on to the duckboard with one hand, six inches above the water line, and shielding his eyes from the sun with the other. Will had a very strange expression on his face.

‘You alright?’ Gaff asked, squinting up at him.

‘There’s been a shark attack at Cottesloe,’ Will said, calmly.

Gaff did nothing for a moment until he saw that his boss was speaking the truth, at which point he raised his eyebrows and let out a typically philosophical: ‘Jesus.’

He tried to listen-in to the radio from the water but it was too far away. Instinctively, he slipped his mask back over his face and ducked his head into the water, spinning around to look beneath and behind him in case anything big happened to be nearby. Through his mask, his lean legs were very pale and very bright above the quiet abyss of royal blue beneath him that seemed to disappear down forever.

‘Yeah,’ snorted Will after Gaff’s head re-emerged. ‘Come on. Out. Let’s go.’

The loss of expensive cable was a blow to the budget and would mean more work onshore for both of them but, as Gaff’s long frame clambered on board, that was the furthest thing from their minds. Gaff wrapped himself in a towel and with one hand fossicked in his bag for his tobacco pouch. He thought about a quick nip of his moonshine that he always carried around with him but he was more eager to find out what had happened in Cottesloe.

Will cranked the Volvo inboard motor into life and hit the throttle before turning up the volume on the VHF radio in front of his face. Gaff braced himself as he stood up, leaning into the dash so he could hear the radio more clearly.

‘What are they saying?’ he asked loudly, shivering.

‘I’m not sure,’ replied Will from the helm. ‘A minute ago the police were calling the environmental authority to see if they can get the okay to kill it. Now they’re calling in a chopper. It sounds like they’re searching for the victim. A young bloke. Near the North Cott’ Surf Club.’

Gaff grimaced. ‘Searching for him? Christ, where do they reckon he is? Was it a white pointer?’

Will regarded Gaff from beneath his wide-brimmed cricket hat that looked far too big for his small frame and sunken cheeks.

‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘Probably.’

‘Well,’ droned a shivering Gaff as he pulled on his cap and began rolling a cigarette. ‘…he’s fucked.’

Will nodded agreement before reaching over to flick the VHF to the channel used by Fisheries, and both of them listened above the smooth sound of motor and spray. Nothing was being said over the airwaves but having spent a lot of time both on and under the water, each man was thinking the same thing: That so easily could have been me.

After they emerged from the back of Rottnest and could see the mainland, they spied two helicopters that were little more than hovering dots in the distance. For a second it seemed to Gaff that this kind of frenetic chaos didn’t match the bland coastline of the city of Perth. There were no mountains, there were no cliffs, and from afar it seemed incongruous to him that a person might be killed on these featureless beaches. Little did he know that they would soon be radioed and asked to join the search and that they would unknowingly pass within a few hundred metres of the victim.

The shark had sensed plenty of boats before, even seen a few, but on this day they suddenly appeared from every direction. His hunger had been satisfied so he didn’t give any of the strange creatures a second thought, let alone the one that carried Will and Gaff. It simply gelled into the collective noise of the search; a search that would eventually turn up nothing but a single right leg that had been severed at the knee.

Though no one would ever know, it was found almost directly below the spot where Tommy was killed.

3    

The following night the shark was 230 kilometres south-west of Rottnest Island, enjoying the southern end of the Leeuwin Current that runs, north-to-south, down the coast of Western Australia. He allowed himself to be carried, almost effortlessly, to the bottom of the continent. A day later, the fish followed the current hard left as it struck out across the Great Australian Bight. Not all members of his tribe did this, but this season he was consumed by a yearning to travel. It was a desire shared by some from each clan each year. It was part of the Ocean’s imposed duty – to spread his lineage across the seas – and he had committed to this year’s journey months before.

Four weeks later, in early December, in the waters off Port Lincoln, South Australia, he mated with a female he had actually met before. She was rapt to see him, recognising him instantly. They ‘hung out’ together for three days until it was time