The Housemate

by Sarah Bailey

  ‘Right.’

  Kylie squeezes Oli’s arm, her bracelet jangling. ‘God, this Housemate Homicide thing is fab, isn’t it? Dawn gave me the heads-up so we can pull together a layout, you know, a round-up of all the people at the house that night.’ She points to a skinny redhead arranging images on a giant computer screen, dragging them into place with a pen that glides over what might be a type of iPad. The three housemates smile out from the centre, looking like sisters. They’re surrounded by a montage of young faces, hairstyles ten years out of date.

  ‘Well, it was a good story then,’ Oli says. ‘I guess it’s still a good story now.’

  ‘It’s a cracker,’ Kylie declares. ‘I gotta say, I thought Nicole Horrowitz was dead. I really thought that Alex killed them both.’

  Oli is reminded of how polarising the case was, how divided Australia had been about Alex’s involvement in Evelyn’s death and Nicole’s disappearance.

  ‘First we need confirmation the body is Nicole,’ Oli reminds her. ‘Nothing’s official yet.’

  ‘I reckon it’s her,’ Kylie says firmly.

  Oli fights to keep the irritation out of her voice. ‘We’ll see, I guess.’

  Unfazed, Kylie pats Oli’s shoulder maternally. ‘I hope you get some good stuff out there today. I’ll look forward to reading it.’ She pauses long enough to take a few noisy gulps of water from a bright-blue canister before wiping the back of her hand along her mouth and yelling, ‘John!’ Oli startles. ‘John!’ Kylie repeats, taking off to chase him down.

  Oli approaches the rear of the giant computer screen Kylie pointed out. On the other side she finds a scrawny-looking Asian kid wearing giant purple headphones. He stops mid-bop and yanks them off, springing to his feet. ‘Olive Groves! Great to meet you. A real honour.’ He grins and pumps her hand with unexpected strength. ‘I’m Cooper. Cooper Ng. Some of my mates call me CNN. My middle name is Nicholas, but I’m down with whatever suits you. Coop, Coops? I really don’t mind.’

  Cooper’s short black hair has been corralled into one giant peak slightly to the left of his crown, and he has three silver studs in his left ear. He wears glasses with thick black frames, his short-sleeved shirt skims his thighs, and his jeans bring new meaning to the term pipe-cleaner. He stuffs his headphones—and about a million other electronic devices and cords—into a backpack.

  ‘Are you cool with me calling you “Oli”? I notice your by-line is always Oli. Olive Groves is a downright cracker of a name, though. Total gold! Your parents must have had a sense of humour.’ Oli opens her mouth to speak, but he hurtles on. ‘Are you going to change your name when you get married? I figure you won’t, but people can surprise you sometimes. You know how there are some chicks who are total feminists but then they overlook something really basic like taking a dude’s name? It’s the worst.’

  She blinks. ‘Are you ready to go?’

  ‘Um, let me see.’ He pats himself up and down, appearing to run through some mental checklist. ‘It’s still cold outside, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it’s lucky I have this piece of quality goodness then, isn’t it?’ He yanks a multicoloured ski jacket from the back of his chair, wrestles it into a small bundle and wedges it under his elbow. ‘Ready!’

  ‘Great.’ Oli’s back teeth grind together.

  ‘Let’s go, then, shall we?’ He swings his backpack on. ‘Bye, Chelsea!’ he calls out. ‘See you, Graham!’

  His colleagues fail to respond, earplugs in, eyes fixed zombie-like to their screens. Cooper charges off toward the lift, and Oli trails behind, plucking an apple from the brimming fruit bowl.

  In the lift, Cooper keeps talking. ‘This whole thing is crazy, huh? I never get sent on stories, but it’s just such a coincidence that I’ve got Alex coming up on the pod.’ He flicks his finger up and down his phone at an alarming speed. ‘I’ve got alerts on all of the Housemate Homicide chat groups and keywords. The second this thing hits, I’ll give you the vibe. There’s going to be, like, a billion conspiracy theories doing the rounds as soon as people hear about Nicole Horrowitz turning up dead.’

  The lift pings, and the doors open.

  ‘I know where you park,’ he says cheerfully. ‘I have this thing about matching cars to their owners. You’re the white Audi.’ He points to the car. ‘Very fancy.’

  The faint flutter of irritation that has been simmering in Oli threatens to boil and spill over. She has no doubt her new car was the talk of the office for weeks, but Dean insisted she needed a decent car to help with the girls, and her old Mazda hardly seemed worth defending.

  ‘Do you come down here and spy on everyone?’ she asks.

  Cooper reaches inside his jacket, then holds out an old-fashioned cigarette case, silver and engraved with an intricate floral pattern. He taps it conspiratorially. ‘I smoke. You notice lots of things when you smoke. Hear lots of conversations. James Gilchrist told me that, when I did work experience at Channel Seven. Gilly’s such a legend—I mean, you probably know him, right? Anyway, smoking has led me to discover many interesting things.’

  After reaching the car they stand on either side, looking at each other over the roof.

  ‘You smoke?’ Oli says sceptically.

  ‘I know, I know,’ Cooper says guiltily. ‘I’m a traitor to my tribe, a rare breed of millennial. I don’t use Snapchat either. I like my digital footprint curated and permanent. I’m actually kind of old-fashioned,’ he adds earnestly. ‘I have no interest in getting a tattoo. And I’m not sold on Uber—their disregard for paying tax bothers me.’

  ‘Get in,’ Oli says curtly. ‘It’ll take us an hour to get there.’ She beeps the car open and slides onto the dark leather seat, surreptitiously shifting the rubbish from the door and shoving it under the seat.

  Cooper hoists himself into the passenger seat. He sniffs deeply several times and turns to her, looking delighted. ‘You smoke too!’

  ‘Not when I’m on the clock.’ She starts the car.

  He pulls on his seatbelt then gasps, his index finger pointed skyward as if to indicate a bright idea.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I forgot the camera!’ He swings the door open and runs back to the lift. ‘Don’t go without me!’ he cries as the doors swallow him up.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  OLI’S KNUCKLES ARE WHITE, CURLED LIKE CLAWS AROUND THE steering wheel. Cooper continues chatting away. In the fifteen minutes since they left the office, Oli has been treated to a blowby-blow account of his resumé, starting with the holiday job he had at the local video store when he was fifteen. Now he’s five minutes into a detailed review of the sleep-monitoring app he’s recently started using. The stop-start rhythm of the traffic is amplifying her tension, and as they slow for yet another red light she breathes out through pursed lips and inhales deeply through her nostrils.

  Eventually they escape the bustle of the city via the tollway and arrive in suburbia. Skirts and suits are replaced with activewear, and rows of taxis have morphed into mums with prams, but Oli barely registers their surrounds. Her brain is stuck on a loop of old faces: Nicole, Evelyn, Alex. Isabelle.

  This bloody story was always going to come back to haunt her, she thinks grimly, tuning out Cooper’s babble. Despite the undeniable surprise, there’s a sense of inevitability in Nicole turning up. Secrets tend to come out eventually, whether they are forced into the light kicking and screaming, or simply float slowly to the surface. The pulsing momentum of unfinished business can be strong. This story was certainly the anomaly in her own resumé, the loose tooth that her mind often felt compelled to probe. She produced pages and pages of copy, spent weeks immersed in the world of the housemates, trying to make something interesting out of the ordinary, all the while arguing the toss with Jo, the whole saga culminating in their popular coverage of Alex’s trial. But in the end, it amounted to very little. The story turned out to be a dud, a nationwide let-down that left everyone feeling cheated, Oli included.

  She
can still picture the corner of the newsroom back at The Daily: the wall of photos, the piles of paperwork; a dynamic mural of the murder, Alex’s arrest and, ultimately, her trial. The shrine had remained in the office for weeks, almost as if Jo thought that by leaving it there, someone might work out what had really happened—anything to avoid the sustained feeling that the point had been missed. Oli knew her own fascination with the occupants of 28 Paradise Street had bordered on unhealthy, and Isabelle Yardley’s involvement had only compounded her obsession. To be fair, she was hardly alone: the entire country was swept up in the story.

  She recalls feeling unsettled by the unchecked judgement that spewed forth from every armchair detective in Australia, all convinced they had the answers. Talkback radio exploded, and the brave new world of online blogs hyperventilated over the saga, flooding the internet with think pieces about the dangers of drugs and female promiscuity, cautionary tales that suggested no one should be surprised that when young women play with fire, they will likely get burned.

  Nicole was always considered the key to the whole thing, the missing girl with the missing details. FIND NICOLE, FIND THE ANSWERS, screamed the headlines. HOMICIDE DETECTIVES DESPERATE TO FIND NICOLE HORROWITZ. Dubbed the popular one of the three, Nicole was the nice girl from the nice family with a history of good grades and impressive sporting achievements. Classmates went on the record declaring her charming and charitable. There were rumours, of course—there were rumours about all the girls—but Nicole’s documented warmth and generosity saved her from the most vicious scrutiny. In contrast, Alex was the foster kid with no alibi, fingerprints on the murder weapon and blood on her hands. Her emotional reaction at the house, widely interpreted as a confession, turned into a stubborn silence, and there was little faith in her claim that Nicole had disappeared in the middle of their mysterious night walk without her phone and wallet. And then there was poor Evelyn, the centre of the whole thing, who, despite being stabbed four times in the back and chest, lost a good deal of her posthumous sympathy when it was revealed she’d had a cocktail of illicit drugs charging through her bloodstream and a great deal more hidden in her bedroom.

  Cooper is still nattering away, while Oli is now firmly lost in the past. The old frustration returns as she remembers dead end after dead end, the inconsistent story arcs and the nonsensical clues. If Nicole really has turned up in the middle of nowhere, does that mean Alex was telling the truth? Or does it mean something else entirely?

  Oli knows the case all but broke Isabelle. Jo even wrote a piece speculating about the strain it had put on the young detective. Dean never went so far as to admit that Isabelle was struggling—not to Oli, anyway—but you could see it on her face plain as day every time she fronted up to the press. Cracks appeared in her usually perfect exterior, and Oli hates to admit she experienced some joy in witnessing Isabelle’s weakness. Back then, the whole police force was under fire, and the media delighted in fuelling the flames: crime statistics splashed across the front pages alongside questions about dead prostitutes, the ongoing gangland wars and the lack of leads in the Carter abduction. After Evelyn was killed, the cops were scrambling, desperate for a conviction.

  They got one in Alex Riboni, but Isabelle and Bowman copped a lot of heat for the way the case had been built around convenient forensics and circumstantial evidence. Accusations of incompetence hung in the air, the lack of motive compounding the issue. Alternate possibilities continued to circulate, and by the time Alex was sentenced Oli could almost feel the tide turning, the universal shift that tipped the party-girl orphan from guilty to innocent. Alex was sent to gaol under a maelstrom of doubt.

  Guilt bubbles up as she remembers lying to Jo about being sick that evening so she could sneak off with Dean. Poor Jo, dead from cancer in 2010. She was a horrible boss, but she didn’t deserve to waste away like that.

  Despite the conviction and sentencing, Alex’s legal team refused to give up, relentlessly appealing her case. Evelyn’s toxicology was scrutinised, comparable cases unpacked, experts wheeled in to claim she had likely struck out in a violent episode—her emotional outbursts were well documented. Alex’s powerhouse of a lawyer presented a compelling appeal that Alex was the victim and Evelyn the out-of-control monster. Alex had been dragged from her bed in the middle of the night by crazy, naked Evelyn, who threatened and attacked her; she was left with no option but to fight back. The evidence that had put Alex away was flipped and twisted. It was self-defence, her lawyer cried, and after three years she was out of gaol and in a rehabilitation centre.

  Nicole’s disappearance was reframed too: Evelyn must have driven her to suicide, or potentially even killed her.

  Chief Inspector Bowman’s carefully worded statement delivered outside court, moments after Alex’s release, was deemed unsatisfying by the media, and Evelyn’s alcoholic father made a spectacle of himself when the salivating journos requested a comment. Mitchell Stanley called Bowman a useless cunt and Isabelle Yardley a stupid slut, before tripping over. His pixelated bum crack appeared in every news bulletin, accompanied by an edited version of his rant.

  Despite the sunshine, cool sweat beads in Oli’s armpits, and she shifts uncomfortably in the leather seat. This morning feels like too much too soon. She wants to reacquaint herself with each piece of the story, to feel her way back into the narrative, word by word.

  ‘How did you arrange the interview with Alex Riboni?’ Oli asks Cooper, interrupting his monologue about computer software he’s recently purchased.

  He attempts a low whistle, but it comes out more like a squeak. ‘We’ve been avoiding the big chat this whole time, haven’t we? You know, the reason we were brought together today.’ He rubs his hands and tips his neck from side to side. ‘I have to say, it was all pretty cool, you know, tracking her down like that. And I’ve been working with one of the guys at the office who is a musician on the side, and he’s developed this cool sting for the podcast intro, it’s so ominous, like, super moody, and—’

  ‘Cooper!’

  He shifts gears easily. ‘Right, back to Alex, sure. Well, someone in one of the Facebook groups said she worked with her cousin at an environmental consultancy. You know, one of those places that encourages businesses and schools to put more sustainable practices in place—recycle more, stuff like that.’

  ‘What does she do there?’

  He shrugs. ‘Project management, I think. Anyway, I messaged the Facebook person and found out the company is called Everyday Green. I tried a few times to get in contact with her, but they wouldn’t put me through. I even sent a letter, but I didn’t hear back, so in the end I tracked her down on social media.’

  ‘She has a public account?’ Oli asks, surprised.

  ‘Only Twitter. And it wasn’t easy—she goes under Al_R_85. But I had a hunch it was her. She kept retweeting links to victim advocate sites and stories about legal loopholes and mistreatment by cops. And environment stuff. I sent her a DM, and we messaged back and forth a few times. I think it took her a little while to believe I was legit.’

  ‘And then you just asked her to do an interview?’

  He dips his head up and down. ‘Pretty much!’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘About three weeks ago. The digital team is planning to launch the podcast series with the Alex interview at the end of this month, but we have a ton of other interviews lined up.’

  ‘Right.’ Oli is unconvinced. ‘And was this all your idea?’

  ‘No, it came straight from the big man himself. Joosten gets we need to diversify—you know, evolve or die.’

  Oli makes a dismissive sound, masking the betrayal she feels. ‘What we really need to do is invest in quality journalism.’

  ‘Podcasting is quality journalism. I’ve heard The Australian is working on one, and they’ve invested a massive portion of their budget in it.’

  ‘Podcasts clearly have their place,’ Oli says, pragmatically, ‘but a newspaper isn’t a broadcaster, and I don’t re
ally think jumping on the shiny bandwagon is the way to go when we could be building on what we already have and what we’re known for. You know they cut half the subeditors last year?’

  Cooper lifts his skinny shoulders, clearly happy to disagree. ‘Don’t worry, my mum doesn’t get it either. She thinks I’m just dicking around on my phone.’

  ‘Yes, well.’ A cramp is forming in Oli’s left calf. ‘Your mum sounds smart. When is the interview with Alex scheduled?’

  ‘Sunday morning at the office, but we spoke last week.’

  ‘You already spoke to her?’ Oli can’t believe what a wasted opportunity this is—the kid is sitting on exclusive content about the one person that everyone will sell their soul to speak to.

  Cooper looks confused. ‘Of course. I had to plan out my interview questions and get a feel for the tone of the show.’

  She laughs in spite of herself. ‘It’s a true crime interview, isn’t it? I would have thought the tone is pretty set.’

  Cooper reddens. ‘I just want to make sure she feels comfortable with me. She seemed to appreciate it.’

  Perhaps Oli’s being too harsh. ‘It’s always a good idea to put the subject at ease,’ she offers.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, brightening. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Hang on. You said you’re doing the interview at the office? Have you thought about where?’

  ‘In the studio.’

  ‘What studio?’ she asks, veering off the highway and stopping at a red light.

  ‘I turned one of the empty meeting rooms into a studio. It’s got proper soundproofing and everything.’ He pauses to throw a stick of gum into his mouth. ‘I looked up how to do it on the net—a combo of old carpet and egg cartons—and got one of the IT guys to help me. It’s come up a treat, you’ll love it.’

  Oli doesn’t comment. For some reason, the thought of Cooper hammering carpet onto walls at the office makes her want to punch something.

  ‘Anyway,’ she prompts.

  ‘Anyway, what?’ He looks at her.