by Sarah Bailey
The house seems to consist of six rooms, three on either side of the dim corridor. She and Ren walk past an unfamiliar movie poster—two angry-looking men in a stand-off—that’s stuck over the wallpaper, blobs of Blu-Tack obvious in the corners. An empty picture frame is propped on the floor further down. Oli peers into one of the dark rooms: a bed with a rumpled sheet and not much else.
‘In here.’ Ren gestures to the last doorway on the right. An old-fashioned gas heater glows like lava in the far-right corner. It looks dangerously close to an armchair, the foamy guts of which are escaping from a large hole near one of the buttons. A lamp with an exposed bulb sits on a narrow side table. The wooden grain is cloudy with the remnants of something—milk, maybe?—that’s been half wiped off.
Ren commandeers the armchair and points to a grotty two-seater opposite. Oli lowers herself onto it as he unashamedly brushes crumbs from his armrests onto the floor. ‘Shit!’ he exclaims.
She jumps a mile. ‘What?’
‘Do you want a drink?’ He leaps back to his feet and sways alarmingly. ‘I think I have some Coke.’ He looks around, uncertain. ‘Somewhere. I’m always forgetting my manners.’
‘No, no, I’m absolutely fine,’ Oli insists. ‘Honestly.’
‘Okay.’ He sinks back into the chair, rocking forward and clasping his hands together. His eyes flit around the room before fixing on her again. ‘So, you’re what? A journo?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ she says, pulling out her notebook and a pen.
‘On TV?’ He squints at her doubtfully.
‘No, print. Newspapers.’
‘Newspapers,’ he echoes, as if he’s never heard the word before.
‘Ren, I really appreciate you speaking with me. I’m working on a story about what happened to Evelyn Stanley.’
‘Sure, yep.’ Lines furrow Ren’s wide forehead, and he sits up a little straighter. ‘Man, I was just thinking about that, I dunno, it must have been last week. What a trip. Feels like yesterday.’ His unfocused gaze fixes on the heater.
Oli hesitates. ‘Ren, you know that Alex Riboni was found dead earlier this week, right?’
‘Oh, yep.’ He laces his bony fingers. He’s still staring at the heater. ‘Mum told me. Alex, man. I liked her a lot.’
Oli can’t tell whether Ren is stoned or simply operates at a slower pace, or both, but she’s determined to mine his brain for whatever old information might be floating around in there. ‘Ren, can you tell me what you remember about the night Evelyn died?’
‘Sure, yep, no problem.’ He balances his bony elbows on his kneecaps. ‘We had dinner together. The girls wanted to cook for everyone.’
‘Did they often do that?’ asks Oli. ‘Cook for you guys?’
‘Matt’s dead,’ Ren replies brightly. ‘Did you know that? He fell off a roof when he was on a job a few years ago. I don’t know what happened, but someone told me. Can’t remember who. We went to his funeral together, me and Mum. Fuck it was sad.’
‘Yes, I can imagine, and I’m sorry,’ Oli says, meaning it.
Ren picks a scab on his elbow. ‘It’s just life.’ He smiles ruefully. ‘It sucks sometimes. And I hadn’t seen him for years. It’s weird how you’re sometimes only friends with people for a short time, isn’t it?’
She’s finding this roundabout conversation vaguely therapeutic: his childlike manner is oddly charming. ‘Did you speak to Evelyn on the night she died, at the party?’
‘Yeah, a bit.’ He narrows his eyes. ‘When we came over, she was cooking in the kitchen. I remember because I tried to sneak a taste of sauce from the pot, and she flicked me with a tea towel. It really hurt, actually.’ He rubs his arm as if the pain is still fresh.
Oli nods encouragingly.
‘We mostly hung with Miles. All us guys got pretty wasted that night. I guess that’s why I don’t remember much.’
‘How often did you see Miles?’
‘Pretty often,’ Ren says, scratching his head absently. ‘But he wasn’t, like, a mate. It was more like, if he was at the girls’ place we’d go over, or he’d come around to ours. Miles was a smart guy. He was studying business at uni.’
‘What about if he wasn’t there? Were you friends with the girls?’
‘Yeah, we were friends.’
‘Were you more than that?’
‘Nah, I wouldn’t say that.’ He looks sheepish.
‘Really?’ Oli presses. ‘Three pretty girls living next door?’
He chortles. ‘Well, yeah, I mean we talked about them a bit. You know, just mucking around. But we liked Miles, so we would never have touched Alex. And the others, I dunno. They were so busy, studying and working. Real go-getters. Not like us.’
Oli leans forward. ‘What kind of work?’
Ren looks thoughtful. ‘Just … working. I’m not sure. Evelyn worked in a cafe in St Kilda for a while. She used to sneak us free coffees sometimes, which was cool, but that was when we first met them. After that they all did babysitting.’ He unhooks his gangly legs and rearranges them. ‘But they were … what’s the word? Ambitious. Like they had big plans.’ He shrugs again. ‘They went to auditions sometimes, well Evelyn did, but I think Nicole wanted to be an actress as well.’
‘Miles remembers going to the shops that night. Do you remember that?’
‘We went to the shops?’ Ren’s forehead furrows before smoothing again. ‘Yeah, we did.’
‘Can you remember walking back home? Did Miles say anything to you about the girls?’
‘Yeah, he was going on and on about Alex. Matt and I said he should speak to her the next day—we wanted him to come back to ours for a smoke.’
‘And that’s all you did? None of you left the house after that?’
‘I’m positive. We all fell asleep in the lounge room. Miles was totally cooked. He couldn’t handle much booze, let alone weed, and he passed out.’ Ren rubs his nose, which seems to trigger an itch on his elbow. ‘We accidentally locked the cat out, and it started up its crying first thing. I was pissed ’cause it woke me up around five. I got up to let it in, and the guys were dead to the world on the couch, snoring their heads off.’
Oli sighs. She wants something else—not the same old story from a slightly different angle. ‘What were the girls doing when you left the house?’
Ren thinks for a moment. ‘I reckon Evelyn was in the lounge room. The other girls were in one of the bedrooms.’ He looks up and squares his shoulders. ‘I saw them down on the corner after that, though.’
Oli’s fingers tighten around the pen she’s holding. ‘You saw Alex and Nicole after you left the house?’
Ren nods. ‘Yeah. They were walking down toward the foreshore.’
‘When you were at the shops?’ Oli asks.
‘Yeah. I didn’t say anything to Miles, ’cause he was already upset about her. I didn’t think they should talk for a bit.’
Oli’s nerves are firing. ‘Were Nicole and Alex talking? Arguing?’
Ren scrunches up his face. ‘I dunno. They were just walking together. Alex was wearing a backpack, so I thought maybe they were going to the twenty-four-hour bottle shop.’
Oli knows that the cops asked shopkeepers to come forward if they saw the girls that night, but no one did. Neither of them had used their bank cards, and all of Nicole’s things were at the house. With so little CCTV back then, the defence could never prove whether or not the walk Alex insisted had happened actually took place.
‘You didn’t mention this at the trial, Ren. Why not?’
He shrugs. ‘I can’t really remember what I said back then. I probably did mention it.’
She knows he didn’t but lets it slide. She’s trying to think what it all means. Did Alex and Nicole kill Evelyn together? And if so, why did Alex draw the short straw? ‘A lot of people said the girls were fighting before Evelyn was killed. Did you notice that?’
‘I saw them argue a lot, yeah. Like when Evelyn put the paint all over Alex’s car.’ Ren is clearly
impressed at this memory. ‘That was pretty weird.’
Oli blinks. ‘Do you know why she did that?’
‘No. They were yelling—me and Matt were pissing ourselves listening to it, but we couldn’t hear what they were saying. We went onto the balcony for a smoke, and we could see Evelyn painting a canvas in the carport. She was into art, always making something, paintings and sketches, that kind of thing. I think the others were inside, and Evelyn, she just suddenly put down her brush and threw a tin of paint all over Alex’s car.’
‘What did Alex do?’
Ren squeezes his eyes shut for moment. ‘She just stood there staring at it. The paint was white, so it looked like bird shit on the red. After a second, she just, like, stomped back into the house. Alex washed it off, it wasn’t permanent or anything.’
‘Were they always fighting like that?’
‘Nah, but they could all be pretty moody. Sometimes they would get pissed at me and Matt even though we were just mucking about. I think they got sick of us coming over all the time. One time I remember Alex went right off at me for no reason.’
‘What were you doing?’
‘I don’t know. I just picked up her camera—you know, pretending to take photos or whatever—and she lost her mind. Told me to get out of the house.’ A mobile phone starts buzzing on the mantelpiece, and Ren looks up, suddenly alert. ‘Gotta get that.’ He disappears into another room, talking in a surprisingly assertive voice.
Through the window the charcoal sky is bloated, set for another release. Time feels warped, sluggish. Oli thinks about the housemates, the tension brewing between them, pressure mounting until suddenly Alex exploded and it was all over. Or was it? Have the same forces resurfaced now?
‘Sorry.’ Ren returns, his face sporting more colour as he shifts his weight from one foot to another. ‘Um. You might have to go soon.’ His eyes dart around the room. ‘Is that okay?’
Oli has zero interest in being there when his drug pals turn up. ‘No worries. I just want to ask you a few more questions, but I’ll be quick.’
‘Sure.’ He resettles on his chair but he’s twitchier now, and Oli can’t tell if it’s in anticipation of a hit or a sale.
‘You said the girls worked a lot, they had goals and wanted to do well in auditions and things, but what were they like? Were they wild? Did they drink a lot?’
Ren looks thoughtful. ‘Sort of. I think they drank a normal amount. They didn’t get stoned as much as we did. They used to sunbake topless in the yard, and if you opened the bathroom window you could see.’ Oli doesn’t say anything, and he rushes to fill the silence. ‘But they had their shit together, you know? They had plans. They had this big diary on their kitchen wall, and they always wrote down their uni assignments, auditions, stuff like that. We used to give them shit about it. They had weird rules and little codes and numbers next to stuff they wrote. I don’t know.’ He bites his lip. ‘When Evelyn died it totally fucked us. We couldn’t believe it.’
‘What sort of codes?’ Oli is tempted to grab his head and shake it until the right answers fall out.
Ren stares at her like she’s crazy. ‘I don’t know because they were codes. Like if one of the girls was babysitting, the others would block out the time on their calendars—probably because they all shared the car, I guess.’ He fixes his gaze on the dirty carpet. ‘There were stars on some of the days. And they had numbers at the end of the months.’ He chews his fingernail. ‘One time I asked if it was some kind of astrology shit, but they all just laughed at me.’
Oli’s muscles are tense, her feet straining against the leather of her boots. ‘What else do you remember?’
‘Nothing, really. But that last night at the house, the calendar was gone, and a poster was stuck there instead. I asked them why they’d taken it down, but they all just acted like I hadn’t said anything.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
TWO MEN LOPE AROUND THE CORNER. ONE-DARK HAIR, ROUND features, bright-red baseball cap, and a foot taller than the other—kicks a discarded Coke can that rattles noisily into the gutter. The shorter one—skinny, shaved head—wears gravity-defying jeans, every move threatening to make them plummet to his ankles. Neither seems to notice the rain falling in thick sheets.
Across the road from Ren’s, Oli is hunched in the driver’s seat, trying to decide whether to wait until the rain stops before she heads back to the office.
Ren’s sketchy account plays out in her mind. Was he right about the girls having a coded schedule? Were they doing drug drops and using babysitting jobs as a cover? And where did Alex and Nicole go that night? Were they meeting with someone?
Oli stretches her leg to fend off a cramp, thoughts still swirling. She hasn’t heard from Cooper today, a sure-fire indication he’s still angry with her, and she wonders what he’s doing. He might be in the studio working on another episode, or out and about trying to bank an interview. Oli feels a frisson of guilt at her behaviour yesterday. She acted like Jo used to, using her position to pull rank. Plus, she doesn’t have the energy to sustain it.
The two men reach Ren’s house, and the tall one shoves a hand down the front of his tracksuit pants, giving Oli an unwelcome view of him adjusting his privates before he knocks on the door. Ren appears, greeting them with the same enthusiastic head movements that Oli was treated to earlier. They disappear inside the house, and she stares at the door for a few moments, wondering what’s going on inside.
Sighing, she starts the car. It promptly begins to hail. She flinches as a particularly large hailstone ricochets off the windshield. Turning off the engine, she leaves the heater running. There’s no way she’s going to drive in this.
The nature strips turn white as she goes through her voicemails, with Isabelle’s diaries on her lap. She scans the pages as she listens to an excited message from Joosten. Isabelle’s neat notes run in parallel to Oli’s questing thoughts. Search the entire property for DNA proof she was there that night. The house and out house. Request was shut down, but why? Unexplained visit. Sexual relationship doesn’t seem likely so something else. Oli has no idea what thread the detective was pulling at.
There’s a voicemail from Dawn twenty minutes earlier saying the podcast has hit over two thousand downloads already, and that traffic to the website has gone through the roof since it went live. A rush of pleasure rolls through Oli, followed by an intense hit of validation.
After she completed her degree as a mature-age student, her tutor encouraged her to consider TV. He set up a few meetings with industry contacts. One executive insisted on meeting her in a hotel lobby for an afternoon coffee, and suggested she stick around until he could return after work and get a room with her. Another, a large sweaty man who wore a cravat, talked about his knack for finding talent, then proceeded to talk about himself for over an hour without asking her a single question. The third and final meeting was lunch at an expensive restaurant on Collins Street.
‘You’re Scandinavian,’ the high-profile executive stated knowingly, shoving another risotto ball into his mouth. ‘Mm, yes, very nice,’ he added, eyes on Oli as he licked his fingers, chewing sloppily.
‘No, actually,’ she said, her appetite vanishing. ‘I don’t have any Scandinavian heritage.’
‘Doesn’t matter. Between your looks and your voice, men will be wanking into their cereal all over the country.’
Oli looked at the tabletop, gripping her knife and doing her best to keep it pointed down even though she wanted to stab his giant beer gut.
The exec guffawed to himself. ‘We might even need you to tone it down a bit so it’s not too much. We could do some covert PR, get people to know who you are.’ He looked at the hint of her cleavage appreciatively. A few minutes later his foot rubbed against her leg, and she faked a phone call and left.
Print was safest, she decided; better to hide behind the anonymity of a by-line, let her words do the talking.
Oddly, that was one of the only times her mother conveyed an opin
ion about her career. At a family dinner, when Oli reluctantly recounted the unfortunate interactions, Sally knotted her hands together and said it was a shame Oli was only pursuing print, because she’d always thought it would be nice to see her on TV. Pretty Lily, jolly Oli.
As suddenly as it started, the hail stops, replaced by tiny javelins of rain. Easing out of the cul-de-sac, Oli connects her phone to Bluetooth and calls her mother.
‘Olive?’ Sally Groves answers straight after the first ring, her voice ready for bad news.
‘Hi, Mum.’ Oli’s organs tense one by one.
‘Oh. Well.’ Sally sounds both relieved and concerned. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine, Mum. Busy. There’s a lot going on at work.’
‘Yes. Lily said that.’
This is why I don’t call, thinks Oli. It’s so excruciating.
‘How are you, Mum? How is Max?’
‘Not too good,’ Sally says glumly. ‘Max has to get a mole removed next week.’
Oli stifles a sigh. ‘What did the doctor say?’
‘Just that he needs to have it removed.’
‘But they don’t think it’s malignant or anything?’
‘No,’ Sally admits.
‘Hopefully he’ll be fine, then.’
‘I suppose so.’
Oli finds it hard to remember whether Sally has been worse since that night at the house, the horrible night when she found Oli’s diary, or whether she has always been like this. On a daily basis, life swallows Sally up and spits her out again. She finds simple tasks overwhelming and the concept of looking on the bright side unfathomable. Her melancholy is like a huge sinkhole, threatening to suck Oli in every time they talk. She can’t get off the phone fast enough.
‘How are the girls?’ Sally asks.
‘Good. Busy with their music and school.’
‘They must be so sad. Poor things, losing their mother like that.’