by Sarah Bailey
To the east of the town centre is a large lake surrounded by dense bushland and a popular community park. Sonny Lake is really Smithson Lake but no one ever calls it that. I don’t know why, but it’s been Sonny Lake as long as I can remember. Even the road signs read This Way to Sonny Lake. My parents were married there in a very bohemian ceremony back in the seventies. I’ve got a photo of Mum from that day on my bedside table. It was taken just after she and Dad said their vows. There are daisies in her hair and a glass of punch in her hand. She looks about twelve.
The lake backs onto the main high school. When I was in primary school I used to come down here with Mum to feed the ducks and to hunt for four-leaf clovers in the grass. In my high school days, the lake was where we came to smoke cigarettes, drink stolen alcohol and kiss boys. The old gazebo on the little bridge across the water provided the perfect place for a ghostly séance, and the ancient wooden tower in a nearby clearing was a great vantage point from which to see if someone was coming. Once you climbed its creaky, winding staircase, you reached a lookout where you could see the entire lake, the main highway and all the way to the high school. It was also a great place to hide. Before he died, Jacob and I had spent hours up there talking and kissing and more. I close my eyes briefly, picturing his young face. He feels so far away now.
I try to avoid coming here.
Sonny Lake is already swarming with cops who are fencing off nosy passers-by. The lake is a popular hangout in the summer and, around two years ago, the council built one of those modern, soft-edged playgrounds at the north of the park to complement the rickety old one that remains to the west, but I’ve never thought to bring Ben; there are way too many memories lurking around for a Sunday afternoon play date.
Several people in jogging gear huddle nearby, talking quietly to each other as I walk past. Then I spot him. Detective Sergeant Felix McKinnon, my partner. My insides bubble gently and as always I marvel at the effect he has on me. His brow is furrowed as he bends down to talk to one of the forensic guys who is brushing at the ground just off the path. I see a white tarp a little further down in the reeds. Casey, our photographer, is snapping away to the left of it.
I allow myself to process the fact that Rosalind Ryan is dead. I suddenly feel startled to find myself a fully grown adult. I remember how her summer school dress moulded to her womanly figure. I remember the way my own uniform brushed below my knees, how I tried to pin it at the waist and the hem to look more like hers. I breathe deeply and exhale slowly. Walking down towards the lake, I set my face to blank. I try to block out the well-worn images of Rosalind that are fighting to settle in my vision. I try to block out everything. The sun is cracking through the last of the clouds and beats down like fire. The air is sharp. Dry. We are going to have to move quickly. We need to get her out of here.
‘Hey,’ I say.
‘Hi.’ Felix smiles up at me, squinting into the sun. ‘You okay?’
My vision blurs with patches of white. ‘Yep.’ I shrug his question away. I gesture to the white tarp. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘Hard to say. We ID’d her from a coin purse in her jacket that had a school library card in it. There’s nothing else on her except for her keys, which were also in her jacket. No phone or bag that we’ve been able to find yet.’ He wipes at his forehead, already beaded with sweat. ‘Fuck it’s hot.’ Felix is still trying to get used to the relentless heat that invades Smithson every Christmas. ‘She was in the water when the guy found her but Anna doesn’t think she drowned. She thinks she was strangled. But there’s also a nasty injury on her head. No visible stab or gunshot wounds. We’ll know more when we move her, obviously.’ He staggers to his feet. A few grey hairs glint above his ears. The skin around his eyes wrinkles as his gaze meets mine. I look away before I can’t.
‘So did you know her? Remember her from school?’ he asks.
I nod and look out across the lake. Two ducks bob along side by side, the beautiful markings on their faces like stage masks.
‘She’s not the kind of person you forget.’
‘Yeah, I figured. Were you friends though?’
‘It was high school! We were all friends until we weren’t. You know what it’s like when you’re that age.’
He raises his eyebrows and looks as if he’s about to say something else, so I cut him off before he can. ‘Felix, is this our case?’
He’s still looking at me curiously but says, ‘I think so. I was in when the call came through and Jonesy asked me to call you. Matthews might kick up a stink but yeah, I reckon it’s ours.’
A familiar current pulls through me. A new case. My head clicks into gear as I try to start firming up the possibilities. But it’s Rosalind Ryan lying dead over there in the water, I think. It’s her. My usually reliable brain is stuck on an image of her face and it glitches over and over like a buggy computer screen. The click of Casey’s camera forms a steady beat behind us and the sound bores into my ears. I deliberately take a few deep breaths before I say, ‘Good. I really want to work this one. Look—’ I finally turn to meet Felix’s eye ‘—I knew her a bit from school but it’s not an issue. Honestly.’ I try to ignore the throbbing in my abdomen. ‘So who found her?’
‘That guy over there with Jimmy. He went to Smithson High too, but I think he’s older than you. He’s pretty shaken up. His wife is coming to get him soon. Name’s Marsh.’
I look at the well-built man clad in running garb sitting on a park bench with Jimmy, one of our constables. I think the man is Phillip Marsh’s older brother. I don’t think we’ve ever spoken.
‘I’ll go and talk to him.’
‘Okay. Don’t be too long—we need to take a look at her before we get out of here.’
I make my way over to our witness, trying to remember his name. Spencer? Cooper? Something like that. ‘Hello.’
Jimmy and the man look up at me.
‘I’m Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock.’
Jimmy smiles at me briefly. ‘This is Connor Marsh. He found the body of the young lady this morning. He was running laps.’
‘Hi, Connor,’ I say.
‘To be honest I was only going to do one. One lap. I’m not as fit as I used to be.’ Connor doesn’t look at me as he speaks. His eyes are fixed on a stick near his feet. He is nudging it back and forth between them.
‘Tell me about when you first saw the body,’ I say.
He kicks at the stick again. ‘God, it was so weird. You know?’ He looks up at me again and there’s a flash of recognition in his eyes. I’m pretty sure that after I finished school and started going to the gym behind the library I’d see him there lifting weights. He squints and turns his gaze to the lake. ‘I was running. Just down there, along the bend.’ He points down to a curve in the path about twenty metres from Rosalind’s body. ‘I wasn’t thinking. Well, you know what I mean: I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular. I was just running. I decided not to do another lap and started to slow down and then I saw her in the water.’ He breathes out heavily. ‘I didn’t know what she was at first. Thought it was probably rubbish or something. And then I sort of realised what I was looking at in a weird moment. I totally freaked out.’ Connor pushes his hair back from his eyes and says, ‘I heard one of the cops say she’s a teacher at the school.’
I hold his gaze but I say nothing and keep my expression neutral.
‘I know the one. She went there too, like us. She was really pretty.’ Connor looks at me. ‘Probably in your year, I reckon.’
Jimmy’s head snaps towards me. I ignore him.
‘Connor, did you notice anyone else this morning? Anyone hanging around? Anything at all that you can remember might be helpful.’
He is looking at the ground again. I notice the top of a tattoo snaking out of his ankle sock. It looks like the Smithson Saints Football Club emblem. ‘I don’t think I saw anyone. Maybe there was a girl in her car when I first pulled up in the car park. Talking on her phone. I think I remember that.
’
‘Anything else?’ I press.
‘I don’t think so. Well, not really. I think I ran past someone walking their dog at some point. A guy, I think. An older guy maybe. Sorry, it was pretty early and I wasn’t paying attention.’
‘That’s okay. If you recall anything else just let us know.’
‘Do the flowers mean anything?’
‘The flowers?’
Connor nods. ‘Yeah, there were flowers around her in the water. Looked like roses.’
I exchange a look with Jimmy. He shrugs subtly. ‘We can’t speculate at this stage. We’ll obviously be investigating everything.’ I speak smoothly but my blood has turned white-hot.
‘Can I go soon? My wife is coming to get me but she’ll have the kids with her, so I think I should wait near the car park.’ He glances down towards the crime scene and shivers despite the heat. ‘Not here.’
‘That’s fine, mate, I’ll come with you.’
Jimmy’s calmness is always reassuring. He’d make a great voice-over artist selling life insurance or something.
‘Hey, Connor, one more thing,’ I say as they get up. ‘You didn’t touch the body, did you?’
‘No way. I didn’t even go very close. To be honest, I’m not good with stuff like that.’
‘A good way to be, mate, a good way to be,’ Jimmy says, leading Connor away.
Rocking onto the balls of my feet, I survey the scene again. A couple of young girls wearing neon running shoes and black lycra are clutching at each other, their faces ashen. They’re probably Smithson students, I think, grimacing. There are a few mothers cautiously pushing their children on the swings and half-heartedly helping them to navigate the slide as they fix their eyes squarely on the activity near the edge of the lake. I can hear the low hum of a chopper approaching. Bloody reporters. We need to keep moving.
Felix sees me coming and breaks away from the techs, raising his eyebrows in a question.
‘The guy’s clear,’ I tell Felix. ‘Saw nothing, knows nothing. We’ll pull him in later today or tomorrow to get it all logged and double-check with his wife for an alibi, but I doubt he can help us.’
‘I didn’t think so,’ says Felix. ‘Well, c’mon, let’s talk to Anna and get this done so we can get moving.’
‘I was going to suggest that exact thing.’
We smile briefly at each other as we walk along the rocks to where the reeds start. I see the dark entrance to the stormwater drain and can’t help feeling that someone could be watching us from in there.
‘Hey,’ I say to Felix, shaking the paranoia away, ‘what’s with the flowers? Connor Marsh said her body was covered in them.’
‘Yeah,’ he says, turning his head so I can hear him. ‘Long-stemmed red roses were floating all around her in the water. Fucking creepy.’
I picture it, thinking for a brief moment how perfect she would have looked covered in roses under different circumstances, and keep following Felix. Suddenly I experience a jolt of emotion so strong, I think I will fall into the water. This can’t be real. I focus on remaining upright, my eyes fixed on the back of Felix’s head, and breathe deeply.
Grey water laps gently at the brown dirt under my boots and then I see it: a foot, pale and ethereal, floating out from beneath the tarp. I remember watching Rose on the podium at the end of the local pool on a swimming sports day, her dainty feet squared together as she bent down low, snapping her goggles on, ready to jump into the water.
‘Hey, Gem!’ Anna’s head appears from the other side of the tarp.
‘Hi, Anna,’ I say, shielding my face from the sun and stepping over a dirty plastic bag, crab-walking along the edge towards her.
Anna is standing knee-deep in the lake in her waterproof scrubs. She looks like an astronaut. I can tell she is hot; her face is red and her fringe sticks to her forehead in messy little lines.
‘Right,’ she says, when we are close enough. ‘Well, guys, you know the drill. We have a deceased female, twenty-eight years of age. Her birthday would’ve been on Christmas Day, actually, according to her ID, which is a Smithson Secondary College teacher’s library card. She’s been dead for at least five hours, but it could be up to eight; the water makes it hard to tell. I’ll be able to be more accurate later. Like I said to McKinnon earlier, I think she was dead before she hit the water. There’s a large wound on the side of her head. I’d guess she was struck with a rock or something with rough edges but this should be clear when we do the autopsy. There might be dirt or gravel that confirms the weapon. I’d say she was strangled too, based on the marks on her neck, and obviously I’ll want to run tox as well. I’m thinking lovers’ tiff. Or a random attack, especially if her wallet is missing.’ Anna pushes damp hair away from her eyes. ‘Either way, this isn’t pretty. It looks like she’s been assaulted too: her underwear is missing and there is some bruising around her thighs and upper arms. Again, I’ll know more when we get her back to base. But I can rule out suicide and accidental death for you. This is a homicide.’
I look at Felix. He is staring down at Rosalind, seemingly deep in thought.
Anna gestures for the forensic team to come and get Rose’s body. The reporters have arrived and are roaming up and down the police line like hungry lions. I see the black puff of a microphone bobbing along above the small crowd. The glint of a camera lens. The flick of sleek, TV-ready hair.
Great, the last thing I need today is a run-in with pocket-rocket reporter Candy Fyfe.
Anna puts her hands on her hips. ‘Okay, guys, I’m done here. We’ve taken all the shots and bagged everything. Nothing that I think will be helpful. Mind you, there’s bloody rubbish everywhere. Water never helps.’
‘Yep, much better if everyone was killed in the middle of a wide open sports field on a still day,’ says Roger cheerily. Roger is one of our longest-serving forensics. He’s been with the Smithson police force for almost forty years and has a perpetually sunny attitude regardless of the situation. I often picture him at home, happily telling his wife about his cases: ‘Yes, the dead girl was strangled, it seems, murdered in cold blood. Pass the salt, please, darling.’
Roger and Fred, our other forensic guy, pull up the tarp and place the stretcher carefully underneath Rose’s left side. Above us is the belly of a low-flying helicopter, and I come around the right side to block the view of her body. Rose is pulled onto the white surface. Her face is exactly as I remember it. A Disney princess beauty: her even features waiting patiently for a prince’s kiss. When I heard a few years ago that she’d returned to Smithson and was a teacher at the school, I was disappointed. I wanted better for her than that. Her hair hangs to the side, and Fred picks it up and pulls it along her face so that it rests across her shoulder and down the side of her arm. He looks at her as if she is a sleeping child. I remember that Fred’s wife had their first baby a few months ago and I wonder what is going through his mind.
Rosalind’s toenails are painted a vivid blue and there are silver rings on her fingers. Her brows and lashes are dark against her pale skin. I remember trying to re-create those eyebrows in my bedroom. Even though my colouring was much darker than hers, it had never looked right.
Fred and Roger close the body bag around her. The marks on her neck are almost black. Her dark chocolate eyes stare unflinching into the burning sun. The harsh buzz of the zip and then she is gone.
‘Right, well, I’ll see you all soon, I’m sure.’ Anna’s already checking her phone as she walks off towards the car park.
We instruct the field team to begin the search.
‘Start with the area around the lake,’ I tell Charlie, our field lead. ‘Then move into the playground and the bushland. And get rid of all these people. It’s a bloody nightmare.’
Several uniforms start instructing people on the outskirts of the police tape to leave. I watch as a teenage boy casually holds out his phone and takes a photo of Rosalind’s body being bundled into an ambulance before sprinting off towards the town centre
.
We’re already running out of time to get in front of this thing.
I turn back to the lake. The water gives nothing away.
Once everything is set in motion, we get into my car and head back to the station. Felix is listening to voicemails. He reaches over and gives my hand a slow squeeze. A deep shiver plays through me. I pull my hand away and flick on the radio to drown out the buzz in my ears. The ache has settled deep in my groin where my belt is pressing and I shift my weight, trying to placate it. I can’t tell how much I’m still bleeding and want desperately to get to the bathroom at work. I want to be alone.
I brake suddenly, seeing a red light just in time. Felix throws me a look but I keep my gaze on the road. Rosalind Ryan is dead. Rosalind Ryan is dead, I think, over and over. And then I think that somehow I always knew that something like this would happen.
Chapter Three
Saturday, 12 December, 11.36 am
‘Are you sure you’re fine to work this one, Woodstock?’ says Jonesy. There is coffee spittle in his moustache. His belly protrudes past his pants and he rubs at it distractedly. ‘McKinnon tells me you knew the dead girl.’