by Sarah Bailey
‘Goodnight, baby man,’ I say, kissing him on the forehead.
He zooms off, still making little electronic sounds as he bounces against the walls.
I grab a beer and sink onto the couch, letting thoughts whirl around my head as I half watch the cricket. Nothing is adding up. By all accounts, Rose was in good spirits last night. The opening night of her school production was a huge hit. It does appear that the aura of mystery she’d carried in high school had extended into adulthood. ‘She kept to herself’ along with ‘such a beautiful girl’ are common themes in the commentary that we and the scrappy bunch of uniforms we’ve managed to secure so far have gathered from our initial interviews. No one we spoke to knows anything about a boyfriend or a lover, but we haven’t made contact with many people yet.
I keep playing the scene with the Ryans over in my mind. There was such a stiffness to their grief. Felix is right—it’s odd.
I’ve uncovered an assault charge against Timothy Ryan: he allegedly punched another guy in a pub brawl about six months ago but the charge was dropped before it ever went to trial. Apparently the victim was his ex-wife’s new boyfriend. As a result, Timothy has become the main focus of our investigation. I have some uniforms working through his personal finances and phone records, and we’re trying to confirm his alibi.
In the end, Felix went with Marcus to identify Rosalind’s body a few hours after we spoke to the Ryans. George wasn’t up to it. Marcus didn’t say much, but gasped when the sheet was pulled back to reveal his dead sister’s face. He nodded quickly and said, ‘Yes, that’s her. Oh my god.’
Nothing is cut and dried at this stage. I remind myself that working a case is a marathon, not a sprint, as Jonesy is fond of telling us. Even though he makes it clear he would prefer more sprints.
I flick a quick text to Felix. Meet me at RR’s house tomorrow. 9:30? We can go through it after the forensic guys are done. Then we can do autopsy and get background done before the briefing?
My phone buzzes almost immediately. Roger that boss. Very romantic. Dream sweet x
I knock back the last of my beer. Shrill giggles echo up the hallway from the bathroom. Ben thinks brushing his teeth is hilarious. He is becoming such a little boy now. So confident and so curious. He no longer fits in my arms properly and I’m finding it harder and harder to carry him. I think about him having a sibling; another little Ben. I can see his baby photos on the bookshelf from where I am sitting. I remember breathing in his scent just after he was born, not quite believing that he was mine.
Scott comes back down the hall and I get up to fetch another beer. He pours himself a bourbon and joins me on the couch. He pulls my foot into his lap and strokes it absently. I glance at his profile but he seems intent on the cricket. He needs a shave; his face is dark with patchy bristles. I wonder if he will bring up getting married again. His proposal from a couple of weeks ago still hangs in the air between us. I wish it would disappear. I finish my beer and place the bottle on the coffee table. My eyes glaze as I watch the action on the screen. I slip into sleep for a few moments and wake with a jolt, slightly disoriented.
‘You okay?’ Scott says.
‘Yeah. Just knackered. I better go to bed. We’ve got a massive day tomorrow.’
‘It’s about to get crazy for you, isn’t it?’
I stand up and stretch out my back. It clicks uncomfortably. I picture Rosalind face down in the water. Her bruised neck and vacant stare.
I remember the blood swirling around my toes in the shower this morning.
Felix grabbing my thigh in the car.
The burning pain in George Ryan’s eyes.
Scott is still looking at me, his face filled with concern. He runs his finger along the rim of his glass, waiting for me to answer.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It sure is.’
Chapter Six
Sunday, 13 December, 9.24 am
Rosalind’s house is one of eight modest cottages positioned on a nondescript stretch of the Ross Highway. Smithson’s public hospital is about five hundred metres up the road and there’s a 7-Eleven opposite her driveway. A vacant block of land two doors along on the right has an old mattress propped against the fence and weeds almost a metre high. The dwellings are made from an off-white fibro with peeling cream window frames. A few plants are growing half-heartedly in the common garden beds between the driveways but there are more weeds than anything else. The patchy-looking sawdust scattered in between them looks about a decade old.
Rosalind’s place is the neatest. There is a new doormat on her porch and an array of pots around the front entrance with a few flowers reaching out of them. A pair of thongs is set neatly to one side of the door. A birdbath hangs from the brick window that cuts into the porch and it shifts slightly in the breeze. The drone of the highway traffic rings in our ears as we greet Jimmy and sign the crime scene register.
‘Jeez, I guess teaching salaries are even worse than ours,’ Felix says, slipping booties over his shoes and snapping on latex gloves.
‘They probably are,’ I say, pulling my gloves and booties on, ‘but considering her family home, this is pretty strange.’
‘Maybe George is the kind of father who thinks you need to make your own way,’ Felix suggests.
‘Maybe. But he’s obviously happy to let Timothy stay with him.’
Felix shrugs. ‘True.’
The forensic team deemed Rosalind’s house clear yesterday and have taken a few samples to run through the lab. They don’t think she returned here after the play, which makes sense given that she was attacked in such close proximity to the school. I’m curious to see her house, to get a glimpse into her private world.
We duck under the line of police tape. I open the front door. Petrol fumes from the highway fill my throat as I step inside.
The house begins in the kitchen. There is a small table with a vase of white daisies in the middle. They are still standing tall, despite the heat, so must only be a few days old. A coffee mug is in the dish rack along with a single plate, a few forks and some spoons. A faded tea towel hangs neatly to the side of the sink. The shelves in the small fridge are scattered with a couple of sauce bottles and a small carton of milk. White wine bottles fill the rack on the fridge door.
Felix picks up the half-empty one and looks at the label. ‘Nice. This bottle would have cost more than my weekly grocery bill.’
I know very little about wine but even I can tell the label is expensive. An almost empty rubbish bin is nestled under the sink. Half-a-dozen empty wine bottles are lined up next to it. Felix confirms that they are all at the upper end of the market. In the freezer is a stack of Tupperware containing some kind of sauce. A bottle of vodka lies next to them.
‘She was definitely a drinker who knew her way around wine, but I don’t get the feeling she had many guests, do you? They wouldn’t fit in here.’ He gestures to the tiny rooms.
‘You think she got blind on her own?’ I ask.
‘That would be my guess.’
I bend down to look through the drawers and cupboards. They are mainly empty, just a couple of worn-looking pots and pans. An old blender covered with a layer of dust. I stand up too quickly and blank for a moment, dizzy. A faint floral scent enters my nostrils.
‘It’s like she was an old lady or something,’ says Felix. ‘With a penchant for outrageously expensive booze.’
I nod, running my fingers along the rim of the daisy vase. There are no photos but movie posters are everywhere: in the bedroom, in the lounge and in the spare room. A large old-style cinema poster announcing the debut screening of The Godfather is Blu-Tacked to the back of the toilet door. Dramatic scenes seem to close in on us from every angle. Familiar Hollywood faces are everywhere I turn. Magnets dot the fridge, most featuring a quote or a poem.
‘She must have been a real movie buff,’ says Felix, turning in a slow circle to take in all of the posters. ‘And a bookworm,’ he adds, noticing the bookshelf in the lounge.
It’s the nicest
piece of furniture in the house; dark mahogany shelves are built into the wall and run the entire length of the room. Rows and rows of books are crammed into every square inch. There are hundreds of them. I remember how Rosalind seemed to slip into a trance whenever she was reading aloud to the class or acting out a scene. She always seemed so far away. I often wondered what she was thinking.
‘Well, she was an English teacher. I guess reading is kind of essential.’
‘I thought she was a drama teacher?’ Felix says, confused.
‘I’d say she teaches both,’ I tell him. ‘I think they are often paired together. At least, when we went to school they were.’
I remember poor Mrs Frisk yelling at us to use our bodies as tools and then awkwardly watching on through the necessary love scenes in our school plays.
‘I bet you would have been good at drama yourself.’ Felix’s eyes dance as he looks at me. The small room suddenly seems smaller.
I wish, not for the first time, that we could go away together. Escape. Sit on a beach and drink cocktails, make huts from driftwood, make fire from sticks and never come back. I want to wrap my body around him forever. But then Ben’s little face looms before me and I shake the fantasy away. ‘Come on,’ I say, ‘let’s get this done so we can get back to Anna.’
I head towards the bathroom, trying to focus. There’s an entry from Rosalind’s bedroom but a shelving unit has been placed in front of it so I go through the main door off the hallway. I am greeted by a shower over a small bath. The tap drips. Faded grey towels hang from cheap gold hooks on the back of the door and a bathmat riddled with tiny holes is folded on the side of the vanity. I stand in front of the mirror and try to picture Rosalind here every morning, brushing her long blonde hair and putting foundation on her perfect skin, but it doesn’t seem to fit somehow.
I pull open the cabinet doors and my face disappears. Inside is like a portal to a different world. Shining bottles of shampoo and body lotion line the bottom shelf. Expensive teeth-whitening products are arranged on the next shelf up alongside what must be thousands of dollars’ worth of make-up. L’Oréal, Estée Lauder, Chanel. I don’t even know what half of the products are for. I pick up a full contraceptive pill packet and turn it over, wondering whether it means she was seeing somebody. I’d taken mine religiously, but about two months ago had forgotten a day when I worked an early shift and then had got into a routine that was a day out. Then I worked late one night and accidentally skipped another day. A few weeks later I knew immediately that I was pregnant. The aching of my breasts and the slow tumble in my stomach were such visceral reminders of how it had been with Ben.
A few bobby pins are scattered across the middle shelf and a few hair ties are loosely bound around the stem of a designer hairbrush. Despite the expensive products, it still seems impossible that someone as glamorous as Rosalind groomed herself in a bathroom like this.
White chemist packets pepper the top shelf. I reach up and pull them down. Two brands of antidepressants and two Valium prescriptions, dated from September to November.
‘What was going on with you?’ I whisper.
‘What, Gem?’
‘She was on meds,’ I call out.
Felix sticks his head into the bathroom. ‘Who isn’t? Hey, so I can’t find a diary or any sex tapes but I did find something weird. Look.’
I leave the pills and follow him into the bedroom.
It’s a stone. Flat and smoothed by time, it has softened into the shape of a crude love heart. A neat X has been drawn on the back of it with a black marker.
‘I found it in her bottom drawer.’
I breathe out, thinking. ‘Anything else interesting in her drawers?’
Felix drops the stone into an evidence bag. Something about that movement reminds me of cracking an egg into a bowl. ‘Not unless you consider a book of poems and some Bonds undies fascinating.’
I swat at him gently and look around the small bedroom, which is so different from what I had pictured for her. The rug on the floor is faded. I recognise the grey bedspread as one that Kmart sold a few years back; I have the same one in blue. My hands are on my hips as I take in the giant artwork hanging above the bed: a stark, haunting painting of a tree. I let my eyes get lost in it.
‘This house is so strange. The wine, the movie posters, the art.’ I gesture to the piece on the wall. ‘Her make-up is all top-shelf stuff too. But everything else is so basic.’
‘Yeah, it’s pretty weird.’ Felix is typing a message into his phone. ‘I’m not really getting a clear read of this woman.’
The tiny room is suffocating. I’m struggling to take a proper breath. It’s as if my lungs have shrunk. I stamp my foot, suddenly desperate to go outside. Felix jumps slightly.
‘C’mon,’ I say. ‘Let’s have a quick chat to the neighbours. See what they say about her.’
We walk to the top of the drive. I take the first cottage, he takes the next, and we alternate like that for the next forty-five minutes. Surprisingly, all seven occupants are home; the investigation gods are clearly smiling down on us. On the flipside, all we learn is that Rose was a perfect neighbour, perhaps a bit shy but always friendly enough.
An itchy young man in number three tells me that Rose had asked him to fix a light fitting a few weeks ago and then left beer on his doorstep the following day. ‘Didn’t expect anything in return. I would have done pretty much anything for that smile of hers. So yeah, I helped her out from time to time. Just odd jobs around the house. She used to sunbake at the top of the driveway sometimes. I couldn’t help but notice. She’d give me a wave. Very friendly.’ He wipes at his eyes, which are red raw, and scratches his elbow again. ‘I’m really going to miss her.’
An old woman in number five is warier and obviously hasn’t been watching the news. ‘Something’s happened to her, hasn’t it? I saw the policeman come yesterday with that ribbon you lot use.’
‘Yes. I’m afraid so.’
She purses her lips. ‘Ah. Beautiful girl like that. It figures.’
I don’t have the heart to tell her that bad things happen to ugly girls too. It’s just that they slip off the front pages a little bit quicker and are less likely to be the subject of A Current Affair specials.
‘She’s dead then?’
‘I’m afraid so, Mrs …?’
‘Miss Murphy. Never married.’ She says this proudly, as if she has escaped a fate worse than death. Then, ‘Oh dear. That poor girl.’
‘Yes, it’s very sad,’ I say.
‘Well, my fault for not watching the local news, I suppose,’ she says primly, but her jaw wobbles. ‘I only ever watch the BBC.’
‘I’m sorry, Miss Murphy. I know this is hard but I just want to ask you a couple of questions about Ms Ryan. Did you ever see anyone hanging around her place?’
She clasps her hands formally. ‘Not really and I’m home all day. I’m always sure to keep an eye on things. I sit in the chair over there near the window.’
I look over to a chair rendered shapeless by a mountain of blankets. A fan and a heater are propped about a metre from the chair, aimed at it like spotlights.
‘And nothing ever seemed out of the ordinary?’ I ask.
‘No. I don’t think so. She didn’t have many visitors, which always seemed strange for a girl like that. A young man did come a few times. Her brother, I think, from the way they were together. And a few weeks back a man came in a posh car. I remember that because it was the same day that Luis died on The Street, god bless him, and I stood at the front door to get some fresh air—a bit upset, I was—and I saw the car. They talked outside though. It didn’t seem like a romance call, if you know what I mean.’
I nod, taking notes. ‘That’s very helpful. Is there anything else?’
‘I don’t think so. It’s actually rather dull around here really.’
‘Do you remember what her visitors looked like?’
‘I think so. The man in the car was flashy. Nice suit, nice smile.
Older. Maybe forty? Doing well for himself. The other one was young. Dark hair. Tall. Good-looking, but all slumped over. Terrible posture.’
‘How old?’
‘Well, it’s hard to say these days, isn’t it? Twenty-five? Or it could be older. Or younger. Honestly, I’m not sure. It’s not like I was spying on her.’
‘Of course not. Well, thank you for your time.’
Felix and I meet back outside Rosalind’s.
‘Anything?’ I say to him.
‘Nope. Just a bunch of bullshit about how pretty she was. One guy clearly had the hots for her, which normally I’d be all over, except it seems that everyone had the hots for her. You?’
‘Some male visitors we need to track down but no real leads. Mainly just a disappointed Miss Marple who’s wanting a bit more action than this block delivers.’
‘Huh,’ says Felix.
We stand looking at Rosalind’s home for a moment, the pots of flowers leading to the plain flyscreen door, the pinwheel in the largest pot doing a lazy turn in the wind.
‘Well,’ I say, ‘it’s usually the way, I guess. Nosy neighbours never come through with the goods. Only in Hitchcock.’
‘Exactly.’ Felix looks at me and briefly everything else disappears. I’m so lucky to be able to spend so much time with him, yet it’s so horribly unsatisfying. I want to reach out and hold him. Be a normal couple.
Reluctantly I break the moment. ‘Let’s head back. Anna should be ready to start the autopsy by now.’
We make our way down the short drive back to the cars. I spot a guy with a camera getting out of a beat-up Holden. I recognise him from the local paper. Smithson is just waking up to Rosalind’s death, but no matter what happens it will be in the local news for months. Probably years. I’ve only been involved in a couple of high-profile cases since I joined the force. I see the guy raise his camera to snap a shot of Felix and me getting into our cars. A familiar shiver runs down my spine as I duck my head out of sight. I’ve worked on all kinds of mysteries, some that have really got under my skin, some that have got me on the front page of the paper, but certainly none that have ever been as personal as this.