The Dark Lake

by Sarah Bailey

  After I updated Felix on my conversation with George Ryan, we finally heard back from the former principal of the secondary school in Sydney that Rosalind taught at. Felix decided to fly down there straight away to interview him and some of her old colleagues. Apparently, though nothing formal was ever reported, there was definitely a sense that Rosalind was trouble. A male student had confided to a teacher that he thought something was going on with his classmate and Rosalind. The teacher had passed this rumour on to the principal and the whole thing had blown up, culminating in Rosalind leaving the school at the end of the year.

  Felix called me from Sydney airport while waiting for the flight back to Gowran.

  ‘What did she actually do?’ I asked him.

  ‘That’s the thing,’ he said, and I could hear airport noises in the background, ‘it’s all speculation. Rosalind never admitted to anything. But apart from the principal, I get the sense they all thought that the student was obsessed with her. Kept trying to trap her in situations where they were alone together. Just besotted, basically. It all seems pretty odd.’

  ‘What, don’t you think a young boy can behave like that?’

  ‘Of course I think it’s possible, but I just think it’s odd. Despite the fact that the boy seemed out of line, it’s clear that the principal was happy to see Rose go. He definitely didn’t like her. Plus, I guess no principal ever wants any kind of scandal on their watch.’

  ‘Was this kid ever formally interviewed so he could tell his side of the story? Where is he now?’

  Felix sighed, and the sound was filled with the paradox of Rosalind. ‘Yeah. He spoke to the principal off the record. With his parents present. He said it was Rosalind’s fault. That she was giving him signs that made him act crazy. The school suggested he see a counsellor but he refused and that was it. It was almost the end of the school year and he was already eighteen, so legally the whole thing was tenuous anyway. A case of he said, she said. It sounds like, in the end, everyone just wanted the whole thing shoved back under the carpet. But the principal was keen to get her out of there and encouraged her to leave, which she obviously did. The kid is overseas now, studying somewhere. He’s never come back since the whole scandal apparently.’

  ‘It doesn’t really help us, though, does it? I mean, sure, there’s a bit of tension about the play and talk of some teenage crushes, but mostly everyone seems to like her,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, I guess so. They just don’t really seem to know her, that’s half the problem. On the other hand, the principal I spoke to today thought she was bad news. Even her being dead sparked very little sympathy.’ Felix paused. ‘She was lucky she could just run on back home to Smithson and hit good old Nicholson up for a job.’

  ‘Very lucky,’ I agreed. ‘He certainly didn’t seem fussed about any of this when we spoke to him, though perhaps he didn’t realise how bad it was.’ I stretched out my legs, wincing at the stiffness of my muscles. ‘I spoke to Kai Bracks this afternoon,’ I told him.

  ‘And?’

  I filled Felix in on my interview.

  ‘Well, even if he did send her the flowers it’s hardly conclusive,’ said Felix.

  ‘I know. Though at least it would be a lead. It would be something,’ I responded.

  ‘True.’ Felix yawned. I could hear more airport announcements in the background.

  ‘Anyway, I’m just watching this footage for the hundredth time,’ I told him as I rubbed at my eyes and looked at the frozen screen.

  ‘Still no sign of Timothy?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘But the tape is pretty shitty and it misses the ramp entrance to the hall, so even if he’s not on the tape it isn’t a done deal.’

  Felix was called to board the plane and we agreed to meet early in the morning before check-in.

  Now I refocus on the computer screen, clicking on the video file to play it from the start. The one camera that provided semi-clear footage of the audience from last Friday is positioned under the eaves of a classroom opposite the entrance to the school hall and partially blocked by a droopy ghost gum. We can assume that most of those who attended the play were captured on this tape, unless a ticket-holder entered from a backstage door or along the disabled ramp around the side.

  Just before the 7 pm timestamp, people begin to cluster around the entrance of the Smithson Secondary College auditorium, talking and fiddling with their phones. The bulk of the crowd enters the auditorium just before 7.30. Between 7.32 and 7.39 a few stragglers rush in, with one latecomer running across the screen at 7.52, head down, apologetic, as he makes his excuses to the ushers. After this, the only movement on the screen is from the two student ushers standing either side of the closed doors, playing on their phones and chatting occasionally. One of them disappears at around 8.15 and reappears six minutes later. A bathroom break or, if I’m more of a cynic, a sneaky cigarette.

  The interval begins at 8.40 and a smaller number of people emerge from the hall this time. A few light up cigarettes and shift off camera before reappearing a few minutes later popping breath mints. A middle-aged woman appears to have an argument with her husband. They exchange angry gestures before he storms off and she spins on her heel to re-enter the auditorium. He makes a dash inside just after the doors are closed at 9 pm, carrying what looks to be a woman’s jacket. Rosalind doesn’t appear on the tape in the interval and I assume she is backstage with the cast. That corresponds with what several of the student actors and crew told the uniforms in their interviews.

  At 10.03 pm the ushers pull open the doors and I watch the now-familiar footage of the audience surging out into the night, noticeably excited. I recognise some of them in the hazy way that you can summon up identities from an old photo. A sharp profile tugs at a latent memory. A distinctive mannerism takes me back to a long-forgotten conversation. I recognise a man we questioned over a domestic violence incident last year. The crowd thins out fairly quickly, with about half leaving between 10.11 and 10.19. Those remaining are clearly waiting to greet the cast members. They bob up and down on the spot, craning their necks towards the dressing-rooms. Several are students who we saw at the school the other morning. I’ve already checked them off against the copy of the yearbook I asked the school receptionist to find for me.

  Another camera, positioned on the front gate, has provided us with lopsided, out-of-focus footage of over thirty cars exiting the main car park between 10.20 and 10.29 pm, but Nicholson reminded us that most people attending the play would have parked in the streets adjacent to the school, or the car park near the top of the lake, so the cars captured on the tape are only a small sample of the attendees’ vehicles. The resolution is so bad I’ll need the tech guys to work the files before they will be any use to us anyway.

  After the crowd subsides, small circles of people remain, chatting animatedly and making wild gestures. I pause the file and do a quick count: there are about sixty people visible on screen, a few of them smoking, some holding flowers to give to the cast. Rosalind is visible about ten minutes after the play ends and disappears about ten minutes later. There’s no indication as to where she went; all we know is that she can’t be identified on the footage from the car park.

  The cast start to arrive just before Rosalind disappears. They come from the left of the screen. Maggie Archer, the student who played the Juliet character, appears first. I went to her house today, as we hadn’t been able to contact her by phone, but her mother informed me that she has gone to stay with her aunt in Melbourne for a few days; I called the aunt’s house but there was no answer and no voicemail. On the video, Maggie is greeted with applause and does a little curtsy before joining a small group of blonde women who smother her with cuddles; her mother and sisters, I assume. Rodney Mason appears too, along with some other cast members, and there is more clapping. Kai Bracks and the other backstage crew are there, all dressed in black. I spot Donna Mason standing off to the side talking to Troy Shooter, the PE teacher. He makes his way over to Rosal
ind, and they embrace briefly and have a short conversation before she disappears from view, and he is sucked back into the excited tangle of people. There is a moment on the tape where Rodney seems to look at Rosalind. I pause the video but it’s impossible to tell if his eyes are fixed on her. Other cast members talk animatedly to their families, most still sporting the elaborate hairstyles of their characters. Kai jumps onto one of the low benches near the canteen and appears to be acting out a scene from the play to the amusement of a small crowd of students, before he grabs one of the boys good-naturedly around the neck and leads him off camera.

  Groups of kids kiss their parents goodbye and leave—the majority, we now know, heading to Jamie Klein’s after party. Their adrenalin rush from performing is obvious, mixing with the anticipation of the big party still to come. Everyone we’ve interviewed about Jamie’s party so far has been somewhat vague. It was clearly quite a party. As one year twelve student eloquently put it: ‘I really can’t remember much but it was completely awesome.’ Jamie’s parents weren’t present that night, being in Sydney for the weekend. They’d been led to believe that their daughter was hosting a modest sleepover. Jamie’s furious dad, Brad, is now ensuring that his sheepish daughter gives us whatever information she can about her unsupervised celebration.

  On my screen the remaining theatregoers slowly drift away and when the timestamp clicks over to 10.47 pm there is no one left. I click back to the last few seconds of Rosalind and pause on the image of her mid-step. According to Anna, she was killed anytime from 11 pm onwards.

  ‘What happened next?’ I whisper to my laptop.

  Yawning, I stretch my neck, turning it one way and then another. My hair is heavy with the day’s grime and I am aware of the slow thump of a headache.

  I called the school receptionist earlier today and asked her to pull the data for all tickets sold online for the play’s opening night. Felix and I are working our way through a master list of those who attended that evening, but with just under three hundred tickets sold in total, and over half of those purchased at the school office and paid for in cash, any audit is unlikely to help us get a clear view of all attendees. Plus, the school doesn’t have an electronic system, so there’s no way of knowing whether people who purchased a ticket actually attended the play that night. There are still so many gaps. And the reality is, the person who attacked Rose may not have gone to the play or have any connection to the school anyway. It is beyond frustrating that there were so many people at the play last Friday night but no one saw anything.

  Karly hasn’t been able to turn up anything on the flowers I received. Because of the play, the three florists in Smithson all reported a spike in sales on Friday and there were five weddings on the weekend, two of which had placed large orders of long-stemmed red roses. Over half the florists’ sales are cash transactions and we don’t know when the flowers were purchased. We’ve sent the card off for analysis but unless the author is a known offender any prints or DNA are not going to get us very far.

  Snapping my computer shut, I get up and go check on Ben. He looks like he’s fallen asleep midway through a conversation: mouth wide open, one arm flung high above his head and the other out to the side. He is perfect. I brush my fingers across his forehead and wipe away the tiny beads of sweat, tracing his lips.

  Massaging my neck, I grab another beer from the fridge and stand in the cool air as I twist the top off and take a swig. Scott watches me from the kitchen table where he is doing emails and probably reading up about the cricket. A bowl of Weet-Bix sits next to an empty beer bottle on the table beside him.

  He sees me looking at it and shrugs sheepishly. ‘Got hungry.’ He stretches his arms into the air. ‘So how’s it going?’

  ‘Okay. We’re not really getting anywhere.’

  ‘Is this on the dead teacher case?’

  ‘Yep. It’s pretty much all we’re working on at the moment. Everyone’s pretty spooked. We really need a solve.’

  ‘Well, you can only do what you can, I guess.’ Scott says this as if I’m trying to work out why the paper wasn’t delivered. He looks back at his laptop. The light skims the contours of his face and I think how tired he looks. Scott is so content for life to happen around him. He feels no urgency, is in no rush to pull his way through things or force his way into them. Unlike me, who races through life so quickly I get whiplash. I often think that when you haven’t been touched by death you have no need to feel alive, no desperation to keep breathing. Scott greets every day with the relaxed attitude of someone who assumes there are thousands more of its kind to come.

  I shut the fridge door and the heat instantly regroups around my body. ‘We kind of have to do whatever it takes,’ I say stiffly. ‘There is a murderer out there.’

  His eyes meet mine. ‘I get it, Gem. But this is not your fault. All I mean is that you’ll do your best but you’re not magic.’

  ‘I’m not saying I’m magic. I’m saying this is pretty fucking important.’

  ‘Seeing it’s almost Christmas I just hope that you’ll be able to spend some time with Ben. That’s important too.’

  I drink the beer so I don’t have to speak. His gaze holds steady on mine, challenging.

  ‘I’ve got more work to do,’ I say and spin on my heel, returning to my search for clues hidden in the grainy footage from Rosalind’s opening night.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Thursday, 17 December, 12.56 pm

  I can tell Jonesy is nervous. He pulls at his tie and adjusts his ill-fitting jacket. A thin stream of sweat trickles from his temple, journeying along craggy skin and arriving at his chin. He’s shaved, and the result is an array of fresh red welts that look like they will burst into song at any moment.

  ‘Right.’ He beckons Felix and me close. ‘This won’t take long. Get ’em in and get ’em out is the plan.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I say. Felix nods.

  ‘I’m going to stick to the basics. I won’t mention the pregnancy. Nor the paternity query, obviously.’ A sharp look at me as though it’s my fault that Rosalind’s father turned out not to be George Ryan. ‘This is just a general appeal for information and also a means to provide some calm.’

  He clears his throat noisily and then breaks into a hearty cough, thumping his chest aggressively. Felix and I exchange a look. I’m not sure that calm will be what Jonesy inspires, but after five days and no solve, he has no choice but to speak publicly.

  ‘Right then.’

  Someone calls for quiet and a tech checks the mic. Jonesy ambles up to the lectern, his back straight, still clearing his throat. We hold our press conferences outside next to the undercover walkway between the police station and the car park. Jonesy always has the lectern positioned next to the main entrance, with the Australian coat of arms and the recently renovated front desk clearly visible for the TV cameras to capture.

  ‘Makes us look professional and not like some hick backwater effort,’ I heard him telling our media manager—poor, downtrodden Cynthia—who I suspect is still trying to figure out exactly what the internet is.

  I also suspect that Jonesy thinks there is some kind of power in making all of the reporters stand outside. It doesn’t allow them to get too comfortable.

  Felix and I follow Jonesy onto the small stage and stand behind his left shoulder.

  ‘Thank you, folks. I’m going to keep this fairly brief.’

  I spot Candy Fyfe in the crowd, her dark skin glowing against a soft pink dress with cute capped sleeves. Candy’s grandfather was a local Aboriginal elder, one of the original custodians of the land that Smithson now lays claim to. Her grandmother was from a posh English family and their union was allegedly quite the scandal in the 1950s. Candy opens her notebook, pen poised, eyes fixed on Jonesy, and then suddenly on me. She arches a slender brow and I hold her stare before looking away. My shoes are badly scuffed, worn at the front. Under my pants I’m wearing mismatched socks, and I feel a surge of anger at Candy and her silent expectations
. I know she feels let down by my inability to bond with her, one woman to another, but I just don’t buy into the gender roles battle. I simply push on and try to do a good job. I’m not interested in spending my time advocating for my rights: I want to earn them. In contrast, Candy is due to give her third keynote speech at the upcoming ‘Country Women in Conversation’, an event designed to support the advancement of women in business. I threw my invitation in the bin.

  Jonesy begins his speech. ‘A sudden death is always a tragedy. Especially that of someone as young and important to our community as high school teacher Rosalind Ryan. But we are confident that we will be able to come to a resolution quickly and put whoever is responsible into custody.’

  A reporter puts up her hand but Jonesy shakes his head. ‘I’ll take a few questions shortly, but first I want to be clear that we here at Smithson police station are doing everything we can to ensure justice for Ms Ryan and her family. We have our best officers dedicated to the case and they are being supported with extra staff from around the region. We are also in contact with our state counterparts to ensure the best methods and technology available to us are utilised.’

  Jonesy looks at the crowd, eyeballing people randomly, daring them to suggest otherwise. His bulky presence is powerful, but many Smithsonians are forced to endure the incongruity of having a forbidding station chief on the TV who is also regularly spotted shopping at the butcher in his two-sizes-too-small tracksuit pants.

  ‘Of course, these cases are not always solved as quickly as we would like. But we are making good progress, piecing together Ms Ryan’s movements and the details of her death to ensure we find the person or persons responsible. We’re committed to building a comprehensive case so that charges can be laid and a conviction attained.’ He claps his hands as if he is about to tuck into a meal. ‘Right. Questions?’