The Dark Lake

by Sarah Bailey

  A rumble of thunder rolls across the sky and I look up to see I’m being watched by several sets of solemn glass eyes: the dark windows of the houses built high along the ledge that runs the length of the parkland look down at me. If only someone had seen something that night. No one in this town can keep to themselves so it seems ironic that not one of the lakeside dwellers stepped out onto their balcony and saw Rosalind with her attacker. Only bleary-eyed Moira Foss, with her screaming baby and rows of spit towels blocking her view, heard something, but her observations hardly provided clarity.

  A pretty jumble of rocks leads into the water where Connor Marsh first saw Rosalind floating just over a fortnight ago. Bouquets of flowers are arranged in a sloppy pyramid a few metres from the rocks. Damp teddy bears and soggy envelopes poke out between the heads of flowers. I squat next to the makeshift shrine. Such an insignificant spot before this. Not a place that anyone would have thought to stop at, not even to pause and look out over the lake. There are far better vantage points.

  Another blast of thunder shudders and I relish the cool air lapping my face. The storm is getting closer. I wish I could summon the rain to turn me inside out and wash over me. Clean my soul.

  I finish the coffee and grimace, screwing the lid on tight. I absently pass the thermos back and forth between my hands, trying to think. What would have made Rosalind come to the lake that night? Could someone have forced her to go with them? But how? Blackmail? Maybe someone had found out something that was damaging to her reputation. No one saw or heard anything that would indicate she was abducted. Was she lured to the lake with the promise of something? Money? Drugs? It doesn’t fit. Of course, despite my doubts, it could have been a random stranger, but that still wouldn’t explain why she was at the lake in the first place. Plus, it just feels personal. Both Felix and I sensed that from the start. Nothing about Rosalind has ever seemed random anyway.

  Maybe it was attempted rape that turned to murder. I’ve worked cases where the killer is frustrated that he can’t perform and turns lethally violent as a result. Or did the killer get spooked while he was assaulting her? I shiver lightly, thinking about someone abusing her still-warm dead body. I wonder about her brothers. Could Timothy have been obsessed with her? Followed her here?

  I pull a card out from the pile of tributes, exposing a picture of a white dove inside a ring of flowers. Damp has curled its edges. Sharp edits of Rosalind’s possible final moments form a steady stream of film through my mind but nothing seems right. It’s a random montage without a plot. A stray droplet hits me square in the eye and I blink, trying to clear the wetness. A scraping sound behind me on the path causes me to whirl around, hairs on end, still blinking through the water.

  Rodney Mason swings his leg over his bike so that both feet are on the same side, slowing it to a stop.

  ‘Hey.’ He looks past me to the shrine, swallowing heavily.

  ‘Rodney. What are you doing here?’

  He props his bike next to a tree. ‘Dunno. I guess I just wanted to come here. You know, to where it happened. Pay my respects.’

  I watch as he steps forward, balancing carefully on the rocks, and looks out towards the gazebo.

  His eyes are closed as he says, ‘I never really come here, you know. ’Cause of Jake. Mum doesn’t like it.’

  His shoes are worn and the cuffs of his jacket have holes in them. I can’t tell if it’s fashion or reflective of his financial circumstances. The Masons never had much money.

  ‘Have you been here before now?’

  He turns and looks at me. ‘Is that a trick question?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay.’

  He comes closer to me and I quickly stand and step back onto the path.

  ‘I came here last week with some of the others from school.’ He shrugs, blinking quickly as he takes in all the flowers and toys. ‘Some of the girls said it would help.’

  ‘Did it help?’

  ‘Dunno. I’m not really sure what it’s supposed to help with. It’s not like she can come back.’

  Another rumble breaks around us. Rodney looks heavenwards. ‘It’s weird without the heat today. I’d got so used to it.’

  ‘I was just thinking the same thing.’ I can’t pull my eyes away from him. The face so like Jacob’s. The colour of their eyes an exact match.

  ‘Do you still think about him?’ he asks me.

  Lightning sparks in the sky and is immediately followed by a release of large droplets that turn into sheets of rain. We stand rooted to the spot, looking at each other for a moment, and then I say, ‘Quick, this way!’ and he follows me up the path, the dust turning to mud. Water pours down my face and I run into it. It feels good. My legs pump steadily underneath me. Strong. I can feel Rodney just behind me, our feet pounding in unison. I beep the car open and gesture for him to get in the passenger side. We heave ourselves in, breathless and soaked. There are still no other cars in the car park; probably no one will come here now with the rain like this. Inside the car, noise drops away as if we’re inside a drum. Rodney is wiping water from his eyes with the bottom of his t-shirt, revealing his taut abdomen. Sparse dark hairs disappear into his waistband. He sees me looking.

  ‘Let’s get the air on, hey?’ I fiddle with the keys, turning the car on and feeling relieved when the wind moves through the car, creating space between us. I feel like my body has reversed through time: I am eighteen, in love with Jacob, with the world in front of me. It’s hard to breathe and there is a faint ringing in my ears.

  ‘Jeez, it’s really coming down out there.’ Rodney stares out the window. Lightning flashes in the sky and the trees are rag dolls waving for help.

  ‘I still think about him all the time,’ I say.

  He turns towards me, leaning his head back on the headrest, and sighs deeply. ‘Yeah. I do and I don’t. Less often, but deeply. Like now I really feel it when I think about him. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sort of the same.’

  ‘You must see some pretty bad shit in your job though. I guess you get tough from all that.’

  I lean my head back like his and turn to him. ‘Sort of. It’s hard to compare really. I don’t know what I’d be like if I didn’t do this. This is just how I am now.’

  He nods and twists his hands in his lap, and I remember that he did this the other day too. ‘Are you working right now? Is that why you’re here?’ he asks.

  ‘Once you have a case everything you do is work. It’s on your mind the whole time. You can’t stop.’

  He seems to think about this for a while. ‘I guess that makes sense.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t your mum let you come here?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s like she thought what Jake had done might be catching or something. She just didn’t want me anywhere near where it happened. I don’t know why we didn’t move away. No money, I guess.’

  A lump forms in my throat. I’d all but forgotten Rodney back then. Flashes of a skinny little boy in hand-me-downs flicker in front of me. At the memorial he sat with his mother, owl-eyed and lost, surrounded by sobbing teenagers.

  ‘I used to like it when you came to our house.’

  I smile. ‘Yeah, I liked it too. That was a long time ago. I was your age then.’

  ‘You have a kid now, right? I’ve seen you with him.’

  My heart clicks into a higher gear. ‘You have?’

  ‘Sure. Just around, you know.’ His mouth twists into a strange smile. ‘Don’t worry, I haven’t been following you or anything.’

  The rain is coming down so hard I can’t even see the lake. Water zigzags across the windscreen.

  ‘Must be nice to have a kid to look after.’ His hands fidget in his lap but he doesn’t seem nervous. His voice is steady. His dark hair curls slightly from the rain and his lashes clump together like he’s wearing mascara.

  I nod, pushing the fan onto a higher speed. ‘Yes. I can barely remember what it was like before. Without him.’


  ‘Jake used to look after me a lot. You know, because he was so much older.’

  The lump in my throat is growing bigger and I take a deep breath around it. ‘I’m sorry, Rodney. You must have been so scared. I think I forgot how young you were. I wasn’t thinking straight then.’

  ‘It’s okay. Before he died he told me you broke up. I was sad about that. I reckon that’s probably why he did it.’

  I think back to writing that note, the letters curling beautifully into Rosalind’s prose.

  ‘Yes, well, I don’t know. You never really know what’s in someone’s head when they do something like that. And it was a long time ago.’

  ‘I talked to her about him, you know,’ he says.

  I glance sideways at him, wondering if this whole thing is about to be resolved right here in my car. ‘What did you talk about?’ I say, trying to keep my voice even.

  The air in the car thins and the wet has started to seep through my clothes. I wish I was home in bed asleep, preferably drugged into a deep prolonged unconsciousness. On the highway blurry headlights bob through the trees. It feels like Rodney and I are completely alone, hidden from the rest of the world, which may or may not be real anyway.

  ‘Everything really,’ says Rodney quietly. ‘She loved talking to me. She said that.’

  ‘Ms Ryan said she loved talking to you?’ I confirm.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So tell me what you talked about?’ I ask.

  He shrugs, seeming young again. ‘Everything. Jake. Her family. Me finishing school.’

  ‘Was it important for you to finish school?’

  ‘She really wanted me to do well. She thought I had a real future in drama.’

  ‘Were you going to move to Queensland too?’ I say.

  His head whirls my way. ‘What?’

  ‘Queensland,’ I repeat calmly. ‘Were you going to move there in the new year?’

  ‘What? No.’ His eyes won’t meet mine but I can’t tell if he’s lying.

  ‘Ms Ryan was planning to move there in the new year and I wondered whether you were going with her.’

  A faint flush dusts his cheeks. ‘No, no. I don’t know anything about that. I’ve enrolled in uni. I’m going to do it by correspondence. Online.’

  ‘Doesn’t that mean you can do it from anywhere?’

  He gives me a somewhat defeated look. ‘Yeah, I guess. I want to keep working at the newsagent. You know, save some money.’

  ‘So you can get out of here? Isn’t that what every teenager in Smithson wants to do? Get out of here?’

  ‘Well, yeah. Eventually. It’s hard with Mum. She’s … well, her health is up and down.’

  ‘She needs you.’

  He shrugs. ‘I guess.’

  Rain smatters on the bonnet, slowing. I feel like I’m running out of time. ‘Rodney, were you here with her that night? Arranged to meet but it went bad? Did you fight?’

  ‘No.’ He shakes his head furiously.

  ‘You need to tell us. I know you were seeing her. Someone saw you together. I want to help you, Rodney.’

  I’ve thrown in Izzy’s alleged sighting, hoping it will prompt him to speak. I think about getting a confession and the look on Felix’s face when he finds out. I feel sick.

  Rodney grabs my hand and pulls it towards his chest, wrapping his other hand around it.

  ‘Rodney!’ Sparks shoot up my arm and burn into my own chest. He pulls my hand to his mouth, mumbling into it. His breath tickles my skin and I don’t want him to stop.

  ‘I cared about her. A lot. I really did. But we didn’t do anything. I never saw her outside of school. She wouldn’t. I would never have hurt her. I swear.’ He releases the grip on my hand slightly. ‘Now I’m just kind of half asleep, you know? I don’t really know what to do with all the time. It’s like—’ he wipes at his eyes ‘—there seems to be a lot more time now. I miss talking to her.’

  He looks so helpless. An inky-eyed puppy. I want to bundle him up and hold him like I hold Ben when he first wakes up in the morning. Then Rodney grips my hand again with an urgency that feels dangerous. He laces his fingers around it. I know I should pull away, tell him it’s wrong, and a wave of confusion slides through me. An odd shiver of desire. I see a flash of white—a car is turning into the car park—and I yank my hand from Rodney’s grip.

  The rain has stopped and the world looks vibrant and sated.

  ‘Your bike,’ I say.

  He sees the other car and nods, opening the door and pulling his hood up over his head. Leaning into the door, he says, ‘I didn’t hurt her. I would never have done that.’ He runs off towards the lake, the flat echo of the slamming door pulsing through my thoughts. He disappears between the trees and I lean back in my seat, my hands in my hair, pulling the skin on my face to either side. I choke on a sob that rises in my throat as my face collapses. I bite my lip hard and pull air into my nose and then release it slowly through my mouth. From shaky to steady. My body aches for Felix. I want to hold Ben. I want to go back in time to talk to Jacob. To stop myself from sending that note.

  A man in his sixties has got out of his car and is attaching a leash to his dog’s collar. The dog is a wriggling ball of fuzzy hair and is finding great joy in dancing through the brand-new puddles. The man looks at me curiously, then gives me a polite nod. He walks off, his dog jumping in mad circles as he coaxes it along the path. He probably thinks Rodney is my boyfriend and we’ve fought.

  My car feels empty without Rodney. I want to be close to him again, together in our pain. I turn the engine on and sit there trying not to think until my heartbeat matches the thrum of the windscreen wipers and my mind is blank.

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Tuesday, 29 December, 3.34 pm

  I’ve felt like this before. Like I’m in a dark room, feeling for the edges of a door, but instead going round and round the dark square and forgetting where I’ve already checked. I am hollow.

  Without discussing it, Felix and I have divided Rosalind’s case in half, divvying up suspects and dispensing the outstanding tasks like pieces of an apple. I’ve got the Ryans. He has the teachers. I have Nicholson. He has the students—with the exception of Rodney.

  ‘I spoke to Rodney Mason this morning,’ I announce at the informal check-in Jonesy requested. It’s just me, Felix, Matthews and Kingston now. ‘He admitted to having feelings for Ms Ryan.’

  ‘Feelings.’ Jonesy snorts, as if it’s the worst condition imaginable. ‘Well, that sounds promising. What are you thinking, Woodstock? Were these feelings mutual?’

  I recall Rodney’s grip on my hand. The flatness in his stare. I think about Jacob picking me up and throwing me onto my bed, tickling me mercilessly and covering me with kisses. Laughing until my face ached. I remember somewhere deep in my soul the contented peacefulness of love-struck teenage tiredness settling deep in my limbs.

  ‘He says they never acted on it. But they were definitely close. I think I believe him. But then there’s what Izzy said she saw. I guess we can try to get permission to secure DNA and see if it’s a match to the foetus.’

  ‘And if it’s his?’

  ‘Then we’ll know, sir. We’ll know he’s lying about the relationship. That would be fairly telling.’ Then I quickly add, ‘We’re also still looking at Timothy Ryan. His alibi is flimsy but there’s no indication as to where else he was that night. And we can’t write off John Nicholson either. We’re at a bit of a dead end.’

  Felix’s eyes narrow on me briefly.

  ‘Well, figure it out.’ Jonesy looks stressed. He clears his throat unnecessarily. ‘Right, everyone, off you go.’

  I make a coffee in the kitchen. The kettle hisses against the quiet of the station. Phones bleat sporadically from the front desk. I can hear Kenny asking someone to slow down so that he can understand them, his voice cracking like a teenager’s. I walk back to my desk, the hint of a headache forming at my temples. Papers ruffle gently in response to the creaking ceiling fans. The air-
con still isn’t fixed. Discarded coffee cups dot across the tops of messy desks. Stale smoke mingles with the smell of men and days of heat.

  I stand still for a moment and look squarely at the pin board. Rosalind’s face is large, surrounded by smaller photos of the crime scene and the autopsy. The coffee mixes sharply with the freshness of the apple I’ve just eaten but I drink past the taste. Slowly I take everything down from the board. Maps, photos, phone records, post-its. I look at the neat little pile on the chair. I grab some fresh post-its and map out a new timeline from scratch. I start with the Ryans arriving in Smithson in 1980. Olivia Ryan’s affair with Nicholson in 1987. Rosalind’s birth, Olivia’s death a few days later. The RYAN business sky-rocketing. George marrying Lila in 1997. Rosalind starting to see Jacob in November 2005. Maybe earlier, I admit to myself. Jacob dying in December. Rodney is just seven years old. Rosalind moving away, studying, living in the city. Landing a job as a teacher in a large city school. The rumoured relationship with the student there. Returning to Smithson in late 2011 and into her modest cottage on the highway. In 2012 she starts teaching at Smithson. Has a passion for drama and fights to produce the school play. Has a blowout with her brother at her dad’s birthday in October 2015. She applies for a teaching job in Brisbane the same month. Izzy Mealor claims to have seen Rosalind and Rodney Mason kissing at the school in November. Her play opens on Friday, 11 December. Rosalind Ryan is dead sometime that same evening. I am warned off the case with the roses a few days after the investigation begins. Ben is taken, another warning, one week later. John Nicholson confesses to believing Rosalind was his daughter the entire time.

  I wriggle my toes, pulling each knee to my chest and stretching my stiff legs. I look up at my newly arranged board.