by Sarah Bailey
Could Jacob really be relevant to Rosalind’s death or is that just a tempting thought because of the link between the two of them? I’ve told no one else about Rose dating him; it’s not something that I’ve ever spoken about and I don’t really want to start now. I imagine coming clean about what happened all those years ago and feel panic surge through me.
Who benefitted financially from Rosalind’s death? Only her brothers directly. But for others, killing Rosalind might have been a way to stop secrets from spilling out. Maybe the father of her baby hadn’t wanted her to keep it; hadn’t wanted her telling everyone that he was the father. Was killing her a way of getting rid of the baby and keeping her quiet? Or was she involved in something bigger? Something we haven’t even thought of yet?
The pieces dangle in front of me, not quite fitting together. I squint, trying to force the notes and pictures to make sense, until the only thing I can see clearly is Rosalind’s face trapped in the middle, completely unfazed by the surrounding chaos.
Chapter Sixty-two
Wednesday, 30 December, 11.17 am
‘I need to talk to you.’
I try to place the voice. ‘Rodney? Is that you?’
‘Yeah. Can we meet?’
‘Hang on.’
Felix eyes me from his desk. His hair looks different today. He’s forgotten to put gel in it. I get up and walk the length of the station. ‘Okay.’ I duck into an empty interview room. ‘What’s going on, Rodney?’
Rodney sounds like he’s crying. Or has been. ‘I just want to talk to you. Can you meet me?’
‘Sure. Sure. Um, do you want me to come and pick you up?’
‘Um, yeah, no, that won’t work. What about at the lake again?’
Discomfort bubbles inside me. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Rodney. Do you want to come to the station?’ I picture parading him along the beige corridor and instantly hope that he rejects my suggestion.
‘No.’ He says the word like a bullet. ‘What about the pizza place by the little park near my house? It’s always empty during the day. You know it?’
‘Yeah. I know it.’
We ring off and I walk out of the station to my car. As I pass the skate park, I stare at the base of the skate jump, marvelling at the courage that must be needed to scale the peaks.
Rodney seems nervous as I slide into the booth across from him. Cherry’s Pizza is clearly not popular during the day. A frail-looking man mechanically tosses pizza dough into circles behind the counter and there is only one other customer, a wizened-looking elderly woman heroically making her way through a large margherita. I don’t recognise either of them. I kept a careful eye out on the way here to make sure I wasn’t tailed by reporters and it appears my efforts were successful.
After a few moments, a fresh-faced girl all of thirteen appears to take our orders. Rodney asks for a milkshake, barely looking at her. I glance at the wine menu but settle for a milkshake too.
After she disappears into the kitchen, I duck my head, trying to catch his eye. ‘Are you okay, Rodney? Why did you want to see me?’
He twists his hands. ‘I don’t know. I wanted to talk to you.’
‘What do you want to talk about?’
He looks at the fan, the door. His mind seems to be flitting around, almost like he’s on something.
‘Rodney?’
‘I just don’t have anyone to talk to. I like talking to you.’
Warmth spreads in my chest before I catch myself. Careful, I think. ‘I like talking to you too,’ I say.
‘I guess I just feel alone now. You know, doing the play again, it’s like I’m glad we’re doing it but it’s so weird that she’s not there.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘I don’t think that anyone else really cares! They’re all talking about next year and leaving Smithson and I just can’t.’
‘You really loved her, didn’t you, Rodney?’
The tendons in his jaw work hard. He looks at me with wounded eyes. ‘She just understood me. She got me.’
I remember that Rodney turns eighteen in two weeks. If I collect his DNA now and file it in mid-January I won’t have to get Donna Mason’s permission. I can also decide whether I want to submit it at all.
‘You know, Rodney,’ I say kindly, ‘there’s a lot of talk about you, people saying things about the two of you. I could put a lot of it to rest with a DNA test.’
‘A DNA test?’ he repeats.
‘Yes.’ I stir the milky bubbles with my straw. ‘There’s some evidence that we collected and if we could just get your DNA we could possibly remove you from the investigation.’
He puffs out his cheeks. ‘Okay,’ he says, after a minute. ‘How long does it take?’
‘Collecting your DNA is instant. We can do it right now; I have a kit in my bag. You just need to swab your mouth. The test will take a few weeks but I’m sure it will all be fine.’
‘Okay. I’ll do it.’ His voice is flat and I wonder what he is thinking.
He doesn’t ask what evidence I’m referring to. I don’t mention the baby. Even if it was his, he may not know anything about it. I think about the baby I lost. It would have been about eight weeks along by now. The gravity of the decision I managed to dodge overwhelms me, and I paste on a smile and hand Rodney the DNA kit.
‘Just push that along the inside of your cheek and that’s it.’
Rodney takes the kit from me and removes the swab, running it along the wall of his mouth before placing it back into the bag.
‘Thanks, Rodney,’ I say, taking it from him, and I swear I can see all of his tiny cells scrambling around on its tip, holding all the answers.
Chapter Sixty-three
then
I folded the letter in half and placed it in the envelope. I looked at his name, written across the front like it should be sung. I slipped the envelope in the front page of my notebook and then put it into my bag. I only had an hour until daylight.
I cycled over to Jacob’s house. The sparse streetlights lit my way, the ground steamed from the recent rain. I counted on Jacob being up first. He often roamed around the house till late, watching TV, before waking early. For a moment I panicked, thinking that perhaps he was staying at her house, but Donna would never let him do that, and I could see his bike propped next to the front door, his sneakers parallel with Rodney’s.
I leaned my bike on the fence beside the letterbox, got the envelope out of my bag and walked towards the house. I stared at myself in the glass of the windows, which had turned to mirrors in the early-morning light.
Before I could have second thoughts, I slid the envelope underneath the front door.
Chapter Sixty-four
Wednesday, 30 December, 5.18 pm
I pick Ben up early from my dad’s. He wraps his small arms around my neck as I kiss Dad goodbye then bundle him into the car. We drive. I’m not sure where we’re going but I don’t feel like going home. Scott has agreed to help one of the neighbours rebuild a fence this afternoon and even though we haven’t discussed Ben returning to Cloud Hill yet, instinctively it doesn’t feel like an option right now. Maybe it never will be. Everything seems temporary at the moment.
I turn corners at random, following the curves of the road. The idea of stopping, of having to do anything beyond aimless driving, seems impossible.
Ben kicks the back of my seat.
‘Hey, sweetheart, stop that, come on.’
‘Want toast.’
‘You can’t have toast, baby. I can’t cook toast in the car.’
Ben replies with a swift kick to the door.
‘Ben, please. Look, we’ll stop and get some fruit. I know a place just up ahead.’
We whip past patchwork paddocks. The sun has dipped towards the earth, shooting sideways like a laser beam. Melancholy cows watch us, their mournful stares providing a distraction for Ben, who mercifully stops kicking the seat. I pull into the roadside stall and buy a small box of strawberries and a bag
of blueberries.
‘Berries!’ he says with a hand out.
‘Hang on, hang on. We’ll just go up the road a bit.’
I park in the rest stop under the shade of a giant gum. A few chairs and tables pepper the edge of the car park but I coax Ben to an oasis of faded green at the tip of the curve where the mountain juts out and you can stare forever at the infinite fields. The sky is the sea, the land its sandy base. It’s beautiful. I haven’t thought to come here for years. Smithson is surrounded by pockets of nature’s best. Valleys pool with emerald green moss, ferns carry the faces of exotic tigers, flowers the colour of rare gems. The air is cleaner up here: we’re above the haze that hugs the town, above all the judgment that gets stuck in my lungs and pulls me down. I pan evenly across the outlook, catching myself as I complete my scan. It’s not like I’m going to be able to spot the killer from up here. Looking down at Smithson like this does make it seem more possible though. It’s smaller. More manageable. I see the large square of the Carling plant, the tiny dots of houses, the sketchy roads. Sonny Lake, the shot tower. Catching the killer shouldn’t be so hard, but somehow once I’m back among the Lego-like rows of houses and familiar shops, everything is closer and yet further away. Rodney’s down there somewhere, I think. I wonder what he’s doing. Rehearsing for the play? Or is he at the lake, staring out at the water, missing Rose? I move my eyes back to Ben, who is chomping contentedly on his blueberries, staring at the view, a wine-coloured rim quickly forming around his lips.
‘You had a good Christmas, Ben?’
He nods, still eating.
‘That’s good.’ I shift over next to him in the shade and kick off my shoes and socks. I pick fluff from between my toes. Move them back and forth in a slow wave before pushing them into the dry earth.
‘Hey, Ben, maybe we’ll go on a holiday soon. Would you like that?’
He bobs his head up and down. ‘Peppa Pig goes on holidays.’
‘Cool,’ I say. ‘Well, I think it would be nice to go on a holiday.’
‘With Daddy?’
A beat goes by. I was imagining Felix and I somehow escaping to a cosy cabin, or perhaps a stormy beach house, with Ben in tow. Away from the heat and the rest of the world. Ridiculous. He has three teenage daughters, and a wife for good measure. Plus, he’s not even talking to me right now. Our life together is a fantasy, one that I need to put a lid on. ‘Sure, Daddy will come.’
‘I like holidays.’
‘Good. Maybe we’ll go somewhere cold. That might be nice, huh?’
‘Like snow?’
‘Well, maybe not snow.’
Paris, England, Vancouver. All these places that I was supposed to see but haven’t. My mother used to tell me about skiing: the feeling of trusting your feet, the feeling of flying. I look at Ben and imagine his tiny body whipping down a mountain. I imagine all the things he will do, far, far away from Smithson. And suddenly there’s a lump in my throat and I’m jumping back to my feet, wiping my soles on the grass.
‘Look at you. You’re like a little vampire.’ I yank some Wet Ones from my bag and dab the berry juice off Ben’s mouth. He squeals and squirms away.
After the blueberries are gone and the strawberries are nothing more than green, tuft-like weeds, we go for a walk. Ben wants to pick flowers. We assemble a ragged-looking posy of wildflowers and bracken that is appealing in a home-cooked kind of way.
‘Look at this!’ I fasten them together with a hair tie. ‘They’re beautiful, Ben. Should we take them home and put them in a vase?’
‘I want to give them to Daddy.’
I block out the sun with my hand. I can’t seem to get away from it.
‘That’s a nice idea. He’ll love them.’
The cicada chorus kicks up a notch. Shrill, the noise bores into the air as I help Ben into the car and start down the mountain, along the familiar curves, back into Smithson.
Chapter Sixty-five
Thursday, 31 December, 8.24 am
Candy’s article details everything: from the time of Ben’s kidnapping to him being found in our backyard a few hours later. The kidnapper is described as a middle-aged woman who claimed to be Ben’s grandmother. There’s even a quote from Madeleine at the day-care centre and a reference to a piece of evidence linked strongly to the Rosalind Ryan murder case.
Propelled into Jonesy’s office by a force beyond my control, I’m in such a rage I can’t even feel my face.
‘What the fuck is this?’ I throw the paper onto his desk.
He looks up at me and I can tell he’s already seen it.
I read from the paper, ‘“The question that we should really be asking ourselves is whether or not Detective Woodstock should keep working on this case. It seems impossible for her to remain impartial now that there is such a clear threat to her family.” I mean, what is this? Do we have a leak?’
Jonesy pushes his chair away from his desk and stands up. He looks tired and old. A stain on his shirt sneaks out from behind his jacket.
My phone is going ballistic in my pocket. I don’t even want to look at it. Scott, my dad, Aunt Megan. Everyone will be wanting something from me. Blaming me. How could I let this happen to my son?
‘Do you need to get that?’ Jonesy says, jerking his head towards my buzzing pocket.
‘No. What I need to be doing is getting on with my job. But that seems kind of fucking impossible right now, doesn’t it?’
I spin on my heel and storm out, leaving an open-mouthed Jonesy in my wake.
I spend the next few hours brooding around the station like a thunder cloud. My fists clench involuntarily and I manage to drop a full cup of takeaway coffee on my shoes. I want to kill Candy, watch her eyes bug out of her head as I strangle her, but somehow I refrain from calling her office. Honestly, I’m mainly afraid of what I might say.
Scott is looking after Ben today. He’s not working again until mid-January. Everyone else from the worksite has gone away for summer. It’s only us who have nowhere to go. I don’t call him; I just can’t deal with it right now.
In the end I’m sick of my own company and I call Dad back, pacing manically in front of the park bench behind the station, listening as he wonders how this could have happened and how I could have kept it from him. His voice is rough-edged, the anger unfamiliar and sharp.
‘Gemma, help me understand why you didn’t tell me about this.’ ‘Dad, I’m working a murder case. I know you don’t really understand what that means but there is procedure. I can’t tell you everything. Does that make sense?’ I choke back a sob. ‘Plus, we didn’t want to upset you.’
Dad doesn’t speak for a moment. At last he says, ‘Gemma, I understand how important your job is, but this is about our Ben—not some fact about a clue.’
‘He’s not “our Ben”, he’s mine!’ I click the phone off and shove it in my pocket, which is nowhere near as satisfying as throwing it on the ground like I want to do. Instead, I try to calm down, watching as a blowfly stuck in the sticky strands of a web tries desperately to break free, its tormented buzzing loud in my ears.
Chapter Sixty-six
Thursday, 31 December, 2.37 pm
I get into a patrol car and head to Gowran. My argument with Dad has upset me and I grip the wheel and grit through tears that I refuse to unleash. I haven’t told Jonesy where I’m going, which is not the smartest idea, but I simply can’t deal with having to explain myself right now. For the briefest moment I wonder what Felix is doing, but that line of thinking will get me even more worked up than I am already, so I focus on driving, staring at the reliable horizon and taking the kind of deep breaths that I was taught the one time I tried meditation. Paddocks flick past with cows huddled around the fence posts. Rows and rows of fruit trees reach up to the sun.
The drive takes about an hour, and by the time I arrive I’m feeling anxious and remember why I never went back to that meditation class.
Gowran was once a wealthy mining town and the architecture always makes
me want to stand up a little bit straighter. I walk into the open-air shopping complex, slightly bemused by the exotic coffees on the menu at the country kitchen café. Little old Gowran has clearly propelled itself into the mainstream. The small space is writhing with teenagers, who all appear to be spending their hard-earned holiday cash on various forms of caffeine and cream, the excessive price tag clearly a matter of value perception.
Rosalind had several ticket stubs in her rubbish bin and bedside drawer from the Gowran cinema and, even though it’s a long shot, I figure I’ll ask the guys on the counter if they remember her and, if they do, are they able to recall who she came with. The fact that Rosalind went to Gowran is suspicious. It’s a two-hour round trip and there is a cinema complex in Smithson that shows all the same films. But Gowran is much larger than Smithson; I think its population is almost sixty thousand. It’s arguably a place someone might come if they want to hide in plain sight. I’d planned on sending one of the uniforms on this inquiry mission but there is no one left now. Really, I just wanted to get out of Smithson, and this seemed as good a red herring to follow up as any.
The staff on the cinema ticket booths look incredibly young but I assume they must be at least fifteen. I wait for a lull and then amble over to speak to them. Explaining that I’m a detective, I show them the picture of Rosalind and ask if they remember seeing her.
‘Oh yeah,’ says a particularly angelic-looking boy with ringlets pulled into a ponytail. ‘The dead girl. She used to come here all the time.’
A girl with a pixie cut and a square jaw smacks her gum and manages to serve a customer while talking to me. ‘Yeah. She did. Almost every Friday or Saturday.’
‘She come alone?’ I ask them.
‘Sometimes.’
Another kid leans in front of me from behind and I whip round, holding my arms out in defence.
‘Whoa.’ A girl with matching braids stands back, her arms up. She giggles. ‘That was kind of cool. But I was just trying to look at the picture.’ Leaning across me again, she pushes some stray hairs behind her ears. ‘Oh yeah, her. Always here. The boys used to go crazy trying to serve her and shit.’