‘Huh? Oh, sorry,’ I say, putting the pen down. Looking away from the screen is making everything seem slightly too bright. I lean back in my chair to stretch out my spine. Marty gives me his standard disparaging look before he disappears down behind the partition again, shaking his head. If Marty had his way, no one under forty-five would be a cop.
There’s a commotion at the front desk, and vague wafts of swearing and crying roll into the main room. Someone has put on the radio in one of the interview rooms and Bon Jovi is softly belting out ‘Bad Medicine’. I return my eyes to the computer screen and read through a few more articles about George Ryan’s business ventures. It seems that Marcus was involved in the business for a short stint but there is barely a mention of Timothy and Bryce, or of Rosalind. There are, however, several photos of George and his sons at various local industry nights. There is nothing on Rosalind apart from a local newspaper story about the upcoming school play.
Just as I am about to shut my computer down, I find a small article in the local paper from January 1985 covering the death of Olivia Ryan. In the photo, taken on their wedding day, the woman from the mantelpiece at the Ryans’ stares out at me. Her thick dark hair frames her heart-shaped face, and her crystal eyes are reminiscent of Elizabeth Taylor’s in her heyday. A tragedy, declares the paper. It seems thirty-three-year-old Olivia suffered a haemorrhage two days after giving birth to her first daughter, Rosalind, and fell unconscious from the blood loss. She died two days later. George Ryan was quoted as saying that he was devastated by the sudden loss of his precious wife and would do everything in his power to look after their three young sons and brand-new baby angel.
Chapter Nine
Monday, 14 December, 7.32 am
Jonesy has called us together to officially kickstart the investigation. We had trouble getting resources: a murder/kidnapping took place on Saturday afternoon, a few kilometres out of Paxton, and all spare bodies in the region were allocated to finding the newly motherless seven-year-old girl and her violent father. Fortunately, she was found unharmed late last night in her dad’s ute on a long stretch of country highway. Her father was discovered about fifty metres away in bushland, his brains blown to pieces.
Rosalind’s death has formed a blanket over Smithson: mixing with the relentless heat, it’s a creeping, vapour-like cover that sticks to everything. Voices are low and theories are exchanged in clusters outside the newsagent and the post office. Eyes dart around as if seeking a killer in the shadows. Beautiful piles of flowers form little mountains of love and grief at Rosalind’s front door, the lake and the school. It’s true what they say, that death unites us, pulls us together, though I see beyond this primal unity and think that perhaps we pull each other closer to check that we are who we say we are. We are all trying to work out what went so horribly wrong.
The energy is frenetic, buzzing with the newness of a bona fide mystery. There is nothing like this feeling, the hard fact that a death must have a story. We detectives must fill in the blanks: we have the ending but not the beginning or the middle. We need to know what happened in reverse. I usually love this stage. The satisfaction of problem-solving makes my soul sing. But this is different. I feel a flatness. And a mild flutter of fear. In many ways I’m scared of going backwards through Rosalind’s life in case it merges dangerously with my own. My past is something that I’ve always been happy to leave be.
There are about fifteen uniforms in plainclothes seated at the tables in the Waratah Room, underneath the overworked ceiling fans. Matthews, Kingston and Pearson are also present. The uniforms are mainly from Gowran and Mt Lyall, though two are from Corburn and two flew in from the city. Eager and desperate for murder experience, I picture them fist-pumping at the first sign of carnage on the nightly news. Jonesy is pacing at the front of the room, stopping sporadically to rock back and forth on his heels. The bottom of his belly winks out and I can tell he wants a cigarette. Large prints of Rosalind—dead and alive—dot the pin board behind him. Several sets of her dark honey eyes stare out across the room. In one of the shots she’s dressed in a soft mauve jacket with her hair pulled back, exposing her delicate throat. Her face is arranged into a sad, knowing smile. I fight the strangest urge to smile back.
One of the uniforms is fiddling with the venetian blinds, trying to get them to drop, and the rustling sound is slowly driving me spare. I look down and realise my hands are in fists. I didn’t even get to see Ben this morning. He was still asleep when I left; his arm wrapped around his soft-toy fire truck. Scott asked me whether I’d be home for dinner as he handed me a plate of toast. I told him I wasn’t sure.
I need a coffee. I start to walk towards the kitchen to make one just as Jonesy slaps his hand down on a desk and yells, ‘Right!’
I move back to my spot just inside the door; I don’t feel relaxed enough to sit down.
‘Here.’ Felix appears, placing a takeaway coffee from Reggie’s in my hand. He keeps looking straight ahead. We’re very careful at work, but we are partners and this means a certain level of intimacy is expected. Plus, we both have kids and most of the people we work with simply aren’t imaginative enough to assume we have time for anything as frivolous as lust.
‘Thanks,’ I whisper, gently glancing my knuckles against his.
Jonesy begins. ‘Right, by now you all know that Rosalind Ryan, a twenty-eight-year-old female, was found dead in Sonny Lake on Saturday morning. Beaten and strangled. Suspected sexual assault. She was a teacher at the local high school and by all accounts very popular. No witnesses and no clear motive or suspect. No partner that we can tell at this stage and no obvious beef with anyone. The media is already crawling like flies on shit over this’—Jonesy pauses to jerk a thumb at Rosalind’s photographs—‘for obvious reasons.’
He breaks into a mild coughing fit and grabs the ledge of the whiteboard to steady himself. ‘So we need a solve and fast. Being a teacher, the school parents will start to be pains in the arse too and we don’t want this kicking around for months. The mayor called earlier and he’s putting the pressure on as well.’ He hikes his pants up, which only serves to highlight the flabby skin around his waist. ‘Now, not for a moment do I think that this is a serial, but you know how these things play out. If we don’t pin someone for this, then it may as well be the next Jack the Ripper and we’re all fucked.’