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.’
‘Is there a manager on today?’ I say.
Braids girl smiles at me. ‘I am the manager.’
‘Oh, right.’ I swallow my surprise. ‘Do you remember whether she came with anyone?’
‘She was alone, I think.’
‘Nah, she was with a guy a bunch of times,’ says the boy with ringlets.
I spin back around to face him. ‘What did he look like?’
‘Dunno really,’ he says. ‘I just remember sometimes she bought two tickets. And I saw her at the candy bar with a guy.’
‘Young? Old?’
‘Ah, young, I think. Like your age?’
‘I reckon I saw her with her dad. Some old guy,’ the pixie-faced girl chimes in helpfully.
I turn back to the manager, who is putting change in the tills.
‘You have cameras here?’
‘I think so.’ We both glance up to see a clapped-out camera that looks like it was made before electricity was invented.
‘I’m going to need your camera footage from the past few months. I want to see anything you have with this woman on it.’ I hold Rosalind’s photo up again and she stares out at us serenely.
‘Roger that.’ The girl with the braids waves in a clumsy salute. ‘Don’t know how to do it but I know it can be done. I’m on it.’
‘Great, thank you. Here’s my card. Contact me directly if you find anything. My guys will go through anything you’ve got.’
‘Will do.’
A slow electronic ticker broadcasts a loop of pixels across the top of the candy bar menu, advertising the movies on show. I imagine what it would be like to head back to the boy with the ringlets, buy a ticket to some shoot-’em-up gangster flick, grab some popcorn and disappear into the darkness for a couple of hours. I can see Rosalind here: the faux European walkways are a homage to the world of art that made so much sense to her.
Shaking my head, I wave at the ticket crew, who return it cheerily, and head back to my car. The air-con takes a while to get going so I stand outside, letting it do its thing for a few minutes. Checking my phone, there’s nothing from Felix, but there’s a text from Dad apologising and an angry voicemail from Jonesy apologising for the Candy article but also demanding to know where the fuck I am.
As I get into the car, my eyes stinging with the transition from hot to cold, I notice a couple in a parked car about twenty metres away. The woman’s bright red hair catches my eye. I shrink down in my seat and watch John Nicholson and Izzy Mealor, heads bent close together. Izzy smiles at him before tilting her face so that he can kiss her on the lips.
Chapter Sixty-seven
Thursday, 31 December, 5.42 pm
I go to the lake. It suddenly seems to have a magnetic pull, drawing me close. I walk a lap briskly and then another more slowly. I look out at the shimmering bed of glass, wishing it would part and show me the way. Footsteps tap behind me and blurry shapes form in the water but no one else is here, it’s just me and the whispering lake.
Really, all I want is to speak to Felix. My body aches for him. I’m barely eating and I drift in between wakefulness and sleep with alarming ease.
I should tell him about Nicholson and Izzy, but at the same time there is a delicious addiction to the pain of weaning myself off him. Plus, I know if I contact him and say I need to talk about the case, he’ll think I just want to see him. My anger at this likely assumption makes my blood boil. In the end I do call him, but it goes to voicemail, so I leave him a message saying we need to speak about Nicholson.
I head back to the station. Everyone is out preparing for the inevitable dangers that come with one year transitioning to the next. The silence needles my brain. I run comprehensive searches on Izzy Mealor but turn up nothing. I can’t help thinking that her claim about witnessing Rosalind with a student is fuelled by jealousy. Perhaps she thought that Nicholson had a crush on Rose and she wants to posthumously cast her in a bad light. Or is she planting a red herring to put us off course? Whatever the case, Nicholson told us that he doesn’t endorse staff relationships and Izzy certainly wasn’t forthcoming about her romance with him.
Perhaps they’re somehow in on this together. Nicholson might have gone to the school that night and somehow lured Rosalind to the lake.
I want something to break, something to happen. This case is so still. Taunting me.
I need to eat. Rustling through my drawer, I find a crumpled instant soup packet and mix it into some boiling water in the kitchen. My face prickles with sweat as I drink the hot liquid and I push my lank hair behind my ears. Restless and out of breath, I can’t seem to sit. I’m staring at the pin board when I feel a tap on my shoulder.
‘Jesus!’ I reel around.
Felix looks equally startled and steps away from me. ‘Sorry. I saw you standing there. I called you back but you weren’t picking up.’
I grope at my pockets for my phone but it’s not there.
‘Oh. Must have left it in the car. Or maybe it’s on my desk …’ I’m lightheaded, his presence unsteadying me. He seems more solid than normal, somehow anchored to the ground as I struggle to stay upright.
‘So you have something new on Nicholson?’ His voice is all business.