Saturday, 2 January, 9.17 am
Everything is on hold. When I look around the station, things pause for a moment before abruptly jerking back to life. I barely slept last night, tossing and turning for hours, until in the end I took myself into the lounge room and shuffled through Rosalind’s case files again, as if they were cards in a deck. I feel inexplicably anxious about seeing Rosalind’s play tonight. I’m almost convinced that she will deliver me a message from beyond the grave. Wired, I push my hair behind my ears and return to my pile of paperwork, trying to focus. The thought of waking up tomorrow and the answers still being on the loose is maddening.
Jonesy has briefed Matthews and me on our first job together, a cold case that has a fresh lead. Matthews and I are polite, careful, and I get the feeling that he will do his best to make this thing work between us. However, the gaping hole that was Felix is so big that I’m constantly worried I’m going to slip into it and won’t be able to climb out.
At our late, informal check-in, Felix tells our dwindling group about confronting Nicholson regarding his relationship with Izzy. ‘He admitted he’s seeing her, said it was a recent thing. Said he would have told us but that he didn’t think she wanted anyone to know yet. He added that it’s too new to be a big deal.’
Felix says Nicholson claimed to have no knowledge about Izzy’s reported sighting of Rosalind and Rodney at the school, and said that if it were true it would concern him greatly. He’d told her nothing about his suspected paternity.
‘So this thing between them is legitimate? They seem a pretty unlikely pair, don’t they?’ Jonesy can’t seem to fathom how a ‘looker’ like Izzy would be attracted to Nicholson. Possibly he simply wants to know his secret.
‘I think I’ve caused some trouble in paradise, but I believe they are genuinely a budding couple.’ Felix laughs and I keep my eyes on my hands. ‘I think the only reason Izzy didn’t mention what she thought she saw to Nicholson is that she didn’t want to upset him. Plus, she wasn’t certain it was Rodney. She probably figures that Nicholson would have been obliged to follow it up and she knows how fond he was of Rosalind. She just doesn’t know why.’
‘Well, it was a great lead anyway, Woodstock,’ says Jonesy generously. ‘I really thought we might be on to something with those two. I’d still keep an eye on her,’ he says to Felix, ‘seeing as she’s the only one who ties Ms Ryan and the boy together. What else?’
‘Nothing new, sir,’ I say. ‘We’re going to the play tonight in case something turns up. We have nothing solid on Timothy Ryan. Amelia Posen has confirmed he was at her place until around ten forty-five that night and he still claims he went straight home. As far as we can work out he’s telling the truth—the home security camera shows him arriving at ten to eleven. Takeaway for two ordered and porn downloaded onto Amelia’s wi-fi, purchased with Timothy’s corporate credit card. It’s not directly linked to him so we never ran it through the system. His blissfully ignorant brother is still claiming he thinks he heard him come in at about eleven while he was on the phone to Amelia, who did call him just after Timothy claims to have left her place. I think he’s a shitty person but probably not a murderer.’
‘It’s like Days of Our bloody Lives. Okay, well, I guess we play the waiting game. I know I don’t need to tell you that we’ve got one more week on this thing before I’m going to need to downgrade it again. Woodstock, you’re already briefed on the cold case, and McKinnon, I need you across something else from tomorrow as well.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Right. And you’re both going tonight?’
We nod again.
‘Meet me there just before eight?’ Felix asks, trying to catch my eye.
‘Sure,’ I reply, without looking at him.
Chapter Seventy-four
then
No one is home at Gemma’s. Ned’s car isn’t in the driveway and no one answers the doorbell so Jacob cuts through the bushland at the back of the house and opens the gate to look into the yard—Gemma sits out here sometimes—but it’s empty. He feels desperate. He just wants to find her. Talk to her. Touch her. Nothing has ever felt so important.
After ending things with Rosalind last night Jacob woke up with a strange sense of clarity. The fog that had wrapped itself around his head for the past few months has lifted a little but it’s threatening to drop again. A brutal headache pounds through his skull as the seconds tick by. He needs to find Gemma. Needs to try to explain to her why he pushed her away. He’s made such a mess. He doesn’t know what is wrong with him.
He can’t fit all the thoughts in his head.
His pulse races constantly.
He is so tired.
The emptiness is closing in again.
He slept in this morning, which almost never happens. His mother was already in the kitchen cleaning. Cleaning, even though Rodney was still sitting at the table eating cereal. She’s always cleaning. Always scrubbing. The skin on her hands worn and grey. She asked him what he was doing today. She always wants to know what he’s doing. He hasn’t even told her about breaking up with Gemma. Never told her about Rosalind. He can’t imagine trying to explain it all. His head is all over the place. Even as he’s doing things, they don’t make sense.
But Gemma makes sense.
He goes to the school, to the park, to the shopping centre. She’s not working at the burger shack. Not in the food court. She’s nowhere. He lights a cigarette and sits against a phone booth, backpack between his legs. The smoke enters and exits his lungs, mixing with the air and disappearing into nothing. He thinks about what he wants to say to her. But he needs to hurry: the darkness is coming back.
And then he sees her. She appears right in front of him; her arms are around Fox. She’s laughing. Jacob shuffles around to the other side of the booth and peers out, transfixed as they link arms. She looks happy. Happier than she has been in weeks. Fox kisses the side of her head, his arms still around her as they disappear into the cinema.
After half an hour Jacob goes home because he can’t think where else to go.
‘You okay, Jake?’ His mother sticks her head into his room, her pale face pinched and worried. She is always worried.
‘Yep.’
She comes and sits primly on the end of his bed.
‘The police called here before,’ she says. ‘They said there’s been some trouble today. Something to do with a girl from school called Rosalind Ryan? There was some kind of threat made to her family. Something serious. They want to talk to you because they say you’re her boyfriend, that you had some kind of argument yesterday?’
Jacob blinks. He can’t seem to apply the required brain power to the scenario. His mind is full of Gemma.
‘Jacob?’