The Dark Lake

by Sarah Bailey

  We are standing in one of the little offices off the main room of the police station. Ken Jones, our chief superintendent, has obviously decided that Rosalind’s murder warrants his presence. I can’t remember the last time I saw him down here on a weekend.

  I recall flashes of Rosalind’s face in the schoolyard. Glimpses of her creamy skin in the school change room, her large eyes glowing back at me knowingly. Years later, I slowed my car to watch her walking in front of me, arms heavy with shopping, her long skirt swishing above her feet. Her grainy face in my high school yearbook faded from the rub of my fingers.

  Her staring back at me in class, daring me to look away.

  I know every inch of her face.

  I clear my throat. ‘Yes, sir. I knew her a bit but it’s not a problem. Honestly. We weren’t friends and I haven’t really seen her since we were in school. Ages ago.’

  My heart is flying; I hate lying to Jonesy but how else can I put it? It is impossible to explain Rosalind to him in any other way.

  ‘Well, good. ’Cause I want you to throw everything at this. Both you and McKinnon. Get tight on this one. It’s going to be big.’ He takes a noisy slurp of his takeaway coffee. ‘Do what you need to do today, sort out her family, and then get some sleep so you can hit the ground running tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, sir, of course.’

  ‘You’re up to it after last week?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good. Terrible, all that was.’

  I adjust my bag; the strap is digging sharply into my shoulder. I think back to last Sunday night, to opening the peeling bathroom door and finding the desperate, beaten-down young woman who had decided it would be better to drown her baby son in the bath and then slit her wrists as she held his dead body, rather than spend another night in fear of her violent ex-boyfriend. ‘Isn’t it all pretty terrible these days?’

  ‘Certainly feels like it sometimes. Well, anyway, let’s get this show on the road.’ Jonesy pats me hard on the back as his phone starts to ring. ‘Ah, here’s the bloody maintenance man. The air-con in the main room has carked it again,’ he says and walks away, scrambling to get his ringing phone out of his pocket. The Pink Panther riff is abruptly cut off as he starts barking orders.

  I stare at the large painting hanging on the wall next to the water cooler: a blurry blue-grey sky set atop green mountains. I think about Rosalind, dead inside the body bag. My insides are wound tight like a spring, my organs suddenly too large for my body. I tap my foot and wish Felix would hurry. I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts right now.

  He appears around the corner holding two coffees. He sees me and smiles. ‘Here. You probably need this.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I take the coffee from him even though the thought of drinking it is making my stomach churn.

  ‘I just spoke to Charlie. They’ve found her car in the top car park. The one in between the school and the lake.’

  ‘Charlie called you?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah. Just now.’

  ‘I thought you were talking to your wife.’

  Felix shoots me a withering look. ‘I was, Gem. And then Charlie called me. Want to see my call log?’ His accent wraps sweetly around the word ‘log’ and I want to kiss him.

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Her car’s not a primary crime scene, apparently. Anna’s gone back to do a once-over but it’s locked and seems fine. We can go have a look before they move it, if we want.’

  ‘Okay. Good.’

  ‘So, since her car was in the lake’s top car park, maybe she knew she was going to end up at the lake last night?’ he says.

  I think about this. ‘From memory, the car park at the school is tiny. The teachers would use that lake car park all the time because it’s only a five-minute walk away. So she might have just always parked there.’

  ‘Maybe it’s changed since you went there,’ says Felix.

  ‘I don’t think so. I drive past there sometimes and it looks pretty much the same.’ I know I’m talking quickly. I stop to breathe.

  Felix cuffs me amicably on the shoulder but then lets his eyes linger on mine. A flutter runs through me. ‘Are you really okay, Gem? It must be weird going to school with her and then seeing her like this.’

  ‘Seriously, I’m fine. It’s just a bit of a shock, I guess.’

  ‘Okay, right, you two.’ Jonesy is off the phone. ‘C’mon, let’s get this thing moving. Get Matthews and Kingston as well. I want them across this, just in case.’

  I roll my eyes but Felix walks off to grab the others. Gerry Matthews and Mac Kingston, both in their late forties, are detective sergeants too but wear their superiority like a badge. They have no time for me and the feeling is mutual.

  Once the five of us are crammed into Jonesy’s messy office, we work through what we know.

  ‘Deceased twenty-eight-year-old female. Rosalind Elizabeth Ryan. English teacher at Smithson Secondary College. It appears she lived alone in a small place on the highway. The body was discovered this morning at Sonny Lake, just before seven-thirty am. She was bashed and strangled, and there’s suspected sexual assault.’ Felix reels off this information as if it is a classified ad and I can almost pretend I don’t know her. That I can’t see her lifeless limbs floating in the water.

  ‘And who found her?’ asks Jonesy. ‘Some jogger you said, Woodstock? Have we cleared him?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I think he’s clear. He knew her very vaguely but we’ll obviously get a lot of that with her growing up here and being a teacher at Smithson.’ My voice sounds odd, like I’m talking from the next room.

  ‘Okay, get his statement sorted and put that to bed. What else? Time of death?’

  ‘Anna thinks late last night or early this morning,’ I tell them.

  ‘Any ideas on what she was doing down at the lake?’

  Matthews clears his throat. ‘There was a big production on at the school last night. A stage play, I guess. My wife went. I just spoke to her. She said that at the end our dead girl was up on stage getting flowers and doing a thankyou speech. Apparently the play was very good.’

  I remember Rose on stage in our final year of school, absolutely captivating as Medea. Her wild eyes like daggers as she looked out over the audience, bemoaning her plight.

  ‘She was always really into acting,’ I say.

  ‘Woodstock knew her back in school,’ Jonesy explains to the others.

  I avoid making eye contact.

  ‘Right,’ Jonesy continues, ‘well, the school needs to be a secondary crime scene, pronto. Seems like she never made it home. Seal it off and start working over it. And check out her place too.’

  ‘I’ve already had a team seal it off,’ I say, ignoring the look that Kingston gives Matthews.

  ‘Good,’ says Jonesy. ‘You and McKinnon check it out once the forensics have gone through it. Interview whoever you need to. Who’s going to do the family?’

  ‘I’m happy to …’

  ‘No.’ Jonesy waves Matthews’ offer away. ‘I want McKinnon and Woodstock to do the family.’ He looks me in the eye. ‘The father is a bigwig in business, so tread carefully. Apparently he’s very friendly with Mayor Cordon. I want the formal ID done asap. People are talking so we need to confirm the identity today. Autopsy tomorrow; Anna knows already. Once all that’s sorted, I want you to get a grip on what happened at the school last night. Who, what, where, the usual. Reporters are already clogging up the phones. I can’t believe your mate Candy Cane hasn’t called me yet, Woodstock, but it’s only a matter of time.’

  ‘She’s not my mate, sir.’

  ‘She’s a pain in the arse, that’s what she is, but nonetheless she and the rest of the rat pack will be all over this. It’s a great story and just in time for Christmas. Bloody fucking nightmare.’ He pushes at his sparse hair and rubs his eyes. He seems surprised to find us all still there when he looks up. A few beats go by until he roars, ‘Well, go on then—move it!’

  We scatter.

/>   I found my feet when I became a cop. After years of teetering on the brink, wildly close to the edge, the force pulled me back to safety; I walked tall again. Dad said my uniform made me look strong. I think that I simply stopped looking at the ground when I wore it. In the beginning my days were reactive: traffic accidents, petty theft, lost property, broken windows. Over time they became more proactive: tracking known offenders, looking for patterns, getting inside their heads, attempting to predict and prevent their next move. We had a lot of grads from the city come and do stints with us. Typically, young cops need to do their time in the regional areas but it’s not reciprocal; I haven’t done more than a few weeks in the city, not since my training. Smithson and its surrounds are all I’ve ever really known.

  A good four-hour drive from Sydney, it’s hot here in the summer and freezing in the winter, but I soon discovered that crime isn’t seasonal. Along with the wholesome country air comes a lot of booze, a lot of boredom and a whole lot of violence. Felix, fresh from the streets of London, assured me that the police skills we apply here are the same, it’s just the scale that is different. I’m sure that’s not true—I think he just didn’t want me to feel like I was missing out—but either way, I know that everyone would agree that I’m good at this. It suits me.

  From the beginning I liked the hunt. The endless puzzles to figure out. The permission to focus on one thing and shut out everything else. It’s a profession sympathetic to selfishness. I found it relaxing after years of blaring noise to legitimately claim tunnel vision, to dive wholeheartedly into something, to have an excuse not to talk to people, to justify my mysteriousness.

  Being a female cop in Smithson did come with its challenges, but in a way I revelled in those too. They gave me something hard and real to buck up against. A living, breathing obstacle that I could conquer; a stark contrast to the murky nothingness that was the deep well of my grief. The soundtrack of leers and put-downs that followed me around only made me more determined, more focused.

  Jonesy had a soft spot for me from the start. His initial fascination at a woman being able to navigate the testosterone-soaked locker room extended to him being impressed every time I fronted up, calm and capable, to a nasty road accident, a messy suicide or a violent conflict. To his credit, he seemed determined to avoid typecasting me, often deliberately sending the others to break bad news to family members rather than assuming they needed my soft touch. I’d heard him talking on the phone a few months into my appointment, declaring to someone that I was ‘as tough as old tin’. It wasn’t a father figure I lacked, and he never overstepped the fence I had carefully built around myself, but I did get a bonus uncle in Jonesy, and I can’t say I minded. The guys in the station were brutal and his backing was not so overt as to make things worse for me; rather, he became a subtle and powerful—albeit bumbling—ally, and I yearned to make him proud of me.

  It had been a long time since pride had seemed important; the grief that swarmed around Dad and me did not allow a normal parent–child relationship. Our focus was almost solely on survival. Dad never relaxed enough to enjoy parenting me most of the time; there were moments of nervous joy but generally he was too busy looking over our shoulders for looming danger. Having lived only with Dad since I was thirteen, I initially found the proximity of so many other people, particularly so many men, overwhelming. Their scent hung over the station; their constant hunger unsettled me. Their jokes were crude and cruel. I set my jaw and swallowed my frustration and, occasionally, my fear. I had very little on my side. Not only was I female but I was also young, keen and sharp: a dangerous combination.

  About a month into my first year, I attended a robbery at one of the local garages with Keith Blight, a worn-out old boy who saw no place in the police force for women. He thought I’d be better off taking my feelings and my handbag straight to the nearest beauty parlour. The mechanic had managed to detain the thief, a scrawny, acne-scarred backpacker who spat on the ground approximately every sixty seconds. We arrived and I pulled out my handcuffs only to have the ferrety criminal smirk at me and then exchange a knowing look with Blight, who seemed equally amused. They both thought I was a joke. A kid cop and a girl to boot. I said nothing, knowing that any protest, any reaction at all, would simply be deemed emotional, giving them exactly what they expected from me. My face burned as I pushed the backpacker’s oily head down and shoved him into the police car. Anger raged through me, threatening to erupt into a scream.

  And then, a few months later, the Robbie case came along and changed everything.

  Chapter Four

  Saturday, 12 December, 1.46 pm

  Smithson in general is fairly leafy and George Ryan’s house is undoubtedly in the leafiest part of town. Smithson has always had a wealthy area to keep the rest of us in our place; it’s just that before the Carling plant was built, it used to be the retail franchise owners, a handful of bank managers and the former owners of successful family farms who lived at the base of the rolling hills on the edge of town, on the opposite side from Sonny Lake. Now it’s more likely that Carling’s top-tier executives are neighbours both at home and at the office.

  ‘Nice place.’ Felix ducks down to look up through the windshield at the full length of Rosalind’s old house.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I imagine this house was party central back in the day?’

  ‘Unfortunately not. Rosalind kept to herself. Well, sort of.’ I try to explain. ‘She was popular but she was very private. I don’t know if anyone really went to her house.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m not sure. She was unusual.’

  ‘Well, hopefully she’s got easier to work out since then.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say again, though I doubt it.

  I look up at the house too. I know her bedroom used to be on the second level to the left: I would occasionally catch her silhouette in the window as I watched from the other side of the street.

  I shake myself back into the present and push my phone onto silent.

  ‘Okey-dokey,’ says Felix. ‘Let’s do this, then, shall we?’

  We get out of the car and slam the doors heavily behind us. I don’t mind if George Ryan knows someone is coming, though of course nothing will ease him into the shock he is about to get. Unless he already knows, I think darkly.

  Telling family and friends about a murdered loved one is never easy. Parents are usually the worst, their grief so pure and unchecked. They tend to immediately recast the dead adult offspring back to their childhood version. Distraught mothers often relive the moment they first held their infants, and shape their arms into an empty cradle, even if the birth was sixty years earlier. On the other hand, children of the newly dead are often bravely stoic, realising their new responsibility and position at the top of the food chain. Plus, they are busy with a myriad of distracting, grown-up jobs: legal tasks, funerals to arrange, relatives to inform. Siblings are distraught, of course, but there is often a strange ingrained competitiveness that has them imagining the roles reversed. They picture themselves as the dead child and compare hypothetical grief and reactions. Even in death, the ability to pull rank can be strong.

  Informing the family of a murder is particularly difficult because our best chance at a solve is maintaining a completely open mind. We must have the ability to see past a broken stare. To look beyond pale-faced agony and the wringing of hands. Murderers are people too, and in many instances the grief they show for a victim is real, despite having caused it.

  George Ryan is listed as Rosalind’s next of kin. I’m pretty sure she also has three older brothers.

  ‘I can only remember one of them,’ I tell Felix, as we walk to the door. The driveway is lined with a cloud of wattle and the sun bounces off it, making a ferocious yellow blaze. ‘He seemed kind of cocky. I think the others were a bit older than us.’

  ‘No mother?’ asks Felix.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Not that I can remember.’

  The front
door flies open just as I am about to press the doorbell.

  ‘Hello?’ A short, clean-shaven man with neatly combed hair and a complexion starved of sunshine stands in front of us. A rush of air-con swirls out from behind him. His small eyes dart back and forth between us.

  ‘Hello. Sorry to arrive unannounced but we need to speak to George Ryan.’

  The man bobs his head up and down. ‘Oh. He’s only just out of bed. He’s not feeling one hundred percent.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid we’ll still need to speak with him. I’m Detective Sergeant Woodstock. This is Detective Sergeant McKinnon.’

  A haze of understanding falls over the man’s stare. ‘You’d better come in then. I’m Marcus. George’s son.’ He steps aside, gesturing for us to enter. On our left is a polished wooden stairway. To the right, a high-ceilinged hallway displays a heavy-looking oil painting.

  ‘Is Mr Ryan unwell?’ Felix asks, as we follow Marcus towards the back of the house.

  ‘He had surgery yesterday,’ Marcus informs us. ‘But he’s recovering well.’

  Felix and I exchange looks. We are probably about to bring his recovery to a grinding halt.

  ‘This way, please,’ says Marcus. ‘Everyone is in here. My brothers are here too.’

  He leads us into a large open room at the rear of the house.

  Three men sit on a giant cream couch along the right wall of the room. Their eyes are glued to the cricket, which is playing soundlessly in high definition on one of the biggest televisions I have ever seen. The ceiling peaks directly above them and windows are cut into its sides, casting blades of light onto the floor near their feet. Photographs crowd the mantelpiece. On one end there is a large frame featuring a striking raven-haired woman with glittering blue eyes. From the kitchen I hear a radio tuned in to the cricket match on the TV.

  Outside, a sparkling lap pool glitters in the bright sunlight.

  ‘Hello,’ I say. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Woodstock and this is Detective Sergeant McKinnon.’