by Sarah Bailey
‘Okay, well.’ I sit lightly on the edge of his desk. ‘Back to Izzy. You think it was Rodney she saw with Rosalind, don’t you? But she’s not certain who it was. It could have been anyone.’
‘Oh, come on, Gemma. I think the kid knows something, you just don’t want to see it.’ He pushes his fingers roughly through his hair. ‘It makes sense that he’s who Izzy saw with her that night. Rosalind seemed lonely—or maybe she was just strange—but either way she was looking for validation through the play. Through male attention. Rodney was cast as Romeo, right? It all seems to fit.’
I drop my chin, trying to get him to look at me, but he is staring studiously at his screen. He is tapping his foot underneath the table; I can feel the vibrations from where I’m sitting.
‘What about Kai Bracks?’ I ask. ‘If he sent her those flowers on Valentine’s Day then that seems pretty telling, don’t you think?’
‘Sure. I’ve got no doubt he had a crush on her, but we know he was at the party straight after the play and was with other people all night. He might be a creep or just an infatuated teenager, but I don’t think he’s our guy.’
‘What about Nicholson? We’re still unclear on his relationship with Rosalind.’
He sighs. Glances at me quickly and then shifts his eyes away. ‘I think Rodney just fits, that’s all. It figures that an attractive young schoolboy would fall for his drop-dead gorgeous teacher. I thought we were the team that doesn’t fight the obvious?’
I clear my throat, which is clenching painfully as I try to speak. ‘Fine. But I don’t think Nicholson’s off the hook. It’s equally likely that an older man would be lonely and pine after a beautiful young woman. That would be validating for her too. And we still haven’t ruled out the possibility of a RYAN business associate. And there’s still Timothy Ryan.’
‘Gemma, I’m not saying this is a done deal, but it’s a pretty big lead. The biggest we’ve had so far. It would certainly explain Rosalind being cagey about her new relationship when she spoke to Lila. And we already needed to clear up the missing hour Rodney has between the play ending and his arriving at Jamie Klein’s.’
‘Alleged missing hour. He says he went straight there.’
Felix rolls his eyes. ‘Yeah. On his own, which is a bit convenient. Whatever. We need to check this out.’
‘John Nicholson could just have easily got out of bed and waited for the play to finish,’ I say. ‘You have to agree your theory on Rosalind is no more conclusive than any theory we currently have on Nicholson. Or Timothy, for that matter.’ I look at Felix but his eyes are still fixed to the screen. His body is a square, just like his computer, and I can’t read it. ‘What’s with you?’
‘Nothing,’ he says, giving me a surprised look.
‘You’re hurting me,’ I say quickly, looking at the floor. Immediately I feel guilty. We avoid laying our feelings on each other, knowing that there is enough of that heavy responsibility in our worlds already.
The room tips as he stands, his face blocking out the harsh fluorescent light. For a moment I can’t see him; he is just a dark, featureless blur.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to hurt you. This is hard, Gem. Really hard. And then there’s bloody Christmas on top of it all.’
‘I know. I’m the same.’
‘So it’s just hard. Harder than normal. My parents are coming to stay with us next week for a while. It will be even harder to see you. All the happy family time I’m going to have to do feels impossible.’ He looks up at me and then around the room, as if people are listening, even though no one is there. He puts his lips together and I think he’s going to cry. His voice is so soft I can barely hear him. ‘I get so sick of our situation sometimes, Gem.’
I talk quickly, desperate to say the right words. ‘I know it’s hard. So hard. But we both know that. We both understand, we get it. This time of year is always difficult. I’m finding it hard too. But it will be okay.’
He opens his mouth and then closes it again. ‘C’mon, let’s go and talk to young Mr Mason.’
Chapter Thirty-nine
Sunday, 20 December, 9.55 am
Jacob’s house is almost exactly as I remember it. Squat and dark, with thick ferns licking at the windows. The garage door is closed but an old Ford Falcon sporting learner plates is parked out the front. Rodney’s birthday is in January, I find myself remembering suddenly, the fact surfacing in my mind. I remember a hot blustery night in the downstairs den, the artificial smell of hotdogs and a bunch of young boys watching ghost movies on the old TV. Jacob holding my hand as we sat on the couch in the corner, supervising Rodney’s birthday sleepover, laughing at how scared they were.
A tall gum still stands to the left of the house, its branches disappearing over the roof. We’re not out of the car when Donna Mason appears on the front veranda holding a broom. She reminds me of a tightly coiled spring. She walks as if she’s being controlled like a puppet on strings, her movements jerky. Felix winds down his window.
She comes to the edge of the veranda. ‘Hello,’ she says softly to Felix. A tiny nod for me.
‘Hello, Mrs Mason. Sorry to intrude like this, but we’d like to speak to Rodney if he’s home. About Ms Ryan.’
‘He’s already been interviewed,’ she says.
‘Yes, but we have further questions,’ replies Felix.
A flash of defiance lights her eyes and then, just as quickly, she drops her shoulders and it’s gone. Another blunt little nod. ‘He’s out the back playing basketball.’
We get out of the car to a chorus of cicadas. The dull thud of a basketball forms a bass beat. Jacob played too, his long limbs perfectly suited to the ducking, weaving and shooting for goals. I loved watching him play.
‘This way.’ Donna props the broom against a wall and leads us through the dark house. The blinds are drawn and the hot air is thick with the smell of pine—a Christmas tree. We step out through the wire door and back into the soupy air, following Donna down the creaking wooden stairs.
‘Rodney!’
He spins around. The slope of his cheekbones is so familiar I could draw them with my eyes closed. I look quickly at Donna and wonder how she manages, living with a ghost. Her arms are crossed on her sunken chest and her right foot taps up and down, and in that movement I sense the long nights, the broken dreams and the hopeless crying that I’m sure have been her life for the past decade. The basketball rolls off the side of the concrete court, coming to rest near the base of a tree. Rodney’s chest heaves and perspiration shines on his face. He walks towards us and his eyes are level with Felix’s. He is taller than Jacob was. Broader. He wipes the sweat from his forehead up into his hair, giving it height. He is stunning. A cloud passes over the sun and we are thrown into shadow.
‘Hi.’ He shrugs. ‘What’s up?’ He sounds relaxed but his eyes dart between the two of us and he scratches at his neck.
‘These people want to talk to you about the teacher, Rodney. It won’t take long.’
She looks at Felix pointedly, ignoring me completely. I must remind her of Jacob, of that terrible time. She strikes me as the kind of person who would do anything possible to keep her feelings at bay. I wonder again about the note, where Jacob put it. I look up at his old bedroom window and wonder whether the room is a shrine to him, whether there are still photos of me in there, or whether she’s stripped it bare, disinfected it, destroyed it, in an attempt to clear her house of her broken, dead son.
‘Okay. Here?’ Rodney gestures to where we are standing.
‘How about over there?’ Felix points to a worn-looking outdoor setting near the back fence.
Rodney shrugs again, the universal language of the young. ‘Sure.’
We sit. There is nothing for our hands to play with, and both Rodney and I twist our fingers in our laps, scratch at our legs, pull at our hair. Felix folds his hands together in a tight ball and leans forward. Donna stands a few metres away keeping watch, her eyes shining like marbles.
‘Now, we know you spoke to the police last week, Rodney,’ I begin, ‘but we have some more questions for you, okay?’
‘Okay,’ he says.
‘We’ll probably repeat a lot of stuff but it’s really important that you are honest with us,’ I say. ‘You know that, right?’
He swallows and nods.
‘Okay, good,’ I say. ‘So. Tell us about your relationship with Ms Ryan, Rodney.’
Rodney itches at his wrist and looks at Felix carefully. ‘She was nice. A good teacher.’
‘Just nice?’ Felix asks.
Rodney’s dark eyes glance my way and then back to Felix. I swat at a mosquito. Blood smears across my arm.
‘I liked being in her class. She was sort of different, I guess. Like, sometimes it didn’t seem like we were at school.’
‘What do you mean? Because it was fun?’
‘Yeah, I guess. She sort of made everything seem more important or something. I dunno. Probably sounds stupid.’
‘Not at all. Drama is the kind of subject that needs someone with a bit of imagination, right?’ Felix says.
‘Yeah. Everyone wanted to be in her class. She was really good.’
‘So she’s gone from “nice” to “really good” then?’
Rodney leans back heavily in the chair. ‘Whatever.’
‘Did you ever see her outside of school?’ My voice, higher than Felix’s, is almost lost in the sticky heat.
He blows air through his lips, reminding me of Ben. ‘Sometimes. You know, because of the play.’
‘What, like rehearsals and stuff?’ I ask.
‘Yeah. Sometimes we stayed back late after school. Even went in on weekends if we needed to. Everyone was really committed. We still are. We have a rehearsal later tonight for the extra show we’re doing in the new year. We’re, like, doing it in her honour.’
‘Yes, we were at the memorial. We saw you speak. It’s a very nice gesture,’ says Felix.
‘Are you close to Maggie? She seems like a nice girl.’ I feel an odd prickle of envy as I imagine Rodney, so like Jacob, touching Maggie’s face, her tight young body; running his long fingers through her silky white hair.
‘We’ve been in school together forever. We’re friends.’
‘Ever been anything more?’
He rolls his eyes gently. ‘We sort of went out for a while last summer. It was only a short thing. We decided we’re better as friends.’
‘Who decided?’ I ask.
Donna walks over to the basketball and picks it up, dropping it noisily in a large plastic tub. Thunder rolls ominously in the distance. ‘Rodney’s very serious about his schoolwork and his basketball,’ says Donna. ‘He doesn’t have time for anything else.’
Rodney continues as if she didn’t speak. ‘Mainly I decided, but it really wasn’t a big deal. We just went out a bunch of times. Movies, a few house parties. Like I said, it wasn’t for very long.’
‘Was she upset when you guys broke up?’ I keep my voice light. I want to ask whether he told her the same way Jacob had told me. I wonder whether his decision had shattered her world into a million little pieces.
‘I don’t think so. She hooked up with this guy Matt a week later.’
‘Love moves fast, huh?’ Felix laughs and sends a soft glance my way. ‘Maybe she was trying to make you jealous. Maybe she felt like you’d moved on to bigger and better things? That maybe you wanted someone more mature?’
Rodney scowls childishly. ‘You’d have to ask her, but I don’t think so. She kind of has a girlfriend now.’
I sense Donna’s eyebrows lift.
‘Okay, okay,’ Felix says. ‘Tell us about the play. You’re Romeo, right? That’s a pretty big role.’
‘Yeah.’ Another shrug. ‘I like acting. I love basketball too, but I want to do drama after school, like an arts college or something, so it was good to get the lead. The play is different from the original. It’s set in Australia in the seventies. Like in the city—Sydney, I guess. Jasmine is the Juliet character, from a really rich family. And she has really strict parents that she doesn’t relate to. I play Ricky, who’s the Romeo character. He’s poor and heaps younger.’
‘Younger man with an older woman? Very progressive. It sounds pretty cool. Different.’ Felix raises an eyebrow.
‘It is. Ms Ryan wrote the whole thing. I reckon it could get picked up by a studio or something. It’s way better than a high school play.’
‘Sounds like you thought she was pretty amazing.’
His eyes drop. ‘Yeah, like I said, she was a great teacher.’
‘Did you ever see anyone get angry with her? Did she ever tell you about being scared of anyone?’
‘Um, no. I mean, you know, we didn’t talk that much really.’ He pushes his fingers through his hair again. ‘I mean, I know that there were issues with the school. Our principal, Mr Nicholson, he supported the play, I think, but there were problems making it happen. Funding stuff. I saw them talking about it sometimes, kind of arguing. Rose was really upset about it.’
‘Rose?’
He reddens deeply as if he’s been caught stealing. ‘In drama class we all called her that. She said that everyone is an equal on the stage.’
‘She was still your teacher though, right? So you weren’t really equals. And you’re not an adult yet,’ presses Felix.
‘Almost.’
‘January fifteenth. I checked.’ Felix squares his shoulders and tips his head to look Rodney in the eye.
Rodney’s mouth opens as if he is about to say something but then he quickly snaps it shut.
‘Rodney,’ I say, ‘you are still technically a child, so if Ms Ryan was making you do anything or spending time with you outside of school, that would be wrong. She had a responsibility to you. You understand that, right? You’re not in trouble but we still need to know.’
He looks down again, then says, ‘I already told the other cops. We didn’t do anything.’
‘What happened to your basketball game?’ says Felix.
‘Huh?’
‘You were going to play basketball on the Saturday morning after the opening night. Did it get cancelled?’
‘Ah, no. It wasn’t a game. I was just going to meet some guys to train but it was hot so I decided not to go.’
‘So you went to Jamie’s party instead,’ I say, realising perhaps for the first time just how much I don’t want Rodney to have anything to do with this.
‘Yeah.’
‘Have fun?’
‘It was okay. I was tired—you know, from the play—but yeah, it was okay.’
‘And you walked there on your own?’ I say.
‘Yeah. I got separated from everyone after the play. Mum had already left and I had, um, some beer in my bag, so I took the back streets and drank one on the way.’ He looks at Donna but she doesn’t flinch.
‘What time did you get there?’
‘Maybe around eleven?’
‘Okay,’ says Felix, with doubt in his voice. ‘And what time did you leave?’
‘Dunno. Maybe two?’
‘How’d you get home?’ I ask.
He shoots another quick look. ‘I walked.’
‘Cut through the lake?’
A quick glance at me and then back at his hands. ‘No, that wouldn’t make sense. I came along Drummond right to the end of our street. Came home and went to bed. I was pretty wrecked.’
‘Are we almost done here? As I’ve already said to the other officers, I can certainly confirm that Rodney was home just after two. I heard him come in. He’s told you what he knows and he really needs to keep practising.’
The three of us ignore Donna as a light smatter of rain sprinkles across my bare arm. I suspect it’s unlikely that Rodney will practise basketball in the rain anyway.
‘Did you ever fight with Ms Ryan, Rodney?’ I ask. ‘Maybe you wanted her to do something and she wouldn’t? Or maybe you disagreed about the play?’
‘No.’ He looks at me, almost
pleading. ‘Nothing like that.’ The droplets fall more heavily, splashing onto the table and joining together, forming small pools. ‘I don’t know who killed her.’ His eyes are bloodshot. The exhausted stare of someone with a broken heart. Of someone who isn’t sure if the future is worth striving for anymore. ‘Really, I have no idea. The play was great that night, it went so well. I think she was really happy.’ He clears his throat, which I suspect is a tactic to avoid crying. I can see the telltale shake of his lips.
He’s upset, that much is clear, but I can’t tell if guilt is mixed with his pain or if it’s just pure, simple grief. Or fear from being caught. I look at him and hope again that he really didn’t have anything to do with it. A gumnut falls from the sky and lands on his clenched hand. He yanks it back from the table and rubs at his knuckle.
We get up.
‘Okay, well, thank you for your time,’ Felix says. ‘We may need to speak to you again but we’ll give you a call if we do. Good luck with the rehearsals. We’re looking forward to seeing it, aren’t we, Woodstock?’
I nod; I want to hold out my hand to Rodney. To pull him close and tell him that I understand.
‘I’ll walk you out,’ says Donna briskly, wiping her hands on her thighs as if she is wearing an apron.
We make our way back up the wooden stairs as the rain pours down. Donna’s thin hair is curling already, small ringlets forming at the base of her pathetic ponytail. I pull mine back, thick and frizzy, bunching it together in my hands. Behind us Rodney is playing basketball again. The sound of the ball hitting the wet concrete is like a hand smacking against bare skin.
Chapter Forty
Monday, 21 December, 6.06 pm
I’m late to pick up Ben. I had sort of known that this would happen, but Scott needed to work back because the rain had messed around his building schedule and he asked me if I’d be able to get Ben tonight and, thanks to my performance at the party on Saturday, I hardly felt like I could say no. I slunk out of a meeting and raced to my car, threw it into drive, then wove impatiently through the end-of-day traffic up to Martha, the small suburb in the hills where Ben’s day care is. Cloud Hill for Children is a standard plastic fortress on a half-acre block around the back of Martha’s primary school. It balances the garish worn plastic with a small chicken coop and a vegetable garden, both of which look rather half-hearted, though I’m sure the children don’t notice. Ben has been going there since he was three months old and seems to like it well enough. I park sloppily and jump out of the car. It’s after 6 pm and the centre is incredibly strict about the pick-up cut-off time, but there haven’t been any calls to my mobile so I figure they can’t be too concerned yet.
