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I arrived in Glebe around 10:00 PM, found the hostel I’d booked online, and parked at the rear. I then went in and handed some of Lyons’ money over to a smiling Sudanese clerk, and felt a sense of innate satisfaction at doing so.
He gave me the key, and I wandered down three dank hallways until finding my room. When I opened the door, it smelled like fish warmed up in a microwave, but the bed was comfortable, and the TV worked fine. After flicking through the channels, I took advantage of the free WiFi, booted up my laptop, and started background checks on both Jeff and Tamsin Lyons. I started with Tamsin, and the lack of social media accounts surprised me—no Facebook, no Instagram, no Snapchat. I found a link to ‘Explore Tamsin Lyons’ 5 photos on Flickr!’ and clicked on it. A gallery loaded in a grid pattern, and three photos showed Tamsin on a beach with a group of men and women of similar age, wearing board shorts and bikinis. All stood in a line holding bottles of alcohol, striking more and more outlandish poses in each photo, except for Tamsin, who stood extreme left and slightly apart from the group, wearing a one-piece and smiling, close-mouthed.
The fourth photo showed Tamsin grinning, with her arm around the shoulder of a young woman of similar height and hair colour, on what I assumed to be the Sydney university campus grounds. It was a clear photo, so I took a shot of it with my mobile phone. The last photo was an unflattering and slightly blurred selfie, taken in poor light from a low angle.
Someone who knows she’s pretty trying to see something new. Or maybe that’s how she sees herself.
The photos were simply labelled: ‘session 2 break Burleigh,’ ‘Renee and me,’ and ‘solitude.’ I downloaded each photo into a folder with the plan to print them back home.
Her LinkedIn account listed two jobs, one at a café in Glebe, and an admin role with Waverley council. Both listings were over a year old. I took a screengrab and saved them to the same folder.
Searches on Jeff Lyons revealed a news article from twenty years ago. The photo featured a younger version of the man I’d drunk with. The figure was slimmer, the hair darker and fuller, but the ruddy face gave him away. At his side, a tall, thin woman with dark curly hair and an angular, determined face looked past the photographer. Lyons, dressed in a business suit, had his hand around her waist and was captured mid laugh. The article detailed the media magnate’s marriage to influential socialite Yvette Turner, daughter of the Australian Minister for Finance, Jeremy Turner, in a civil ceremony. The journalist was quick to mention the lack of a pre-nup in the second paragraph of her article.
I found an older article about Lyons’ success with American media mogul Ted Turner during the early eighties, then losing it all in the crash of eighty-seven. He divorced Yvette in the late nineties and became linked to a list of beautiful Aussie actresses. He moved into other business ventures I didn’t understand, nor had the inclination to. Lyons was money incarnate, and he obviously played up to the media. I wondered where Tamsin fitted into all of it, what with the wheeling and dealing and upper crust hobnobbing.
In the morning, I showered under warm water, checked out early, and thanked the gods my ute appeared unharmed in the harsh morning light. I drove east along Broadway, past Saturday shoppers, to the Queen Mary building in Camperdown. Red-bricked, ten storeys high with a glass atrium, it was situated on a quiet tree-lined street. Luckily, a multi-storey parking station sat directly opposite, so I parked and walked across the road.
The foyer featured comfortable-looking breakout spaces, and wall decals explained that the building used to house nurses during the Second World War.
A Lebanese-looking security guard manned a large desk, and he squinted at me as I approached.
‘Morning, I’m a private detective verifying the whereabouts of Tamsin Lyons. Do you mind if I check in on her?’
‘Sorry, brother, can’t let you access the dorms. Students and family only.’
I took out my phone and showed him the picture of Tamsin. ‘Do you know if she checked in over the last twenty-four hours?’
‘I wasn’t rostered on yesterday, but the kids check in all sorts of hours, and the front desk isn’t manned all the time. They can swipe in and out anytime between six and eleven.’
‘Any way you could check the logs from the last forty-eight hours?’
‘Sorry, brother, head office keeps the access logs.’
‘I’m investigating her possible disappearance. I only need to sight her—at the very least, knock on the door and confirm she’s okay.’
He raised his hands. ‘I’m the only one here, and I can’t leave the desk.’
I took stock, considered my options, took out my wallet, and removed the twelve-month Peekaboo subscription card. I held it up. ‘Have you heard about this?’
He eyed the card with interest.
I said, ‘Twelve months obligation-free. Premium package. You let me in, it’s all yours.’
He hesitated for a minute and stared at the desk, but eventually held out his hand. I gave him the card and he quickly pocketed it. ‘I’ll have to escort you in.’ He locked the computer screen and left the desk.
I followed him to a pair of glass doors, which he opened with a swipe card. We rode an old elevator to the second floor, walked down a musty hall, and stopped at a door with the number 212 on it. He pushed his card into the lock. When the red light turned green, he pressed against the heavy door, and the hinges squealed.
The smell of urine and shit hit me. The small room had two single beds under a window, a wardrobe, and a small desk with a flat screen TV. A girl’s body lay on the floor, wedged between the right-hand side bed and a small set of bedside drawers. Blowflies circled her in slow, lazy loops. I watched as one of the blowflies landed on her unblinking eye, and made its way to the corner, where it settled and ate from a pool of sticky fluid it found there.
