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I left Clovelly with a sour taste in my mouth and a throbbing head. Zara’s ambivalence annoyed me, and the run-in with the mystery assailant left me sore and on edge. I’d obviously ruffled some feathers, and I wondered who the man in the bandana may be aligned with. In the two years since I’d acquired my inquiry licence, I’d accepted the fact occasional fisticuffs were par for the course; however, an unprovoked attack in daylight at a popular tourist spot read as desperate or urgent, or both.
At the peak of the Illawarra escarpment a thick, low fog formed, and the temperature dropped a few degrees. Traffic slowed to a crawl and hazard lights flashed a conga line of orange. The occasional rigor mortis wombat appeared at the side of the road. After two clicks, visibility improved enough to speed up, and the familiar vista of Sydney Blue Gums opened up before me, and the sight of grey beaches, thrashed by rolling surf cast from the menacing cobalt blue of the Tasman under dark autumn skies, brought a smile to my face.
I cruised back into The Gong and more familiar surroundings. The lack of traffic on Cliff Road, where I lived, stood in direct contrast to the summer months, where a typical Saturday saw a swell of tourists swarming the area for soft serve, bodysurfing, and sun baking, despite all the melanoma awareness commercials. In autumn, the locals reclaimed local eateries and breathed a sigh of relief.
I pulled into the tiny parking spot at the rear of my strata complex and made my way up to my flat on the second floor, jiggled the keys in the lock, and opened the door to the smell of red curry still clinging to the walls from my attempt at Thai four nights previously.
I threw my laptop on the three-seater couch and dashed to the bathroom, the phenomenon of sudden urgency increased by proximity to the toilet. After sparking up a burner on the stovetop, I dumped a frozen lasagna into a saucepan along with half a dozen frozen meatballs my mother had made me, and set it at a gentle simmer while I went into my bedroom to change. Once the sauce had cooked through, I took it off the heat, poured a glass of wine, dumped the food into a deep bowl, and topped it with freshly shaved Reggiano cheese.
I needed to find the name of the woman I found murdered in Tamsin’s dorm room, and then to find a connection to Tamsin, if there was one.
Finding a missing person means finding the reason the person went missing in the first place. In some cases, its murder, and finding both the body and the degenerate responsible becomes imperative. In most cases, the reasons aren’t so cut and dry. People go missing for a vast range of reasons, but in all cases, establishing the person’s last known movements is vital, and is where the real gumshoe work takes place.
In a Word document labelled ‘Tamsin Lyons’ on my laptop, I made some notes covering what I’d learned. I wrote the names of Tamsin’s known family members and made notes against each name:
Jeff Lyons – contact date and unknown.
Zara – Tamsin visited Monday 9 March (evening – 2 hours approx.) unknown reasons/not close – say goodbye? Money? Not likely.
Ed – ? no apparent connection/Tamsin, step-father – what capacity? Not close.
The easy work included trawling social media accounts, last known residences, and relevant work histories. The next leg involved talking to people—family members, bosses, boyfriends, girlfriends, exes, and social circles. With the close family members, Jeff and Zara, out of the way, I deduced Sydney University to be the next port of call to track Tamsin, or hope someone there had seen her sooner than Tuesday, 6 March, the day Tamsin visited her mother under mysterious circumstances. My stomach filled up quickly, and I slipped in and out of consciousness until my laptop fell off my lap and woke me up, at which point I went to bed.