Liddell began by announcing that, while they awaited forensic confirmation, all indicators pointed to the bones being those of Belle Fitzgerald, and that the post-mortem would most likely confirm Belle had died from a blow to the head. Liddell assured the media that though the case was by any reckoning cold, the New South Wales Police Service would not stint on its investigation. Then she introduced Chief Inspector Bradley Harwood and Inspector Jacqueline Rose. ‘We’re allocating two of our brightest stars to this investigation,’ she said. ‘Chief Inspector Harwood is new to New South Wales and comes to us from his successful management of the Organisational Reform Program in South Australia. Inspector Rose, on DCI Harwood’s left, will have carriage of day-to-day activities. She is the daughter of decorated retired police officer, Stanton Rose –’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ The interruption came from an older man, standing up to make his point. ‘Trevor Curran, freelance,’ he said. Jackie looked at him with interest. This was the man she’d told Harwood about, the one who’d written the book about Belle Fitzgerald’s disappearance. Curran was tall, thin, slightly stooped, with a lined face and prominent nose emphasised by gold-rimmed aviator glasses. His thick salt-and-pepper hair was brushed to one side. Jackie thought he looked familiar, but couldn’t remember where they’d met.

  Liddell’s head came up. From where she sat, Jackie couldn’t see her face, but she sounded irritated at the interruption. ‘Yes?’ she said. ‘Mr Curran?’

  Curran pressed on. ‘Do the New South Wales Police have a preferred theory about what happened to Belle?’

  Liddell shot a look at Harwood, who twitched a no in return. She prevaricated. ‘Of course, over the decades, there have been a number of ideas about who was responsible for Belle Fitzgerald’s disappearance. One of Inspector Rose’s duties will be to sift through them and decide which ones warrant investigation. Inspector Rose? Will you comment?’

  Jackie spoke into the mike on her desk. ‘It’s too early to know which of the many theories about Belle Fitzgerald’s death are worthwhile pursuing. I look forward to talking to you about them, Mr Curran. I know you’re an expert on the subject.’

  ‘And to what extent will Stanton Rose, your father, be guiding the investigation? Will he be your de facto supervisor?’ Curran’s tone was sarcastic, almost bitter.

  Liddell, in danger of losing control of the conference, didn’t give Jackie a chance to respond. ‘Of course not! However, as you no doubt know, Stanton Rose was employed undercover in the Cross at the very time Ms Fitzgerald disappeared. He has agreed to consult on this case and will be able to provide relevant and valuable background.’

  Curran, who had sat down, bobbed up again, leaning forward. ‘Isn’t that like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank? Rosie Rose was front and centre when Belle Fitzgerald disappeared, and now he’s guiding the investigation. It seems to me –’

  Liddell wasn’t having it. ‘On the contrary. It makes good sense to use whatever resources and experience we can, especially when they come from as respected and decorated an authority as Stanton Rose. We welcome any contribution he can make and look forward to consulting him.’ She turned her gaze from Curran and surveyed the room, searching the forest of raised hands for someone else to address.

  ***

  Question after question at the media conference, and it was well after ten when Jackie and Kinsella got back to Level 8. Jackie, whose phone had been on silent, found a text asking her to phone Kashif Abdi. She had to think for a moment who that was. The head SOCO, the one with the handbag.

  Kashif answered on the third ring. ‘What’ve you got?’ Jackie asked.

  ‘Come see for yourself.’

  The Forensics Evidence and Technical Services Command Centre, aka Crime Scene Services, was a twenty-minute drive further west, a low-rise complex in bushland off the M4. It was secure and Jackie and Kinsella found themselves checked by guards at both the front gate and entrance. Jackie had phoned ahead and they waited until Abdi himself came down to claim them.

  Jackie hadn’t seen him without a mask before and the first thing she noticed was how handsome he was. Shorter than Kinsella and squarer, with jet-black hair cropped short, he looked as if he’d come off a film set. He held out a hand for her to shake, a formal gesture. It was dry and warm. Then it was Kinsella’s turn. The men shook and Abdi said, ‘Come with me.’

  They followed him down corridors to a small laboratory where, masked and gloved, he showed them a steel counter laid with the last possessions of Belle Fitzgerald. So this was what a life came down to: shreds of an orange coat, dirt-encrusted; fragments of fabric; two gold hoop earrings; the handbag with its pathetic contents neatly arranged in a row.

  Kinsella stopped, arms folded, and Jackie stood next to him. She was willing to bet they were remembering the same thing, the skeleton laid out as if for a viewing. She stepped forward to examine the handbag’s contents more closely. On the left, the plastic wallet they’d seen before. A couple of ten-dollar notes, which must have also been plastic to last this long. Some coins. The ID cards they’d seen before. Next to the wallet, a pocket mirror, a ballpoint pen, a keyring with keys, a plastic chequebook cover. A rusted tin with flakes of tobacco. A cheap lighter. A Filofax notebook, its cover intact but its contents congealed into a single lump.

  ‘We’ll try to get what we can from that,’ Abdi said, indicating. ‘But there won’t be much.’

  The final item was a green striped plastic pouch, this one with a zip. It had held lipstick, mascara, a small plastic pot of something unidentifiable and a gold ring.

  ‘The ring is interesting,’ Abdi said. He picked it up and placed it in his palm. It was unusual, modern. A wide band of yellow gold, roughened on the outside. Jackie took it from him and she and Kinsella, heads together, looked closer. The inside was smooth and they could see engraving: 7639 ~ 20 April 1988. Abdi said, ‘There’s a jeweller’s mark. I’ll show you.’ He walked them to a row of gleaming machines and positioned the ring under a magnifier. First Jackie, then Kinsella, peered through the lens. At the end of the engraved letters, a tiny depressed square with the letters JVL.

  ‘Should be possible to find out who that was,’ Kinsella said. ‘Or is, if they’re still in business. Could be useful.’

  ‘I wonder what the numbers before the date mean,’ said Jackie. She was reluctant to give up the ring and closed her fingers around it. ‘Can I take it with me?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Abdi said, holding out his hand for its return, ‘but I’ll send photos of everything, including a blow-up of the jeweller’s mark.’

  Abdi walked them to the door, shook hands again. He held Jackie’s hand for an instant longer than necessary.

  On the drive back to the office Jackie was quiet. Kinsella, who must have noticed the handshake, said gruffly, ‘Thinking about Mr Smooth in there?’

  ‘Oh yeah. Nothing else on my mind. Pass him a note from me, will you, in the playground later?’ Then she added, ‘Thinking if we identify the jeweller today and if he’s local I might swing by later to see if they have any record of the ring.’

  Kinsella snorted slightly. ‘Thirty-seven years ago? You’d be lucky. Want me to go?’

  ‘Nah. See if you can squeeze in a few minutes with Tess.’ Tess was Kinsella’s daughter and he saw little enough of her as it was.

  Kinsella grunted thanks, said, ‘Pick up something to eat on the way back?’

  ***

  At work, they found Sharna Khouri manoeuvring a handcart stacked with three cardboard archive boxes into a meeting room. Jackie had guessed right. Some of the Fitzgerald files hadn’t made it to the intranet.

  ‘Give you a hand?’ Kinsella took the cart from Sharna.

  ‘Just stopped a bugger from dumping this on your desk,’ Sharna told Jackie. Homicide inspectors’ desks might be bigger and closer to the window, but they were still out on the open-plan floor.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Jackie.

  Sharna Khouri was Homicide’s squad organiser, the queen of schedules, supplies and whatever else it took to keep the section running smoothly. She was also the go-to person if you wanted to find out what was really happening in the building, the police service or, for that matter, the state. She was a big, blowsy mother of three who treated her Homicide colleagues exactly the same way she treated her three teenage children. Sharna wielded real power and it was best to keep on her good side.

  Bennie, watching helplessly from his wheelchair, said to nobody in particular, ‘This is the older stuff. My mate in Unsolved says they’re in a mess over there.’

  Sharna snickered. ‘Should keep you quiet for a bit.’ Then she softened. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Give us a hand?’ Bennie asked Sharna.

  ‘Couple of hours max,’ Sharna replied, taking pity. ‘Some of us have real work waiting.’

  At her desk, Jackie searched the net for the jeweller’s mark on the ring, hoping JVL would show up as a Sydney operation. It took a while, but eventually she found what she was looking for. Jules V Levy, Manufacturing Jeweller, Castlereagh Street, Sydney.

  She grabbed her jacket and bag and stuck her head into the meeting room. She could tell at a glance Bennie was right. The files were chaotic – handwritten scraps of paper shoved into foolscap folders together with typed reports and records of interview. For a moment she felt guilty about not sorting through them herself, then remembered she was an inspector now and nobody expected her to stoop so low.

  ‘Need me to get you help?’ she asked Bennie.

  ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Not as bad as it looks. Sharna’s pitching in. Should have something for you by tomorrow morning.’

  Kinsella appeared at her elbow. ‘You off to the jeweller?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Sure you don’t want me along?’

  ‘No need. And you’d be better off helping with the files.’

  Kinsella looked disappointed. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Jackie replied, over her shoulder.

  ***

  Jules V Levy, Manufacturing Jeweller, occupied rooms on the fifth floor of a high-rise near the corner of Castlereagh and King streets, the luxury store centre of town. The ground floor of the building was home to Hermès on one side and Rolex the other, but the upper levels were a warren of small jewellery and repair businesses, some of which had been there for generations. It was an inverted Upstairs, Downstairs situation, thought Jackie, as the lift door opened onto a run-down corridor lined with barred security doors. On the other hand, she told herself, there was probably more money upstairs than in the whole of Hermès and Rolex combined.

  Jules V Levy jewellers was at the far end of the corridor. A hand-drawn arrow on a card taped to the wall pointed customers to a buzzer and a screen below it. Jackie pressed the buzzer. The screen came to life and a woman’s face appeared. Jackie flashed her badge, heard faint ding-dongs and the click of the security door opening.

  The inside was more depressing than the outside. Jackie found herself in a small foyer barred by another security door and another buzzer, this one without a screen. Once through, she stepped into an untidy space lined at one end with a glass counter full of gold jewellery and at the other with four mismatched chairs, on and around which were gathered several generations of what looked like the same family. They were talking loudly and all at once to the plump, middle-aged woman behind the counter, the owner of the face on the screen.

  After a few moments during which nobody paid her any attention, Jackie stepped up to the counter, badge in hand. ‘I’m looking for Jules Levy.’

  An elderly man called from a chair behind her, ‘You’ll be lucky, sweetheart. He’s been dead since 1995.’

  The woman behind the counter snapped, ‘That’s my father-in-law you’re talking about, Chaim. Have some respect.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ He appealed to the room. ‘A man can’t make a joke anymore?’

  Shaking her head, the woman turned to Jackie. ‘You the one who phoned? I’m Sophia. You need to talk to my hubby, Simon. Simon!’ she yelled. ‘The police are here!’

  A door at the side of the counter opened and a wiry, balding man appeared, ushering before him a bantam-sized woman carrying a small velvet box. The woman turned. ‘That your best offer?’

  The man raised both hands in a helpless gesture. ‘It’s a flawed stone. Why don’t you see if you can get a better price from other jewellers? If you can, well and good. If you can’t, bring it back here.’

  That satisfied the small woman, who joined the others at the chairs. They showed no sign of leaving and, forming a scrum around the velvet box, began to argue loudly.

  ‘Simon Levy,’ said the balding man to Jackie. Without waiting, he turned, adding over his shoulder, ‘Come with me,’ and led Jackie into his inner office. There he inserted himself into a worn leather chair behind his desk and rolled his eyes. ‘Families!’ he said, grinning conspiratorially. ‘Families!’

  He was instantly likeable and Jackie grinned back. ‘Jackie Rose.’ She proffered her ID.

  They shook. He examined the ID. ‘Inspector Rose. What can I do for you?’

  Jackie explained and showed him photos of the ring and its markings. ‘I know it’s a long time ago but I was hoping I could find a record of the sale. It might help our investigation.’

  ‘This about that girl who went missing? Heard it on the news, and that cop, Stanton Rose, is involved.’ She saw his mind working, braced for it. ‘You a relation?’ Levy waited for Jackie to confirm and when she didn’t answer he lifted his eyebrows knowingly and returned to the photos, zooming in and out. ‘Tell you what, it’s definitely one of ours. My father’s. That scratch-finish on the outside? That was something he did for about five years. I remember because I was his apprentice at the time. Might even have worked on this one myself.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you have records? Receipts?’

  ‘We certainly do. We keep receipts going back to the beginning, to the forties. It helps with estate sales. We take record keeping seriously.’ He waved towards the office outside. ‘As you see, our customers are with us for generations.’

  ‘Can I look at the receipts?’

  Levy hesitated. ‘That long ago? They’ll be on paper. I keep meaning to put them on the computer, but …’ Again he indicated the outside office. ‘I have to talk to those people. If I bring you the books from around the time of that ring, can you go through them yourself? It’s not as terrible as it sounds. The pieces are described and you look for “ring” and “yellow gold” and “scratch-finish”. And there won’t be any question about this one because of the engraving, the date and the number 7639. That’ll be noted as well. Okay?’ He levered himself out of the chair and moved to a set of steel cupboards lining one wall.

  Jackie checked her watch. ‘What time do you close?’

  Levy, who was unlocking the second cupboard, waved his free hand at her. ‘Five. But don’t worry. It shouldn’t take you that long and if you don’t find what you want tonight we can keep going tomorrow, when I can help you.’ He considered the shelves. ‘Let’s see. When we began to make these rings I was in the final year of my apprenticeship. I started in 1984, so that would be … 1987. Yes. We began to sell them from around ’87 and kept on making them until the early nineties. But they weren’t popular, so we went back to more traditional stuff.’ He pulled out a large plastic box marked 1987 in thick black letters, placed it on his desk and removed the lid. The box was neatly stacked with old-fashioned, handwritten receipt books. He said, ‘Each year has its own box, and a couple of years have two. But we started a new box for each year.’

  Jackie reminded him, ‘I’ll only need to see receipts until July ’88.’

  ‘Of course. That’s when she … that narrows it down a lot. Still, just as well to start with ’87. People often order months in advance.’

  He pulled out a book to show her. ‘Each book is numbered and dated. You can see, this one is 1987/1, January 1–16. Only two books that month. Business is always quiet after Christmas. Later in the year has more.’ Leafing through the pages, he said, ‘Skip all the ones labelled Repair. You’ll get the hang of it. Please put the books back in order and when you finish one box, replace it and take out the next one. Come out and fetch me if you need help.’

  Clearly, Jules V Levy had been a stickler. The receipts had served as order forms, invoices and receipts and, because the originals had been torn out, what Jackie was looking through were carbon copies. Each page was headed, in capital letters, REPAIR or SALE. She concentrated on the sales. Each sale was described in the same way. At the top of the page, the name of the buyer and sometimes contact details. Below that, a description of the piece and its cost, with extra instructions for engraving or special clasp or refinement, which were added to the price. The bottom of the page bore the buyer’s signature.

  Soon Jackie fell into a routine, leafing through book after book, her eye going straight to the description. She passed entries like Ring, engagement, yellow gold, diamond claw; Earrings, silver and opal, drop; Necklace, silver, linked; Wedding ring, rose gold, engraved 27.3.87. Soon she was well into records for October 1987. With a thrill she saw the first Ring, yellow gold, scratch-finish, engraved BS to HV and bought by a Dr Bernard Solant. She photographed the page. Only three similar receipts followed in 1987: one for November and two for December. Neither were engraved.