She Lies in Wait

by Gytha Lodge

  “I’m sure we can check, thank you,” Jonah said. “And once you were there, at the campsite, you didn’t leave at any point? And you didn’t hear any sounds, or witness any other walkers?”

  Mackenzie shook his head. “We weren’t that close to any of the roads,” he said. “Which was a conscious choice. The official campsites can be heaving at that time of year, and the weather was perfect. Mind you, my choice pissed Di off. She wasn’t a fan of hiking a mile and a half down a track in the dark to get there. I had to go and meet her.” He gave a half smile. “I should probably have taken that as a sign of ultimate incompatibility.”

  “You had a few drinks that evening?” Jonah asked. “I think there’s a report that you’d both had wine.”

  “Yes, I think we had a couple of glasses.”

  “So it’s possible you would have slept through some sounds,” Jonah said.

  “Oh. Yes, I suppose it is. Not the world’s lightest sleeper anyway.” He gave a slight shrug—a half smile.

  “Thank you. Could I just have your ex-girlfriend’s name?”

  “Oh. Diana…Diana Pitman.” He gave a short laugh. “I had to work to remember that.”

  “Is there anything else at all you can think of that might be useful? Anything that occurs to you?”

  Mackenzie considered for a while. “No. I don’t think there is. I…I’m not sure how much I really remember at this stage. And how much I’ve misremembered by now. I’ve probably overwritten a lot of what really happened by trying furiously to remember things, and beating myself up over not camping closer by. Not hearing anything.”

  Jonah nodded. “This is my card. Please let me know if anything occurs to you. If you have anything useful, like diary entries or records of Aurora’s work, that would be appreciated.”

  Mackenzie took the card, peered at it, and nodded. Jonah felt a faint dampness in his fingers as the teacher took it. The teacher was sweating.

  Mackenzie nodded after that, and watched them leave in silence.

  20

  Aurora

  Saturday, July 23, 1983, 12:35 A.M.

  Everything had become fragmented. Confusing. She was dizzy with alcohol and spinning. Dizzy with contact. With the pervasive smell of Connor.

  “I feel a bit…weird.”

  She pulled back from him, her skin blooming into full sweat. She lost her footing slightly, and Connor steadied her.

  “OK?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She heard a peal of laughter, and Connor went rigid. He was looking past her, toward her sister. Of course it had been Topaz laughing.

  She found herself turning to look, too. Topaz was standing close to Brett, whispering in his ear. Her hand was on his shoulder and her long hair was brushing his forearm. It made Aurora feel profoundly uncomfortable.

  Brett was smiling, but his gaze moved and fell on Aurora. She didn’t have time to pretend she was happy that her sister was moving in on him.

  His smile faded, and he pulled away from Topaz a little. “Hey, we should dance!” he said. He bent to put his drink down and then moved a little closer to Connor and Aurora. “Come on!”

  He started nodding and swaying slightly.

  Topaz didn’t approach him. Instead, she walked over to Coralie and took her hands. She drew her friend toward her and began to dance, too, pressed against her, with her hands on Coralie’s back.

  Aurora jumped as Connor suddenly started to move again. He pushed at her to get her to go with him.

  “Sorry. I don’t really feel like dancing anymore,” she said quietly.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Connor said, and he pressed closer to her.

  She didn’t want him to touch her anymore. More than that, she didn’t want him to force her to move with him. Her arms felt limp and her feet had turned into heavy, clumsy things.

  She saw Topaz spin Coralie round, and then look from Brett to Connor, and back again. Both of the boys were watching her, and Aurora couldn’t help watching, too.

  With a smile, Topaz half turned and drew Coralie toward her, tilting her head until their mouths met. Coralie did not resist. She responded by putting her arms round Topaz and pulling her further into the kiss.

  Aurora couldn’t help staring. She was as mesmerized as Connor and Brett, for very different reasons.

  She tried to ask herself if Topaz was really into girls and not boys. If she had missed it somehow in Topaz’s behavior. But she remembered too many boyfriends, too many trysts outside the school gym or behind the bus shelter. Too much flirting and touching.

  Brett laughed. “Whoa, girls.”

  Topaz only paused for a moment. She looked away for long enough to give him a wicked grin and then took a bundle of Coralie’s hair and drew her head backward. Topaz lowered her mouth to her friend’s throat and began to lick and kiss along the top of her collarbone.

  Brett moved toward them slowly, one hand to the back of his own neck as he watched. And then he moved in closer, and Topaz opened the group to include him. She let him press his mouth down on hers. His hand moved to Coralie’s back, and then slid down inside her skirt.

  Aurora’s nausea grew. She pulled away from Connor, but he was trying to hold on to her.

  “I want to go,” she said, and wrenched herself free.

  “Don’t,” Connor said. It was a little bit desperate, the way he said it, but Aurora was done with all of them.

  She turned and tripped away from the campsite, out into the darkness of the trees.

  21

  Jonah called through to O’Malley and Hanson via Bluetooth the moment they were moving again. Hanson answered immediately and with enthusiasm.

  “Can you get Domnall on the line, too?” Jonah asked.

  “I don’t know where he is,” Hanson replied. “I’ve not seen him since you left.”

  Which wasn’t that unusual. If the DS had a lead, he would generally pursue it in whatever direction it took him without taking the time to communicate with the team.

  “All right. I’ll call his cellphone later. Give me your updates.”

  “OK. I’ve got something from forensics. Linda McCullough wants you to call her. They’ve taken a proper look at a beer can that was in the stash with the body, and it’s half full of Dexedrine.”

  “Half full?” Jonah asked.

  “Yes,” Hanson agreed. “There’s something really off about it, she says. There’s only a little of it toward the bottom that’s been dissolved, and the rest is still totally dry.”

  Jonah processed this. “So the powder went in there after the can had been drunk,” he said.

  “That’s what she thinks.”

  There was something disconcerting in that. Jonah could see a few possibilities: it had been a failed attempt at spiking someone’s drink after the drink had been finished; it had been a hurried disposal of the drugs; or it had been planted there to mislead. He was inclined to rule out the second option. There were much easier ways of disposing of drugs than pouring them into a narrow opening in a beer can and then burying it. If a failed attempt at spiking, why had Aurora still ended up dead? Why had it been buried with her?

  Jonah had an unsettling feeling that it was the third option, and that someone had planned for the eventuality that Aurora would be found. Could it have been Connor? Had he raped and killed her, and then tried to make it look like Daniel Benham by planting a can full of drugs?

  He was aware of Hanson speaking to him.

  “Sir?”

  “Sorry, what was that?”

  “Mackenzie. I’ve found the girlfriend who went camping with him. Diana Pitman.”

  “That’s good work,” Jonah said, remembering that he’d only just got hold of the name himself. “Where is she?”

  “She’s teaching in a school in York now. Do you want me to contact her?”r />
  Jonah sighed at the thought of a long drive. “Yes. See what you can talk her into. If we have to go to York, we will.”

  “OK. I’ll call her. I’ve also had a pretty clean report back about Andrew Mackenzie so far. Google doesn’t find much, either. But I’ve submitted a request to Intelligence for more.”

  “You may as well go ahead and call up all the schools he’s taught at to check his record with them,” Jonah said. “If his résumé’s on LinkedIn, use that as a starting point, but check all the dates. The easiest way of hiding career problems is to pretend you never worked somewhere.”

  “OK.”

  “But leave it until you’ve looked at Connor,” he added. “There’s no reason yet to see Mackenzie as our main suspect.”

  “All right.”

  He could tell that Hanson was less than pleased about this. She’d clearly been excited about Mackenzie being a missed suspect, and wanted to pursue that line. Half of being a good copper was instinct, he knew. And the other half was knowing when to do the grunt work.

  “Anything from Jojo Magos?” he asked.

  “Yes. She said she’ll be at Southampton Climbing Wall the rest of the day. She’ll be back on her cellphone at about eight.”

  Jonah glanced at the dashboard clock, which read 4:52. Even allowing for traffic, they would be back well before then.

  “Should I try and get hold of her?” Hanson asked.

  “No,” Jonah said. It might be more productive to speak to her at the wall. “I’ll sort it out. If you contact the ex-girlfriend, and keep digging at Mackenzie, we’ll look at the others.”

  He rang off, thinking about Hanson and how she could fit into his team. The way they worked together had always mattered a lot. Everyone brought their own abilities, and he used them when they were needed.

  Juliette Hanson was very different from the arrogant, impulsive constable he’d recently got rid of. He couldn’t see her pursuing aggressive, bad-cop lines of inquiry. Which also meant he couldn’t see her wrecking entire cases.

  But Jonah was trying to work out exactly where she did fit. She was proactive, certainly, like O’Malley. More intuitive than logical, unlike Lightman. Jonah also saw in Hanson a need for praise and recognition that could be either useful or difficult to manage, depending on how it panned out.

  He shelved the thought for now, deciding that he’d better think through that interview with Mackenzie while it was fresh in his mind. The teacher’s reaction to the news, and his ferocious pride in Aurora, had been a warning note. Jonah wasn’t quite sure he believed that it was all regret at not being there for her. He’d only taught her a few times a week.

  There was a sustained pause while the slightly lessened rain continued to sweep down the windscreen in streams. The traffic was building now, becoming a maze of starred red taillights.

  “Once we’ve got the ex-girlfriend tracked down, we should see what Mackenzie’s colleagues have to say about him,” he said after a while.

  “You’re looking for inappropriate relationships with students?” Lightman asked.

  “I’m looking for anything,” Jonah said. “But if he’s got a problem with young girls, that’s indicative.”

  “Want me to look into it?”

  “No, I’m happy for Hanson to do that,” Jonah replied. “Let her feel industrious and useful. She’ll be hooked before she realizes how bloody boring the job really is.”

  * * *

  —

  HANSON CAUGHT SIGHT of Lightman letting himself into CID, and glanced up at him. His warm smile was a little embarrassing somehow, and she ducked her head back down to look at her screen.

  She still wasn’t sure whether she trusted him. But frustratingly, she also found herself trying to make Lightman like her. It was as if the teenage Hanson was still in there somewhere, wanting the popular boys to chat her up.

  Lightman made his way toward her and folded his coat over his own chair. Trying to ignore him was made harder by the fact that his desk was opposite hers. There were only a couple of slimline screens between them.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “It’s OK,” she said. “Two of the schools have talked to me about Mackenzie, and I’m waiting for a call back from the head of his second school in Bournemouth.”

  “Anything strange?” He was still standing, an expression of interest on his face.

  “Nothing significant.” Hanson shrugged. “At his previous school, he went to an antiwar protest during school hours. A student who should have been in school saw him there. The parents reported him, but the school did very little about it. His students were doing well, and he was popular. They concluded that it was none of the school’s business as long as he didn’t miss any lessons.”

  “Fairly irrelevant, then,” Lightman commented.

  Hanson glanced over at the door, realizing that the DCI hadn’t appeared through it after Lightman.

  “Is the chief on his way?”

  “No, he’s off to interview Jojo Magos.”

  Hanson made direct eye contact for a moment. “At the climbing wall?”

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t that a tough place to conduct an interview?”

  “There are pros and cons of going to where the suspect is,” Lightman said with a small smile. “And generally, I find the DCI is pretty good at knowing when to control a situation.”

  He sat carefully at his desk, and she busied herself with the second page of Google results on Andrew Mackenzie. She dutifully clicked on the dull links, most of them about other Andrew Mackenzies, and kept on going to the later pages.

  Her extension rang at seven thirty. She was hoping, despite the late hour, that it was the school rather than the chief. She wanted to have something else to report to Sheens.

  “DC Hanson.”

  “Oh, hello. I’m calling from Bournemouth East.” A young woman’s voice. Gentle, and a little Northern, Hanson thought. “I’m one of the deputy heads. You wanted some information on Andrew Mackenzie. Sorry it’s taken so long. I had to talk to a few different people and work around a meeting.”

  “That’s not a problem at all,” Hanson replied. “I really appreciate you calling.”

  “That’s all right. He had a good record here, but there was one thing I thought you’d appreciate knowing. He began a relationship with one of our sixth-formers after she’d left the school. It wasn’t legally problematic, as she was overage and no longer a pupil. But given that he met her here, as her teacher initially, it wasn’t entirely popular with the parents.”

  “That could be interesting, thank you,” Hanson said, pulling a cap off her pen and beginning to take notes on a legal pad. “Do you think the relationship really did start after she left? It wasn’t happening covertly while the girl was at school?”

  “The staff generally think not,” the deputy head said. “But it’s difficult to be certain. They did their best to find out at the time, and to look for any grooming. It seemed to be above board. The girl herself was quite certain that it was only a few months after she left, when they’d bumped into each other at a pub, that it even occurred to either of them. I think the school did everything it should have done, under the circumstances.”

  “Yes, thank you,” Hanson said. “Do you have the girl’s name?”

  “I assume this isn’t going to be announced publicly?” the teacher said, suddenly a little guarded.

  “No, no,” Hanson said. “This is purely for investigative reasons. It might well be unimportant.”

  “All right. According to our solicitor, it won’t violate any confidentiality if I pass on the information, given that she was no longer a pupil. Her name was Pria Anand.”

  “Great,” Hanson said. “Is it all right if we talk to you again if we need to?”

  “Yes, that would be fine,” the
deputy head said, “though I’m off on vacation next week. I’ll give you my cell in case you need it.”

  Hanson took it down and rang off. She could see Lightman’s curious expression.

  “Inappropriate relationship?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” Hanson answered. “Apparently it only started after the girl left. But we’re talking a few months after she left. I’d say that’s fairly suspicious.”

  O’Malley announced his return at that point by slamming the door to CID. He came over to them both with a slightly distant expression.

  “Successful afternoon?” Hanson asked.

  “Possibly,” O’Malley replied. “I’ll update you once we’re at the pub.”

  * * *

  —

  JONAH WALKED THE mile to Southampton Climbing Wall in less time than it would have taken to sit in early evening traffic. His suit trousers were heavy with water by the time he arrived, but the outdoor jacket had kept the rest of him dry. He couldn’t help feeling that the rain should be warmer, that this summer storm should be a hot and tropical thing instead of a miserable, chilly gray invasion.

  The front desk at the center was overshadowed by a protruding piece of climbing wall: a dark-blue bulge covered in neon-bright holds. He showed the skinny young man on the desk his ID.

  “Oh…do you need to see the manager?”

  “I just need to ask a member a few questions,” he said. “She’s agreed to see me.”

  There was a slight hesitation, and the guy looked around for someone to ask advice from, then shrugged.

  “OK. But…don’t disturb people too much when they’re climbing. And don’t stand underneath anyone when they’re on the wall, OK?”

  Jonah gave him a small smile. “I’ll try not to.”

  It took him almost fifteen minutes of searching to find Jojo. The place was more complex than he’d imagined, with room after room opening off one another, each with a different challenge. Some very high climbs with ropes; some overhangs; some high and low walls; and somewhere there was a series of footholds only.