She Lies in Wait

by Gytha Lodge

  In every room, a few climbers were working away. They were as varied as the rooms. Some of them moved like spiders across the wall and others strained to stay on. The air was dry with chalk from dozens of pairs of hands, but there was something nice about the smell of it.

  Jojo was in one of the double-story roped rooms, in a group of four. She was almost at the top of the wall when he walked in, roped up but with her short hair uncovered. He watched her traverse sideways, moving constantly but carefully, her wiry arms and legs working. It was graceful, and a touch hypnotic, her hands and feet always finding tiny purple holds and not touching any of the others.

  There was a pause for a short while as she hung off one hand and dipped the other into her chalk bag.

  “I think you’re going to have to dyno it,” one of the men at the foot of the wall called. “Your arms aren’t long enough.”

  Jonah thought he could see why she’d stopped. There was a final purple hold, way off to her left and higher up.

  “Fucking dyno it,” Jojo called, shaking her head. “Do you ever have any less-shit advice?”

  Instead she leaned gradually to her left, balanced on what looked like a single toe, her weight shifting over her knee. Then she lifted her right foot and tucked her toe into a hold that must have been at her waist height, her left hand still loose and all of her weight poised between that right arm and that left foot until the toe was lodged in place. Her body set, she shifted, somehow removing her weight from the left leg and reaching upward, pushing herself steadily off that right arm and leg.

  Her left hand closed on the hold, which he had thought must be too high for her. She swung off it, letting go with her right hand, and then called, “Coming down.”

  The rope tightened and her belaying partner—Jonah remembered enough about his climbing to get some of the terms right at least—lowered her down.

  “Not bad,” the belayer said. He was more the build Jonah would have expected of a climber: tall and rangy, with shoulders wide enough to make him look triangular. He had slim legs beneath, with muscles so defined that Jonah could see them when the guy was just standing there at rest.

  “Better than dynoing anyway,” Jojo said with a grin, and began to unhitch herself from the rope.

  Jonah moved forward, and she glanced up at him. Her face did a funny little twist as she recognized him. It was somewhere between a smile and a grimace.

  “When I said I was going climbing,” she called, “I meant I was busy.”

  Jonah gave her a shrug and a small smile. “It seemed like a much better idea than sitting in a room with no windows. Can I just have a few minutes?”

  He could feel the other three watching him. The wait for an explanation.

  Jojo gave him a slow look, but she was smiling slightly as she did it. “All right. A few minutes. Come on.”

  She led him back through three of the rooms, and then through a dusty archway into a harshly lit seating area with a series of vending machines around it. There was nobody else here.

  Jojo walked to a table in the corner, pulled up one of the hard plastic chairs, and settled herself onto it with one foot up on the edge.

  “There’s crap coffee in the machines if you want it,” she said.

  “That’s OK. I have all the crap coffee in the world back at the station.”

  He sat opposite her, aware that she was watching him.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “A few things,” Jonah answered slowly. “To start with, I thought there was something that was bothering you. Not just Aurora’s death, but perhaps connected with it.”

  He watched Jojo’s gaze fall to her hands, and how she started fiddling with some tape she had round her middle fingers. She said nothing.

  “Was there anything you wanted to say? Something that’s difficult to talk about?”

  He knew that he had been right. He could read the urge to talk battling with a fear of consequences in her expression.

  “I just…” And then she breathed in, an unsteady inhalation. “I told you that we all left the stash alone. But it wasn’t that simple. When we realized she’d gone, and that we’d have to call the police, we panicked.”

  Jonah nodded at her. “There were fifteen kilos of illegal substances a third of a mile from the camp. I’m pretty sure I’d have panicked, too.”

  Jojo’s cheeks lifted in a small grin, but she looked at the hand tape, not at him. “So we…discussed it, and somewhere in the panic we realized we had to hide the Dexedrine. So Brett and I went down there and caved in the entrance. We didn’t look inside…we just wanted it hidden. We kicked at the bank above it until you couldn’t see anything.” She looked up at him now, finally. And he saw tiredness, horror, a strange sort of fear. “We buried her in there, and we didn’t even know.”

  “You and Brett Parker?” Jonah asked quietly.

  “Yes.” Jojo nodded. “Brett Parker.”

  There was a pause while Jonah imagined the two of them scrambling to hide the drugs. He tried to imagine the rush, and the decision to do it without looking inside.

  “When will you know how she died?” Jojo asked in a slightly hoarse voice.

  “I honestly don’t know,” Jonah said.

  “I keep wondering if she was just asleep in there or…or injured and…What if we killed her without knowing?”

  “All I can tell you is that we’ll do our best to find out what happened to her,” he answered. He leaned forward slightly, and was suddenly close enough to inhale a little warm chalky, slightly sweaty scent off her. “It’s unlikely that someone would have put her into that hole alive.”

  “No,” Jojo said. “I suppose not.” She went on picking at the tape, pulling it until it had all rolled in on itself into a thin, sticky string.

  “I need you to come and give a statement about hiding the entrance,” Jonah said, after she’d given up pulling at the tape. “Obviously it’s hard to say, but if you didn’t know she was there, there’s nothing criminal about your actions.”

  “There’s something stupid about them, though,” Jojo said. “And cowardly. We should have faced up to what we were doing. We could all have taken the blame.” And then she gave a sigh and stretched her neck to one side. Rubbed at it.

  “But it was everyone’s decision?”

  Jojo nodded.

  “And nobody disagreed?”

  “I think we were all equally afraid. Imagine what our parents would have thought…and the school.”

  Jonah nodded and allowed a brief silence to elapse.

  “How long will you stay?” he asked, tilting his head toward the room outside, where a pair of climbers was working at a route not far from the door.

  “A couple of hours,” she said. “Until the shaking gets too bad to make it worthwhile.”

  “How many times a week do you go?”

  “Four or five, though sometimes we meet at someone’s house. A lot of people have a wall in their shed.”

  “Jesus…” He shook his head. “And you have an active job. You make me feel lazy.”

  Jojo smiled slightly. “That’s nothing to how much Aleksy used to do. Two sessions a day, minimum. One day off every fourteen.”

  Jonah nodded, considering. And then he said, “Was it a big fall? The one that killed him?”

  Jojo’s arms suddenly became tense, and she looked away from him.

  “Sorry,” Jonah said quickly. “I’m not very good at—”

  “It’s fine,” she said briefly. “It was a climb he’d done before a lot of times. Just a warm-up before a harder one. It should have been fine, but that’s the trouble with free climbing. You only need a momentary slip in concentration.” She paused for a moment, and then said, low and intensely, “Such a bloody idiot.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jonah said quietly.

&
nbsp; Jojo rubbed at her neck again and he was wondering if she’d pulled a muscle on that climb.

  “There was something else I wanted to mention when you came to the house. It wasn’t…” She paused. “The trouble is, it’s such a long time ago, I’m really not sure if it’s real. It’s a half memory, and I was drunk and…and high. I remember not being quite sure at the time whether it had happened.”

  “It’s probably worth saying,” Jonah said. “Even if you aren’t sure. I’d rather have a dozen false leads than miss a real one because someone wasn’t sure.”

  “OK, well, I’m not even sure it’s a lead….” Jojo gave a half smile. “I’ve probably overplayed it. It’s just that I think I might have got back up at some point. Because I have this memory of Aurora being by the fire, and talking to someone. Only I couldn’t see who she was talking to because they were outside the firelight. And you know how you’re not sure if you’ve convinced yourself of something? Well, when she went missing, I never said so, because I really, really didn’t know.”

  “Interesting,” Jonah said. “You don’t remember what she was saying?”

  “The only thing I thought I remembered was her saying she was thirsty, and really,” Jojo said with a shake of her head, “I could easily have made that up.”

  “Well, it’s worth knowing anyway,” Jonah said, thinking of what Coralie had said about Connor. If he really had been up later on, then perhaps Aurora had got up and had some kind of altercation with him.

  “Do you need me to come to the station now?” Jojo asked. “To give my statement?”

  “God, no,” Jonah said. He gave her a grimace. “I want to go home. Tomorrow will do fine.”

  She gave him a look that was at once wary and slightly humorous. Then she pulled one shoulder up in a shrug and smiled.

  “Whatever you say, Copper Sheens.”

  “Nine o’clock?”

  He saw her hesitate.

  “Is that a difficult time?” he asked.

  “I’m pretty grumpy before ten,” she said with a small grin.

  “Well, ten is probably all right,” Jonah said. “Anything for a quiet life…”

  “Great. I’ll see you then.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out one of his cards. It was slightly bent, but she took it with a momentary sober nod.

  “In case you need to talk to me about anything before then. Enjoy your climb.”

  Despite being lost in thought as he let himself back onto the street, he still recognized the neck-crawling feeling of being watched, and turned quickly to look over to his right. He had only a glimpse of a figure in a large coat and hat before it disappeared round the edge of the building.

  He jogged the length of the building and turned the corner, but whoever had been there was now out of sight. The road was glistening wet and empty.

  * * *

  —

  O’MALLEY INSISTED ON what he called a “proper” pub, instead of the refurbished, brightly lit bar opposite the station.

  “If there isn’t dim lighting and cloth-covered stools, it’s not a real watering hole,” he told them both.

  So they ended up walking half a mile to an unpromising-looking place called the Boathouse, which had a grubby black sign and a freestanding blackboard on the pavement with a badly spelled quote about drinking.

  Inside, it was better, Hanson decided. The furniture looked comfortable rather than ragged, and it was warmly lit. Given the rain that had soaked into her suit, she was glad of the unseasonal fire, too. She made her way toward the table in front of it and hung her bag over the back of a chair.

  “I’ll get this round,” she said.

  “Ah, no, you’re all right,” O’Malley replied. “My idea, my shout. What’ll you have?”

  “Umm…Staropramen. But I’ve got to drive, so it’s going to have to be just the one.”

  “Pale ale for me,” Lightman said. “I don’t really mind what kind.”

  As O’Malley made for the bar, Hanson asked, more for something to say than anything, “What was Mackenzie like, then? Did he say anything interesting?”

  “The chief thought he was a little odd,” Lightman replied. “He seemed quite emotional about it all.”

  “Mackenzie, or the chief?” Hanson asked with a small smile.

  Lightman laughed. “Mackenzie. DCI Sheens isn’t known for breaking down in interviews.”

  “What about you?” she asked, because she was curious. “Do you find cases get to you?”

  There was a brief silence, and then Lightman said, “I try very hard not to let them. I don’t think it helps. And I don’t play the emotional card in interviews. I’m not much good at getting people to warm to me.” He paused again. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel anything. Particularly with murder investigations. Some of them…I mean, when you’re interviewing a mother about the partner who’s just killed her daughter in a fit of rage, it’s hard not to feel for them.”

  Hanson gave a slow nod. She remembered, vividly, going to investigate a house where a baby had been screaming for hours and the neighbors had reported it. She’d been a constable back then. She remembered her sergeant questioning the exhausted, tearful mother, his gentle fiddling with items of baby gear on the counter. And then how eventually he’d picked the kid up and looked in his mouth, and then told the mother quietly that they were going to have to go to the station. The mum had been putting boiling water into her tiny son’s bottles, and his mouth had been full of blisters.

  Hanson hadn’t been able to sleep properly for a week after that. She would find herself thinking about the defenseless child, or about the slow nod of the mother who knew she had been caught, and how she’d asked if it meant someone else would look after the boy now. She’d been so hopeful. It had made Hanson afraid that you couldn’t trust anyone when they were pushed too hard. It had also made her realize that the ways people could find to hurt were endlessly imaginative.

  She decided to change the subject before she got caught in a lot of very dark thoughts. “So. Give me a cheat sheet. How do I impress the chief?”

  “It’s basically to do with playing to your abilities,” Lightman said. “He’s all about the psychology of teams, and he wants the team to be self-supporting. He knows where his weaknesses are, and he uses us to make up for them.”

  “So…you’re more thorough than he is?”

  “I’ve got a better memory,” Lightman corrected her, “and I’m more accurate. But he’s a lot smarter.” He gave a small smile.

  “What about Domnall?” she asked quietly.

  “He’s good at easing information out of suspects, and he’s quick-thinking and intuitive. He can do leaps of intellect and act quickly, which the DCI finds difficult until he’s built up to it. The chief takes what I’d call a holistic approach, which slows him down.”

  That made Hanson wonder what she could bring to the table. She was smart and keen-eyed. Those had always been features her colleagues had picked up on. Even the inspector she’d worked for previously, who’d generally filled her reviews with comments on her “good communication” and “support of the team,” and thought she’d like them.

  “Here,” O’Malley said, stepping up to her and handing her two pints of Staropramen and returning to the bar.

  He came back with a tall glass full of clear sparkling liquid and a slice of lime. So he’d ignored the beer, and gone for gin and tonic. Which she knew was a good way of hiding a love of liquor. Everyone else could drink pints while he sank triples.

  “So,” she said, as O’Malley settled himself onto a stool that made his big frame look a little comical. “What have you been doing with yourself?”

  “I’ve been talking to a few dealers. Trying to find out if anyone offloaded a lot of Dexedrine after Aurora’s death. I mean, I hardly think they’d dig it up and
hang on to it, would they?”

  “Any luck?”

  “There’s potentially something interesting. I mean, it’s not like they keep records, so it’s hard to check, but one of them said that the market got flooded a year or so later, and it drove the price down, but unfortunately he didn’t buy, so he doesn’t know where the hell it came from.”

  “Would fifteen kilos be enough to flood the market?” Hanson asked.

  “Yeah, if someone offloaded a lot at once to other small-time dealers.”

  “Were there any other sales they remember?” she asked.

  “Not a lot. One of them remembers a small deal with a girl he’d never met before, but we’re talking five or ten grams, and he’s not sure if it was earlier. Another one reckoned he had a few deals with some guy he’d only met a few times, but much, much smaller amounts again. He didn’t think they’d have added up to that much.” He drank his drink off in one solid go, and then said, “Jesus, I’m dry. Too much talking. Anyone need a top-up?”

  Hanson was acutely aware that she’d barely started her lager, and shook her head. She drank a quick couple of mouthfuls.

  “Let me get it,” she said, but he was already on his feet.

  “No, you’re all right.”

  “Is he going to think I’m useless if I can’t keep up?” she asked Lightman quietly, as O’Malley returned to the bar.

  “Domnall?” Lightman replied, and shook his head. “You don’t have to worry about impressing him. He doesn’t drink. It’s tonic water.”

  “Do we have any early wagers on the killer?” O’Malley called from the bar. It made Hanson wince slightly, but the bartender didn’t seem to care.

  “I might want to spread my bet,” Lightman replied. “I’d go evenly between the four males.”

  “That’s no way to gamble,” O’Malley said. “Have some balls and back your instincts.”

  He paid up, and hefted the drinks in a triangle.

  “What about you, Juliette?” asked O’Malley.

  “Ah, I don’t know. I’d want to know more.”