She Lies in Wait

by Gytha Lodge

  Her phone buzzed, and she pulled it out to check it. She felt an unpleasant twist as she saw that it was from Damian again.

  She hated the effect it had on her, his name on a message. Every time she thought she’d closed things down, another message arrived.

  She could see the first line of the message in the preview on her home screen. It began with, “I’m sorry…” but she’d had messages like that before. She’d also had a lot that raged at her. That told her she was a fucking idiot, and that she’d been wrong about everything. That she’d left based on a stupid assumption. That she should have helped him through a difficult time and not walked out.

  And then there had been the other kind, where he’d accused her of cheating on him, and tried to pretend that was why she’d left. Which was the kind of warped logic that he seemed to function on.

  She felt the same draining away of energy that she did every time he messaged. The same drop of her positivity, and the same anxiety in her chest.

  “All OK?” O’Malley asked, and she glanced up at him, and then at Lightman, who was watching her with another unreadable expression.

  “Yes,” she said, looking down at the phone and then putting the screen to sleep. “All fine. Just a pain-in-the-arse ex-boyfriend.”

  She no longer felt like staying with them and talking. She finished up the rest of her lager and rose.

  “I’d better get going,” she said. “I’ve got a few calls to make….”

  “I’ll walk back with you,” Lightman said, and stood to drain his pint.

  “Good thing I don’t mind drinking alone,” O’Malley said wryly.

  “Oh. Sorry.” Hanson felt a stab of real guilt. She hadn’t bothered to think about O’Malley, and the fact that he might need company. “I’m sure I can…”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said with a laugh. “I ought to get back to work, anyway. People to see. Drug dealers to find. I’ll head back to the station soon.”

  Lightman held the door open for her as she left, and then, instead of trying to talk, walked along next to her in equable silence. Her thoughts went quite quickly back to Damian and the girl whose two passionate messages she’d found on his phone.

  Hanson hadn’t even known her. The girl had turned out to be in a relationship with one of Damian’s colleagues. It hadn’t been the first time she’d suspected him, but he had so often attacked her, and made her feel guilty for so much as smiling at a man, that the focus had never been on him. She’d always been on the back foot.

  She’d come to realize that he’d been hiding an awful lot behind his jealous attacks on her. She had no idea how long that particular thing had gone on, and he had denied and denied that there had been anything besides the girl being unhappy in her relationship, until she’d found a picture of them together on his computer from weeks before.

  There was part of her that still wanted to interrogate him to the point where he admitted the truth. But she had had to accept that she wasn’t going to get the truth, and that the only thing to do was to walk away.

  “We should do the pub thing again,” Lightman said suddenly, “when we’re not in the frantic stages of a case, and when there aren’t other distractions.”

  She expected him to smile at her, but his expression was quite serious.

  “Yeah,” she said, not really meaning it. “We should.”

  Lightman gave a half smile. “All right, so you probably have better things to do. But Domnall and I don’t. So as long as you humor us once in a while…”

  For some reason, she found herself trying to make him feel better.

  “No, I really don’t,” she said. “It’s nice to see you two outside work. Sorry I’m being miserable and useless. I’m not normally. I promise, Sarge.”

  “You’re all right,” Lightman said, and then, after a pause, added, “Comparatively.”

  It made her smile in spite of herself.

  * * *

  —

  JONAH BEGAN THE walk to the station slowly in spite of the rain. He tried to bring his mind back to the case, and not to let the unsettling memory of the figure watching him from the shadows take over.

  If he had to attach himself to a theory, he thought it most likely that Aurora had been persuaded to go down to the stash with someone, and then murdered there. Whether that had been by strangling or by overdose—or by some other method—wasn’t yet clear. If Coralie and Jojo were both right in what they’d said, then Aurora and Connor had both been back up. A suspicious couple of events.

  He thought about everything else Jojo had said, and found himself running over his memories of her as a girl. She’d had that same taunting, competitive, wild expression. He was trying to work out the limits to that wildness, and to her willingness to try anything.

  The thoughts became circular, though. There were so many things to think about; he couldn’t afford to get stuck on anything. So he did what he always did, and put the thoughts aside, somewhere in the background, ready for later.

  Hanson was still at her desk when Jonah arrived. He shook his head at her, and then came and sat in a neighboring chair.

  “I’m pretty sure I told you lot to sod off. Didn’t you get the memo?”

  “Sorry, sir,” Hanson said with a ghost of a smile. “Ben started it. And I felt like I should compete, and then by the time he was ready to go I’d got a little bit stuck in….”

  “What are you looking at?”

  “A few things,” she said. And then she added, “There’s something that is really bothering me. Actually, there are two things, but one more than the other.”

  Jonah was absolutely ready to go home. He was wet and tired and feeling grumpy. But he’d been where Hanson was. Working on a first homicide case with feverish enthusiasm. Finding heart-racing excitement in discrepancies. “Let’s hear it.”

  “The search started with people on foot,” she said. “None of them saw the stash, which makes sense if it was behind an offshoot of the beech tree. The most anyone would do would be duck under the tree and move on, yes?”

  “Yes,” Jonah said. “I’m happy with that.”

  “But at five P.M., they brought in dogs from Southampton,” she said, handing him an old report from the investigating officer at Lyndhurst. “They were primed for Aurora’s scent, and they’d all been trained on suspicious substances. So how did all of them fail to find a place that we know she had visited before, and which must have reeked of Dexedrine?”

  Jonah frowned. He took the report and read over it. He had a hazy memory of the dogs arriving at the scene. But on that first day, he’d been moved to the door-to-door search with his sergeant. They’d spent the evening knocking and questioning.

  “You’re right. I don’t…”

  He thought of Jojo’s confession. Of how they had caved the entrance in.

  “Jojo Magos is coming in tomorrow,” he said slowly. “She wants to make a statement to the effect that she and Brett Parker caved in the entrance to the stash. Caving it in would make it a lot harder for the dogs to pick up the scent, but if Aurora had been in there beforehand, there should have been a trail leading right to it.”

  Hanson nodded, her cheeks gaining a slight flush of excitement. “If they covered it up, that makes sense of some of the weird statements from the following day. They were trying to cover up two of them hiding it…Yeah, look.”

  She had stuck tiny fluorescent tabs to some of the pages in a stack of statements, and she pulled one open to show him. “Topaz said Brett went toward the main road to search, and Jojo stayed at the camp. But Connor said Brett had gone to wade in the river and that Jojo had gone looking toward the road. Brett agreed that he’d been wading, but the one slightly canny bit of interviewing involved him being asked why he hadn’t been at all wet when the police arrived. He’s on tape as saying he removed his trousers before g
oing in, but they’ve indicated a pause in the transcript. Here.”

  Jonah couldn’t help smiling at the thoroughness. It was a refreshing feature in a new recruit. It was usually just Lightman who went for the meticulous approach.

  He glanced over the statements. Nodded. “Good work, Juliette.”

  “So do we think that’s all they were hiding?” she asked. “Was it just that they’d gone to hide the drugs, or was there something else? Were some of them deliberately laying a false trail for the dogs, either to hide the drugs or because they knew she was there? And if so, how did they know how to do it? The talk we had from the guy at Vice said it’s really hard to do.”

  “You’re right,” Jonah said thoughtfully. “I had that talk, too. That stuff about how they smell in the same way we see. Not just one thing at a time.”

  “So whoever did it probably had a good working knowledge of narcotics,” Hanson agreed.

  “Yup. Benners.”

  “Or Jojo Magos, through her brother.”

  Jonah nodded. He found himself thinking again of Jojo hiding the stash.

  “You should definitely go home now, Juliette,” he said. “I’m heading off in the next thirty seconds. And thank you. That’s significant information.” He started to walk away, and then turned back. “How did everything else go? Anything specific on Connor?”

  “Oh, no,” Hanson said, slightly flustered. “I was looking into Connor when I realized about the dogs….”

  Jonah nodded. “In the morning, please. And if you get stuck, Facebook and LinkedIn are a good bet.”

  Hanson nodded. “Sure.” Her face was a little pink, her nodding a little overeager.

  Jonah felt sorry for her. He was genuinely pleased with her work. But he also knew that the little things could be as crucial to an investigation as the inspired leads and analysis. And he needed orders followed as well as instincts. He’d learned the hard way how much devastation could be caused by officers who didn’t listen.

  22

  Aurora

  Saturday, July 23, 1983, 12:50 A.M.

  The images in her head were as confused as the trees whipping past her. Topaz kissing Coralie. Connor’s iron grip on her. Brett so caught up in them that it was like watching someone hypnotized.

  And threading through all that, sharper and more painful, the memory of twilight, and the ice that had gone through her after she’d followed Mr. Mackenzie. After she’d crept, dripping, through the trees and seen him—her Mr. Mackenzie, Andrew—put his arms round a little brunette woman and kiss her.

  She had so many questions that she wanted to fire at him. So many things she badly wanted an answer to. How he could do that to her. How he could hide it from her. How he could turn his back on everything they had.

  And there was a creeping voice inside her that said, Maybe he didn’t think you really had anything. Maybe he’s never really cared about you. Maybe it was all in your head.

  There was nowhere for her thoughts to go that didn’t wrench at her insides, and she felt sick as it was. Sick and hot and dizzy.

  The nausea stepped up in a rush, and she bent down and retched. Liquid poured out of her mouth and her nose, and kept coming. She couldn’t keep her balance, and was afraid of falling in it, so she moved sideways and thudded onto her hip, her legs pressing into twigs and stones.

  She had never felt more alone.

  23

  Jonah did not sleep well. He spent too long reading the case files, time passing him by without being noticed until his phone buzzed at almost one, and startled him.

  It was a one-line message from a number he didn’t recognize.

  We’re going to the wall again on Thursday. You should get some shoes and come along.

  After a second or two, he found himself laughing. He sent a reply.

  That’s a kind offer. You know I didn’t actually give you my card for sporting invitations, though, right?

  He closed down his machine, and another message arrived shortly afterward.

  Doesn’t mean it isn’t a good idea, though, Copper Sheens. Night.

  He decided not to reply, though it was tempting to get involved in some banter when he was feeling weighed down with the past. But if his phone records ended up in court one day, he wanted no record to suggest that he hadn’t done his job properly.

  Once he’d finally got into bed and dozed off, he had a series of disconcerting dreams about camping with Jojo and Benners and Topaz and Connor, sometimes with the others there and sometimes not. In every dream, he suddenly became aware that Aurora was missing, and that something terrible had happened to her. But in each dream, he couldn’t get the others to worry. They kept on drinking and dancing and laughing while he ran between the trees desperate to find her. At some confused point it was a baby he was looking for, and Michelle was there, too. It was a wakeful night.

  During his time awake he found himself rehearsing a conversation with Wilkinson about Andrew Mackenzie. He wasn’t relishing telling his chief super about potential police corruption.

  He showered at six thirty and drove to the station. The roads were clear, but it was still raining, and the surface was slippery under the Mondeo’s wheels.

  He expected to be the first one in, but Lightman’s mop of hair was visible over the top of his screen as he let himself into CID.

  Jonah made his way toward his office, thinking he would leave Lightman to whatever was occupying him. But as he drew closer, he could hear something like the sounds of a football match coming out of the speakers of the desktop, and realized that Lightman was watching Brett Parker in action.

  “Barcelona Olympics in ’92,” Lightman commented. “The four hundred meters.”

  The commentator’s voice rose in pitch, and Jonah watched Brett’s long, powerful stride pick up in pace. He moved past the leader in a matter of three steps, and crossed the line a few moments later.

  “I hadn’t realized quite what sporting royalty he was,” Lightman admitted as the video finished.

  “Royalty is probably fair,” Jonah agreed. “He was pretty unstoppable for a few years.”

  “There isn’t much around after the late nineties,” Lightman commented, scrolling through the suggested videos. “Even though some helpful fans have uploaded a lot of stuff to YouTube.”

  “He switched to triathlon,” Jonah replied. “At the point when he stopped being able to take medals at sprinting.”

  “Think he’s still in any clubs?” Lightman asked. “They’d probably know him quite well.”

  “It’s worth finding out,” Jonah agreed.

  “Other obvious lines of inquiry are school friends of his and Aurora’s,” Lightman went on. “Particularly of Aurora’s. I can ask the Jacksons for their help.”

  Jonah experienced a slight dropping sensation in his stomach. It had been an inevitable part of the investigation, but he’d still been hoping that it wouldn’t happen.

  “I’ll do it,” he said. “I’ve got to give them an update as soon as it’s a human hour. See if you can find any of Brett’s school friends without asking him about it.”

  “OK. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Let me know when everyone’s in,” Jonah said as he made his way to his office. “We’ll have a proper sitrep.”

  He wasn’t quite sure what he was doing, taking over talking to the Jacksons. The idea of one of the team doing it panicked him, but if they came up with one of the names he thought they would, there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t hide a potential witness from the team.

  He sat at his desk and then rose again, too restless for sitting still. He put a call through to Wilkinson’s office on the off chance that the chief super was there, but wasn’t surprised that it went unanswered.

  He started trying to get his head round the team briefing, but struggled to focus on t
hat, too. And then, at a little after seven forty, McCullough rang, despite the forensics lab technically not being open for another hour and twenty minutes.

  “Digital analysis is back,” she said without any greeting. “We’ve got a fracture to two metacarpals, and another to the sacral side of the left sacroiliac joint. It’s a pelvic joint, and it’s difficult to fracture. Taken together, they are strongly indicative of rape. Though sacral fractures are unusual.”

  Jonah had a strange, cold sensation around his heart. The reality was that McCullough’s findings weren’t unexpected. Aurora had been fourteen and beautiful, and a probable murder victim. But he could still remember her as a gawky twelve-year-old, her hair falling over the pages of a book and her feet kicking at the stone wall outside the school while she waited for her sister to come to the bus with her.

  “What does that suggest?”

  “That one leg was leaned on and placed under a lot of pressure while the attack took place, by someone a lot stronger than she was,” McCullough said. “The fractures to her hands are likely to have occurred while attempting to protect herself.”

  “Likelihood of any DNA retrieval?”

  “Extremely slim,” McCullough said. “I’ll swab what tissue we have and start going through soil and fabric in detail, but there’s going to be a lot of data loss over thirty years.”

  “OK. Thank you. Are you able to rule out animal interference in the removal of drugs? It looks like that stash of Dexedrine used to be a lot bigger.”

  “How much bigger?”

  “Fifteen kilos.”

  “There’s no way animals removed fifteen kilos of Dexedrine from underground,” McCullough said definitively. “That has to be human action. I’ll see if we can find any shovel marks or other signs of interference. The site’s still covered.”

  “Thanks. Anything on toxicology…?”

  McCullough sighed. “To clarify my earlier comments, we’ve got no hair or nails or eyeballs, meaning no testing there.”