She Lies in Wait

by Gytha Lodge

  Jonah could hear the lack of finality in her voice.

  “But…?”

  “There isn’t really a but. I’ve been as thorough as I can, and sent soil samples from directly around the body for column and gas chromatography, and if we’re really, really lucky, we might manage to separate out nonmetabolized Dexedrine from other compounds in the soil and confirm presence in sufficiently high quantities to indicate ingestion by the victim. But if there have been sufficiently high temperatures in that dugout, there is zero chance, and it was a hot summer.”

  “Well, naturally,” Jonah said. “Common problem…”

  “Piss off, Sheens,” McCullough said.

  “Thank you,” Jonah answered on a laugh. “Genuinely. I know you’re busy at the moment.”

  “I’m always busy,” McCullough said. “I’m going to start saying no more often, and go home at five, and all of you lot can complain to my voicemail instead.”

  “But what would you do with all the spare time?” Jonah asked.

  “Have a life? Maybe?”

  “Yeah. I hear they’re overrated….”

  He ended the call, and sat thinking about a violent attack in as unemotional a frame of mind as he could manage. From an investigative point of view, it clarified things quite a lot.

  In essence, it was unlikely that any of the girls had killed her. It was extremely improbable that she had been attacked violently by a male attacker and then murdered by a separate female.

  But that didn’t mean that one of the girls hadn’t been peripherally involved, or that none of them knew anything. If one of them had covered up for one of the boys, it wouldn’t be the first time. Not by a long way.

  The other thing it meant was a difficult conversation with the Jackson family at some point. As a feeling human being, he wanted to make the revelation as easy as possible. But as the man tasked with finding out who had killed Aurora, he had an opportunity to use that information to shock.

  * * *

  —

  O’MALLEY WOKE UP five minutes before his alarm. He felt vaguely optimistic about today. He’d done some good work yesterday on the drug supplier that might well help them. He’d gone to see Jojo Magos’s older brother, Anton, straight after the pub.

  Anton hadn’t been exactly nonplussed when he’d opened the door. It was a rare man who liked having his evening interrupted by a detective, and Anton had the grudging, wary look of someone who thought cops were the bad guys. O’Malley guessed, as Anton sized him up, that the elder Magos brother hadn’t been automatically treated with respect by the force. His graying hair was dreadlocked and tied back, and he wore a wiry wool cardigan that smelled faintly of animals.

  But O’Malley was good at coming across like a human being instead of a cop, and his accent generally helped him. Most people saw it as unthreatening. So Anton had let him in, and in the end had admitted that he’d been the one to set up the deal where Daniel Benham had bought fifteen kilos of Dexedrine. His contact had been a man called Matt Stavely, for whom he provided a current address on the Thornhill estate.

  O’Malley had sighed inwardly at that. The Thornhill estate after dark was not his idea of fun. But at least he didn’t have a flash car or a uniform to worry about.

  He’d climbed into his Fiesta and made his way there, which was at least a quick journey at this time of night. He found Spring Terrace, which was about as unspring-like as it was possible to be. There was a series of desperate-looking low-rise flat blocks and then one towering high-rise at the end with a recreation ground in its shadow.

  Stavely lived in the last of the small blocks. It had a small car park outside it with no attempts at trees or flower beds anywhere.

  O’Malley parked up underneath a streetlamp without any real hope of that dissuading anyone from damaging the car. Thornhill was increasingly gang-run and lawless. Though after having to come and talk to numerous residents over a number of years, O’Malley at least had a reasonable relationship with some of them, and understood that the root of gang culture was fear rather than aggression.

  He took the flat block’s external stairs two at a time, determined to make this quick. Stavely was in Number 36, up on the second floor. The door had no number on it, but it had two faded patches where a three and a six had once sat, and four screw holes.

  He could hear a TV from somewhere, playing something that involved shooting and yelling. A moment or two after he knocked loudly, the sound shut off. He thought he caught footsteps approaching. There was a pause, which he would have expected. You didn’t open your door without checking on this estate.

  And then there was a click as the door was opened a fraction, the security chain still on. A thin, bearded face appeared in the gap.

  “Matt?” he asked, as unthreateningly as possible. “I need a little help from you. Can I come in for a minute?”

  “What help?”

  O’Malley glanced up and down the empty hallway, and then drew out his wallet. He flexed it open, showing a few tens and twenties inside.

  Stavely gave him a hard look, and then the door closed as the chain came off. He opened the door fully, and O’Malley got a full view of him. A loose gray hooded cardigan on a thin frame. A black beanie over hair that was almost all gray, and skin that looked like it didn’t get enough light.

  “Here,” Stavely said, walking ahead of him down a very short, very bare corridor that had only two doors opening off it. They passed a bedroom that was in darkness. Little except a mattress and a cupboard were visible. The whole place smelled of stale smoke, though it was cleaner than O’Malley had been expecting. There was no moldering food odor, and Stavely himself was well washed.

  Stavely led him to an open-plan kitchen and sitting room, which was dominated by a large screen and a PlayStation. The screen was a frozen image of a fierce gun battle. It looked like Russia from the buildings and weaponry, and it was uncomfortably realistic to O’Malley.

  Stavely sat near the remotes, where a can of beer was waiting. “What are you looking for?” he asked in a very neutral tone.

  “Nothing for my mood,” O’Malley replied, leaning against the kitchen counter. “It’s actually information. And it’s not the kind of information that’s going to get you into any trouble.”

  Stavely went very still. He looked at O’Malley, and then reached for a cigarette from a packet stuffed between the cushion and the arm of the sofa. He shifted his hips in order to reach into a pocket and pull out a lighter, and then lit up without speaking.

  “It’s information thirty years old,” O’Malley went on, “so it’s pretty stale. It’s about a large sale of Dexedrine you made to a boy called Daniel Benham.”

  O’Malley caught a strange twist to Stavely’s mouth, but he still said nothing.

  “You probably remember the missing girl, Aurora Jackson.” He waited for a reaction, and in the end Stavely nodded. “We’ve found her remains. The trouble for us is that she’d been buried next to a very large quantity of Dexedrine, and we need to rule those drugs out of any involvement. We’re not, and I need to be firm about this, interested in pursuing any dealing or distribution crimes against anyone.”

  There was another silence.

  “How does tracing them help you?”

  “If they came from a fairly normal source, we can show that it wasn’t connected to Aurora being murdered. Which is what happened to her.”

  He waited again while Stavely thought this over. He was a careful man, O’Malley thought, and possibly not stupid. O’Malley had low expectations when it came to small-time dealers.

  “So you want to show that the Dexedrine wasn’t dangerous to know about,” Stavely said.

  O’Malley nodded. “I don’t believe her death had anything to do with the drugs. But I have a DCI who is thorough as hell, and is going to be relentless about pursuing the drug connection unt
il we can close it down. I want to close it down.”

  Stavely took a long drag on the cigarette and then tapped it into an ashtray. “I don’t know, man,” he said slowly. “It sounds like trouble.”

  Stavely was closed off in the way that people who survived by keeping things secret often were.

  “You’re going to have to help at some point,” O’Malley said, in a low voice. “The chief is not going to let this go. If you knew the man, you’d realize that. Your best bet, as God is my witness, is to be helpful now, while it’s still your choice, and make him want to overlook you.”

  Stavely balanced the cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, and watched it for a while. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Just answer a few questions for me. About the drugs, and Daniel Benham.”

  Stavely let out a large sigh, and shook his head. “I asked you in for a sale.”

  “Think of it,” O’Malley said, drawing out his wallet again, “as a different sort of sale.”

  He held out two twenties, and Stavely’s attention was immediately on the money. It was a noticeable shift.

  “Here,” O’Malley said, and put the two notes down on the table in front of the dealer. Stavely watched them, his hands moving slowly over each other. O’Malley decided that was enough for him to continue. “You ended up with the Dexedrine after a deal fell through. Is that right?”

  There was a pause, but to his relief Stavely said, “It was a guy I’d sold to before. Upmarket guy. He wanted it to sell on. So I got it from my supplier.”

  “But the buyer backed out?”

  Stavely shook his head. “He got busted. He’d been selling at expensive parties and some girl died. Her boyfriend pointed the finger at him.”

  “And you couldn’t return it to your supplier?”

  Stavely looked up at him, momentarily incredulous. “You can’t. You can never do that. Never. And if you tried it, they’d never supply you again. It’s not a fucking department store.”

  “But you still needed to pay them, all right, so,” O’Malley said, soothing him.

  “Yeah. And I was generally sweating it. But…I got put on to Daniel Benham.”

  “By Anton Magos?”

  There was a silence, and then Stavely lifted his shoulder in a shrug.

  “Doesn’t matter,” O’Malley said, quickly. “Tell us about Daniel Benham. He wanted to buy it.”

  “Yeah. Well…he seemed like he wasn’t sure.”

  “He wasn’t all that keen?”

  Stavely shook his head. “No, he…he asked why I had the stuff, and I explained. And he said what would happen if I couldn’t pay, and I said…Well, I said they’d cut my fucking legs off. Which wasn’t really a joke.”

  There was a pause while Stavely fiddled with the cigarette.

  “And did he ask anything else?”

  Stavely shook his head. “No. He made his mind up then. And you know, I don’t want him getting…I know he’s a crappy politician now, but, you know, he did me a favor, all right? And actually I think he bought the stuff because he wanted to help me.”

  O’Malley nodded, but he wondered if Stavely was right about that, or whether Benham had had his eye on a very drugged-up party or two.

  “Has he bought anything from you since?”

  Stavely hesitated, which piqued O’Malley’s interest.

  “We’re just keen to know more about him,” O’Malley said. “As a person, like.”

  “I can’t remember,” Stavely said, a stubborn look on his face.

  “OK. So did you know the others that well?” he asked, acknowledging that Stavely wasn’t going to say any more. “Connor Dooley, Topaz Jackson…”

  Stavely shook his head and picked up his cigarette again to take a drag. “I knew Jojo some, because I hung out with Anton sometimes. She was usually around the park when we were. I didn’t know the others.”

  O’Malley let a silence descend, and then nodded. “Thank you. That’s all fine. I might need you to come in and say a bit of that on record sometime.”

  “Fuck’s sake,” Stavely said quietly.

  “It’ll be worth it for you,” O’Malley said with a fixed look. Stavely held the look, and then gave a shrug.

  Stavely didn’t get up as O’Malley let himself out. With the door closed behind him, O’Malley moved sideways slightly, out of sight of the peephole. He waited for the sound of the computer game to start up again, but instead, after a pause, he heard Stavely’s voice.

  There was no other voice in reply, and then, after a pause, Stavely spoke again, though none of the words reached him. A phone call, then. And given that no phone had rung, one Stavely had made off the back of O’Malley’s visit. Which was more than a little interesting.

  * * *

  —

  AT TEN PAST eight in the morning, Jonah arrived at the Jacksons’ house. He had toyed with calling the family to save himself the trip, but he knew that news of this kind was better handled in person.

  It was Tom who answered his knock this time. He was rubbing at his mouth, presumably having been in the middle of breakfast.

  “Good morning, Mr. Jackson,” Jonah said. “Sorry for the early call, but I just wanted to catch you up with what we’re doing.”

  “As I’ve said many times to various police over the years,” Tom said, a little patronizingly, “I’d much rather be updated than not, at whatever hour of the morning.”

  He stood aside, and Jonah squeezed into the small space along the corridor. It actually looked a little tidier than it had on his last visit. There were orderly piles, and even a few gaps in the detritus. Perhaps Topaz and Connor had been busy.

  They were all in the kitchen. Joy, sitting at one end of the table, gave him an owlish glance, her eyes wide and wary. Topaz was leaning out from her position in the corner to look at him. Only Connor kept eating, working his way slowly through a bowl of porridge with his head down, until Jonah spoke.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m interrupting breakfast.”

  “It’s fine,” Topaz said swiftly. “What’s going on?”

  “We have some news,” Jonah said, and Joy suddenly rose and moved a chair round the table so that he could sit facing them. Tom returned to his place in front of a plate of eggs and crossed one long leg over the other. “We’ve had digital analysis back, and various signs point to some form of sexual assault on Aurora before she died.”

  Topaz flinched, visibly. Connor finally stopped eating. He rested his spoon carefully on the edge of his bowl, but didn’t make any move to comfort his wife. From Joy and Tom there was nothing. It was as if they were frozen in place.

  “It’s clearly a distressing finding,” Jonah went on, “but it does help us to be clearer on who we’re looking for.”

  “Who are you looking for, then?” Tom said, his voice a little thick.

  “A male, potentially one of the group she was camping with,” he said carefully. “We’re looking into whether anyone else knew about the place where Aurora was found. We can’t be conclusive about that yet, but we do know that the kids who were camping were familiar with it. We’re also investigating possible drug use at the party.”

  Jonah felt instinctively guilty at having to give him so much disturbing news at once. But it was better for them to know now, he knew. Delaying it only made it harder if further evidence was found.

  He saw Topaz’s face color, and she picked up a glass of water and drank from it with a hand that shook slightly. Tom glanced at her, and Jonah thought that there might be a difficult conversation coming up.

  “Do you think it was connected?” Tom asked eventually.

  “It’s possible,” Jonah said. “But I’m not assuming anything just yet.” He took a momentary breath. “I wondered if we could ask for something from you.”

  “What’s
that?”

  “We want to talk to Aurora’s other friends,” Jonah said. “Anyone she was close to or might have confided in.”

  “Well, I can’t…Topaz and Joy can help, I suppose,” he said, nodding to his wife. “I’ve never been much good with names.”

  “No, he hasn’t,” Joy agreed a little breathlessly. “Terrible memory, haven’t you, Tom?”

  “That’s fine,” Jonah reassured him. “The three of you can talk it through and let me know later today. You can give the names to one of my team if I’m not available.”

  “Your team,” Tom said, considering. “How many are there on your team?”

  “Three, apart from me,” he said. “Constable Hanson you’ve already met. I also have Sergeants O’Malley and Lightman, and support from the DCS, the forensics team, and other teams as needed.”

  “Four of you directly working on the case, then,” Mr. Jackson said. He nodded his approval, though his voice still sounded unsteady. “That’s good to know.”

  Jonah rose and left, regretting that he couldn’t be there to hear Tom and Topaz discuss those drugs. It would have made for interesting listening.

  * * *

  —

  O’MALLEY WAS THE last one to arrive, at 9:20. An early enough morning, but it seemed halfway through the day to Jonah.

  Jonah asked them into a briefing room to tell them about Hanson’s thoughts on the dogs being fooled, and about the confirmation that Aurora had been raped.

  They all nodded grimly when he was finished.

  “So our key question,” Jonah said, “has to be whether Connor Dooley was the one to rape her. What do we have on him since yesterday?”

  “Not a lot,” Lightman said. “Coralie was the only one to see him up and about, and we’ve yet to hear more about him attempting to kiss Aurora.”

  “That’s something to press our other campers on,” Jonah replied.

  “I’ve checked his account of the following morning, when he realized she was gone, and there aren’t any holes. He gives a good account of himself, with a few details that drop in and out as you’d expect from someone trying to remember what happened. And he seemed eager to find her.”