by Gytha Lodge
Her mouth twisted humorously. “I told you how obsessed he was with Topaz.”
“So nothing…physical happened between you that night?”
She was definitely awkward now. “Oh, well…to be honest, I’m not sure. We hugged. And I…I sort of woke up thinking that we might have kissed, and feeling unbelievably embarrassed about it. I mean, we were friends. There wasn’t anything else except a bit of mutual support and a lot of alcohol between us.”
“You didn’t talk about it?”
“It didn’t even matter,” she said in a voice that was suddenly harsh. “Once we’d woken up that morning, and not found her…Who gave a shit whether we’d made out?”
Jojo sat back and folded her arms across each other.
“And you don’t remember Connor getting up in the night?” he asked. “You don’t remember being awake, and him not being there…?”
“I was asked about that at the time,” she said with a small sigh. “I didn’t think so. I have no memory of him moving, or coming or going, but if it was hazy back then when I was hungover, it’s a lot more so now.”
“Could you just reiterate for me the half memory you mentioned in our last talk?” he said. “And that will be all.”
Jojo did so, sounding even more hesitant than she had. She finished up with an impatient sigh. Jonah reached forward to turn off the tape. He gave her a smile.
“Thank you for doing that. It was an important thing to get on tape.”
Jojo nodded, and then gave him a slightly quizzical smile. “Anytime, Copper Sheens.”
* * *
—
LIGHTMAN ASKED HIM, once they’d seen Jojo out, about the questions regarding her late boyfriend.
“Is he of interest?” he asked.
“Yes and no,” Jonah replied. “There’s no particular reason to think so, but he was part of the group for a while, and his is the second unexpected death to happen among them. I think it would be an omission not to ask questions.”
Lightman nodded. “I’ll look into the police reports on it.”
“Good man.”
* * *
—
JONAH FOUND HIMSELF thinking about the past again as he sat at his desk. About that beauty of Aurora’s, and what she could have achieved in her life. How she might have been seduced, perhaps before that night.
Aside from that, he was bracing himself for Tom’s call. For the name he hoped not to hear. Whenever he thought about it, it was like standing on the edge of a steep drop. He couldn’t afford to be drawn into memories that threatened to undo him.
He gave a sigh, and decided that it was time to go over his team’s notes on the original interviews. It was immediately absorbing, not least because of the gross difference in the number of interviews. Coralie had been brought in only twice, with Jojo interviewed four times, Brett five, and Topaz seven.
And then there had been a big jump to the number of transcripts for Daniel Benham, who had come second to Connor Dooley in the number of interviews he’d been given only by three.
Daniel had been brought in fourteen times to have things checked and double-checked. They wanted to know why he’d been the one to go for help. Why he hadn’t looked for her. What time he had last seen her, because his account wasn’t quite like everyone else’s. Though, in fact, everyone else’s account had proven to be false, too, and none of them was quite like anyone else’s.
And yet they’d kept on at him, the bright young son of a well-known and wealthy local businessman. The kind of boy who usually got away with whatever he wanted. The kind of privileged male who breezed through life.
Jonah could find no reasoning behind this apparent distrust. There was nothing stated in any of the interviews or notes to point the finger at Benham above any of the other kids. So had it been his attitude that had been wrong? Something that never made it into those clinical transcripts? Or had it been the way he liked to argue every point and was known to be a pot-smoking anarchist?
He tried reimagining Daniel Benham’s life. He thought about how it might have been shaped by murder.
At fifteen he had been a vocal socialist. He had been champing at the bit to be old enough to vote, and to join the Labour Party. He was going to stand up against the prime minister he thought was killing the vulnerable by removing support. He had been a humanitarian on a grand scale, and if his socialism had been of the champagne kind, it had been heartfelt. It had driven him to attend rallies and to make him found a socialist group at the school.
But his principles had fizzled out somewhere. His socialism had changed to a centrism that, with age, had slowly turned to downright Toryism. Had his own actions as a killer changed him? Or was it a reaction to the disappearance of the girl he had liked?
He found it difficult to place Benham in the role of killer, somehow. But that was true of all of them, he thought.
At a little before twelve, Tom Jackson called him back with the list of Aurora’s friends.
“There are two of them,” Tom said. That fact alone gave Jonah both a twinge of fear and a twinge of sadness.
“Topaz says the only person she really talked to much was Becky Morris,” Aurora’s father said. “She came round here a couple of times. Very quiet girl.”
“Did Topaz know where we might find her?”
“Yes, she said she’s found her on Facebook and she’s accepted her friend request. She says if you give her an email, she’ll send you a link to her profile.”
“That would be very useful, thank you.” He read out his email address, and Tom read it out in turn, presumably to Topaz.
“And then there was Zofia Wierzbowski.” Tom spelled the name out carefully, and Jonah could feel sweat breaking out across his skin. “They did drama together after school and sometimes waited for the bus together, Topaz says. I think she was supposed to come round, but she never did. Topaz has no idea if she’s even in the country anymore. Her parents took her out of school some while before…before Aurora. She’d got in with a bad crowd, and I remember Aurora distancing herself from her.”
He wondered if Tom could tell that his heart was in his throat as he said a slightly strangled “Thank you,” and hung up.
He stood looking at that name. An intense urge to screw the paper up hit him. If he wrote a new note, with just the other friend’s name on it, nobody might ever know that Zofia had been mentioned. Tom Jackson wouldn’t be checking up with the rest of the group, would he?
But what about Topaz? What if she decided to contact the girls themselves? What if the case came to court, and a decision to hide his own actions undid everything?
He could contact her himself, to try to limit the damage. But that would be the worst possible thing. She would recognize his name, and doubtless react. And then he’d have to offer up her messages as evidence.
His one chance would be to let the team talk to her, and hope that his name never came up. That she wouldn’t think him relevant to any of their questions. Or better still, that she would have forgotten.
He felt light-headed as he left his office. Lightman and Hanson were both on their desktops, so immersed that neither looked up until he spoke.
“The Jacksons have given me the names of two of Aurora’s friends,” he said as lightly as possible, and Lightman reached out to take the note. It took him a fraction of a second longer to let go of it than he’d intended, but Lightman didn’t seem to notice. “I know you’ve both got things to be getting on with, but I need the second one tracked down. Topaz is sending me Facebook details for Becky, so I’ll get in touch.”
“OK. I’ll take a look,” Lightman said. “Mackenzie’s ex-girlfriend called back. She’s going to let us know what time she can come in once she’s worked out child care.”
“Good. Anything through from Intelligence on Mackenzie himself yet?”
Lightman gave a ver
y short laugh. “Apparently asking for anything back today is optimistic. Amir says they’re snowed under at the moment.”
Jonah sighed. Intelligence was always snowed under. It was a perpetual state. Or at least they liked to say so. “I feel for them. But tell them it’s the DCS’s priority, and they’d better look sharp about it.”
“Will do.”
“Anything to report?” he asked Hanson.
“Not much,” she said. “I’d quite like some of the files O’Malley’s been looking at….”
She looked at the chaos of O’Malley’s desk with a grimace, and Jonah managed to laugh. “I’d wait till he gets back.”
He retreated into his office again, and logged in to his laptop. His heart was still pounding, but he told himself to breathe. He had to put thoughts of Zofia aside, and not sit waiting for his team to find something.
Topaz’s email had come through, and the link to Becky Morris’s profile. Her photo was from some kind of professional shoot, with vivid makeup and a coy pose. She looked uncomfortable, her round face uncertain.
A quick look at her profile showed him that Becky was now a jewelry maker. She ran her own online store called Bells and Whistles, which also had a small shop only a mile away. It was open now.
Jonah grabbed his jacket, and called to his team breezily, “I’m heading out to see Aurora’s friend Becky. I should be less than an hour. Call me if anything urgent comes up.”
It was a huge relief to walk out of the station, away from where they were searching for a Polish woman he had once known. He was so steeped in the feeling that he forgot his own advice to be careful until, halfway down the steps, the sound of a revving engine startled him.
He spun, and saw the departing tail of what looked like an old Fiesta on the far side of the road. But with two lanes of traffic in between, he could see little else.
His heart was back to its accelerated rhythm as he walked more watchfully down to ground level and round to the front car park, where his Mondeo was waiting. He paused before using his remote to unlock it, and then, feeling slightly ridiculous, ducked underneath to check for any strange devices.
There was nothing there, but the feeling of danger remained with him all the way to Becky’s shop.
* * *
—
HANSON WAS STRUGGLING to get on with her work, and wasn’t entirely sure why. Her thoughts kept returning to the DCI, and Jojo, and the tension she noticed in him sometimes when discussing Aurora or her friends. He had been jittery as hell before he left, and she wondered if he knew this Becky Morris he was off to see.
Lightman, sitting opposite her, was absorbed in files on his screen. She was half desperate to talk to him about it and half afraid of saying anything. In the end, she leaned round her screen, and said, “Ben, what do you think of the chief working on a case where he knew the victim? You don’t think it’s a bit…awkward?”
Lightman focused on her, and then nodded slowly. “If he’d known her well, I’d say it was a bad idea. But being at the same school, and having done nothing more than catch sight of her a few times…I don’t think there’s any harm.”
“You think that’s all he knew of her?” she pressed. “I mean, surely he’d talked to her.”
“Not that I know of.”
“And Jojo?” she asked, with that anxiety in her stomach. “He definitely knew her quite well.”
Lightman pulled a considering face. “I don’t think it’s going to get in the way. Like I said, he’s not exactly emotional.”
Hanson nodded, trying to align herself with his trust. Perhaps she just needed to get to know the chief better. But she still felt, at some level, that something was up with Jonah Sheens. And she wanted very much to know what.
* * *
—
BELLS AND WHISTLES had the small ground floor in what should have been an attractive nineteenth-century building. But the fish-and-chip shop and betting shop on either side were both run-down and shabby, and their signs dominated the building.
The shop had a lot of pink and a lot of glitter. The sort of place that small girls would be drawn to like magpies. It was empty of customers at the moment, however. He could see only someone reading a magazine behind the counter.
He was immediately certain on entering that it was Becky sitting behind the counter, despite the lack of makeup and frizzy hair. She had the same round face, and the air of uncertainty.
“Can I help?” she asked, standing as he approached. Her accent was pure working-class Southampton, with a slight trace of a wheeze to it.
“I’m DCI Sheens,” he said as lightly as possible. “I’m looking to have a quick chat with Becky Morris. Is that you?”
“Yeah,” she said, looking a little hunted. “Sorry, you’re…from the police?”
“Yes. It’s nothing to worry you. I’m the officer in charge of investigating Aurora Jackson’s death, and I wanted to ask you a few questions.”
“Aurora?” she asked. “Yeah, OK. I mean…I don’t think I can help much.”
“That’s fine,” Jonah said. “I just thought you might know a few more things about her that could help us.”
“Right. I haven’t got anyone who can cover today. We’ll have to talk here. Do you…do you need a seat?”
“No, that’s all right,” he said with a smile.
Becky perched herself back on the high chair behind the counter. “OK. What did you want to know?” she asked.
“I’d like to know if Aurora seemed happy to you in the days before she vanished.”
“I think so. I mean…as happy as she generally was.”
“She wasn’t all that happy a person?”
“Not…not really. Not unhappy. Just not, you know, really cheerful. School was tough for both of us.”
It was strange watching her. She visibly shrank as she spoke, as if weighed down by memories of that time.
“Were either of you bullied?” he asked.
“Yeah. A bit.” She was a mixture of resentful and embarrassed, which was something he’d heard in a lot of bullying victims. Even grown men and women like Becky who by rights should have moved on and forgotten about it. But that kind of thing left a mark on people.
“That’s sad to hear. Was there anyone in particular?” he asked.
“Mostly a couple of girls in the sixth form,” Becky said. “Lisa and Emma. They were twins, and they were pretty crap to everyone.”
“Would you say Aurora had been driven to despair?”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t think she was on the verge of doing something stupid?”
“No, it was nothing like that.” Becky gave a half laugh. “Actually, it’d got a bit better. Topaz’d had words with them.”
Jonah was taken aback. He couldn’t remember Topaz ever sticking up for her sister.
“What did Topaz say?” he asked.
“She saw them pushing Aurora and me around in the middle of the schoolyard, and she stormed over,” Becky said, and he could hear a little note of worship in her voice even after thirty years. “She said to get their fucking hands off us, and if they touched us again, Connor would beat the life out of them.”
Jonah found himself smiling. That was a little typical of Topaz, to use her hanger-on to her advantage. But she’d gone to Aurora’s aid when she needed it, despite her embarrassment at her spacey sister. He wondered whether she would still have done that when drunk or high, and if the person threatening her sister had been someone she was interested in.
“Sorry, I don’t think this is very…I probably don’t know anything that helpful,” Becky said uncertainly, smoothing down her skirt.
“It’s helping me understand Aurora better,” Jonah reassured her. “What about boyfriends?”
“Who? Aurora?”
“Yes.
”
“No. Neither of us was…She didn’t have anyone.”
He caught something in her expression. For the first time, someone wasn’t laughing at the idea of Aurora dating.
“Had she had someone before?”
“Not…not exactly.” There was a momentary pause, and then she said, “Sorry. I need my inhaler.”
She scrabbled under the counter and came up with a blue Ventolin inhaler.
“Asthma?” Jonah asked. “That’s a pain.”
She took a puff, held her breath, and then nodded. “Always had it,” she said, once she’d breathed it out. There was a slight breathlessness to her voice. Jonah knew to be patient, even when he was itching for her to continue.
“So was there some kind of complicated situation? Someone who pursued Aurora, maybe?”
“It…it wasn’t…it was someone she liked.”
Jonah waited, beginning to suspect that he knew what she was going to say.
“She was totally in love with our English teacher, Mr. Mackenzie. I mean, we all were a bit. But Aurora could hardly talk about anything else. And she was always going to see him about stuff, having extra lessons with him….”
“He gave her extra lessons?” Jonah asked. “Outside school?”
“Yeah. He was helping her with a competition she was entering, and she’d written a book, and she wanted him to read it.”
“So would you say…that he might have encouraged her a bit?”
There was a very brief silence. “I don’t know. Maybe. She was always telling me how he looked at her, and there was this thing between them. I guess part of me believed her and part of me thought it was all in her head.”
“She didn’t mention him touching her? Kissing her?”
“No.” Becky seemed positive about that. “I think she would have told me. If she was all excited about a nice comment on her work, she would have told me if something had actually happened, wouldn’t she?”
Jonah made a noncommittal noise of agreement, thinking that that might not be true, if the teacher in question had warned her not to tell anyone.
