by Gytha Lodge
There had been signs of guilt that pointed vaguely toward all of them in the beginning. Daniel Benham, who had bought the drugs and possibly removed them. Connor, who had been back up at the campfire. Brett, who had a possible predilection for young girls.
And two of those pieces of information, he realized, had come from Coralie.
And now, suddenly, two pieces of information that pointed toward Andrew Mackenzie had emerged. A two-step devastating blow to his reputation. One from Stavely, and one from Coralie again.
What would you do, he wondered suddenly, if you wanted to hide a rape and murder, but wanted to protect your friends, too? What if you were smart enough to realize that you could cloud everything, to point evidence toward multiple people, meaning that there could never be a clear case against one?
To convict, they needed to prove murder beyond reasonable doubt. But that was impossible when there were vague implications that others could have done it.
Had that been the intention from the beginning? Had the body been recovered decades earlier, would there have been fingerprints on that beer can, from Brett or Connor? And then the drug removal to point to Daniel Benham? Perhaps there had been a third indication of guilt to point to the remaining boy.
But then up had popped Mackenzie. He had been snapped going into the police station, and he’d hit the news. There was suddenly a new person to target, who was entirely outside the group, and meant nothing to the killer. And ever since, evidence had appeared that made him look guilty. First from Stavely and then from Coralie.
Someone was manipulating all of this. Planting evidence, and using Coralie and Stavely. And possibly ringing to check that Coralie was doing what she was supposed to.
He found himself thinking again of that can full of Dexedrine, and what it had been supposed to tell them.
It was supposed to imply an overdose.
But—the big but—that would only work if the killer knew Aurora had died from an overdose. Otherwise, a can full of drugs at the crime scene would have meant nothing.
His hand felt a little disconnected from the rest of him as he put a call through to McCullough.
“Hi, Linda,” he said, at her wary answer. “The original crime scene, from 1983. The campsite. There was a lot of peripheral stuff collected from there, wasn’t there?”
“Yes, though it’s nothing I’ve been looking at.”
“But you’ve got access to it?” he asked.
“If I go and dig around in the archives,” she said, sounding less than enthusiastic. “Why am I thinking this is going to mean another very late night?”
“The beer can,” he said briefly. “We both agree that it was most likely planted. You might have been able to get fingerprints and saliva off that can if she’d been found, say, a year after her death, right?”
“Well, I was at school at the time,” McCullough said sardonically, “but someone here might have.”
“Assuming that had happened, we’d still have been able to tell whether or not she’d overdosed by then, wouldn’t we? The soft tissue would have been there in part.”
“Well…yes, I suppose so.”
“So why leave it there, when it pointed toward her mode of death, unless it pointed the finger at someone else?”
There was a pause.
“So you’re using this as, what? Evidence that she overdosed?”
“I’m using it as a reason to look elsewhere,” he said. “We don’t have prints, but maybe we were supposed to have them. And because that beer can was there, nobody was supposed to look elsewhere for the source of the overdose. There were other containers found around the campsite. Lots of empty cans and bottles and cartons, and a few cups. The case notes show that they were collected, but never tested, as back in ’83 they weren’t looking for traces of an overdose. And why would they? But now I’d like to know if any of them had traces of Dexedrine in.”
“Jesus,” McCullough said. “That could be a lot of work….”
“But I think it needs doing,” said Jonah. “If we had that, we’d have definite cause of death.”
Linda sighed. “You’re right. And I guess I’m finished with my normal day’s work, and was fondly thinking of getting home before midnight….”
“You’re wonderful,” Jonah said, and hung up before she could argue.
* * *
—
KEEPING TRACK OF Stavely at bus stops was difficult. At the first three, there was traffic coming the other way, so she’d had an excuse to tuck in behind the bus and watch who climbed off. At the fourth, there had been nobody coming the other way and she’d had to make her way round it, and then pull in a quarter of a mile farther down the road.
She’d overtaken the bus and then let it past several times, until they were in the city center proper. She was beginning to worry that they would reach a bus-only area and she would be stumped, but he had climbed off on Commercial Road just before it turned the corner onto Above Bar Street, and she was able to crawl along ahead of him and pull into the Frog and Parrot car park just round the corner.
She strolled toward the car-park entrance, and saw him walk past along the street. It was easy enough to turn the corner and fall into step behind him. But then she almost walked into him when he turned suddenly to enter the big John Lewis.
It wasn’t a good move from the perspective of someone tailing. Department stores with multiple exits were hell. She’d tried to follow a fake suspect through one during her training and had lost them within minutes.
She pushed open the first set of doors and stopped just inside it, trying to find him again. The displays weren’t tall, and as she scanned them, she saw him bending over the top of one of them.
He was in the kitchenware section, which struck her as bizarre. She couldn’t imagine Stavely browsing crockery in his spare time.
She ambled in his direction, trying to walk round behind him to keep out of his sight. She followed the aisle and walked round in front of the tills until she was standing over his shoulder.
She was entirely unprepared for him swinging round and facing her. His eyes met hers, and she felt the animal sense of fear that usually only hit her when she was facing up to a violent offender.
There was what felt like an endless moment while he stood like that, and then he muttered, “Excuse me.” His eyes cut away, and he stepped round her, making his way toward the tills.
She turned to watch him, not quite able to believe that he hadn’t recognized her. That he wasn’t about to do a runner or try to attack her. But then, she realized, he’d never actually met her. She was just a random woman to him, and not an officer who had peered at him through the one-way glass.
He was focused on the counter, and stepped forward quickly to one of the free checkout assistants. He was holding out a thin plastic packet with a protruding handle, and she was slow to realize that it was a large kitchen knife. And only at that point did she realize she’d left her phone sitting on the passenger seat of her car and couldn’t call this in.
* * *
—
JONAH ONLY JUST remembered to make the promised coffee before he barged back in on Coralie. He put it down carefully enough in front of her, but that was the last of the care he was happy to show her.
“I don’t think you’ve been telling us the truth, Coralie,” he said, and then he sat, not bothering to pull his notes out again.
“What do you mean?” she asked in a small voice.
“You’ve come in here with a sudden and convenient story about Andrew Mackenzie, a man who produced zero reaction in you before,” he said. “You’ve previously arrived to point the finger at Connor Dooley, and suggested doubts about Brett Parker. Are you attempting to misdirect us alone, or are you being used by another member of the group?”
Coralie’s cheeks flushed a hot red. “I’m not. All I’m trying t
o do is tell…is tell the truth when nobody…nobody else will.”
“That doesn’t quite wash,” Jonah argued, and then immediately he added, “What were your movements last night?”
There was suddenly an agonized expression on Coralie’s face. “What do you mean?”
“You visited a member of the group, didn’t you? Covertly?”
“We all visited him,” she said, and he found himself momentarily wrong-footed. “I was the last one there and I only went because the others did.”
Jonah’s brain worked back over the messages between each of them. “To Brett Parker’s house?”
Coralie nodded.
“And where did you go afterward?”
“Back to my hotel,” she said in a tight voice.
Jonah could see the lie in her expression.
“Where did you go?”
“I did!” Coralie protested. “I did go back to my hotel. Really.”
Jonah gave her a level gaze. “But not alone?”
“I don’t…” She was absolutely silent, and then she said in a quiet voice, “I want to go now.”
“I need you to help us, Coralie,” he said urgently. “You’re being used, and I think it’s the killer who’s using you. If they’re a friend of yours, or a lover, it doesn’t matter. They raped and murdered a young girl, and there is no guarantee that they haven’t done worse since.”
“None of us did anything!” she said, fiercely. “It was that…that teacher! We all went through hell because of him! I’m not going to help you hurt my friends when you’ve got the murderer sitting here.”
“How long have you believed that for?” Jonah asked. “You didn’t even know he was there until yesterday.”
“I wish I’d known,” she said fiercely. “I would have helped Topaz have him arrested, and we could have…we could have got on with our lives and been happy instead of having to pretend to be people we’re not, and I wouldn’t…I wouldn’t have been…alone.”
Something broke in Coralie, and she was suddenly sobbing, tears squeezing out of her eyes and childlike sounds of misery coming from her mouth.
* * *
—
HANSON WAS RUNNING now. Other pedestrians were giving her odd looks as she pelted down the pavement, but she wasn’t worried. Stavely was already in a cab and driving north, and she desperately needed to get to her phone and her car.
On the plus side, she thought wryly, she’d managed to be away from the phone a good fifteen minutes without compulsively checking for messages from Damian.
* * *
—
JONAH LEFT THE interview room in a bit of a daze. He’d had nothing more out of Coralie, who had continued to shake her head and cry until he’d suggested a break.
He picked up his phone to make a call, and saw that Hanson had tried to call him. He had a moment of worry as he called her back, and was relieved to hear her pick up.
“Slight situation, sir,” she said breathlessly. “Stavely’s just been on the phone to someone, and has now bought himself a large kitchen knife and got into a taxi. I have the reg number. I’m trying to follow but I’ve had to get all the way back to my car.”
“And you’re on your own…?”
“Yes,” Hanson said, with a note of guilt. “Sorry, I…I forgot that you’d said…”
“OK,” Jonah said with an exasperated sigh. “Give me the reg. I’ll call it through.”
She read out the license plate, and he recited it to O’Malley, who had followed him from the interview room and still had his pen and notebook handy.
“When I saw him, he was driving north along Above Bar Street. Vehicle is a black Passat,” Hanson added.
“Well done. Get after the taxi if you can, but warily. Any idea of a destination?”
“No, sir. Afraid not.”
“OK. We’ll be on the road soon and we’re calling it in. And be careful, Juliette. Get your stab vest on if you can and keep well back if he stops and gets out.”
He hung up, and called through to the switchboard staff up on the fifth floor. “I’ve got a vehicle traveling north along Above Bar Street. Black Passat. Licensed cab. I need a squad car on it.”
He was hurrying through CID as he spoke, and he checked in his pocket for his keys before he got to the door. O’Malley was right behind him.
The operator came back on and confirmed that a squad car had been dispatched and that the license plate had been flagged. He hung up just before reaching the door of CID, and said to O’Malley, “Where the fuck is Stavely going with a kitchen knife?”
38
Jojo climbed out of the car and stretched, grateful for the fresh air and the freedom. What would she have done if she’d had to stay in that bloody cage of an interview room? And what if she had to go back?
She tried to bury the thought under her appreciation of the beauty of the place. It was glorious out here. She used her phone to take a picture of the rolling wooded hills that led to the Dagger-Edge climb, and then posted it on the climbing forum to show everyone what they were missing out on. She hadn’t had any takers for her earlier suggestion to come here. That was the trouble with people who had proper jobs.
She went round to the back of the Jeep and picked up her backpack. She tucked the bottle into the side pocket, slung it all onto her back, and started to tramp down the forest path.
* * *
—
JONAH’S PHONE RANG through the Bluetooth moments after he’d started up the car.
“Linda,” he said. “Any news?”
“Yes. It didn’t take that long,” McCullough said. “I cut open a few cartons and cans, and struck gold. There’s an orange-juice carton with the remnants of a pile of Dexedrine in it. It’s been dissolved at some point.”
“Enough for an overdose?”
“Easily,” McCullough said. “There’s probably half a gram of it in the dregs, and a lot of it around the edges of the carton. I’ll weigh it up, but if a whole bag went in there, that’s four or five times the amount you’d need to kill someone.”
“That’s great work,” Jonah said.
“Can I go home now?” she asked. “Or do you need all the results tonight?”
“Tomorrow will be fine.”
He rang off, and stopped to think. He’d always assumed that Aurora’s death had been murder, and that it had been a deliberate act. But what if that hadn’t been the case at all? What if the killer had only realized what they had done the morning after?
It would have been a horrifying discovery.
He began going over, in his mind, every account from the morning after. From Connor stumbling around trying to find her, to Benham’s shell-shocked guilt and Brett’s hungover attempts to cover up the drugs.
It suddenly seemed blindingly obvious, as if he should have worked it out a long time ago. There was only one of them who could have been criminally stupid enough to empty a whole bag of Dexedrine into an orange-juice carton as a method of rape. Only one of them who could have gone back to sleep and left Aurora to crawl away and overdose alone in a hole in the ground.
And in a strange rush of memory that made him feel that he wasn’t quite in his own body, he remembered the party thirty years ago, and the boy who had encouraged Zofia to drink. Who had kept on and on refilling her shot glass. And who had asked Jonah where he was taking her, as if out of solicitousness.
He knew then. He knew for certain. The same person was the only one of them who could have realized that she was dead the morning after, because he had seen her there.
* * *
—
THERE HAD BEEN a frustrating mile where Hanson had seen nothing of the Passat. She’d turned left onto Commercial Road, hoping the cab had done the same. She knew there was a chance the taxi had continued north, along the bus route through the park. She wa
s beginning to think it must have done, and trying to work out where she should go, when she caught sight of it again with a flood of relief. The taxi was turning left onto the dual carriageway of Havelock Road.
It was the route she took to head back out of town. It led to the flyover, and on from there toward the New Forest. Stavely had picked a busy time to travel across town by taxi. It was all stop-start, which made it easier for her to keep him in sight, but must be costing him a fortune. Which only added to her impression that Stavely was being paid to do whatever it was he was doing.
They crawled until they reached the flyover, but things started moving a little more quickly from there. She accelerated to keep the black Passat in sight, and checked the rearview mirror, half hoping to see the squad car. She was torn between fear of that knife he was carrying, and a desire to be first on scene.
Once she’d reached a section of road with no exits, she took one hand off the wheel, and rooted around behind her until she found her stab vest. Putting it on while driving was not her idea of attending to the road, but if it was that or faffing around with it while Stavely attacked someone, she’d choose the slightly hairy driving any day.
Her phone rang while she had one arm in and one out. She glanced at the dash, expecting to see Sheens’s number, but instead saw the word “Damian.” There was no sinking feeling this time. She felt one hundred percent pissed off with him.
He’d already tried calling again by the time she had the stab vest pulled on and fastened. Checking that Stavely’s cab was still ahead, she picked up her phone one-handed, and swiped on the missed call from Damian so it brought up his contact details.
With only a slight surge of adrenaline she pressed the Block button.
* * *
—
JONAH’S ADRENALINE WAS running pretty high, too, as he tore out of the station in the Mondeo. He would not have chosen the newest member of the team to be in pursuit of an armed suspect, however smart and generally sensible she seemed to be. Knives were absolutely not good fun to deal with. There had been one member of his year of recruits killed three months into the job by one.
