She Lies in Wait

by Gytha Lodge

  “Jesus,” O’Malley said. “It’s…it’s Machiavellian, isn’t it? Everything planned for.”

  “Yes,” Jonah said slowly. “Except for Stavely turning on him.”

  There was a pause, and then O’Malley said, “The original crime. Killing Aurora. It wasn’t deliberate.”

  “Yes,” Jonah agreed. “The other kids were regular drug users. They knew damn well how much would be deadly. It was Brett, who’d never tried anything before, who looked at that bag and thought it was only a small amount, and who was too unaware of the effects of an overdose to recognize them in Aurora. The morning after, Jojo and he went to hide the stash. But Jojo sidetracked to get a dead animal, and Brett went on to start covering the hideaway up. He was the one person who had the opportunity to find Aurora that morning. By the time Jojo came back, he’d realized what he’d done. That Aurora had crawled into the hole while overdosing, and died there. And he vomited. Not from the smell of the animal, but because he’d realized that he’d killed her.”

  “So do we wait until Crime Scene have looked at that computer,” O’Malley asked, “or do we pick Brett up straightaway?”

  “Hopefully he’ll arrive home to see his perfect plan in tatters,” Jonah said with a small smile. “All thanks to a two-bit drug dealer he thought would do anything for him.”

  He wondered whether Stavely would resurface, or if he’d set up an escape route for himself. He badly wanted to ask him some questions.

  But as he thought back over Stavely’s actions, he found himself troubled. Why the knife? Why would he turn up to Brett’s armed with a knife? Stavely must have known that Brett wouldn’t be there, or he wouldn’t have tried to create a crime scene. In fact, he must have known that he was being followed by Hanson, too. So why go armed, and make it much more likely that he would be forcibly arrested?

  Perhaps to get Hanson’s attention, he thought. A man armed with a knife setting off somewhere was a fairly attention-grabbing thing. And then he felt a twinge of unease. Maybe that had been the point, but maybe it wasn’t Stavely who had thought of it.

  What if Brett, who had clearly been directing his actions for a long time, had told him to pick the knife up? And if he’d told him to do that, it had been to make sure that he was getting a lot of attention.

  There was a feeling of wrongness spreading through him. Whatever Stavely had done in the end, it looked like he had waited until he saw Hanson watching his flat, and then drawn her—and, by extension, Jonah and his team—off on a wild-goose chase. He hadn’t needed to go to a phone box to make a call. He could have taken a call on his cellphone, which was probably how Brett had got in touch with him for years. But taking a phone call was a good way of making his next actions seem significant.

  He put another call through to Hanson. “Juliette, do you have Anna there?”

  “Yes,” Hanson answered in a light voice. “Yes, she’s just here, and she’s doing fine.”

  “Great. Can you just find out from her where her husband might be? We’d better warn him about the break-in.”

  Hanson passed that on, and then there was a muttering from Anna.

  “She says he’s gone for some trail running somewhere,” the constable told him. “She says she can try calling….”

  There was a sound from Anna, followed by some talking, and Hanson said, “There’s no reply, but she says she can use Find My Friends on her iPhone. He’s got her added, which means she can see him, too, if she needs to.”

  Jonah waited with his heart doing strange things in his chest. After a few seconds, Anna’s voice came again.

  “He’s off in the forest, she says, near Burley.”

  His heart definitely skipped. He could hear Jojo at the end of their interview, a few hours ago.

  Maybe half an hour? It’s near Burley….

  “Thank you,” he said mechanically, and ended the call. And then he switched the siren and lights back on, trying to ignore the awful feeling that they were way, way too late.

  * * *

  —

  BRETT WAS SMILING to himself as he jogged along the path. This was glorious. The sunshine; the trees; the view. His body felt like a living machine. It felt powerful and perfect.

  He was looking forward to seeing Jojo. He felt such a strange mixture of affection and hatred toward her. Though maybe hatred wasn’t the word. Disappointment, perhaps.

  He’d warned her so many times. With her garden, and with Aleksy. In so many subtle statements.

  And after years of being obedient and helpful she’d suddenly turned on him. The private chat with the detective at the climbing wall that Stavely had reported back on. How she’d trekked into the station the next day to give a statement, and then when she’d come over with the others. He couldn’t get over that, how she’d sat in his house, defiantly looking him in the eye and saying that it was time for everyone to tell the truth.

  She hadn’t listened to his warning. The questions Sheens had been asking them all told him that loud and clear. She’d been leading them toward him.

  He wondered what had changed. Was it Sheens? Had he manipulated her more cleverly than he’d given him credit for?

  He felt a keen sense of pain all over again at the betrayal. That long-ago morning, when they’d hidden the stash together, and she’d used the dead stoat to hide the scent, she’d been definite. She’d told him that she was going to cover up for him. And she must have seen Aurora in there. She must have known that was why he’d puked.

  She’d already covered up for him before that, anyway. She’d said nothing when they all discussed whether anybody had seen Aurora after she’d gone to bed. Even though Jojo had seen not only Aurora but him, too. She’d stood blinking across the fire at him.

  Of course, at that point, Brett had thought it was just his coercion of Aurora she was covering up. A slightly awkward situation, and a vanished girl he needed to find first so he could talk her round.

  But Jojo had told him that she’d hide it for him, or as good as. She’d been on his side. And she’d stayed on his side even when Aleksy had realized that something was wrong.

  It had been utterly stupid, Brett knew, keeping the phone in his study when he wasn’t using it. He was still angry with himself about it. So much careful planning, and he’d been tripped up because he hadn’t thought anyone would be looking in the desk drawers.

  He’d moved it after Aleksy found it, and kept it behind some of his books in the den. And, in fact, he’d swapped to a new phone pretty soon after that, and hidden the old one in the attic. He’d started locking his study, too, because there was still the computer to worry about.

  The strange thing to Brett was that Jojo seemed to be charmed by him, but didn’t want anything sexual. He’d made offers to her, even after Aleksy had died, and she’d always declined. Perhaps he should have realized that meant she wasn’t really on his side. Though she’d laughed and smiled at him, accepted his hugs and his compliments, and listened with that steady gaze whenever he had a small gripe about Anna to share.

  She’d even listened when she’d been raw with grief over Aleksy’s death, and had confided in him that her boyfriend had been planning on leaving her. He’d held her when she sobbed that she’d hounded him, and it was her fault he’d died.

  “It’s not your fault,” he’d said quietly. Which had been a lie. It had been all her fault. She shouldn’t have brought Aleksy into this.

  He wasn’t sure whether he liked the symmetry here. That Jojo was going to die just as Aleksy had. He had the smallest of doubts: That it would be too similar. That Sheens would see through it. That everything would unravel.

  But that feeling of anxiety fought with decades of getting away with this. He’d planned it all carefully, and they wouldn’t be able to connect him. Not with Stavely off laying a confusing scent to Daniel Benham’s house.

 
And besides that, Jojo had let him down. In the end, she’d turned on him. And she had to be punished for that.

  * * *

  —

  O’MALLEY GOOGLED THE Dagger-Edge climb, and checked through climbing-club sites until he’d found directions for getting there. Then they called the switchboard and told them to send the closest squad car.

  Jonah put the call through himself. “You need to park in the car park off Station Road,” he told the operator, “and follow the central path. It forks right. Take that, and then ignore any turn-offs until you’re at a sign-posted fork toward Burley Ridge. They’ll be up there.”

  “How long ago did he leave?” O’Malley asked quietly.

  “I don’t know,” Jonah said. “But Jojo must have been there for more than an hour by now. Maybe two.”

  * * *

  —

  JOJO HAD LEFT Dagger-Edge till last. It was still her nemesis, this climb, with its final lunge onto a hold that should be easy, but which was just too high and too far. Even with a rope, she had never managed to make herself do it.

  And today, she didn’t have a rope. It had been Aleksy she’d been thinking of on the drive here. Aleksy, whom she was beginning to think hadn’t betrayed her, and who hadn’t fallen because of her. Aleksy, and his ability to fling himself without any support at climbs that would make other people blanch.

  Sometimes I think I only make it because I don’t have a choice, he’d said to her.

  Well, today, she wasn’t giving herself a choice.

  Her hands found the jug that started the route. They closed on it and her feet swung into place on the ridge below it. She knew this. She was at home on it.

  The next move was another quick one. She pulled her left foot up and dug her toe into a narrow depression. The toehold felt like nothing, but she was light with adrenaline and she pushed up on it anyway.

  She had her weight set for the next move when she heard a noise behind her. Shifting slightly, she looked down and to her left, and saw Brett below her, pausing for breath with his hands on the back of his head, elbows out to each side. He was in running gear, and there was sweat on his forehead.

  “Hello, Jojo,” he said, and despite the fact that it was Brett speaking—Brett, who had been kind to her for thirty years—a chill ran right through her.

  She was aware that she was only just out of his reach as she called, “What are you doing here?”

  “You brought me here,” he said with a sad smile. “I warned you not to, Jojo. Why have you been talking to them? Why are you no longer my ally?”

  Jojo looked at him for a moment. “Your ally?”

  She had found the next hold with her left hand—a sloper with a good grip to it—and she pulled her right foot up to a crack and pushed upward. She was definitely out of his reach now, but he was stepping closer.

  “You know I didn’t mean for her to die,” Brett said, looking hurt. “You knew that then, but now you seem to have forgotten it.”

  He was talking about Aurora. Of course he was.

  Jojo had the sudden sick feeling that this was how Aleksy had died. That Brett had spoken to him like this, with disappointment and a little anger, and had then killed him. Had he climbed up below him and pulled him off? No, he had been at the foot of Mechanical Vert. Brett had probably walked up the easy way and waited at the top, then pushed Aleksy off.

  “I haven’t forgotten anything,” Jojo said. She took the next move with less certainty. She couldn’t stop imagining Aleksy’s cry as he’d fallen. “I’ve just realized a lot of things. You killed him, didn’t you?”

  She knew she ought to be mollifying him, but she had a burning need to hear him say it.

  “Aleksy?” he asked. “Of course I did. The stupid prick went snooping when he should have kept his nose out. It wouldn’t have taken him much to join the dots.”

  Something between fear and rage took her through the next three moves. She looked down past her feet at a scraping sound, and saw that Brett was on the wall. He was clumsy and inelegant, but he was strong, too. He was making easy work of that first jug.

  He was coming up to get her, presumably planning on catching up with her and pulling her off. The sick feeling in her stomach increased.

  “Jojo, please understand that you’ve made me do this,” he said, his voice a little breathless as he shifted round, preparing to make another move. “Just like Aleksy did. I have never wanted to harm anyone.”

  “You didn’t want to harm Aurora when you raped her?” Jojo asked.

  “Harm her? She enjoyed it. She wanted it. I saw how she looked at me all evening….” He paused as he made another effortful move, and then went on. “You know I never meant her any harm. When I saw she’d died…it was awful. And I’ve been protecting all of you”—he shifted again—“for thirty years. I could have framed any of you easily. But I didn’t. I kept you all safe.”

  Jojo moved up once more, and now had reached the farthest point in this climb she had ever made. The point beyond which she had never gone. She was more than twenty feet up, and the next move was the one that meant launching herself into space and hoping. The last move before she could grab the upper lip and top out. One more move before she could pull herself up onto the grassy top of the sheer face.

  She’d bottled it every time, even with a rope. It had been too high. Too far. She’d abseiled back down, angry with herself. But now she had no way of abseiling, and doing some of those moves in reverse was going to be gnarly. The simple thing—the safer thing—would be to go for the top.

  “Are you frightened, Jojo?” Brett asked, in a voice that was suddenly very different. He wasn’t trying to explain. He was trying to scare her.

  It gave her a cold feeling realizing that it would be a lot easier for him if she simply fell.

  “Why would I be frightened?” she asked, though she could feel adrenaline pulsing through her. Her left leg had started to wobble slightly, and she had to breathe consciously to stop it getting worse.

  “Everyone’s scared of dying,” Brett said. “Even Aleksy. You should have seen his face as I shoved him off backward. He thought he’d made it to the top.”

  Jojo closed her eyes against the image of him falling, but it was still there. The vision of his long, slow descent to the ground. It made her feel as though she were falling already.

  “I guess Aurora…must have been frightened, too,” she said.

  He’d made another move. He was closer to her. Feet away. What if he got close enough to grab her foot while she was there, frozen? Would she be able to hold on?

  “She should have gone for help, instead of crawling away,” he said. “But I suppose she was confused. She thought it was safe in there. And instead, she died there, all on her own.”

  Jojo shook her head. She thought of the brilliant, kindhearted girl, and it made her heart ache. But it made her furious, too. That he’d cut her life short for the sake of gratuitous sex.

  “Fuck you, Brett,” she said, and without thinking any further, she launched herself at the final hold.

  The moment of hanging in space was vast. There was a seemingly minute-long delay before some kind of contact.

  The feeling of her hands closing on the final juglike hold was almost unexpectedly easy. It was only instinct that made her close her hands on it while her brain caught up and realized that she had made it.

  Her right foot kicked something and she scrabbled at it. She found a large bulge beneath her. It was like standing on a step.

  She smiled to herself. It really had been as easy as everyone kept saying.

  She found another, smaller hold with her left foot. She pushed up off it until she could put her right hand over the lip. She dragged and kicked herself upward until she had her right toes onto the edge, too.

  With a shaky last push, she stood up, and turned to
look down at Brett.

  He was doing well for a non-climber. And particularly so for someone wearing running shoes. He had the kind of body tension a lot of climbers trained a long time for, presumably from decades of running and cycling and swimming.

  But the next move was harder, and he was still one short of the crunch point.

  “How’s it going, Brett?” she called down, buzzing with triumph.

  He glanced up at her. She couldn’t tell from his expression if he was concentrating on keeping hold of the rock, or if he hated her right then. She hoped it was the second one.

  “Shall I give you a hand?” she asked, with a grin.

  She wondered if he would screw this one up. His body weight was all wrong, his weight too far over his left leg when he needed to free it up. But he made a lunging jump upward and made it anyway, his height paying off.

  He was one move away from her.

  “All to play for now,” she said. “One last move.”

  She saw him pause and take his right arm off for a moment. He flexed his fingers and then quickly replaced them on the rock.

  “Ah, yeah. That’s the trouble with not being a real climber. Your hands give out first.”

  He laughed. It was a short, breathless bark.

  “They’ll last long enough to shove you off this fucking cliff, Jojo.” Despite the sweat on him, he still gave her a smile. “You should have stood by me and kept quiet about seeing me with her.”

  Jojo gave a laugh. “That’s the thing, Brett. I didn’t see you. I was staring into a fire, and you were past it. You were bloody invisible to me. And you’ve stayed that way. Whatever games you’ve thought we’ve been playing for thirty years were all in your head.”

  She could see that had unsettled him. He was looking up at her, trying to work out if she was telling the truth. But then something hardened in his expression and his gaze fell on the rock again.