by Gytha Lodge
He sent Jojo and Brett to find firewood, and then turned on Topaz.
“You shouldn’t have told him,” he said, his voice low but spiking into volume erratically. “There’s more at stake here than you impressing your latest crush.”
“That’s not what this is about.” Topaz’s cheeks grew red.
Benners ignored the reply. He looked down at her from his rangy six foot three. “We don’t know him, Topaz. Not like we know every other person here.”
“I’ve known him for years!” Topaz retorted. “I trust him.”
“This isn’t about who you trust!” Benners said, and then lowered his voice with an effort. “That stash is not your secret to share. It’s mine. And it’ll be me in the shit if this gets out.”
“It’s not going to get out.”
Connor lifted his head, his hands still in his pockets and his eyes hard. “I’d break his fucking arm if he talked. You can tell him. Tell him I’d break his fucking arm, and I’d enjoy it.”
Topaz rolled her eyes. “For God’s sake…”
Benners gave a sigh. “All right.” He was still angry. Still upset. Trying to be the calm one. “He doesn’t need threatening. Just let him know that we’re…all in this together. OK?”
“Fine.”
Topaz turned and stalked off, with Coralie at her heels. Her ever-present childlike shadow. Aurora knew her sister was about to launch into a rant. She’d heard it often enough out in the orchard at home, though it hadn’t usually been about Benners or Connor. During warm weekends, Topaz’s anger about someone who had offended her, and Coralie’s chiming in, had floated up through her bedroom window until Aurora had closed it or left the room.
Connor wasn’t trying so hard to be calm. “Brett’s got a fucking nerve, poking his nose in like that.” He kicked at the dry earth. His hands were clenched so that his forearms had ridges of tendon and muscle and vein on them.
“He’s just out for a good time,” Benners said. He rubbed his hair, which stood up in sweat spikes. “I’m sure he won’t let on. He’s not an idiot.”
“He is an idiot.”
Benners laughed. “I’m not talking educationally. I mean…he’s not going to get himself in trouble if he can help it.”
Connor grunted.
Benners glanced at Aurora, and away. It made her feel unusually awkward.
“You know…you know I won’t tell anyone either, don’t you?” she said.
Benners gave her a frown. “Of course I do. I’m not worried about you.”
It gave her a warm feeling. That trust of his.
“Good.”
“We should get the rest of the stuff unloaded.” Benners had resumed his cloak of practicality. The calm older brother. The scout leader. Only he’d always been too cool for scouts. “We can leave food till later, as long as we have a tent up and all the cooking gear out.”
“All right. Better than fucking around in the dark trying to do it once we’re drunk,” Connor agreed.
Benners started toward the car. Connor nodded for Aurora to go ahead. He was still angry, but old-dog angry. And he wasn’t as intimidating as he liked to think.
“We should swim,” he called a few moments later. “Did you bring swimming stuff, Aurora?”
“No…but I have some things…I can sort something out.”
“You can’t not swim. It’s the best bit. Moonlight and cold water.” He looked up at her under his eyebrows when she turned. She smiled at the sudden poetry in his voice; at the way his accent stepped up into full-on West Coast of Ireland. Connor reacted with embarrassment. “Sure one of the other girls can lend you. Not Jojo. She doesn’t have any girls’ clothes.”
They emptied Brett’s car and the panniers of Benners’s bike in two loads. All together, there were three tents as shelter in case the weather changed. Seven sleeping bags and thick foam mats. Blankets. A battery-powered radio. Shopping bags of food and bottled water. Cases and cases of beer bottles and cans. Pillows, two camping stoves, and four torches, because Benners’s parents had outbuildings full of that kind of stuff.
They pitched a single tent as a quick retreat in case of rain, and it was already sauna-hot in there by the time Jojo and Brett returned from their wood-finding expedition. They’d tied the wood into bundles and were dragging it with ropes. Jojo’s idea, Aurora guessed. Jojo, who virtually lived outside and was browner in her vest top than any of the boys, despite her fair hair.
“Do not go left along the riverbank,” Brett announced. “There’s a dead animal over there and it fucking stinks. I mean, stinks like the smell you’d get if you opened up a grave.”
“Recently dead?” Aurora asked.
“Three or four days, I think,” Jojo answered, straightening up and rubbing her arm across her forehead. “Three or four really hot days. It’s kind of impressive how much it smells.” She gave a sudden grin. “Hey, maybe we should put it in Topaz’s sleeping bag.”
“Maybe not the right time,” Benners replied, then bent over to fiddle with a guy rope. “Did you find the other two?”
“No. Did they come our way?” Brett squinted back in the direction they’d come.
“Theoretically. Topaz isn’t exactly top at orienteering.”
“But they know the place, though, right?” Brett started tugging off his T-shirt, unembarrassed at having an audience. The top was drenched with sweat, and the well-honed body underneath was glistening with it. “They’ll be all right?”
“I’m sure they will,” Benners said.
Aurora felt suddenly flustered by Brett’s bare skin. She wanted to look, but was worried about being caught. She glanced away and saw Connor’s furious expression. She felt a moment of sympathy toward him.
“Ahh,” Jojo said as she straightened up from untying the firewood and saw Brett’s chest. “Doing that without asking is like visual assault.”
Connor gave a brief, snorting laugh, but Brett just grinned at Jojo.
“But the kind of assault where you actually aren’t saying no,” he said, balling up his T-shirt and chucking it toward one of the tents. “I need a drink. Where am I looking?”
“Here,” Aurora said, pushing one of the double-bagged six-packs of Kestrel toward him with her foot.
He crouched down over the bag. “Ah, not beer. Where’s the hard stuff?”
He hunted around in the other bags, and pulled out a liter bottle of vodka and a couple of plastic cups. Aurora watched him pour a measure into each and then top the cups up with orange juice.
“Are you fucking serious?” Connor asked, laughing unnecessarily loudly. “Vodka and orange?”
“I’m a bloody athlete,” Brett said. “I can’t have a beer gut.”
“So you’re watching your weight,” Connor said, still grinning.
Brett didn’t answer. He held one of the cups out to Aurora. She shook her head quickly.
“Oh. Sorry, I don’t…I don’t want any. Thank you.”
“Really?” His face showed momentary confusion. “Aren’t you thirsty?”
“Yeah, I am. I’ll just have some orange juice.”
She took the bag from him, found a clean cup, and held her hand out for the carton of juice.
“If you’re worried about the taste,” he said quietly, as he passed it, “it’s actually quite sweet. Kind of thing you can drink without having to like drinking. You know?”
“She’s fourteen,” she heard Connor say behind her. His voice was a lot angrier than it needed to be. “And she doesn’t drink.”
There was a brief silence, and then Brett said with that same half smile directed across her toward Connor, “I thought your family liked their drink. You, your dad…”
There was a hot, heavy silence, and then Connor moved quickly toward him. Benners was just as quick. He got in the way while Brett straig
htened up slowly, still smiling slightly.
“What did you fucking say?” Connor spat.
“Come on, come on,” Benners said loudly. “Don’t rise to it. Don’t rise to it.”
Benners had his arm across Connor’s chest, hand gripping his shoulder, and although he was taller he was losing ground to Connor rapidly, his feet sliding in the dry earth.
Brett was shaking his head. “You don’t want to fight me, dude.” It wasn’t even a threat, the way he said it. Just a statement of fact.
“Seriously,” Benners said, and then to Brett, “Just tone it down. We’re supposed to be hanging out with friends, not…”
It was Brett who took a step backward. “All right. All right, that was…OK. I’m sorry. Being a dick. Let’s have a drink, and feel better. Here.”
He pulled one of the cans of Kestrel out and held it out to Connor, who clearly had fight still pulsing through him.
“Come on, Connor,” Benners murmured. “Don’t bother.”
Aurora stepped over to Connor, her heart pounding. “That was my fault. I…I should have just drunk it. Sorry, Connor.”
Connor looked at her, and his expression relaxed a little. “No, you shouldn’t.” There was another one of those heavy silences, where Aurora could feel sweat beading up on the skin of her back. And then Connor lifted his hands and stepped back, shaking his head. “All right.”
He took the beer from Brett, and Aurora saw the condensation standing on the can like a mirror of the sweat on his skin.
“Sorry, man,” Brett said. And he lifted his cup in a salute.
7
It was a strange feeling to be writing case notes based on intelligence when Jonah knew all of this himself. He knew the people he was writing about, too, though not well enough to help him.
Though this group and occasional others had used the area to camp in before, it was not an official site and was accessed through the woods by a winding, unclear path.
He didn’t need to read the notes to help him describe the place. He hadn’t even needed to see the site again. He had memories of tramping the same paths over and over in a search that had widened only in the tiniest increments. He remembered, too, his strange optimism that he would find somewhere that nobody else had looked. It had turned into a desperate sort of determination and had driven him to carry on the search during his leave, and long into the night when he should have gone off duty.
The summary of events was simple, yet strange.
Seven adolescents had gone camping just after the end of term. Three of them had been fifteen, two sixteen, one eighteen, and one—Aurora—just fourteen. None of them had turned in until midnight, and Aurora had gone first. She had taken her sleeping mat a little way from the campsite to avoid being disturbed by the others, who had been drinking and were talking and laughing loudly. She had been well outside the ring of light cast by the fire, and invisible to them.
The others had gone to bed later in dribs and drabs. They thought they had seen Aurora still in her sleeping bag, but none of them was quite sure. They had heard nothing to indicate any violence.
When early morning came, Connor Dooley, fifteen, had woken up thirsty, and gone to get himself some water. He found Aurora’s sleeping bag empty, and guessed she had gone to find a quiet spot to relieve herself. But after some time, he became concerned, and on investigating the sleeping bag found that it was cold and dewy on the inside.
Connor woke the missing girl’s sister, Topaz Jackson, fifteen. A search ensued that gradually brought in all six of the remaining teenagers. After half an hour, Daniel Benham, sixteen, stated that he would cycle to Lyndhurst to raise the alarm. The one driver, Brett Parker, eighteen, was still intoxicated. He and the other five continued searching while Daniel cycled to Lyndhurst.
Local police logged a call from Daniel Benham at 07:09, after he discovered the Lyndhurst police station to be closed and knocked on an adjacent door to use the phone. A squad car arrived at 07:48. By 09:17, a full search team had arrived and the nearby community was alerted shortly afterward. The active search went on for almost two weeks, with more and more of the nation becoming alerted.
Like so many stories of beautiful young girls snatched away, it became a rallying call and a subject of huge speculation. Hours and hours of television and reams of paper were devoted to her.
And then, gradually, the story became old and tired. Thirty years passed, and Aurora was never found.
* * *
—
AT FOUR, HE received a brief email from the DCS, checking in. It was a relief to receive it. He’d been expecting a visit to make sure things were happening and although Wilkinson was easy to work with, firing off a quick summary of his plans was much easier than going through it all in person right now.
Ten minutes later, he received a reply.
All fine. Do the press briefing first thing and we can chat after that. I won’t expect you at the senior management meeting tomorrow.
That was the kind of message Jonah liked, and showed one of Wilkinson’s very best qualities. He believed that his best officers should be directly involved in cases, and he would duck, dodge, and weave behind the scenes to keep them from the endless meetings most DCIs were expected to attend.
Jonah ducked out of the station to eat at just after 6:30. A day of grazing on sugar-packed convenience foods and riding from high to high had left him feeling sickly and in desperate need of something savory.
He’d offered to take Hanson along, but she had declined with a smile. Possibly equal parts not wanting to be stuck having dinner with the boss, and wanting to impress him with how hard she was willing to work.
He told her to be ready for their first house calls on his return. The plan he had put to the chief super had been to visit as many of their list of connected people as possible before the story leaked and they were forewarned. Surprise was a powerful thing, and he wanted them all shaken to hell.
The air was still heavy with heat on Southern Road. The traffic had become sluggish with shoppers leaving the retail park, making it easy for him to jog across the road. He made his way down the cut-through beside the Novotel and struck out toward TGI Fridays, where there would be a greasy cheeseburger to demolish. This was his one regular vice. He could have stayed in the station and picked up a wrap or a piece of cottage pie at the canteen, but he liked to reward himself when he’d done a good run of desk work.
He had never enjoyed being in his office and working through notes. It made him fractious and claustrophobic to be trapped indoors for hours. He sometimes imagined this was the traveler blood in him. But then, who really did enjoy being stuck behind a desk?
He asked the waiter to make it as quick as possible, and sat drinking a Diet Coke while he waited. He lost himself a dozen times in the memories of his newly qualified nineteen-year-old self, and was shocked back into the present by noise.
It was mostly that group of seven who occupied his thoughts. The ones everyone at school knew, and to some extent wanted to be.
Daniel Benham—Benners to everyone back then—had formed the center of the group. He had been the big philosopher, the kind of free-thinking, argumentative student that teachers had either loved or hated, depending on how threatened they felt. He had also been sultry and attractive, decidedly well off, and a talented guitarist and singer. Popularity had come easily.
Topaz and Benners had become an item early in secondary school, drawn together presumably by their shared attractiveness and by their love of rule breaking. The romance had gone nowhere, but they had remained close friends after it fizzled out. And Coralie, Topaz’s pretty but slightly vacuous best friend, had been a willing participant in all their activities, and a loyal follower.
Connor and Jojo had been drawn in pretty soon afterward. It was hardly surprising. Connor was at least as smart as Benners, if not brighter, and was even more a
ntiestablishment. Jojo was as opinionated and quick thinking as either of them, and probably a good deal wilder.
The end result had been a group of five that had attracted constant attention. They had been frequently engaged in battles with the school authorities, but had equally been the school’s star students in debates, music and arts, and science competitions. They had maintained their serious cool by holding parties that had become legendary, helped in no small way by the financial backing of Benners’s parents, and Coralie’s.
And then there had been their sex lives. Benners had dated most of the desirable sixth-form girls by the time he’d turned fifteen, and was known to have spent the night with several of them. Jojo had messed around with some of her older brother’s friends, and then there had been Topaz and Coralie, who had been in a league all their own.
The two of them had been hot property from the moment they had swung their rolled-up skirts through the school’s main doors. Perfectly turned out and fully aware of their power, they had been rumored to have done some very sordid things with some very lucky boys.
The five of them had only grown more fascinating after Aurora Jackson had disappeared. Their ranks had briefly opened. They had expanded to encompass Brett, whose athletic body and handsome face had suited them.
But he was the only outsider ever to be let in. After Aurora, they shut themselves off completely. They held no more parties, and barely exchanged words with anyone else at the school. If they had enjoyed the attention before, they now shunned it. He remembered only ever seeing them at a distance after that, their heads together in some private conversation, their body language hostile.
Jonah let out a sigh, knowing that he would have to pull them apart to get answers. Although thirty years had passed, he strongly suspected that they would present as much of a united front as ever.
* * *
—
HE FOUND O’MALLEY and Lightman still reading at their desks, Lightman’s files all in neat, straight-edged piles. O’Malley’s looked more like a series of rejected novels, a dozen or so opened and then cast aside. The Irish sergeant sat surrounded by them, his graying head bent and his expression lost.