by Gytha Lodge
Jonah picked up one of the last two pictures. It was of a slightly younger Jojo, perhaps age thirty, soaking wet on a drizzly day, her face pressed close to a man’s. He was all strong jaw and five o’clock shadow. Behind them was a rain-drenched view of the sea and cliffs, and both of them were grinning despite the abysmal weather.
He heard Jojo rising and coming to stand near his right shoulder. She was shifting her weight from foot to foot, agitated.
“That’s Aleksy,” she said. “He was my boyfriend.”
Jonah nodded. He’d recognized Aleksy Nowak, the New Forest’s adopted, celebrated free climber, from the photo of him in the paper. There had been a tribute from Jojo, too.
“I heard that he’d died. I’m sorry.”
Jojo shook her head, and rubbed at her forearm. “He didn’t know Aurora. I didn’t meet him until a lot later.”
“Sorry,” Jonah said, and placed the photo down. “I shouldn’t…I’m not here to pry into your life.”
“OK. That’s OK.”
Hanson rose before they had a chance to sit back down. “I think that’s all for this evening,” she said with a questioning glance at Jonah.
He nodded, and told Jojo, “We’ll see you tomorrow, then. At eleven.”
“All right. I was supposed to climb but it looks like it’ll be stormy anyway.”
Jonah found himself watching her, curious. “You still climb?”
Jojo nodded. She gave a slightly defensive shrug. “It was either that or lose something else I loved.”
She followed them to the door, and watched them as they returned to the car. She shut the door only once they had climbed in.
Jonah should have gone to pick up his bike from Godshill and cycled it the thirteen miles to his house in Ashurst. He hated leaving it locked up anywhere out of his sight, even in low-crime Godshill. But it was almost eleven now, and he still needed time to read the overview again in preparation for the press briefing tomorrow.
“Drop me at home,” he told Hanson. “I’ll sort my bike out tomorrow.”
“Sure,” she said, and then, after a pause: “Where’s home?”
He sighed. “Sorry. I’m in Ashurst.”
“Can you…?”
She waved at the GPS, and he dutifully took it down and punched in his postcode.
“So the drugs…” Hanson began, once they’d pulled out onto the road.
“Are an interesting feature,” Jonah agreed.
“How much did they find there?”
“A fraction of that amount,” he answered.
“It sounds like Daniel Benham went back there,” Hanson said. “And if he saw her, and didn’t report it, in all probability he killed her.”
“Somebody, at some point, removed a large quantity of Dexedrine from around the body of Aurora Jackson,” Jonah corrected her, “and afterward failed to report it. We don’t know that it’s one of them, never mind being certain that it was Daniel Benham.”
“But it’s the likely answer, isn’t it?” Hanson pressed.
“Likely isn’t good enough,” he said.
He heard a small out breath from Hanson, but she said nothing. A silence grew as they drove, and Jonah inwardly went back over the interview with Jojo. He found himself circling around that conversation over the photograph, remembering what Jojo had said about her boyfriend. It took him a while to notice that Hanson was looking at him whenever she could get away with it.
“You were friends with her, weren’t you?” she said. “Jojo. That’s why you wanted me to take the lead.”
“Only in the very loosest sense,” he answered. “I was really friends with her older brother. I sometimes went to the house or hung out with both of them at the recreation ground. There was a lot of that in my childhood.”
“So you aren’t worried about a conflict of interest? You’re not close?”
“No, we were never close,” Jonah said, feeling slightly defensive again. He was beginning to recognize that Hanson didn’t like letting things go. “I’ve probably only bumped into her four or five times since, and never done more than say hello. None of those times has been recent. I stopped hanging out with her brother once I started training college, too. It was a conscious choice, in part. He had so many friends who broke the law as a matter of course, and I know he did it himself, too. Though I think he’s cleaned his act up now.”
Hanson nodded thoughtfully. And then she volunteered, “I’ve cut ties with a few of those myself.”
It surprised him to hear it. He’d read her résumé, and thought of her as straight-laced, from a very different background from his. Though he knew well enough that a résumé didn’t tell you everything.
“Well, anyway, that’s good,” she added with a smile. “Knowing someone in a half-arsed way isn’t going to complicate things.”
“No,” Jonah agreed. “It isn’t.”
And he tried not to think about all the things he wasn’t telling her.
12
Aurora
Friday, July 22, 1983, 9:25 P.M.
She was shivering with cold as she picked her way back to the campsite. It was almost fully dark, and her hair was still dripping wet from the river. It had started soaking into her top the moment she’d pulled it on, turning it translucent in patches. She kept her eyes on the luminous red of the fire through the trees as she walked. She hoped it would be warm enough to dry her off.
Topaz, Benners, and Brett were standing in a bunch in front of it. She could hear Topaz’s voice, high-pitched and aggressive, before she had cleared the trees.
“Well, she shouldn’t have told her to! For fuck’s sake. She’s probably got lost swimming down the river.”
Aurora could feel the desire to hide overcoming her again. She often retreated inside herself when her sister was angry.
But then, in a rare moment of rebellion, she wondered why Topaz felt she had the right. Topaz had gone off and left her with people she barely knew. She’d invited Aurora and then acted like she shouldn’t be there.
“Have you checked to see if she’s left clothes on the bank?” Jojo called from where she was bent over beside Connor, pegging down one of the tents more thoroughly.
“No, I haven’t,” Topaz said.
“We should try and find her,” Brett said, glancing toward the path to the river. “She could have got into trouble in the water.”
Aurora didn’t want to step forward, but she also didn’t want them to come looking for her. “It’s all right. I’m here.” She moved into the clearing.
Topaz turned on her. In the firelight, she looked aglow with anger. “Where the hell have you been?”
Aurora came close to the fire and crouched beside it, letting Jojo’s swimming bag drop down beside her.
“Swimming,” she said, and had that strange sense of rebellion again. She didn’t want to apologize this time. Didn’t want to appease her sister. She felt no need to do anything but huddle close to the flames and stare into them.
“For an hour and a half?” Topaz asked. “You’ve spent an hour and a half swimming?”
“Yes,” Aurora said. “Just like you spent an hour and a half looking for firewood.”
There was a silence after that, broken only by the snap and rumble of the fire. It was searingly hot this close. Aurora reveled in it. She breathed in the heat and let her face become painfully warm.
Eventually, she heard Topaz mutter, “Fucking ridiculous,” and stalk away. Aurora could just make her out over the top of the flames, sitting huffily next to Coralie. Coralie put her arms round her and started stroking her hair.
“You need some food,” Benners said, breaking through the silence. He went to the camping stoves, which were no longer lit. “I’ll warm something up for you.”
She could feel Brett hovering next to her, but her eyes were
still on the fire, on a section of log that was just beginning to ignite.
“Did you get in some kind of trouble swimming?” he asked quietly.
“No, I was fine.” She realized it had been a little terse, and gave him a quick smile. “I just went a long way up the river and then had to swim back.”
“Good. I was…We were worried about you. So that’s good.”
He dropped his hand to her shoulder and squeezed it before going to stand next to Benners.
Aurora watched him, uncertain. She had always associated his effortless popularity with selfishness, with lack of care. She was surprised to find some concern for her, when she was fourteen and at the far end of the popularity spectrum.
When she looked away from him, she realized that Topaz was staring at her, her body rigid and her jaw set. Topaz was so often irritable with her, but this was more than irritation. There was a look of hatred on her face so fierce that it made Aurora feel cold again.
13
Jonah could have done with silence the rest of the way home, but Hanson was alert and talkative.
“How long have they been working for you, the other two?” she asked him, a few miles from Jojo’s.
“Five years. Well, Ben has for five years. Domnall came the year after. He was a late recruit to the forces. Used to be in the military.”
Hanson gave him a delighted grin. “Really? He doesn’t…seem the military type.”
“No, I would agree. I’ve never met a man who hates being told how to do things as much as Domnall O’Malley.”
“Maybe that’s why he left,” she said.
“Could be.”
He knew otherwise; knew about the drinking and the warnings and the eventual benders that had put Domnall out of action during active service. He knew also that Domnall had been through a great deal to take him to that point, and had put himself through a great deal to drag himself back. As far as Jonah was concerned, that was Domnall’s story to tell their new DC if he wanted to. Jonah wasn’t going to be the one to break his confidence.
“What about Ben?” she asked. “Where did he spring from?”
“The more standard graduate applicant,” Jonah replied. “He was always set on being CID, and he did his degree in sociology because he felt it would help him. I hired him as soon as he became a DC, like I did you.”
“Where did he do his uniform time?”
“With the Met, interestingly enough.” Which was not a common path. Those who started in the Metropolitan Police usually chose to stay there.
“Wow. City boy.”
“Adopted city boy,” he said. “He grew up in Morestead. Which is why he’s back. Family. Siblings, nieces, and nephews.”
“Wife?” Hanson asked.
Jonah tried not to smile. They always asked, the young women. Some of the young men, too. It didn’t matter that Lightman was reserved and polite rather than warm. The look of him was always enough to drive their interest.
“No, no wife. And no girlfriend, either, as far as I know. He’s all about the job, is Ben.”
He could see her considering that. He wondered if she was interested. She didn’t look as starry-eyed as they usually did. Either way, the interest would wane when she realized that the pretty sergeant’s veneer of cool never rubbed off or broke down. When she realized that flirtation and lingering gazes and striking eye makeup did nothing.
A moment later, Hanson’s phone buzzed where she’d stuffed it into a cup holder. He saw her eyes cut sideways to it and then back, and it didn’t surprise him when she paused at the next junction and picked it up.
“Sorry,” she said as she unlocked it and read.
“No problem,” he answered, wondering if he was keeping her from a boyfriend. Whoever it was, she didn’t answer. She shoved the phone back into its place, and Jonah could see a tension in her that hadn’t been there before.
* * *
—
HE WAS UP until two, eyes going in and out of focus as he went over the Intelligence report. He climbed into bed irritable at the thought of five hours’ sleep, and dreamed off and on about searing hot weather, and a faceless girl being in danger.
His phone rang intrusively at just before seven. His sleep-fuzzy mind went to his ex. His eyes tricked him for a moment into reading Michelle’s name, until he realized that it read Mum.
When was it going to stop, the instinctive assumption that everything was Michelle? When he threw himself into the next doomed relationship? Or would Michelle be the one he could never quite get over, the one he regretted for the rest of his life?
His voice was croaky as he answered. “Everything all right?”
“There’s someone…I recognize them.” Her voice was choked and incoherent, and he felt a familiar wave of depression. “They’ve been outside all night. They’re friends of his. They want me dead.”
“Mum,” he said as patiently as he could. “Nobody wants you dead. You need to take some breaths. It’s a long time ago, Mum. They don’t care about you, or us. Not anymore.”
“Stop it! You always try to say…” She made a choked sound. “Why aren’t you here? You’re supposed to protect me!”
A rush of rage in her that, as always, ended in an equally swift flood of tears.
“Where are you, Jonah?” she sobbed. “I’m so lonely. It’s been days. I’ve seen no one.”
“I’ll be over this evening or tomorrow,” he said. He’d become pretty good at soothing her over the last few years. There were tears almost every time they spoke. “You aren’t on your own. You have Deborah popping in at lunchtime. You can talk to her.”
“No, I can’t.”
She sounded like a toddler. Petulant and tearful.
“But you like her.”
“She never stays anymore. She just does my lunch and then she goes.”
Jonah started to argue, and then realized this might be true. The funding situation had changed, and that might well mean less time. He needed to call up the care company and find out.
“OK. Well, I’ll be over later. And I’ll arrange for Barb to visit, too. OK? She likes coming to see you. We’ll invite her for lunch or something.”
He was always careful when he talked about Barb. He always tried hard to make it sound like she was a friend, and not someone he paid as a companion to keep up the facade that his mother still had friends and a normal life.
“She should have come yesterday. I wanted her to.”
Jonah felt tripped up for a moment. “Did you ask her to? Did you call her up?”
“No. I thought you would.” She was sulky, self-pitying. It was difficult not to find it infuriating. “It’s just the two of us now. I need you to look after me.”
Jonah sighed. He’d been looking after her for decades. Ever since she’d fled from Tommy Sheens and started a new life in Lyndhurst.
Even at ten years old, his relief had been profound. Tommy had only occasionally been physically violent, which he supposed was what had made it so hard for his mother to leave. His abuse was verbal, emotional. He had controlled and manipulated until his mother had doubted her own thoughts. Until Jonah had possessed no shred of self-confidence, and begun to believe his father when he claimed that obeying his every whim was what a loving family should do.
“I was working all day yesterday, I’m afraid, Mum,” Jonah said lightly. “But I’ll call her.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t bother. Maybe she doesn’t like me anymore.”
“Of course she does,” he said. “I’ll ring her in a bit. See you this evening, all right?”
He ended the call and stayed lying there for a moment, feeling frustration in all the muscles of his head and arms. He could gladly have thrown his phone across the room. But instead he rose, finding Barb’s number and sending her a message instead of calling. He wasn’t willing to
wake her up early, and he would forget if he left it till later.
He picked up a towel from the radiator and went to the bathroom. He stood for too long in the shower thinking the same circular thoughts about his mother that he always did. That he somehow needed to save her from herself, but that he didn’t know how. That it wasn’t his fault that she was like this. That it had been Tommy Sheens who’d caused it all, from the moment she’d married him.
By the time Jonah had dressed in his charcoal suit and pale-blue tie, his standard media-facing outfit, he had shelved thoughts of his family. He had forty-five minutes to prepare himself to face the press.
He opened his front door on to a misty day full of drizzle, which seemed like an unfair letdown after the day before. He checked his phone before climbing into his Mondeo. No messages or emails from McCullough. He would be giving the briefing without a tox report. Which in some ways was better. He didn’t have anything to hide. He just had to stand up there and tell them it was Aurora, and that they were pursuing new lines of investigation.
Hopefully, by the end of the day, they’d actually have a few lines of investigation to pursue.
* * *
—
TOPAZ HATED BEING in her parents’ house. She hated the clutter and the unchanging nature of it; the way it made her feel her life draining away while they sat in the tired kitchen and drank tea out of stained cups. More than that, she hated the fact that coming here made her a child again. It made her remember the person she had been.
And then there was Aurora’s room, which was still so very much her younger sister’s. It was dusty and tired-looking now, but it was still festooned with butterflies and flowers, from bedspread to ceiling.
Connor was already in his jogging kit, and seemed unfazed by the persistent rain and the increasing muddy puddles. He was drinking coffee in little gulps, and she found herself watching him while her mother clattered around making breakfast.
They’d barely talked about Aurora since they’d left Edinburgh. For most of the flight they’d made nothing but stilted, facile conversation about practicalities. About getting shopping in for her parents on the way from the airport, and about whether they’d decamp to a hotel for the next night.