She Lies in Wait

by Gytha Lodge

  “No, I wasn’t,” Jonah said, his voice firm this time. “I’ve never been involved with a suspect. I’m trying to solve a case, Juliette. Everything else is secondary. Everything. I gave you Zofia’s name because I’m determined to solve it, even when that meant letting you find out about something I’ve been ashamed of for most of my life.”

  Hanson shook her head, and said in a slightly unsteady voice, “You’re supposed to be—” And then she turned round without finishing the thought, and left.

  She didn’t need to finish what she’d started saying. He knew what she meant.

  He felt, profoundly, that he had failed her. Her next step must be to report him. And there wasn’t anything he could do to stop her.

  * * *

  —

  FEAR ENDED UP taking over Jonah’s afternoon. Every time Hanson moved or said anything outside, he found himself moving to watch her, wondering what she was telling the other two. The combination of anxiety and lack of sleep was deadly and his focus was anywhere but on the case. Where it needed to be. It bloody needed to be.

  O’Malley tapped on his door at quarter to one, and Jonah found his pulse picking up again at the thought that his sergeant was about to weigh in about Zofia. But O’Malley’s expression was neutral.

  “You’ll probably be interested to know that the first phone records are just through,” the sergeant said. “I’ve got Topaz, Brett, and Daniel for this year. Looks like Connor and Coralie are with O2, so that’s going to be a manual permission.”

  Jonah nodded. He’d been through this process a lot of times. Aside from the online portals used by many of the major phone companies, there were still those who only gave out records when permission had been sought and given manually. Requests would go to staff members, who would make a decision and then send the information back. Those could be handled quickly or could take several days to process, and there was no way of knowing which it would be.

  He found a flicker of interest breaking through his tiredness and fear. There could be some interesting interactions among the three they already had. A lot of calls back and forth could be indicative.

  It was frustrating that they didn’t have the messages themselves at this point. Unless there was an overwhelming reason to ask for the content of messages, and approval had been given by a secretary of state, what the police had access to was simply who had called or messaged whom, at what time. Location information could also be gathered, but accuracy was in no way guaranteed, as recent cases had proved. Calls were routed through the nearest available cell tower, which might not be close to where the call had actually been placed. For more precise information you needed a smartphone with GPS, and permission to access it.

  The other problem faced in investigating older cases was records being deleted. The good news was that, thanks to various antiterrorism laws, carriers now had to store records for a full year. But it was up to them whether they kept the information for longer, and it was hit or miss whether they would have data going back further. In terms of actual message content, only a few providers stored this at all, so even with the full weight of the law behind them, investigators often came up with nothing.

  “OK,” he said to O’Malley, telling himself it was time to pull himself together. “Can you start with the last few days? Look at which of those three messaged each other, or any of the rest of the group?”

  “Yup, will do.”

  * * *

  —

  JONAH WAS REREADING the reports on the two fires when Jojo’s tousled blond head appeared through the door to CID. He hadn’t come to many conclusions. His gut instinct told him that the first fire had been to warn Aleksy off. But it could have been more than that. Aleksy had been in the house, while Jojo had been out drinking with a group of climbers, it seemed. Which meant it might have been a first attempt to kill Aleksy.

  There was a lot to ask Jojo. He let himself out into CID, and said to Hanson as normally as he could, “Juliette, can you take over from the PCSO?”

  Hanson nodded, not making eye contact, and went to field Jojo from the door. Jonah could hear her reminding Jojo that she’d met her before. He couldn’t catch any reply.

  He continued to watch as they walked toward the interview suite. Jojo had seen him, but she gave him only a short nod before looking ahead again. She seemed, if anything, a little nervous. He wondered whether she was afraid of being asked more about Aleksy, or about the fire, or whether she’d been talking to one of the others.

  “Chief,” O’Malley said, waving a hand at him. “The messages from Aleksy Nowak’s phone are through.”

  Jonah stopped watching Jojo and drew up a vacant chair with keen interest.

  “I want to look before I talk to his girlfriend,” he said. “Can you bring up any texts from the day of his death? The thirteenth?”

  O’Malley opened up the database file, and searched for a date range including only that day. There were a number of messages both to and from Aleksy’s number.

  “Start with the last one,” he told the sergeant.

  O’Malley opened up the last text Aleksy had sent. It was brief, but immediately made Jonah’s stomach tighten.

  Sorry, I’m afraid I’m at the heath. Maybe another time.

  “Looks like he told someone where he was going,” Jonah said. “Can you bring up the whole conversation between these numbers?”

  O’Malley copied and pasted the number into the search bar. It brought up only two messages, the first sent at ten thirteen on the morning of Aleksy’s death. Aleksy had received a message from the unknown number that read:

  I should have messaged before. I’m sorry about shouting at you. I really am. I was being a total dick and taking a lot of stress out on you. I know you weren’t meaning anything bad, and that you actually care a lot. I’d really like the chance to explain, and salvage what I can of the two of us. Can you forgive and forget enough to at least go for a drink later?

  Aleksy had sent his last message at just after twelve, clearly after a long gap.

  O’Malley gave a huff of air at around the same time that Jonah had finished reading.

  “That’s pretty interesting,” he said. “Particularly given those two messages had been deleted from the phone.”

  O’Malley pointed to the tag “RECOVERED” next to each message.

  “Can you check that number? Is it any of the group’s?” Jonah asked.

  O’Malley dutifully opened up the main database on his second screen, and typed the number in. It didn’t suggest any matches as he was typing, and came up with no saved results once he’d submitted the search.

  “So it’s not the main number of Jojo, Brett, Topaz, or Daniel Benham,” Jonah said.

  “Or Coralie or Connor either,” O’Malley added. “They’re saved on the system, too, even if we don’t have their records. So we’re looking at a second phone, or someone else entirely.”

  Jonah looked again at some of the phrases in those messages.

  I’d really like the chance to explain, and salvage what I can of the two of us…

  There was an implication to the message. It sounded like things someone would say to a partner. And the message had a jokiness that could easily have been Jojo’s.

  Aleksy’s reply, too, sounded like the deliberate shutdown of a partner. It was slightly sulky in tone.

  Had there been a row between Jojo and Aleksy? Was the reference to interference because Jojo had waded in on a conversation? Or was this someone else? Perhaps a lover of Aleksy’s?

  Though Jonah was inclined to think that the tone of the messages was wrong for an affair. There were no declarations of missing each other, no sexual undertones…none of the usual features of messages between illicit lovers.

  Could they be between friends? In a close-knit group, references to the importance of the relationship
between two of them were possible.

  “What do we think?” O’Malley asked. “Did the girlfriend do him in?”

  “Hard to be sure,” Jonah replied, rising, “but it’s unquestionably time to give Jojo a bit of a grilling.”

  35

  Hanson took a few sideways looks at Jojo Magos as she showed her silently into Room One. She was wearing a tank top again, this one with a narrow racer back that left her shoulders exposed. It let Hanson see the amount of muscle that the woman carried.

  She looked a lot younger than she was, despite her hours in the sun. She had a healthy, outdoorsy, left-field look to her that was appealing, even to Hanson. And acknowledging that only made her feel angrier at the DCI. Was all his apparent logic a huge sham? Did he just follow his libido around the place?

  Sheens didn’t take long to follow them. He said nothing as he inserted a fresh tape into the machine. Jojo watched him do it with her elbows propped on the table. Hanson thought she looked anxious, and she wondered whether the DCI had primed her for this somehow.

  Jonah ran the tape, and made all the necessary introductions. And then he thanked Jojo for coming in to speak with them.

  “So we’ve asked you here to ask a few questions about the vandalism and arson at your property,” Jonah said, in what was a surprisingly cold tone as far as Hanson was concerned. “We’ve looked into a previous fire on your property. There was a strong suggestion that it was not, in fact, accidental.”

  “Yes,” Jojo said a little hoarsely. “I don’t think either of them was accidental.”

  “The insurance investigations suggested that it had been started intentionally, using an accelerant,” Jonah said, rotating a piece of paper to show it to Jojo. “Your own petrol was used, and a petrol-splashed set of your overalls was found hidden. And here we have another blaze, this time clearly deliberate.”

  Jojo’s lips parted slightly, and for a moment she just stared at Sheens. “I don’t…What are you talking about?”

  “Why were you outside when I arrived at the scene of the fire?” the DCI asked.

  Jojo focused on him slowly. “Because I saw the fire.”

  “And yet you weren’t doing anything about it?”

  “I didn’t…I was so shocked. I’d just woken up.”

  The DCI raised an eyebrow. “When I first arrived, I believed that you must be unconscious in the house. Receiving no response from you, I went to your room. The bed had not been slept in, and you were still wearing clothes.”

  Jojo looked startled. “That’s because I hadn’t gone to bed. I’d passed out on the sofa. Everything’s been…exhausting. I went to the sofa to read and I passed out. And I woke up, and saw a fire, and a person. I was sure I saw someone out there. And the first thing I tried to do was find them, but they weren’t there. Just this petrol can. And by the time you arrived, I was just looking at the fire thinking that everything was going to go.”

  “The petrol can was next to you,” the DCI pointed out.

  “I know,” she said, frustration sounding in her voice. “I went over to it when I saw it. I knew it was deliberate. And I thought about before…”

  “I believe Aleksy was alone at the house last time there was a fire,” Sheens said.

  “Yes,” Jojo said. “He was bloody lucky not to get caught up in it. I was late back from a pub night with the climbers, and he was asleep.”

  “And can the climbers confirm what time you left?” the DCI asked her. “That you didn’t, in fact, arrive home, smash up the greenhouses and start the fire?”

  Jojo shook her head, looking between Sheens and Hanson as if this might just be some kind of a wind-up.

  “Why the hell would I want to burn what I care about most? My garden, my tools, my house…Aleksy…”

  “Perhaps because your boyfriend had found out something he shouldn’t have about your involvement in Aurora’s murder.”

  Jojo looked as if she had been struck. Hanson felt a strange surge of sympathy for her. Sheens’s harshness was raising a reaction even in her.

  “That’s bullshit,” Jojo said finally. “I had nothing to do with Aurora, and I would never have hurt Aleksy. Not in a million years. And you can fuck off if you’re going to pretend I would.”

  The DCI shrugged as if this wasn’t a problem. “Have you changed your phone number in the last few years?” he asked, and Hanson could see that Jojo was wrong-footed again.

  “What? No. No, I’ve always ported my number. It’s been the same…I don’t know. For fifteen years. Maybe more.”

  “Do you have a second phone?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Not for work?”

  “It’s enough of an arse remembering where I’ve put one phone, never mind two,” Jojo replied with an attempt at humor. “Why do you want to know?”

  “On the day he died, Aleksy received messages asking him to meet someone, and establishing where he would be climbing that day. Messages that were subsequently deleted.”

  There was a profound silence. Hanson was as stunned by this as Jojo clearly was, but Jojo seemed more than stunned. Her whole face seemed to drain of color. She looked ill.

  “What the fuck?” she said, and she put a hand up to her head and leaned sideways in a gesture that Hanson knew well.

  “I’ll get you a glass of water,” she said in a low voice to Jojo, and rose.

  The DCI looked up at her with apparent surprise, and then nodded.

  Hanson went out into the corridor and grabbed one of the plastic cups from the fountain. She filled it two-thirds full, and made her way back in. The two of them were still sitting in silence, and Jojo looked like she might be sick.

  It was a shock reaction, and Hanson knew exactly how it felt. It had happened to her at the age of twelve when she’d seen one of the sixth-formers from her school hit by a speeding lorry outside the school. She’d seen it in a lot of people since, some of them guilty and many of them not. But whatever the reason, it wasn’t going to help them if Jojo vomited or passed out.

  Jojo took a few sips of water when Hanson handed it to her.

  “Can’t you trace whose phone it was?” she said unsteadily, after a moment. “If someone killed him…”

  “We’re looking into it,” Jonah replied in a more neutral voice. “But I thought you might know something about it.”

  “The only thing I know,” she said, “is that those messages weren’t on Aleksy’s phone when they found him. If they had been, I would have told the police eight years ago.” She gave a slow sideways shake of her head. “If someone killed him, there was a lot of time to delete them. He wasn’t found until the next day.”

  “So you’d looked at his messages? Why?” Jonah asked.

  “Why the hell do you think?” Jojo said with sudden anger. “I’d just lost him. I wanted every part of him I could lay my hands on. And…and I was looking for answers to whether…him dying was my fault.”

  There was a moment of silence, and Hanson could see her DCI considering. She leaned forward, hoping she wasn’t about to ride roughshod over his interview.

  “Why would it be your fault?” she asked in a tone that was as gentle as possible.

  Jojo shook her head again, and then said without looking at either of them, “Something had gone wrong between us. I couldn’t understand what it was. Aleksy messaged me that morning and said he was going climbing. He asked if I’d be around later, because he needed to have a serious talk with me.”

  She saw Sheens sit up slightly, but he said nothing.

  “Do you know what it was about?” Hanson continued.

  “I didn’t have a clue,” she said. “I mean, I made an immediate assumption. I assumed he was going to break up with me. I went ballistic at him. I texted him asking what the fuck that was supposed to mean. I said he could talk to me right now, and he didn’t
answer. So I rang him. I rang him a lot of times, but he never answered. I was so convinced he was about to walk out on me. And I was so hurt and so angry.”

  “Did you have any reason to expect a breakup?”

  “No, I don’t…It wasn’t like he was off with me,” she said. “But I could tell something was wrong, and he was trying to hide it. He was always so upbeat, and suddenly he was…brooding, I suppose. Whenever he thought I wasn’t looking. I guess I put two and two together.”

  The DCI nodded, and interjected, “Can you recall whether Aleksy met up with anyone the day before he died?”

  Jojo’s eyes became a little distant. “I don’t…I don’t remember him doing.”

  “He didn’t mention meeting up with anyone?” he asked. “That day, or on the day of his death?”

  Jojo shook her head. “Not that I can remember.” Her eyes were slightly over-reflective in the harsh light. “If I’d had any hint that he was meeting someone else, I probably would have tried to turn up.”

  “So you can’t think of anything that might have triggered the brooding?”

  Jojo shook her head, and then gave a slight frown. “Maybe…There was a row with Brett when we were at his house. But Aleksy laughed it off. I’m actually not sure if that was just before, or…it could have been earlier.” She made an exasperated sound. “It’s so hard to remember. But there wasn’t anything in his text messages after he’d died. Though…I suppose if some were deleted…Was there anything else I didn’t see?”

  “We’re looking at the phone,” he said, and didn’t add that he was curious about that, too. He moved the conversation on to ask, “Could you confirm where you were earlier yesterday evening?”

  “Yes, I was at Brett’s,” she said. “We all were.”

  “The six of you?” Jojo nodded, and Jonah went on. “Did anything happen there that might have triggered the fire? Did any of them seem angry with you?”

  “No,” Jojo said. And then she paused. “None of them seemed angry, but I suppose…I was saying that we needed to tell the truth, even things we weren’t sure about. I said it was time to tell everything, because Aurora’s killer was getting away with it.”