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.
“Anything so far?”
O’Malley glanced up at him. “Nothing in particular,” he said. “Only a general feeling of doubt about what all the kids said. No drugs, no sexy business, hardly any beer…I’d expect more from a religious gathering.”
“It’s unconvincing?”
“They were teenagers having a party,” O’Malley replied. “What would you say?”
Jonah nodded. There were many reasons for hiding things like that. The simple fact that they didn’t want to get in trouble was one, and guilt at having a good time when Aurora had gone missing. But then there were other reasons, too, like knowing full well what had happened to her and trying to conceal it.
“Any thoughts yet, Ben?” he asked his other sergeant.
“Ah, give him a while. He’s had to organize his pens, poor lad….” O’Malley said with a grin. Lightman glanced up and shook his head at him wryly, and then went back to reading.
Jonah smiled. It was true that O’Malley was quicker, because he dispensed with organization and chose instead instinct and a swift ability to make connections. It was hard to imagine how he must have survived in the army, this irreverent, undisciplined, fiercely intelligent man who was in a constant battle with the temptation to obliterate himself with drink.
Hanson materialized at his elbow clutching a drink in a disposable cup. He gave her a grin.
“Ready to go, Juliette?”
Hanson nodded and pulled her bag off the back of her chair.
“I’m leaving the two of you to hold the fort,” he said to his sergeants.
“Kind of you.” Said by O’Malley, and with deep sarcasm, of course.
“Don’t stay past ten unless anything significant comes up.”
* * *
—
“TOM JACKSON PHONED while you were eating,” Hanson told him once they were in the car. “It got patched through to me. He wanted to know if the press would be involved soon. I said you’d have to answer that.”
He nodded. They were leaving Southampton and striking out west into the New Forest, the sun full in their faces and uncomfortably bright.
“I’ll give him a ring later this evening,” Jonah said.
“He also wanted us to know that their elder daughter had arrived from Edinburgh. She’s got Connor Dooley with her. She married him, did you know that? Even though she calls herself Jackson still.”
Jonah nodded. He had known. Had followed the stories of all of them to a greater or lesser extent. It had been impossible not to watch as they traced their lives out over the years.
“A bit easier if they’ve come here, isn’t it?”
Jonah smiled. “It is. But a shame we don’t get a trip to Edinburgh. I love those crappy motels they find.”
He’d hoped to break the news to the Jacksons’ surviving daughter himself, but knew that had been optimistic. He’d talk to them tomorrow anyway, after the press briefing. This evening’s schedule included Brett Parker, Daniel Benham, and Jojo Magos. Coralie Ribbans was in London and would have to wait, too.
He wondered if Topaz was still on good terms with Coralie. He knew that the relationship had changed gradually. Their claustrophobic, slightly manipulative pairing had suffered when Topaz and Connor had become an item.
Jonah had been surprised when Topaz and Connor got together. Connor had been the silent, resentful admirer most of the way through school. And Topaz had known. Of course she had. She’d played up to it and then retreated, over and over. She liked, of course, having him panting after her. Doing everything she wanted. Making her life easy.
It had been hard for Jonah to like the fifteen-year-old Topaz.
But over the year after Aurora’s disappearance, something had changed. Loss does strange things to people, he thought. Or maybe Topaz had just started to grow up.
“So you were at school with all of them, then? Topaz Jackson, Daniel Benham…”
“Yes, I was,” Jonah agreed.
“Were you friends?”
Jonah instinctively disliked the question. He wasn’t ready to talk about his own experiences. Particularly not about a particular experience.
And it would have sounded odd to her if he’d told her the truth, that he’d been fascinated by them. By their air of mystery and sensuality, and by the stories about Topaz and Coralie.
And at the other end of the spectrum of teenage girlhood, Jojo, whom he had watched skateboarding at the park in a tank top with no bra, her stomach on display and a pair of Calvin Klein boxers riding up above her low-slung jeans.