Anna had slid her hand through his, and Brett had taken it without looking at her.
“Can you tell me where the drugs originated?” Jonah had asked quietly.
“Yes. Well, no. Not originated from.” And then he had given Jonah an agonized look. DCI Sheens had seen many, many of those looks during his career. It was the expression of somebody choosing whether or not to throw someone to the dogs.
“My investigation is about Aurora,” Jonah told him. “Whoever owned the drugs hasn’t got anything to fear from me. It’s thirty years ago, and I couldn’t track down any buyers if I wanted to.”
It had been enough to tip him. It didn’t usually take very much.
“Look,” he’d said, a pleading note to his voice after he’d spilled the truth. “I know it looks like…I know there was a lot there, but Benners never meant to sell any of it. He’s not like that. He was into his own fun, and helping his friends out. He didn’t profit from it. And he only ended up with such a crazy amount because some acquaintance of his was in trouble with his dealer.”
“So all of you decided to keep quiet about it?”
“Yes,” Brett had said. “We didn’t know what else to do.”
Hanson was bright-eyed and half smiling as they climbed into the car.
“That’s quite a motive for Daniel Benham committing a murder, isn’t it? Being a drug dealer to his friends?”
“It is,” Jonah answered, a little more guardedly. “It’s one motive of numerous potentials.”
“But he’d have been looking at youth offenders’ time,” Hanson persisted as she steered the car round a small, tidy circle of grass in the center of the driveway and drove back toward the main gates. “And if he wanted to go into politics then he would have known it was going to haunt him. That would have ruined him right at the start. Is he next on the list?”
“Yes,” Jonah said, his thoughts going to that small space in the ground and the drugs hidden within it. “We need to talk to Benham. Brett said there was a lot of it, which I want to check with McCullough. But there’s more than motive in that stash.”
“How so?”
“It’s opportunity,” Jonah told her. “How many people even knew that place existed? I count six.”
“Well, we don’t know.” Hanson was hesitant. “Other people may have stumbled on it.”
“You mean before the murder?” Jonah asked. “If Brett was right, it had only been there three weeks. I’m pretty certain it was a well-guarded secret, that place. And that leaves us with a very short list of people who could have hidden the body there, and I make that Topaz Jackson, Brett Parker, Daniel Benham, Coralie Ribbans, Connor Dooley, and Jojo Magos.”
Hanson nodded, and he could see her mind working. He let her follow her own train of thought. His mind went to Benners, the bleeding-heart liberal turned Conservative. He wondered, not for the first time, how the socialist schoolboy Benners had turned into Conservative MP for Meon Valley Daniel Benham. He couldn’t see much remaining of the left-wing, humanitarian, anarchic, and fiercely intelligent son of a tech-firm millionaire. Not in the news articles about the MP that Hanson had dug out. He wondered whether he would see something left of that boy when they spoke for the first time in years.
* * *
—
JONAH HAD VISITED Bishop’s Waltham only a handful of times. Daniel Benham’s house was an old rectory at the end of a lane full of postcard-pretty cottages. It was a surprisingly large distance from the church.
The gates were open, a growth of wisteria over one half suggesting they probably didn’t actually close anymore. There was more gravel here, but the lines were a little blurred between lawn, flower bed, and driveway. There were wildflowers in tubs on the porch and pansies in window boxes. A real cottage-garden feel.
“Do you think this is paid for with drug money?” Hanson muttered. “Another awfully nice pad.”
They parked alongside a gleaming black Range Rover, which made Jonah more envious than any huge pile in the country. Almost a hundred grand’s worth of car, and it would never be within Jonah’s reach.
At least Daniel Benham, when he opened the door, looked a little more middle-aged than Brett Parker. His long, thin frame had a slight hint of a paunch, and his hair was thin and graying. His clothes were a different kind of expensive. Hunter wellies over cream trousers. A pale-blue shirt. A tweed jacket.
Two chocolate Labradors came rolling out of the door with him, and Jonah tried not to grin at the way Hanson flinched. One of them responded by jumping up at her.
“Monty! Monty! Get down. For goodness’ sake, Monty.” Daniel aimed a halfhearted shove at the dog, who moved aside and then jumped again. “Get back in the house, you useless animal.”
He grabbed for each collar and bundled the two dogs inside, then pulled the door closed behind him.
“Sorry. Demented creatures. Ah, thought you were the advance party back from choir, but you’re not, are you?” He gave Jonah a thoughtful look. “Go on. Give me a clue.”
“DCI Sheens,” Jonah said. “And DC Hanson. Are we all right to come in?”
“Oh. Well, yes. I was planning on a G and T and some Countryfile. But I suppose…”
There was no spark of recognition. At school, they’d chatted more than once over a cigarette, and even discussed Jonah’s desire to join the police. But the MP had forgotten him at some point during the three decades since.
Benham opened the door a fraction and shouted through it. “Polly! Polly, could you come and remove the dogs into the garden, please?”
“Why?” The answer from inside was a girl’s voice rather than a woman’s. A daughter, he supposed.
“Visitors! Come on, Polly. A little haste, please.”
There was movement within. Daniel stood shifting in his Wellingtons, offering no conversation. Jonah was immune to the annoyance of a put-upon suspect. He stood equably looking at the flowers. It was twilight now, and their colors were luminous in the blue light.
Eventually, there was a call from the rear of the house, and Benham let them into the yellow-lit hall. He slid his jacket off and hung it on an overly full hook.
“I’m only just back from walking the dogs,” he said. “I usually give them some ham. They’ll be furious. But I suppose Polly can do it.”
He removed his feet from the wellies and inserted them into a pair of heelless sheepskin slippers, then led the way into a heavily furnished sitting room.
“Mary’s at her mother’s, so you can forget about talking to her.” He sat in a leather easy chair and gestured impatiently for the two of them to sit on a sofa. It was so deep in cushions that it was hard to find space to perch on the edge.