Hanson glanced in at Brett, who was fiddling with his phone.
“Hard to tell so far. I think he’s not telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth…but then, most people don’t.”
O’Malley laughed. “I meant what you thought of the chief, so.”
“Oh!” Hanson found herself blushing very slightly. “He seems great. And smart, too. I hope I’m going down OK with him.”
“Ah, you’re doing fine.” O’Malley gave her a nod. “Just go on paying attention and you’ll be grand.”
Hanson gave him an awkward smile, and headed back into CID. She switched on the screen of her desktop PC with a sigh. None of them had given her anything in particular to do. Which meant she’d better start looking at paperwork.
* * *
—
IT WAS HARD to look away from Topaz. In part, it was a game of memory. Jonah traced in her only slight changes from that intoxicating fifteen-year-old who had dangled half the boys in their school. The long, dark, glossy hair was much the same. The huge light-blue eyes barely touched by lines; the prominent lips. And her figure looked like a schoolgirl’s, too. Her bare legs were still tanned and smooth, her stomach flat under her white figure-hugging dress. Only her expression had changed. She’d lost the openly flirtatious, knowing glance. She was more brittle and less certain now.
Connor was almost unrecognizable. His skinny frame had bulked out to become stocky. He had grown his buzz-cut hair into a side-parted mane, and the slight waves of it were almost all gray. He had added a short, clipped beard, and with his navy-blue jacket the whole appearance was of privilege and education. Not a trace of that volatile, angry kid whose dad was known to bash him about every so often.
Jonah settled himself in the larger interview room. O’Malley came in a moment later, and pulled up the other chair.
“I’m sorry that the eventual news of Aurora was so sad,” Jonah began. “It wasn’t the news any of us wanted.”
“Can we stop being sorry?” Topaz asked, her voice clipped. “We’ve had fifteen minutes of sorry. I want to know what’s happening. Have you found out how she died yet? Was it murder?”
Jonah shook his head gently. Tried to soothe. “We don’t know the answer to that yet. I hoped that the two of you might be able to help us.”
Topaz gave a slightly twisted smile. “More than we did thirty years ago? When we were dragged in for interview after interview and nothing ever came of it?”
“We have more to go on now,” Jonah told her quietly. He glanced at the tape machine. “Are you happy for me to record this interview?”
Topaz frowned. “I’m not sure I like the implication.”
Connor leaned forward and put a hand on hers. “It’s OK by me,” Connor said. His voice was perhaps the greatest surprise. No trace of his family’s Irish-by-way-of-Southampton. He sounded pure upper-class Edinburgh.
Topaz’s mouth moved as she thought. She tucked her lip behind her upper teeth, and then gave a brief sigh. “All right. You can record it.”
She sat rigidly while the tape was started, and through the introductions made for its benefit. And then she said quickly, “Tell me what’s going on.”
Jonah glanced down at his hands, then nodded. He decided that shock might be their friend here.
“Aurora was found buried in a drug cache you all knew about. Cause of death is currently unconfirmed.”
There was a pause, and then Topaz said sharply, “What was she doing in there? What happened to her?”
Jonah found his eyes traveling to Connor. He wondered about him, this changed man. Jonah had been wary of Connor at school thanks to his sudden fits of violence, but he’d also known him as a firm protector of the girls in his group. He was almost old-fashioned in his beliefs. All about virtue, honor, and female frailty. Which were in some ways the same tenets Jonah’s bastard of a father had held.
“We’re trying to find out what happened to Aurora,” he said. “We need your help with that. I want to know how Aurora ended up with your friends. Was there anyone in particular who invited her? Was it you?”
Topaz did not answer for a moment. Jonah saw the swift cut of her eyes across to Connor, and the slight movement in her mouth, which she then stifled.
“It was all of us,” Connor said.
Topaz gave a slight sigh. “It was the others really. I didn’t want her to be there. I know it’s…it’s not nice. She was my sister. But at that point I found her embarrassing. I found my whole family embarrassing. A scruffy bunch of hippies who had no clue about the modern world.”
Jonah gave a nod. “Not wanting your sister there isn’t a crime.”
“No, I know,” Topaz said, her eyes on the table. “But I didn’t look after her, did I? I didn’t make sure she was OK. I was too busy having fun….”
Jonah let a brief silence ensue, and then asked quietly, “Do you remember who suggested it first? If anyone was particularly keen for her to come?”
Topaz shook her head. “I think everyone felt sorry for her. School was lonely for her.”
Jonah let O’Malley make a note while he asked, “You don’t think any of the boys had a particular interest? That they had any designs on her? I’m sorry to ask you in front of your husband, but I am including him in that.”
Topaz’s face was immediately full of revulsion. “No, I don’t. She was so…so goofy and childish. There’s no way.”
He was aware that Connor was watching Topaz, and not him.
“But she was a beautiful girl, your sister,” Jonah pressed. “Some might not have been put off by her naïveté. It might, to be blunt, have excited some of them.”
“That’s a horrible thing to say,” Topaz said. “Just horrible.”
“Well, what about Daniel Benham?” he went on. “He was two years older.”
Topaz was shaking her head, and gave a harsh laugh. “Look, you don’t get it. She wasn’t fanciable. She wasn’t in the least bit sexual. She’d never had a boyfriend and never been asked out. She just drifted around in her own little world, looking at plants and flowers. Up until, I don’t know, maybe earlier that year, when she stopped being so gawky and started looking pretty, she wasn’t even on anyone’s radar. Not even a little. And even then, once everything sorted itself out, she wasn’t sexy. She was pretty and spacey and a classic hippie love child. She was my baby sister. She wasn’t being preyed upon by anyone.”