“So you think Brett didn’t know the girl’s age?” he asked.
“I guess not,” Coralie said. “But next time Topaz talked to him, he didn’t seem interested. I think he was still keen on the blonde.”
Jonah took a note of that, thinking that if eighteen-year-old Brett Parker had liked younger girls, then he might have pursued Aurora that night, in spite of what everyone said.
“So what happened that night?” he asked, moving the conversation on.
Coralie pursed her lips and chewed a fragment off her nail. “Topaz wanted Brett to want her. So we did our usual thing. She kissed me in front of him, and then let him join in when he got excited.”
Jonah wondered why Daniel Benham hadn’t mentioned this. Perhaps he hadn’t felt it was his secret to tell. Or perhaps Coralie was nothing more than a fantasist. But he got the impression this was more about telling tales on her friends in reaction to some perceived slight.
“So Aurora knew?” he asked.
“She saw us going off together.” Coralie was nodding.
Jonah made another note. He wondered exactly how concerned Topaz might have been about her parents finding out. Concerned enough to kill her sister? That would have been a pretty extreme reaction.
“And Aurora wasn’t involved at any point,” he said. “She wasn’t a fourth member.”
The instinctive curl of Coralie’s lip was almost comical. “Are you serious? Topaz would have run a mile. And Aurora wouldn’t have gone near that whole scene. She looked like she wanted to throw up as it was. Bloody prude.”
Jonah had to work quite hard not to suppress a smile. It was refreshing to hear someone talking about an exotic sex life without shame. For some reason police interviews always made people want to underplay everything.
“Was Aurora still there when you returned?”
“We didn’t come back to the camp,” Coralie said, shaking her head. “We were all of us drunk and we passed out. We didn’t see her after that.”
“So you were asleep from then until morning?”
Coralie’s mouth tightened. After a momentary pause, she said, “No. No, I wasn’t. I got up.”
Jonah glanced down, as if checking the original statement. “That contradicts what you said originally,” he said neutrally.
“I know it does,” she said. “Everyone told me not to say anything. They thought…they thought the police would grab hold of it. Because he was already being grilled. And I suppose I felt sorry for him….”
He heard Hanson shift in her chair next to him, and was aware that she knew as well as he did whom Coralie was talking about. For the sake of the tape, however, he needed Coralie to say it.
“Can you tell me who you’re talking about?”
“Connor,” Coralie said, and there was a real intensity to the way she said his name. Jonah could feel her antipathy. “Connor Dooley. He told the police he went to sleep next to Jojo and didn’t get up again. But he did. He got up, and he was sitting by the fire on his own when I got up.”
“You saw him there?” Jonah asked her quietly.
“Yes. I needed to pee.” She fidgeted slightly and dropped her gaze, making him wonder whether that was really what she had been doing. Had she got up to take more drugs? To be sick?
“What time was this?”
“Oh…I’m not sure.” She lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “It was later on. I’d been asleep for a while, and then woken up again.”
“Brett and Topaz were both still there when you woke up?”
“Yes,” she said firmly. “I crept away from them both and went toward the campfire.”
“You didn’t just find a nearby bush?” Jonah queried.
“I don’t…I was a bit disoriented, I suppose. I can’t really…The fire would have been bright, I guess, so I headed that way.”
“You think the fire was still visibly burning at that point?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“And as you approached, can you explain what you saw?”
“I saw Connor Dooley,” she said, more certainly. “He was sitting by the fire, with a can of beer.”
“Did he see you?”
“No,” Coralie answered swiftly. “I backed away. He looked…angry.”
Jonah watched her as she shifted in her seat, the nails of her right hand tapping the table gently.
“Why do you think he was angry?”
She gave him a direct look. “Topaz had gone off with me and Brett, and Connor hated it. He was obsessed with her.”
“You think his attitude toward Topaz was unhealthy?”
“Damn right I do,” Coralie said. “She didn’t want to know, and she’d made it very clear to him a lot of times. But he still chased boys away whenever he could, and watched her with this…possessiveness.”
“Yet they ended up married,” Jonah pointed out. “So Topaz must have had some interest.”
“I never understood it,” Coralie said with sudden emotion. Jonah could see reflections in her eyes. She was struggling with tears, thirty years on. “It all changed that night, and suddenly Topaz was all about Connor. She shut me out….”
“Do you have any thoughts on what might have changed?” he asked.
“I wish I knew,” Coralie said.
Jonah let a silence elapse, waiting for more, but Coralie seemed to have come to a stop. He left with an image of Connor, alone and angry, burned into his mind’s eye.
18
Aurora
Saturday, July 23, 1983, 12:15 A.M.
It was a switch that had tripped in her head. She didn’t even need to try. She was drinking and chattering next to the dimming fire, first just to Benners, and then to Jojo and Connor as they came to take a break from their manic movement. Topaz and Coralie were standing with Topaz’s arm slung round little Coralie’s shoulders, the two of them talking quietly to Brett. She wasn’t worried what Topaz thought anymore. Let her sister do what she wanted, and Aurora would do the same.
“We should cycle somewhere next week,” Jojo said, and Aurora got the feeling she’d missed some of the earlier conversation.
Connor shook his head at her. “We only just cycled here.”
“No, I mean somewhere proper. A long ride. And then camp, and then ride again. Actually get somewhere. You got a bike, Aurora?”