Brett was smiling, but his gaze moved and fell on Aurora. She didn’t have time to pretend she was happy that her sister was moving in on him.
His smile faded, and he pulled away from Topaz a little. “Hey, we should dance!” he said. He bent to put his drink down and then moved a little closer to Connor and Aurora. “Come on!”
He started nodding and swaying slightly.
Topaz didn’t approach him. Instead, she walked over to Coralie and took her hands. She drew her friend toward her and began to dance, too, pressed against her, with her hands on Coralie’s back.
Aurora jumped as Connor suddenly started to move again. He pushed at her to get her to go with him.
“Sorry. I don’t really feel like dancing anymore,” she said quietly.
“Don’t be stupid,” Connor said, and he pressed closer to her.
She didn’t want him to touch her anymore. More than that, she didn’t want him to force her to move with him. Her arms felt limp and her feet had turned into heavy, clumsy things.
She saw Topaz spin Coralie round, and then look from Brett to Connor, and back again. Both of the boys were watching her, and Aurora couldn’t help watching, too.
With a smile, Topaz half turned and drew Coralie toward her, tilting her head until their mouths met. Coralie did not resist. She responded by putting her arms round Topaz and pulling her further into the kiss.
Aurora couldn’t help staring. She was as mesmerized as Connor and Brett, for very different reasons.
She tried to ask herself if Topaz was really into girls and not boys. If she had missed it somehow in Topaz’s behavior. But she remembered too many boyfriends, too many trysts outside the school gym or behind the bus shelter. Too much flirting and touching.
Brett laughed. “Whoa, girls.”
Topaz only paused for a moment. She looked away for long enough to give him a wicked grin and then took a bundle of Coralie’s hair and drew her head backward. Topaz lowered her mouth to her friend’s throat and began to lick and kiss along the top of her collarbone.
Brett moved toward them slowly, one hand to the back of his own neck as he watched. And then he moved in closer, and Topaz opened the group to include him. She let him press his mouth down on hers. His hand moved to Coralie’s back, and then slid down inside her skirt.
Aurora’s nausea grew. She pulled away from Connor, but he was trying to hold on to her.
“I want to go,” she said, and wrenched herself free.
“Don’t,” Connor said. It was a little bit desperate, the way he said it, but Aurora was done with all of them.
She turned and tripped away from the campsite, out into the darkness of the trees.
21
Jonah called through to O’Malley and Hanson via Bluetooth the moment they were moving again. Hanson answered immediately and with enthusiasm.
“Can you get Domnall on the line, too?” Jonah asked.
“I don’t know where he is,” Hanson replied. “I’ve not seen him since you left.”
Which wasn’t that unusual. If the DS had a lead, he would generally pursue it in whatever direction it took him without taking the time to communicate with the team.
“All right. I’ll call his cellphone later. Give me your updates.”
“OK. I’ve got something from forensics. Linda McCullough wants you to call her. They’ve taken a proper look at a beer can that was in the stash with the body, and it’s half full of Dexedrine.”
“Half full?” Jonah asked.
“Yes,” Hanson agreed. “There’s something really off about it, she says. There’s only a little of it toward the bottom that’s been dissolved, and the rest is still totally dry.”
Jonah processed this. “So the powder went in there after the can had been drunk,” he said.
“That’s what she thinks.”
There was something disconcerting in that. Jonah could see a few possibilities: it had been a failed attempt at spiking someone’s drink after the drink had been finished; it had been a hurried disposal of the drugs; or it had been planted there to mislead. He was inclined to rule out the second option. There were much easier ways of disposing of drugs than pouring them into a narrow opening in a beer can and then burying it. If a failed attempt at spiking, why had Aurora still ended up dead? Why had it been buried with her?
Jonah had an unsettling feeling that it was the third option, and that someone had planned for the eventuality that Aurora would be found. Could it have been Connor? Had he raped and killed her, and then tried to make it look like Daniel Benham by planting a can full of drugs?
He was aware of Hanson speaking to him.
“Sir?”
“Sorry, what was that?”
“Mackenzie. I’ve found the girlfriend who went camping with him. Diana Pitman.”
“That’s good work,” Jonah said, remembering that he’d only just got hold of the name himself. “Where is she?”
“She’s teaching in a school in York now. Do you want me to contact her?”
Jonah sighed at the thought of a long drive. “Yes. See what you can talk her into. If we have to go to York, we will.”
“OK. I’ll call her. I’ve also had a pretty clean report back about Andrew Mackenzie so far. Google doesn’t find much, either. But I’ve submitted a request to Intelligence for more.”
“You may as well go ahead and call up all the schools he’s taught at to check his record with them,” Jonah said. “If his résumé’s on LinkedIn, use that as a starting point, but check all the dates. The easiest way of hiding career problems is to pretend you never worked somewhere.”
“OK.”
“But leave it until you’ve looked at Connor,” he added. “There’s no reason yet to see Mackenzie as our main suspect.”
“All right.”
He could tell that Hanson was less than pleased about this. She’d clearly been excited about Mackenzie being a missed suspect, and wanted to pursue that line. Half of being a good copper was instinct, he knew. And the other half was knowing when to do the grunt work.
“Anything from Jojo Magos?” he asked.
“Yes. She said she’ll be at Southampton Climbing Wall the rest of the day. She’ll be back on her cellphone at about eight.”
Jonah glanced at the dashboard clock, which read 4:52. Even allowing for traffic, they would be back well before then.