At a little before twelve, Tom Jackson called him back with the list of Aurora’s friends.
“There are two of them,” Tom said. That fact alone gave Jonah both a twinge of fear and a twinge of sadness.
“Topaz says the only person she really talked to much was Becky Morris,” Aurora’s father said. “She came round here a couple of times. Very quiet girl.”
“Did Topaz know where we might find her?”
“Yes, she said she’s found her on Facebook and she’s accepted her friend request. She says if you give her an email, she’ll send you a link to her profile.”
“That would be very useful, thank you.” He read out his email address, and Tom read it out in turn, presumably to Topaz.
“And then there was Zofia Wierzbowski.” Tom spelled the name out carefully, and Jonah could feel sweat breaking out across his skin. “They did drama together after school and sometimes waited for the bus together, Topaz says. I think she was supposed to come round, but she never did. Topaz has no idea if she’s even in the country anymore. Her parents took her out of school some while before…before Aurora. She’d got in with a bad crowd, and I remember Aurora distancing herself from her.”
He wondered if Tom could tell that his heart was in his throat as he said a slightly strangled “Thank you,” and hung up.
He stood looking at that name. An intense urge to screw the paper up hit him. If he wrote a new note, with just the other friend’s name on it, nobody might ever know that Zofia had been mentioned. Tom Jackson wouldn’t be checking up with the rest of the group, would he?
But what about Topaz? What if she decided to contact the girls themselves? What if the case came to court, and a decision to hide his own actions undid everything?
He could contact her himself, to try to limit the damage. But that would be the worst possible thing. She would recognize his name, and doubtless react. And then he’d have to offer up her messages as evidence.
His one chance would be to let the team talk to her, and hope that his name never came up. That she wouldn’t think him relevant to any of their questions. Or better still, that she would have forgotten.
He felt light-headed as he left his office. Lightman and Hanson were both on their desktops, so immersed that neither looked up until he spoke.
“The Jacksons have given me the names of two of Aurora’s friends,” he said as lightly as possible, and Lightman reached out to take the note. It took him a fraction of a second longer to let go of it than he’d intended, but Lightman didn’t seem to notice. “I know you’ve both got things to be getting on with, but I need the second one tracked down. Topaz is sending me Facebook details for Becky, so I’ll get in touch.”
“OK. I’ll take a look,” Lightman said. “Mackenzie’s ex-girlfriend called back. She’s going to let us know what time she can come in once she’s worked out child care.”
“Good. Anything through from Intelligence on Mackenzie himself yet?”
Lightman gave a very short laugh. “Apparently asking for anything back today is optimistic. Amir says they’re snowed under at the moment.”
Jonah sighed. Intelligence was always snowed under. It was a perpetual state. Or at least they liked to say so. “I feel for them. But tell them it’s the DCS’s priority, and they’d better look sharp about it.”
“Will do.”
“Anything to report?” he asked Hanson.
“Not much,” she said. “I’d quite like some of the files O’Malley’s been looking at….”
She looked at the chaos of O’Malley’s desk with a grimace, and Jonah managed to laugh. “I’d wait till he gets back.”
He retreated into his office again, and logged in to his laptop. His heart was still pounding, but he told himself to breathe. He had to put thoughts of Zofia aside, and not sit waiting for his team to find something.
Topaz’s email had come through, and the link to Becky Morris’s profile. Her photo was from some kind of professional shoot, with vivid makeup and a coy pose. She looked uncomfortable, her round face uncertain.
A quick look at her profile showed him that Becky was now a jewelry maker. She ran her own online store called Bells and Whistles, which also had a small shop only a mile away. It was open now.
Jonah grabbed his jacket, and called to his team breezily, “I’m heading out to see Aurora’s friend Becky. I should be less than an hour. Call me if anything urgent comes up.”
It was a huge relief to walk out of the station, away from where they were searching for a Polish woman he had once known. He was so steeped in the feeling that he forgot his own advice to be careful until, halfway down the steps, the sound of a revving engine startled him.
He spun, and saw the departing tail of what looked like an old Fiesta on the far side of the road. But with two lanes of traffic in between, he could see little else.
His heart was back to its accelerated rhythm as he walked more watchfully down to ground level and round to the front car park, where his Mondeo was waiting. He paused before using his remote to unlock it, and then, feeling slightly ridiculous, ducked underneath to check for any strange devices.
There was nothing there, but the feeling of danger remained with him all the way to Becky’s shop.
* * *
—
HANSON WAS STRUGGLING to get on with her work, and wasn’t entirely sure why. Her thoughts kept returning to the DCI, and Jojo, and the tension she noticed in him sometimes when discussing Aurora or her friends. He had been jittery as hell before he left, and she wondered if he knew this Becky Morris he was off to see.
Lightman, sitting opposite her, was absorbed in files on his screen. She was half desperate to talk to him about it and half afraid of saying anything. In the end, she leaned round her screen, and said, “Ben, what do you think of the chief working on a case where he knew the victim? You don’t think it’s a bit…awkward?”
Lightman focused on her, and then nodded slowly. “If he’d known her well, I’d say it was a bad idea. But being at the same school, and having done nothing more than catch sight of her a few times…I don’t think there’s any harm.”
“You think that’s all he knew of her?” she pressed. “I mean, surely he’d talked to her.”
“Not that I know of.”
“And Jojo?” she asked, with that anxiety in her stomach. “He definitely knew her quite well.”
Lightman pulled a considering face. “I don’t think it’s going to get in the way. Like I said, he’s not exactly emotional.”