“Sorry…yes. Please. We should go down there. There will be flights….”
Connor hesitated, thinking of the bursar and the fight he would inevitably lose if he left now. Then, cutting through that thought, there was a memory of a hot, hazy summer and a girl with a halo of blond hair.
“Sure. I’ll cancel tomorrow’s meetings. We should go.”
He hung up, and stood unmoving for a while.
So she was by the river….
He thought about what that meant. Then he replaced the spoon carefully, closed his laptop, and started gathering his belongings together again.
4
Aurora
Friday, July 22, 1983, 6:15 P.M.
“We found it last summer, when we were out here for Benners’s birthday.” Topaz was picking her way down the crumbling riverbank. Coralie was in her automatic place just behind her, tripping along on her skinny legs like a foal, always on the verge of falling but never quite doing it. Benners and Connor and Jojo hadn’t arrived yet, but Topaz couldn’t seem to wait to show Brett around.
Brett seemed happy enough to be given the tour. He was close enough on their heels to reach out and touch them both if he’d wanted to. Aurora thought he probably did want to. They all did.
Aurora trailed further back, drunk on heat and sunshine. She was following for the sake of following. She tripped on something on the lip of the bank and stumbled.
Brett turned, remembering her. “You been here before?”
“No.”
“Aurora—” She heard the sharpness of her sister.
Coralie looked at her and whispered, “Great, the love child’s here….”
Topaz had turned to face them all, her body blocking the way uncertainly. Behind her was a huge spreading beech tree, its roots plunging into the glittering river.
“You don’t say a word about this to Mum and Dad, all right?” Topaz said.
“Why would I tell them anything?” Aurora looked up at the tree and smiled. “It’s pretty.”
“I mean it.”
She looked at her sister’s hard blue eyes. She had the quality of sharpened rock just then. Like something carved out of unforgiving stone. Chiseled and sculpted and weathered.
“Of course I won’t tell them anything.”
“Come on, then.” Brett stepped forward and put a hand on Topaz’s dark-bronze shoulder. She yielded, and turned again.
“This way.”
Topaz ducked her head under a spray of glossy leaves, vanishing into the gloom. Aurora let Coralie and Brett go ahead, and reached out to touch the slick green foliage.
“It’s hot here.” She leaned in to whisper to the tree. “Are you thirsty?”
She ducked under, too. In the tree’s shade, the soil was bare and loose and pale brown. There was just the earth, and the smooth roots, and a single shrublike offshoot of the tree at its base.
“Here.”
Topaz pulled two branches of the sapling aside. There was a dim space behind it, where the bank beneath the roots had been hollowed out.
“Nice!” Brett said, stepping forward.
“Take a look,” Topaz said. “There’s only room for one at a time.”
Aurora watched Brett’s broad shoulders tilt sideways as he squeezed his way into the opening.
“What’s in there?” Aurora asked. It looked like the work of animals. Badgers or rabbits. Maybe an otter.
“Private things,” Topaz said immediately. “Things you need to keep quiet. All right?”
Aurora shrugged. “All right.”
And then Brett was reemerging, his face alight and smudged with mud.
“Jesus. That’s some stash. Where did it come from?”
Topaz grinned at him.
“Friend of Jojo’s brother. He had a deal that didn’t come off, and he owed his supplier. Benners bought it all for, you know, cost price.”
“With what money?”
“He asked his parents for it. They didn’t have a clue.”
“He said it was for a new car,” Coralie chipped in. “So he bought a heap of junk for fifty quid and the rest went on this.”
“Fuck me.” Brett laughed, and rubbed at his face. “That’s a lot of partying.” His eyes fell on Aurora. “You need to have a look.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Topaz answered. Her arms were folded across her body, her gaze on her sister.
“Come on. She’s not going to tell your parents. She’d be in as much shit as you. She’s here with us, isn’t she?”
Aurora looked between them, and then saw Topaz wave her hand.
She dropped to her knees on the earth and crawled in, her dress picking up soil. There was the tiniest bit of moisture in the air as she entered the darkness. The earth was soft under her hands, feeling fresh-turned, gravelike.
It was a small space. There was just enough room for her to sit or kneel. Ahead of her, something gleamed in the dimness. She squinted at it, held out a hand and ran it over the wall of dull silver. She realized that these were piles and piles of carefully folded foil packets held in dozens of clear plastic bags.
She didn’t need to know what was in them. Drugs of some kind, she thought. Nothing she wanted to know about.
It was a shame they’d filled so much of this space up. There was a slight animal smell here, and Aurora guessed that whatever had made the hole had been frightened away. She could imagine being a creature and living here. Sleeping here for the winter. Looking after young, safe from predators.
Slowly, she backed out, and stood up, dusting her skirt down. Some of the mud still clung to the gauze, ground in by her knees.
“What did you think?” Brett asked her.
She gave him a small smile. “It’s nice in there.”
She heard Topaz’s noise of disgust, even under Brett’s booming laugh.
5
McCullough angled the jaw toward him.
“Here.”
They were in the Forensic Department, in the bowels of the station. McCullough had rung him an hour after he’d returned from the Jacksons’ house. It was a much faster turnaround than he’d been expecting. IDing a body could take days.
He leaned in, thankful for the age of the body and the mask. McCullough used a finger to hover over the jaw.