“That’s the filling there. Look at the inside of the second premolar.”
“And…”
“And the chipped second incisor. Definite ID. No question about it.”
Jonah nodded. He hadn’t needed confirmation, but it was official now. It was Aurora.
“Her records show she was fourteen when she died,” Linda added.
“Any cause of death?”
“Nothing solid yet.” She rested the jawbone back on the cloth covering the trolley. “Initial visual examination of the skeleton hasn’t come up with knife wounds or evidence of bullet travel, but that might come down to digital analysis from Forensic Anthropology. We’ll have that in the next few days.” She gave a frustrated sound. “I’d dearly like to have enough material for a tox analysis, but decomposition is pretty complete.”
“Why a tox analysis? Any particular reason?”
“Yes, significant traces of a reason.”
She moved over to a covered workbench and pulled the tarp away. There was a dusting of soil, and within it the outlines of foil-wrapped shapes.
“Dexedrine.” Her gloved hands opened a plastic-wrapped package. She removed one of the foil packets, which had been opened. Off-white powder within. Spongy-looking, like crumbling plaster. “It was in several foil-wrapped packets with sheeting around it, close by the body. The chemist’s taken samples, but he says it looks medical-grade. There are traces of more in the soil, and it looks like some of the ground has been excavated close by. Possibly some of it’s been removed, though whether by animals or not, it’s hard to tell.”
Jonah dipped his latex-sheathed forefinger into the powder, trying to remember those amphetamine-touched years of the ’80s. Had it been Dexedrine behind those many expensive deaths in penthouses? Or speed? Or crystal meth? Hard to distinguish between the older ones and the more recent. So many bodies; so much powder and crystal and muck.
“Can you try and find some tissue to test for traces? If she was buried with all this stuff, it’s more than possible it’s connected.”
“Thank you,” McCullough said dryly. “That hadn’t occurred to me.”
Jonah gave her a slight smile. “Anything else on the body?”
“Well…”
He dusted his finger on the plastic overalls and then followed her to the table again.
“Nothing indicative. The body’s been submerged at some point. But I’d say well after death.”
Jonah thought back to the extensive flooding that had hit the New Forest—what, four years ago? “So she didn’t drown,” he said.
McCullough gave him a level look. “She might have drowned.”
“All right.” He gave her a small smile. “But she was also, separately, submerged. And you haven’t found evidence of drowning.”
“No, but don’t rule it out until I’m sure.”
“Noted. Anything else at the scene?”
“Assorted buried items that we’re searching through. There’s likely to have been some previous contamination of the site, and there are items that might have been carried in by floodwater. So far, nothing exciting. Potato chip packets, a crushed beer can, a rubber ball, some unidentified plastic remnants. No weapons. So nothing for you to get hopelessly excited about. Sorry.”
Jonah shook his head, thanked her, and let himself out of the morgue. He felt a mixture of relief at the natural light outside and discomfort at the sudden arrival of sticky heat. He met Hanson on the stairs, files held to her chest a little self-consciously. It looked like she was still working on the docks investigation, which was pretty committed when there was a murder to excite them all.
She turned to walk up the stairs with him. “Chief’d like an update.”
“I’m on my way.”
Hanson nodded, waited a few steps, and then said, “Is it definitely a murder?”
“It looks likely.”
“Was she shot?”
Jonah glanced at her, slightly startled by the question. “Possibly. No sign of it so far. But more significantly, she was found alongside the remains of a stash of Dexedrine. So it’s possible that she overdosed, but it’s also possible that she found something she shouldn’t have done.”
He saw Hanson’s small smile. The dilated pupils.
“So it might have been the other kids, either killing her or hiding her death.”
“Definitely a strong possibility.”
* * *
—
“FUCKING HELL.”
This in a complaining tone from DS O’Malley, oldest member of Jonah’s team, as the two Intelligence officers deposited four boxes of case files onto the table at the front of the briefing room. His slightly florid face was slack with surprise.
“Don’t use up all the swearwords just yet,” Jonah said dryly. “This is just the locally stored stuff.”
“No, this is the first load of the locally stored stuff,” Amir, one of the slightly awkward Intelligence staff, said, pulling at his tie. “These are from 1983. Then there are another five covering the years from ’84 to ’98, when it was officially declared a cold case. The more recent stuff—which from what’s logged on the system looks like it’s mostly disproved sightings and phone calls from the parents—is on the database.”
Lightman lifted a hand. “Sorry, but…’83? That’s—”
“Aurora Jackson, Ben. Missing person. Domnall’s probably the only one old enough to have heard of her.”
Amir excused himself, and Jonah glanced at his team. Lightman with his total calm in the face of this, as everything; Hanson and the eagerness that made her shift in her seat; and O’Malley, whose face was thoughtful.
Jonah pulled the plastic folder off the top of one of the boxes and opened it. The glossy-printed photo on the top looked strangely new. Aurora, smiling slightly crookedly at the camera in a school photograph. Blazingly beautiful in this picture, though Jonah could still remember her before she’d emerged from the chrysalis of childhood. He remembered the slightly chubby, frizzy-haired girl whose clothes were always a mess. The ugly younger sister of the girl everybody wanted.
He tacked the photo to the whiteboard.
“Seriously?” O’Malley glanced around at Lightman and Hanson. Hanson was wearing a slightly smug expression. She’d known the punch line. “That’s…it’s the biggest missing-persons case I can remember.”