onto the sand. Unzipping it, she found not a swimming costume, but a tight Lycra vest and a small pair of shorts. A mismatch of turquoise and white.
Quickly, she pulled off her underwear and hid them inside the bag. She slid the shorts up under her skirt as she thought about what Jojo had said about the boys.
She realized there was no way of changing her top without nakedness, and decided to do it quickly, all in one. She emerged from the Lycra vest to see the wood and the riverbank still silent and empty.
She slid off her shoes last, and stuffed everything into the bag. She moved it a little farther up the bank, trying to skip over the dusty sand and occasional spiky beechnuts. It was worse on the way back into the water when she trod on an embedded stone.
But under the water there was soft sand. As she waded in, the coolness over her feet and up to her shins felt delicious. She took a few steps, and then leaned forward into the water, submerging herself as far as her neck.
It was a lot colder than the air. Breathless, she swam to the edge of the sand and then along it. She began to relax into the cold as she went. Once she’d swum up and down a few times, she felt almost warm.
She lay back to look at the deep azure of the sky for a while, drifting, until trees appeared overhead once more and the water was suddenly much colder around her.
Aurora swung herself upright, realizing that she’d drifted downstream. Her shoes and clothes were out of sight.
She was on the verge of turning and kicking away when she heard voices on the bank. A lazy, flirty laugh she recognized well. A deeper voice answering, which made her freeze in place, her hands barely moving to keep her upright.
Please, not him.
9
Jonah left Brett in whatever peace he could find for the evening. He’d requested his attendance at the police station at nine the following morning.
Jonah was in some ways distressed by the shadowed look of the man. He recognized someone seeing head-on the potential ruin of his reputation.
“We’ll be informing everyone who was camping with Aurora that evening. We’re expecting you to keep certain information to yourself, however.”
“I understand.” Brett was a little pathetic in his eagerness to please now. He had poured information at Jonah from the first. He’d told him how much he’d regretted trying a little of the Dexedrine.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he had said, his eyes on the ice in his lemonade, a hollow look to them. “Except that I was an eighteen-year-old idiot who wanted to be the coolest kid on the block. A stash of drugs? That’s great, man. Seriously. I do drugs all the time, man. Even though I also watch every bite of food I eat and go to bed early so that I can train.” He sat back sharply, angrily. “What the hell was I doing?”
Anna had slid her hand through his, and Brett had taken it without looking at her.
“Can you tell me where the drugs originated?” Jonah had asked quietly.
“Yes. Well, no. Not originated from.” And then he had given Jonah an agonized look. DCI Sheens had seen many, many of those looks during his career. It was the expression of somebody choosing whether or not to throw someone to the dogs.
“My investigation is about Aurora,” Jonah told him. “Whoever owned the drugs hasn’t got anything to fear from me. It’s thirty years ago, and I couldn’t track down any buyers if I wanted to.”
It had been enough to tip him. It didn’t usually take very much.
“Look,” he’d said, a pleading note to his voice after he’d spilled the truth. “I know it looks like…I know there was a lot there, but Benners never meant to sell any of it. He’s not like that. He was into his own fun, and helping his friends out. He didn’t profit from it. And he only ended up with such a crazy amount because some acquaintance of his was in trouble with his dealer.”
“So all of you decided to keep quiet about it?”
“Yes,” Brett had said. “We didn’t know what else to do.”
Hanson was bright-eyed and half smiling as they climbed into the car.
“That’s quite a motive for Daniel Benham committing a murder, isn’t it? Being a drug dealer to his friends?”
“It is,” Jonah answered, a little more guardedly. “It’s one