had got her into university, and got her each and every job. She spent a great deal of her time with him, even now, O’Malley noted, which was evident from her social-media feeds.
Contrastingly, despite liking to tag herself in lots of locations and with numerous friends, there were very few references to the friendship group from school. Jonah brooded on that, on her role as an outsider. It made her the most likely person to be truthful, but also meant there were things that were probably hidden from her.
Lightman appeared at ten to seven, having finished his interview with a woman who thought she might have been assaulted by Mackenzie.
“I’m pretty sure it’s not a goer,” he said. “She’s almost certainly been assaulted, by a perpetrator who was slightly similar in look to Mackenzie, but given the location, which is somewhere Mackenzie is not known to have been, I think it’s likely to be someone else. I want to pass it to DCI Matthews’s team for a proper investigation.”
Jonah nodded, thinking again of Zofia and a sexual assault that had gone unreported for thirty years. He needed to decide what to do about it.
At that point, he saw Coralie finally arriving beyond Lightman’s shoulder. She was in sports kit, and Jonah sighed. He didn’t think being late for a police interview because of being at the gym was enough of an excuse.
He took in her pink-and-gray running shoes, which had the exact same colors as her pink top and gray leggings. Over the top, she had a thin, gray-blue hoodie. Her blond hair was tied back in a high ponytail. It was an overwhelmingly young look once again. If it hadn’t been for the slight looseness of the skin on her arms, and the lines on her face, she could have been still at school. And there was a nervousness to her movements, too, that made her all the more girlish.
“Come and sit in on this with me, will you?” he asked Lightman.
As he entered the room and sat in front of her, Jonah remembered decades-old gossip about the parties held at Coralie’s house whenever her father had been overseas, which had been fairly often. He didn’t remember ever having been to one, but he’d heard about the drink, the joints, and the borderline sexual games. And he remembered Topaz discussing one of the bigger parties, and who would and wouldn’t be invited. Topaz had been making all the decisions, as if the house and the party had been hers and not her friend’s.
“There was something you wanted to tell us, I believe, Miss Ribbans,” Jonah said for the benefit of the tape.
“Yes,” Coralie said, nodding. “It was…You asked me about Mr. Mackenzie before. And whether or not…whether I’d seen him. I wasn’t expecting the question, so I wasn’t really ready to think.”
“So you’ve had time to think now?” Jonah asked.
“Yes. Yes, I have. I mean, not about that night. I still…I never saw him. He could have been there. I just didn’t see him. It’s about before that.”
There was a sudden loud buzz. Coralie jumped slightly, and scrabbled in her shoulder bag. She pulled her pink iPhone out, which was continuing to buzz, and then, to Jonah’s surprise, she answered it.
“Hi,” she said a little breathlessly. “Can I talk later? I’m just at the police station. Helping…helping them.”
There was a pause, and then a male voice sounded faintly.
“Yes. Yes, OK. Speak later. Bye.”
Coralie hung up, looking somehow more nervous than she had.
“Just Daddy,” she said as she put the phone away.
“That’s fine,” Jonah said, despite wondering quite seriously about the relationship between Coralie and her father. “Please go on when you’re ready.”
“Yes,” Coralie said, and she pulled her bag back onto her shoulder jerkily. “A few months before Aurora—before that night—I saw something at the school. I’d been late writing an essay, and Mr. Mackenzie had told me to drop it in after school. I had to miss a dance lesson to do it, and I went up to his office at five thirty. The lights were on, so I went in, and I saw…I saw Mr. Mackenzie and Aurora.”
Jonah waited for a moment, and then asked, “What were they doing?”
“He was right up close to her,” she said. “He was handing her a book, and smiling at her, but then he put his hand up to her face.”
And he knew she was camping that night, Jonah thought. He knew she was there.
“What was Aurora’s reaction?” Jonah