asked.
“She looked…uncomfortable,” she said. “Maybe a bit scared.”
“Did they see you?”
“Yes,” Coralie said. “Mr. Mackenzie suddenly caught sight of me. And he was all smiling and asking me to come in, and saying he’d just been recommending a book to Aurora, as if nothing was wrong, and I started…to doubt what I’d seen.”
Jonah nodded slowly. He had heard that exact series of events before on numerous occasions, either from the victim of sexual abuse, or from observers like Coralie.
And yet he felt doubt coursing through him. He needed to think about this piece of evidence against Mackenzie, which fought with everything that was gradually building in his head.
“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly. “I didn’t offer you a hot drink. Let me get you something. I’ll need a few more details from you.”
“OK,” she said, still with that tension in her. “Coffee would be good. Thank you.”
* * *
—
STAVELY HAD BEEN looking out of his sitting-room window every few minutes, squinting down into the car park. The waiting around was killing him. He’d tried playing some Doom to distract himself, but he was too wound up. Four cigarettes smoked one after the other hadn’t even put a dent in the edgy anxiety.
On what was probably the fifteenth check, he saw a car pulling up. He waited there, absolutely still, to make sure he’d got this right. And then he went to pick up his phone.
He sent a one-word message to the number that he had memorized, and then sat and waited. His leg was jiggling uncontrollably.
His phone buzzed thirty seconds later, and he felt a slight crawling sensation up his spine as he read Daniel Benham’s name.
It was time to go.
He stood, shoving his cigarettes and his wallet into his pocket. He checked for his keys, and then let himself out onto the landing.
The anxiety was still there, but there was a large part of him that was really looking forward to this.
* * *
—
HANSON WAS STILL sitting outside the ’60s monstrosity that Stavely lived in. It was within what she knew was gang territory, and she found her heart racing as a group of boys made their way from the nearby parkland across the car park and past her. There was no need for her to be here. The chief had only told her to follow him, not to sit on stakeout. But she felt frozen in place. Or weighted down, maybe.
Damian had texted her eight times since she had stopped replying. She’d been trying to gather herself together for the last half hour. She just needed to drive away, back to the station, but with every new message, the feeling of a wall between her and the world only deepened.
She half saw a figure leave the flat block by the stairs ahead of her, and she had watched him for quite a while before she realized that it was Stavely, his beanie pulled low over his brow and a hunch to his shoulders.
He was heading toward town, and in a sudden, flustered rush, she started the Fiat and began following him. His zigzagging route took him to a graffiti-covered pay phone on Merton Road. She carried on driving, and saw him speaking into the mouthpiece. He looked around him as he did it, and she wondered whether he was afraid of attack, or of being watched. She was glad that his eyes drifted over her without apparent recognition through the side window, and snapped her focus back to the road.
There was a three-car parking bay outside a fish-and-chip shop and a drugstore farther up, and she pulled in there. She could just see Stavely in the rearview mirror, and she made a point of looking in her bag beside her in case anyone else was paying attention.
The phone call didn’t last long. Stavely hung up, and then immediately began moving down the road toward her. He didn’t glance her way as he strode past, head down. She was getting ready to start the car when he stopped at the bus stop twenty yards farther up.
He propped himself against the seats, pulling out a cigarette. She let her hand drop from the ignition, pulled out her phone, and made a show of fiddling with it. She wondered if she was being stupid. Was Stavely likely to be going anywhere in particular right now? He’d been home several hours after being released, and hadn’t immediately gone to talk to anyone.
The phone call was the bit that piqued her interest,