of an interview room? And what if she had to go back?
She tried to bury the thought under her appreciation of the beauty of the place. It was glorious out here. She used her phone to take a picture of the rolling wooded hills that led to the Dagger-Edge climb, and then posted it on the climbing forum to show everyone what they were missing out on. She hadn’t had any takers for her earlier suggestion to come here. That was the trouble with people who had proper jobs.
She went round to the back of the Jeep and picked up her backpack. She tucked the bottle into the side pocket, slung it all onto her back, and started to tramp down the forest path.
* * *
—
JONAH’S PHONE RANG through the Bluetooth moments after he’d started up the car.
“Linda,” he said. “Any news?”
“Yes. It didn’t take that long,” McCullough said. “I cut open a few cartons and cans, and struck gold. There’s an orange-juice carton with the remnants of a pile of Dexedrine in it. It’s been dissolved at some point.”
“Enough for an overdose?”
“Easily,” McCullough said. “There’s probably half a gram of it in the dregs, and a lot of it around the edges of the carton. I’ll weigh it up, but if a whole bag went in there, that’s four or five times the amount you’d need to kill someone.”
“That’s great work,” Jonah said.
“Can I go home now?” she asked. “Or do you need all the results tonight?”
“Tomorrow will be fine.”
He rang off, and stopped to think. He’d always assumed that Aurora’s death had been murder, and that it had been a deliberate act. But what if that hadn’t been the case at all? What if the killer had only realized what they had done the morning after?
It would have been a horrifying discovery.
He began going over, in his mind, every account from the morning after. From Connor stumbling around trying to find her, to Benham’s shell-shocked guilt and Brett’s hungover attempts to cover up the drugs.
It suddenly seemed blindingly obvious, as if he should have worked it out a long time ago. There was only one of them who could have been criminally stupid enough to empty a whole bag of Dexedrine into an orange-juice carton as a method of rape. Only one of them who could have gone back to sleep and left Aurora to crawl away and overdose alone in a hole in the ground.
And in a strange rush of memory that made him feel that he wasn’t quite in his own body, he remembered the party thirty years ago, and the boy who had encouraged Zofia to drink. Who had kept on and on refilling her shot glass. And who had asked Jonah where he was taking her, as if out of solicitousness.
He knew then. He knew for certain. The same person was the only one of them who could have realized that she was dead the morning after, because he had seen her there.
* * *
—
THERE HAD BEEN a frustrating mile where Hanson had seen nothing of the Passat. She’d turned left onto Commercial Road, hoping the cab had done the same. She knew there was a chance the taxi had continued north, along the bus route through the park. She was beginning to think it must have done, and trying to work out where she should go, when she caught sight of it again with a flood of relief. The taxi was turning left onto the dual carriageway of Havelock Road.
It was the route she took to head back out of town. It led to the flyover, and on from there toward the New Forest. Stavely had picked a busy time to travel across town by taxi. It was all stop-start, which made it easier for her to keep him in sight, but must be costing him a fortune. Which only added to her impression that Stavely was being paid to do whatever it was he was doing.
They crawled until they reached the flyover, but things started moving a little more quickly from there. She accelerated to keep the black Passat in sight, and checked the rearview mirror, half hoping to see the squad car. She was torn between fear of that knife he was carrying, and a desire to be first on scene.
Once she’d reached a section of road with no exits, she took one hand off the wheel, and rooted around behind her until she found her stab vest. Putting