was aware that he needed to find Jojo.
He shielded his eyes and looked upward. Jojo was sitting right on the edge of the cliff, swinging her feet gently. She waved at him.
“Are you all right?” Jonah called.
“You already asked that,” she shouted back, and clambered to her feet. “I’m fine. Really. I’ll come down. It’s a bit of a scramble down the back. Give me a minute.”
Jojo disappeared, and then reappeared a minute later round the right-hand side of the cliff.
She nodded to the other officers, who were now standing somewhat lamely around the body. She gave Jonah a slightly crooked grin. “I made the last move on the bloody climb,” she said quietly. Triumphantly. “Seems like it’s easier when you think someone’s going to kill you if you don’t.”
“Well done,” Jonah said, a little wryly. “I take it Brett failed, then.”
“Yeah. Probably for the best,” Jojo said thoughtfully. “If he’d made it, I’d have kicked him off the edge.”
41
Jonah called the Jacksons on the way back to the station. There was a feeling of victory at finally having an answer, but it was more than usually marred by the pain they were going to feel at how their daughter had died: alone, overdosing on drugs she hadn’t wanted to take, having been raped by a boy she’d probably trusted.
Joy answered this time with the rather endearing, old-fashioned habit of reciting the phone number.
“It’s DCI Sheens,” he said. “I’m sorry I’ve left you waiting, but we’ve got some very important developments to tell you about. Would you and Tom be able to come into the station? I think it would be best if you came and talked to me here.”
“Oh,” Joy said breathlessly. “Tom, can we…can we go to the station? I’m sure we can. They’ve got something important to tell us. Do you…do you know who killed her?”
“Yes,” Jonah replied. “Yes, we do.”
* * *
—
“HE THOUGHT I saw him.” Jojo’s voice was unusually straightforward. It was strange listening to her without any sarcasm; without seeing any half smiles or mockery. But he was fiercely proud of everything she was saying, and of how well she would come across in her statement. “He saw me looking over, and didn’t realize that he was too far outside the firelight. He thought I was keeping it quiet for years.”
“Why would he think you would cover for him?” O’Malley asked, being the thorough copper.
“I think he connected my willingness to go and hide the stash with my silence about seeing him. And he told me today that he thought I’d seen her in there, too. You know he puked, when I was dragging a dead stoat around to mask the scent? I thought it was the smell, but he’d just seen her body and realized what he’d done.” She gave a very slight shiver. “He kept repeating that he’d never meant to kill her when he was climbing after me. And he really thought she’d enjoyed it when he raped her….”
“He never talked about you seeing him after the murder?”
“No. I think there was a lot going on in his head that had nothing to do with reality. He claimed he’d been keeping us all safe for thirty years by not framing one of us. He’d taken on this role of keeping us together for some reason. It was…controlling, I think, but maybe he really did think he was the good guy. When I got together with Aleksy, he made a huge effort to be friends with him, too. To keep him onside.”
“So that friendliness,” O’Malley asked. “It maintained right up until recent events?”
“Yeah,” Jojo said. She stopped looking at O’Malley. She glanced over at Jonah and then away from both of them. “I thought so. But there was…there was a row with Aleksy. I told you about that, didn’t I? I could tell something was wrong, but I didn’t guess that he’d figured out Brett’s dirty secret.”
“Did anything else come of it?”
“No,” Jojo said. “Well…yes, actually. Brett was quiet for a bit, and a few days later, my sheds, and most of my garden, were burned down. And then, straight afterward, suddenly Brett was my best friend, and all charm. Flirting. Making me feel…like he cared more than Aleksy, who had barely helped me with the clear-up. It all got a bit messed up.” She paused, and then said slowly, “It seems obvious now that he thought I knew something. He was warning me to keep my mouth shut, with