to hold the fort,” he said to his sergeants.
“Kind of you.” Said by O’Malley, and with deep sarcasm, of course.
“Don’t stay past ten unless anything significant comes up.”
* * *
—
“TOM JACKSON PHONED while you were eating,” Hanson told him once they were in the car. “It got patched through to me. He wanted to know if the press would be involved soon. I said you’d have to answer that.”
He nodded. They were leaving Southampton and striking out west into the New Forest, the sun full in their faces and uncomfortably bright.
“I’ll give him a ring later this evening,” Jonah said.
“He also wanted us to know that their elder daughter had arrived from Edinburgh. She’s got Connor Dooley with her. She married him, did you know that? Even though she calls herself Jackson still.”
Jonah nodded. He had known. Had followed the stories of all of them to a greater or lesser extent. It had been impossible not to watch as they traced their lives out over the years.
“A bit easier if they’ve come here, isn’t it?”
Jonah smiled. “It is. But a shame we don’t get a trip to Edinburgh. I love those crappy motels they find.”
He’d hoped to break the news to the Jacksons’ surviving daughter himself, but knew that had been optimistic. He’d talk to them tomorrow anyway, after the press briefing. This evening’s schedule included Brett Parker, Daniel Benham, and Jojo Magos. Coralie Ribbans was in London and would have to wait, too.
He wondered if Topaz was still on good terms with Coralie. He knew that the relationship had changed gradually. Their claustrophobic, slightly manipulative pairing had suffered when Topaz and Connor had become an item.
Jonah had been surprised when Topaz and Connor got together. Connor had been the silent, resentful admirer most of the way through school. And Topaz had known. Of course she had. She’d played up to it and then retreated, over and over. She liked, of course, having him panting after her. Doing everything she wanted. Making her life easy.
It had been hard for Jonah to like the fifteen-year-old Topaz.
But over the year after Aurora’s disappearance, something had changed. Loss does strange things to people, he thought. Or maybe Topaz had just started to grow up.
“So you were at school with all of them, then? Topaz Jackson, Daniel Benham…”
“Yes, I was,” Jonah agreed.
“Were you friends?”
Jonah instinctively disliked the question. He wasn’t ready to talk about his own experiences. Particularly not about a particular experience.
And it would have sounded odd to her if he’d told her the truth, that he’d been fascinated by them. By their air of mystery and sensuality, and by the stories about Topaz and Coralie.
And at the other end of the spectrum of teenage girlhood, Jojo, whom he had watched skateboarding at the park in a tank top with no bra, her stomach on display and a pair of Calvin Klein boxers riding up above her low-slung jeans.
But there had been Aurora, too, who had turned thirteen and suddenly grown out of gawkiness into an ethereal beauty. None of them had been quite sure how to approach her after that.
None of this was useful.
“We weren’t really friends,” he said in the end. “I was three years ahead of Topaz and Benners and Connor, and I was a lofty sixth-former who didn’t socialize much with the lower years. Aurora had just started secondary school by the time I joined the sixth form, and I was already a PC by the time she died. I had friends who knew them all better because they had siblings the same age.” And, to a man, they had lusted after Topaz and been fascinated by Aurora.
“Did you have any? Siblings?” Hanson asked.
“No.”
Jonah made it clear that the conversation was not going to turn to him. He wasn’t willing to talk about his family. He didn’t want her sympathy or her morbid curiosity.
Hanson took the hint and kept quiet until she had followed the GPS through Lyndhurst and southward. A mile short of Brockenhurst, they turned off down a private driveway that Jonah had often wanted an excuse to drive down. He wasn’t alone. The press liked to come here, whether invited for interviews or not. Brett Parker’s following had been significant for more than a quarter of a century.
There was a gate, of course, and an old lodge that looked like it was occupied. But nobody came out to ask them who they were. An etched sign asked them to press the buzzer, and so