broken up, nobody had ever got to hear about it. She was a kind person, Aurora.”
His eyes were leaking tears, and he picked up his water and finished it.
Jonah waited, watching until the witness’s eyes had dried a little. “I’m sorry to bring up a lot of unpleasant memories. But it is important that we ask.”
“I understand.”
“Could you tell me whether you believe any of the other members of the group were interested in Aurora? Whether anyone might have become involved with her that night?”
“I…” Daniel shook his head. “I didn’t think so. There wasn’t necessarily much opportunity. We were all together, and then peeled off to sleep. And Aurora went to bed pretty soon afterward.”
He could feel the sudden tension in O’Malley.
“According to all six statements from the day after the disappearance,” the DS said, “Aurora went to bed first. Before any of the rest of you.”
“Sorry, I suppose…Right. Right. Well, I’m…It wasn’t so much that they went to bed. People sort of…paired off.”
Jonah gave him a steady look. “So there was sexual activity occurring between members of the group before her disappearance.”
“I don’t know about sexual,” he said hastily. “You’d have to ask them. Just kissing, from what I saw. And then people drifted off toward the woods.”
“Can you clarify who we are asking?” Jonah pressed.
“Well, the others. I mean, Topaz, Brett…and Connor and Jojo were cuddled up, though I don’t think it was any more than that.”
So the media hadn’t been far wrong, some of them. Drugs and alcohol and sex, and most of the kids only fifteen. It gave Jonah an uncomfortable feeling to hear it, despite his own memories of being that age—parties where couples had disappeared and then re-emerged, clothing on all crooked and a dazed look to them.
“So to clarify,” Jonah said flatly, “Topaz left the campfire with Brett Parker. And Jojo left with Connor.”
“Yes. Yes, I think so.”
“And you were left with Aurora and Coralie,” O’Malley said.
“No, Coralie…Coralie left to go to bed when Topaz did. She wasn’t much interested in talking to the rest of us. And Aurora decided to go to bed, to sleep, when she realized that the others were getting up to things. It wasn’t really her scene. And I suppose with her sister being involved…”
“So, in fact, you were on your own,” O’Malley stated. “You were left alone, by the fireside, with Aurora. And nobody saw her after that.”
A pause, while Benham’s forehead drew into lines. And then he said, “But someone did, didn’t they? Someone killed her and put her in that bloody hole in the ground.”
* * *
—
LIGHTMAN HAD FOUND a comfortable position in the observation room, his weight back on his heels and his arms folded. He’d grown used to this pose, and he didn’t resent being the DCI’s eyes, ears, and memory.
There had been a short silence in the interview room while Topaz sat back in her chair and folded one leg over the other. Connor had stroked her shoulder at first, and then risen and stretched.
“What if she was raped?” Topaz said, breaking the silence abruptly. “How are my parents going to deal with it?”
“Maybe they won’t need to know,” Connor answered, his hands in his pockets, his head turned to look at her.
“They’ll have to know,” Topaz said shortly. “I don’t…But she can’t have been, can she?” she asked, turning to him. “I don’t see how it can have happened. The chances of some stranger coming along and somehow doing that…And…she was with us. And it was just us. And Benners and Brett would never have done it.”
Connor shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Come on,” she said more forcefully. “Benners wouldn’t hurt a fly. And Brett was unconscious.”
Connor turned his head away from her sharply. One hand came up to his mouth.
“And it was Benners who put her to bed, wasn’t it?” Topaz went on. “You said so. And he wasn’t gone long.”
“No,” Connor said shortly.
“And you just chatted with Jojo, after that?” she said. Her eyes were on him intently. “That’s what you said, isn’t it? You didn’t try to follow—”
“Topaz,” he said sharply. And then he glanced over toward the window, where Lightman was watching. It felt to Lightman as though he and Connor were making eye contact for a moment, though he knew Connor could only see himself in the glass. And then Connor turned away again, and started to take short, erratic steps around the room.
Topaz watched him for a while,