too, if you’d seen the way he looked at her,” she said with a twist to her mouth. “She only had to open her mouth, and he was already smiling and telling her how wonderful she was. It was all wrong. It was always all wrong.”
* * *
—
JONAH SPENT A few moments syncing up with Lightman and Hanson, edgy with tiredness and the feeling of his thoughts being overloaded. He needed them to keep him on task, and make sure that nothing got forgotten.
What he wasn’t so much in need of was Hanson’s cheerful “I’ve found Zofia Wierzbowski. She’s on Facebook, and calls herself Zofia Wier. I’m sure it’s her. She has Southampton College listed on her education.”
“Right,” Jonah said, trying not to show a reaction. “Is she local?”
“No, she’s in Wroclaw, or however the hell you say it. But I’ve sent her a message, and if I don’t get a reply, I’ll see if I can find a phone number.”
“Great,” he said, feeling anything but. “Anything else for me?”
“Not yet,” Lightman said, and Hanson shook her head.
“I might need you in the interview room shortly, Hanson.”
He headed back to his office and then diverted to make himself more coffee. He’d had too much already, but he was hoping it would somehow break through the boiling fog in his head.
* * *
—
MACKENZIE’S EX-GIRLFRIEND ARRIVED before Mackenzie did. Jonah watched her being escorted past his doorway. Soft cardigan. Baggy tunic top. Round figure. Short, slightly wavy gray-brown hair. And when she turned to Hanson, who was ushering her in, a warm smile. An aura of overwhelming motherliness.
An inevitable feeling of guilt toward his own mother, who had never been anything like that, surfaced. It was compounded by the guilt of not having seen her the night before, and not having managed to reach her yet today. He’d have to try again. He picked up a board marker and scrawled “Mum” on the notepad on his desk, before walking after Hanson and the ex-girlfriend.
He realized on the way that he’d forgotten her name somewhere along the line. He thought about asking Hanson when she paused outside the door with a questioning look, but he was pretty sure that the woman was going to hear through the open door.
“Sit in on this one,” he said to the constable, and they went in.
Jonah thanked the woman for coming, and spent a short while writing a date and time on his notebook, but by the time he’d finished, her name still wasn’t there.
He wrote another note and leaned it toward Hanson.
Can’t remember her name. Kick things off, please?
Hanson shook her head slightly, a small smile on her mouth. “We’d like to record this interview, if that’s OK, Diana?”
“Of course,” she said, that warm smile in place once again and her eyes creasing up behind her thick glasses.
Hanson held her hand out toward the tape recorder hesitantly, and Jonah waved a hand. “Be my guest.”
“This is DC Hanson and DCI Jonah Sheens, interviewing Diana Pitman.”
Jonah wrote the name down, and then sat back to listen while Hanson started in with a few questions.
Diana talked easily, and was happy to take them through the night of Aurora’s disappearance. What she told them synced up with what Mackenzie had said—they had camped together and slept from before midnight until seven A.M.
Satisfied for the present, Jonah asked her to explain the history of her relationship with Andrew Mackenzie—a month and a half before that night—and then, from there, to expand on what had happened between them afterward.
It was in the gradual breakup of their relationship that Jonah found the greatest interest.
“It basically started going wrong after that night,” she said. “His student had gone missing. I understood that. We found out together when we got back to his house on the Sunday evening. We put the TV on to watch something. I’m not even sure what now. Probably a drama. He did like his dramas. And before it started, the news came on….I don’t think he was ever really my boyfriend after that.”
“How so?”
She took a breath, and swallowed. “Sorry. This is ridiculous. I’m a happily married woman and it’s thirty years ago, but talking about it is still…I suppose that’s wounded pride, for you, isn’t it?” She gave a small, slightly bright-eyed smile. “Lasts a lifetime. I still remember how…We were sitting there, half on top of each other on the sofa, both of us tired and a bit hungover. And then he was bolt