have a clue.”
“He said it was for a new car,” Coralie chipped in. “So he bought a heap of junk for fifty quid and the rest went on this.”
“Fuck me.” Brett laughed, and rubbed at his face. “That’s a lot of partying.” His eyes fell on Aurora. “You need to have a look.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Topaz answered. Her arms were folded across her body, her gaze on her sister.
“Come on. She’s not going to tell your parents. She’d be in as much shit as you. She’s here with us, isn’t she?”
Aurora looked between them, and then saw Topaz wave her hand.
She dropped to her knees on the earth and crawled in, her dress picking up soil. There was the tiniest bit of moisture in the air as she entered the darkness. The earth was soft under her hands, feeling fresh-turned, gravelike.
It was a small space. There was just enough room for her to sit or kneel. Ahead of her, something gleamed in the dimness. She squinted at it, held out a hand and ran it over the wall of dull silver. She realized that these were piles and piles of carefully folded foil packets held in dozens of clear plastic bags.
She didn’t need to know what was in them. Drugs of some kind, she thought. Nothing she wanted to know about.
It was a shame they’d filled so much of this space up. There was a slight animal smell here, and Aurora guessed that whatever had made the hole had been frightened away. She could imagine being a creature and living here. Sleeping here for the winter. Looking after young, safe from predators.
Slowly, she backed out, and stood up, dusting her skirt down. Some of the mud still clung to the gauze, ground in by her knees.
“What did you think?” Brett asked her.
She gave him a small smile. “It’s nice in there.”
She heard Topaz’s noise of disgust, even under Brett’s booming laugh.
5
McCullough angled the jaw toward him.
“Here.”
They were in the Forensic Department, in the bowels of the station. McCullough had rung him an hour after he’d returned from the Jacksons’ house. It was a much faster turnaround than he’d been expecting. IDing a body could take days.
He leaned in, thankful for the age of the body and the mask. McCullough used a finger to hover over the jaw.
“That’s the filling there. Look at the inside of the second premolar.”
“And…”
“And the chipped second incisor. Definite ID. No question about it.”
Jonah nodded. He hadn’t needed confirmation, but it was official now. It was Aurora.
“Her records show she was fourteen when she died,” Linda added.
“Any cause of death?”
“Nothing solid yet.” She rested the jawbone back on the cloth covering the trolley. “Initial visual examination of the skeleton hasn’t come up with knife wounds or evidence of bullet travel, but that might come down to digital analysis from Forensic Anthropology. We’ll have that in the next few days.” She gave a frustrated sound. “I’d dearly like to have enough material for a tox analysis, but decomposition is pretty complete.”
“Why a tox analysis? Any particular reason?”
“Yes, significant traces of a reason.”
She moved over to a covered workbench and pulled the tarp away. There was a dusting of soil, and within it the outlines of foil-wrapped shapes.
“Dexedrine.” Her gloved hands opened a plastic-wrapped package. She removed one of the foil packets, which had been opened. Off-white powder within. Spongy-looking, like crumbling plaster. “It was in several foil-wrapped packets with sheeting around it, close by the body. The chemist’s taken samples, but he says it looks medical-grade. There are traces of more in the soil, and it looks like some of the ground has been excavated close by. Possibly some of it’s been removed, though whether by animals or not, it’s hard to tell.”
Jonah dipped his latex-sheathed forefinger into the powder, trying to remember those amphetamine-touched years of the ’80s. Had it been Dexedrine behind those many expensive deaths in penthouses? Or speed? Or crystal meth? Hard to distinguish between the older ones and the more recent. So many bodies; so much powder and crystal and muck.
“Can you try and find some tissue to test for traces? If she was buried with all this stuff, it’s more than possible it’s connected.”
“Thank you,” McCullough said dryly. “That hadn’t occurred to me.”
Jonah gave her a slight smile. “Anything else on the body?”
“Well…”
He dusted his finger on the plastic overalls and then followed her to the table again.
“Nothing indicative. The body’s been submerged at some point. But I’d say