She Lies in Wait by Gytha Lodge

Author:Gytha Lodge
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2019-01-07T16:00:00+00:00

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AT TEN PAST eight in the morning, Jonah arrived at the Jacksons’ house. He had toyed with calling the family to save himself the trip, but he knew that news of this kind was better handled in person.

It was Tom who answered his knock this time. He was rubbing at his mouth, presumably having been in the middle of breakfast.

“Good morning, Mr. Jackson,” Jonah said. “Sorry for the early call, but I just wanted to catch you up with what we’re doing.”

“As I’ve said many times to various police over the years,” Tom said, a little patronizingly, “I’d much rather be updated than not, at whatever hour of the morning.”

He stood aside, and Jonah squeezed into the small space along the corridor. It actually looked a little tidier than it had on his last visit. There were orderly piles, and even a few gaps in the detritus. Perhaps Topaz and Connor had been busy.

They were all in the kitchen. Joy, sitting at one end of the table, gave him an owlish glance, her eyes wide and wary. Topaz was leaning out from her position in the corner to look at him. Only Connor kept eating, working his way slowly through a bowl of porridge with his head down, until Jonah spoke.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m interrupting breakfast.”

“It’s fine,” Topaz said swiftly. “What’s going on?”

“We have some news,” Jonah said, and Joy suddenly rose and moved a chair round the table so that he could sit facing them. Tom returned to his place in front of a plate of eggs and crossed one long leg over the other. “We’ve had digital analysis back, and various signs point to some form of sexual assault on Aurora before she died.”

Topaz flinched, visibly. Connor finally stopped eating. He rested his spoon carefully on the edge of his bowl, but didn’t make any move to comfort his wife. From Joy and Tom there was nothing. It was as if they were frozen in place.

“It’s clearly a distressing finding,” Jonah went on, “but it does help us to be clearer on who we’re looking for.”

“Who are you looking for, then?” Tom said, his voice a little thick.

“A male, potentially one of the group she was camping with,” he said carefully. “We’re looking into whether anyone else knew about the place where Aurora was found. We can’t be conclusive about that yet, but we do know that the kids who were camping were familiar with it. We’re also investigating possible drug use at the party.”

Jonah felt instinctively guilty at having to give him so much disturbing news at once. But it was better for them to know now, he knew. Delaying it only made it harder if further evidence was found.

He saw Topaz’s face color, and she picked up a glass of water and drank from it with a hand that shook slightly. Tom glanced at her, and Jonah thought that there might be a difficult conversation coming up.

“Do you think it was connected?” Tom asked eventually.

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