She Lies in Wait

Book 1: Jonah Sheens Detective Series

by Gytha Lodge

Genres: Traditional Mysteries; Thrillers

Synopsis

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of She Lies in Wait by Gytha Lodge, read by John Hopkins, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Joe Coen and Gytha Lodge.

Six friends. One killer. Whom do you trust?

On a hot July night in 1983, six school friends go camping in the forest. Bright and brilliant, they are destined for great things, and young Aurora Jackson is dazzled to be allowed to tag along.

Thirty years later, a body is discovered. DCI Sheens is called to the scene, but he already knows what's waiting for him: Aurora Jackson, found at long last.

But that's not all. The friends have all maintained their innocence, but the body is found in a hideaway only the six of them knew about.

It seems the killer has always lurked very close to home....

Release date: January 8, 2019

Publisher: Random House

Print pages: 384

Sample

1

Jonah was halfway up Blissford Hill when he felt the buzz of his phone in the zip pocket on the back of his Lycra. He was standing up on the pedals and slogging upward. He considered ignoring it, and then had a vivid image of his mum in hospital. And following that, he had a slightly stomach-­turning thought that it might be Michelle. Which was just as irrational as every other time he’d believed it in the last eight months, but he thought it anyway.

He braked with gritted teeth and stopped his grinding climb. He caught his shin on one of the pedals as he jumped down, and was savage by the time he’d rooted his phone out and seen DS Lightman’s extension flashing on the screen.

“Ben?” he said, and then moved the phone away from his mouth to mask his heavy breathing.

“Sorry, Chief.” Lightman didn’t sound it. Never really sounded anything. Michelle had liked to call him Barbie. Exquisitely pretty and emotionless. A lot smarter than Barbie, though, Jonah knew. “Call from DCS Wilkinson. He wants you to postpone your days off to investigate a possible homicide.”

Jonah let the DS wait in silence. He looked up at the tree-­shadowed top of the hill. It was a slog away, but he wanted the slog. His legs were crying out for it. He squeezed the drop handles of his bike with his free hand and felt the sweat on his palm. He hadn’t spent enough time doing this recently.

“Sir?”

“Where?” he asked, not bothering to hide his irritation.

“Brinken Wood.”

There was another silence, but this one wasn’t deliberate. He felt knocked off balance.

“Recent remains?” he asked in the end, though he thought he knew the answer.

“No. DCS says not,” said the sergeant, who was too young to understand.

His day of cycling was over, but Jonah suddenly felt too old for it anyway. He couldn’t remember ever feeling old before.

“Send a car to pick me up in Godshill. Bring the kit bag from behind my desk. And find someone to lend me a deodorant.”

“Yes, sir,” Lightman answered, his voice as level as ever.

Jonah slotted his phone back into the pocket of his technical top. There was sweat already cooling on him and leaving him chilled. He ought to get cycling again. It was a few more miles to Godshill.

He stayed there, unmoving, for a full minute, then swung his leg off the Cannondale and started to walk it slowly up the hill.

Hanson was in such a hurry to climb out of the car that she caught the sleeve of her expensive new suit on a protruding piece in the door and pulled a thread. It gave her a slightly sick feeling. She hadn’t really been able to afford it in the first place. She’d bought three others in her first two weeks as a DC, having previously owned only jeans, tank tops, and sweaters, and a few dresses for going out. Suits were bloody expensive, and she resented the money she could have been spending on her unreliable car. Or maybe on an actual social life, which she seemed to have forgotten about somewhere along the way.

She tried to smooth down the plucked sleeve while she made her way inside. She wondered if she could get her mum to take a look at it, if she managed to make it to her mum’s anytime soon. A potential homicide might mean working through the weekend. Late nights and living off caffeine while they caught the killer. The thought made her smile.

She let herself into CID and saw Lightman’s head bent over his screen. She wondered how long he’d been here, and whether he did anything else with his life. Whether there were a Lightman wife and kids that he hadn’t yet mentioned. He somehow had the look of an unfaithful husband about him. Too pretty, and too closed-­off. Unless that was more her own recent experience warping her expectations.

Lightman caught sight of her and gave a small smile. “I got hold of the chief. He’s going to need picking up and taking to the crime scene.”

“On it,” Hanson answered immediately. “Where is he?”

“Godshill,” he said. “He’s on his bike.”

Hanson nodded. She pretended she knew the place well, and that she wasn’t about to punch it into her GPS. Two weeks into the job and she basically knew the route from home to the station and the supermarket, and from there to the dockside, where they’d been looking at some potential fraud. She missed the certainty of zooming around Birmingham, where she’d grown up and then worked as a constable for two years. Though she had to admit that the New Forest was a lot prettier.

“You’ll need this,” Lightman said, and lifted a dark-­gray kit bag from the floor. “And despite the time constraints, I’d take him a coffee. He’s not going to be that happy at having his day off interrupted.”

“OK. Just . . . a filter coffee? Not a latte or something?”

Lightman laughed. “God, no. Have you not had one of his rants on coffee menus yet?”

“No, but I’m sure it’ll be great.” She put the kit bag onto her shoulder. “OK. Anything else? Do you know what it’s about yet?”

Lightman shook his head. “Local sergeant will hand over to the chief at the scene. You’ll both get a rundown, though if it’s not recent, there won’t be much so far.”

Hanson nodded, and tried not to smile. You shouldn’t smile at news of a murder, even if it had been ages ago. But the truth was, she was delighted.

Hanson was wound up like it was exam-­results day. She gabbled at Jonah about the kit bag and coffee, and then without pausing for breath asked about the remains. Jonah found it somewhere between sweet and irritating.

“Ben said they might not be recent,” she said.

“I’d wait until forensics gave an opinion,” he replied, taking a long gulp of coffee. “Most people—­including me—­don’t have a clue what age bones are.”

Having sweated and chilled, he was cold even in the suit he had tugged on in the public toilets at Godshill. Cold, and drifting around his own thoughts of thirty years ago. He had to interrupt her to ask her to turn the heater on. The Fiat veered while she turned the dial, and then steadied.

“Sorry,” she said.

“I’m just grateful you’re driving,” he said with a slight smile. “The coffee was a good call, by the way. You’ve given me at least a couple of hours of not being in a really bad mood.”

“Hmm. A couple of hours. So I’ve either got to find you a Starbucks before then or get out of the way?”

“Pretty much,” Jonah agreed.

Brinken Wood was suddenly on them. There was a cluster of squad cars and uniforms in the shingle car park. He found it impossible not to remember this place as it had been back then. The car park had all been bark and mud, but it had been just as overrun by police. The haircuts different; the faces somehow the same.

Jonah levered himself out of the car once they’d pulled up, taking the coffee cup with him. He felt like he’d gone back in time. So many months had been spent here, searching endlessly.

He approached the sergeant. “DCI Sheens. This is DC Hanson.”

Hanson had been the same rank as the sergeant two weeks ago. But to train as a detective, you had to take what amounted to a demotion, and become a detective constable. He remembered not being sure who was more important when it had happened to him, and wondered if Hanson felt the same.

There was sweat along the sergeant’s hairline. His eyes were over-­wide and his smile brief and agitated. His police constable, a stocky twentysomething, seemed calmer.

Jonah addressed his question somewhere between the two of them: “Who found the remains?”

The sergeant answered. “A GP out camping with his family. Well, his daughter, but he called it in.”

“How old’s the daughter?”

“Nine,” the constable said. “Seems fine, though. It’s the father who’s taking it hard.”

“They’re still here?”

“We’ve kept them at their campsite. It’s not within view of the remains.”

Jonah nodded, and let the sergeant lead the way, though he knew where he was going. It was where seven kids had bedded down thirty years ago, but only six of them had got up in the morning.

Dr. Martin Miller was sitting apart from his family. The doctor’s wife was watching the boy play on an iPad. The girl was kicking up dust around the edge of the camp.

It was the mother Jonah approached.

“DCI Sheens.” He smiled at her. He’d had to learn how to smile when his mind was full of complicated, dark thoughts like crazed glass between him and the world. “Would you mind if I talk to your daughter for a few minutes?”

“Jessie!” It was a call from the father. His voice was high-­pitched and irritable. “Stop kicking like that. You’re making a mess.”

The girl was halfway upset and halfway rebellious. She scuffed over to her mother and Jonah, sat down quickly, and looked up at him, her knees up near her chin.

The mother slid an arm round her in a brief hug. “You don’t mind talking to the police, do you, Jessie?” she asked her daughter.

Jessie shook her head.

“We don’t need to ask much,” Jonah said steadily. “Just a few details about what you found.”

“Sure.”

“She doesn’t know anything,” her slightly older brother interrupted scathingly. The disdain of older siblings had always seemed uniquely intense to Jonah.

He glanced over at the boy, who was now watching them both a little sullenly. He thought about asking him to move away, but decided to let him be.

He crouched close to Jessie. “So, a few questions for you.”

The girl gave him another wary look, and then her gaze wandered away and she picked up a pebble, threw it off to the side, repeated it with another.

“Jessie, for goodness’ sake!” The father again. Much closer. “Stop throwing things, and look at the policeman when he’s talking to you. This is important.”

Jonah tried to smile up at the doctor. “It’s OK, don’t worry.”

“Jessie!”

Jonah might as well not have spoken.

The girl gave her father a truculent look, and then did her best to look up at Jonah through her straight brown fringe. Jonah tried not to become irritated at the father’s interruptions, which had nothing to do with helping the police, he thought, and everything to do with control.

“Are you an inspector?” Jessie asked quietly.

Jonah grinned. “I am. Detective chief inspector, in fact.”

Jessie’s eyes were still a little wary. “So you’re in charge?”

“Yes.” She seemed happy enough with that, so he went on. “Could you tell me what you were doing when you found the bones?”

Jessie glanced at her father, and then said quietly, “Hiding.”

Jonah saw the mother grimace, but she didn’t try to deny it.

“Hiding can be fun,” he said. “That hollow under the tree. That was already there? You didn’t have to dig it?”

Jessie shook her head. “I just got in and sat down. There was something poking me, so I pulled it out.”

Jonah nodded. “Naturally. And it came out easily?”

“Yes. I thought—­I thought it was a root, and then maybe a plant because I grabbed a handful. But then I realized it was a finger.”

“Well done,” he said, nodding. “Not everybody would have realized.”

Jessie nodded, gave a small smile, and stood up. Her mother pulled her into a brief hug.

“I’d like them not to talk to their school friends about this for a few days,” Jonah said to Mrs. Miller, once she’d let go of her daughter.

“It’s OK, they’re not seeing any for a few weeks. We thought we’d carry on the trip, but somewhere else.”

Privately educated kids, he realized. They were already on vacation, a good month before the state schools broke up.

“Good. It would be better if this wasn’t talked about just yet.”

“Of course.”

He heard Dr. Miller’s footsteps.

“Are we done? It’s a beautiful day and I don’t think we have much to add.”

“Yes, we’re all done. Thanks for your patience.”

Jonah stood, and the doctor was already giving his children orders to get packed up.

He hurried them over to the tent, and Jonah found himself watching until Mrs. Miller rose and began to pick up a few half-­eaten packs of raisins and a cup.

“I’m sorry your vacation got interrupted,” he said.