The team began to disperse. Chloe Lane lingered at one of the desks, waiting to grab Alex’s attention. ‘I was wondering if I could have a word?’
‘About this?’
She shook her head.
‘Now?’
‘No, no rush. Lunchtime?’
‘I’ll be in my office.’
Chloe smiled. ‘Thanks.’
She didn’t really know what she was thanking her for. Not yet.
Chapter Ten
Chloe stuck her head around the door of Alex’s office and eyed the sandwich sitting unopened on her desk.
‘That your lunch?’
Alex glanced at the cardboard packaging that housed the equally cardboard-looking sandwich. ‘It’s an attempt.’
Chloe gave a slight smile. ‘It doesn’t look that great.’
Alex placed her hands on the desk in front of her and turned in her swivel chair so that she was facing Chloe. ‘What did you want to see me about?’
Chloe hesitated between the truth and a lie. She glanced at the clock on Alex’s wall. ‘Any chance I can tell you over a better lunch?’
Twenty minutes later, the two women sat at a table in the corner of a quiet café in the town centre, waiting for their food to arrive. Chloe didn’t want to tell Alex the truth at the station, not with prying eyes and over-keen ears lurking in every corridor. For months she had longed to tell Alex the secret she’d been keeping, and for months there had always been something that had stood in her way. Now there was a pressing sense of urgency. The emails she’d received seemed to read as a warning.
‘This can’t be long,’ Alex told her, shooting a look at the woman who had taken their order. ‘I’m going to speak with some of the staff at the council this afternoon – find out exactly who had access to the park. Authorised access, that is. Obviously, whoever put Lola Evans in the river could quite plausibly have been there without any authority. I’m not sure many people would look twice at a van driving through the grounds there – it’s not that uncommon a sight.’
Alex was thinking out loud now, but she noticed Chloe seemed to be barely listening. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I need your help,’ Chloe confessed.
Alex was the only officer – the only person – she trusted with the words she was about to speak. Life had taught her that even those closest couldn’t be relied upon – that everyone had a second face and some chose to keep it well hidden – but Alex had proven to be exactly the type of person Chloe needed: someone honest, someone with integrity; someone with a sense of loyalty that dictated that once something had been started, she would see it through to its completion.
Alex studied Chloe questioningly, wearing that expression she seemed completely oblivious to: the expression that seemed to look right through someone and see things they’d not yet seen for themselves.
‘What’s the matter?’ Alex repeated.
Chloe realised, much to her embarrassment, that tears had spiked at the corners of her eyes. She swallowed and took a sip of her tea. ‘Does the name Emily Phillips mean anything to you?’
Alex put her coffee cup on the table and sat back in her seat. She recognised the name, but she couldn’t picture the face and couldn’t remember why it should mean something to her.
‘Eight years ago,’ Chloe said. ‘She was found hanging from her mother’s banisters.’
Alex’s face fell. Of course she remembered Emily Phillips. Alex had attended the scene of what had initially been reported to police as a suicide. A teenage girl, just sixteen at the time, had been found hanging from the staircase of her mother’s home, or so it had been claimed.
‘I remember her. Did you know her?’
‘It wasn’t a suicide, was it?’
Alex’s eyes narrowed. Where was all this leading, and why was Chloe so interested in this girl? Alex couldn’t remember all the details, but she carried the main bones of the case with her – as she did with every case in which she’d had involvement – as though a part of her own skeleton.
‘No,’ she said tentatively. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Please tell me what you know.’
Alex sat forward in her seat and leaned on the table, closing the distance between them. ‘I know the same as everyone else does – it was public knowledge. Emily hadn’t killed herself – she’d been strangled and the death had been staged to look as though she’d taken her own life. Pretty badly, by all accounts.’
There was other evidence that it hadn’t been staged at all, but until she knew where Chloe’s sudden interest stemmed from she wasn’t going to volunteer any further details on the matter. What would Chloe have been at the time? Eighteen… nineteen? She hadn’t been in the police then; she had no reason to be interested in this case.
As she spoke, Alex watched Chloe’s pretty face grow pale. Her eyes became glazed yet her focus more intense, not faltering from Alex’s.
‘You met him, didn’t you?’
‘Met who?’
‘The boy everyone thought had killed her.’
‘Her boyfriend? Yes, I met him.’
General opinion was that the boyfriend had killed her after a drunken argument, yet there was something about it that Alex had never quite believed. She had been one of only two people who had seen him on that staircase and she remembered him now as she had found him then, clutching his girlfriend’s body and sobbing into her hair; little boy sobs that had failed to subside even when Alex had managed, after what had felt considerable time, to coax his body from the dead girl’s arms.
The case had been closed shortly after, when the boy had killed himself less than a week later.
‘Chloe, what’s all this about? Why are you asking me about this now?’
‘Her boyfriend, Luke,’ she told Alex, the words falling free before she had time to think twice about letting them escape her. ‘He was my brother.’ Chloe pushed a hand to her face as though willing back a further onslaught of tears. What use were they to him now? He needed her to be strong, to do what she should have done years ago.
‘He didn’t kill Emily,’ she told Alex. ‘And he didn’t kill himself.’
Chapter Eleven
Sometimes Connor’s head felt too full of the things of which he knew he would never truly be free. He had tried to fight them off, tried to shut them down, but they kept surging, like recurring nightmares, to break him, always managing to somehow take him by surprise though he spent every day expectantly awaiting their arrival.
He watched his son clicking away at the computer in the corner of the living room.
‘Liam.’
Connor continued to watch the back of his son’s head, knowing the boy had heard him. The click-clicking of the computer keyboard was grating on his last nerve.
‘Liam!’
The boy turned slowly on his swivel chair, meeting his father’s eye with indifference. ‘What?’
‘Fancy a game of football after dinner?’
Connor didn’t know why he was wasting his time. He was more likely to get a game of football from the baby than he was from Liam; if nothing else, the baby would have been a more willing opponent. His son wasn’t interested in spending time with him. He didn’t really seem interested in anything beyond the bloody computer.
Liam pulled a face and made a noise that sounded too much like a teenager for Connor’s liking before turning back to the screen. Connor knew he wasn’t supposed to feel it, but he didn’t really like his own son. He wasn’t sure whether he liked the baby either.
The problem was, Connor didn’t much like anyone, least of all himself.
Liam had been conceived when Connor had been home on leave from Afghanistan. His family was under the impression that his ‘issues’ – as they ambiguously liked to name them – had started upon his later return, but they had begun much earlier. Under duress, he had attended counselling. Under even greater duress, he had agreed to complete a short course that would allow him to run his own support group. He’d never ha
d any intention of actually doing so, but once he’d met Tim Cole there he was railroaded into it, going along with the other man’s plans in the hope that it would get him out of the house. The truth was, he hated listening to people drone on about their problems. I’m lonely, I’m exhausted, I’m fat… God, they got on his nerves. Still, he needed the group as a much-needed excuse for a night off once a week; the only time he didn’t feel crippled by the weight of parental responsibility and supposed marital bliss.
The news of Jen’s second pregnancy had been met with plenty of enthusiasm and excitement, but unfortunately for her little of that had been generated from Connor. Afghanistan changed everything. He didn’t want this domesticated life he was living. In the kitchen, Jen was grappling a heavy load of wet washing. The baby was sitting in its highchair, red-faced and wailing.
All he heard was noise, but Connor realised these sounds went way past his family and ran far beyond the four walls of this house he was supposed to acknowledge as home. They consumed him, filling the space around him like the air he breathed. The memory of war tormented him yet, with a perverseness that left him questioning his own sanity; a part of him longed to be back there. There he had served some sort of purpose. Here he wasn’t doing anything. What was the sense in any of this?
There was a clatter from the corner as Liam dropped something on to the floor. He cursed, the word he muttered audible enough to be heard by his mother in the kitchen, who appeared in the doorway of the living room with a face as red as the baby’s and a wet bedsheet tangled around her arm.
‘Liam! Naughty!’
Connor took his mobile from the pocket of his jeans and pretended to read an imaginary email he’d received just as his wife entered the room.
‘You can turn that off now,’ she scolded. ‘Your dinner’s almost ready.’
For a moment, Connor thought she was speaking to him.
He tried to remind himself the boy was only eight, but sometimes Connor felt his son was testing them both, and that his wife would pass this initiation with straight A*s while he was destined to be leaving at the end of the term.
Running away had certainly seemed an appealing option, on more than one occasion.
‘Do you want anything?’
It took a moment for Connor to realise that this time she was in fact talking to him. ‘What? Uh… no.’
She said nothing and returned to the kitchen. Connor watched his son traipse out into the kitchen, the boy ignoring his father’s presence as he passed.
He reached for the television remote and switched channels, watching aimlessly as a panel of famous sports stars answered trivia questions in order to win money for charity. On the table beside the sofa, his mobile phone vibrated with a text message. He leaned over and swiped a finger across the screen before typing in his four digit passcode. A number he didn’t recognise came up.
Tell your wife or I will.
Connor read the message twice. He glanced to the opened kitchen door, spying like an outsider on his family’s dinnertime. He looked back at the phone, locked it, and went into the kitchen to feign happy domesticity.
Chapter Twelve
Ethan Thompson had proven easy to find. He was working in a bar called The Lizard in Cardiff city centre and was bottling up the beer fridges when Alex arrived. A flyer for his band had been found during a search of Lola’s bedroom at her grandmother’s house, and April recalled Lola having said something about knowing the lead singer. ‘Knowing’ him turned out to mean she had been having regular sex with him, although Ethan was quick to point out that he hadn’t been in a relationship with Lola.
Alex had acknowledged what April Evans had told her – that her granddaughter was very much a free spirit who didn’t take too well to having to explain her whereabouts to anyone – but the fact that so many of those who were allegedly closest to her had little knowledge she’d even been missing let alone anything worse was something Alex was struggling to get to grips with. Had it just been that everyone had assumed she was with somebody else?
She had encountered a few missing children cases in which similar scenarios had unfolded, with both parents thinking the child was safely with the other. Alex realised mistakes could easily be made, but whenever there was a child involved she found it difficult to be sympathetic with a parent whose attention had been distracted. Her own childlessness made it easy to judge the inadequacies of others and believe she would do better. She would never allow a child to leave her sight. No harm would come to anyone in her care.
She followed Ethan Thompson to a table in the corner of the bar. This was completely different, she thought. Lola Evans was a young woman, not a child. Perhaps it hadn’t been anyone else’s business where she was or who she was with.
Or had it?
Ethan Thompson sat and Alex took a seat opposite him. He looked like a model from the pages of some alternative fashion magazine, she thought: that skinny, anaemic look young people seemed to prefer these days. His ears had huge holes in them filled with thick black coins of plastic that stretched his lobes like a spaniel’s. Alex was pretty sure he was wearing eyeliner.
His dark eyes fixed themselves on her, and it was only then that Alex noticed how enlarged his pupils were.
‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘I saw the news, but they just said a woman’s body had been found in the river. They didn’t give a name, did they?’
‘You play in a band?’ Alex asked. She wanted to gain a picture of Ethan’s social life; hopefully, find a link with Lola’s. Lola had been found the morning before, on Tuesday, but the pathologist believed she had died anything up to two weeks earlier. Her grandmother claimed to have seen her eleven days prior to her body being found. Trying to pinpoint an exact timeframe was going to prove near impossible.
‘Yeah.’ Ethan faltered, as though it was a trick question and Alex was somehow trying to trip him up. He ran a hand through his hair – too long in Alex’s opinion, but how most young men were wearing it – and twisted his lips in an expression of confusion.
The pupils seemed to grow bigger by the second. Alex wondered whether he knew which day of the week it was, never mind being able to recall the name of the band he played in.
What had Lola Evans seen in Ethan Thompson? He looked as though he needed a good bath and a decent meal, as well as perhaps a couple of weeks in rehab.
‘Is this where you first met Lola?’
The young man shook his head. ‘I met her in the club opposite. I was playing there with my band – she was with some friends. We got chatting at the bar. She came back to mine. You know how it is.’ He pulled a face that suggested Alex didn’t know how it was.
‘When was that?’
Ethan fiddled with his stretched left earlobe. ‘Couple of months ago. Maybe a bit more.’ He put his hand on the table between them, his unusually long fingers splayed. ‘Shit. I can’t believe she’s dead. She was a nice girl. Quiet, you know. Bit vulnerable. I like that.’
If he realised how odd his last statement sounded, Ethan Thompson didn’t show any awareness.
‘Vulnerable, in what way?’
Ethan pulled a face. ‘I don’t know. Like she needed looking after. I liked that, at first.’
‘At first?’
He shrugged. ‘Gets a bit wearing, you know what I mean.’
How wearing had it become? Enough to drive him to murder?
‘When did you last see Lola?’ she asked.
His eyes rolled up to the ceiling as though trying to fix the memory. ‘Weekend before last. Saturday night. We grabbed some food together before she went to work.’
Alex narrowed her eyes. What beautician worked on a Saturday night?
‘Work where?’
Ethan shrugged. ‘She was a waitress or something. Evening job to earn an extra bit of cash. She mentioned somewhere, but I can’t remember.’
‘You didn’t know where your own girlfriend worked?’
‘Look,’ Ethan said, raising his hands from
the table, ‘she wasn’t my girlfriend. We were just having a bit of fun, you know.’
Alex’s thoughts skipped momentarily to Rob and she felt a flush of shame at what she knew she’d been doing the past few months. She didn’t know what Rob believed was happening between them, but she was beginning to suspect whatever thoughts he’d had on the subject didn’t match hers.
Had Lola seen her relationship with Ethan as more than just a bit of fun?
What did Rob think was going to happen as a result of all the nights they’d spent together recently?
‘Where did you go?’ Alex asked, snapping herself away from distracting thoughts.
‘When?’
‘You said you went for food before she went to work. Where did you eat?’
‘Oh. Nando’s. The one in the shopping centre in Cardiff.’
Alex made a note of the place along with the date. ‘OK. If there’s anything else we’ll be in touch. Soon.’
Ethan gave her a nervous glance as he rose from his chair. ‘I am upset about it, you know,’ he said, as though trying to convince himself rather than Alex. ‘I just, I didn’t know her very long, you know? It’s really sad.’
It was the most insincere expression of sadness Alex had ever heard. They still had only a limited picture of Lola’s life, but had her confidence been at such a low ebb that she had seen nothing better for herself than gravitating towards young men such as Ethan Thompson? Alex knew very little of eating disorders or the psychological implications of such diseases, but the knowledge she had was enough to understand that Lola’s condition might have resulted in extremes, and this might also have impacted upon her trust in other people. She could have distanced herself from people, but the fact that she went home with Ethan on the evening she met him – coupled with a lifestyle that seemed to suggest she moved from place to place quite freely – implied the opposite was true, and that Lola might have trusted other people too easily.
The Girls in the Water: A completely gripping serial killer thriller with a shocking twist (Detectives King and Lane Book 1) Page 5
