Statistically it was likely Lola Evans had known her killer. She looked at the young man opposite. Could those long, skinny fingers – could that young man who was little more than a boy – have inflicted the multiple injuries that had scarred Lola’s body? Watching Ethan Thompson head back to the bar, Alex knew nothing was to be considered impossible.
Chapter Thirteen
Alex poured herself a glass of wine. Chloe didn’t drink and Alex had often wondered whether there was a reason for it. It didn’t seem appropriate to ask and it was none of her business. She made her a coffee and took a seat opposite her at the kitchen table. Chloe had brought an array of files with her, stacked at her side and labelled with an administrative prowess Alex could merely dream of. She seemed fraught and her hair was dishevelled, so far from the usually immaculate young woman in whose presence Alex found herself feeling inescapably old and dowdy.
‘Have you had a chance to check the case history?’ Chloe asked.
‘Not yet. I had a corpse wash up on a riverbank, remember?’
The younger woman’s face flushed. Alex had noticed she only ever blushed in front of women. With men, Chloe was defiant. She never backed down in the face of male banter at the station and her attitude towards Harry during their first meeting showed a tendency to be flippant if she felt threatened or undermined.
Alex wondered where her defences against men had risen from.
‘Sorry,’ Chloe said. ‘I know the timing isn’t great.’ She reached for the top of her files and drew out a photograph. ‘Emily Phillips.’
The smiling teenage face in the photograph was far different to the face Alex recalled. She hadn’t wanted to remember, but the young girl with the belt tightened around her throat was an image that would be etched permanently on Alex’s brain. Worse still had been the tear-streaked face of the teenage boy who had clutched on to the body, refusing to let her go.
‘The coroner didn’t think it was a suicide, did he?’ Alex asked.
She didn’t want to sound unfeeling, but she realised how difficult talking about this case would be for Chloe. If the young woman wanted her help, she had to accept Alex as things stood now. She would look at it from the eyes of a detective and nothing closer. Allowing herself to become emotionally embroiled in the details of the story’s background wasn’t going to be productive for anyone – least of all for Chloe – and the last thing she wanted was to encourage any false hope.
In truth, Alex remembered exactly why the death hadn’t been believed to have been a suicide. The coroner reported that it would have been impossible for the girl to have positioned herself in such a way that her boyfriend claimed to have found her, and that was also an initial source of doubt: no one but the boyfriend had seen her ‘hanging’ at all. A post-mortem examination revealed that although she had been strangled by the belt, the markings to her throat suggested the belt had been tightened horizontally, and not from the angles that would have been evident had she been hanged from the staircase as claimed.
The boyfriend had claimed to have loosened the belt and lowered Emily’s body upon finding her. It was obvious why he had so quickly become prime suspect in her murder.
‘I know how it all looks,’ Chloe said, having talked Alex back through the initial events, ‘but I also know my brother. He’d never hurt anyone. He’s not a killer.’
Alex sipped her wine and tried not to linger on the look of desperation evident in Chloe’s expression. She noticed how she never spoke about her brother using the past tense. How had she been able to keep this to herself for so long?
‘Your brother’s name was Luke?’
‘Luke Griffiths.’
‘Your surname?’
‘I changed it about a year after Luke…’ Chloe drifted away from the end of the sentence. ‘My parents… we fell out. I wanted a clean start. It’s a long story.’
If Chloe wanted her help, Alex felt that at some point that long story was going to have to be told. She just wasn’t sure it was the right time. Glancing at the files in front of them, it seemed evident they already had enough to keep them going. And none of this could be looked into properly until they had completed their current commitments and found the man responsible for Lola Evans’s murder.
‘I know Luke,’ Chloe said, putting her drink on the table between them. ‘And I know you were there – you were with him.’
Alex had been a sergeant at the time and had responded when the initial call had come in. She and a colleague had been first on the scene.
‘Everyone was against him,’ Chloe continued. ‘Everyone thought he’d killed her. Only, everything was circumstantial. Where was the proof?’
Alex sat back in her chair and exhaled. ‘I’d have to refer back to the case file,’ she said, knowing that was a lot easier said than done. ‘I can’t guarantee that’ll be easy. Look, I’ve never been asked to do anything like this before. Cases aren’t usually reopened without some sort of new evidence having come to light, you know that. And you also know how much shit you could end up in if you go about taking matters into your own hands.’ The original case had been led by a senior investigating officer who’d retired a couple of years later. Returning to it now would mean seeking the permission of Superintendent Blake. Alex glanced at the files on the desk. ‘Please tell me this lot’s not from the station.’
Alex couldn’t remember much of the case that had followed. She hadn’t been directly involved – had been working on another case at the time – but she had known how it had ended. She was worried that this was all too personal to Chloe. Her attachments to the people involved were inevitably clouding her judgement.
She shook her head and Alex sighed with relief. Chloe tapped the pile of files in front of her, as though her own belief in her brother’s innocence was proof enough. ‘This is what I collected. Evidence.’ She eyed the look of scepticism etched on Alex’s face. ‘Look, I’ll show you.’
For the next hour, and over Alex’s second glass of wine, Chloe worked her way through the paperwork. She had documented everything she had gathered – newspaper clippings, photographs, handwritten transcripts of conversations between her and her brother – with a precision that bordered on obsession, but rather than convince Alex that the case was worth reopening, Chloe managed to dissuade her there was anything substantial that could be considered by a case review team.
‘This all relates to Emily,’ Alex pointed out. ‘What about Luke?’
Luke’s suicide had closed the case into Emily’s murder. In the days that had followed her death, police had closed in on Luke, looking for concrete evidence that would be sufficient grounds for an arrest. But that, as far as Chloe was concerned, was the pivotal flaw in the logic of the officers who had dealt with the case: they had never found any. They had read Luke’s death as an admission of guilt. Case closed.
‘Luke didn’t kill Emily,’ Chloe repeated.
Alex wondered if she was really convinced of this as fact, or whether her insistence just showed a desperation to keep the possibility a reality.
‘And he didn’t kill himself,’ she continued, reading the doubt in Alex’s expression. ‘I saw him that afternoon. He told me he was going to find out what had happened to Emily – that it was the last good thing he could do for her. I told the police what he’d said, but nobody would listen to me. I was little more than a kid myself – why would anyone take me seriously? And I didn’t do much to help myself. I was in my first year of uni, I was drinking too much.’
Chloe’s unspoken words left Alex with questions she didn’t feel comfortable asking. Was this an explanation as to why Chloe didn’t drink now? What had she done?
‘Luke was scared, but he was determined,’ Chloe said, shifting focus from herself. ‘The following morning, they found the car. Does that sound right to you?’
Alex held back her response. Over these past few months working closely alongside DC Lane she had found herself developing a respect for this hard-working and resilient youn
g woman. That hadn’t changed, yet this seemed to alter everything. Alex couldn’t help but feel in some way manipulated, as though Chloe’s trying so keenly and so obviously to impress her had all been leading up to this: this moment when she would ask for her help.
A wash of disappointment swept over her and she shook it off hurriedly, annoyed at herself for her misplaced pride. ‘I’ll have to speak with the superintendent.’
Chloe looked panicked. ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea. What if he says no? They don’t know I’ve got any connection to either case. How’s that going to look?’
Alex wasn’t sure, but she knew that investigating a case without following the appropriate procedures would land them both in front of a disciplinary board, justifiably or not. The case into Lola Evans’s death was already proving a difficult one; Harry certainly wouldn’t appreciate one of his own making things even more complicated.
‘Why now?’ Alex asked. ‘How long ago was this? Eight years?’
Chloe took her mobile from her handbag and showed Alex the email she’d received that week:
Found him yet?
Then she searched for the other, the one received weeks earlier:
How’s the search going?
‘I ignored the first one – I thought it’d just been sent to the wrong email address by mistake or something. I got the second one the other day, again from the same email address.’
‘This could refer to anything.’
Chloe looked at Alex as though she had physically harmed her.
‘Someone knows something. If I can find out who murdered Emily, I can find who was responsible for my brother’s death. Someone killed him, I know it. Either that or he was being blackmailed, something, but I know he wouldn’t have killed himself. I have to find out what happened, but I don’t think I can do this alone. I know I’m asking a lot, but there’s no one else.’
Alex put a hand to her forehead and dragged her fingers through her hair. How was she supposed to tell Chloe that neither of them could go through with this – that if they couldn’t get permission to reinvestigate the case then going ahead and doing so anyway might potentially mark the end of both their careers?
It turned out she didn’t need to say anything. Chloe had read the response stamped on her face.
‘I’m sorry. I’m asking too much.’
‘I understand why you want to do this. Well,’ she hastened, knowing she could never truly understand what Chloe must have felt, ‘not understand, obviously, but I can appreciate how difficult this all must be. I just want you to think very carefully before you make any next step.’
Chloe gave a wan smile, sat back and drained the last of the coffee from her cup. ‘I will.’
She didn’t need to say any more. They both knew she was going to go ahead, with or without the help of Alex.
Chapter Fourteen
Connor knew Sarah’s shift pattern because he regularly met her once she had finished work. They would meet a few streets away where he would abandon his own car to get into hers. That day, he waited for her to finish her shift and approached her in the car park, taking her by the arm and trying to lead her around the side of the building. His fingers dug into her skin and she yanked herself away from him, voicing angry protestations.
‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’
‘What are you trying to do?’ Connor hissed.
‘Well, I was trying to get in my car and go home.’ She shoved her handbag back up on to her shoulder and pushed her long hair from her face.
‘I thought we talked about this at the pub the other night? I thought we were going to leave it there.’
‘If by “it” you mean “us” then we were,’ Sarah said. ‘And I have.’
She flicked a length of blonde hair from her face and Connor tried to ignore the reaction that stirred inside him. He didn’t need any psychologist to tell him that he’d found a counteraction to his anger through sex – he’d worked that much out for himself, much earlier. The only time he didn’t feel angry – the only time he found himself able to block out all the things that had gone before this and the life he’d left behind on the dirty ground of a foreign country – was when he was having sex.
His therapist had told him he should talk about how he was feeling with his family, that they would understand the complications he was facing. What the hell would he know about it, sitting there in his nice office never having done a proper day’s work in his life? All he seemed to do was repeat back what Connor said to him, occasionally altering his words with a slight change in phrasing.
Would his wife understand his need to have sex with other women? He wasn’t prepared to take a bet on it.
‘So what was that text yesterday all about then?’ he asked Sarah angrily.
‘What text?’
Connor felt anger crawl up into his chest. He could usually control it – he’d been controlling it for so long now – but more frequently, it caught him with a need to suppress it, and an even greater desire to let it do as it pleased.
The only way he could release it would tear his life apart, if his family were ever to find out the truth. Even now, whilst so angry at Sarah – whilst hating her – he wanted to push her into her car and take her clothes off.
‘You know what bloody text,’ he said, shoving the car door closed as Sarah once again tried to open it. The shove was stronger than either of them expected and the door slammed shut, narrowly missing Sarah’s fingers. She shot him a glare.
‘I’m sorry,’ he snapped, not sounding sorry at all. ‘It’s just…’
He glanced to the far side of the car park, where a woman was standing at the corner of the building. She was holding a black bin bag in each hand and wore a net on her head to keep her hair in place. Once the woman realised she’d been caught watching them, she turned away from Connor and Sarah, busying herself at the industrial-sized wheelie bins that were separated from the car park by wooden fencing.
‘Here,’ Connor said, showing her the message he’d received.
Sarah looked at him defiantly. ‘Well, I didn’t send it.’
Why should she care? She wasn’t the one who was married and had kids. He had ended it – whatever happened next was his problem.
‘Have you tried texting back?’ she asked sarcastically.
‘I tried calling. It keeps going through to answerphone.’
‘Well, it wasn’t me,’ Sarah said quietly between gritted teeth. She pulled her arm away from Connor, opened the car door and threw her bag inside. ‘You said it was over. It is.’
She got into the car and slammed the door shut. Connor stood in the car park, fists clenched by his sides, and watched as she drove away.
When she got back home, Sarah planned on going straight to her bedroom in a bid to avoid Grace, her flatmate. The plan failed: Grace was coming out of the bathroom as Sarah reached the top of the stairs and, as always, Sarah was unable to hide her feelings from her face.
‘What’s happened?’ Grace asked. She flicked the bathroom light switch and stepped out on to the landing. ‘You OK?’
Sarah shrugged. ‘I’m fine. I just want to get showered and out of these clothes.’
Grace folded her arms across her chest. Sarah was a terrible liar; she always had been. Grace had known her long enough to know when she was trying to hide the truth.
‘It’s him again, isn’t it?’
Sarah rolled her eyes, unable to hold back the reaction. ‘Not everything has to be about him, you know.’
‘But I’m right, aren’t I?’
Sarah sidestepped her friend into the living room and threw her bag on to the sofa. ‘Everything’s always on his terms.’
Grace stood in the doorway, watching as Sarah sat down to take off her shoes. How many more times were they going to have this same conversation?
‘Of course it is. That’s how affairs work.’
Sarah looked up sharply. ‘You don’t have to be quite so mean about it.�
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‘I’m not being mean. I’m being honest. Married men don’t leave their wives, Sarah, that’s not how it works. I just don’t want to see you hurt again.’ She sat down beside her, aware Sarah was still sulking. She always did in the first few moments after being told the truth. It usually didn’t take too long for her to snap out of it, although there had been a couple of occasions when Sarah’s relationship with this married man had caused days of non-communication between them.
She wondered what it was about her friend. A few years earlier, when Sarah was just twenty, she’d been in an abusive relationship that had ended when she had been hospitalised. The ex-boyfriend was sent to prison for the assault and Sarah – after many tears and much therapy – seemed to be moving on with her life. Right until she found another Mr Wrong, that is.
‘How about that night out you promised me?’ Grace suggested.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think I’m in the mood.’
‘That’s exactly why you need it,’ Grace said, getting back up from the sofa. ‘Come on. I’m not taking no for an answer.’
Chapter Fifteen
After Chloe left, the thought of spending yet another evening alone in her empty house was almost enough to make Alex want to call her and ask her to come back. Instead, she did what she recently tended to do when this feeling caught her off guard: she called Rob. It rang through to answerphone.
She stood at the kitchen sink and washed her wine glass, resolving not to drink any more. As her thoughts festered in the silence of the house, they naturally strayed towards her work. Her job was the only thing able to provide a distraction from the realities of her home life, and from a future Alex feared to linger on too long. Empty years – childless, loveless – seemed to stretch into the spaces ahead, leaving Alex filled with a dread that often kept her awake at night in the darkness of her now-lonely house.
The Girls in the Water: A completely gripping serial killer thriller with a shocking twist (Detectives King and Lane Book 1) Page 6
