Connor’s expression changed and his face paled at the implication. ‘No. I mean, she wasn’t like that. She’d never done anything like that, she just… she liked to talk things through. She wanted to be around people who understood her.’
‘And that was you, was it, Mr Price? You understood her?’
Alex shot Chloe a look that didn’t go unmissed. She knew what the look meant. She was angry, and her anger was manifesting itself in the wrong way, directing itself at the wrong people. This wasn’t like her, and both Alex and Chloe knew it.
‘What the hell is all this about?’ Connor said, his focus shifting between the two officers. ‘Look, I’m not in love with her, OK? I admit it. Is that a crime?’
‘It’s just sex?’
Connor gave a shrug. ‘People do it every day,’ he said, holding Chloe’s stare longer than was comfortable. ‘Look, I assume I’m not under arrest?’
‘What would you be under arrest for?’ Alex asked. Sarah Taylor was missing, but as yet that was all she was. Under ‘normal’ circumstances her disappearance wouldn’t have yet been considered a priority, but with another young woman recently found murdered they weren’t going to take any chances.
‘Exactly,’ Connor said. ‘She’s probably just having a couple of days to herself. Clear her head or something.’
‘Why would she need to do that?’ Chloe asked. ‘You just said she wasn’t upset by the end of the affair, that she’d accepted it?’
Connor scraped back his chair and stood. ‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her when she turns up. Can I go now?’
Chloe watched the man hesitate before he got the nod from Alex that he was free to leave.
He headed for the door.
Alex got up and followed him back down the corridor to reception. She hoped for Sarah Taylor’s sake that when she did turn up she’d be capable of explaining where she’d been.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chloe hadn’t been to her parents’ house in over eight years. Her last visit had ended with her father telling her it was best she never came back, so she’d adhered to his wishes and hadn’t returned. A year later she had moved to London, a city where it had been easy to lose herself, and it was there she had joined the police after finishing university. She had spent over six years in London trying to cast off her old self and prove what she was made of, to herself as much as to others. Six years spent trying to forget. Then she had realised she couldn’t. She never would. So she returned home, to Cardiff.
She had seen her parents only once since moving back to Wales a little over six months earlier. She had been in Cardiff city centre shopping for a pair of shoes to wear to a party she didn’t end up going to. She remembered standing in the shoe section of Debenhams, deliberating between a pair of sensible flats that didn’t look that great but were likely to be comfortable and a pair of high heels that looked amazing but she knew were likely to attract unwanted attention.
She ended up with neither. Whilst playing eeny-meeny between them, Chloe had looked up and seen a familiar figure standing near the menswear department. She recognised her mother immediately. The short, solid frame and the hair swept back and piled high on the head: she hadn’t changed one bit. Her mother was wearing an outdoor jacket, the windbreaker kind that came in lurid colours that made her even more conspicuous amongst the busy crowds of Saturday afternoon shoppers.
Her mother had turned to speak with someone, and there was Chloe’s dad, larger than life, towering over his wife by a good eight inches, as he always had.
Chloe had never been able to look at her father without being reminded of Luke. The thought of her brother never failed to throw her off balance and she put a hand to the shelving unit on which the high heeled shoes she’d been eyeing up were displayed. They were so similar. Both tall, both with the same wiry frame – an athlete’s figure – and with dark hair that even in her father’s case showed minimal signs of grey. Chloe watched as something was said between them. Her mother gestured to a pair of sunglasses, took them from the stand and handed them to her father who tried them on and turned to his wife, seeking her approval. She gave a shrug and he passed them back.
Chloe had never known her father to wear sunglasses. Why would he have needed any? The sky that ceilinged South Wales spent ninety-five per cent of its time bearing an expression of disappointment, and even on its best days was never that sure about it for too long.
It occurred to Chloe that her parents might be going on holiday, and the thought filled her with a sickening anger. Their son was dead. Years had passed, but not that many, and nothing in that time had changed. Luke was still dead. His killer was still out there somewhere.
His parents were shopping for sunglasses.
‘Can I help you?’
A girl who looked no older than nineteen was standing beside Chloe, so close she made her jump.
‘Sorry,’ the shop assistant said with a smile. ‘I just wondered if you needed a hand with anything, or a second opinion maybe?’
Chloe had forgotten the shoes. She had forgotten what she was doing there. She was momentarily distracted by the thick line of orange foundation that framed the girl’s face before saying, ‘No. Thanks.’
She left the shop, nearly walking into a woman pushing a pram on her way out. Once out in the wide main space of the shopping centre, she took a deep breath and promised herself, once again, that she would never be like them. They might have forgotten Luke, but she never would.
Now Chloe stood at the gate of her parents’ house, hesitating. She had grown up here, in Fairwater in Cardiff, in a house her parents had always quietly – and sometimes not so quietly – been ashamed of. The semi-detached was a standard three-bedroom on an estate both Malcolm and Susan Griffiths had always regarded as beneath them. From early childhood, Chloe had been encouraged to believe her family was better than those of her peers at school, better than the neighbours; better, in fact, than anyone she came into contact with in her relatively sheltered life. Her parents were big on exam results – anything they could use as a means to confirm themselves more successful than the parents of the other children at Luke and Chloe’s school. It had all seemed sadly hypocritical considering how little real interest they had taken in their children.
Chloe had grown up knowing she was different, but only because her parents had made her so. Her clothes were old-fashioned and when the other kids in her class spoke about television programmes they watched and music they listened to, Chloe was rarely able to join in with their conversations. Her father believed television rotted the brain; she and her brother were occasionally allowed to watch a programme, but only if it was educational and had been vetted by both parents first. Pop music – or ‘popular’ music, as her mother insisted on calling it – was filled with expletives, debauchery and disrespect of women, so that was off limits too.
They had wondered why both their children had insisted on rebellion.
Chloe walked up the short front path that led to the front door and pushed the button for the bell without allowing time when she might talk herself out of it. Everything about the house brought a heavy pain to her chest. The front step on which she and Luke had sat side by side most afternoons after school when it wasn’t raining, watching the other children playing on the small patch of grass on the far side of the street and wishing they were allowed to go; the same dark curtains hanging at the front windows where she would stand and lose herself when she and Luke played hide-and-seek and it was her turn to disappear: the sound of the bell, flat and dull, that rang for deliveries and the gas man, but never for the friends Chloe would long so much to see.
As a younger child she had thought their lives were normal. Then Chloe grew a little older, started comprehensive school, and had realised she wasn’t living in a home but under a regime.
Chloe had wondered which of her parents would be home – whether either of them would be there – and which one of them would answer the door. She didn’t wait long
to find out.
‘Mum.’
The word almost got stuck to her tongue. It had been so long since she had needed to use it, it sounded foreign as it left her lips.
Her mother said nothing. She looked so familiar, yet now she was this close to her Chloe could see how much older she had become, heavy lines framing her eyes and the skin at her jaw beginning to slacken. Her thick hair was piled high on her head in its usual way, pinned carefully in place with an array of slides and grips. The smell of baking wafted past her as she shifted uncomfortably in the doorway.
There was something behind her eyes, words she couldn’t bring herself to say. She kept them there, unspoken.
‘Dad home?’ Chloe asked when it became clear her mother wasn’t going to say anything.
The question was answered for her when Malcolm appeared at the end of the hallway; his face paled as though he’d seen a ghost. Chloe guessed that in many ways that was exactly what she must have become to them.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.
There had been a time when the hostility in his welcome and the curtness of his words might have offended or hurt Chloe, but they were way beyond that now.
‘I want to talk about Luke.’
Her father hurried along the hallway and pushed past his wife, his urgency almost violent. He gripped the side of the front door. ‘I told you not to come here again,’ he said, his voice shaking across the words. ‘Not until you’d found something else to talk about.’
Chloe opened her mouth to speak, changed her mind and said nothing. Her focus moved from her father to her mother. Why can’t we talk about him, she wanted to scream. He’s my brother, your son. Why shouldn’t we talk about him today, tomorrow? We should never stop talking about him.
Yet Chloe knew the words would be pointless. They had been there before, so many times; so much anger and bitterness; so many recriminations.
‘Mum…’ She looked at Susan pleadingly, knowing she was wasting her time. She couldn’t appeal to her mother’s softer side – as far as Chloe was aware, she didn’t have one. It had been there, once, in occasional appearances, but time had hardened it, eroding the soft edges that once might have existed.
This was the woman who had stood and watched on as her husband had beaten their son with a slipper. While Luke later sat locked in his bedroom, Chloe had cried to her mother in the kitchen, begging to know what her brother had done that had merited such punishment.
She would never forget her mother’s blank expression as she put Chloe’s dinner on the table in front of her and coldly said the words, ‘He shouldn’t have answered back.’
Chloe looked from her mother to her father and felt a burning flame of hatred race through her. These people had ruined her childhood – had ruined Luke’s childhood – yet here she was, standing on their doorstep and pleading with them.
It made her feel pathetic and humiliated all over again.
She might have cried, but in that moment her anger was stronger than her sadness.
‘I shouldn’t have come.’
‘No,’ her father said coolly.
Chloe reached into her pocket, her fingertips touching the cold metal of the house key.
She wondered whether her parents had ever thought to change the locks.
Chapter Twenty-Six
When he’d left the room, he had left Sarah lying on the floor. Her arms had deadened behind her, but at least she was able to breathe again. She had thought he was going to kill her, but she was still alive. He had left her mouth uncovered and, at first, she hadn’t made a sound. Then she had screamed and called for help. It hadn’t taken long for her throat to become raw with the effort and, even as she’d screamed, Sarah had realised the sound was going nowhere. It was merely bouncing from the walls, returning to her.
She had tried to get herself upright, but with her arms numbed and her legs still tied to the chair, it was impossible. All she had managed to do was end up on her side, but at least this had relieved the pressure from one of her arms.
He returned later. It might have been hours; it might have been days. Sarah had lost all concept of time. He pulled the chair upright, lifting her with it as though she was weightless. She saw a glint in the darkness and for a moment she thought he had brought a knife.
‘Please don’t,’ she said softly.
The hours she had spent alone in the darkness had given her time to think. She knew him, or at least she thought she did. There would be things she could say to him, ways she might be able to talk him down. She had seen it on TV: if she kept him talking, she might be able to get him to change his mind about what he was doing.
She didn’t want to die here.
She didn’t want to die.
When his hand moved, she realised he wasn’t carrying a knife. It was a pair of scissors.
‘That dress makes you look like a slut.’
She didn’t like the dress either. She had chosen it in an act of defiance against Connor, but she hadn’t thought it too bad with the tights she’d been wearing. Where were they and when had he removed them?
‘Please don’t,’ she said again when she realised his intended use for the scissors. ‘I’m so cold already.’
He reached for the front of her dress and Sarah began to scream. With the back of his other hand, he hit her across the face. She could feel every inch of her body shaking, every nerve tensed as the scissors moved to her chest and he began to cut through her clothing. Sarah squeezed her eyes closed and tried to shut out the sound of the metal slicing through the fabric. She tried to block out the sensations of the scissors’ coolness against her already frozen skin; the feel of his gloved hands against her body.
When he was finished, he stepped back to look at her. She was now in just her underwear, cold to the bone and humiliated. She could sense him staring at her, but refused to open her eyes to look at him.
‘If you’re going to do it, just do it,’ she said, the words catching between sobs.
‘Do what?’
Sarah opened her eyes and looked at him reluctantly.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘That. You think that’s what I want?’
She was so cold that she didn’t know how long her body could survive the temperature inside the room. When she next spoke, she heard the shiver in her words. Despite the darkness, she could see the cool cloud formed with every syllable.
‘Let me go. Please. Just leave me somewhere, anywhere; I won’t tell anyone, I promise.’
‘Leave you somewhere?’ he repeated. ‘Like that? You’ll catch your death.’
Sarah squeezed her eyes shut again. The mocking tone of his voice rang in her ears, taunting her. ‘I’ll catch my death if you leave me here.’
‘I won’t be leaving you here.’
She opened her eyes. This time she was determined to look at him; to really look at him, and to make him see her back. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ she asked again. ‘I’ve never done anything to you.’
He tutted. ‘You all say that.’
When he moved back towards her, Sarah braced herself for what she thought would happen next. She’d been wrong. He reached into his pocket and took something out, something that he pressed over her mouth and nose though she fought to try to get him off her.
Within seconds, there was nothing but darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Alex switched on the TV and turned up the sound. In the kitchen, she began to prepare herself a sandwich and a cup of tea, leaving both half-made when she heard the sound of Superintendent Blake’s voice coming from the living room. She went into the hallway and stood at the living room door, watching her colleague face the news crews and reporters as he prepared for the announcement recorded earlier that evening.
Harry still didn’t look well. The grey pallor of his skin blended with the grey at his temples and there was something missing from his eyes, some kind of lost spark that seemed to Alex an unspoken admission. Why had he come back to work so s
oon? Had he even wanted to come back at all?
There had been an air of detachment surrounding him these past weeks; a hopelessness that wouldn’t allow itself to go ignored. It shouldn’t have been so surprising or unexpected. Harry hadn’t returned under the most usual of circumstances. Besides that, he wasn’t the only person at the station whose attentions had seemed more than just a little diverted.
Alex’s thoughts drifted involuntarily to Chloe. She glanced back through to the kitchen, to the oversized clock hanging on the wall to the side of the sink. It was just gone ten thirty. Whatever Chloe was doing at that moment, Alex hoped it wasn’t something reckless.
‘We are currently investigating the murder of local woman Lola Evans, as well as the disappearance of another young woman.’ Superintendent Blake addressed the camera with a solemn expression fixed upon his face. ‘Miss Evans was from Rhydyfelin and her body was recovered from the River Taff at Bute Park on Tuesday morning. She was last seen on Saturday, the ninth of January in Cardiff. Another young woman, Sarah Taylor, is currently missing. We have no reason at this time to believe the two cases are in any way connected, although we are keen to make contact with Miss Taylor as soon as possible. While I’m unable to give any further details about either investigation at this time, I would ask anyone with any information regarding either of these two young women to please come forward and speak with police. As in any other circumstances, we ask everyone to take sensible precautions when in the city, particularly during the evenings and at night.’
There followed the usual barrage of questions from the press, despite the fact that Harry had just made it clear he could give no further details. The camera panned back to the news reporter as an image of Sarah Taylor appeared on the bottom right hand of the screen. It was a photograph of her in a pastel pink bridesmaid’s dress, taken at her sister’s wedding. She was smiling, her eyes focused on something or someone to the side of the camera and her face caught by a ray of sunshine that made her squint.
The Girls in the Water: A completely gripping serial killer thriller with a shocking twist (Detectives King and Lane Book 1) Page 10
