Alex sensed Chloe’s body tense as they stepped into the darkened room. The air was fetid and sour with the smell of iron. Patches of blood stained the already dark carpet at the right-hand side of the room. A wooden chair was upturned. Several lengths of rope lay strewn amidst it.
‘Jesus.’
Alex surveyed the scene, realising now exactly what Jacob and his friend Riley had seen. A woman in a chair. Her head hanging low and her long hair covering her face. At first, they hadn’t thought the woman was real. She looked just like one of those real-life dolls they dress up in shops. A Hallowe’en version.
Then they’d kept telling themselves that’s exactly what she had been, to make the memory of her go away.
Alex put a hand to her mouth. Had Sarah Taylor been here, tied to this chair? Was it Sarah the two boys had seen? Had she been alive? If it hadn’t been Sarah, who else had been here? And where was Sarah now?
‘We’ve got prints, boss.’
Alex watched a scene of crime officer collect a sample of blood from the floor at the foot of the upturned chair. The other SOCO was still dusting for further prints.
‘Could be the boys’ prints,’ Chloe suggested. ‘Did they actually come into the room?’
‘Jake said not. What the bloody hell were they doing out here alone at that time of night? Where were their parents?’
Chloe studied Alex, watching frustration play out in the tensing of her jaw. Chloe didn’t think it was suitable to point out that if the boys’ parents had been keeping a closer eye on them, they wouldn’t have found this place.
When she caught her eye, Alex looked away. She ushered Chloe back out to the kitchen.
‘If Sarah Taylor, or whoever else, was here then how were they moved – how were they brought here?’
‘Road’s pretty isolated. Be easy enough for someone to come and go without being noticed, I suppose.’
Alex went back through to the small landing and glanced along the walls at the side of the staircase. ‘No blood out here,’ she mused. ‘If someone had been brought here against their will, there’d be signs of a struggle, wouldn’t there? And if he’d had to move an injured person back down these stairs, where’s the blood?’ She put a hand to her face and pressed her fingers against her eyelids. She knew that injured would likely mean dead. As she began to consider the ways the woman had been removed from the building, dark images permeated Alex’s thoughts.
‘We need to get Jake and Riley in and get them printed,’ she said, thinking aloud. ‘If we can rule them out, we might be able to isolate the killer’s prints.’
Her phone began to ring. She took it from her pocket and saw DC Mason’s number flash up from the screen.
‘Daniel.’
‘I’ve watched some of the CCTV footage sent over from the strip club where Lola worked,’ he told Alex.
The call the station had received had been from a young woman who hadn’t wanted to give her name. She claimed she had worked with Lola in a strip club in Cardiff – one of the subterranean bars that ran the length of St Mary’s Street – and said it was doubtful the manager would have contacted police even had he heard of Lola’s murder. It seemed he paid a lot of the girls who worked there cash in hand and was notorious for fiddling the club’s accounts. He wouldn’t have wanted any attention from the police.
‘Anything?’
‘Didn’t need to watch much to find what we needed,’ Dan said. ‘Lola didn’t leave alone.’
Chapter Thirty-One
The desk sergeant raised an eyebrow at the man lingering in reception. He appeared to be sweating, despite the fact that it was bitterly cold outside, and even inside the station’s barely capable heating system was doing little to stave off the chill. The man had long hair that was pulled back into a messy ponytail. He was wearing leathers and carrying a helmet under his arm.
‘Can I help you?’
Stuart generally didn’t like helping anyone. His front of house position at the station was something of an ongoing source of ridicule amongst his colleagues who often claimed he would have been better suited to a role in a prison: his mardy expression and surly attitude were enough to put anyone off reoffending. On the plus side, his general apathy was a deterrent against time-wasters and that was something that was always needed.
‘I want to put in a complaint.’
If Stuart could have got away with sighing, he would have. As things stood, he had already been spoken to in recent months about his lack of customer service skills and was subsequently feigning best behaviour. He was supposed to make people feel safe and reassured. As far as he was concerned, it was this kind of soft-soaping that was turning the country to shit. Back in his day, the police had demanded authority and respect. They didn’t sit behind desks and offer politeness to people who had the gall to make complaints about the way they chose to run things.
His lips spread into a thin, meaningless smile. ‘Against?’
‘Against Detective Constable Chloe Lane.’
Despite the blast of heat from the radiator on the wall behind them, the air in Harry Blake’s office felt colder than it was on the street outside. Chloe stood beside Alex, her face pale and her eyes cast to the floor as though she had been summoned to the head teacher’s office. Alex knew she didn’t have to be there, but she felt a loyalty to Chloe and was aware of the pressure the young woman was under, something no one else at the station knew of. She had asked Harry if he would consider allowing her to return to a closed case – it wouldn’t take him long to work out which closed case that happened to be.
Superintendent Blake shoved a pile of papers aside. Alex watched him pointlessly move things around his desk, feigning productivity in an attempt to delay the real reason they were all there. She didn’t think it fair that Chloe should bear the brunt of his disgruntlement. She wasn’t yet sure of the details of what Chloe was supposed to have done. She had imagined the worst, but had optimistically decided to hope for the best.
No one else knew of Chloe’s connection to either the Emily Phillips or the Luke Griffiths case, and as far as Alex was concerned that was how it should stay. There was no getting away from the super finding out now, but Alex was determined to do everything she could to keep Chloe’s secret just that. She and Harry Blake had worked together for years. He had been responsible for her relatively quick promotion to detective inspector. She knew that beneath his cool exterior and his off-puttingly stern demeanour, Harry liked her. He respected her. She was confident she could persuade him, if needed, to keep Chloe’s secret between the three of them, if only in the short-term. And besides, there was plenty more going on. There was no way he would want any negative attention drawn to anyone on the team.
‘You’re aware of the complaint that’s been made?’ Harry asked, not inviting either Chloe or her to take a seat. Alex hoped that was an indication they wouldn’t be kept too long.
Chloe nodded.
‘Do you want to explain it?’
‘Not really,’ she mumbled. She looked up, caught his expression and gave a brief and barely audible apology. ‘It’s not quite as he said, sir. I never accused him of anything.’
‘Mr Sibley claims you accused him of murdering your late brother’s girlfriend. He says it’s not the first time you’ve done so.’
Though they weren’t within touching distance of one another, Alex felt Chloe’s body stiffen beside her. She shot the young woman a look.
What the hell had she been thinking?
‘Why have you never told anyone about your links to these two cases?’ Harry asked. ‘Well, except you,’ he gestured to Alex. ‘You obviously knew all about it.’
‘Only recently.’
The superintendent sat back in his seat and pushed his fingertips to his temple as though forcing back a headache. The fingertips of his other hand beat rhythmically on the wooden desk. Chloe braced herself for the verbal onslaught, but it didn’t come.
‘I didn’t want to be judged, sir. It’s never aff
ected my work.’
‘Until now?’ Harry surmised. He sat forward and put his elbows on the desk in front of him. ‘I’m familiar with both cases. You weren’t with the police then, were you?’
‘I was still a teenager.’
Harry nodded. Alex watched him deliberating over his words, carefully sidestepping the things he really wanted to say. She almost felt sorry for him. What was he supposed to say to this young woman whose brother had been accused of murder and subsequently taken his own life? No police training could ever prepare a person for circumstances as unlikely and unpredictable as this. Everyone believed Luke Griffiths guilty. There had been no real reason not to.
‘Cases can only be revisited if new evidence has come to light; neither of you needs me to tell you that. Do you have any new evidence?’
Chloe shook her head, her top teeth clamped on to her bottom lip as though blocking all the things she wanted to say. She knew she was fighting a battle she couldn’t win. The case was closed. Guilty.
She was starting to wish she had never confided in Alex. She’d managed on her own for this long; why had she thought she needed anyone else now? All she’d done was open up to other people a past she’d kept a lid on for years.
Those bloody emails were to blame. She had responded spontaneously, her heart ruling her head. Someone seemed to be pulling her strings, as though knowing that the mere suggestion another person might know something of Emily’s death would be enough to send her plummeting back into the past. Had she reacted as they had hoped?
By her side, Alex cast Harry a pleading glance, but it went either unnoticed or ignored. She assumed the latter. She thought of the post-mortem report she had returned that morning and felt the same surge of guilt she had experienced when sitting at her kitchen table to read it.
‘All right then, I don’t want to hear any more about this until Lola Evans’s murderer has been found. I need you both on task, no distractions.’
Alex nodded in acknowledgment. Beside her, Chloe did the same.
‘I will speak to Mr Sibley about this myself. The last thing we need is negative attention. I’ll tell him you’ve been formally reprimanded, although clearly that’s an exaggeration. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here. Please don’t make it something I’ll regret.’
‘Sir.’
Chloe and Alex left Harry’s office in silence, neither willing to be the one to break it.
‘I don’t want to talk about it again,’ Chloe said, once they were in the corridor.
‘But—’
‘It’s not your fault. I should never have involved you.’
Alex didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to let Chloe down, but she didn’t want to have to be the one to help her chase a mystery that was never going to be solved. The only people who knew what had truly happened that night all those years ago were Luke and Emily. All truths had gone to the grave with them.
‘Boss.’
Alex was distracted from her thoughts by DC Mason. Chloe sidestepped him, barely acknowledging her colleague in her desperation to get away.
‘OK?’
‘Forensics has come back with the results on the two sets of prints found at the pub. One of them is a match with Lola Evans.’
‘And Sarah?’
Dan nodded. ‘She was there.’
Alex felt her heart miss a beat. A surge of fear for Sarah Taylor overwhelmed her. ‘And the blood?’
‘Nothing yet. Said they’ll try by the end of tomorrow.’
Alex sighed. She hoped for Sarah Taylor’s sake that the blood would be identified as Lola’s.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The forensics department was better than its word and the following morning returned a result on the blood samples taken from the pub. Two different blood samples had been collected from the room where they now knew Lola Evans and Sarah Taylor had been held. One was a match with Lola Evans.
Sarah Taylor’s sister was called into the station for a blood test, accompanied by the police officer acting as family liaison. His presence alone had previously been enough to send the family into a tearful panic about what might have happened to Sarah. There were things the Taylor family still hadn’t been told. They were unaware that Lola Evans had been held in the room where they now knew Sarah had also been held. They didn’t want to give them reason to worry any more than they already were doing; at least not until their fears were justified.
The family was aware that fingerprints had been found at the scene and were being analysed against belongings taken from Sarah’s bedroom at her flat. The match that had been found was something Alex was about to have to inform her of. Alex sat with Laura in one of the interview rooms.
‘I’m so sorry to tell you this, but one of the sets of prints lifted from the pub is a match with Sarah’s.’
Laura Taylor had seen the news and knew all about Lola Evans. No one needed to be told that Sarah’s disappearance was being investigated alongside the murder case. Alex had barely started speaking before the other woman was reduced to a trembling wreck.
Vulnerable young women, Alex thought. Lola Evans. Sarah Taylor. Now Laura. All victims of the hands life had dealt them. Or maybe not. Life hadn’t chosen this for them: a man had. A man possessed by the kind of evil Alex knew she would never begin to understand no matter how long her career.
Alex had sat through the strip club CCTV footage that Dan had flagged up. He was right: Lola hadn’t left alone. A camera at the front doors had picked her up leaving the building at just after 2 a.m. She had walked from the main doors of the club alone, but had met with someone as soon as she was outside. A man had been waiting there for her and it seemed Lola had been expecting him. The footage was grainy and the man was wearing a hood pulled up, though there was a partial shot of his face when he turned to greet Lola. Dark features. Much taller than Lola’s five foot four.
Was this the man who had taken and killed her?
Did this same man now have Sarah?
Laura Taylor sat sobbing, her long hair hiding her blotchy, tear-stained face. She looked so very much like her sister, and the thought of their physical similarities was unsettling. For a short while, Alex found herself unable to look at Laura without seeing Sarah’s face. It made her all the more determined to find her alive.
‘We’re doing everything we can to find Sarah.’
‘But she was definitely there? In that building. You know that for sure?’
Alex nodded.
As Laura Taylor cried – as her tears grew louder and pierced through the silence of the room – the officer assigned as family liaison stood by her side helplessly, seeking Alex’s eyeline for some sort of sign as to how he should handle the situation.
Alex put a hand on the young woman’s arm. ‘We mustn’t assume the worst. Although Sarah’s prints were there, there’s nothing to suggest she has been injured. It’s likely whoever has taken Sarah was panicked by the boys getting into the building. He might have just moved her. You need to stay strong for your sister, OK?’ She looked up at the family liaison officer. ‘Could you get Laura a cup of tea, please?’
The young woman looked at Alex once the FLO had left the room. ‘I know what he did to that other girl. What if he’s done the same to Sarah?’
Alex took Laura’s hand in hers. ‘We have to believe he hasn’t. For Sarah. OK?’
She let go of Laura’s hand and passed her the box of tissues from the desk. Her own words sounded so convincing when she spoke them aloud like that.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Connor Price had been brought into the station by uniform and was sitting in the holding area looking agitated. He followed Alex through to the interview room, making no attempt to hide his annoyance at having been called there for a second time that week.
DC Chloe Lane was already in the interview room. She sat with her arms folded across her chest and avoided Alex’s eye as she entered the room. She was clearly still smarting from that morning’s meeti
ng with Superintendent Blake. Alex guessed that much of what the young woman was experiencing was acute embarrassment. She had kept her past – she had kept herself – so expertly hidden, her backstory packed neatly away like a delicate keepsake, that to watch its wrapping torn away by careless fingers must have panicked her into the shame-filled silence which she now seemed so intent on maintaining. If she hadn’t known Chloe better, Alex might have thought her attitude petulant. But Chloe was just a young woman who had been forced to endure more than her life’s fair share of trauma.
No one could blame her for wanting to cocoon herself.
‘I’m not saying anything until a solicitor gets here,’ Connor said, taking a seat and folding his arms across his chest. His stance mirrored Chloe’s, an unspoken defiance reaching across the table between them.
‘That’s fine.’
Alex gave Chloe a nod, gesturing her out into the corridor. Chloe stood, barely tearing her gaze from Connor Price.
Alex waited until they were both in the corridor then pulled the door closed behind her, keeping a grip on the handle in case Connor Price decided to try something stupid, like leave.
‘You’re upset with me,’ she said, not wanting to waste what little time they would have until the duty solicitor showed up. ‘I’m sorry if you feel I didn’t support you this morning.’
‘I’m not upset with you,’ Chloe said, pushing a length of blonde hair behind her ear. ‘I shouldn’t have gone to see Patrick Sibley like that. It was stupid.’
Alex didn’t think anything would be helped by agreeing with this statement. Going to see Patrick Sibley like that had been reckless and foolish. Hadn’t Alex warned her against approaching any of the ‘suspects’ on her increasingly neurotic list? And hadn’t she failed to adhere to her own advice when making the decision to take that post-mortem report? She wasn’t really in a position to judge.
The Girls in the Water: A completely gripping serial killer thriller with a shocking twist (Detectives King and Lane Book 1) Page 12
