The Girls in the Water: A completely gripping serial killer thriller with a shocking twist (Detectives King and Lane Book 1)

by Victoria Jenkins

  A request to the Department of Work and Pensions for his current and former employment details was being processed; a phrase Alex had come to loathe. It seemed a get-out clause for people who were simply unprepared to complete their jobs quickly and efficiently. She had given one of the team’s DCs her own request: to make sure the department’s administrative staff didn’t keep them waiting, even if that meant standing over a desk and utilising the threat of a search warrant.

  Alex wasn’t confident about where the information might take them, but she wanted every member of the team kept busy. Any information was to be considered useful, only to be discarded once it had been proven not so. Alex had made the mistake in the past of overlooking the finer details, and at times missing the all too obvious. It was the reason she had insisted on sitting through hours of strip club CCTV footage, though it had turned out to be fruitless. She couldn’t afford to make any mistakes.

  Adam Edwards’s mobile number had already been sought and his phone company contacted. They had been hoping to be able to use the GPS to track him, but as yet there had been no result. His phone seemed to have been disconnected from the network. The only way that this could have happened was for the battery to have been removed. Once again, he was two steps ahead of them.

  A search warrant of the house where Adam Edwards had been living recently was obtained.

  Alex and Dan returned to Simon Watts’s house and searched Adam’s bedroom, finding nothing there out of the ordinary. The man seemed as meticulous in his day-to-day life as he had been in his crimes.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Simon Watts said, standing in the corner of the living room and watching with a disgruntled expression as Alex searched through the contents of the drawers beneath the TV unit. ‘Adam’s hardly ever here.’

  Ignoring him, Alex’s thoughts continued to focus on the hair that had been cut from both Lola’s and Sarah’s heads. If Chloe’s assumption had been right and the killer had taken the hair as a souvenir, it seemed likely he would keep it somewhere close; somewhere he would be able to return to it. There was no sign of either woman in the house.

  Had he taken the hair with him?

  Where the hell was he?

  ‘Your work ID shown up yet?’ Alex asked.

  Simon Watts shook his head. ‘Security at the parks is useless anyway.’ As soon as he’d spoken the words, he seemed to regret them.

  ‘What are you suggesting, Mr Watts?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said quickly.

  ‘So anyone could gain access with a vehicle if they chose the right moment, is that it?’

  Simon’s refusal to offer a response answered Alex’s question for her. It was frustrating, but why would anyone have expected tight security at a city park or a popular picnic location? People didn’t generally expect to have murder victims abandoned there.

  ‘Does Adam have any identifying features?’

  It had occurred to Alex that, although Rachel Jones had been able to identify him from his photo as a teenager, she hadn’t seen him since well before Christmas. During that time, he’d had plenty of opportunity to change his appearance.

  ‘Got quite a big tattoo up his arm,’ Simon told her.

  ‘Of?’

  The man shrugged. ‘Snake or something.’

  ‘What colour’s his hair?’

  Simon narrowed his eyes, as though it was a trick question. ‘Dark.’

  It had been dark in his police photograph, Alex thought, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t recently changed it. She continued her search of the house, finding a bank statement dated six months earlier that she took with her.

  Once they left, she and Dan made their way to the nearest branch. If they could gain access to Adam Edwards’s account activity, it might give them an indication of where he now was. Any further activity would help lead them to him.

  ‘Did you hear Simon Watts complaining about the mess?’ Dan asked as he put on his seatbelt. ‘I thought we left it in a better state than it was in when we arrived.’

  Alex smiled, though she had barely registered his words. She was thinking of Adam’s mobile and how the GPS had thrown up no results. It was the same for Lola’s and for Sarah’s. Adam Edwards was a clever bastard. He had been careful in concealing his tracks, and Alex was worried that his bank account activity might also prove fruitless in their search.

  Her suspicions were proved correct. Standing orders had left his account: his phone bill; his monthly payment for van insurance. Other than that, Edwards’s account had little activity. He had been paying his rent at Simon Watts’s house in cash, presumably from the odd jobs through which he seemed to be earning his living. He must have been making the rest of his purchases that way.

  To all intents and purposes, Adam Edwards had disappeared.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chloe had barely slept, and what little rest she had managed to cling on to had been permeated with dreams that had left her shaken. Her brother’s voice on the recording and the memory of his visit to her shared flat not long after Emily had died all played back to her, the words distorted, incriminating. Why was she now starting to doubt him? She hated herself for even contemplating the notion that Luke might not have been telling the truth. She had come this far. She wouldn’t stop believing in him now.

  It was twenty past seven. It was early to be calling Alex, although she knew the DI was always up early. She wanted to catch her before she got to the station, or wherever it was that the investigation into the deaths of Lola Evans and Sarah Taylor would take her that morning. She wished she could be of greater help. She felt useless there, confined to the flat and unable to go to the job that she realised had for so long now been the very thing that had been keeping her afloat. Without it, what was she?

  ‘Alex?’

  ‘Everything all right?’

  No, Chloe thought, but of course they both already knew that. Nothing was all right. It was starting to feel as though nothing would ever be all right again.

  ‘Any updates on the case?’

  Alex exhaled loudly down the phone. Chloe realised what a difficult position she was putting her colleague in, and she had already asked too much of her. Relaying details of a current case to an officer on suspension would be yet another round of ammunition the superintendent could use against Alex, were Harry to decide that her involvement in Chloe’s closed case investigations was sufficient to take action against them both. Alex had already made herself vulnerable for the sake of helping her.

  ‘Chloe, you know I can’t give you any information.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. I just feel so bloody useless sitting here, not doing anything.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’ Chloe pressed, reading the unspoken suggestion in Alex’s silence.

  ‘You’re not useless, OK. We have a suspect, and that’s all I can say, but something you wrote in your email… we wouldn’t have got there without you. You’re not useless.’

  The DI was trying to offer her reassurance, but Chloe couldn’t bring herself to accept it. She should be there with her now, she thought, helping her catch the bastard responsible for the deaths of two innocent young women. She had allowed herself to become distracted. She had failed those girls. Words had their place, but it was actions that solved crimes and ensured convictions.

  ‘Who is he?’ Chloe asked, knowing she was pushing her luck.

  ‘I’m going to put the phone down if you ask me anything else. How are you?’

  ‘Like I said, useless.’ Chloe played distractedly with a loose thread of cotton at the seam of her duvet cover. ‘Look, I know we can’t do anything more about Luke now. I realise I might not be coming back. I just want you to know something.’

  There was silence again as Alex waited for Chloe to resume her speech. Chloe had wanted to tell Alex of her suspicions about her father so many times before, but there had never seemed to be a right time. Whenever she had thought to tell her, she had
visualised Alex’s likely response. She knew how erratic her suspicions already appeared, what trouble they had already led her into. Accusing her father was likely to help her lose what little credibility she’d had left.

  There was never going to be a right time. Somehow, the urgency to tell her now seemed pressing. If someone else knew what she thought had happened at least she would no longer be alone with her suspicions. Even if they chose not to listen, she had told someone.

  ‘I think my father killed Luke.’

  Chloe could hear the scepticism in Alex’s silence. To anyone else, her words were those of someone barely clinging on to common sense. First Patrick Sibley then all those other names she had reeled off that morning in Alex’s office, crowding the room with events and accusations that seemed to hold little coherence even to her. Now her father.

  ‘Do you have any evidence?’

  There was a tiredness to Alex’s question – a ‘here we go again’ sigh mingled between the words that Alex couldn’t have hidden even had she attempted to.

  Chloe looked at the screen of her laptop. She knew what she wanted to say. She wanted to tell Alex, louder this time, what a controlling bully her father had been throughout her and her brother’s childhoods. She wanted to tell her again – had she not heard it the first time? – that she had watched her father beat Luke for little more than what he had referred to as insolence.

  Luke had been accused of murder. What had her father been capable of under those circumstances?

  She looked again at the screen in front of her. She couldn’t tell Alex – not without admitting to having copied the files. Not without forcing Alex to an even greater scepticism of her integrity. ‘No.’

  ‘You need to stop this now. For your own sake, please.’

  She thinks I’m losing the plot, Chloe thought. ‘I wish I was there to catch him with you.’

  Was she talking about Lola and Sarah’s killer, or was she talking about the man she believed responsible for her brother’s death? Was it now more important to find that man than it was to find the one responsible for the death of Emily? The boundaries between everything seemed blurred. Chloe wasn’t sure of anything any more.

  Except maybe one thing.

  She looked at her opened laptop and at the CCTV footage that was paused on the screen. A main road, not far from Marcross where her brother had been found. Her father’s car stopped at a set of traffic lights. A driver who wore a hooded jacket – a jacket that was one of Luke’s.

  A driver she was certain was not her brother.

  Chapter Sixty

  He stood on her front doorstep still looking so much like the younger man Chloe remembered with such fondness. Time had altered him, tracing the finest of lines at the corners of his eyes, but that smile – that front tooth that crossed ever so slightly over the other – was still instantly recognisable as his. It brought a comforting sensation that she felt enclosed by, as though nostalgia had wrapped itself around her like an old blanket, cosy in its familiarity.

  ‘Chloe? God, it’s been so long. You haven’t aged though. What you taking? I’ll have some.’ He smiled that familiar smile again, though it was quick to fall from his face. ‘Sorry. How are you? Stupid question, I suppose.’

  Seeing him brought back a host of memories. He had always been so nice to her; so supportive, even though she had so often taken advantage of the fact. Chloe supposed there were a lot of things she had taken for granted back then. She’d had to grow up quickly – far too quickly – but despite her circumstances, her teenage naivety had been strong enough to blind her to the hardships that were yet to come. When it had seemed she had lost everything, she’d still had the person closest to her. The person who had made it possible to survive anything.

  But once Luke was gone, Chloe had really known what losing everything truly meant.

  Perhaps that was why she had lost touch with him. She couldn’t cling to the remnants of a past, not when the solid structure of it was no longer in existence. It was a shame, she thought, but life and everything it had thrown at her had forced her away from everyone.

  There was also the issue of that awkward night she didn’t really want to remember.

  She stepped aside and let him into the flat. He handed her a carrier bag. She peered inside. There was a bag of mixed salad, a packet of tomatoes, some spinach and ricotta ravioli and a bottle of non-alcoholic fruit cocktail.

  ‘Thought you might need some dinner. If you’re anything like me, you don’t bother cooking for one. You still a veggie?’

  Chloe nodded. ‘Thanks.’ She stepped aside to allow him into the flat, but he hesitated.

  ‘I don’t want to be presumptuous. We can go out if you prefer, though? Might be good for you. The longer you stay in, the harder it’s going to get to go back out.’

  Chloe realised this was probably right, but she couldn’t face the outside world just yet. She considered it for the briefest of moments, but it was far too soon. ‘I invited you over, didn’t I? Look, I know you’re right, but… not yet.’

  What would other people say if they were to see her out with a man, just days after those photographs had been splashed all over the front of the newspapers? She would be adding fuel to a fire that, as far as Chloe was concerned, couldn’t die out quickly enough. Keeping a low profile would mean keeping herself protected to what little extent she was now able to. Surely it didn’t mean, though, that she needed to keep herself entirely isolated?

  ‘How long have you been living here?’ he asked, taking a look around the sparsely furnished living room.

  It did look as though she had only just moved in and hadn’t yet had time to unpack any items beyond the basic furniture needed to make the space liveable, but this was exactly as Chloe had always liked it. She had never wanted to become fixed to any one place, presumably because being fixed had once meant being trapped. Since working with Alex – and now since meeting Scott – her ideas had altered. She felt a sense of belonging in her job, something that had previously been an alien sensation to her. Scott had been the first person in a long time with whom she could imagine something fixed, something permanent, and it was those very thoughts that had sent her running.

  What must he think of her now?

  Chloe followed her old friend’s eyes as they scanned the room, embarrassed suddenly by the sum of her life. ‘About six months.’ She took the bag from him and ushered him through to the kitchen. ‘Thanks for these.’

  In the kitchen, she flicked on the kettle and took two mugs from the cupboard next to the fridge. For someone who had craved her own space, Chloe had found herself attacked by loneliness at a worryingly rapid rate. Isolation had been acceptable when she had chosen it. Once it had been forced upon her, it had quickly lost its appeal.

  ‘It’s good to see you.’

  She turned from her task of making tea and shot him a smile. ‘You too.’

  In a way, having him there made it feel as though the previous eight years of her life had never happened, as though she had been transported back to a whole other lifetime: one that despite being so relentlessly battered by sadness had been punctuated with the occasional moment of hope. Before Luke’s death, she had been happy, occasionally. Those times they had laughed together over something stupid – the times he had walked her home, deliberately extending the route taken in an unspoken effort to keep her a little longer from a flat he had always seemed to know she would never be able to call her home.

  Would she want to be eighteen again? she thought.

  Not the version of it she’d been given, certainly not. But in another past – in another life that had led down a path much different to the one she had been given – most certainly.

  She turned to him. ‘Still take sugar?’ she asked.

  He gave her a smile. ‘Good memory, Chloe.’

  Chapter Sixty-One

  The local press had been informed of the search for Adam Edwards and one of the team was updating social media websites with
his image and a request for any member of the public who might see him to contact them immediately. If he was to gain knowledge of the fact that the police had identified him, there was always a chance he might give himself up. He had nowhere to go, and nobody could run for ever.

  Alex had to acknowledge that the likelihood was slim. If the conditions Sarah Taylor had been put into the lake at Cosmeston offered anything by which they were able to judge this man, Alex predicted that he had come to view his criminal activity as some sort of game. It was likely he had known her body would be found, and sooner rather than later. He may have already known that the police were aware of him, probably enjoying this game of cat and mouse where he had, until now, exercised control.

  Wading through Adam Edwards’s copious employment history for any clues as to his current whereabouts seemed a daunting task, one that Alex realised they had little time for. With Rachel Jones safely at her brother’s house in Bristol, she had no longer to fear for the young woman’s safety. But that wasn’t to say Adam Edwards hadn’t set his sights elsewhere.

  While the rest of the team worked on contacting those who might have known or worked with Edwards, Alex paid a visit to the mutual friend who had referred Simon Watts to Adam when he’d needed electrical work on his house.

  She found the man working in a pub in Hopkinstown. The man had once worked in another pub, years earlier, and it was there he had met Adam. It made sense that Adam Edwards might have worked in pubs: he had grown up in one, would be familiar with their running. According to his former workmate, Edwards had trained as an electrician but had never fully qualified, although he still took on cash-in-hand jobs to make an extra bit of money on the side. The man claimed not to have seen Edwards in months, not since he had moved into Simon Watts’s house as a lodger.