Exactly what were those appearances concealing?
‘Is there somewhere we could sit down, Mrs Griffiths?’
Her husband appeared at the top of the stairs then, a tall man, slim, with a presence Alex could easily imagine a young child might find intimidating. He came down the stairs with his eyes fixed upon her, a definite defiance in his expression. Everything Alex knew of this couple was clouded with Chloe’s experience of them and the suspicions that had only developed over time. She knew she must try to ignore them, but it was difficult not to view the couple in the same way as Chloe.
It was also difficult not to suspect them now she had spoken with one of the elders from their church.
‘Mr Griffiths,’ she greeted him. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Alex King.’
He didn’t offer her a hand, or even a response.
‘Through here,’ Susan said, gesturing to the living room doorway. Alex followed her into the room and sat in a chair opposite the sofa on which the couple sat. They were nowhere near each other, she noticed; each taking a separate end of the sofa. She wondered if it was habit.
‘I’m afraid there’s been an incident involving Chloe.’
She watched the couple carefully for their reactions. Malcolm’s face didn’t change, his defiant expression remaining fixed and emotionless. There was a flicker in Susan’s face; a tensing of the jaw.
‘Is she OK?’
‘She will be,’ Alex told Susan. She had to hold back her anger. They hadn’t even asked her what had happened. ‘Incident’ could have meant anything.
‘You’re aware of the images of Chloe that were sent to the press last week?’
She spoke to Malcolm this time. She already knew he was aware of the photographs: Chloe had told her how he had gone to the flat and taunted her about them. The man’s eyes left her for the first time, casting down to the living room carpet at his feet.
Susan gave a slight nod.
‘The man who sent those images is responsible for the murder of three women. He’s also guilty of the attempted murder of your daughter.’
For the first time there was a reaction that Alex might have described as normal.
Susan’s hand moved to the arm of the sofa, gripping it as though stopping herself from falling off. Her face paled. ‘You said she’s OK though? She’s going to be OK?’
Alex nodded. ‘She’s pretty tough, your daughter. But then, I’m sure you already know that.’ She looked again to Malcolm. His gaze had risen from the floor, back to her.
Had this man really done what Chloe suspected him of?
‘The three women I mentioned,’ Alex continued. ‘One of them was Emily Phillips.’
Susan’s head turned sharply to her husband. His eye met hers, but still his expression barely changed. He refused to look at his wife. When Susan looked back at Alex her face looked frozen. ‘But, Luke?’
‘Luke was wrongly accused. He will be formally cleared. As a result, the case into his death is going to be reopened.’
‘Why?’ It was the first time Malcolm had spoken. It was the first time a reaction had been evident on his face. He didn’t seem to have any idea that she was lying, that she was testing the waters. There had as yet been no talk of reopening an investigation into Luke’s death.
Alex had let Chloe down. There was only one way that she was still able to help her. She hadn’t yet found out what had happened to Luke. Adam Edwards claimed to know nothing about Luke’s death; like everyone else, he thought it had been a suicide. It was better than he could have hoped for: Luke’s suicide had meant the police were no longer looking for Emily’s killer.
Alex hoped she might be able to find the truth for Chloe. She felt she owed it to her. Finally, Chloe would be able to move on with her life.
‘Emily was murdered, Mr Griffiths, we knew that. Your son was falsely accused of her murder and was awaiting charges. At the very least, this new information about Emily’s death makes someone responsible for Luke’s suicide. The police are culpable in many ways.’
She watched him carefully as she spoke, gauging his reactions. There was a lot she had learned from Chloe in those past six months. Faces could reveal so much more than words were capable of. She hadn’t missed it: at the mention of the word ‘suicide’ the tension in Malcolm Griffiths’s jaw had relaxed slightly. He knew something. He was hiding something, and had been doing so for all these years.
Susan was crying now, silent tears that ran streaks down her face.
‘Chloe’s in the University hospital, if you want to go to see her,’ Alex said, standing from the chair. She wondered if Chloe would want to see them. It didn’t seem to matter: Alex doubted that either of Chloe’s parents would go to visit their daughter. They didn’t seem the type of people to admit when they’d been wrong.
‘In the meantime, if you need anything, please take my number.’
Susan hurriedly rose from the sofa, running her sleeve across her face. She went to the sideboard and took a pen and paper from one of its drawers, handing it to Alex. Alex wrote down her name and number and handed the pen and paper back to Susan. It was Susan who saw her to the door, though Malcolm lingered in the hallway behind them, watching every move.
‘If I could have a moment alone with your wife, please, Mr Griffiths.’
‘Why?’ He stepped nearer and put a hand around Susan’s wrist. ‘This is my house. Anything you want to say to my wife can be said in front of me.’
Alex raised an eyebrow. ‘Fine. We’ll talk outside then.’
She opened the front door and waited for Susan to leave ahead of her. The woman did so reluctantly. So this was what life had been like, Alex thought. Malcolm Griffiths dominated his wife. He had been the same with his children. Once again, Alex felt in awe of the way Chloe had managed to succeed despite the terrible start her young life had been given.
She unlocked the car and gestured for Susan to get in. Malcolm Griffiths stood on the path to the house, watching, with arms folded.
‘Chloe tells me you’re a Jehovah’s Witness.’
Susan eyed Alex suspiciously, as though wary of falling into a trap. She glanced past her and through the window to her waiting husband.
‘Yes.’
Alex nodded. ‘It must be a relief to you, knowing your son was not a killer. Perhaps your church will have you back now.’
Susan’s face dropped. ‘How do you…?’ She pushed a hand through her hair.
‘I spoke with one of the elders earlier this morning. Do you want to tell me why you were excommunicated?’
‘I’d have thought that was obvious. Our son killed a girl.’
‘Only he didn’t. You know that now.’ Alex glanced at Malcolm. Would his wife now be brave enough to tell the truth? ‘You have my number. When you’re ready to talk, call me.’
Alex started the engine, her eyes returning to the house where Chloe had grown up. She waited to watch Susan walk back up the path and return to the house with her husband, wondering what would be waiting for the woman once the door was closed behind them. She wondered what secrets lay beyond that door, and what words were being spoken now that the rest of the world had been shut out.
Chapter Seventy-Five
There were two detectives sitting opposite Adam: a man he didn’t recognise and the bitch that had turned up in that bathroom. Neither of them had taken their eyes off him, as though staring long enough was going to make him cave in and reveal everything.
It wasn’t.
The woman pushed a couple of photographs across the table towards him, prompting him to take a look. ‘You recognise this place, don’t you?’
They were photographs of the pub: the room where he’d held Sarah and Lola, and the bathroom where his mother had drowned – the bathroom where he had found her dead one Friday evening fifteen years earlier.
He could still remember that night so clearly. He had been living in care for a few years by then – a supposed home where he kept himself to himself and did
n’t bother with any of the other kids. He had gone to the pub to see her. He had already been a couple of times, on the afternoons he’d bunked off from school and lied to the home about hanging around town. Even after all that time, he still wasn’t sure why he had felt the need to return to her. He didn’t like her. She had never liked him. He hated going to the pub. He hated the noise from downstairs, the smoke-filled air of his mother’s living room and the raucous voices of the girls who worked behind the bar. He hated it because it reminded him of every other pub they had lived in. It reminded him of the fat, sweaty men he would see coming out of his mother’s bedroom, of the grunts he would hear through the flimsy wall that divided her bedroom from his.
‘Adam,’ the detective said, dragging him from his thoughts. ‘Or would you prefer me to call you Joseph?’
He’d given them the name Joseph Black; made up an address and a false contact number. Nobody had ever bothered to check them out.
‘We found the support group member records in the glovebox in your van. Want to tell us how you got them?’
He had taken them when Connor had been ‘otherwise engaged’ with that tart, Sarah. They thought everyone else had left.
He met the detective’s gaze. If he could, he would close his hands around her throat and squeeze until those eyes bulged from her head. He hated her. He hated all of them.
His mother had claimed to hate those men, although that never stopped her from letting them back into their home time and time again. She would be all painted smiles and low-cut tops when they arrived, then scowls and slurred expletives when they left. When he was small, he hadn’t understood what had been happening on the other side of the wall. Then he’d got older and he had grown to realise what his mother was. As soon as he did, she had hated him for it, as though it was somehow his fault.
‘Why did you take them to the pub?’ that bitch King asked him. ‘What did she do to you there, Adam? Or was it the men? Did one of the men do something to you? Do you blame her for letting it happen?’
He sat back and closed his eyes. If he focused hard enough, he could drown her out, just like he drowned out the others. He had come to think it was the coldness that cleansed not the water itself. Warm water soothed the skin, but the cold could drive right through it, hitting the heart of all that was truly dirty.
It could seep through to the rotten core of any person.
The bathroom door had been ajar. He could see a hand, so pale it looked almost transparent, with thick turquoise veins, rested on the edge of the bathtub. He pushed the door aside slowly using his foot. His mother was in the water, her face submerged. She was naked, although he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. He kept his focus fixed to her face, lifeless and blurred beneath the water.
There was a bottle of vodka at the end of the bath, nestled between the taps. To the left of the hot tap, two bottles of prescription medication.
Her hair clung to the sides of her face, partly covering it. Later, it would be her hair he would remember the most. He hated it. He hated the way she wore it long: pretence at a youth that had long since passed her by. He hated the way it concealed the ugliness of the person who hid beneath it.
Like the make-up she wore caked in thick layers on her skin, her hair hid the truth of what she really was.
He put out a hand and touched the top of her head, pushing down slightly. Her body nudged further below the water, weighted to the bottom of the bath.
The detective produced another photograph from the file on her lap. She put it alongside the others and waited for him to react. He took a glance, knowing straight away who the girl in the image was.
Emily Phillips.
‘You confessed to her murder. Why did you kill her?’
Everything was his fault, his mother had told him. She did it for him. To keep a roof over his head. To keep food on the table. She could have had a nice life without him. No man wanted to keep her. That was because of him.
Eventually she’d given up on him. She had told social services she couldn’t handle him. She told them he’d be better off with someone else, as though she was getting rid of him for his benefit rather than her own.
Detective King was still staring at him, still waiting for a response. He supposed he should give her one.
‘She was a little whore, just like the rest of them.’
There was a flicker of a reaction in the woman’s face. He had touched a nerve, it seemed.
‘And Chloe?’ she said. ‘You knew about the webcam work. You sent that video clip to the paper, didn’t you? And here, to the station? Did that make her a whore, as well?’
He had never felt such bitterness towards his mother as he did in that moment he realised she was gone. He had wanted that moment as his own – had dreamed of hurting her in so many ways, childhood nightmares that had turned into obsessive fantasies as he had reached his teenage years – and now she had taken it away from him, robbing him one last time. She couldn’t even leave him with that.
The water had been a final bad joke. She was filthy. Disgusting. And now she was drowned. Cleansed. It was funny, really.
The detective placed both hands flat on the desk in front of her. She looked down at the photographs before focusing her gaze upon him once more. ‘Seeing as you’re not prepared to talk to us,’ she said, ‘let me tell you what I think. I think you’re a coward. I think you believe you hated your mother, but more than anything you were desperate for her love – so desperate, you would have killed her rather than gone ignored by her any longer. But she took that opportunity away from you, didn’t she? And to compensate for it, you’ve been making other women pay. Innocent women. Women whose vulnerabilities you sought out and then preyed upon. Women who made no other mistake than to trust you.’
She sat back, still staring at him, waiting for a reaction.
‘There’s no rush for a response,’ she told him. ‘You’re going to have plenty of time to think it over in custody.’
Chapter Seventy-Six
Glancing in through the window of Chloe’s hospital room, Alex saw the young woman sitting on the side of the bed. She had a bag opened on the sheet beside her and was moving things from the bedside table, packing them away.
‘Not leaving already? I’ve heard the food’s so good here.’
Chloe turned and gave her a tired smile. She looked so much better than when Alex had last seen her, lying in this same bed unconscious, the drugs and the exertions of her fight in the bathroom at the cottage having exhausted her. She had come around long enough to tell Alex what Adam had told her – that it was he who had murdered Emily. She had rambled incoherent words about Luke, a car, something about CCTV footage, and then she had left them again for a while.
Her nose had been reset. There was bruising to her neck and her eyes bore dark circles from the effects of her broken nose. It seemed to both Chloe and Alex that she had paid a small price in comparison to that which they had both feared.
‘Has he told you, about Emily?’
Alex nodded. Adam had known Chloe was alive and conscious and that she had told them what he had confessed. What had chilled Alex most was the man’s lack of remorse. Adam Edwards seemed to think himself on some sort of one-man crusade, ridding the world of impure woman. The cutting of their hair seemed a stand against dishonesty, ridding his victims of part of the mask he felt they hid behind. His moral crusade had stretched to Connor Price – to the text that had been sent threatening to tell his wife of the affair with Sarah Taylor. And yet throughout his interviews, Adam Edwards failed to acknowledge any sin in his own actions. His only regret seemed to be that he hadn’t achieved a greater number of kills.
What exactly had he seen and heard as a child growing up in the flat above that pub? What had his mother done – what had she allowed to happen to him – that had led Adam to become so consumed with hatred and fixated on revenge? They would never know all the things that had driven a young boy to become the man Alex had just two days earlier
charged with three counts of murder and one attempt.
Not for the first time that week, Alex considered how criminals could so easily blend themselves into the rest of society. No one had considered Adam – Joseph – anything but a kind man, someone reliable, someone to be trusted with their secrets. Vulnerable women had befriended him, regarding him as non-threatening. They had seen him as safe, and it was this that had empowered him.
‘This is all my fault,’ Chloe said.
‘How?’
‘If I’d seen him years ago for what he was—’
‘Chloe,’ Alex said, sitting on the bed beside her. ‘No one saw him for what he was. Not Emily, not Lola, not Sarah. Is it their fault too?’
Chloe looked down at her hands, not meeting Alex’s eye. ‘I’ve done some stupid things. Really stupid.’
‘So have I. I’ve been sleeping with my ex-husband.’
Chloe looked up quickly. Alex wasn’t sure whether she looked embarrassed or was trying to suppress a smirk. She wouldn’t mind if it was the latter. It would be worth her own momentary embarrassment just to see a smile on Chloe’s face again.
‘Sorry?’
‘It’s been going on a while. Every time I felt a bit stressed out, a bit lonely, I called him. And I didn’t once realise that he’d been with someone else for months, not until I saw them out shopping with her kids.’
Chloe’s eyes widened. ‘Christ. What a prick.’ Her face coloured slightly, as though she thought herself guilty at having spoken out of turn.
‘Exactly. And I’m almost twice your age. What’s my excuse?’ Alex put a hand on Chloe’s arm. ‘You trusted someone you’d known for years. That doesn’t make you stupid.’
Chloe smiled. She looked her beautiful self, despite the tiredness and the broken nose. Alex wouldn’t tell her yet, but short hair suited her.
‘Thank you. For everything.’
Alex felt a wedge of guilt at the sound of Chloe’s gratitude. It wasn’t deserved. If she had acted earlier – if she had trusted Chloe with the name of their suspect – they wouldn’t have been in that hospital room.
The Girls in the Water: A completely gripping serial killer thriller with a shocking twist (Detectives King and Lane Book 1) Page 28
