Sean let his head fall back against the sofa to eye her with a look that told her he had been drinking.
When she came around the sofa she saw her suspicions were correct.
On the coffee table in front of him stood a large bottle of vodka. Next to that newspaper feature.
Her eyes rose to meet his.
He was staring, but not really seeing her. His eyes were glazed, and his mouth was slightly lopsided, as if attempting to sneer but only managing that look she knew some people got when they were at that fine line between being a stupid but harmless drunk and becoming irrational and aggressive.
She hoped she wouldn’t say the wrong thing to agitate him.
He slouched on the sofa, looking her over from head to toe.
She was dressed as he had expected her to be: cropped leggings and a short-sleeved top, both clinging to her like a second skin. He saw the pink strap of her sports bra just poking out from underneath her top.
She still had her brightly coloured trainers on her feet.
‘Thought you were at the kennels today on early shift?’ he said, voice a little slurred as he reached for the glass bottle and poured himself a large measure into the tumbler on the coffee table.
Raja’s voice was small when she spoke. ‘I’m covering the middle shift.’
‘What’s with the tight clothes?’
Raja chewed on her lip before she spoke. ‘I’ve been running.’
‘Why not run here?’
Raja frowned, confused.
‘We have a perfectly good running machine, down there in the gym. I’m spending thousands on decorating it, kitting it out. It’s got a fucking shower in there. Do you realise how lucky you are?’
Raja stroked Sixx, unsure how to respond.
Just don’t argue with him, she thought.
Sean’s eyes narrowed as he looked at her over the rim of his glass. He drained the liquid, and then poured himself another. ‘We have a gym here,’ he spat. ‘Why not use that? Why do you have to go running around the village?’
Raja half laughed. It was a nervous laugh, and it slipped out before she could stop herself.
Her second mistake.
Her first was needlessly rousing his jealousy in the first place by wearing tight clothes, even if they were just meant for the gym.
Sean got up and lunged towards her.
Sixx raised his head and snapped at him, making him take a few steps back.
‘Get outside!’ he shouted, snapping his fingers at the Husky, indicating the open French windows.
‘Stop it, Sean,’ Raja said.
‘Get out!’
Sixx paused, then bounded out into the back garden.
Raja longed to run after him as Sean clicked his fingers at the sofa. She took a seat, and after he locked the French windows, he sat down close beside her. She could smell the alcohol on his breath.
‘Now,’ Sean said, winding strands of her black hair around his fingers, ‘why not use the gym in the basement?’
Raja attempted a smile. ‘The decorating isn’t complete yet and a running machine and a cross-trainer don’t equal a gym.’ She touched his arm, tried to act the happy wife. Truth was, when Sean had a drink, he drank to excess. That’s why she rarely drank around him. He lost control too easily.
He cocked his head at her, and wound the strands of her hair around his fingers tighter still. ‘Are you taking the piss out of me?’
Raja bit her bottom lip. She gave a sharp shake of her head.
‘You trying to make a fool out of me, is that it?’
‘No, baby,’ she said, reaching her hand up to cup his face.
He moved his head and she drew her hand away, clasped it with the other in her lap. She avoided his eyes.
‘I’m due to fly back out to Dubai in two weeks’ time,’ he said, his eyes narrowing, looking her over. ‘I bet you can’t wait to see the back of me, can you?’
She looked down, avoiding the weight of his stare. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
His eyes concentrated on the curve of her shoulders.
He leaned forward and bit down on the exposed flesh, a gentle pinch at first, then applied more pressure until she squirmed.
‘Damn it, Sean,’ she said, sliding away from him. ‘I hate it when you drink.’
‘Oh, I am sorry, your ladyship,’ he said, venom behind the words. He pushed himself clumsily off the sofa. ‘Am I not good enough for you any more? Had your use of me and now I don’t matter?’
Raja sighed heavily. ‘I don’t even understand what you’re getting at, or how we even got here.’ She got up from the sofa to beat a hasty retreat from the living room. ‘You’re angry I went running… I think. Who knows when you’re like this?’
He picked up the newspaper from the coffee table. ‘Leaving this out for me, just to piss me off, aren’t you?’
‘Is that what this is about? The article?’
‘You went behind my back!’
‘We’ve been over this,’ she said, exasperation clear in her voice. She ran a hand back through her hair, which was damp with sweat.
He ripped the paper up in front of her face, dramatically tearing off big strips. When he’d finished, he balled up as many of the fragments as possible and lunged at her with them.
Raja moved, but he still caught her shoulder with his weight. She stumbled but didn’t look back as she made for the door to the entrance hall.
Sean followed her, his arm reaching out and taking hold of hers. ‘Come here.’
‘You’re hurting me.’
He pulled her roughly into his arms.
His sour breath repulsed her.
‘You’ve had it worse, darling,’ he said, looking at the scars on her face.
Raja stared, open-mouthed. ‘How can you even say that to me?’
‘You think you can always use what happened as an excuse, don’t you?’
She heard the slur of his words, and shook her head, clasping her hand over his arm. She pulled. ‘You’re drunk.’
He resisted her efforts to free herself. ‘Did you ever stop to think about what your past has done to me?’
‘You’re not making any sense.’
‘You think what he did makes you special?’
Her eyes searched his, shaking her head. ‘You going to say what people write on the internet? That we asked for it? That all three of us deserved it?’
She pressed her hands against his chest and shoved him away.
She grabbed her car keys from the dish on the hall table and ran to the front door.
He got there first, taking hold of her wrists.
He pulled her around to face him, his hands squeezing her upper arms. He pressed his forehead hard against hers.
‘You think I don’t see other men looking at you? Do you think they wonder what it must feel like to be inside one of Raymond Knox’s victims?’
His lip curled into a cruel grin when he saw the hurt on her face.
‘You’re famous, darling. It must be so exciting, especially after all I’ve done for you, for us.’
‘Stop it!’ She wriggled in his grasp, managed to free her right arm.
He pressed his forehead harder against hers, his breath hot on her face.
‘Do you think they imagine what it’s like to feel the damage he did to that sweet little piece of heaven between your-’
The blow caught him off guard as her hand swept in across his face.
In an instant he released her other arm.
It was just a slap, but he’d felt the sheer anger behind it.
He looked at her and licked at his bottom lip. His teeth had caught the skin.
‘Bitch.’
‘You’re disgusting!’ Tears pricked at her eyes. ‘Where is all this coming from?’ Sean wiped the smear of blood from his mouth and came after her. ‘Stop this!’ she shrieked when he clawed at her.
She skimmed past him and
ran towards the kitchen. She rounded the island counter in the middle as he followed after her. ‘Sean,’ she breathed heavily, ‘please stop. You’ve drunk too much. This isn’t you.’
‘I’m what you made me,’ he said, hand thumping on his chest, then jabbing his finger at her.
She shook her head. ‘You’re not making any sense.’
From outside, they heard Sixx barking.
Sean looked towards the kitchen door, saw the dog’s breath misting up the glass. ‘Shut up!’
‘He thinks you’re going to hurt me,’ she said. She looked at him, eyes pleading.
‘You’re getting rid of him, Raja.’
A look of defiance swept over her face. ‘Never.’ He took a few steps closer. ‘Why are you being so hateful?’
It was as if her words washed over him. ‘I’ve done so much for you, for us… all I want is some recognition for what I’ve been through… you’re all I’ve thought about.’
She shook her head. ‘Sean, what are you talking about? What have you done?’
Her words stopped him.
His eyes narrowed, then looked away, his head bowed.
She took a few tentative steps towards him. ‘What have you done?’
‘I haven’t done anything!’ He grabbed a glass off the side and threw it to the floor, making her jump when it smashed.
Sixx continued to bark furiously.
‘Shut that fucking dog up before I do,’ he said, heading towards the back door. Raja grabbed his T-shirt, tried to pull him back.
‘Stop it! I’m calling the police,’ she screamed at him, just as he turned on her, and swung his fist, catching her on the side of the head.
The blow sent her hurtling to the floor.
CHAPTER 37
Claire had been up most of the night, unable to sleep properly. In the end she’d gone downstairs to watch TV and fallen asleep on the sofa around 3 am. She’d been woken a few short hours after by the alarm on her mobile. Struggling to clear the fug of sleep, she’d dragged herself from the sofa, skipped breakfast and headed straight for Haverbridge City Hospital for Helena’s PM.
By the time she got back to the station, the others were eagerly waiting for her.
‘Okay,’ she said, as she rushed in, dumped her things in her office and came back to the main part of the incident room.
‘Helena Daniels died of a massive haemorrhage, same as Tilly.’ She looked at the Glasgow Smiles photographs stuck to the wall. ‘Same as Knox.’
She pinned a few more photographs to the board. She pointed to the close-up photographs taken of Tilly, and now Helena’s clothes.
‘Look here, there appears to be the same chalky residue on her clothes as was found on Tilly’s. Dr Schreiber also found traces of hair intertwined in Tilly’s – short, wiry hairs, some with root still intact. The results have been expedited to the lab, but will still take days to come back.’
She looked to Stefan.
‘Where are we on the women from the cold cases?’
He leafed through some paperwork on his desk.
‘I’ve only got the basics at the moment, but we’re looking at four women between the ages of sixteen and seventeen at the time, all raped between July 1998 and January 2000, that were being looked at in relation to Knox after his conviction for the Dahlia rapes. I’m sending a couple of DCs to visit them today, but to be honest I don’t think we’re going to come up with anything new that DCI Forrester hadn’t already looked at.’
Claire rubbed the back of her head, a tension headache pulling like a tight band around her head.
‘Let’s just establish what they were doing when Knox was killed. Don’t forget, they have families, too, who would’ve been less than enthusiastic about his release.’
Stefan nodded. ‘Did you get much more from DCI Forrester?’
She thought back to the cross words she’d exchanged with Simon. ‘Nothing of relevance to add.’
She moved on. ‘Social media?’
Stefan picked up a handful of printouts and circulated them. Claire looked at them, saw it was some kind of message thread between two people.
She looked at Stefan.
‘Tilly talked to Helena through a second, secret, Facebook account on and off, but it was mainly through Twitter and most of it was public.’
‘Which means literally anyone could’ve read what they said, what they posted,’ Elias clarified.
‘Yep, although they shared more intimate details through direct messages that only they could see,’ Stefan said. ‘Looks like both women had some kind of thing for The Three and their families, namely the husbands, so Stuart Headley and Sean Clarkson, not so much Martin, Sophie’s father.’
‘What do you mean a thing?’ Claire said, scrutinising the printout in front of her.
She saw Tilly was talking about how much she was looking forward to finally meeting Raymond Knox – she would find where he was once he was released. She was going to ask him to marry her. Helena had responded with a half-hearted joke that told her to get in line; she would be getting there first.
‘Well, it’s like they wanted to be a part of their past,’ Stefan said. ‘The Headleys are both on Twitter. Tilly tried to engage Stuart in several conversations, mostly about Knox or his wife’s scars, but she did try to get him to respond about more mundane things.’
‘He never mentioned this to us before. Did he ever report her?’
‘No. Not so far as we can tell at this stage. There was one direct message from him on Facebook. He told her to respect his privacy.’
‘And Helena?’ Elias said.
‘She was more subtle than Tilly. She mainly tweeted them links to posts she had written for her blog, devoted to Knox.’
‘And this is all open for anyone to read?’ Jane said.
Stefan nodded.
‘They must have been trolled, surely?’ she said.
‘Yeah, quite a lot.’
‘Potentially widening the suspect list even further,’ Elias said, wryly.
‘What about the hybristophilia theory?’ Claire said.
Stefan rifled through more of his paperwork. ‘I spoke to Tilly’s mother, Shirley; she was horrified about the suggestion, understandably. She said Tilly rarely went to the doctor.’
‘That she knew of,’ Claire said.
‘True. The only thing her mother did remember was Tilly watching a programme on television about Knox, around a year ago. Tilly mentioned how she’d felt sorry for him, and understandably her mother came down on that and told her never to mention it again. Shirley admitted, though, that she kept out of a lot of her daughter’s business. They weren’t particularly close.’
‘Okay, what about Helena?’
‘She was different,’ he said. ‘We managed to get hold of her aunt, Lisa, yesterday. She said she’ll come and do the formal ID on her niece, but that she hadn’t seen her in a few years now. She revealed that Helena had attended some therapy sessions based on having the cognitive behavioural treatments just before they stopped talking to each other. Apparently the whole obsession with Knox drove a wedge between Helena and her extended family.’
‘The therapy – it can’t have worked, can it?’ Elias said.
‘Cognitive behavioural therapy is more commonly used to treat depression and anxiety than hybristophilia. I think Helena was allowed to slip through the net. She clearly needed proper help and never got it.’
Claire stared at the faces of the two women on the board. ‘They both lived out their fantasy world online,’ she said. ‘Nothing seems grounded in reality, just one sick fantasy about a man they would never be with.’ She looked back at the team. ‘Stefan, can you carry on looking at the material posted online. See if there is more.’
DI Matthews was sitting at his desk winding through CCTV footage, only half listening to what was being said.
‘Guv,’ he said, his eyes glued to the screen in front of him. ‘Think I have so
mething.’
Claire rounded a bank of desks in the middle of the room and came up beside him as he pointed a finger at the screen, freeze-framed on a grainy image.
Claire squinted at the screen.
‘Where’s this?
‘From a resident in Cliff Street. She gave it to DCs yesterday. Rose Ecclestone, an eighty-year-old woman, lives alone. Her garden backs onto the scrubland as you exit that side of the wood where Knox was killed.’
He pointed at the screen.
The time stamp on the bottom of the screen showed 31 March at 16:58 – the date and time Knox had entered the wood and never left it alive again.
‘She has CCTV front and back of her house. Living in this area, she said she got cameras to film vandals. She said she checks it most days, but had been in hospital so nothing was checked. Her daughter happened to stumble upon it and noted the significance of the date and gave it to officers, just in case… It’s a blink and miss it moment.’
He rewound the footage, hit play again.
The camera was hazy, a cheap one by all accounts, but after a few seconds, a dark figure emerged through the thick scrub and walked into the wood.
He had dark hair, was slender, wearing a long, dark-brown coat that appeared to be leather. He was wearing what looked like dark-blue jeans and a brown record bag slung across his body.
Matthews paused the footage.
Claire felt a wave of uneasiness sweep over her then. Still, she found it hard to suppress a smile. ‘Hello, Mr Crowley.’
CHAPTER 38
Adam Crowley had gone to the station as soon as Crest had asked him to. He had been sitting at his desk at the newspaper when Shelia, his editor, had called him into her office. She said a police officer was waiting to speak to him in reception.
After Elias had asked him to come to the station to help with their enquiries, Shelia, who had sat in on the conversation, had insisted he go.
It was for this reason that he was now sitting opposite Claire and Stefan in a small, stuffy room back at the station, staring at a laptop screen. As he watched the CCTV footage begin to play, he could almost feel the look Claire was giving him.
He looked down at his feet when he saw himself on the screen.
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