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

by Victoria Jenkins

  She turned the volume up on the laptop and sat hunched forward as though to cover it, as though to prevent any detail it held from escaping her. She knew that hearing Luke’s voice for the first time in so long was going to throw everything off balance.

  DS Barrett: For the purposes of the recording, could you please confirm your full name.

  Luke Griffiths: Luke Griffiths.

  DS Barrett: You understand that you’ve been arrested on suspicion of the murder of Emily Phillips? You’ve been read your rights and understand that this interview is being recorded and anything you say may be used against you later in court?

  Silence.

  DS Barrett: Please respond verbally for the recording.

  Luke Griffiths: Sorry. Yes, I understand.

  DSB: You’ve told officers that you went to a party with Emily Phillips last Saturday night, is that correct?

  LG: Yes.

  DSB: Could you tell us where that party was?

  LG: Michael Parry’s house. He’s in our year at college. He was having a party while his parents were away. He lives on the other side of Emily’s estate.

  DSB: Did you meet Emily there or somewhere beforehand?

  LG: I met her there.

  DSB: Can you tell us what happened when you and Emily left the party, Luke? What time did you leave Michael’s house?

  LG: About 10, I think.

  DSB: We have eyewitnesses who say it was 9.15.

  LG: OK. 9.15. I can’t remember exactly.

  DSB: Please tell us, in as much detail as you can, what happened after you left the party.

  LG: We walked back to Emily’s house. We stopped at the shop for a bottle of Coke. She had a headache. I thought maybe a bit of sugar would help. She’d had too much to drink. When we got back to the house I made her a cup of tea and some toast. She went into the living room to sit down and take off her shoes. She came through to the kitchen then, when I was making the tea. She was crying. I thought it was just because she’d had too much to drink.

  Silence.

  Then the faint sound of crying. Luke.

  Chloe closed her eyes, gripping the sides of the laptop. She pictured her brother sitting there in that interview room, eyes red and nose running, alone with the realisation that the people who might prove his innocence were the very people who were convinced of his guilt.

  She remembered sitting in the waiting room at the station in Cardiff that day. Her parents had been there; her mother’s visit so brief that she might as well not have bothered at all. Chloe and her father had sat opposite one another, both with their heads bent forward, each avoiding eye contact with the other. So many hurtful, hateful things had been said between them in those previous few months. This should have brought them together.

  DSB: Do we need to stop the interview for a while?

  LG: No. I don’t need time, I just… I didn’t kill her. I swear; I didn’t touch her – you’ve got to believe me.

  DSB: Let’s stick with the facts for now, please, Mr Griffiths. You say Emily took her shoes off in the living room and then came through to the kitchen where you were making tea. She was crying. What happened then?

  LG: I asked her what was wrong. She said she was sorry, that she—

  The recording became inaudible; Luke’s words lost amidst his sobs. The interview was terminated.

  Chloe went to the kitchen and made herself a coffee. She longed for something stronger, but she needed to keep a clear and sober head. Against her wishes, tears escaped her. She gripped the edges of the kitchen worktops, trying to cling to some remnant of normality. She hadn’t allowed herself to cry enough, fearing where those tears might lead her. Once she started, how would she stop?

  Trying to push back a flow of tears, Chloe returned with her coffee to the living room and to the recording of her brother’s police interview. What she’d heard was painful, yet she knew what was still to come would be so much worse.

  DSB: Interview resumed at 11.42. You said Emily came into the kitchen. She was crying. You said she apologised. What was she apologising for?

  LG: She said she couldn’t do it any more. She said she was sorry, but she didn’t want to be with me any more.

  The cup in Chloe’s hand wobbled slightly, sending coffee trickling down its side. She didn’t want to hear about this, not again. This was why everyone had assumed Luke was responsible for Emily’s murder. She had wanted to end the relationship with him. He couldn’t accept it. So simple, when it was put like that.

  The sound of her brother’s tears, muffled by the interviewing officer’s words, filled the room. She wasn’t sure they would ever leave. She would continue to hear them long after she stopped pausing the recording.

  DSB: She wanted to end the relationship?

  Silence.

  DSB: For the recording, please, Luke.

  LG: Yes.

  DSB: And how did you feel about that?

  LG: I was shocked. I thought everything was fine.

  DSB: Emily hadn’t given any previous indication that she didn’t want to be in the relationship any more.

  LG: No.

  Even in his single word responses, the change in Luke’s voice was obvious. His increasing hesitation, his heightened tone: he knew the implications of the interviewing officer’s questions.

  DSB: What did you say to her when she told you that?

  LG: I said I didn’t understand. Everything had been fine, I didn’t know why she was saying that.

  DSB: Did you argue?

  There was a lengthy pause. Chloe had abandoned her cup on the coffee table, the smell of it alone making her nausea worse.

  LG: Yes.

  DSB: Did the argument become physical?

  LG: No! I asked her why she was doing it and she wouldn’t give me a proper answer. I told her she was drunk, that she didn’t know what she was saying. I left. I slammed the front door behind me; I was upset.

  DSB: Where did you go when you left Emily’s house?

  LG: I just walked around the estate for a bit. I was going to go home, but… I don’t know, I didn’t want to. I just wanted to be by myself.

  DSB: But you went back to see Emily?

  LG: Yeah. I wanted to sort things out with her.

  DSB: Even though she was drunk? By your own admission, it sounds as though you thought she didn’t really know what she was doing or saying. Why go back then? Why not wait until the following day, until she’d sobered up, to go back to speak with her?

  LG: I didn’t want to leave her on her own. Her mother was away and—

  Luke stopped mid-sentence. It was almost as though he’d sensed the trap he was about to walk into and had decided not to venture any further. Honesty didn’t always pay. Sometimes saying nothing was far less incriminating than speaking the truth, even when that truth fell from the mouth of an innocent.

  DSB: And that gave you an opportunity to go back and kill her.

  There was an objection from the duty solicitor. Luke had refused the presence of his father, and Chloe didn’t blame him. He’d been better there alone than with either of their parents.

  DSB: You were angry with Emily, weren’t you, Luke? Angry that she was ending the relationship. Angry that she wouldn’t give you a reason for it.

  LG: No, it wasn’t like that. I wasn’t angry. I was upset.

  DSB: So upset that you went back to the house and you argued with her. She said something and you snapped. What happened, Luke? Was it an accident?

  LG: I didn’t touch her. I didn’t do it. For God’s sake, please, I didn’t kill Emily; I loved her.

  Chloe leaned forward and paused the recording. She closed the file hurriedly. She couldn’t listen any more. Her brother’s voice filling the room, panicked and desperate, was like having his ghost there beside her, and though she had always been haunted by what had happened to him, the words spoken on the recording were more painful than she could ever have imagined.

  She didn’t want to question him. She didn’t want t
o doubt.

  She couldn’t listen any more, not while she still wanted to believe.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  After speaking with Martin Beckett, Alex contacted the register office at Caerphilly Council, telling them she would be there within the hour. Her main focus now was finding out what ex-boyfriends or husbands might have been lurking in Julia Edwards’s past. The rest of the team had been given the priority of trying to find Christian Cooper and Joseph Black. The plan was for officers to speak again with the remaining support group members to see what they could remember about either man. Lola Evans and Sarah Taylor had known their killer well enough to have trusted lifts from him. Presumably, others from the support group would also have got close to him; close enough that they may have known relevant details about the man’s life.

  Before Alex left the station, Dan tracked her down in the corridor.

  ‘Christian Cooper,’ he said. ‘We’ve found him. He works in the cinema at Nantgarw – he keeps off social media because of his anxiety. Bullied at school, history of self-harm.’

  ‘How did you find him?’

  ‘Sean Pugh remembered seeing him at the cinema once, a few months back.’

  ‘Alibi?’

  ‘He was at his aunt’s fiftieth birthday party on the Saturday Lola went missing. There were seventy-odd other people there. He’s not short of witnesses.’

  Alex nodded. ‘It’s narrowed it down. What have we found out about Joseph Black?’

  Dan exhaled loudly. ‘Not a lot, I’m afraid. No record of him on Niche. Physical description is pretty general – could describe forty per cent of the male population. Rachel Jones seems pretty sure of one thing though: he drives a van.’

  Alex’s eyes widened. ‘Right. OK. Get on to the DVLA, see if we can trace a vehicle registered to Joseph Black. I’m going to the council offices in Caerphilly – I shouldn’t be too long. Call me if there’s any news.’

  When Alex arrived at the council offices early that afternoon they were obviously expecting her. She had given them Julia Edwards’s details over the phone and was hoping for a result that might reveal an ex-husband on the scene.

  The words of Chloe’s email echoed in her head.

  Who has harmed him?

  Martin Beckett’s views on whether or not Julia Edwards might have been selling sexual favours to men other than his father had been vague, but there was no denying the insinuation that had been present. Had Julia angered a former husband or lover? Had one of her clients held a grudge against her for some reason?

  Had someone else contributed to her death?

  Alex pulled into a parking space at the council office car park and turned off the engine. The direction her thoughts were taking her didn’t make sense. Why would someone connected with Julia Edwards all those years ago be victimising young women now? Julia had died years ago; if someone had meant her harm but hadn’t killed her, surely her death had spared them from taking matters into their own hands?

  Yet it was clear that whoever had tortured and killed Lola Evans and Sarah Taylor was connected with the pub in some way. It was too much of a coincidence that the place would have been chosen at random. Though it was remote and derelict, South Wales had its fair share of such places. There had to be a reason for its relevance, and Alex was determined to find out what it was.

  She entered the council building and went to the reception. The woman there pointed her in the direction of the register office, which was tucked in the far corner of the ground floor of the building.

  ‘DI King? I’m Diane. We spoke on the phone earlier.’

  A woman about Alex’s age stood from the department’s front desk and reached out a hand to greet her before leading her through to the office. There was a young man there; Diane asked him to go and get them tea, presumably as an excuse to give them some privacy.

  ‘I’ve found the lady you’re looking for,’ Diane told her, gesturing to a seat. Alex sat beside her and looked at the computer screen as the woman pulled up her search results. ‘Julia Edwards. Death registered as the fourth of April 2002. Accidental drowning while under the influence.’

  ‘That’s her. Any record of any marriages?’

  Diane shook her head. Alex felt her heart sink. She had been so hopeful that today might be the day they found their concrete lead, something substantial that would lead them to their killer before he had an opportunity to identify a next victim. ‘There’s a son though,’ Diane said, switching between the opened windows on the database.

  Alex’s reaction made it obvious she’d known nothing of a son. There had been no mention of a child living at the pub when Julia had died. There had been no mention of him at any time during the investigation.

  ‘Adam Edwards. Born thirteenth of November 1987.’

  Alex stared at the details on the screen, trying to keep her expression impassive. ‘Could you print this off for me, please?’

  Diane nodded and set about the task. When she got up from her seat and went to the printer at the far side of the room, Alex moved closer to the computer screen, her mind racing as she absorbed the details. Adam Edwards was fourteen when his mother died. Where had he been at the time? He couldn’t have been living at the pub with her: Martin Beckett would surely have made mention of him and none of the reports relating to Julia’s death made any reference to any children.

  Where had he been? Why hadn’t he been with his mother?

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  It took the rest of the afternoon to build just a brief profile of Adam Edwards, the son of the woman who had died in the flat where both victims had been held. Did the unidentified blood sample taken from The Black Lion pub belong to him, Alex wondered. The list of employees obtained from Cardiff Council gave no match with the name Adam Edwards, so the team was left to search for other links he may have had to both victims and the areas where their bodies had been found. Adam was twenty-nine years old and had a criminal record: a caution received for a shoplifting offence thirteen years earlier. A check with the Inland Revenue revealed a long history of employment, with Adam having frequently changed jobs. However, the records showed no known employment for the previous eight months, his last job having been with a building firm based in Bridgend.

  The image on the criminal records database showed a teenager with unruly dark hair and pale grey eyes. He had an angular face and soft features. Alex wondered how much Adam had changed during the past thirteen years, and whether anyone who knew him now would recognise this boy as the same person.

  His police record had thrown up another interesting detail of his past: since the age of eleven – and at the time of his arrest when he was aged sixteen – Adam had been living in care. That explained his absence from the reports on his mother’s death.

  Had this shoplifting teenager become a criminal slick enough to kill two women without leaving behind a trace of himself? There had been no unidentified fingerprints lifted at the pub, but perhaps one of the young women had helped police by causing her killer an injury and leaving a blood sample at the scene. Perhaps he hadn’t been as clever as he’d thought.

  Alex brought Adam’s details up on the Police National Computer. After his arrest, fingerprints and a swab sample from his cheek would have been taken. Both would have been recorded on the database. All she needed was a DNA match.

  She clicked back and re-entered the database page. Something was wrong.

  Adam Edwards’s fingerprints had been taken and stored, but the results of his swab test were nowhere to be found on his file.

  ‘For God’s sake.’ She shoved back her chair and left the office.

  She eventually found Harry in the staff canteen, staring through the window whilst a plate of what might have been lasagne, but was really anybody’s guess, lay congealing on the plate in front of him. So much for keeping everyone on task, she thought.

  ‘Boss.’

  He looked up and stood hurriedly, leaving his food as though ashamed to be associated with it.r />
  ‘We’ve got a potential suspect. He’s got previous, but his swab test results haven’t been recorded on the system. If we had them, I could try a match with the unidentified sample from the pub. Why the hell isn’t it there?’

  Harry sighed. ‘Human error,’ he said, the scathing tone unmissable. ‘Isn’t that the popular get-out clause? Someone fucked up. Who is he?’

  ‘His name’s Adam Edwards. His mother lived in the flat above The Black Lion.’

  ‘The woman who drowned in the bath?’

  Alex nodded. ‘Victims in water. Can’t be a coincidence, can it?’

  Harry looked sceptical. ‘Is that all you’ve got?’

  ‘If we can get him in and his swab’s a match, I think that’s enough, don’t you?’

  He raised a hand as though in surrender. He was rarely in the mood for a confrontation with Alex and today was no exception. ‘Do we know where he is?’

  ‘Not yet. A few of the DCs are on to it.’

  ‘Let’s get him in as soon as possible. You can get a swab test sent off then.’ He paused. ‘How’s DC Lane?’

  Alex gave a shrug. ‘As you’d expect. She’s a good officer. I don’t want to lose her.’

  The superintendent gave a look that acknowledged the challenge in her tone. ‘There’s a procedure that has to be followed. It’s out of my hands.’

  ‘There’s a lot you don’t know. That girl’s been through so much. She got here with so much stacked against her.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s true. But rules are rules.’ Harry gave an apologetic shrug and made his way back to his office.

  Alex felt a sting of injustice on Chloe’s behalf. When this case was closed she was going to do everything she could to get Chloe back to work, whatever it took, even if it meant risking her own position.

  She made her way back up to the central office, a streak of determination pushing a spring into her step.