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

by Victoria Jenkins

  He hated her.

  ‘You leave your laptop lying around far too readily. Makes it too easy for people to find out what you’re up to. What do you reckon, Belle90?’

  It was amazing how the mind could restore itself when it needed to, even when her brain felt as addled as it did now. That night came back to her, a daydream so vivid that it seemed to play out in front of her, blurred by time and everything that had taken place since. At some point after trying to kiss him and having her advances refused, Chloe had slept. During that time, what had he been doing?

  Her laptop had been in her room. He must have accessed her Internet history, the not-so-secret life she lived online.

  Chloe screamed. She had no idea where they were or how long it had been since he had taken her from her flat, but surely there would be someone close enough to hear her cries for help.

  Apparently not.

  Adam flinched slightly at the noise, but he didn’t move from where he was seated. His hand moved to the sink. Something flashed from his hand.

  A knife.

  The sight shocked Chloe into silence. She stared wide-eyed at the blade, her thoughts consumed with images taken at Lola Evans’s post-mortem.

  ‘It’s not really how I want to go about it this time.’

  Her head lolled back against the side of the bath, too heavy to hold upright any longer. Keep him talking, she thought. Keep him distracted for as long as possible.

  Yet in her heart, Chloe wasn’t sure there was any point in prolonging what seemed to be inevitable.

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Alex had taken Adam Edwards’s phone number from his landlord that morning and had tried several times to get through, each attempt leading her nowhere. The number Dan had found on Chloe’s phone at her flat – a number that had called her twice earlier that day – was now being traced. It looked as though Edwards had used a second phone: the one through which he had made contact with Chloe. He had presumably assumed that the police wouldn’t be able to trace him through it, had assumed they would have no idea of its existence. His mistake had been leaving Chloe’s phone behind in the flat when he had taken her.

  It was now clear why his Facebook account had been reactivated. He had used it to make contact with Chloe.

  Dan was in one of the police vans with another officer who specialised in the use of phone tracking equipment. The technology was able to masquerade as a mobile phone network, allowing them to access communications and track a location. Once a trace was detected via GPS, he would be able to feed information through to Alex and the rest of the team out on the ground. In the meantime, Alex had to think quickly about where Adam might have taken Chloe.

  Waiting outside the flat whilst scene of crime officers secured the evidence left there by Adam and Chloe, it seemed to Alex sadly ironic that she had previously considered the similarities between her young colleague and the two women who had been killed by this man. The similarities were making themselves all the more obvious at an increasingly rapid rate. Lola Evans had been working as a stripper, something few people had known about. Sarah Taylor had been having an affair with a married man. Chloe had worked as a webcam girl. All three were ‘guilty’ – if that was how Adam regarded them – of living secret lives, double lives, and all in some way connected to sex.

  According to the information Alex had received from Martin Beckett, Julia Edwards had also had her secrets.

  This man’s crimes weren’t motivated by sex: they were committed because of it.

  What else did Adam Edwards know of Chloe’s life? Alex had no idea how close they had once been. She had read the Facebook messenger conversation between the two of them which suggested they had once been fairly close friends. The emails he had sent anonymously demonstrated an awareness of Chloe’s desire to find whoever had been responsible for the death of either Emily or her brother. Presumably, he knew of at least elements of Chloe’s past.

  Alex watched a scene of crime officer head back into the flat. She felt so bloody useless standing here, waiting for Dan to come back to her with something concrete. Chloe had been in the same place, feeling the same way only that morning, and now… where was she? Alex felt a piece of her heart crack at the thought that something might have happened to her. She had already been through so much.

  Alex needed to clear her head, to think straight, and to do it quickly.

  She paced the narrow length of path that ran between Chloe’s building and the house next door. Behind her, out on the street, she could hear a uniformed officer losing his patience with a woman who refused to move along and stop lingering by the police cordons erected by the roadside. Alex shut them both out, focusing her mind on the things she knew: things she knew might hold the answer to where Adam had taken Chloe.

  She was distracted from her thoughts by a familiar voice.

  ‘Alex.’

  She turned. Superintendent Blake was heading down the pathway towards her, his grey face etched with concern. ‘DC Mason’s got me up to date. Any idea where this bastard might have taken her? Are you OK?’

  He put a hand on her arm, and for once Alex was grateful for the physical contact. His was a reassuring face in a world that had become bleaker than she had ever seen it. Was that how Chloe had perceived Adam? Had he offered her comfort, familiarity, at a time when it seemed the rest of the world had chosen to turn its back on her? Was that why she had let him into her home without a second thought?

  Memories of the corpses of Lola Evans and Sarah Taylor flashed into her thoughts. Alex had spent much of her adult life aware of the fragility of time, but she had never feared it as she did now.

  She shook her head. There was little point pretending she was OK when she so clearly wasn’t. ‘I’m trying to think. This is all so complicated. She was sent emails, a while ago now – one a couple of weeks ago and the other back before Christmas. I dismissed them. I told her not to worry about them, that it was just someone messing around.’ Alex paused to take a gulp of cold air. It burned the back of her throat.

  ‘This is not your fault.’

  ‘No? I spoke to her this morning. I told her we had a suspect, but I didn’t tell her who, and you know why? I was covering my own backside. Looking after number one. And it’s led her to this. So please don’t tell me it’s not my fault.’

  Harry’s hand twitched at his side, as though he wanted to reach out to her once more but was afraid she might lash out at him if he made the attempt. ‘If it’s any consolation, DC Mason’s also blaming himself. If he hadn’t told me about those bloody files, DC Lane would have been at work. You know more about her past than I do. Is there any link to this?’

  A scene of crime officer appeared at the garden gate. She nodded an acknowledgment to Alex and Harry as she passed, and Alex waited until she’d gone before she answered Harry’s question.

  ‘I just don’t know. All this business with wanting to prove her brother’s innocence – that was all prompted by those emails. Either he does know something, or he’s used it to get at her.’

  She knew there was something she should be seeing amidst the murky fog clouding her vision, but it was refusing to draw itself to the surface and make itself known.

  The women. Their ‘sins’. The water.

  Was he trying to cleanse them in some way?

  Chloe. Her brother. The water.

  Then it came to her, as clearly as though she had always known the answer. She knew where Adam had taken her.

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Adam had left the bathroom for a while, leaving Chloe to the stillness and the cold of the water. She lifted her head again, using all the effort she could muster to take a better look around the room. If she could find something, anything, even slightly sharp, she might be able to use it to cut through the wires that bound her. Pushing her elbows to the porcelain, Chloe tried to push herself back. The bath was too slippery and she fell awkwardly, hitting her shoulder against the inside of the bathtub and sending water splashin
g into her face. It didn’t hurt – her body was still numbed by the drugs.

  The bathroom was sparse. There was a toilet roll hooked on to a holder screwed to the wall; a bar of soap in an old-fashioned plastic soap dish in between the taps at the sink. Chloe tried again to get herself upright, gaining better leverage with her elbows on this attempt. Now, for the first time, she noticed a corner of window reflected in the mirror to the side of the room. It was dark outside, the window offering nothing but a rectangle of blackness between the opened curtains. She had a sudden longing to know what the time was.

  She called again into the deafening silence, but there was no sound from the other side of the closed door. Was it locked? If she could get herself out of this bath, would she be able to get out of this room? Perhaps he had left the building. If he had, she might have enough time to get herself from this room before he returned.

  Chloe scanned the bathroom again. Then she remembered the knife.

  There had been times, years earlier, when she had thought the things she had lost were enough to send her to her death. Now the things she had yet to gain joined her, gathering to fill the empty spaces in the room. They looked lovelier in that moment than they ever had. Her career. Scott. All the things she had still to do, the places she had yet to see. She had been foolish – blind to what had been in front of her – but she was able to see things so differently now.

  She had wasted so much time dwelling on what she’d lost. It was only now that she realised how much more she had still to lose – and to live for.

  With all the effort she could summon, Chloe heaved her body upright. The sudden movement made her nauseous, and the room seemed to sway once more as she tried to gain balance, using the side of the bath to right herself. She glanced to the sink. She couldn’t quite see over its rim, couldn’t tell whether or not the knife had been left lying there. She tried to slide along the bottom of the bath, bring her knees up so she could gain some momentum, but the surface was too slippery and the drugs he had given her had rendered her body near useless.

  She felt tears of frustration catch at the corners of her eyes. Chloe lay back and studied the goose bumps that had spread across her skin like a nettlerash. Her limbs had turned a pale purple colour, her veins prominent. She breathed in slowly, taking a long lungful of air.

  Then she tried again. Sheer determination forced her upright. She brought her knees up to her chest, gritting her teeth against the pull of weight that fought to keep them fixed beneath the water. With her feet flat to the bathtub, she propelled herself upwards and forwards, not considering the physics of her movement or the angle at which she might land. Whilst she was still in that water, he had her at her most vulnerable.

  Chloe felt exhausted by the effort, but she was out of the water. She sat perched precariously on the edge of the bathtub, her bound feet still in the water, her tied hands resting between her knees. She leaned forward slightly, just enough to shift the swirl of clouded vision behind her eyes without allowing her to fall back into the bath. Her head hurt so much. Every muscle in her body screamed in pain.

  She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. Her hair had been haphazardly cut short. Like Lola Evans’s. Like Sarah Taylor’s. There was dried blood staining her top lip and smeared across her left cheek. Her nose was knocked off its path at the bridge.

  It would have once mattered, but now these things meant nothing. She needed to get out of there. She wouldn’t let him win.

  She stretched forward and peered into the sink where the knife still lay.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Alex headed to Marcross in one of the squad cars. She sat in the back beside Harry, checking her mobile every thirty seconds in the hope of getting a call from Dan. They had ordered an immediate appeal for any sightings of Chloe or of Adam, but it was late and most people would be tucked safely in their beds, sleep rendering them oblivious to the horrors that lay beyond their locked doors.

  Every officer available had been employed in the search for Chloe. Alex prayed their efforts wouldn’t prove in vain.

  ‘You sure he’ll have taken her to Marcross?’ Harry asked.

  ‘No,’ she admitted, ‘not exactly. I think he’s taken her to the area, but I don’t think they’ll be outdoors. He knew Chloe wanted answers about her brother and about Emily. He takes his victims to water.’ She closed her eyes and tried to block out the tightness she felt in her chest. They were travelling so fast it was making her feel sick, yet it still wasn’t fast enough. ‘I don’t think he’ll take her to where Luke died, but I think he’ll take her somewhere close. He wants things on his terms. His mother died in the bath. That’s the one thing he’s not attempted yet with either of his previous victims. Maybe he sees it as apt in some way. I don’t know. I can’t think like a fucking psychopath.’

  Alex’s right hand gripped at the door handle, her nails embedding grooves in the plastic.

  Harry watched his colleague’s anguish and felt a wave of helplessness that had become, unfortunately, familiar to him. He couldn’t remember ever having heard Alex swear before. The look that had fixed itself upon her face was fraught with worry. She cared about every victim, but this was far too close to home for them all.

  ‘We’ll find her,’ he said.

  As soon as the words had left his mouth, he knew he shouldn’t have spoken them. It sounded like a promise and promises were so easily broken.

  It wasn’t finding her that was Alex’s concern. It was finding her in time. The thought turned Alex’s fear to bile she could taste in the back of her throat.

  ‘I let her down.’

  ‘How?’ Harry reached out and tentatively touched the back of her hand.

  His skin felt cold against hers, as though the blood that warmed them had been drained from him.

  Lola Evans’s torture. Sarah Taylor’s drowning.

  What horror was Chloe being subjected to in these moments?

  ‘I should have kept her protected somehow. I knew she was vulnerable; I knew better than anybody. She came to me for help, she trusted me, and I did nothing to help her. Then I turned my back on her; I covered my own back.’

  Harry slid his hand from hers, unsettled by the intimacy. The officer driving had cast his eyes to the rear-view mirror, distracted from the road by the sound of Alex’s anguish.

  ‘Chloe is an adult. She made some choices that neither you nor I nor anyone else could have controlled. Come on, please. This is not your fault.’

  Alex turned from him and looked out of the window at a black night that was rushing past them. The trees lining the side of the road formed a continuous train, racing beside them as though in competition.

  ‘Those files she accessed: her brother’s case. I’m as guilty as Chloe is. I took Emily Phillips’s post-mortem report. When she goes to disciplinary, so do I.’

  She heard the future tense hang in the air, hopeful but fragile.

  On her lap, Alex’s mobile rang. She swiped a finger across the screen and hurriedly moved the phone to her ear.

  ‘They’re not at Marcross,’ Dan told her.

  She prayed that wherever Chloe was, they wouldn’t be too late. Alex’s fingers tightened around the phone.

  ‘He’s at Colwinston. The phone’s been traced to a rental holiday cottage there.’

  Alex lowered the phone from her ear and spoke to the officer driving. ‘Get on the radio. They’re in Colwinston. It’s not far. Do we have an address?’

  Dan read out the postcode, Alex repeating it to the driver.

  ‘We’re trying to make contact with the owner now,’ Dan told her. ‘I’ll get back to you as soon as we hear anything.’

  Alex ended the call and glanced at the satnav on the dashboard. They were another ten minutes away. She hoped to God a squad car was nearer. Anything could happen in ten minutes, she thought.

  Anything.

  Chapter Seventy

  Chloe lifted her legs and swung them out of the bathtub. Her ankles were
bleeding; the wire that bound them had torn into her skin as she had fought to gain momentum and get herself out of the water. She felt breathless and exhausted, and the earlier sensation of coldness that had chilled through to her bones had been replaced with a hot panic that flared the colour in her cheeks and made her skin damp with fear. She didn’t have much time. If Adam was still in the house, he would have heard the squeaks and thuds that had accompanied her efforts to free herself. If he wasn’t there, she doubted he would leave her long before returning.

  She grabbed the knife in both hands and reached down to saw through the wire that bound her feet. It was going to be more difficult to cut through the wire at her wrists, the angles all wrong; if her feet were freed then at the very least she would be able to run from him. The wire didn’t give easily. It was pulled tightly, making it tricky for her to get the knife beneath, to work upwards and avoid cutting into her skin. Panic made things even more difficult. The handle of the knife was slippery with the sweat from her palms, and she took a moment, took a deep breath and told herself to calm down.

  It was difficult to calm down when she had no idea where he was or what he was doing.

  The wire began to give way. At the final snap of thread that held it bound, Chloe felt the blood rush back to her feet. She stood, but fell back, hitting her heels against the foot of the bath. She moved her wrists to the sink, using them to balance herself. She still felt so sick, so dizzy. She looked up again, barely recognising the woman who stared back at her from the reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were small, shadowed with grey, but her pupils seemed unfeasibly large. Her skin looked washed out, as though the water had drained it of life.

  But she was alive, she thought. She was here and she was alive.

  There was a noise outside the room. Chloe tightened her grip on the knife she still held in her hands, trying to stop them from shaking. She stood upright on wobbling legs, willing them to work as they should.