She turned away from Alex and looked at the closed door that kept them shut inside the claustrophobic room. ‘Her mother died when she was three. Cancer. When she was twelve, my son was killed. Knocked off his motorbike by a drunk driver. She’s seen more suffering in her life than most twice her age.’
Alex wondered whether the family’s tragic background went some way to explaining the woman’s strange, perhaps delayed, reactions to the sight of her granddaughter’s tortured and decomposed body laid out on the table in the pathologist’s identification room. It was almost as though April Evans expected darkness to lurk at her door.
‘Who did this to her?’ April asked, turning back to Alex. There were tears in her eyes, stubbornly fought back with pride and defiance.
‘I don’t know,’ she told her. ‘But I promise we’ll do everything we can to find out.’
Chapter Nine
Alex and Chloe were joined by the rest of the team and the superintendent in the station’s investigation room. A photograph of Lola Evans provided by her grandmother was pinned to the board at the far end of the room, highlighting the empty white space that surrounded it. They had very little to go on. Lola Evans was twenty years old and lived with her grandmother despite rarely being there. According to her grandmother she was often out until the early hours and she spent a lot of nights staying at friends’ houses. She worked as a self-employed mobile beautician although April Evans hadn’t seemed convinced this was the only way she’d made her money. When questioned further about what she meant by the comment, she gave an equally vague answer, merely stating that the lifestyle Lola seemed to have become accustomed to – the constant going out and the never-ending clothes she seemed to buy – was unlikely to have been funded through facials and pedicures.
‘The post-mortem report on Lola Evans came back this morning,’ Alex said, addressing the team.
‘As we already know, there were several injuries inflicted on the victim, particularly to the hands and nails, and the assault was likely sustained over a period of time. We need to find out her last known whereabouts.’
Alex paused and turned to the image of Lola: a photograph of her taken on Christmas day, sitting at her grandmother’s table beside what looked like a meagre celebratory meal. Thinking back on what April Evans had told Alex of the family’s history, she guessed there was little worth celebrating at any time of year, but least of all during December.
Lola looked hung-over in the photograph, with heavy bags circling her bleary eyes and what looked like the previous evening’s make-up darkening her skin. It also seemed glaringly obvious that she was unlikely to eat much of what was on her plate. The post-mortem report showed the ravages of anorexia on Lola’s body over the years.
Looking at the sad eyes of the girl in the photograph – at the knife and fork that would no doubt have been pushed half-heartedly around the plate once the photo had been taken – made her life’s brutal ending somehow all the more tragic.
‘Lola Evans suffered from anorexia. She was hospitalised three years ago at the age of seventeen with a weight of just five and a half stone. Her grandmother said she made improvements with the help of various medical and psychiatric professionals but it was short-lived. Her family history is tragic, as you’ve already been informed. Now, initial indications would suggest that Lola wasn’t taken at random.’
‘The post-mortem shows no evidence of sexual assault.’
Alex turned to Superintendent Blake. ‘No, so that rules out what might have been our obvious assumption. So what else? Lola was young, attractive, but obviously highly vulnerable. Who might have wanted to make her suffer in this way, and did that person know her? Lola’s mobile phone is missing. The service provider has drawn a blank. She owned a laptop, but it wasn’t in her room at her grandmother’s house when officers carried out a search there. Dan,’ she continued, nodding to a uniformed officer sitting close by, ‘you went to the house, didn’t you? If you could give feedback.’
Daniel Mason was a detective constable recently transferred from another unit. A few years older than Alex, he was one of the few men she’d encountered on the force who didn’t seem to mind taking instruction from a woman younger than him. Ribald station banter often revealed more truth than anyone liked to admit. Dan had shown her nothing but respect and had fitted into the team as if they’d already known him for years.
‘Not much to report back, I’m afraid,’ Dan said, turning in his seat so that he was able to face the rest of their colleagues. ‘Laptop missing, as DI King said. No signs that Lola had been planning on going anywhere – no great amount of clothes missing and her passport was in the bedside drawer. There’s a suggestion from her grandmother that she might have had a boyfriend, although she doesn’t seem too sure about it. The bag of equipment Lola used for her beautician’s job was in her room, so she hadn’t been working for around two and a half weeks.’
‘Not at that job, anyway,’ Chloe chipped in. ‘Didn’t her nan suggest she might have been making money in other ways?’
The superintendent cut in before Alex could respond. ‘I don’t want us to spend too much time speculating on what other source of income she might have had, at least not until we’ve got some facts. I don’t want anything to skew our perception of this young woman, OK?’
Alex nodded in agreement. ‘The fact of the matter is, she was brutalised and whoever was capable of inflicting this kind of suffering on another human being needs catching.’
‘He could do with a bit more than that,’ Chloe muttered.
‘Before he does it again?’ Dan asked.
Alex sighed. ‘Let’s hope not. And let’s not rule out the fact that “he” could be “she”.’
She gestured to the other images on the board; in particular, to the close-up shots of Lola’s hands and the bloodied fingertips from which her nails had been pulled out. ‘This kind of torture is inflicted deliberately, with intent. Why the nails? Any link to her work as a beautician?’
‘What?’ piped up one of the younger male officers at the back of the room. ‘She gave someone a dodgy manicure and they decided to get their own back?’
Alex wasn’t in the mood for attempts at humour, particularly when they were in such bad taste. Her lip curled, as it often did when she was unimpressed. The look was enough to cast an uncomfortable silence over the room, especially when it was reinforced by the superintendent. If nothing else, the comment allowed her to allocate the task of watching the two weeks’ worth of CCTV footage requested from Cardiff City Council.
‘Her hair was cut off,’ Alex continued, drawing the focus away from the young constable. ‘Why?’