‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘I saw the news, but they just said a woman’s body had been found in the river. They didn’t give a name, did they?’
‘You play in a band?’ Alex asked. She wanted to gain a picture of Ethan’s social life; hopefully, find a link with Lola’s. Lola had been found the morning before, on Tuesday, but the pathologist believed she had died anything up to two weeks earlier. Her grandmother claimed to have seen her eleven days prior to her body being found. Trying to pinpoint an exact timeframe was going to prove near impossible.
‘Yeah.’ Ethan faltered, as though it was a trick question and Alex was somehow trying to trip him up. He ran a hand through his hair – too long in Alex’s opinion, but how most young men were wearing it – and twisted his lips in an expression of confusion.
The pupils seemed to grow bigger by the second. Alex wondered whether he knew which day of the week it was, never mind being able to recall the name of the band he played in.
What had Lola Evans seen in Ethan Thompson? He looked as though he needed a good bath and a decent meal, as well as perhaps a couple of weeks in rehab.
‘Is this where you first met Lola?’
The young man shook his head. ‘I met her in the club opposite. I was playing there with my band – she was with some friends. We got chatting at the bar. She came back to mine. You know how it is.’ He pulled a face that suggested Alex didn’t know how it was.
‘When was that?’
Ethan fiddled with his stretched left earlobe. ‘Couple of months ago. Maybe a bit more.’ He put his hand on the table between them, his unusually long fingers splayed. ‘Shit. I can’t believe she’s dead. She was a nice girl. Quiet, you know. Bit vulnerable. I like that.’
If he realised how odd his last statement sounded, Ethan Thompson didn’t show any awareness.
‘Vulnerable, in what way?’
Ethan pulled a face. ‘I don’t know. Like she needed looking after. I liked that, at first.’
‘At first?’
He shrugged. ‘Gets a bit wearing, you know what I mean.’
How wearing had it become? Enough to drive him to murder?
‘When did you last see Lola?’ she asked.
His eyes rolled up to the ceiling as though trying to fix the memory. ‘Weekend before last. Saturday night. We grabbed some food together before she went to work.’
Alex narrowed her eyes. What beautician worked on a Saturday night?
‘Work where?’
Ethan shrugged. ‘She was a waitress or something. Evening job to earn an extra bit of cash. She mentioned somewhere, but I can’t remember.’
‘You didn’t know where your own girlfriend worked?’
‘Look,’ Ethan said, raising his hands from the table, ‘she wasn’t my girlfriend. We were just having a bit of fun, you know.’
Alex’s thoughts skipped momentarily to Rob and she felt a flush of shame at what she knew she’d been doing the past few months. She didn’t know what Rob believed was happening between them, but she was beginning to suspect whatever thoughts he’d had on the subject didn’t match hers.
Had Lola seen her relationship with Ethan as more than just a bit of fun?
What did Rob think was going to happen as a result of all the nights they’d spent together recently?
‘Where did you go?’ Alex asked, snapping herself away from distracting thoughts.
‘When?’
‘You said you went for food before she went to work. Where did you eat?’
‘Oh. Nando’s. The one in the shopping centre in Cardiff.’
Alex made a note of the place along with the date. ‘OK. If there’s anything else we’ll be in touch. Soon.’
Ethan gave her a nervous glance as he rose from his chair. ‘I am upset about it, you know,’ he said, as though trying to convince himself rather than Alex. ‘I just, I didn’t know her very long, you know? It’s really sad.’
It was the most insincere expression of sadness Alex had ever heard. They still had only a limited picture of Lola’s life, but had her confidence been at such a low ebb that she had seen nothing better for herself than gravitating towards young men such as Ethan Thompson? Alex knew very little of eating disorders or the psychological implications of such diseases, but the knowledge she had was enough to understand that Lola’s condition might have resulted in extremes, and this might also have impacted upon her trust in other people. She could have distanced herself from people, but the fact that she went home with Ethan on the evening she met him – coupled with a lifestyle that seemed to suggest she moved from place to place quite freely – implied the opposite was true, and that Lola might have trusted other people too easily.
Statistically it was likely Lola Evans had known her killer. She looked at the young man opposite. Could those long, skinny fingers – could that young man who was little more than a boy – have inflicted the multiple injuries that had scarred Lola’s body? Watching Ethan Thompson head back to the bar, Alex knew nothing was to be considered impossible.
Chapter Thirteen
Alex poured herself a glass of wine. Chloe didn’t drink and Alex had often wondered whether there was a reason for it. It didn’t seem appropriate to ask and it was none of her business. She made her a coffee and took a seat opposite her at the kitchen table. Chloe had brought an array of files with her, stacked at her side and labelled with an administrative prowess Alex could merely dream of. She seemed fraught and her hair was dishevelled, so far from the usually immaculate young woman in whose presence Alex found herself feeling inescapably old and dowdy.
‘Have you had a chance to check the case history?’ Chloe asked.
‘Not yet. I had a corpse wash up on a riverbank, remember?’
The younger woman’s face flushed. Alex had noticed she only ever blushed in front of women. With men, Chloe was defiant. She never backed down in the face of male banter at the station and her attitude towards Harry during their first meeting showed a tendency to be flippant if she felt threatened or undermined.
Alex wondered where her defences against men had risen from.
‘Sorry,’ Chloe said. ‘I know the timing isn’t great.’ She reached for the top of her files and drew out a photograph. ‘Emily Phillips.’
The smiling teenage face in the photograph was far different to the face Alex recalled. She hadn’t wanted to remember, but the young girl with the belt tightened around her throat was an image that would be etched permanently on Alex’s brain. Worse still had been the tear-streaked face of the teenage boy who had clutched on to the body, refusing to let her go.
‘The coroner didn’t think it was a suicide, did he?’ Alex asked.