‘I don’t understand you,’ he said, turning back to face her.
She said nothing. The truth of it was, she didn’t understand herself either.
Chapter Sixteen
When she woke, she found herself in darkness. She couldn’t move. She tried to free her arms from behind her back, but they were tied to the chair on which she was sitting. Something was shoved into her mouth, something like clothing, the cotton absorbing all the moisture so that her tongue, squashed against the roof of her mouth, felt dry. She panicked, tried to free herself, but her arms were tied back and her legs were fixed fast to the legs of the chair. She tried to scream, but only a muffled gurgle escaped her.
She tried to remember what had happened, but those past few hours were a tangle of blurred recollections. They had been talking, catching up, and then… she didn’t know what had happened next. The room was cold and dark. Her head ached so badly. It was like every hangover she’d ever had all rolled into one, fierce and unforgiving. She was supposed to be going out with Grace, she thought. Was she late? What time was it?
Grace would be wondering where she was.
They’d had a drink together, she remembered. She had popped to the supermarket; she was only going to be twenty minutes. He had seen her there and they had gone to the pub just around the corner. Grace always took ages getting ready, so Sarah figured she wouldn’t miss her for an extra half an hour. He’d offered her a lift home with the bags she had been carrying. As always, she had only gone in for a couple of things – a bottle of wine that she and Grace could share before they headed out – but she had got carried away and ended up with more than she could comfortably manage. She was appreciative of the offer – she’d decided not to take the car, having planned on not buying much and figuring she needed the exercise.
Now she wished more than anything that she’d taken it.
Tears coursed her cheeks, hot and fast. This couldn’t be him, she thought. It couldn’t be.
Why would he do this to her?
She tried to remember what they had talked about, but so much of the time after leaving the supermarket had become little more than a blur, and her head felt heavy, dragged down with the weight of something unknown. Had she had that much to drink? She was certain she wouldn’t have, not when she had planned to go out later on with Grace.
There was a creaking somewhere in the darkness, on the other side of the wall to her left. Her eyes had adjusted slightly to the dark – enough to make out the heavy drapes and the wooden furniture – but whatever he had given her was making a double of everything, like an old photograph taken out of focus. At the sound of his footsteps in the next room, she felt her body freeze. She didn’t know whether she hoped it was him or not. If it was him then everything she had thought she had known had been wrong. She had trusted this man. She’d had no reason not to.
Perhaps she could talk to him, find out why he was doing this to her. Maybe, somehow, if she could get him to free her mouth, free her words, he might allow her the time to change his mind.
She had never done anything to him.
If it wasn’t him… she couldn’t bring herself to think that far ahead. If the man who had brought her here, wherever here was, was a stranger, she had no idea what had happened during the past few hours. Did she hope it was him? She really wasn’t sure which outcome would be worse.
Her heart faltered at the sound of the door handle, the heavy door creaking on its hinges as it was pushed open. A thin shard of light stretched across the dirty carpet, highlighting the dust-filled air of the room.
She tried to speak, but the words were muffled by the material filling her mouth. A low groan broke free from her, animal-like and desperate. He filled the path of what little light had existed, blocking it and sending her once again into a half-darkness where all her worst fears became imagined and played out in front of her. She was going to die here, she thought.
She was going to die and she had no idea why.
Chapter Seventeen
Chloe sat in Alex’s office discussing Emily Phillips’s death in even greater detail. Alex didn’t want to be found away from her duties in the middle of a murder investigation, but at the same time she didn’t want Chloe to land herself in trouble. Unless she could keep her talking about it, Chloe might take matters into her own hands by trying to access the closed case files. Chloe Lane was bright and astute, but Alex was worried that where her brother was concerned the young woman was unable to see the bigger picture. She seemed blinded by loyalty, as Alex supposed any good sister might be.
Alex hadn’t said she believed there was a chance Luke hadn’t been involved in his girlfriend’s death, yet Chloe had assumed that she was with her in her doubt. She acknowledged the grey areas surrounding the closing of the case, but that didn’t mean she thought Luke innocent. Alex hadn’t been directly involved in the case, despite having been the first officer to arrive at the scene following Luke’s call. She had been assigned to another case, so her knowledge of what had followed was for the moment limited to what the newspapers had told her at the time, station gossip, and what Chloe had told her the night before. Everything she knew was therefore clouded in media sensationalism, hearsay or bias.
If she was going to help, she was going to have to access the case files, but when was she going to have the time to do that?
And how was she going to do it without getting them both into serious trouble? It couldn’t be done, not without major repercussions. It wouldn’t be worth it. If the evidence to clear Luke’s name hadn’t existed at the time, it wouldn’t be discovered now. She was going to have to deter Chloe in her efforts, but how she was going to go about it Alex wasn’t sure. The young woman’s determination seemed unshakeable.
‘Matthew Mitchell,’ Chloe said, reaching into one of the documents she seemed to now carry with her at all times. She put a photograph in front of Alex, who looked at her incredulously.
‘You’ve got photos?’
‘Of course. This is Emily’s half-brother,’ she said, tapping the image of a sullen-faced young man, aged early twenties at the time the photograph was taken. ‘Same father, different mothers. He had an argument with Luke the afternoon of the day Emily died. Emily had been upset about something – Matthew thought Luke was responsible.’
‘And was he?’
Chloe shook her head. ‘According to Luke, they’d been getting on fine. There’d been no argument. He didn’t know what had upset her.’
‘So you’re assuming if Luke hadn’t upset her, someone else must have?’
Chloe shrugged.
She must realise that all this is just ‘he said, she said’, Alex thought; nothing more than teenage drama that didn’t amount to anything substantial when it came to looking at the facts.