With her nose pressed tightly between his fingers, Sarah had little choice than to open her mouth for air. He was sitting on her chest now, crushing the air from her body. She gasped for breath, but it was cut short when he held the bottle of water above her face and poured it in a steady stream over her opened mouth.
She felt the water fill her mouth and run down into her throat. She couldn’t swallow it fast enough; within seconds she was choking on it. She closed her eyes in an effort to block the sight of him. He was still there when she opened them, his impassive face still mocking her.
She heard herself choking.
She could feel herself drowning.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Alex and Chloe sat in the office of the care home. It was chaotic, Alex noticed: files and paperwork stacked on every available surface; half-finished mugs of tea and coffee abandoned by the desktop computers. There seemed to be few staff members present, and the buzzer in the corridor had been sounding since they’d got there.
‘Do you think something’s happened to Sarah?’ the care home manager asked. She had been unsettled by the appearance of police. She had ushered them quickly through to the office, trying to keep them invisible from the cleaner at the end of the corridor and a resident who was wheeling himself from the day room, his slight frame bent forward and his bony fingers clutching the tops of the wheels of his chair.
The man had caught Chloe’s eye, his gaze vacant, and Alex had noticed her colleague staring. It wasn’t like Chloe; she was usually so sensitive and discreet. Alex understood how unsettling these places were to someone who’d had no previous experience of them. She imagined Chloe had never been inside a care home before. She knew Chloe had fallen out with her parents and had subsequently changed her surname, but Alex didn’t know what their disagreement had been over. Until that week, she hadn’t known Chloe had a brother. All she knew of Chloe’s life prior to the last six months was that she had trained with the Met in London after graduating with a degree in Psychology. Her teenage years and childhood were something Chloe had never spoken of.
The wailing sound that came from the end of the corridor evidently upset Chloe. She cast Alex a look that said why aren’t they doing something?
A reminder of her own mortality and the fragility of time were the things Alex realised had confronted Chloe as they’d stepped inside the building, as she too had once experienced.
‘We don’t know,’ Alex said, ‘but by all accounts it seems out of character for Sarah to not let anyone know her whereabouts. Has she done this before, just failed to turn up to work?’
The manager shook her head. ‘She’s always been pretty reliable.’
‘“Pretty reliable”?’ Chloe repeated.
‘Look,’ the manager said with a sigh. ‘There has been the odd time when she’s not come into work, and we know she’s had her fair share of problems over the years. But if she wasn’t coming in she’d always let us know beforehand, even if it was at the last minute.’
‘What problems has she had?’ Alex asked. They’d already heard plenty from Sarah’s flatmate, Grace, but hearing the details from someone else would corroborate the account.
‘Sarah had some problems with an ex-partner,’ the manager said, seeming to select her words with caution. She looked anxiously at both women. ‘You know this already, I suppose?’
‘We know about the violent ex-boyfriend, yes.’
The manager nodded. ‘He turned up here once, while she was working. The place is obviously secure so he couldn’t gain access, but we had to call the police. He was waiting just around the corner for her, refusing to leave. Sarah was pretty shaken up by it. I wish we’d done more.’
‘In what way? What more could you have done?’
‘I don’t know. Anything. Two weeks after that, Sarah ended up hospitalised.’
The manager’s eyes were glassy. She clearly felt a responsibility for what had happened to Sarah on the day of the attack. ‘She’s in some sort of trouble, isn’t she?’
‘We don’t think her ex-partner is in any way connected, but it’s helpful to know as much about Sarah as we possibly can.’
‘I wish I could tell you something more, but I really don’t know much of Sarah beyond this place. You might like to talk to some of the other girls here – she seems quite friendly with a few of them.’
Alex nodded and noted the names the manager provided. ‘If we could speak with whoever’s here now, that would be really useful.’
The manager left and came back moments later with a lady wearing a green tabard and a hairnet.
‘Marianne has some information for you.’
She gave the woman what may have been intended as an encouraging smile but managed to make her look even more anxious. ‘I’ll give you some time,’ the manager added, closing the door as Marianne stepped into the office.
‘Sarah,’ the woman began, ‘is she OK?’
‘She’s missing. We want to find her as soon as possible.’
‘I saw her arguing with someone. In the car park. It was a man.’
Marianne sat beside Alex and gave her the details: which day, what time, and a description of the man that was as detailed as she was able to recall. Either the woman’s powers of observation were finely honed, or she’d had years of experience in being generally nosy.
Alex shot Chloe a look. The woman had just described Connor Price, the man with whom Sarah Taylor’s flatmate had claimed her friend was having an affair.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Connor Price drummed his fingers on the desk in a way Chloe assumed was intended to be annoying. Since the man had arrived at the station, he’d said little. His body language was stiff, defensive, and every time he was spoken to by one of the officers he would flinch slightly as though bracing himself for an attack.
They knew very little about him, but enough to know he was ex-army, married and had children. Enough to know that his alleged affair with Sarah Taylor was something he was unlikely to have wanted made public knowledge.
‘When was the last time you saw Sarah?’ Chloe asked.
Alex was sitting by her side, pen poised in her hand. She was taking notes despite the fact that the interview was being recorded. It was a force of habit, something she insisted on doing as though she couldn’t trust technology in the way she could trust herself.
‘A few days ago. Thursday,’ Connor said, translating Chloe’s raised eyebrows as a need to be more specific.
‘Where did you see her?’
Connor sighed. The police knew where he’d seen her; they’d already been told he’d been to see her at her workplace, thanks to the nosy cow who had spotted them arguing in the car park.
‘At her work.’
‘Is that something you do often?’ Alex asked. ‘Go to see her at work?’
‘I didn’t see her at work,’ Connor snapped, unable to hide his frustration. ‘I saw her in the car park. I just wanted to talk to her about something.’