He sighed again at the second rise of Chloe’s eyebrows. ‘Here.’ He reached into his pocket and retrieved his mobile phone. He unlocked the screen and searched for the message he’d received. ‘There.’ He held the mobile phone out across the table and waited as DC Lane and DI King read the brief message.
‘But that’s not Sarah’s mobile number?’ Alex clarified. ‘So why did you think she’d sent it?’
Connor sat back in his seat and returned his mobile to his pocket. ‘No one else is supposed to know… about us.’
‘Where did you meet Sarah?’ Alex asked.
‘At the support group I run. She started coming about nine months ago. She’s had problems with depression, anxiety; her ex-boyfriend beat her up pretty badly.’
His eye met Chloe’s and she held his stare. ‘She knows how to pick them then.’
Connor’s jaw tightened. ‘Look, we had a fling, all right? It was no big deal.’
‘Did Sarah see it that way?’
‘Yes. We agreed to finish things and she didn’t make a fuss about it. I haven’t seen or spoken to her since Thursday. I don’t know where she is.’
‘That message you received,’ Alex said. ‘Have you tried calling the number?’
‘Of course I have.’
‘And?’
‘And no reply.’
‘Could you give us the number please?’
Connor took his mobile back out from his pocket, found the message and passed the phone to Alex. She copied out the number into her notebook.
‘Was Sarah upset by the end of the affair, Mr Price?’
‘She didn’t seem it, no.’
‘You don’t think she seemed upset? You said she suffered with depression. You don’t think she’d have done anything to hurt herself though?’
Connor’s expression changed and his face paled at the implication. ‘No. I mean, she wasn’t like that. She’d never done anything like that, she just… she liked to talk things through. She wanted to be around people who understood her.’
‘And that was you, was it, Mr Price? You understood her?’
Alex shot Chloe a look that didn’t go unmissed. She knew what the look meant. She was angry, and her anger was manifesting itself in the wrong way, directing itself at the wrong people. This wasn’t like her, and both Alex and Chloe knew it.
‘What the hell is all this about?’ Connor said, his focus shifting between the two officers. ‘Look, I’m not in love with her, OK? I admit it. Is that a crime?’
‘It’s just sex?’
Connor gave a shrug. ‘People do it every day,’ he said, holding Chloe’s stare longer than was comfortable. ‘Look, I assume I’m not under arrest?’
‘What would you be under arrest for?’ Alex asked. Sarah Taylor was missing, but as yet that was all she was. Under ‘normal’ circumstances her disappearance wouldn’t have yet been considered a priority, but with another young woman recently found murdered they weren’t going to take any chances.
‘Exactly,’ Connor said. ‘She’s probably just having a couple of days to herself. Clear her head or something.’
‘Why would she need to do that?’ Chloe asked. ‘You just said she wasn’t upset by the end of the affair, that she’d accepted it?’
Connor scraped back his chair and stood. ‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her when she turns up. Can I go now?’
Chloe watched the man hesitate before he got the nod from Alex that he was free to leave.
He headed for the door.
Alex got up and followed him back down the corridor to reception. She hoped for Sarah Taylor’s sake that when she did turn up she’d be capable of explaining where she’d been.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chloe hadn’t been to her parents’ house in over eight years. Her last visit had ended with her father telling her it was best she never came back, so she’d adhered to his wishes and hadn’t returned. A year later she had moved to London, a city where it had been easy to lose herself, and it was there she had joined the police after finishing university. She had spent over six years in London trying to cast off her old self and prove what she was made of, to herself as much as to others. Six years spent trying to forget. Then she had realised she couldn’t. She never would. So she returned home, to Cardiff.
She had seen her parents only once since moving back to Wales a little over six months earlier. She had been in Cardiff city centre shopping for a pair of shoes to wear to a party she didn’t end up going to. She remembered standing in the shoe section of Debenhams, deliberating between a pair of sensible flats that didn’t look that great but were likely to be comfortable and a pair of high heels that looked amazing but she knew were likely to attract unwanted attention.
She ended up with neither. Whilst playing eeny-meeny between them, Chloe had looked up and seen a familiar figure standing near the menswear department. She recognised her mother immediately. The short, solid frame and the hair swept back and piled high on the head: she hadn’t changed one bit. Her mother was wearing an outdoor jacket, the windbreaker kind that came in lurid colours that made her even more conspicuous amongst the busy crowds of Saturday afternoon shoppers.
Her mother had turned to speak with someone, and there was Chloe’s dad, larger than life, towering over his wife by a good eight inches, as he always had.
Chloe had never been able to look at her father without being reminded of Luke. The thought of her brother never failed to throw her off balance and she put a hand to the shelving unit on which the high heeled shoes she’d been eyeing up were displayed. They were so similar. Both tall, both with the same wiry frame – an athlete’s figure – and with dark hair that even in her father’s case showed minimal signs of grey. Chloe watched as something was said between them. Her mother gestured to a pair of sunglasses, took them from the stand and handed them to her father who tried them on and turned to his wife, seeking her approval. She gave a shrug and he passed them back.
Chloe had never known her father to wear sunglasses. Why would he have needed any? The sky that ceilinged South Wales spent ninety-five per cent of its time bearing an expression of disappointment, and even on its best days was never that sure about it for too long.
It occurred to Chloe that her parents might be going on holiday, and the thought filled her with a sickening anger. Their son was dead. Years had passed, but not that many, and nothing in that time had changed. Luke was still dead. His killer was still out there somewhere.
His parents were shopping for sunglasses.
‘Can I help you?’
A girl who looked no older than nineteen was standing beside Chloe, so close she made her jump.
‘Sorry,’ the shop assistant said with a smile. ‘I just wondered if you needed a hand with anything, or a second opinion maybe?’
Chloe had forgotten the shoes. She had forgotten what she was doing there. She was momentarily distracted by the thick line of orange foundation that framed the girl’s face before saying, ‘No. Thanks.’
She left the shop, nearly walking into a woman pushing a pram on her way out. Once out in the wide main space of the shopping centre, she took a deep breath and promised herself, once again, that she would never be like them. They might have forgotten Luke, but she never would.