The pub was in Groeswen, a tiny village that sat between Caerphilly and Pontypridd. It was on a lonely path that although just a few hundred metres from the main road – the main road itself being little more than a narrow country lane – managed to seem as though it was far out in the countryside, isolated from the rest of civilisation by high trees and overgrown wasteland. Alex pulled her car up to the front of the building and parked alongside the couple of other vehicles already there. She could see the appeal of the place for any curious child of an adventurous and risk-taking persuasion. A stretch of land surrounded the building, now thick with bracken but still showing evidence of its former life: a broken picnic table upturned and partially burned, abandoned signage growing moss and left to decompose on the shadow of a path; broken glass still littering the ground like some haunting reminder of a party that was long since over.
Scene of crime officers were already present, having been alerted by the original officers who attended to check the place over. There was no one inside the building when they’d got there, although it quickly became clear that there had been.
Chloe stepped from the passenger side of Alex’s car and looked up at the building that stood tall and imposing before her. Its main doors had been boarded, but had been broken through by officers. The windows on both the ground and upper floors were boarded up and the roof was in a state of disrepair with large sections of tiles missing.
‘Place gives me the creeps,’ she said, pulling her jacket closer around her to stave off the bite of afternoon air.
She followed Alex through the gap of broken boards that allowed them entry into the former pub. Inside, time had been frozen. The bar stood in front of them, thick with grime and dust. The majority of the furniture was gone, but a few old, red-cushioned benches remained lining the walls, pictures still hanging against the flaking paintwork behind them.
Chloe took her phone from her pocket and the officers stood in the glow of its torchlight. Cobwebs hung like curtains from the ceiling and relics of the pub’s past – empty glasses, beer mats and beer bottles – lay scattered on the few tables that remained. Beneath them, their shoes clung to the sticky carpet.
‘Boss.’
A male constable appeared in a darkened doorway to the right, beckoning Alex and Chloe with a nod of the head. They followed him into a short narrow hallway and up a flight of stairs.
‘There’s a flat upstairs,’ the officer said. ‘We’ve found where the boys got in. Climbed up on to a fire escape at the back.’
‘What else has been found?’ Alex said, already fearful of the answer. If only Jake had spoken up sooner. If only his friend had said something. If only—
She stopped her trail of thoughts. Where had ‘if only’ ever got anyone?
Alex followed the officer through another door that led into a small square kitchen. The place was dark and dank, the damp spreading up the walls in a blackened rash and the stale smell of age and abandonment clogging the air. Other than old cupboard units and a cooker that looked as though it had never been cleaned, the room was empty. The remains of a smashed light bulb hung from the fitting at the centre of the ceiling.
‘You’d better come through,’ the officer said, nodding to the next doorway.
They followed him through an empty space that might once have been a living room. The door that led to the room where scene of crime officers now worked had been at some time padlocked, the lock found on the floor of the kitchen when the first officers had entered the building.
Alex sensed Chloe’s body tense as they stepped into the darkened room. The air was fetid and sour with the smell of iron. Patches of blood stained the already dark carpet at the right-hand side of the room. A wooden chair was upturned. Several lengths of rope lay strewn amidst it.
‘Jesus.’
Alex surveyed the scene, realising now exactly what Jacob and his friend Riley had seen. A woman in a chair. Her head hanging low and her long hair covering her face. At first, they hadn’t thought the woman was real. She looked just like one of those real-life dolls they dress up in shops. A Hallowe’en version.
Then they’d kept telling themselves that’s exactly what she had been, to make the memory of her go away.
Alex put a hand to her mouth. Had Sarah Taylor been here, tied to this chair? Was it Sarah the two boys had seen? Had she been alive? If it hadn’t been Sarah, who else had been here? And where was Sarah now?
‘We’ve got prints, boss.’
Alex watched a scene of crime officer collect a sample of blood from the floor at the foot of the upturned chair. The other SOCO was still dusting for further prints.
‘Could be the boys’ prints,’ Chloe suggested. ‘Did they actually come into the room?’
‘Jake said not. What the bloody hell were they doing out here alone at that time of night? Where were their parents?’
Chloe studied Alex, watching frustration play out in the tensing of her jaw. Chloe didn’t think it was suitable to point out that if the boys’ parents had been keeping a closer eye on them, they wouldn’t have found this place.
When she caught her eye, Alex looked away. She ushered Chloe back out to the kitchen.
‘If Sarah Taylor, or whoever else, was here then how were they moved – how were they brought here?’
‘Road’s pretty isolated. Be easy enough for someone to come and go without being noticed, I suppose.’
Alex went back through to the small landing and glanced along the walls at the side of the staircase. ‘No blood out here,’ she mused. ‘If someone had been brought here against their will, there’d be signs of a struggle, wouldn’t there? And if he’d had to move an injured person back down these stairs, where’s the blood?’ She put a hand to her face and pressed her fingers against her eyelids. She knew that injured would likely mean dead. As she began to consider the ways the woman had been removed from the building, dark images permeated Alex’s thoughts.
‘We need to get Jake and Riley in and get them printed,’ she said, thinking aloud. ‘If we can rule them out, we might be able to isolate the killer’s prints.’
Her phone began to ring. She took it from her pocket and saw DC Mason’s number flash up from the screen.
‘Daniel.’
‘I’ve watched some of the CCTV footage sent over from the strip club where Lola worked,’ he told Alex.
The call the station had received had been from a young woman who hadn’t wanted to give her name. She claimed she had worked with Lola in a strip club in Cardiff – one of the subterranean bars that ran the length of St Mary’s Street – and said it was doubtful the manager would have contacted police even had he heard of Lola’s murder. It seemed he paid a lot of the girls who worked there cash in hand and was notorious for fiddling the club’s accounts. He wouldn’t have wanted any attention from the police.