Alex wondered if a chat with the former Mrs Beckett might be necessary. For now, she couldn’t see how any of this would be relevant to the cases they were currently investigating. Whoever had taken Lola and Sarah had needed somewhere secluded, secure. Their killer might not have chosen the best of places, but perhaps it had been his only option at the time. But clearly he had known the flat was there.
‘I’d like to take your details please, Mr Beckett. Just in case we need anything later on.’ She took a small notebook and a pen from her bag, turned to a clean page and passed both to Martin Beckett. He wrote down his name and number and passed them back to her.
Chapter Forty-Six
Alex had never seen Chloe like this. She was without make-up and dark circles shadowed her usually bright eyes. She looked as though she’d been crying. Chloe was usually so strong, so in control. What was all this doing to her?
Chloe held the door aside for Alex, though she refused at first to meet her eye. Despite her frustration with Chloe’s breaking of the rules, Alex knew she was in no position to judge. She should have admitted to her own taking of Emily Phillips’s post-mortem report, but she couldn’t while their current case was still ongoing. She felt sympathy for Chloe; she felt a loyalty towards her, but she also had a commitment to catching Lola Evans’s and Sarah Taylor’s killer.
Alex had felt an initial anger towards Daniel Mason for reporting Chloe to the super, but the reaction had been short-lived. The detective constable worked by the rules, as Chloe should have: as she knew they all should. He had done what he thought was right.
Though she had never seen the inside of Chloe’s flat before, Alex assumed its current state couldn’t possibly be its usual one. Chloe was usually so immaculately presented, so seemingly in control and organised. That day, the place was chaos. The files she had previously taken to Alex’s house now lay strewn on the living room’s laminate flooring, their contents sprawled at random. Amongst them, the occasional face stared up at Alex, each pair of eyes seeming to follow her as she tiptoed through the debris of Chloe’s past.
It seemed to Alex that the flat was sparsely furnished, as though it wasn’t inhabited fully but merely used by someone who was just passing through.
Did Chloe have any intention of staying here when she first moved in?
Did she have any intention of staying with the police when she first joined up? With hindsight, Alex speculated whether everything the young woman seemed to have worked so hard for had been with a singular aim: proving her brother’s innocence. Though her intentions were in many ways honourable, it all seemed to Alex such a tragic waste.
‘Tell me,’ Alex said. ‘I want to help you, I want you back at work, but I can’t do anything until I know the truth. All of it.’
‘Coffee?’ Chloe offered.
Alex wondered how many she’d already had – she seemed wired.
‘Thanks.’
Alex followed Chloe through to the kitchen. The flat was small, with one bedroom, but it was neatly appointed, making maximum use of what was minimal space. She watched silently as Chloe set about preparing coffee for them both.
‘It’s you in the pictures?’
‘Yeah, it’s me,’ Chloe said, her back turned to Alex.
Alex had studied the face in the newspaper photographs, though it had saddened her to do so. Chloe had looked so different back then – her natural hair much darker than the bottle blonde she now chose; her frame much slighter now than it had been then – but when she looked closely, there she was: the pale skin, the high cheekbones; the bright eyes. She had hoped not to find her in the image, as though not seeing her would make the stark reality of the photographs untrue.
She was beginning to feel an almost maternal loyalty to Chloe, a need to keep her protected from all the nastiness that life seemed intent on throwing at her. It now felt to Alex she had arrived far too late. Chloe’s young life had seen plenty before it had barely begun. Alex realised that what she knew was likely to have barely skimmed the surface. She couldn’t have been more than nineteen in the images that the papers had so happily spread amongst their pages. What had driven her to it?
‘I could tell you I did it because I had to, but it all sounds a bit pathetic,’ Chloe said, turning to Alex and handing her a coffee.
She went back into the living room and sank into a corner of the sofa, clutching her mug of coffee to her chest. Her small frame seemed engulfed by the cushions that surrounded her.
To the side of the sofa, on the floor, lay several newspapers. Alex recognised their front page stories: knew that Chloe’s own lay not-so-hidden somewhere amongst the pages of each.
She sat at the other end of the sofa.
‘What’s been said back at work?’
‘Don’t worry about what’s been said,’ Alex said too quickly. Her hasty response gave Chloe the answer she’d been looking for: too much had already been said. Stopping gossip was sadly beyond Alex’s powers. There were certain male officers at the station who’d been not-so-secretly enjoying the rumours that the previous couple of days had generated. Colleague solidarity was something they were unfamiliar with, and she imagined, with disdain, that there were a couple who had returned to the images splashed across the papers with relish.
It had always been obvious Chloe’s looks garnered a fair share of male interest, and why wouldn’t they? She was slim, attractive, the kind of pretty that didn’t flaunt itself but was nonetheless obvious. Alex had once thought she might have been involved with a former male colleague, but her suspicions had been proven wrong. Rather than enjoying the attention her looks received – as many young women might have – Chloe shunned male interest. Perhaps here was the explanation for that.
‘I was brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness.’
The comment came from nowhere and took Alex by surprise. Chloe had never mentioned this before, although she had never really spoken of her past before. Something else that was now beginning to make sense.
She didn’t know what to say, so said nothing. Thankfully, Chloe filled the silence.
‘It wasn’t a religion, not where my parents were concerned. It was a cult. For years I thought it was normal, but then I got to about eleven, twelve, and realised it was far from it. My brother and I weren’t allowed to do anything. We couldn’t mix with the other kids at school, so eventually they stopped bothering to make the effort. We were outsiders. They thought we were weird. The teachers used to be nice to us – overly nice. As I got older, I realised they just pitied us. We were the resident freak show.’ Chloe looked down at the coffee in her hands. She had wanted this moment for so long – had wanted to be able to confide in someone with all the things she’d kept hidden for so many years – but not like this. She’d been forced into this. It felt like a confession. She supposed that’s exactly what it was.