‘He was fourteen and he looked at some porn,’ Chloe said, looking down at her father. ‘Jesus, what teenage boy doesn’t?’
‘Jesus? How typical of you, Chloe, to use his name in vain. Your religion means nothing to you, does it? And that’s where we’re different, you see. Your mother and I. You and Luke. You think that behaviour is acceptable. We don’t. You think looking at pornographic imagery is acceptable. We don’t. You think accepting payment for sexual favours is acceptable. We don’t.’
He stood from the sofa and Chloe held her breath, expecting his worst.
‘Get out of my flat.’
‘Gladly,’ her father said. ‘Come to the house again and I’ll call the police. Be nice for you, I suppose. Think of it as a reunion.’
‘Come to this house again,’ Chloe said, yanking open the front door, ‘and I’ll make sure everyone knows you killed your son. Luke didn’t kill himself, did he?’
There was a moment before he headed back out onto the street and Chloe was able to slam the front door behind him. But not before she saw it again. There it was, so faint she might have missed it. That flicker beneath the arrogant, horrible exterior that acknowledged that his secret wasn’t entirely his own.
Guilt.
Now all she had to do was prove her father was a murderer.
Chapter Fifty-Two
The first call Alex made when she got back to the station that morning was to Martin Beckett, the son of the man who had owned The Black Lion. She had gone straight to the coffee machine for a caffeine fix before shutting herself away in her office, wanting to be alone with her thoughts. Dan had returned to the main investigation room to continue his research into Julia Edwards. Finding out as much as they could about the woman now seemed their best chance of finding a link with the two girls whose bodies had been retrieved from the water.
Alex searched through the contacts on her phone for his mobile number. As it continued to ring without answer, she cursed.
‘Hello?’
She kept her fingers crossed that he might hold the information she needed. She had made the link between the bath and the water when they’d found out about Julia Edwards’s death at the pub, but she wished the missing pieces had fallen into place earlier. They needed names. A solid link to Julia Edwards would finally give them something concrete from which to work.
‘Martin? It’s Detective Inspector King. Have you got a minute?’
She heard noise in the background, the sound of voices and movement.
Martin spoke to someone at his end before redirecting his attention back to Alex. ‘I do now.’
‘Julia Edwards, the woman who died in the bathtub at your father’s pub: how much do you know about her?’
‘Not much. Like I told you though, I knew too much. More than I was comfortable with.’
‘Look, I know this can’t be easy to talk about, but I need to know as much as possible about what was going on in that flat. You suggested your father had been having an affair with the woman who lived there?’
Martin gave a bitter laugh. ‘Not how I’d describe it.’
Alex paused. ‘How would you describe it?’
There was a loud exhalation at Martin’s end of the conversation. ‘More of a business transaction, shall we say. An exchange of services.’
This much Alex knew already. Clive Beckett appeared not to have been too pushy about the rent on the flat above his pub, providing missed payments were accounted for through alternative means.
‘How did you find out about your father’s…’ She had been going to use the word ‘relationship’, but Alex realised it would most likely lead to insult.
‘I heard my parents arguing,’ Martin told her, saving Alex the awkwardness of having to rephrase the question. ‘Not just the once, either. I think she had a bit of a reputation at the pub – the staff used to gossip about what was going on in the flat.’
Alex doodled distractedly across the notepad on her desk. ‘So you’re suggesting she saw other men there? Men she might have been accepting payment from?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t want to speculate. Like I said, there was a lot of gossip.’
No smoke without fire, thought Alex.
‘Do you remember her moving into the flat?’
‘Yeah. Couple of years before she died.’
‘Did she move into the flat alone? No husband or boyfriend?’
Martin sighed. As responsive to her questions as he had been, Alex realised revisiting this old ground was something Martin had no desire to experience.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I was only a teenager back then. I don’t know. I think she lived there alone, but I can’t be sure. I’m sorry I can’t be more help, I really am. I’ve seen those girls on the news. I know what all this is about. You don’t think it’s got something to do with that woman though, do you? I mean, all this was years ago.’
‘I can’t give any details of the case, I’m sorry. You’ve been really helpful. I’m sorry to have dragged it all back up for you. One last thing: do the names Christian Cooper or Joseph Black mean anything to you?’
‘No,’ Martin said. ‘I’m sorry, I really am. I wish I was able to help you in some way.’
‘You have. Thank you.’
Alex ended the call and sat back in her chair, pressing her eyes shut tightly. Despite the links with the water and the pub, nothing was making sense. Why would anyone who had known Julia Edwards all those years ago be now targeting women who, back then, were just kids?
Why couldn’t they find out who these two missing men were? It was rare these days for people to leave no trail behind them, particularly with the popularity of social media. People made themselves easily traceable, even if they failed to realise they were doing so.
Had one of these men removed the records from the support group’s filing cabinet in a bid to make himself more difficult to find? Tim Cole so far seemed entirely plausible, and they had no evidence with which to arrest Connor Price for a second time. If the man they were looking for was either Christian Cooper or Joseph Black, one of them was being careful to do everything he could to conceal his tracks.
He had gone to that group with the intention to kill, Alex thought, and the notion made her sick to her stomach. The guilt she carried about the death of Sarah Taylor was overwhelming. They should have got to her in time, but they hadn’t. They had failed her.
She had failed her.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chloe flicked on the kettle before going into the living room and taking her laptop from the sideboard. She turned it on and waited for the darkened screen to light. She inserted the memory stick and waited for the list of files to appear.