She closed the post-mortem report.
A Facebook message notification pinged at the top of the screen, its narrow banner highlighting the first line of a newly received message. She would have ignored it had it not been for the name that greeted her. At the sight of it, a surge of memories flooded the room, filling it like long forgotten friends. She clicked on the banner and the messenger page popped up to fill the screen.
Hi Chloe. I’m not going to ask how you are – I’ve seen the papers, so realise things must be pretty tough for you at the moment (understatement, I’m sure). Anyway, I hadn’t realised you were back in Wales. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? I thought you might need a friend, and there’s no friend like an old friend (next stop 30, so definitely qualifying on the “old” bit). Let me know if you fancy meeting up for a drink or a chat (or both). You still have my left shoulder x
A sad smile passed Chloe’s lips. His last line resurrected a memory that was so distant she might have come to eventually forget it. She had once told him that she appreciated his shoulder to cry on, and he had asked which one. For a long time, he had been the only person she’d had to talk to. Months after leaving Cardiff, she’d continued to miss him.
As with everyone else, she’d had to let him go. But unlike many others, she had been sorry for it. Somehow, it seemed almost as though he had known when she might need him.
She began to type a response.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
There was no sign of Adam Edwards. His vehicle licence number had been obtained from the DVLA, and his van was a match with the same make and model as the one that had been picked up on CCTV near the entrance to Bute Park. Although the plate couldn’t be seen clearly on the footage it seemed increasingly likely they had identified their main suspect. Wherever Adam had been keeping the van since Sarah’s murder, it appeared he was doing all he could to make sure it stayed out of sight and therefore away from suspicion.
A request to the Department of Work and Pensions for his current and former employment details was being processed; a phrase Alex had come to loathe. It seemed a get-out clause for people who were simply unprepared to complete their jobs quickly and efficiently. She had given one of the team’s DCs her own request: to make sure the department’s administrative staff didn’t keep them waiting, even if that meant standing over a desk and utilising the threat of a search warrant.
Alex wasn’t confident about where the information might take them, but she wanted every member of the team kept busy. Any information was to be considered useful, only to be discarded once it had been proven not so. Alex had made the mistake in the past of overlooking the finer details, and at times missing the all too obvious. It was the reason she had insisted on sitting through hours of strip club CCTV footage, though it had turned out to be fruitless. She couldn’t afford to make any mistakes.
Adam Edwards’s mobile number had already been sought and his phone company contacted. They had been hoping to be able to use the GPS to track him, but as yet there had been no result. His phone seemed to have been disconnected from the network. The only way that this could have happened was for the battery to have been removed. Once again, he was two steps ahead of them.
A search warrant of the house where Adam Edwards had been living recently was obtained.
Alex and Dan returned to Simon Watts’s house and searched Adam’s bedroom, finding nothing there out of the ordinary. The man seemed as meticulous in his day-to-day life as he had been in his crimes.
‘This is ridiculous,’ Simon Watts said, standing in the corner of the living room and watching with a disgruntled expression as Alex searched through the contents of the drawers beneath the TV unit. ‘Adam’s hardly ever here.’
Ignoring him, Alex’s thoughts continued to focus on the hair that had been cut from both Lola’s and Sarah’s heads. If Chloe’s assumption had been right and the killer had taken the hair as a souvenir, it seemed likely he would keep it somewhere close; somewhere he would be able to return to it. There was no sign of either woman in the house.
Had he taken the hair with him?
Where the hell was he?
‘Your work ID shown up yet?’ Alex asked.
Simon Watts shook his head. ‘Security at the parks is useless anyway.’ As soon as he’d spoken the words, he seemed to regret them.
‘What are you suggesting, Mr Watts?’
‘Nothing,’ he said quickly.
‘So anyone could gain access with a vehicle if they chose the right moment, is that it?’
Simon’s refusal to offer a response answered Alex’s question for her. It was frustrating, but why would anyone have expected tight security at a city park or a popular picnic location? People didn’t generally expect to have murder victims abandoned there.
‘Does Adam have any identifying features?’
It had occurred to Alex that, although Rachel Jones had been able to identify him from his photo as a teenager, she hadn’t seen him since well before Christmas. During that time, he’d had plenty of opportunity to change his appearance.
‘Got quite a big tattoo up his arm,’ Simon told her.
‘Of?’
The man shrugged. ‘Snake or something.’
‘What colour’s his hair?’
Simon narrowed his eyes, as though it was a trick question. ‘Dark.’
It had been dark in his police photograph, Alex thought, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t recently changed it. She continued her search of the house, finding a bank statement dated six months earlier that she took with her.
Once they left, she and Dan made their way to the nearest branch. If they could gain access to Adam Edwards’s account activity, it might give them an indication of where he now was. Any further activity would help lead them to him.
‘Did you hear Simon Watts complaining about the mess?’ Dan asked as he put on his seatbelt. ‘I thought we left it in a better state than it was in when we arrived.’
Alex smiled, though she had barely registered his words. She was thinking of Adam’s mobile and how the GPS had thrown up no results. It was the same for Lola’s and for Sarah’s. Adam Edwards was a clever bastard. He had been careful in concealing his tracks, and Alex was worried that his bank account activity might also prove fruitless in their search.
Her suspicions were proved correct. Standing orders had left his account: his phone bill; his monthly payment for van insurance. Other than that, Edwards’s account had little activity. He had been paying his rent at Simon Watts’s house in cash, presumably from the odd jobs through which he seemed to be earning his living. He must have been making the rest of his purchases that way.
To all intents and purposes, Adam Edwards had disappeared.
Chapter Fifty-Nine