‘I’m nearing Taff’s Well now,’ Alex told Dan. ‘Please be as quick as you can.’
Her grip tightened around the steering wheel. She hated this bastard with an intensity she had never felt towards anyone. She needed to get to him before he got to Chloe first.
Chapter Sixty-Four
When she woke, Chloe found herself still in her own flat. Her head felt woozy, as though nursing a particularly violent hangover, and though it was her flat everything around her looked different. Her hands had been pulled together in front of her, crossed and tied with gardening wire. The thin wire cut into her wrists painfully, pinching her skin and cutting off her circulation. Her ankles were shackled in the same way.
Opposite her, Adam sat in the chair, his body tilted at an angle from Chloe’s prone position on the sofa.
‘Wakey wakey.’
Her eyes stung. Their corners were gritty with sleep and her chin felt damp, as though she’d dribbled during her unconsciousness. The room seemed to move as she twisted her head against the seat of the sofa.
Lola.
The woman’s name rang in her mind like an alarm bell. He had mentioned Lola. Right before she’d blacked out, Adam had spoken Lola’s name.
God, she felt sick. Whatever he had given her seemed to have soaked through to her core. Was it Rohypnol?
She had predicted this. She had written it down, told DI King it would happen.
She hadn’t once imagined it would be happening to her.
Nothing made any sense.
DI King. Alex had told her they had a suspect, but hadn’t been able to tell her his name. Was it Adam? Would they be looking for him, or would the investigation have led them to another false path, one that would direct them further and further from him, from her?
‘Why are you doing this?’
Adam smiled. That smile that had seemed so reassuring in its familiarity just hours earlier now made Chloe feel physically sick.
‘Because I can.’
He sat forward in the chair and rested his forearms on his knees. He’d taken off the long-sleeved sweater he’d been wearing earlier and was now in a T-shirt, his arms bare. His exposed skin revealed a tattoo of a snake that looped up and around his elbow.
Chloe moved her head, though the motion sent a painful ringing through her ears. There was something wrong. Something missing. She glanced over to the floor and saw it. Her hair… thick blonde chunks of it lying on the laminate.
‘It was you, wasn’t it? You killed Lola. You killed Sarah.’
Just hours earlier, she had welcomed this man who had appeared on her doorstep. She had invited him there, to this place she called home but knew had never truly been and now would never be. She had welcomed that smile back into her life, believing him to be the man she had known all those years ago: the young man who had been so silently supportive and so predictably dependable when she had most needed it.
Was that why this was happening to her? Had she taken him for granted? Did he feel used by her, betrayed in some way?
Memories were surging back, mingled with the foggy cloud that the drug had left floating in her brain.
That night, the night he had gone back to the flat with her. Luke had died a couple of weeks earlier, and Chloe had spent those weeks existing in a kind of half-slept haze that later made it difficult to recall the details of anything. She had drunk too much, argued with her parents, argued with the police. It was only months later that snapshots of those days would come back to her, seeping into her consciousness like unwanted visitors.
She had gone out to get obliterated, by whatever means possible. Adam had seen her in town, arguing outside a pub with a bouncer who had refused her entry because she was already too drunk. Adam had coaxed her away from the man, put her in a taxi and taken her back to the flat. Then he stayed with her as she threw up, making her tea and toast afterwards.
When the memories of that night began to resurrect themselves, the thing she would remember most about Adam was the fact that he had listened. She couldn’t really remember him doing much talking, or if he had she’d forgotten the things he had said. She had spoken to him about everything: about her parents, her childhood, Luke, Emily. It was as though everything she had carried with her was offloaded in one outpouring of grief and drunken confession, and Adam had listened without comment or judgement, allowing her to relieve herself of all the demons that were haunting her.
She wondered if he’d done the same for Lola. For Sarah.
She had tried to kiss him that night. The memory of that moment made itself much clearer than the others, returning to mock her. He had gently pushed her away. He had said something, but she couldn’t remember what it was.
Had Lola made advances on him? Had Sarah? Did Adam reject them too?
‘Whores,’ Adam said, as though he had somehow been capable of reading her thoughts. ‘All of you.’
He reached to the opened laptop on the coffee table and ran a finger across the mousepad, sparking the screen into life. There was a still on the screen: the image that had seared itself into Chloe’s mind all that week.
Sickness lodged in her throat. She tried to speak, but she choked on the words, on the realisation that sprang from the laptop screen to assault her. When he pressed play, a strangled sob escaped her.
‘Please turn it off.’
He sat back, ignoring the request. The tattoo on his arm flashed black and green at her.
The serpent.
Another sob burst from her. Those emails, she thought. It was him. The video clip had been sent to the papers and the superintendent by him. He had set out to ruin her, and he had succeeded. He had been there all those years ago, on the other side of that computer screen, typing his instructions, filming her. Could he possibly have imagined all those years ago that he would be able to use that footage to such devastating effect?
‘Please.’ The word was now barely audible.
‘Lola begged, as well. And Sarah. Do you know what they offered? They said they’d do anything I wanted, both of them. Do you want to make me an offer, Chloe? What do you want to give me? Remember I’ve already seen everything, so it’ll have to be something pretty special.’
Where was the boy who had held her hair back whilst she’d been sick: the one who had rubbed her shoulders and told her everything was going to be OK? How could he be this same man, a man who had tortured and killed?
Alex had been convinced early on in the investigation that Lola and Sarah had known their killer. Had they been fooled by him in the same way she had, lured by the kindness of his smile and by the reassuring comfort of his false words?
Her thoughts strayed to her father’s visit. Good men could do bad things.
Bad men were capable of doing good things.
She was going to die here.