Memories of the corpses of Lola Evans and Sarah Taylor flashed into her thoughts. Alex had spent much of her adult life aware of the fragility of time, but she had never feared it as she did now.
She shook her head. There was little point pretending she was OK when she so clearly wasn’t. ‘I’m trying to think. This is all so complicated. She was sent emails, a while ago now – one a couple of weeks ago and the other back before Christmas. I dismissed them. I told her not to worry about them, that it was just someone messing around.’ Alex paused to take a gulp of cold air. It burned the back of her throat.
‘This is not your fault.’
‘No? I spoke to her this morning. I told her we had a suspect, but I didn’t tell her who, and you know why? I was covering my own backside. Looking after number one. And it’s led her to this. So please don’t tell me it’s not my fault.’
Harry’s hand twitched at his side, as though he wanted to reach out to her once more but was afraid she might lash out at him if he made the attempt. ‘If it’s any consolation, DC Mason’s also blaming himself. If he hadn’t told me about those bloody files, DC Lane would have been at work. You know more about her past than I do. Is there any link to this?’
A scene of crime officer appeared at the garden gate. She nodded an acknowledgment to Alex and Harry as she passed, and Alex waited until she’d gone before she answered Harry’s question.
‘I just don’t know. All this business with wanting to prove her brother’s innocence – that was all prompted by those emails. Either he does know something, or he’s used it to get at her.’
She knew there was something she should be seeing amidst the murky fog clouding her vision, but it was refusing to draw itself to the surface and make itself known.
The women. Their ‘sins’. The water.
Was he trying to cleanse them in some way?
Chloe. Her brother. The water.
Then it came to her, as clearly as though she had always known the answer. She knew where Adam had taken her.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Adam had left the bathroom for a while, leaving Chloe to the stillness and the cold of the water. She lifted her head again, using all the effort she could muster to take a better look around the room. If she could find something, anything, even slightly sharp, she might be able to use it to cut through the wires that bound her. Pushing her elbows to the porcelain, Chloe tried to push herself back. The bath was too slippery and she fell awkwardly, hitting her shoulder against the inside of the bathtub and sending water splashing into her face. It didn’t hurt – her body was still numbed by the drugs.
The bathroom was sparse. There was a toilet roll hooked on to a holder screwed to the wall; a bar of soap in an old-fashioned plastic soap dish in between the taps at the sink. Chloe tried again to get herself upright, gaining better leverage with her elbows on this attempt. Now, for the first time, she noticed a corner of window reflected in the mirror to the side of the room. It was dark outside, the window offering nothing but a rectangle of blackness between the opened curtains. She had a sudden longing to know what the time was.
She called again into the deafening silence, but there was no sound from the other side of the closed door. Was it locked? If she could get herself out of this bath, would she be able to get out of this room? Perhaps he had left the building. If he had, she might have enough time to get herself from this room before he returned.
Chloe scanned the bathroom again. Then she remembered the knife.
There had been times, years earlier, when she had thought the things she had lost were enough to send her to her death. Now the things she had yet to gain joined her, gathering to fill the empty spaces in the room. They looked lovelier in that moment than they ever had. Her career. Scott. All the things she had still to do, the places she had yet to see. She had been foolish – blind to what had been in front of her – but she was able to see things so differently now.
She had wasted so much time dwelling on what she’d lost. It was only now that she realised how much more she had still to lose – and to live for.
With all the effort she could summon, Chloe heaved her body upright. The sudden movement made her nauseous, and the room seemed to sway once more as she tried to gain balance, using the side of the bath to right herself. She glanced to the sink. She couldn’t quite see over its rim, couldn’t tell whether or not the knife had been left lying there. She tried to slide along the bottom of the bath, bring her knees up so she could gain some momentum, but the surface was too slippery and the drugs he had given her had rendered her body near useless.
She felt tears of frustration catch at the corners of her eyes. Chloe lay back and studied the goose bumps that had spread across her skin like a nettlerash. Her limbs had turned a pale purple colour, her veins prominent. She breathed in slowly, taking a long lungful of air.
Then she tried again. Sheer determination forced her upright. She brought her knees up to her chest, gritting her teeth against the pull of weight that fought to keep them fixed beneath the water. With her feet flat to the bathtub, she propelled herself upwards and forwards, not considering the physics of her movement or the angle at which she might land. Whilst she was still in that water, he had her at her most vulnerable.
Chloe felt exhausted by the effort, but she was out of the water. She sat perched precariously on the edge of the bathtub, her bound feet still in the water, her tied hands resting between her knees. She leaned forward slightly, just enough to shift the swirl of clouded vision behind her eyes without allowing her to fall back into the bath. Her head hurt so much. Every muscle in her body screamed in pain.
She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. Her hair had been haphazardly cut short. Like Lola Evans’s. Like Sarah Taylor’s. There was dried blood staining her top lip and smeared across her left cheek. Her nose was knocked off its path at the bridge.
It would have once mattered, but now these things meant nothing. She needed to get out of there. She wouldn’t let him win.
She stretched forward and peered into the sink where the knife still lay.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Alex headed to Marcross in one of the squad cars. She sat in the back beside Harry, checking her mobile every thirty seconds in the hope of getting a call from Dan. They had ordered an immediate appeal for any sightings of Chloe or of Adam, but it was late and most people would be tucked safely in their beds, sleep rendering them oblivious to the horrors that lay beyond their locked doors.
Every officer available had been employed in the search for Chloe. Alex prayed their efforts wouldn’t prove in vain.