Coronation Street’s Joel Deering playing with fire as he 'targets next victim'

Coronation Street’s Joel Deering (played by Calum Lill) may have found his next target in Weatherfield and it’s not Bethany Platt (Lucy Fallon).

Earlier this month, viewers were seething when they learnt the lawyer was the person who hurt missing teen Lauren Bolton (Cait Fitton).

However, the residents of Weatherfield believe returning villain Nathan Curtis (Chris Harper) is responsible after he was arrested. While Joel remains undetected, it looks as though he’s eyed up the teenager he’s going to target next.

Official spoilers for the ITV soap reveals that DS Swain’s (Vicky Myers) daughter Betsy starts her work experience at the Underworld factory. It’s not long before Carla Connor (Alison King) and Fiz Dobbs (Jennie McAlpine) are impressed with her skills.

Carla later catches Betsy texting and confiscates her phone but who is the mystery person messaging her? Currently, Joel is engaged to fellow lawyer Dee-Dee Bailey (Channique Sterling-Brown) who remains none the wiser of his evil streak. However, the only person who could be able to link Joel to Lauren is Hope Stape (Isabella Flanagan).

After cleaning his car, Hope discovered a red necklace underneath his seat, which she decided to give back to him.

As she quickly walked away, Joel looked shaken as he remembered what he had done to Lauren.

In a flashback scene, viewers then witnessed Joel holding Lauren down in her flat and beating her with furniture.

However, as her body is yet to be discovered some believe he could be keeping the teen hostage somewhere so she’s unable to go to the police.

Although now he’s targeting the daughter of a police officer, who was the lead detective in Lauren’s case, is he playing with fire?

Speaking about Joel’s storyline, actor Calum Lill revealed what’s next for the lawyer as he said: “I think he's trying to work out how many loose ends there could be and how to deal with them.

“Obviously as a defence solicitor, he knows how to play the game and knows that there is reasonable doubt and that he needs to cancel out anything that could be tied down to him.”

The soap star revealed the longer Joel is able to hide in plain sight, the more chances there are for him to make mistakes.

He added: “You can see that in him getting more and more anxious that the slightest thing could bring his world crumbling down around him, you know, even just the fact that he slept with Lauren.

“That's a breach of trust alone and will be enough to end his career and relationship plus murder on top of that, his life would be over you know.

“Everything that he values in his life, his job, his fiance, his freedom? So the stakes couldn't be higher. But when he panics, the more chance there is of something going wrong.”

Coronation Street continues Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays on ITV from 8pm.