M. Arlidge - Eeny Meeny

Her phone was off, the door was locked, she was utterly alone. It wasn’t standard protocol for the senior investigating officer to sever all contact with her team during such an important investigation, but Helen needed some time alone. She needed to think .

She had pulled her own file from HR and was leafing through her professional history, whilst simultaneously surfing the archives of both the Southampton Evening News and Frontline , Hampshire police’s monthly publication. She was looking for the missing link – the clue that would prove once and for all that the killer was targeting her .

There could be no doubt any more that the killer’s choice of victims was governed by Helen’s past successes as a police officer. She had rescued James Hawker (later Ben Holland) from certain death, when she took down his crazed father. The killer, however, had made sure that James/Ben didn’t have a happy ending. Helen had saved Anna and Marie from teenage arsonists, but the killer had taken care of them too. Martina had been born Matty Armstrong and was working as a rent boy in Brighton, when his life went badly sideways. He’d been trapped, tortured and abused by a gang of men in a basement flat, until Helen and a colleague had fortuitously heard his screams and broken down the door to end his ordeal. Again the killer had made sure he hadn’t survived. Mickery was probably just a bonus, a little joke at Helen’s expense – time would tell on that one – which just left Amy and Sam. They were the missing link. How were they connected to Helen? What had they done to draw themselves to the killer’s attention?

Helen had received official commendations for her actions regarding James and Martina. There was a picture of her receiving her certificate in back copies of Frontline – easily accessible to anyone with a computer. There was no official commendation for the way she helped Anna and Marie, but the story had made the Southampton Echo and Helen was name-checked there. Again, easy for anyone to find online. But where were Amy and Sam? Helen couldn’t think of any major incidents in her career that had involved people their age. It didn’t make any sense.

Helen had received another couple of commendations, the most notable of which came as a result of her quick thinking during a major traffic accident. But that was twenty plus years ago – before Amy and Sam were born. Frustrated, Helen scrolled back to the issues of Frontline from that year. The details were still fresh in her mind, but she drank them in again now. On the way back from Thorpe Park, a coach driver had nodded off at the wheel. His coach had swerved through the central barrier on a dual carriageway near Portsmouth and into the path of oncoming traffic. The driver was killed instantly as were several of the drivers and passengers in the other cars. The resulting pile-up had sparked a fire and many more of the injured motorists would have perished had it not been for the heroism of a couple of traffic cops who were first on the scene. One of those cops was a young Helen. She had been doing it for three months when the accident happened. She didn’t like the job and was vocal in her desire to move on, but rules are rules and she had to do her rotation. So she did it to the best of her ability, seeing some horrible things along the way, and nowhere were her skills and bravery better demonstrated than during the accident. Along with her colleague Louise Tanner, she had pulled many shocked and injured people from the wreckage, as the fire spread. Shortly after, the fire brigade roared up and the fire was extinguished. But it was clear to all present that the swift thinking of Helen and her colleague Louise had saved dozens of lives.

Helen and Louise were mentioned in Frontline and the names of the local victims were listed in the Southampton Evening News and the Portsmouth Echo , but there were no details of those who had survived. Everyone was more interested in the tragedy of those who had died. Helen slumped back in her chair. Another dead end. Were Amy and Sam just random victims? Perhaps they were and yet the killer had been so diligent in tracking down the others there had to be some connection.

Helen decided to surf the archives of the national newspapers, given that many of those caught in the pile-up were ferry passengers journeying to Portsmouth to start their holidays. She scrolled through the coverage in the Guardian , The Times , the Mail , the Express, the Sun , Mirror , Star … nothing of any interest.

She was about to give up when she thought she’d have one last stab. The Today newspaper was pretty tabloid and loved that kind of thing during its brief run as a national newspaper, so she decided to scroll through its coverage of that terrible day.

And it was then that she found it. Amidst the two-page spread that covered the carnage, there was a picture of a young traffic cop leading a woman to safety. The picture must have been taken by a rubbernecker and sold to the paper as there was no formal credit for it underneath the image. That was why no other paper had carried it and that was why Helen had missed it thus far.

It was a good picture and it illuminated everything for Helen. Her face was clearly visible as was that of the young woman she was helping from the wreckage. Suddenly everything made sense.

Helen pressed the bell down and held it. It was late and she wouldn’t get a good reception – but she had to persevere. Diane Anderson, hostile at first, ushered Helen inside when she realized she wasn’t going away. She – the family – had had enough of the neighbours gawping at the strange goings on at their house. She didn’t want to give them anything else to enjoy.

‘I’ll get Richard,’ Diane said over her shoulder as she headed for the stairs. She couldn’t face another round of questions on her own.

‘Before you do, I’d like you to take a look at this.’

Helen held out a printed copy of the Today picture that she’d run off at the station earlier. Diane paused, irritated, and returned to the living room, plucking the paper from Helen’s hand. As she looked at it, irritation gave way to shock.

‘Do you recognize the people in the picture?’ Helen asked – there was no time to beat around the bush now.

Nothing from Diane. Shock was giving way to anxiety. Richard was only upstairs and might appear at any moment.

‘Well?’

‘It’s me’ was the mumbled response.

‘So you and I have met before.’

Diane nodded but stared at the floor.

‘Did you know? When I met you after Amy had… after Sam had died, did you know that we’d met before?’

‘Not at first. There was too much going on. But later… I wondered… I wasn’t sure.’

‘Why the fuck didn’t you say something?’ Helen’s anger was punching through now.

‘What does it matter, for God’s sake? What does it have to do with anything?’

‘It matters because it linked you to the police force… and to me particularly. Why didn’t you say anything?’

Diane shook her head, unwilling to go there.

‘I need to know, Diane. If you help me now, then I promise you we will find Sam’s killer, but if you don’t…’

Diane fought back a sob, then shot a glance at the stairs. No sign of Richard – yet.

‘I wasn’t with Richard that day. I was driving back from Salisbury with someone else.’

Now Helen got it.

‘Your lover?’

Diane nodded – now the tears were coming thick and fast.

‘I’d been to see him because… because I was pregnant. It was his. Amy was… is his. He wanted me to leave Richard and be with him… but… we crashed on the way back. He was killed. I couldn’t get out initially, my feet were trapped, I thought I was going to burn to death, but…’