Eeny Meeny

50

Helen made sure she was first in the office. Having abandoned herself so completely with Mark the previous day, doubts had subsequently set in. Helen’s default position of caution – the closed circle – was assailing her again. She fought it off – for once determined not to give in – but she wasn’t sure how her mask would be when she first saw him, so she got in early to give herself time to prepare.

Mark came in promptly and got straight on with his work. By now most of the team were in. Helen shot a surreptitious glance Mark’s way – she wondered if anyone else within the team noticed how much better he was looking these days. He’d lost weight, gained colour and the whole haunted look had completely disappeared. Helen wondered if it was going to be a day of politely tiptoeing round the subtle change in their relationship, but Charlie soon put paid to that. She came round early in the day to update Helen on the latest developments.

Helen had done her old trick – keeping the suspect in custody long enough to arrange a search warrant – so that Hannah Mickery had had no time to prepare her defences or dispose of any evidence. They’d taken her computer – she flipped at that – and most of her diaries, journals, etc. They obviously couldn’t touch her case files – these were confidential – but there were ways of getting information on patients if one had a mind to. But that was for later.

One thing was clear straight away. She knew an awful lot about these killings. She had all the cuttings about Sam’s death, Ben’s, Marie and Anna’s, but also pictures. And not just those culled from local papers (which had in turn been taken from Facebook, school albums, etc.). No, these were photos she’d taken of Amy and Peter after the event. Helen also found Amy’s phone number scribbled in her journal. Why did she have this number, when she had neither met Amy nor according to her testimony ever been allowed to talk to her?

She had Peter’s work details, email addresses and most intriguingly a work schedule for him, though irritatingly this was from after Peter had returned to work, so it couldn’t in any way be linked to his abduction.

The computer was a harder nut to crack. Hannah had been asked to volunteer her password, but had refused, so they’d had to do it the hard way. People think these things are secure but they are not and although they should strictly have waited for the relevant paperwork, Helen decided to press on and the IT guys soon opened up her system.

Charlie had done most of the legwork, so sat in as Helen navigated her way through the files on Hannah’s MacBook Air. Most of it was dull – business and home admin – but a treasure trove was lurking inside. Hidden away from view in the computer’s Finder was a locked file, simply named ‘B’. Tantalizing… but again it didn’t take long to open.

Helen sat bolt upright as she saw what it contained. A word-for-word transcript of Amy’s formal statement, as given to Helen in the custody suite. Helen’s eyes narrowed, disbelieving. She clicked on the RealPlayer icon that was also in the ‘B’ file and her worst fears were realized. There in perfect definition was the video footage of the traumatized Amy giving her statement to Helen. Whoever she was – whatever she was – Hannah clearly had a copper onside. A copper who had given her this footage. But for what end?

Charlie exhaled loudly. The investigation had taken an important, but potentially devastating, lurch forward. Was this corruption? Collusion? Or was a cop somehow involved in these killings?

‘Shut this down. And not a word to anyone.’

Charlie nodded, so Helen got up and quietly, discreetly, went off to talk to her superior.