Free Pop Goes the Weasel by M. J. Arlidge

itself.
    A prostitute was killing her punters. Alan Matthews, a serial user of prostitutes, had been killed and mutilated. Twenty-four hours later, another man was killed on a remote promontory that was notorious for dogging and prostitution. It was all pointing one way and yet already alarm bells were ringing. Prostitutes were the victims not the killers, well before Jack the Ripper and long afterwards. Aileen Wournos bucked the trend, but that was America. Could something like that happen here?
    ‘We’ve got a name, Ma’am.’
    DC Sanderson was hurrying over, exaggeratedly avoiding treading on anything significant.
    ‘The car is owned by a Christopher Reid. He lives in Woolston with a Jessica Reid and daughter, Sally Reid.’
    ‘How old is the daughter?’
    ‘She’s a baby,’ Sanderson replied, wrong-footed by the question. ‘Eighteen months, I think.’
    Helen’s heart sank further. This was her duty now – toinform the living of the dead. If the victim
was
Christopher Reid, she hoped against hope that he had been brought here against his will. She knew this was unlikely, but still the idea that a guy with a young wife and child would abandon them for a sweaty tussle in a car with a prostitute seemed ridiculous to Helen. Could there have been another reason why he was lured here?
    ‘See if you can get a picture of Christopher Reid that we can compare with our victim. If this is Christopher we need to tell his family before the press do it for us.’
    Sanderson hurried off to do Helen’s bidding. Helen’s gaze flitted beyond her to the police tape fluttering in the breeze. As yet they had avoided detection, the scene undisturbed by press. Helen was surprised, particularly by the absence of Emilia Garanita. She seemed to have half the uniformed officers in her pocket and was always excited by a juicy murder. But not in this case. Helen afforded herself a small smile – Emilia must be losing her touch.



24
    ‘I had my head ripped off the last time I was in here.’
    Emilia Garanita leaned back in her chair, enjoying the rare luxury of being in the nerve centre of Southampton Central. It wasn’t often you were personally summoned to the Detective Superintendent’s office.
    ‘I don’t think I was Detective Superintendent Whittaker’s favourite person. How
is
he doing these days?’ she continued, failing to hide the gleeful malice that lay behind her enquiry.
    ‘You’ll find I’m a rather different character,’ Ceri Harwood responded. ‘In fact that’s why I asked you to come here.’
    ‘A girl-to-girl chat?’
    ‘I wanted to put things on a different footing. I know in the past the relationship between the press and some of my officers has been combustible. And that you have often felt cut out of things. That doesn’t help anyone, so I wanted to tell you face to face that things will be different now. We can help each other to help ourselves.’
    Emilia said nothing, trying to work out if she was for real. New bosses always said this when they arrived, thengot on with the job of frustrating the local press at every turn.
    ‘How different?’ she demanded.
    ‘I want to keep you informed of major developments and harness your reach to help us further our investigations. Starting with the Empress Road murder.’
    Emilia raised an eyebrow – so this wasn’t going to be flannel after all.
    ‘I’ll have a name for you soon. And you will be given all pertinent details of the crime. Plus we are setting up a dedicated hotline, which I would like you to major on in your next edition. It’s imperative that we get any potential witnesses to come forward as soon as possible.’
    ‘What’s so special about this murder?’
    Harwood paused a moment before answering.
    ‘It was a particularly brutal killing. The person who did this is highly dangerous, possibly with mental health problems. As yet we don’t have a physical description, which is why we need your eyes and ears. It could make all the