Eeny Meeny Read Free Page A

Anderson.’
    Helen couldn’t hide her surprise as she took in the image. A beautiful and bohemian girl – twenty-one years old at the very most. With long flowing hair, striking cobalt eyes and delicate lips, she looked the definition of youth and innocence. Helen picked up her jacket.
    ‘Let’s go then.’
    ‘Do you want to drive or shall –’
    ‘I will.’
    They walked down to the car pool in silence. En route, Helen extracted her DC, who’d been liaising with Missing Persons. The irrepressibly perky Charlene ‘Charlie’ Brooks was a good officer, diligent and spirited, who resolutely refused to dress like a cop. Today’s offering was skin-tight leather trousers. It was beyond Helen’s remit to take her to task over her dress sense, but she was tempted to nevertheless.
    In the car, the stale alcohol on Mark’s breath smelt even stronger. Helen cast a sideways look at him before winding down the window.
    ‘So what have we got?’ she asked.
    Charlie already had the file open.
    ‘Amy Anderson. Reported missing a little over two weeks ago. Last seen at a gig in London. She emailed her mother on the evening of the second of December to say she was hitching home with Sam and would be back before midnight. No sign of either since. Her mother phoned it in.’
    ‘Then what?’
    ‘She turns up at Sampson’s this morning. Says she’s killed her boyfriend then clams up. Won’t say a word to anybody now.’
    ‘And where’s she been all this time?’
    Mark and Charlie looked at each other, before Mark eventually replied:
    ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
    They parked the car in the Winter Wonderland car park and marched to the site office. Entering the tired Portakabin, Helen was shocked by the sight that greeted her. The young woman huddling beneath a tatty blanket looked wild, unhinged and painfully thin.
    ‘Hello, Amy. My name’s Detective Inspector Helen Grace – you can call me Helen. May I sit down?’
    No response. Helen carefully eased herself into the chair opposite.
    ‘I’d like to talk to you about Sam. Is that ok?’
    The girl looked up, a horrified expression spread over her ravaged features. Helen studied her face intently, mentally comparing it to the photo she’d seen earlier. If it hadn’t been for her piercing blue eyes and the historic scar on her chin, they’d have struggled to ID her. Her once lustrous hair was lank, knotted and greasy. Her fingernails were long and dirty. Her face, arms and legs looked like a frenzy of self-harm. And then there was the smell. It was the smell that hit you first. Sweet. Pungent. Revolting.
    ‘I need to find Sam. Can you tell me where he is?’
    Amy closed her eyes. A single tear escaped its confines and ran down her cheek.
    ‘Where is he, Amy?’
    A long silence and then finally she whispered:
    ‘The woods.’
    Amy categorically refused to leave the sanctuary of the Portakabin, so Helen had to use the dog. She left Charlie to babysit Amy, ordering Mark with her. Simpson, the retriever, buried his nose in the bloodstained rags that had once been Amy’s clothes, then shot off through the woods.
    It wasn’t hard to see where she’d been. Her progress through the wood had been so blind, so crashing, that she’d rent great holes in the thick undergrowth. Bits of cloth, bits of skin decorated her path. Simpson hoovered these up, bounding through the foliage. Helen kept pace behind him and Mark was determined not to be outrun by a woman. But he was labouring, sweating alcohol.
    The lonely building came into view. A municipal swimming baths, long since earmarked for demolition, a sad relic of fun times gone by. Simpson clawed at the padlocked door, then broke away, racing around the building before eventually coming to rest by a broken window. Fresh blood decorated the cracked panes. They had found Amy’s cocoon.
    Getting inside was tough. Despite the building’s dereliction, care had been taken to secure every possible entry and exit. Secure it