Trust Me - T.M. Logan Page 0,92

OK? T x

Check your email x

It’s 6.09 a.m., I guess she’s up early with the boys. I let go a deep breath.

My head throbs from lack of sleep. I swing my legs out of bed and pull the blackout curtain halfway open, squinting as grey morning light floods the room. I flick the little kettle on and pour a sachet of instant coffee into one of the mugs on a pull-out tray below the desk. Check the chain is still secured on the door and get back on the bed, unplugging my phone from the charger. There are a few emails from work which I ignore.

And there at the top of my inbox is a forwarded email from Tara, with a message from her at the top.

Hope you’re OK. Dizzy fine. See below. Call me if you want ANYTHING. Take care, T xx

Below it, the original message from Matt Simms, Crime Correspondent at the Daily Mail. Sent to her just after 10 p.m. last night.

Hey Tara,

Great to talk earlier, really good to hear from you. Brilliant to hear you’re looking for freelance stuff, will mention your name to a few buddies. Here’s the link to that unsolved case I mentioned on the phone:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/uk/crime/alkj8lpoa9bqtrd

Let me know when you want to go for that drink

Matt x

I click on the link and a new browser window opens on my phone, the screen filling with a headline from the MailOnline.

Has The Ghost Struck Again?

By Matt Simms, Crime Correspondent

A WOMAN attacked and left for dead could be the latest victim of a serial killer dubbed the Ghost, according to police.

Detectives are appealing for witnesses after a 30-year-old woman was subjected to a ‘sustained and brutal’ attack in a London park. The victim is believed to be in a critical but stable condition in hospital.

A Metropolitan Police source said, ‘It’s very possible these three cases are linked – the latest attack bears all the hallmarks of previous crimes. We need to stop this man before he strikes again.’

The killer, dubbed ‘the Ghost’ on social media after police were left baffled by the lack of physical evidence at his crime scenes, has evaded officers for more than three months. Murder detectives have reportedly been unable to find ANY fingerprints, fibres or traces of DNA that could help them narrow the search before he strikes again.

Police have been hunting the killer since late August after previous attacks which left two women dead.

The kettle clicks off but I ignore it, scrolling down through the text of the story, trying to work out what this might have to do with Mia. There are more details of the two previous victims, Sienna Parker, aged twenty-four, and Louise Taggart, twenty-nine. Both sex workers from the Northolt area, killed two weeks apart, both found in woodland off the same stretch of the A40 in north-west London. There are head-and-shoulders pictures of both women in happier times, both young, pretty, smiling. No anonymity for them in death.

There’s more background, more comments from the unnamed police source, thinly-veiled speculation that the perpetrator had not realised his third victim was still alive when he dumped her, and somehow she was still clinging to life when she was found by passersby a short time later; that the killer may have been disturbed in the act of disposing of the body, before he could check his latest victim was dead; hope that she might be able to identify her killer if and when she recovered. Not a whole lot of concrete progress in terms of finding the person responsible, the vacuum filled by yet more disposable speculation on social media that he was a forensic scientist or some kind of CSI expert turned killer, like the fictional Dexter from the eponymous TV show.

Lower down, far below the unnamed – and possibly made-up – quote from ‘a Met Police source’, is an attributed quote and a name I recognise instantly.

Detective Inspector Stuart Gilbourne, who is leading the hunt for the Ghost, appealed for potential witnesses to get in touch: ‘Somebody will know the man who’s done this. He’s a neighbour, a colleague, maybe even a friend. Any information you have, however insignificant you think it might be, could be key to the investigation. We’re also very keen to speak to the owner of a dark blue or black estate car seen in the vicinity on the night of the attack.’

There’s a phone number to ring, and a description that says the suspect is thought to be a white male