A lot of coppers treated prostitutes like dirt, but Charlie always found herself wanting to help them. She was already manoeuvring to get Denise away from her parasitic bloke, guiding her in the direction of a refuge she knew, when suddenly all hell broke loose.
A scream. Long, loud and desperate. Then the thundering of feet charging downstairs, doors being slammed, pandemonium. Charlie was on her feet and racing up the stairs. As she turned the corner, she collided head on with a terrified prostitute. It knocked the wind out of her temporarily, but still the screaming went on, so Charlie dragged herself onward, past more worried faces, forcing the breath back into her lungs as she mounted the stairs. As she reached the top landing, she was surprised to find that she had blood on her shirt.
The screaming was coming from the last door on the right. Removing her baton from its holster, she extended it, ready to fight. But as soon as she entered the room, she knew that she wouldn’t be needing it. The battle had already been fought and lost. In the corner of the room, a teenage prostitute was screaming incessantly, frozen by shock. Nearby on the blood-saturated bed was a man. His chest had been ripped open, revealing his pulsating heart to the open air.
Suddenly it all made sense. The reason Charlie had blood on her shirt was that she had collided with the killer as she fled the scene of her latest attack. Stunned, Charlie turned to run after her, then paused. The man was still alive.
Charlie had a split second to decide. She hurried over to the man, pulling her coat off and clamping it to his chest in an effort to stem the blood loss. Cradling his head, she urged him to keep his eyes open, to talk to her. Charlie knew that the killer had such a good lead that she had probably got away and her best chance of IDing her was to prise some information out of her victim before he died.
‘Call an ambulance,’ she barked at the screaming girl, before returning her attention to the man. He coughed up a hunk of blood. The mist of it settled on Charlie’s face.
‘Can you tell me your name, love?’
The man gurgled but managed nothing.
‘The ambulance is on its way now, you’re going to be ok.’
His eyes were beginning to close.
‘Can you tell me who did this to you?’
The man opened his mouth. Charlie craned forward, putting her ear to his mouth to hear what he had to say.
‘Who attacked you? Can you give me her name?’
