Guard Her with your Life by Joy Ellis

Author:Joy Ellis [ELLIS, JOY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Terri had suffered through a night filled with frightening thoughts and nightmarish scenes. Finally, she fell into a fitful sleep at around three thirty, with the result that this morning she felt like shit.

Desperate to keep on top of the house fire business, last night she had made sure everyone knew that Mike Helsdown was away for a few days with his brother and his niece, who was visiting from abroad. She had taken it upon herself to act as contact between the police and either Mike or Sam, as soon as they came within range of a signal again. Since the station was busy with other cases, no one had argued with her.

Now, at seven thirty a.m. she was back behind her desk, armed with strong coffee and a Danish pastry. She’d informed the day shift that Mike could not be contacted, and that she was now asking around at places she knew Sam had frequented in the past. She added that she had checked with Mike’s place of business, but he had left no indication as to where they were going. She hadn’t, but no one with half a brain was going to be checking up on a DI.

Terri was using the time before her team arrived for work to do some investigating of her own. Her enquiries revolved entirely around Julia Berkman. She was doing what she always did and using known facts as her foundation stones.

Fact one: after almost two years of denying Sam access to Zoe, using all manner of weird and wonderful excuses, Julia had contacted Sam and informed him that she was sending his daughter to him for a holiday. Terri herself had sanctioned it, even though it had been at short notice.

Fact two: Sam had collected Zoe from the airport.

Fact three: Shortly after Zoe’s arrival, Sam’s brother Mike had his car torched.

Fact four: Sam and Zoe had disappeared from Sam’s flat, which was immediately broken into and turned over.

Fact five: Mike’s house had been destroyed by fire.

Final fact: Sam, Zoe and Mike were all together in an undisclosed location, and scared shitless.

Terri read through the list. It had all begun with Julia, so that was where she should start. The first thing she wanted to know was Julia’s current whereabouts.

An hour passed. Search after search threw up no mention of Julia Berkman, other than the old sensational media reports with all the embellishments, including the rogue cop assumptions. These were followed much later by a handful of items in small print, saying she had been found innocent of all allegations.

Aware she was deviating from her research, Terri found herself trying to recall some of the names Sam had mentioned relating to the investigation that had gone so wrong. Its code name had been ‘Operation Mitre’; everyone knew that, it had been on enough newspaper headlines. But what was the name of the man they had been investigating? Julia and Sam had been desperate to apprehend this person, and as soon as they got close, everything went wrong.

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