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Nasreen was about to ask Freddie if she’d seen anything else relevant on Twitter, when the door opened behind her. DCI Moast, his navy blue puffa jacket still on over his suit, a green scarf wound round his neck, stormed into the room.

‘You!’ He pointed at Freddie. ‘I heard you were here. Waiting to gloat?’ He strode past Nas and stood over Freddie.

‘Good morning to you too.’ Freddie leant back in her chair. Nasreen felt her stomach drop away.

‘Don’t give me that. What the hell do you call this?’ Moast slammed a newspaper down onto the desk. Nasreen’s teeth clenched as she stepped forward to read over his shoulder. It was
The Post
–
Undercover Reporter Cracks Open Hashtag Murderer Case – Are You the Sophie She’s Looking For?
– emblazoned across the front page.

‘Oh, Freddie,’ Nasreen said.

‘Did you know about this, Cudmore?’ DCI Moast twisted to look at her, his face drawn, tired, and now angry.

‘No, sir, I didn’t…’

‘Are you deliberately trying to undermine me, Venton?’ He spun back to Freddie.

‘You didn’t give me any choice,’ Freddie was saying.

Nasreen picked up the paper.
Hashtag Murderer, Alun Mardling, cat woman, Sophie, Baker Street, DCI Moast, Sergeant Cudmore, Flagship East End Jubilee Police Station.
The whole case was in here. What the hell was she playing at?

Freddie hadn’t anticipated the photo. Neil must have lifted it from her Facebook page. It was from a fancy dress party. She’d gone as an 80s power bitch in a grey shoulder-pad suit she’d found in the charity store. He’d cropped it so you couldn’t see where she’d ripped the pencil skirt.

‘That’s it. I’m taking this to the Superintendent. You’ve gone too far this time, you’ve given confidential case details to the hacks. You’ve deliberately disobeyed my orders.’ Moast virtually frothed at the mouth. ‘Once we’ve sorted this mess out I’m pushing for charges. Again.’

‘You wouldn’t listen. I don’t think this is about drugs.’ She wasn’t doing this for a laugh.

‘You don’t think it’s about drugs? Who cares what you think!’ Moast wrestled his jacket off and flung it at a chair. ‘Cudmore, don’t just stand there, round the team up. I want everyone in here now. We need to contain this.’

Nasreen looked straight at Freddie.

Freddie stared back:
well you wouldn’t help.
She couldn’t just sit twiddling her thumbs while some poor woman was butchered by this hashtag psycho. Nasreen shook her head and walked off.

Tibbsy in his suit and with bloodshot eyes, and Jamie in his uniform, twitching nervously, appeared shortly after. Nasreen came back in with a gaggle of excitable PCs.

‘Guv, it seems the phones have been going crazy,’ Tibbsy said. ‘The night sergeant said it started after the article appeared online,’ he muttered into his mug of coffee.

No one made eye contact with Freddie. ‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.

‘Do?’ Moast looked up from the pile of phone messages he was reading. ‘I want you to
do
nothing. Which is what I wanted you to
do
yesterday. Have you gone through those emails I gave you?’

‘Yes, there was nothing odd in them.’ She stared at him. ‘Unless you count Alun Mardling’s fascination with Steven Seagal movies as odd.’

‘Fine. Sit there where I can keep an eye on you until we’ve got this under control. Then someone can take you to meet the tech team. I’m sure they’ll have lots of work to keep a Social Media Advisor busy.’

‘The public have a right to know if they’re in danger,’
you patronising git.
Freddie stood resting her fingers on the table in front of her. He didn’t frighten her. Not compared to @Apollyon. Out of the corner of her eye she caught Nasreen looking at the floor.
You do agree with me then!
‘This could help save the target.’

‘Save the target?’ Moast snapped. ‘This isn’t a Hollywood bloody film. This is real life. Thanks to your vigilante media turn I’ve got hundreds of hysterical women on the phones thinking they’re going to be murdered in their sleep. This is a massive waste of time and resources.’

‘How many of those live on Baker Street?’ Freddie asked.
There couldn’t be hundreds?

‘This is what you media types fail to understand about the general public, they panic.’ Moast picked up a wedge of papers. ‘The paperwork for this will take weeks to get through. Every man, woman and sodding cat is calling in claiming they’re in danger. I’ve got half the Home Counties demanding police protection for their kids because they’re called Sophie!’

There was a knock at the door. A young Asian police constable poked his head nervously round. ‘DCI Moast, sir,’ he said.

‘What now?’ Moast glared at the lad.

Freddie felt sorry for him. Moast was just a jumped-up red-faced bully. Getting out of here couldn’t happen fast enough.

‘I…er…sir…I…’ said the lad.

‘Spit it out, Constable!’ Moast said. Someone’s chair scraped along the floor. It was as if the whole room was holding their breath.

‘We’ve had a call from a woman in Leighton Buzzard. Her employee, a Sophie Phillips, who lives on Baker Street, didn’t show up at work yesterday. And she’s not answering her phone.’

08:41

Tuesday 3 November

1 FOLLOWING 86,012 FOLLOWERS

Freddie felt as if she’d been slapped.

‘Cudmore, get on the phone to the Leighton Buzzard station and have them check it out,’ Moast’s voice cut through the silent room.

‘No.’ The word fell out of Freddie’s mouth. She tried to stuff it back in with her hands. This wasn’t really happening. It couldn’t be. Not again. Every time she blinked, bloody bodies swam in front of her eyes: Alun Mardling’s corpse laughing; Paige Klinger in a blood-splattered white studio. Freddie moved in slow motion as the room sped up around her. Voices, bodies, phone calls and words flew past in a blur. She was too late. The front page. The gamble. It wasn’t enough.
She didn’t show up at work yesterday.

She forced herself back online. Searching for any mention of Sophie Phillips and Leighton Buzzard. It hadn’t broken on Twitter and there was nothing on the news. There was no mention of a Sophie Phillips in Leighton Buzzard at all. She checked the electoral register. She checked Yell.com. Facebook. LinkedIn. Nothing. Perhaps it was a mistake? A hoax call?
Oh please let it be that.
Everyone was busy, heads down. Checking phone records, bank statements, cross-checking friends’ and family statements. A timeline of Mardling’s uneventful last twenty-four hours had been put up on the whiteboard. Alongside it, the more glamorous timeline of Paige Klinger detailed photoshoots, breakfast at The Dorchester, a flight in from New York. There was no feasible overlap or meeting between the two. Everyone was studiously trying to move the case forward, trying to ignore the question mark that hung over the room: why hadn’t Sophie Phillips of Baker Street, Leighton Buzzard, arrived at work?

Freddie watched Nasreen come back into the room; at some point she’d removed her coat. Nasreen bent to speak to Moast. Freddie saw the colour drain from his cheeks. His head dropped into his hands. She was shaking again. Moast stood, straightened his tie, and cleared his throat. Everyone looked up, and the weight of expectation crushed down on Freddie.

‘I’m sorry to announce the Bedfordshire Police Force have found the body of a young woman, believed to be that of Sophie Phillips, age twenty-seven, an administrative assistant at Leighton Linslade Town Council, in suspicious circumstances at her flat in Baker Street, Leighton Buzzard.’

‘No,’ whispered Freddie. Her voice lost in the sighs, shuffles and swear words of those gathered in the room.

‘As of yet there is no firm evidence to suggest this death is linked to that of Alun Mardling, apart from the coincidental tweets of the suspect known as Apollyon,’ Moast said.

All the tweets, all the clues hinting at a cat lover called Sophie who lived on Baker Street, the photo Apollyon posted of Mardling’s body: it felt linked to Freddie. Otherwise it was one hell of a coincidence.

‘However,’ Moast continued, ‘as we have yet to trace the device used to both take and post the photo of the Mardling crime scene, and the source of the tweets by the suspect known as Apollyon, we will now be exploring the possibility that this latest murder and the murder of Alun Mardling are linked.’

Freddie expected to feel relief; finally Moast was listening to her. But she felt nothing but sadness. She couldn’t meet his eyes.

‘We are waiting for the preliminary forensic reports,’ Moast continued, ‘and I will be putting together a team to visit the crime scene. Sergeant Cudmore will be assigning new tasks in line with the investigation by the Bedfordshire force. If this does turn out to be linked to the Alun Mardling case, then we will take full control of the investigation.’ Moast’s voice was void of emotion: just doing his job. But Freddie could see it. The pain etched across his taut face. There was no victory in her being right about the tweets and him being wrong. Sophie Phillips lost. They all lost.

A lump formed in Freddie’s throat. She blinked repeatedly. She looked round the room. The guy who’d delivered the news was slumped in a chair near the front – his tie and shirt collar loosened. Jamie sat next to him, hands clasped in his lap, head nodded forward, almost in prayer. The faces of the older uniformed officers grouped to the right of her were set in grim determination. She guessed they’d been here before. The moment when all hope has gone.

Nasreen stood quietly at the front, to the side of Moast, her hands clasped behind her back and her head dipped. To everyone else she looked respectful, but Freddie saw something glint in her eyes: anger. Freddie wanted to tell her it was all right. That they would get the sicko who’d done this. But she realised her words would be hollow. These officers, these people, Nas, they did this day in and day out. They faced the darkest parts of society and they kept going. These weren’t institutional bullies; they weren’t jumped-up security guards drunk on the power of a uniform. They were on the front line of humanity. And she knew, no matter what, that she could never be one of them. She wasn’t strong enough.
How I Came To Change My Mind About The Police.

Moast sounded composed: ‘Look at Sophie Phillips’ friends and family, her work colleagues. I want to know her habits, her routines, how she spent her free time. Cross-reference with everything we know about Alun Mardling. If there is anything that links the two, I want to know about it. For now all leave is cancelled. I want everyone on this until we turn something up. Don’t eat, don’t sleep, don’t breathe, till we’ve got this bastard.’

Freddie found herself nodding to his words. People started to stand. Chairs were scraped back along the floor. Groups formed. Nasreen instructed the officers: ‘Speak to the local force and get a list of all Sophie’s acquaintances. PC Boulson, keep on at forensics. Particularly anything that might link the two murders.’

Jamie was stood to her right, frantically scribbling down notes. ‘We have to get this guy. Have to,’ he said over and over.

The room emptied out. Freddie stood. She wanted to help but she didn’t know what to do. Instinctively she took out her phone: nothing. Nothing from @Apollyon. No apparent mentions of Sophie Phillips or the #Murderer. Nothing but the jokes and frightened retweets of before. Twitter didn’t know about the body. The dark secret was contained. For now.

‘Put that down, Venton.’ Moast sounded tired. ‘You do not speak to the press about this, and you do not post anything online.’ Moast ran his hands over his hair, puffing resignation out of his mouth.

Freddie stared at him. ‘I wouldn’t. Not about this. I was just…’

‘Put the phone down, Freddie.’ Nas sounded detached.

Freddie looked at Tibbsy, grey shadows hung under his impassive eyes. ‘Seriously, guys, I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t post about Sophie. That’s fucked up.’

‘Shut up, Venton.’ Moast’s hand had run all the way over his scalp and was gripping the back of his neck, as if he was holding himself up.

‘What’s your thinking, sir? On the team, I mean,’ asked Nas.

It was like Freddie wasn’t there.

‘I’ve asked one of the lads to place a couple of squad cars on standby,’ said Tibbsy. ‘We could get there within the hour, if the traffic’s all right. The morning rush hour’s almost over.’

Freddie looked at the time on her phone: 9:17am. So much had happened already.

‘You,’ Moast pointed at Tibbsy, ‘Cudmore and I are going. Thomas to drive.’

‘Guv,’ nodded Tibbsy. ‘What about Miss Venton?’

Nasreen looked like she was going to add something, then covered her mouth and coughed.

Did Tibbsy just ask about her going to the crime scene?
She wanted to help.

Moast seemed startled by Tibbsy’s suggestion. ‘We don’t know for sure Apollyon – this social media stuff – is a link between these two cases. Yet. Besides, she’s a liability. This newspaper stunt is in complete violation of procedure.’

‘Yes, but the paper article did, well, it led to the tip-off phone call and the discovery of the body.’ Tibbsy looked at Freddie, as if asking for her help. She stared back. ‘And she did…’ he stopped again. The room quiet, Freddie could hear a phone ringing down the hallway.

‘Miss Venton does seem to interpret the tweets in an effective way,’ said Nas. ‘Assuming they’re relevant, I mean.’

‘Have you two been talking?’ Moast looked between Nas and Tibbsy.

‘No, sir.’ The tops of Nasreen’s ears coloured.

There was a knock at the door. They all turned: Jamie entered. ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir. Superintendent Gray has asked to see you and Fred…I mean Miss Venton.’

‘Looks like the decision’s already been made.’ Moast pushed himself up from the table. ‘Bring all your crap, Venton. You’ll not be back after this.’

Freddie glanced at
The Post
still on the table beside her. It was only two years ago, but Freddie knew she’d never feel the same as the carefree girl in that photo again. She closed her eyes and willed herself back there: drunk, hooting, singing along to Bucks Fizz with Vic. It felt like a film. Not her. Not real. As if she could only be a spectator to that world now. Death had come near before, but this time it struck home. She was marked. Inside. Somewhere it’d never fade. Was she going to be arrested? Charged? It no longer mattered. Somewhere, in a flat in Leighton Buzzard, lay the body of a young woman. Sophie Phillips. Cold. Dead. Gone. Despite everything Freddie had done and tried, she was too late to save her.