DC Helen Goldman's Story

She refused to get into ambulance at first. She had clung onto the old woman who eventually managed to persuade her she had to go to hospital to be looked after.

By then police officers were beginning to converge on the park, there was a lot of confusion, Goldie managed to confirm who she was but she was crying and rocking back and forth on the bench, not wanting anyone to see her pregnant belly but it would only be a matter of time before it became common knowledge, when the Librarian had told DI Hume it would be a long time before DC Goldman went back to being a police officer, she obviously had a good idea what her friend had in store for the young detective, in her own way the Librarian had saved Goldie, for she had not let her companion kill the young woman but perhaps that would have been a small mercy, for DC Goldman had a lot of decisions to make and a lot of memories to come to term with, some of them seemingly more terrible than others.

Eventually the old woman agreed to accompany the weeping police officer to the hospital, and it was only then that Goldie relaxed and allowed herself to be helped into the ambulance.

The old couple had no idea who she was, they did watch the news but only the local news where they lived in Leicester and though much had been reported about DC Goldman's disappearance they had not connected this particular young woman with the missing police officer.

The police didn't make much of an attempt to find Reece and myself, it wasn't in their interest to do so, as I predicted the self preservation of many powerful people kicked into play and the disappearance of baby Edward Claremont became a national tragedy like Maddy McCann.

There were many theories on who had kidnapped the little boy and why, the press every now and again pull one out of the woodwork and run with, some are quite fanciful, I especially like the one about his Grandfather being an MI5 agent linked to the troubles in Ireland the 1970s and this was payback time for the family.

But what of Reece and myself I hear you ask? What has become of us? We both have done monstrous things in order to create this equilibrium, born out of a middle aged woman's desire for justice, in a kind of warped way Ellen Smith became our mother/mentor, she gave to us the tools we needed to extract her revenge.

If she could not have justice in the conventional sense, she would have blood instead and blood was what she got.

You see Ellen Smith had a history too; one that made her want what she wanted for Anjuli and Pauline, but that is another story for another time and place.

Reece and I will never be free of our actions or the consequences of them, but I am a pragmatist if nothing else. I was damned long before Ellen Smith came along, there was never going to be any redemption for me so I do not dwell often on what might have been if things had been acted out differently when I was nine years old.