AUTHOR'S FOREWORD

Previously on Photo Finish: Detectives Straw and Blunt decide to turn the heat up and call on JJ who, under intense, persistent questioning, spills the beans about Mandy. DC Sweeney moves in with the girls to keep them under closer protection but his constant presence starts to put a strain on Naomi and Emily. At the end of the evening, while D.C. Sweeney is downstairs and Naomi is in the bathroom, Emily is pounced on by a mystery assailant when she enters the bedroom.

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CHAPTER TEN: THE REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST

Emily was half expecting to feel the cold, steely blade of a knife at her throat any second as she struggled in vain to free herself from the clutches of her assailant. Whoever it was had grabbed hold of her expertly from behind making it impossible for her to see his face but she could feel his hot breath panting down on the back of her neck. Her heart was still thumping furiously and her eyes were nearly popping out of their sockets as she fought valiantly to remain conscious even though her whole body felt like giving in to her blind terror.

Then, just when she felt like she was losing the battle and could feel her legs turning to jelly and giving way completely under her, a very familiar voice broke the terrifying silence and spoke to her in a calm, unthreatening, yet determined manner.

'Emily, it's me. Stop struggling. I'm not going to hurt you. Now, I'm going to take my hand away from your mouth but you must promise NOT to scream. I don't want that copper to come charging upstairs and find me here. Do you understand?'

Emily was so flabbergasted to recognise instantly the identity of her would-be attacker that it was some moments before she remembered to nod her head vigorously up and down to indicate she understood the simple instructions she had been given. Her assailant's vice-like grip on her was slowly released allowing her to take in huge, deep gulps of air as she stood there shaking like a leaf, slowly recovering from the briefly terrifying ordeal she had survived.

When she finally had the courage to look round it was to see a familiar tall, slim, dark haired figure towering over her and staring at her with what she could sense was a serious and accusing expression.

'What the fuck was that all about?' Emily whispered, hardly able to contain her rage. 'You frightened the life out of me. I thought you were going to kill me, you idiot!'

'I'm sorry, Emily,' Mandy whispered back, 'but I had to see you right away and without that dumb-arse copper listening in on our conversation.'

Emily's trembling was gradually subsiding and she moved over to the bed and sat down on the end of it, not taking her eyes off Mandy all the while. She couldn't imagine what was behind this over-dramatic and inexplicably clandestine visit by her one-time 'friend' but there had better be a bloody good reason for it, she told herself.

'So what do you need to see me about so urgently that you were prepared to risk frightening the life out of me for? Naomi's in the bathroom, you know. She's not exactly going to be happy to see you here; you know that, don't you?'

Mandy pulled a face at the mention of her one-time bitter rival for Emily's much-prized affections. 'So, you're still together, are you? How sweet!'

'Of course we are. We'll be together for ever. We love each other.' Emily glared at Mandy and seemed to be daring her to challenge her confident assertion of her and Naomi's rock-solid relationship.

'I thought you loved me once. We could have made a wonderful couple.'

'No, Mandy, that was never going to happen. I only ever loved Naomi.'

'So, what was I, then? Just someone you could use to force Naomi to grovel her way back into your heart?'

Emily paused, unsure how to answer that question. It was too uncomfortably near the truth for her to admit it. She didn't want to get involved in any more emotional scenes with Mandy. She had succeeded in putting that stormy, confused chapter of her life well behind her and had moved on. She and Naomi were back together and this time she knew it would be for keeps – provided the likes of Mandy could be persuaded to jog on and leave them alone in peace.

'Look, Mandy, what the hell are you here for? Because, if you've come to try and take me away from Naomi, then you're wasting your time.'

Mandy frowned, debating momentarily whether to prolong the subject any further, before deciding it wasn't worth it and moving swiftly on to the real reason for her visit.

'I've had the police round this afternoon asking me all sorts of questions about you, me and Naomi! In front of my parents, as well! Have you any idea how embarrassing that was?'

'What? Why?' Emily looked blankly at Mandy who was clearly still very upset about the ordeal she had been made to go through by the police and the revelations about her private love life that she would have wanted to keep from her family at all costs.

'They told me Naomi had received some anonymous threatening letters and some disturbing pictures and they thought it might have been me that sent them! Me!'

'But that's ridiculous. I know you've got nothing to do with all of this.'

'So, why did you give them my name? For fuck's sake, Emily. How am I going to be able to face my family after this?'

'I didn't give them your name! I never mentioned you once in all the times the police questioned us. I promise. You've got to believe me, Mandy.'

'So who the hell did? Someone has obviously grassed me up'

With perfect timing, as if right on cue in a dress rehearsal for one of the major scenes in a 'kitchen-sink drama', the bedroom door opened and in walked Naomi, with a towel wrapped around her torso and wet blonde hair cascading down onto her bare shoulders. She stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of Emily sitting on the edge of their bed with an angry and emotional Mandy towering over her, virtually in tears.

Effy had been tossing and turning in her bed for getting on for an hour but she just couldn't relax her body and mind sufficiently to drift off to sleep. Every limb, every muscle, every fibre in her aching body was crying for release and yet her head was too full of thoughts and images of Freddie to allow her the luxury of blissful unconsciousness. She let out a heavy sigh of frustration and pummelled her pillow with her tiny fists. When would these demons of doubt and uncertainty ever release their hold over her, she wondered in despair? Did they intend to persecute her for the rest of her life? Would she ever be able to sleep normally like other people or did the future hold nothing for her but an endless procession of dark, depressing days and sleepless nights from which there would be no escape?

On the rare occasions when she did succeed in dropping off to sleep she was invariably shaken out of her uneasy slumbers by nightmarish visions of death and decay in which Freddie always seemed to feature somewhere in the background. He was never actually there with her, never right by her side as she experienced these swirling sensations of claustrophobia, isolation and confinement. He constantly appeared in her peripheral vision, always seemingly on the outside of her turmoil, looking helplessly in as she screamed for help. She would reach out her arms towards him, imploring him to pull her free but he would shake his head silently and carry on observing her misery and despair.

Effy decided she couldn't stand fidgeting restlessly in her bed a minute longer. She leapt out of bed and frantically searched around the room for some clothes to throw on, anything at all would do. She didn't give a toss what she might have looked like, just so long as they would keep her warm. She pulled on a sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms and found a pair of trainers which had obviously been chucked down on the floor and had half disappeared under the bed. Two minutes later she was peering around the door to check if she could see a light on under the bedroom door of her mother. She could. Good. Her Mum was probably reading in bed and so she wouldn't have to run the gauntlet of anxious questions from her downstairs when she tried to leave the house.

She put on her leather jacket which was hanging up in the hall and with immense care and concentration slowly opened the front door and slipped outside without making a sound, closing it behind her with equal stealth and precision. She moved confidently out into the street and started making her way towards her intended destination. She had her head down as protection against the wind which was blowing into her face and was concentrating intently on getting to a better place, somewhere she would feel calmer and safer where she could finally relax. Consequently she was oblivious to the car that had started up its engine once she had left the house and was now doggedly following her path, albeit at a discreet distance, as she walked the streets.

It had been fifteen minutes since Naomi had sent Mandy packing from the house with an almighty flea in her ear. The blonde had retreated back into the bathroom in the mother of all moods and rages, leaving a tearful Emily alone again in the bedroom wondering if the not-so-jolly green giant had once again cast a considerable shadow over their relationship. Naomi had unsurprisingly flipped her lid upon seeing Mandy in her bedroom alone with Emily and the subsequent sounds of her screaming and shouting had equally predictably brought a frantic DC Sweeney tearing up the stairs to fling open the bedroom door, gun brandished menacingly in hand.

The sight of the regulation issue police handgun, which neither girl had been aware he was carrying on him, had provoked further screams of terror from all three girls this time but it did at least bring to an end the slanging and slapping match that had kicked off between Naomi and Mandy. Sweeney's face on realising that a complete stranger, indeed a mere slip of a girl, had managed to get past him into the house and up to the girls' bedroom without him knowing it was a picture of red-faced embarrassment and shock. He knew there'd be hell to pay with DI Straw if his boss got to hear of this.

When all three girls had finally calmed down Emily introduced Sweeney to Mandy and explained who she was and why she had come to see them.

'I couldn't help thinking of her name when the police were asking us who might have a grudge against me,' said Naomi, turning to Emily at the first break in the conversation. 'I'm sorry, Ems, but I really did. Who else could hate me this much?'

'You fucking cow!' screamed Mandy, launching herself across the room at the scowling blonde. It needed the sharp reflexes of DC Sweeney and a pair of rigidly outstretched arms to intervene between the two girls and prevent more bloodshed than might have resulted had he actually started shooting wildly when he first came into the room. The acrimonious insults continued between the arch foes, with a distressed Emily cowering on the bed, with tears running down her face as she watched her girlfriend almost completely lose it in front of DC Sweeney.

'Please, Naomi, don't! You're just making things worse! Calm down, please!' she cried, afraid that the constable might decide to arrest her for attempted assault, threatening behaviour or simply causing a breach of the peace, anything in fact to get her away from this potentially explosive situation and calm her down by throwing her in a police cell for one night to give her time to think about her behaviour.

Fortunately, Sweeney decided that the unpleasant situation would best be diffused by marching a still ranting and raving Mandy down the stairs and escorting her out of the house which he promptly did, despite all the efforts of the tall, strong girl to break free. Naomi couldn't resist giving Mandy a triumphant little wave of farewell as Sweeney firmly led her out of the room but as soon as she was gone the blonde turned on her heels and retreated back to the bathroom, locking the door behind her. A tearful Emily had then spent the next quarter of an hour pleading with Naomi to come out and talk about it which Naomi refused to agree to, saying she was too angry to talk. The thought passed through a thoroughly miserable Emily's mind that this was the second time in just a few days that the pair of them had been arguing through a locked bathroom door. She was worried sick their relationship might be on the skids.

By the time Effy arrived at the house the stiff breeze which had greeted her when she left home had degenerated into something approaching a gale and she was shivering violently and desperate to get in to the warm. Her long, dark hair had been blown all over the place and lent her even more of a wild, carefree appearance than usual. As she went round the side of the house, heading for the back garden, the car that had been following her from a distance ever since she left her house pulled up slowly and came to a halt on the other side of the road. The driver watched as Effy disappeared from view and then turned the engine off. After a brief hesitation he opened the car door and got out, quietly shutting the door behind him and locking it, before hurrying with quiet determination in the direction that Effy had just vanished from view.

So intent was she on finding shelter from the weather and sanctuary from the dark forces that had been preying on her mind all evening, Effy was completely unaware that by the time she reached the shed door and opened it there were two pairs of keen eyes trained on her. Without even thinking to look around to check that her presence in the garden had gone unnoticed, she opened the door, which she knew was still never locked, and slipped swiftly inside, shutting the door firmly behind her.

Once she was inside the shed she breathed a huge, heavy sigh of relief and went over to the sofa, throwing herself down on it and stretching out her and arms and legs as far as they would go in an attempt to shake the nervous tension and rigid fear out of her body. She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jacket, searching for something to soothe her nerves even more and found a packet of cigarettes, though sadly not the spliff she had been hoping for. She lit one immediately and inhaled deeply with the first drag before blowing ridiculously large rings of smoke into the air, one after the other and watching them float up and away before disappearing from view.

Lately Effy had frequently taken to sneaking into Freddie's shed late at night when she couldn't get to sleep in her own bed. The first time she did it, a few weeks ago, it had been from a desperate need to be around his stuff, to fill her head with all the memories of him. She had wanted to cling on to the vain hope that he might suddenly turn up again as unexpectedly as he had vanished from her life and if that were to happen then she wanted to be there, calmly waiting for him in his shed. But he hadn't shown up. Nonetheless she continued to go back there whenever she was feeling particularly scared, vulnerable and alone.

She always felt becalmed as soon as she set foot inside his shed, as if somehow he was in there with her somewhere, hiding from her in some secret hideaway place that only he knew about. She couldn't actually see him as such but he still felt close at hand, talking to her, whispering words of comfort and reassurance that would quickly put her mind at rest and banish the evil spirits and the persistent voices in her head that were preventing her from sleeping, stopping her from carrying on with her life.

She closed her eyes and began thinking about him, recalling moments they had spent together, either alone or with the rest of the gang, but always happy, smiling, laughing images that seemed to fill the room and take on a life form that extended far beyond the confines of her vivid memories. She could almost smell him in her nostrils. She reached out a hand to try to touch him but he was always infuriatingly just that little bit too far out of reach. She cried out his name, softly at first, then more urgently and stridently, begging him to save her from the darkness into which she had fallen.

Her eyelids were beginning to feel heavy and her body had become loose and relaxed as the nicotine and the warm, comforting images of Freddie had begun to kick in and have their effect. She might even have been on the verge of dropping off to sleep when a noise from outside the shed shattered her reveries and brought her back to full consciousness with a start. She sat up and listened hard, barely daring to breathe. There was no mistaking it – she could hear the sound of footsteps approaching the shed.

She jumped to her feet and frantically looked around for somewhere to hide. She had never had to do this before. No-one had ever disturbed her taking refuge in Freddie shed since she started coming here so a hiding-place had never been a major issue. But now as the muffled, determined tread of the unknown visitor got ever closer, she was desperate to find somewhere to hide. She started to panic. She needed to hide somewhere immediately before the door opened, before the bogeyman or Jason or even Freddy Kruger appeared at the door but she couldn't think straight.

Suddenly the footsteps stopped dead and the unmistakeable sound of the door being opened seemed to reverberate all around the shed and worse, inside her head. She put her hand to her mouth to prevent a scream from coming out and scrambled to dive down behind the back of the sofa. This had never proved to be a terribly successful ploy in horror movies, she was fully aware of that, but her options were sadly limited.

She was holding her breath and her heart was beating so loudly that she felt certain it could be heard by the intruder who now had opened the door wide and whom Effy could sense was hovering in the doorway.

'Effy? Effy? Where are you? I know you're in here. I saw you go in.'

An almost indescribable feeling of relief swept over Effy in waves as she instantly recognised the voice whispering her name. She climbed to her feet from the back of the sofa and returned the greeting, feeling slightly foolish as she stepped forward.

'I'm here. I was afraid. I didn't know who it was, I'm sorry.'

Karen stared at Effy with a look of bemusement and shook her head slowly. 'What the fuck are you doing here, Effy? Do you know what time it is?'

'It's late, I know. I…I couldn't sleep. I just wanted to….well, be near to Freddie, you know?' Her explanation sounded lame in the extreme, she realised that, but then the truth often does sound the most bizarre and irrational explanation for things.

Karen nodded silently and then came over to Effy, pulling the tall brunette gently towards her and gave her a big hug which Effy gratefully reciprocated. The two girls stood holding on to each other like that for some time and Effy felt comforted by Karen's spontaneous gesture of support and understanding of how she was feeling.

'Yeah, I know,' said Karen when she eventually pulled back and looked closely at Effy with the hint of a sad smile playing across her lips. 'I come here to think about him too – but not in the middle of the night, though! Come on, let's get you inside the house. You must be freezing your tits off in here. I'll make us some tea, okay?'

Mandy had been walking around town aimlessly for God knows how long, trying to calm down and regain her composure and her customary poise. It had been an extremely emotional and traumatic day for her, what with the police unexpectedly calling on her at home to question her about her relationship with Emily and Naomi and then seeing Emily again for the first time after their painful break-up

She had been so embarrassed when the police had turned up and started asking her intimate, personal questions about her and Emily in front of her strait-laced parents who, naturally enough, hadn't the faintest idea of their daughter's 'special friendship' with Emily. Then, when it became clear that the reason behind their questioning was that they were looking for some crazy psycho killer who had sent photos of the dead girls to Naomi, she was plunged into even deeper depths of rage and disbelief that they could actually think her capable of such sick acts of brutality and sadism.

After the police took their leave, she hadn't felt up to facing the wrath, hellfire and damnation of her parents so she fled the house immediately before they had a chance to give her an even more painful third degree inquisition than the police had managed.

The face-off with Naomi at her house that evening well and truly rounded off one of the most miserable days of her life so far.

Mandy couldn't believe Naomi had seriously thought of her as a possible suspect. Typical of that foul-mouthed, arrogant, stuck-up bitch, she thought! What the fuck Emily saw in her she couldn't imagine. She would have been so much better for Emily, if only Emily had had the courage to ditch the blonde bitch and come away with her. She could have made her really happy, she knew it. Now Emily would be condemned to a lifetime of insecurity, misery and probably endless scrapes and incidents with the law, given the sort of shit that skanky tart got herself mixed up in.

She was starting to feel a lot better and happier in herself the more abusive tirades she launched into against Naomi. It would serve her right if some crazy killer did do her in, she chuckled. It couldn't happen to a nicer girl – NOT! But she still couldn't bring herself to return home and face the music so she decided to crash out at a friend's place over on the other side of the park.

She wouldn't normally have entertained the idea of walking through a dimly lit, empty, isolated expanse of parkland at this time of night. However she had been so engrossed in reeling off a stream of invective against Naomi to make her feel better that before she had realised it she had already wandered fifty yards into it so she decided against turning back and going the more long-winded yet safer route to her friend's house.

She had got to within less than a hundred yards of the exit and the relative safety of the well-lit streets where her friend lived when she heard a noise behind her and she slowly turned round with an uneasy feeling gripping her whole body. She instinctively reached her hand towards the Mace spray which she habitually carried around with her in a side compartment of her handbag just in case she should ever be attacked by anyone at night, be it the Bristol killer or worse, Naomi Campbell. When she realised who it was that was calmly approaching her with measured steps she relaxed, although she wasn't exactly overjoyed at this unexpected meeting.

'Oh, God, it's you again! Look, don't you ever take the hint? I told you the other night you're wasting your time. I'm not interested. Now, please, do me a favour and fuck off, will you, there's a good…'but Mandy was rudely cut off in her prime before she could finish her last sentence.

AUTHOR'S FOOTNOTE

May I say huge thanks to all those who have taken the trouble to review my story and pass on their entertaining and often very interesting theories and ideas about the killer. Please keep them coming! It's great that so many of you are getting 'involved' in the story. I hope I can continue to keep your interest going in the many chapters ahead!