Going down in the lift she took out her phone to call Roy Slack because she was going to need his help. But that was when she saw his message, which ended with the words ‘suggest you disappear’.

75

Laura

The events leading up to my confrontation with one of the world’s most prolific killers went like this.

I was in a patrol car when the alert came over the radio. Someone had called the three nines to say that Maria Rodriquez, the woman wanted by the police, had spent the night in her apartment and was still there.

The caller’s name was Alice Green, and she claimed she’d been seeing Rodriquez since she arrived in the UK. According to the emergency operator she was distressed and feared for her life.

We had just left Scotland Yard and the patrol car driver was giving me a lift to Streatham so I could pick up my own car from outside Danny Carver’s house where I’d left it the previous evening. The plan was for me to then go to the hospital to see Aidan.

But I told the driver to change course, turn on the siren, and head for Knightsbridge where Alice Green’s apartment was situated overlooking Hyde Park.

The address went out to all units, and teams of officers headed there from across London. But the rush hour traffic was kinder to us than everyone else, and for that reason we got there first.

It was why I was the one who spotted The Slayer as she came tearing out of the building. I was lucky and she wasn’t. It was as simple as that.

We were just pulling into the kerb when I saw her. She was instantly recognisable in her leather jacket and with that eye-catching mane of glossy black hair.

The sight of her sent a chill flushing through my body. In that split second I thought about the lives the bitch had destroyed. Dave Prentiss. Marion Nash. The patrol officers in Balham and on the South Bank. The Commissioner. My unborn baby.

And I thought about the dreadful wounds she’d inflicted on Aidan’s body and mind. Wounds that would have an impact on the rest of his life. On our lives.

She looked anxiously about her, as though trying to decide in which direction to go. And that was when she spotted the patrol car and took flight.

She turned left and headed east towards Piccadilly, and it threw us because the car was facing the other way and the traffic made it impossible to execute a speedy U-turn.

There was only one thing for it and that was for me to go after her on foot. No way could I let her get away now that I was so close. So I opened the door and jumped out.