Twisted Justice: Inspector West

Trent had agonised about what he was planning to do for a long time but it hadn’t helped. It had only made thinking about what had happened to Helen all the more painful.

It wasn’t his fault that it had happened to her, but it had happened, and nobody had been held accountable. In his mind, that wasn’t right. The powers that be hadn’t listened to him when he had raised his concerns. They had dismissed his accusations as unfounded, and advised him to seek help with managing his grief. He’d stuffed it all down into the dungeons of his mind and tried to get on with his life.

But she wouldn’t leave him alone.

Helen wanted justice and, after another night of haunted dreams, he understood she had chosen him to administer it and that she would not leave him in peace until he did. Seven years of nightly torment had worn down his resistance. He wanted peace more than anything else, and she’d told him how he could get it.

He sat at the kitchen table and wrote each of the five names he’d memorised onto a small square of paper, using the biro he used for making his weekly shopping list. He folded each square after he’d written a name on it and dropped the folded piece of paper into Helen’s coffee mug.

Trent couldn’t remember why he’d kept Helen’s mug. He’d discarded everything else that had belonged to her years ago. Now, as he dropped the name bearing pieces of paper into the mug, he understood why he’d kept it. She wanted to determine the order of his executions.

He picked up the mug in his left hand and held it above his head.

‘You choose, sweetheart,’ he said to the empty room, before blindly pushing the fingers of his right hand into the mug and pulling out a piece of paper.