Passion Killer
The first time that they caught him with a body they didn't know what to make of it. In the light of no motive and no witness they accepted his explanation:
She had a sudden seizure
He, Martyn was trying to revive her
She struggled with him as she regained consciousness 
He didnt know her-he'd never seen her before
She was prone -he was passing.
The local police kept Martyn's details. He was not cautioned. A senseless tragedy. They drew a line under the event and it would have been just that -and no more. 
PC David Morgan was first on the scene.WPC Wendy Howerd also attended. David talked, later at the station Wendy typed as David recounted from his record book.She typed quickly, efficiently.
When almost exactly the same thing happened two weeks later, almost to the day, the hour, the minute they did not accept Martyn's explanation. They whipped him down to their station so fast it made his head spin. He gave the same account in the same measured tone. Nothing in the very everyday profile of Martyn Hindes or his unblemished history was a cause for concern. A strip search revealed nothing. And the coroner reported nothing untoward. Wendy volunteered to collect the coroners report in the morning. WPC Howerd and PC Miller were assigned to talk to his neighbours.  
But when the young man left the station the Inspector, Michael Timmis, "Tims" to his friends of which there were many, decided that he must be watched. The small corps of 6 including one retiree that had returned to be a part time Community policeman took rostered turns and observed Martyn from a distance. A long distance at first and then more closely as the fateful day of the two week cycle drew near.
Two police in plain clothes tapping their feet to Buddy Holly's latest disc were within feet of Martyn when it happened again. Within minutes the area was sealed, the dance hall closed off and formal interviews conducted of the dancers and onlookers before they could exit. They held Martyn this time. In a cell. He refused legal help and they took turns to interview him several times in a variety of styles and aggressions until it was time to release him. Wendy recalled she had been  not able to bear being in the same room as him. Yet Martyn's explanations remained sound and yet when they gathered to discuss the case they were all certain it was him. Again the coroners (two), the psycho profilers, and the matey cellmate (disguised policeman) had nothing more to work on.
Discussion of his method, motivation, mindset ran long into the thirteen nights.
On the fateful evening Martyn was there again, this time she was slightly older than the other victims, thirty one.
She was not a local girl this time. She was taller. She had a chequered past. All these differences gave them hope and all leads were investigated while he languished in the cell. Miller, Howerd and Chaspy (retired) all burnt midnight oil.
Meanwhile offers of treats and privileges for a confession fell on deaf ears. As ever, he was affable and helpful. Martyn seemed as puzzled as they were. Even the top brass that had Timmis had summoned in readiness were flummoxed. They could not threaten or cajole anything from the helpful young man. He was as bemused as they were.
The newspapers had published. A frenzy had been whipped up. A large vengeful crowd had assembled  outside the police station.
When the time came, he was taken out of a side door, a blanket over his head to a black maria that sped off in the small hours. Several other police vehicles ran interference to deflect the press reporters and outraged citizens. When Wendy and David had finished creating their diversion they joined the others at the secret location. It was a rare opportunity for them to rub shoulders with their peers, the special investigators.
Martyn didn't need a new identity. He was under house arrest. Not Martyn's house but a safe police house that the government had sequestered in a nearby vilage.He did not object to being monitored twenty four hours a day. He was at ease with his captors. As the days went by they could not help but start to like him.
It should have been a surprise, but it wasn't when the young policewoman was taken away covered by a blanket after a fortnight. 
When the Senior Ranking elite Police had eliminated every other person from the enquiry they were left with just one individual. They confronted her, she admitted it. A little too readily but she had an explanation for that too.
She was the girl that just volunteered too much.
This is the explanation she gave when her own police force arrested her.
In the cell, she told herself again and again. It hurts. It hurts when the object of your affection doesn't even know you exist. It didn't make it right but as far as she was concerned, it didn't make it wrong either.
From the time that Wendy was young, her father had been the sun, the moon and the stars; she idolised him. Of course, so had her mother, his why-ife and he also had her two younger pretty sisters, it seemed to Wendy that he hardly even noticed her. Never needed her. His occupation and pre-occupation as a middle ranking soldier had taken him and his family around the world, a series of 1950's post war postings. Within this family group the young Wendy, never destined to be pretty, had grown up. She'd received her education at a number of schools in three different continents. She soon learned it was pointless to make friends, just to lose them again each time she moved away. Cementing the gaps in her education for each new curriculum at yet another new school became her pride and her distraction. Playing "catch up" she'd called it. She seamlessly maintained good study grades despite the many upheavals. She hoped it made her Dad proud of her.
The only time that she recalled having his undivided attention was in Bremen. Scene of yet  another posting. In post war Germany chicken was unavailable, a mere memory. People had been encouraged by the government to eat squirrels, if they could catch them. Rabbits were easier to come by and doubled for a time as family pets. Wendy's dad was in the garden killing rabbits for supper. He told Wendy above the noise of the loud cracks  as he snapped the brittle necks of the first two bucks "they have to be drawn to let the blood drain",. This was the way of the world, he told her. "As a soldiers daughter Wendy, you must accept it, it's the way of the world."
He'd next dragged "Amy" the doe, Wendy's personal  favourite,scooting on her haunches from the far reaches of the hutch. And as he pulled her out and up, he was surprised as Wendy snatched Amy from him. Just as he was about to say that there was no room for sentimentality where survival was concerned, she returned to him, ears first, the rabbits lifeless body. He'd looked at her, for that one and only time, with a new found respect. She basked in the glow of it and recalled wishing that it would go on forever. He didn't ask her to explain what she had done. She gladly would have told him all, anything and everything. What she'd learnt of acupressure. Good strokes and bad strokes and very bad strokes that she'd learntin Japan and India. Acupressure, acupuncture, the location of certain sensory nerves and the kaballah.
She'd loved her dad with all her heart and he was all that she'd needed. Now he was gone. His death, suddenly over two years ago, had nothing to do with her. Even so had he'd been a stiff, uncommunicative man. Apart from the one precious memory that he'd given her there was never any sign that she had pleased or impressed him.
It was whilst grieving, an empty hole in her heart that Martyn had come into her life.
Or hadn't.
Wendy had applied to the army to follow in her fathers footsteps but their recruitment machinery moved too slowly for an impatient seventeen year old. The next best career as far as she was concerned was in the Police Force and they responded quickly. So for her it was Police Cadet Training School in Hendon and a chance encounter that first set her sights on Martyn.      
A man behind a counter in an ordinary newsagent, in North West London. Hard working, unremarkable to most yet there was something about him, a way that he looked at her that struck a chord within her, drew up the memory of the rabbits, that German day and her Dad. It brought it all back to her vividly, perhaps it was the colour of Martyn's eyes. She thought about him a lot. Too much, perhaps. She visited his shop from then on frequently.
Something about the special look compelled Wendy to shop there again and again. When her visits didn't produce a corresponding surge in his level of interest she'd been forthright and asked him out, to a dance, but he mumbled some excuse and dismissed her interest entirely without any good reason that she could possibly see that he should have done to her.
The more he ignored her, the more she intensified her efforts. She followed him covertly. Many times. Police surveillance methods that she had learned at Hendon proved re-assuringly effective.
She was always a good student.
In the park, or at a dance or walking home she noted from a safe distance that he was friendly and outgoing. An easy laugh and a kind word made him many friends. Females he spoke to appeared to like him, perhaps he liked them more than her who he didn't notice as much as he would have noticed her sisters or her mum.
She knew that if she were to "engage the enemy" as her Dad would have put it, suspicion would fall on Martyn. The casualties of this war were'nt good enough for him, she had decided. The fortnight pattern and it's synchronisation had been her own neat touch as had volunteering to be on the team to monitor him in the safe house. He was that oblivious to her, he didn't even recognise her in uniform or out. Sad really as she was the only person that could save him.
And she had. What greater love than sacrifice. Sacrifice of this order cannot go unnoticed.
"I did it for you, Martyn" she whispered to herself as she was led away. She'd whisper it to him later.
But he knew who she was now. So did the newspapers.
She fully expected him to visit.
Perhaps he'd bring a rabbit.
 
 
*And although they didn't know it then, this was to change the way that future peer  nvestigations would be conducted. It had seemed good and wise practice not to "muscle in" on local unsolved crime, to still let the local police force have a hand in ongoing escalations.  No longer would they smear butter on the faces of the local police allowing officers already on the case to volunteer!!!