Voices from the sex trade: 'I have no choice. I need the cash. But I am scared'

The prostitutes who shiver on street corners next to Ipswich Town Football Club are a small band who know each other well.

Their faces are also familiar to the local residents, who they often greet on their way to work, or the drivers at the bus depot, who offer them tea on cold nights.

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While Suffolk Police estimate that up to 40 women work in the town's sex trade, local people could not remember seeing more than a handful. The close-knit nature of the group has heightened the horror provoked by the killings. "They are just friendly, pleasant girls doing their job, a strange job but a job nevertheless," one bus driver said last night. "They have to catch him,"

Yet despite the fact that three of their number were now dead, some of the women were still working. Desperation and drug addiction forces them to take the risk.

Lou, 28, a drug addict with three children, said: "I have no choice because I need the cash. If I wasn't working here I would be shoplifting, then I would land up in prison. Of course, I am scared. It is a difficult situation."

Assistant Chief Constable Jacqui Cheer has offered the women an amnesty and pleaded with them to stay off the street. But Katie, 23, said only a couple of nights earlier she had refused the police's offer of a lift home. "Of course, it has made me worried, but I have got a heroin habit and I need the money to pay my rent," she said. "You just have to do your best to look after yourself. I have been attacked and was raped about 18 months ago. It is just the risks you take."

The discovery of a third body and the news yesterday that the police feared for the safety of at least one, if not two, other women has stunned the people of Ipswich and the surrounding villages.

The fear has united people living not just miles apart but in different worlds - from the impoverished inhabitants of the small redbrick terraces in Ipswich's red light district to the affluent homeowners in the village of Nacton who woke up on Sunday to find police had cordoned off local woodland after a third body was found.

"All the locals consider Nacton to be a quiet rural village. This is a sad way to put it on the map," the parish council chairman, Richard Peel, said.

Villagers knew the nearby town's sex trade had reached their neighbourhood but believed it was "discreet". While prostitutes visited the area at night, by day the woods surrounding an independent girl's school where the body was discovered was simply a pleasant spot for dog walkers.

Tabitha Creasy, 29, was out walking yesterday with her 10-week-old son, Liam. She said: "I am shocked. I walk past the school almost every day. It is very scary. We moved in two months ago as we loved it here. It is a normal friendly village. Until they catch whoever it is I don't think anybody will be completely at ease walking around here."

For those living close to the spot where Gemma Adams, 25, and Tania Nicol, 19, worked, the fear was even more acute. Many were worried that the killer or killers were local. "It is a bit scary. I won't go out at night," Sophie Magor, 24, said.

A neighbour said: "You daren't go out. They want to catch this lunatic and string him up."

Residents have complained about the condoms and syringes left behind by the trade to the local council. But yesterday all had nothing but sympathy for the women working on the street.

In the words of one grandmother: "I don't agree with the drugs and prostitution but this is tragic. They are somebody's child and they are so young."