Stop Dead (26 page)

The whole investigation was fraught with inconsistencies. Not only was the third victim’s involvement an enigma, but different coloured hairs had been found at two of the crime scenes. It was of course possible the different coloured hairs found on Henshaw and Bradford came from the same woman, if she had dyed her hair in between the first and the third attack. If the DNA of the blonde hair found on Bradshaw’s body matched the sample of female DNA found at the scene of Henshaw’s murder, the as yet unidentified woman would be placed at the scene of two out of the three murders. A close search might even discover the same DNA at the site where Corless’s body had been deposited. That area was still being checked. In the meantime, they were all pinning their hopes on the blonde hair providing them with more information.

Reg veered towards suspecting Corless’s young mistress. Desiree was a gold-digger who had embarked on the affair with the intention of getting her hands on his fortune. She had the opportunity, stood to gain a substantial share of his restaurant on his death, and had shoulder-length blonde hair. But the hair found in Henshaw’s car was dark and, in any case, Reg agreed with Geraldine that it was a leap to suppose Desiree had killed both men in the vain hope of getting her hands on a share of the restaurant. It didn’t add up.

Geraldine was convinced that Desiree had genuinely cared for Corless.

‘What if George killed Patrick, for sole ownership of the restaurant, and was then killed in turn by Desiree?’ Reg suggested. ‘She might have put him up to it. Perhaps it was Desiree, not Amy, who manipulated her lover into committing a murder.’

He rubbed his hands together, warming to his theory.

‘George might have told his mistress exactly how he’d killed his business partner, giving her the idea of doing the same to him. It’s possible, isn’t it?’

He sounded quite animated and Geraldine shook her head cautiously. Reg was, after all, the boss, and she had to be diplomatic, especially when she was sure he was wrong.

‘But I don’t think we can read too much into the blonde hair,’ Reg went on, ‘not until we get the results of the DNA test.’

‘Amy was blonde,’ Sam pointed out, and Reg groaned.

They all agreed the DNA results were crucial. They would be available soon, expedited for the murder team. The discussion was beginning to go round in circles. Until they had more information they could only speculate. Just as Geraldine was about to suggest returning to her desk to double-check Desiree’s statement, the door opened and the psychological profiler, Jayne, entered the room, her long skirt sweeping the floor behind her. Geraldine had been disappointed with the profiler’s contribution to their last case. Nevertheless, she listened closely as Jayne gave a brief overview of what they had been considering.

‘What can you bring to the table, Jayne?’ the detective chief inspector asked.

Jayne spoke very slowly.

‘One thing we can be sure of is that this is a hate crime. The nature of the injuries tells us that. Whoever killed the two restaurant owners –’

‘We’ve got three victims,’ Geraldine corrected her, struggling to control her impatience.

‘Whoever committed these murders was making the attacks very personal. Inflicting injuries after death is a different kind of assault to one where the perpetrator just wants to dispatch the victim, to get him or her out of the way as efficiently as possible, without leaving any clues behind. Some murders are really quite functional in that sense, a means to an end, where the victim is killed for his or her money, for example. In this instance the violation of the bodies is probably the killer’s end in itself, or why would he hang around to mutilate them, increasing the risk of discovery? There’s something going on here, some expression of loathing, a venting of a deep-seated anger.’

‘You mean the killer didn’t like his victims?’ Sam asked.

She turned her head to wink at Geraldine, who ignored the signal. Geraldine had very little respect for the profiler, but she did her best to hide her disdain, and her irritation that Reg set so much store by what Jayne said. The profiler was only doing her job.

‘I think the killer is driven by more than mere dislike,’ Jayne replied evenly.

‘We wouldn’t have thought of that, would we?’

Sam appealed to Geraldine who hesitated, tempted to support her sergeant in disparaging the profiler. Instead, she deflected the conversation to a new topic.

‘Do you think the killer’s a male then?’ she asked.

It was a straightforward question, but Jayne looked unexpectedly flustered. Her naturally pinkish complexion turned deeper red as though she suspected Geraldine might be intending to catch her out.

‘That’s a tricky one –’ she hedged. ‘Was there anything at the scene to suggest the killer could have been a woman?’

Reg explained about the DNA found on Patrick’s body.

‘Flecks of skin on his cheeks and under his fingernails, suggesting defence wounds or at least close contact of some kind, and evidence of sexual activity shortly before he died, although that wasn’t conclusive because of his injuries.’

Jayne nodded.

‘In the light of that, we had more or less decided we were probably looking for a woman. And there’s more, but also inconclusive, confusing even,’ he added with a sigh.

Geraldine explained about the hair found at two of the scenes.

‘So it looks rather like two women might have been involved, one dark-haired, one blonde, yet the injuries are virtually identical, and singular.’

Jayne shook her curly head. ‘That doesn’t rule out one killer. The hair evidence could easily be misleading. The woman – if it was a woman – might have dyed her hair.’

They proceeded to discuss the third victim, who didn’t seem to have any connection to Henshaw and Corless.

‘Let’s assume for now that the first two men had some sort of connection to the killer,’ Jayne said. ‘Having killed twice might have released some impulse in the killer who then went on to attack again, perhaps even selecting the next victim at random.’

‘Bradshaw was an easy target,’ Sam agreed, persuaded by the sense the profiler was making.

‘Perhaps the killer gave in to some long suppressed urge –’ Geraldine said.

‘And having started found himself, or herself, compelled to kill again,’ Jayne finished the thought.

No one put into words the obvious conclusion that they were dealing with a serial killer. Once the desire to kill had been triggered, the murderer might be unable to stop.

G
iven her reluctance to view cadavers, Sam was surprisingly keen to accompany Geraldine to the morgue again.

‘It gets easier, doesn’t it?’ she asked as they donned their protective clothing.

Geraldine nodded as she dabbed underneath her nostrils with a small tube of Vic. The pungent smell helped to mask the stench. For her, bodies had always held a clinical fascination. She had never felt in the slightest bit queasy until she had seen Corless. That had been an aberration.

The pathologist had confirmed what they could see for themselves, that the third victim had been mutilated in the same way as the other two bodies. The gruesome details had not yet been revealed to the press and the singular nature of the fatal assaults left the police in no doubt that they were looking for a serial killer. Although they had several suspects for the murders of Henshaw and Corless, Bradshaw was another matter altogether. With no apparent link between the first two victims and the third, it appeared the killer was extending the area of his or her attacks, possibly settling old scores. A team of constables were busy checking into Bradshaw’s history. So far they hadn’t found anything even faintly interesting.

The long blonde hair found on Bradshaw’s body had been sent off for analysis. Its owner had to be the killer or else a key witness. The results of the DNA testing hadn’t yet arrived but the pathologist was able to tell them that evidence of bleach suggested the owner wasn’t originally blonde. That meant the blonde woman might easily be the same woman whose dark hairs had been discovered in Henshaw’s car. If that turned out to be the case, that same woman would be implicated in the murders, even if she wasn’t actually responsible for them. They had to find her.

While they waited for the all-important results, Geraldine decided to look into the woman whose DNA appeared to have been found on Henshaw’s body, the woman who had been in prison for twenty years. Arriving back at the station she joined Sam for a rushed coffee in the noisy canteen before settling down to work.

‘Aren’t you having lunch?’ Sam asked, seizing on a jacket potato. ‘I’m starving.’

Geraldine shook her head. She wasn’t hungry. After a hurried coffee she returned to her office to look up Linda Harrison, the female prisoner who had been locked up for murder twenty years earlier – whose name had mysteriously turned up again in connection with the current investigation when her DNA had appeared on a murder victim.

In her mug shots, Linda looked rough. Her dark hair was matted, as though it hadn’t been combed for weeks, her lips hung slightly open in a slack snarl, and her eyes bored through the screen, seeming to follow Geraldine when she shifted her position. But more striking than signs of neglect in her appearance was the coldness of her eyes. She looked like a woman who had given up on life. Geraldine stared back, trying to fathom the strange expression on the woman’s face, almost triumphant.

Geraldine printed out the image and went back to the canteen. Sam had gone. Geraldine found her deep in conversation with a female constable in a corner of the incident room. The two fell silent when Geraldine joined them. She felt as though she was intruding on a private conversation.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing,’ the constable muttered.

Sam was more forthcoming.

‘We’re talking about Nick Williams,’ she replied in an undertone.

‘Sam,’ the constable hissed.

‘It’s OK,’ Sam reassured her colleague. ‘Geraldine won’t say anything.’

‘Then perhaps you’d better not tell me,’ Geraldine retorted.

She didn’t like secret gossiping in corners.

Dragging Sam away from her conversation, she showed her Linda Harrison’s picture. Sam glanced at the grainy image and shook her head.

‘No, I can’t say I recognise her, but the trial was a bit before my time! All the same, there is something vaguely familiar about her. It’s odd, but I could swear she reminds me of someone. No, it’s gone. But I could have sworn I saw her picture recently.’

Geraldine returned to her desk, puzzled.

‘Something up?’ Nick asked, leaning back in his chair to indicate a readiness to converse.

Nick listened to her account of Linda Harrison being linked to the crime scene, despite being incarcerated.

‘She couldn’t have been there.’

‘Yes, I know that, but how do you explain her DNA being found at the crime scene?’

‘Parole?’

‘None.’

‘Did she have an identical twin? It has been known.’

‘She had one sister who died thirty years ago.’

‘How about a daughter then? Can’t DNA be strikingly similar in some cases?’

‘She didn’t have any children.’

Nick gave a sympathetic grin.

‘I see your problem.’

Geraldine wondered what Sam and the constable had been saying about him. He struck her as committed and professional.

‘The funny thing is,’ she went on, ‘I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about her that Sam found familiar.’

‘Did she recognise her?’

Geraldine shrugged.

‘Kind of. But not really –’

Nick nodded.

‘I’ve had that exact same sensation with offenders in high profile cases years back. And it must’ve been a very serious crime if she got life.’

Geraldine nodded.

‘So twenty years ago this woman’s face would have been all over the press, in the papers, on the news. Seeing her picture probably triggered Sam’s memory of what she saw when the case came up all those years ago. The thing is, these cases can make a huge impression once the media get hold of them.’

Overlooking the fact that Sam would have been about five at the time Linda Harrison was convicted, Nick turned back to his desk with an air of finality, as though he had cleared up Geraldine’s problem. She considered what he had said. Linda had no children. All the facts indicated that Nick’s theory must be right. Sam’s mind was playing tricks on her, throwing up an image from the past as though she had seen it only yesterday. With a sigh she filed the printout of Linda Harrison’s face and went to find out what the constables’ research into Bradshaw had thrown up. There must have been more to his existence than his shabby flat, his dog, and his occasional trips to the pub.

R
emoving her long blonde wig, she shook her own hair free as she kicked off her outdoor shoes and placed them neatly, side by side, on the rack by the door. Wearing her indoor shoes, she went to the bedroom to put her wig away. Her head felt light without it, as though she was floating. She liked the strange empty feeling in her brain. Remembering the pills her doctor had given her, she smiled. Life was too difficult to face with a clear head. Better to be cushioned from it, unable to think about anything. She had already had her medication for the day but she swallowed just one more pill, knowing they were good for her. The stillness calmed her. Nothing disturbed the order of her rooms. Everything remained in position, precisely where she had placed it.

Her eyebrows twitched with annoyance as she noticed a picture had shifted so that it no longer hung exactly parallel to the wall. She reached forward and gave it a little nudge. Straightening up, she stepped away so she could scrutinise it with narrowed eyes until she was satisfied the picture was back where it belonged. She would have to be more careful in future. It must have shifted when she walked past, touching it with her arm without noticing. Unnerved that she had unwittingly displaced the picture, she turned her attention to the rest of the room. She had the same problem with the rug, which had moved a fraction out of place. It was almost brand new, because her dog had pissed on the last one. That was the final straw. She had bought the dog for protection, but the animal had become unbearably unpredictable, jumping up at her with dirty feet and barking. To begin with she had loved it, but in the end she had to get rid of it.