Stop Dead (28 page)

Sam paused expectantly. Geraldine still made no comment.

‘Then, when Desiree found out George had bumped Patrick off, she killed George.’

Sam leaned back in her chair with an expectant grin, as though she was waiting for Geraldine to congratulate her for cracking the case.

‘Because?’

‘What?’

‘Why would Desiree want to kill George?’ Geraldine asked.

Sam scowled.

‘I thought that was obvious. She killed him in revenge, because she found out he’d killed Patrick. Perhaps George told her. She might have been infatuated with Patrick –’

She broke off, frowning, as though suddenly sceptical of her own idea.

‘After all,’ she resumed in a more reticent tone of voice, ‘Desiree was living with George. And she must have known how much she stood to gain from George’s will. Even if she didn’t know, she must’ve suspected it. Well, it’s possible, isn’t it?’

Geraldine considered. The theory could have hung together except for two considerations: not only was she convinced that Desiree had genuinely cared for Corless, but there was the puzzling question of the DNA found on Henshaw; the DNA of a woman in prison. The records had been carefully checked and it appeared Linda Harrison had never given birth, yet the most likely explanation for the DNA match was that it had been left on Henshaw’s body by a daughter of Linda Harrison. And there was still the third victim.

Geraldine called the forensic team who dealt with the DNA profiles but they were only able to confirm what they had already told her.

‘But it’s reasonable that this DNA belonged to a daughter?’ Geraldine persisted. ‘Theoretically, I mean, if there
was
a daughter.’

‘Yes, it’s certainly a possibility,’ the scientist agreed amiably, as though the conversation was purely conjectural, and there was no murder investigation to consider.

Geraldine paused, phone in hand.

‘Don’t forget we’re checking against a DNA sample that was taken twenty years ago,’ the scientist said.

‘Yes, that’s true, but we could easily get another sample if a current one would help clinch it.’

‘Well, there have been a lot of changes in the way DNA is –’ the scientist began before Geraldine interrupted him impatiently.

‘Yes, thank you very much. What you’ve told me has been very helpful. Thank you.’

She didn’t want another lecture about the progress with DNA, impressive though the recent advances were.

‘What if she did have a child and the child was adopted?’ Sam enquired with an anxious glance at Geraldine.

‘The child – it could have been a daughter – would have a different name so wouldn’t be immediately traceable.’

‘Good thinking, but we’ve checked Linda’s medical records and there’s nothing to indicate she ever had a child. That’s not an easy thing to keep quiet about.’

‘But twenty years ago… It’s possible, that’s all I’m saying.’

Geraldine had to agree it was possible. Twenty years ago Linda could indeed have given birth in secret and offered the child up for adoption without leaving any official record of the birth. It was the simplest explanation of the DNA discovered on Patrick’s body, and the truth was often simple.

‘The only problem now is, without any record of a birth how are we ever going to find out if she had a child?’

Geraldine stood up.

‘That’s not a problem.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Leave it to me. I’ll keep you posted.’

Geraldine didn’t tell Sam she intended to confront Linda to ask her outright if she had ever given birth to a daughter. Sam was usually the one to come up with fantastical notions, but Geraldine was harbouring an idea so fanciful she wasn’t prepared to share it with anyone until she had discovered the truth.

G
eoff was in a bad mood as he carried the rubbish out at the back of the café early on Sunday morning. It was a foul job at the best of times, humping bags out to the stinking bins where the pungent odour of mildew and rotting food hung in the air like a fog. To make matters worse he was suffering from a thumping hangover and the sight of a homeless tramp propped up against the bins, blissfully asleep, did nothing to improve his temper. The sleeper’s face was barely visible, concealed in shadows beneath the protruding hood of a dark anorak. No doubt he was adding to the stench of the place.

‘Here, you, shove off out of it,’ Geoff snarled, nudging the stranger with his foot.

The other man keeled over slowly until he was lying on his side in a puddle, legs stuck out in front of him at an odd angle. He was well out of it, oblivious to his clothes which were sodden after the heavy rain overnight.

‘Wake up!’ Geoff snapped. ‘You’re in my way. Push off! Some of us are trying to earn a living here.’

He gave the tramp’s leg another kick, harder this time. The sleeper still didn’t stir. With a flash of rage Geoff booted him viciously but the man lay without moving, blocking the access to the bins. A few drops of rain began to fall. A horrible thought struck Geoff who set down the rubbish bag he was clutching and stooped down. Lifting the edge of the hood he glimpsed a face, grey and rigid. Geoff swore softly. That was all he needed, some bloody homeless yob dropping dead right outside his café. He considered dragging the inert body a few feet along to the far side of the bins, out of sight, where he could leave it for some other unlucky bugger to deal with. He had enough on his plate without having to faff around with strangers who drank themselves to death and then went and parked themselves right on his back doorstep.

Geoff wanted to open the café in less than half an hour and really didn’t have time to start messing about with the police, and goodness knows what else besides. The geezer could have gone and croaked outside one of the big chains that could afford to close up for a day while the police investigated the area and removed the body. But he knew he couldn’t ignore it. With a sigh he pulled out his phone and hesitated for a second, uncertain who he should speak to. In the end he dialled 999 to report that he had discovered a dead person lying in the gutter outside his café.

He seemed to be waiting for ages, fiddling with place settings on the tables, until a patrol car drew up in the street at the front of the café. He opened the door to admit two young uniformed police officers who followed him through the empty café and out of the back door to the bins where the three of them stood in a semi-circle gazing down at the body, still lying on its side. Glancing up, Geoff saw that the face of one of the policemen had gone slightly grey and he wondered if this was the first time the lad had seen a stiff.

Geoff looked back down at the hooded face, half submerged in an oily puddle.

‘Can you move it now, please? Only I need to get to the bins.’

He indicated the black rubbish bag he had left standing by the kerb.

‘I can’t get my litter in the bin.’

His relief that the police had responded so promptly to his call soon vanished.

‘What do you mean you can’t move it out of the way?’ he protested. ‘What about my rubbish?’

The younger of the two police officers suddenly darted away behind the bins. Geoff and the other officer watched his bent back for a second, listening to sounds of vomiting, before the older policeman politely suggested Geoff take his rubbish back inside for the time being.

‘And then we’ll need to ask you a few questions, sir.’

Geoff gaped.

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t stand around jawing. I need to open up. It’s already gone nine, and this is costing me money. I’m not bleeding Starbucks.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, but we need to alert local CID and they’ll decide whether to call out the Homicide Assessment Team.’

‘What does that mean? Homicide team? Who’s talking about homicide? It’s just some old soak, isn’t it? Just take it away will you? This is outrageous – take it away. I’ve got a café to run here.’

‘I’m sorry, sir.’

The policeman turned aside and began talking rapidly on his phone.

The younger officer rejoined them, slightly red-faced, and blustering officiously as he turned to Geoff.

‘We’ll need to take a statement from you, sir. I appreciate this must have been a shock for you, finding a body like that, but –’

George shook his head and interrupted impatiently. He insisted that he was fine. All he wanted to do was open up his café.

‘I’m losing customers. My regulars will all be going somewhere else. I might lose them altogether …’

‘I’m sorry sir, but there’s no question of your opening the café until we’ve established what happened here.’

‘What happened? I can tell you what happened. Someone kicked the bucket, that’s what happened. He took an overdose or his liver packed up, or something.’

‘Have you seen the victim before, sir?’

Geoff was already heading for the door and the police officer scurried after him, notebook in hand.

‘Sir, I need to ask you a few questions.’

Geoff turned on him.

‘
I’ve
got a question for
you
.’

But the police were unable to give any indication as to when the body might be removed.

‘Hang on a minute,’ Geoff sighed. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll answer your questions, but first I need to put up a closed sign.’

Grumbling to himself, he put a note on the door: ‘Closed today, Open tomorrow as usual.’

T
he post office was forwarding Geraldine’s mail. There was one such envelope on the doormat that morning, with a printed redirection label. Since her conversation with Celia, Geraldine wasn’t surprised to pull out an invitation to her father’s birthday celebration. After a moment’s hesitation, she slipped it into her bedside table, along with the single photograph of her mother. Although she was neither superstitious nor religious, she hoped and prayed the proximity of the two pieces of paper would bring her luck and her adoptive father would be able to tell her where to find her birth mother. Then she turned her attention to the serious business of the day.

As she drove out of London along side roads lined with green hedges, the weather turned chilly, threatening rain. Nearing her destination she passed through a pleasant residential district before the area changed again. She followed the main road, which was a bus route; its verges were overgrown, and beyond them only waste ground was visible. From the road she turned into a lane that led to the prison complex. The women’s prison was directly opposite the entrance to the car park. The outer high metal gate was locked behind her and she was admitted through a second gate. She followed a chatty blonde prison officer through a neatly laid out garden, into a secure building where she checked in and was finally taken along a rabbit warren of corridors to the visitors’ room.

Not for the first time, Geraldine wondered what it must be like to hear a key turn, knowing that door wouldn’t open again for years, decades in some cases. Did the young prisoners she passed in the corridor wake up every morning thinking, ‘Oh shit, I’m still here,’ as they gazed around at the four walls of their cells? The penalty of a lengthy incarceration was harsher for women. A man could leave prison after twenty years and start a family. Yet the recidivism rate indicated how many prisoners preferred the security of prison care to the life they faced on the outside.

The blonde woman who had let Geraldine into the building handed her over to a cheerful square-jawed officer who led her outside. They walked briskly along a path bordered with small bushes that skirted the main prison block. Another jangling of keys, another door closed. Geraldine followed her guide into a large room where a prison officer stood unobtrusively by the door. She smiled and jerked her head in the direction of a solitary woman seated at a table, waiting.

‘There she is. Good luck trying to get anything out of her. She’s not much of a talker.’

Geraldine looked at the prisoner’s grey bowed head and hesitated. Rehearsing the approaching meeting in her mind she had envisaged a terrible outcome. In a nightmare scenario Geraldine stared at the convicted murderess, like Dorian Grey gazing at an aged image of himself, knowing she was meeting her own mother for the first time.

‘Yes, I had two daughters,’ she imagined Linda Harrison saying. ‘One of them was about your age. I called her Erin.’

‘So where are they now?’

In the terrible fantasy, Linda shook her head.

‘I’ve no idea. I did hear one of them had joined the police force, and the other one is a killer. Seems to run in the family.’

Geraldine’s first sensation on sitting down was an overriding sense of relief. The woman facing her looked nothing like Geraldine imagined her own mother would look now. She had a photograph of her mother aged around sixteen. There was no way the prisoner was the same woman as the one in that faded image. In the precious photograph, Geraldine’s mother looked uncannily like Geraldine as a teenager, with large eyes so dark they appeared black, and a small crooked nose.

Geraldine didn’t recognise the prisoner in the flesh from the photograph she had found online in an old newspaper. Taken when Linda was barely twenty, the image had been on the front pages of all the papers, so it was possible Sam might have seen Linda’s face in the press during her trial. At that time Linda’s hair hadn’t been grey and badly in need of a wash, hanging down on either side of her pinched face in greasy straggly locks. Together with her extreme pallor, her unkempt appearance made her appear a lot older than forty. She pursed her thin lips and glared at Geraldine, her green eyes guarded.

‘Linda.’

The prisoner continued to stare fixedly at Geraldine who smiled uneasily.

‘I’d like to ask you a few questions.’

The other woman didn’t respond.

‘It would help you if you helped us,’ Geraldine added untruthfully.

Silence.

Geraldine took a breath and plunged in with a direct question.

‘Do you have a daughter?’

The green eyes flickered for an instant.

‘Do you have a daughter?’ Geraldine repeated.

Linda’s face had resumed its blank expression. Geraldine leaned forward and repeated her question once more, studying the other woman closely while Linda sat in stony-faced silence.