Not Dead Enough

stop wasting time – let’s go along to the Crown Prosecution Service with our evidence, get an arrest warrant for Chancellor and have done with it?’
    ‘Bella!’ Grace said firmly. ‘Thank you, that’s enough!’
    She glared at Potting, her face flushed. Grace wondered for a moment whether her hostility towards the Detective Sergeant had something deep-rooted behind it. Had they ever been an item? He doubted it, looking at them now, contrasting the plug-ugly old warhorse with the fresh-faced, attractive thirty-five-year-old brunette divorcee. No way.
    ‘So did you discover anything in his premises to indicate he might be kinky?’ Kim Murphy asked. ‘Any gas masks hanging on the wall? Or in any of his paintings?’
    ‘He had a few raunchy nudes on the walls, I’m telling you! Not the kind of paintings you’d want your elderly mum to see. And there’s something very interesting I got out of him: he was with Mrs Bishop on Thursday night. Until nearly midnight.’
    ‘We need to bring him in for questioning, ASAP,’ Grace said.
    ‘He’s coming in at ten.’
    ‘Good. Who will be with you?’
    ‘DC Nicholl.’
    Grace looked at Nick Nicholl. The young, fledgling father was stifling a yawn, barely keeping his eyes open. Clearly he’d had another bad night with his baby. He didn’t want a sleep-deprived zombie interviewing such an important witness. He looked at Zafferone. Much though he disliked the cocky youngster, Zafferone would be perfect, he thought. His arrogance would rub anyone up the wrong way, and particularly a sensitive artist. And often the best way to get something out of a witness was to wind them up, so they lost their rag.
    ‘No,’ Grace said. ‘DC Zafferone will interview him with you.’ He looked down at his typed agenda, then up at shaven-headed middle-aged Joe Tindall, with his narrow strip of beard and blue-tinted glasses. ‘OK,’ he said formally. ‘We will now have a report from the Crime Scene Manager.’
    ‘First off,’ Joe Tindall informed them, ‘I’m expecting DNA results back this afternoon from Huntington from semen found in the vagina of Mrs Bishop.’ He looked down at his notes. ‘We are sending several exhibits from Ms Harrington’s flat off to the lab this morning. These include a small piece of flesh removed from her right big toenail, and a gas mask found on the victim’s face, which appears similar in type and manufacture to the one present at Mrs Bishop’s house.’
    He took a swig of bottled water. ‘We are also sending clothing fibres recovered from Ms Harrington’s flat and blood samples. We believe the blood samples may be significant. We found blood smeared on the wall just above the bed where the victim was found, which is not consistent with the injuries found on the victim. So it may be the perp’s blood.’ He looked down at his notes. ‘All fingerprints found at both scenes to date have been eliminated from our inquiries, which would indicate that the killer of both women was either wearing gloves – the most likely scenario – or wiped them. However, using chemical enhancement we have found footprints on the tiled bathroom floor that are clearly not the victim’s. We will be analysing these for shoe type.’
    Next, tough, sharp-eyed DC Pamela Buckley reported on a check she had run on all accident and emergency departments in hospitals in the area – the Sussex County, Eastbourne, Worthing and Haywards Heath – for people coming in with hand injuries.
    ‘We’re up against patient confidentiality,’ she said with more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice. Then she read out the list of hand-injury types that had been seen at each hospital – with no names attached – and treated. None were consistent with those Grace had seen on Brian Bishop’s hand, and none of the staff she had interviewed identified Bishop from his photograph.
    Then DS Guy Batchelor gave his report. The tall, burly officer spoke in his usual businesslike way. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think I have something rather interesting.’ He gave Norman Potting an appreciative nod. ‘Norman did a good job getting his mate John Smith in the Telecoms Unit to give up his Sunday. John stayed on to look at the mobile phone taken from Sophie Harrington’s flat.’
    He paused to take a sip of coffee from a large Starbucks Styrofoam cup, then looked up with a smile. ‘The last number that Ms Harrington dialled, according to information retrieved from her phone, was