Stop Dead (DI Geraldine Steel)

to reunite her with the birth mother who had refused all contact with the daughter she had abandoned at birth.

     
    The conversation moved on and soon they were giggling over anecdotes from school.
    ‘Remember that geography teacher? What was her name?’
    ‘Miss Crackpot.’
    They both laughed at the nickname.
    ‘She put me in detention for leaving the dining room eating a chicken nugget!’
    ‘And do you remember that chemistry test when we all just made up answers?’
    ‘Except Swotty Morgan.’
    ‘Oh my God, Swotty Morgan. I wonder what she’s doing now.’
    ‘Probably running the civil service.’
    ‘Or MI5.’
    ‘I heard she went off the rails at uni and now she’s a pole dancer.’
    ‘You’re kidding!’
    Hannah laughed.
    ‘Well, she had the figure for it.’
    They collapsed in giggles, like the school girls they had once been.

CHAPTER 31
     
    T hat night Geraldine slept fitfully, and went into work early on Monday. Nick wasn’t in that morning so she had the office to herself but even that consolation palled after a couple of hours. She found herself struggling to concentrate, and wished she had lingered in bed longer, realising she could have done with another hour’s sleep. She wandered along to the canteen but didn’t recognise any of the other officers in there. Nostalgia for her old station hit her. In Kent she had known just about every officer on the force but London was very different.

     
    A subdued Guy Barrett was escorted to the station. The constable who brought him in reported that he hadn’t appeared surprised when he opened the door and saw a uniformed policeman on the doorstep, and he had accompanied the constable to the waiting car without argument.
    ‘I think he was waiting for us.’
    ‘Come on then,’ Geraldine nodded at Sam. ‘Let’s see if he’s got anything to tell us.’
    Secretly she was hoping it would be relatively easy to draw the truth out of a self-conscious twenty-three year old, but she didn’t say so out loud. She didn’t want to jinx the interview. In any case, Sam wasn’t very much older than twenty-three.

     
    Guy watched in silence, apparently calm, as Geraldine set the interview in motion. He sat very still, his head held upright, as he waited. Quite remarkably good looking with a disarmingly ingenuous gaze and a square jaw line, he looked younger even than twenty-three. With the preliminaries out of the way, Geraldine began her questions.
    ‘You know Amy Henshaw?’
    ‘You know I do.’
    ‘Tell me about your relationship with her.’
    ‘I’m shagging her. Is that what you want me to say?’

     
    Suddenly he flung his brawny forearms on the table, palms facing upwards in a gesture of submission.
    ‘Look, I know what this is all about. Someone knocked off Amy’s old man and you think it was me. Well, you can save us all a lot of hassle because I can tell you right now I never went anywhere near the guy, not since we did a job at his house a couple of years back. I had nothing to do with him.’
    He scowled and leaned forward to rest his chin on his hands.
    ‘But I’m not going to give you a load of bullshit about how sorry I am he’s dead, because what happened to him was no worse than he deserved. Do you have any idea what he was like, how he treated Amy? I don’t suppose she told you he used to beat her up? Fucking bastard. If you want to know, I’m glad he’s dead. He didn’t deserve any better and that’s a fact.’
    He leaned back in his seat with an air of finality.

     
    Geraldine didn’t reply. Instead she put a photograph of Henshaw’s mutilated corpse in front of Guy and watched his reaction closely. He gaped, looking so startled that Geraldine was convinced he hadn’t known the details of the assault beforehand. She watched his eyes remain fixed to the image on the table.
    ‘Jesus!’ he muttered under his breath. ‘That’s sick.’
    Geraldine sat forward.
    ‘You just told me you thought he deserved this.’
    ‘What the hell happened to him?’
    Guy had turned very pale. He shook his head in disbelief and she saw his fingers trembling as he passed his hand over his lips. It seemed an extreme reaction from someone who hadn’t known the victim. It crossed Geraldine’s mind that he might be shocked not so much by the injuries Henshaw had suffered, as by the discovery of the extent of the killer’s brutality.

     
    Guy raised his eyes and shook his head, defiant once more.
    ‘Of course he didn’t deserve to