Stop Dead (DI Geraldine Steel)

either of your suspects.’
    ‘Damn. Are you sure?’
    ‘There’s little room for error these days, but –’
    Geraldine’s spirits lifted for an instant.
    ‘But in my opinion, this couldn’t possibly be a match. It’s too improbable. And you certainly couldn’t use this to make a case against either of your suspects. You’d be laughed out of court.’

     
    ‘There’s more. This might help. The hair on the back seat of the car is a match with the DNA on the body –’
    ‘So the woman he was with on the day he died had dark brown hair,’ Geraldine finished the sentence.
    ‘Exactly.’
    ‘So who was she?’
    Geraldine couldn’t contain her impatience any longer. This was it. All they had to do was find the woman who had been in the car with Henshaw on the day he died, and they would be able to start tracking his last movements. They would discover what he had been doing near the Caledonian Road, what his movements had been before he arrived there. She might even turn out to have witnessed his murder, if she hadn’t actually carried it out herself.

     
    ‘I’m afraid I’ve told you all I can.’
    ‘Whose was the DNA?’ she insisted, but it was a desperate question to which she already knew the answer.
    ‘We don’t have a match.’
    Although she knew what he was going to say, disappointment hit her like a slap in the face.
    ‘That’s it, I’m afraid. We don’t have a DNA match. All I can tell you is that she has dark hair, probably shoulder length, and split ends, but that’s about all we can say with any certainty because – well, there’s nothing else as yet, nothing that can help your enquiries.’
    His voice petered out as though he too was overwhelmed with disappointment. Listening to him, Geraldine felt a wave of lethargy flow through her. After the rush of excitement that his call had provoked, they were no closer to finding the truth about Henshaw’s death.

     
    ‘Thank you for letting me know,’ she said automatically before she hung up. Letting me know nothing, she added under her breath. They were no closer to tracing the woman Henshaw had spent time with on the day he died, for all their forensic expertise. The thought of spending hours trawling through CCTV to find images of dark-haired women entering or leaving the street where Henshaw’s body had been found made her groan out loud.
    ‘Why the hell couldn’t the woman at least have had ginger hair?’ she asked.
    Nick gave her a sympathetic smile.
    ‘We’ve found the haystack,’ she explained. ‘Now all we have to do is find the needle – a woman with shoulder-length dark hair who was near the Caledonian Road on Sunday evening. That narrows it down a bit, doesn’t it? And to cap it all, our chief suspect is blonde. It just gets better and better.’

CHAPTER 33
     
    T he identity of the dark-haired woman who had travelled in Henshaw’s car and had sex with him shortly before he died remained obscure. In the meantime Reg was keen to put pressure on Amy and Guy. Expecting to gain most from Henshaw’s death, they remained the obvious suspects. As it turned out they became worse off after he was killed, but neither of them had been aware of the financial disaster his death would bring them. Ironically, they had both anticipated the exact opposite.

     
    Amy was escorted in from a different interview room where she had been kept for a brief period with a uniformed female constable standing at the door. She had been left there for long enough to unsettle her, but Geraldine’s hopes that the widow might be cowed by her incarceration were dashed as soon as Amy entered the room. Her hair was immaculate and her make-up apparently so freshly applied that it looked as though she had touched it up while waiting. She sashayed into the room heralded by a scent of expensive perfume, a fake smile fixed on her painted lips, looking like a hostess at a corporate lunch.

     
    She sat down gingerly on the hard chair, and smiled at Geraldine and Sam in turn before addressing herself to the former.
    ‘Good afternoon, Inspector. I take it this is about my poor husband? I hope you’ve found out who’s responsible.’
    ‘I’m afraid we can’t divulge any details to you just yet –’
    ‘Not even to me? His widow? I find that preposterous. I have a right to know who did this to my husband.’
    ‘I understand you may be feeling impatient, Mrs Henshaw, but rest assured we are doing our job very thoroughly and whoever killed