Stop Dead (DI Geraldine Steel)

she thought, the detail that would identify who had committed the double murder. She struggled to keep her voice even as she replied, crossing her fingers beneath the desk.
    ‘Which do you want first, the good news or the bad news?’ the young pathologist asked, as breezily as if he was enquiring whether she preferred red or white wine.
    ‘Just tell me what you’ve found.’

     
    ‘Well, it’s not straightforward,’ he began and Geraldine sighed.
    Nothing ever was.
    ‘The good news – if it can be called that – is that we appear to have a match …’
    In the brief pause that followed, Geraldine hardly dared ask the question. Her voice sounded hoarse and strangely flat.
    ‘What do you mean, you appear to have a match?’
    DNA evidence should be conclusive, clinical. The pathologist’s hesitation troubled her.
    ‘Well, this is where it all gets a bit complicated because as I said we do have a match,’ he replied.
    There was another pause. This time Geraldine waited, unable to speak.
    ‘The problem is, the borough intelligence unit have come up with a match to a woman who’s in prison.’
    ‘In prison? Are you sure?’
    ‘Quite sure. She’s been locked up in Whithurst for the past twenty years.’

     
    Geraldine found her voice.
    ‘But you said the DNA was a match and DNA is evidence. It’s conclusive. There has to be an explanation. We could have solved this case. It must be a mistake. You must have entered the wrong details or – check again. Someone’s made a mistake.’
    Geraldine heard the desperation in her own voice, babbling on. To have come so close to an identification only to have it snatched away was almost unbearable. She struggled to control tears of frustration blurring her vision.

     
    ‘Well, yes, clearly something’s not right here,’ the pathologist agreed cheerfully, ‘but the DNA profile on file was entered twenty years ago when DNA testing was in its infancy. It wouldn’t happen any more. Our science and our systems are much more advanced today. We’re much more reliable with DNA records now than was the case in the past. Tests are becoming more sophisticated all the time. So when we’re looking at samples taken twenty years ago or more, there’s a large margin for error that today has been virtually eliminated.’
    He spoke pompously as though he was giving a lecture. Geraldine cut in before he warmed to his subject. All she wanted to know was the identity of Patrick’s killer.

     
    ‘Yes, thank you,’ she interrupted impatiently.
    She wanted a positive result that would help solve the case, not a lecture on the scientific progress that had been made in DNA testing over the last two decades.
    ‘So who is she?’
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘The woman whose DNA matches that found on Henshaw’s body? Who is she?’
    ‘We can only say it appears to be a match,’ the pathologist corrected her. ‘It can’t actually have been her, of course. As I said, profiling twenty years ago wasn’t what it is today.’
    ‘Yes, alright, who is the woman whose DNA appears to match that found at the scene, if you must be pedantic,’ Geraldine said, her frustration making her testy.
    ‘As a scientist –’ he began but Geraldine cut in.
    She wasn’t interested in his views, only in the information he was able to give her.
    ‘Just tell me who she is.’

     
    The DNA found on Henshaw’s body matched the DNA profile of a woman named Linda Harrison, who had been convicted of killing her husband twenty years earlier. The significant factor was a slightly unusual genetic coding that featured in both DNA samples. Geraldine tried to quell an initial rush of hope that the forensic scientist’s information was inaccurate, and that Linda was no longer locked up. If the prisoner had recently been released, only to kill two more men in quick succession, it would be a terrible indictment of any rehabilitation programme she had attended, and of her psychological assessment prior to her release; but it would also lead to a conviction and an end to her killing. Whatever the truth, at least they had new information that might help them find the killer.

     
    It didn’t take long to establish that Linda was still locked up in prison. Geraldine contacted the governor herself to double-check. Only when there was no longer any possible doubt that Linda was securely behind bars did Geraldine’s spirits sink.
    ‘Surely twenty years is a long time?’ she had asked the governor.
    ‘Her