Stop Dead (DI Geraldine Steel)

to say there are two women committing these murders?’ Sam asked.
    ‘That doesn’t necessarily follow,’ Geraldine pointed out, but she couldn’t conceal her dismay at this new twist in the case.
    It was all becoming disturbingly complicated.

CHAPTER 44
     
    ‘S till no identification for the old man?’ Reg asked. ‘It’s over four hours since he was found.’
    ‘Four hours since he was found, but around sixteen hours since he was killed,’ Sam replied. ‘He was in the water all night but no one’s reported him missing yet.’
    ‘It’s only one night,’ the detective chief inspector pointed out. ‘I don’t suppose anyone’s noticed yet.’
    ‘But an old bloke like that,’ Sam protested. ‘Wasn’t there anyone keeping an eye out for him? You’d think someone would have noticed when he didn’t go home last night.’

     
    ‘The divers are still out looking in case a wallet fell out when he went in the water, but they haven’t found anything yet,’ Geraldine told the detective chief inspector.
    He gave her a worried frown.
    ‘It’s an expensive business searching underwater,’ he said tetchily. ‘And they could look for days without results if the contents of his pockets were carried further along with the current, or buried in sludge at the bottom. He was in the water overnight. Is it worth continuing with the search, I wonder? For all we know, this could have been a mugging that went wrong and all his possessions might have been taken before he went in the water. He wasn’t wearing a watch, was he?’

     
    Geraldine realised the detective chief inspector was posing a series of rhetorical questions. It was hardly worth pointing out that muggers didn’t normally mutilate their victims’ genitals.
    ‘I’m going to call off the search,’ Reg said, suddenly decisive, then hesitated. ‘We’ll give it another twenty-four hours and then call it a day.’
    ‘Twenty-four hours is generally called a day,’ Sam pointed out with a grin.
    Reg glared at the sergeant as he left the room and Geraldine couldn’t help laughing.

     
    Later that morning a woman telephoned the station to report that her neighbour was missing. He was an elderly gentleman, she said, very small and quiet. Geraldine had nothing pressing on her desk so she went to question the concerned neighbour herself.
    ‘It’s probably nothing,’ she told the duty sergeant as she left the station, ‘but I might as well go and check it out, seeing as this is the only missing person whose description might possibly match the body that was fished out of the canal.’

     
    Dudley Court was a depressing development of run-down concrete blocks off Dartmouth Park Road; a row of identical ugly constructions put up when high rise flats were seen as the answer to a spiralling housing shortage. One wilting tree grew in the corner of the estate in apologetic recognition that this dreary artificial zone was more than a hideous vision of the future, it was a fragment of a green planet. Having tracked down the right block in a maze of streets around Archway, Geraldine gave the foul-smelling lift a miss and chose instead to trudge up the stairs to look for Mrs Edie Foster on the third floor.

     
    The interior of the block was as miserable as its façade, and she restrained a grimace at the greasy feel of the bell. A dog began yapping hysterically on the other side of the door while she waited. The door was opened by a rotund woman in her seventies who peered anxiously at Geraldine through thick lensed spectacles before issuing a shrill command to ‘Get back in here,’ as a bedraggled Yorkshire terrier rushed out to snuffle wetly at her ankles. The little terrier continued sniffing at Geraldine’s feet, its short tail wagging with excitement. The woman lunged forward and made a grab for the dog which slipped around behind Geraldine’s legs, growling softly. Geraldine held out her warrant card to introduce herself.

     
    ‘Come on in, then,’ the woman said, with a hurried glance along the corridor. ‘Only we’re not supposed to keep pets here. Everyone does of course, but it’s best not to advertise the fact. It’s against the rules – oh!’
    She broke off, remembering who she was talking to.
    ‘It’s not like it’s against the law,’ she added, flustered, ‘it’s just the rules. But as long as he’s quiet – anyway, Toby’s not mine, he belongs to Maurice next door, my neighbour that’s gone missing. I phoned you