Stop Dead (DI Geraldine Steel)

man towards a row of chairs, asking if he would sit down for a moment to answer a few questions. Once they were seated she told him that although his uncle had been found in the canal, he hadn’t actually drowned. She felt a flicker of anger when the young man didn’t seem in the slightest bit curious.
    ‘He’s more of a distant cousin of some sort, not really an uncle,’ he explained, as though that made a difference.

     
    He looked interested for the first time when Geraldine explained that his relative had been murdered.
    ‘Why? I mean, who on earth would want to kill him? He was completely harmless, and it’s not like he had money or anything. According to my mother, he was as poor as a church mouse, just a poor old bloke living on his own. Oh well, takes all sorts I suppose. But bloody hell, he must have been some sick bastard to do away with poor old Uncle Maurice.’

     
    When Geraldine was silent, he shrugged and stood up.
    ‘That’s it, then, is it? I can go now? Only I really do have to get back to work.’
    Geraldine nodded and he thanked her glibly for letting him know about the death.
    ‘Will you keep us posted? I mean, when you find out who did it. I think my mother would like to know it’s all been sorted out. She was quite upset when she heard he was dead. Seems she was quite fond of the old bloke, even though we didn’t see him any more. I mean, he’s still family, and all that. I think she’d like to know that you got the bastard who mugged him.’
    Geraldine assured him they would be in touch as soon as they had any news.

     
    At the door Edgar half turned, his slender fingers on the handle.
    ‘We can leave it to you to sort out the funeral and all that, can’t we? I mean, my parents are in Scotland. I would see to it myself but I’ve got a lot on right now and I can’t really commit myself without knowing what’s involved. In any case,’ he went on apologetically, ‘I hardly knew my uncle, not really. I haven’t seen him in years. He used to come over to us for Christmas when I was a kid but then my parents moved to Edinburgh so I started going up there for Christmas, and we lost touch with Uncle Maurice. You know how it is.’
    Geraldine smiled sadly at him.
    ‘Yes, I know how it is.’

     
    Discussing the gist of the case with Nick, Geraldine couldn’t hide her dismay at the fact that they seemed to be going backwards with the investigation since the discovery of a third victim. Geraldine had dealt with murderers who knew their victims, and with rarer instances of psychopaths who killed random strangers, but she hadn’t often come across killers who combined the two. It didn’t make sense. Nick leaned back in his chair, his lopsided grin suggesting that he was amused by her frustration.
    ‘That’s where you’re going wrong,’ he told her. ‘You can’t seriously expect any of this to make sense. Remember you’re dealing with a psycho. He’s insane. You’re never going to figure out what a nut job is thinking.’
    ‘We have to try,’
    ‘That’s the job of the profilers. It’s nothing more than stating the obvious. Think about it. The profiler tells you to look for some poor misunderstood damaged bloke with an uncontrollable desire to commit a crime, we do the donkey work to find the bastard and surprise, surprise, he turns out to be someone with criminal tendencies, an uncontrollable desire to commit a crime, and all the rest of it, at which point the profiler creeps out of the corner where he’s been hiding behind his text books while we’ve been out finding the bastard, and says “I told you so”.’

     
    Nick shook his head, dismissing her determination as a waste of time, but Geraldine was adamant. She had been through this same debate with other colleagues. No one had yet been able to shake her conviction that understanding the psyche of a killer was an essential tool in helping them to track down murderers. The trouble was that this predator was sending them mixed messages.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ Nick reassured her. ‘He’ll make a mistake sooner or later.’
    Geraldine nodded miserably. She hoped he was right, and that they would find whoever had murdered Henshaw, Corless and old Maurice Bradshaw before the killer found another victim. They were three deaths in, and the only clues they had stumbled on so far had led them up blind alleys.

CHAPTER 47
     
    A s though she had been waiting for him to leave, Sam entered the office shortly after