Free Prime Suspect (Prime Suspect (Harper)) by Lynda La Plante Page B

new baby, and she’s already got two, so I’ve been looking after them . . . Well, by the time I got home I was so exhausted, I went straight to bed. Then I was woken up by the front door banging. I put notices up, but no one pays attention. It started banging, so I got up . . .”
    “You didn’t see anyone go out? Could someone have just left?”
    “I don’t know . . . See, it’s got a bit of rubber tire tacked on it to try and stop the noise, so if they didn’t want to be heard . . . But it was just blowing around in the wind, it was a windy night . . . I told the other man all this.”
    Tennison closed her notebook. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Salbanna.”
    Tennison stopped off at Forensic on her way to view the body, and sat in silence while Willy Chang explained the complex details of the DNA test that had resulted in George Marlow being picked up on suspicion of murder. She looked at the slides.
    “There was a big rape and murder case up in Leicester. They did a mass screening, every man in the entire village, and they got him. The semen tests took weeks to match, but in the case of such a rare blood group it’s much easier to define. He’s an AB secreter and belongs to group two in the PGM tests, so it narrows the field dramatically. We’ve been doing test runs on a new computerized cross-matching system, just using the rarer blood groups, for experimental purposes. Your man was tested in 1988, and was actually on record.”
    “So you got a match from the computer, out of the blue?”
    “Yes. When we got the read-out it was mayhem in here, it was such a freak piece of luck.”
    “So the computer is infallible, is it?”
    “Not exactly, it’ll give you the closest match it can find. We have to confirm the results with our own visual tests on the light-box. Want to see it?”
    Tennison was shown two sets of negatives that looked like supermarket bar codes, with certain lines darker than others. The black bands on each matched perfectly. She made some notes, then asked to use a telephone.
    She placed a call to her old base at the rape center in Reading and requested the records of all suspected rapists charged as a result of DNA testing. She wanted to see how the judges had reacted, if they had allowed the DNA results to be the mainstay of the evidence.
    Felix Norman slammed the phone down as a corpse, covered by a green sheet, was wheeled into the lab. Five students, all masked, gowned and shod in white wellington boots, trailed in after the trolley.
    He gestured for them to gather round, then lifted the sheet. “Well, you’re in luck, this is a nice fresh ’un. I’m gonna have to leave you for a few minutes, but you can start opening it up without me.”
    He picked up a clipboard and strode out to where Tennison and Jones were waiting. Greeting them with nothing approaching civility, he led them to the mortuary. At the far end of the rows of drawers he stopped and pulled on a lever, releasing the hinge, and slid out the tray with “D. Mornay” chalked on it.
    Before removing the sheet from the body, Norman reeled off a list of injuries from the clipboard, including the number and depth of the stab wounds.
    “I hear you had a lucky break with the forensic results. Your suspect has a very rare blood group?”
    Tennison nodded, waiting for him to draw the sheet back. He did so slowly, looking at DC Jones’ pale face.
    The body had been cleaned, the blond hair combed back from her face. The dark bruises remained and the gashes on the head were deep and clear. Tennison frowned, leaning forward.
    “Pull her out further, will you?”
    Norman drew the drawer out to its fullest extent. Tennison walked around, peering at the dead girl’s face, then turned to DC Jones.
    “Shefford identified her, didn’t he?”
    “Yes, ma’am, and her landlady, Mrs. Corinna Salbanna.”
    Tennison made a note on her pad, walked back again, then leaned in even closer. She stared for a long time