A Question of Identity Read Free Page B

his coffee. ‘I reckon the same as you reckon, don’t I?’
    ‘I reckon you do.’
    ‘Felt sorry for the defence – but then you always do in these open-and-shut jobs. Hiding to nothing.’
    ‘Didn’t think he was that strong actually.’
    ‘Oh come on, he saw the forensics woman off a treat. Love it when they pull bloody experts apart.’
    ‘“Dr Culshaw, would you please tell the court on what basis you and your expert colleagues have decided that the odds of the DNA from samples from the accused and the cat is one in two hundred million? How many feline DNA samples have been tested?”’
    ‘“Members of the jury, can you be certain, beyond all reasonable doubt, that you can rely on this new, emerging and so far unproven and previously untested type of evidence? If you cannot then you are under a duty to acquit.”’
    Rod dragged on the last of his disintegrating roll-up. ‘Right, that was a good left hook on one dodgy expert . . . come on.’
    ‘Oh I know, I know. He’s guilty as hell, I just like it when I see a defence come out fighting. He had her in a corner.’
    ‘Bugger it though, Charlie . . . you got any elderly rellies?’
    ‘Nah. My mum died ten years ago, breast cancer, Dad remarried, lives in Tenerife. You?’
    ‘Too right I have, my mum is eighty-one, her sisters are, what, eighty and eighty-three, something like that, and they’re looking to sheltered housing, got their names on lists. We’ve encouraged it – there are some smashing places not far from Pete and me, we’d make sure Mum and Aunt Lil were all right – the other’s up in Liverpool. But now what? The old girls are out of their minds with fretting about all this and I don’t blame them. Think about it. Locked and bolted, alarm by the bed, all tucked up and he slides in through the bedroom window, not a peep . . .’
    ‘What do you reckon about the wife?’
    ‘Shitting herself, what else?’
    ‘I bet there’s a record somewhere – she rang the emergencies when he’d been having a go. She’s terrified of him.’
    ‘Weasely little bugger as well.’
    ‘Not sure I agree . . . Easy to read something into how they look when you know they’ve murdered old ladies but he’s not that bad-looking actually. He’s not stupid either.’
    ‘Psychopaths aren’t stupid.’
    ‘Is he one?’
    ‘Murdering three defenceless old women in their bedswithout any motive other than his own sick enjoyment? Not a psychopath?’
    ‘Take your point. I wonder how it started? Where do these things start? Nothing – then three in a row. Come on! Got to be more to it.’
    ‘Something back then. Always is. He had a witch for a gran. That’s what he’ll come up with, on appeal.’
    ‘No chance.’
    ‘None. You know, doing this job, you get a bit blasé.’
    Rod shook his head. ‘There’s always one though.’
    ‘That’s what I mean. You get blasé until someone like Keyes comes along and you get the creeps just looking at him, knowing what he’s done, hearing it all. You never get used to the worst of them.’
    ‘My dad did this job. Sat through the whole Moors murderers trial for the
News
and
Star
. It did for him. He said he knew he’d never get it out of his head. He used to brood about it. Really did for him.’
    ‘I bet. Jeez.’
    ‘They’re going back in . . .’
    Rod crushed his plastic cup and threw it in a bin as they walked towards the steps. People were pushing back through the doors, relatives of the dead women easily picked out by the way they hung back in separate little groups, by the dead look in their eyes, the way it had left its marks on their faces. Grey-suited CID, having a last quick drag on a cigarette. The press pack, trying to stay near the back, ready to exit fast and phone in the verdict when it came.
    Charlie Vogt held the door open to let in a woman he knew from CID. She nodded to the defendant who had just come back into the dock and made a face. Alan Frederick Keyes. Not bad-looking. Charlie