Substantial Threat Read Free Page A

the floor, whimpering, terrified as the door burst open? What was she thinking as the killer, breathless, red-faced and raging, stood in the bathroom doorway?
    He had probably launched himself across at her in a flash of violence. Maybe she had already been on her knees by the toilet bowl, begging for mercy, and all he had done was grab her and started pound-pound-pounding her face against the porcelain.
    Or had she fought him at that point? Did he have to wrestle her down, overpower her again, drag her to her knees and then murder her?
    Henry finished his tea and walked back to the lounge. The sky was much brighter now, the sun not far away, spring in the air. He went to the TV and switched the video on again. He sat on the settee, hunched forwards, and watched intently as the tape continued from where he had left it. The camera drew back from the woman’s spine then circled within the confined space of the bathroom, picking out the blood splashes on the wall, in the washbasin, in the bath, and the mass of coagulation in the toilet. The screen faded to black, then faded in a few seconds later. Now the body of the woman was laid out on a mortuary slab just prior to post-mortem taking place.
    Henry’s face was emotionless as the camera inspected the wounds on her head and face and the scald mark on her stomach. A commentary from the Home Office pathologist, Professor Baines, accompanied this footage. His latex-gloved hands came into shot, pointing out the various injuries, his voice describing and commenting on them with relish.
    Henry stuck with it up to the point where the PM was about to take place, then switched off. He felt no need to watch her being hacked to pieces.
    A sigh escaped from his lips. His toes tapped agitatedly in his slippers as he pondered and summarized in his mind what he had learned in the last hour about a crime that had been committed over eleven months before.
    There were no particularly good witnesses. No one had been seen entering or leaving the flat, despite the investigation team having interviewed dozens of people in the area. Nor were there any fingerprints which matched anyone on record, and no forensic evidence other than the DNA profiles on the semen. Low copy DNA – DNA left by a person merely touching objects – had been tested too, but this very expensive process had been inconclusive.
    The DNA profiles from the semen were crucial, of course. But only when they could be matched to a particular individual. As with the fingerprints, no match could be made to anything currently held on record. That did not mean that the men who had left their semen did not have criminal records. It might just be that they had not been arrested recently enough to have provided a DNA sample for the database.
    Henry knew that new DNA samples were continually being checked against the database of outstanding crimes, but it was a slow process which might or might not bear fruit. He felt he could not sit back and wait and hope that something of that sort happened.
    Still cogitating, Henry mused that he was looking for a man who was quite powerful and very handy with his fists, which, together with the rim of the toilet bowl, had done a lot of damage to the prostitute’s face. It could be someone who had convictions for assaulting women, particularly hookers. It was an avenue that had been pursued in the original investigation. A lot of likely suspects had been pulled in and questioned without success. That was a line Henry intended to re-open and maybe fling the net more widely across the whole north-west region.
    He bent down to the VCR and ejected the cassette. He would not have liked Kate or his daughters to see it by accident.
    Perhaps the biggest hurdle faced by the murder squad had been that they had been unable to identify the victim. She was faceless and nameless. Either no one knew who she was, or they were not telling. No identification papers had been found in the flat and the