Хилари Боннер - Deadly Dance

Under the circumstances, Vogel didn’t blame her and Cooke’s request for a second DNA test hadn’t actually been necessary. It had always been Vogel’s next move.

Vogel was well aware that mistakes of this magnitude were, as they used to say in the Met, rare as a silent cabby. But everything about Cooke and the way he dealt with each questioning session was leading the DI to strongly suspect that one had been made in this instance.

DNA was generally regarded as a magic bullet by police forces throughout the world and with good reason, but laboratory error was not totally unknown. If that was what had happened in this case, then Vogel had never had personal experience of anything so major.

He suspended the interview. He and Saslow, accompanied by a uniformed officer, took Cooke around to the custody suite and supervised the second DNA test, taken by the custody sergeant himself. Then they headed back to Kenneth Steele House.

The transcripts of Tim’s text exchanges with his probable murderer and the records of phone calls to and from unidentified pay-as-you-go phones, still lay on Vogel’s desk. The DI prepared to go through them again, and every report, and every bit of evidence compiled on the Melanie Cooke murder too.

Logic told him that the Terry Cooke DNA match had to be a massive blunder by forensics. The results of the latest DNA test would be at least a couple of days, even though a request had been made at the highest level for fast-tracking. But, until Vogel knew for sure that Cooke’s DNA had been a mix-up, he intended to check and double-check every possible detail of Melanie and Timothy’s murder cases.

I had waited anxiously, at our appointed meeting place. It was a bar which was always busy, not just at weekends, and where I knew there was no CCTV. I made sure I was there early and bagged a table by the door. I spotted Melanie as soon as she walked in. She looked all around, her eyes searching faces. They swept over my face and onwards. She did not recognise me and I had not expected her to, not from that photograph.

I stood up and took a few steps towards her. Her back was turned to me by then.

‘Melanie,’ I said quietly.

She swung around to face me, her smile of greeting quickly fading.

‘You’re not…’ she began. ‘You can’t be…’

I nodded.

‘ You are Al?’

I nodded again, smiling.

‘But…’ She let the word fade away.

She didn’t really need to say anything else.

‘I’m Al and I am so pleased to meet you at last,’ I said, reaching out to shake hands with her. She ignored my hand.

‘You don’t look much like your picture,’ she responded sharply.

That was an understatement.

‘I know, I’m sorry,’ I said, trying to sound friendly and reassuring and nothing more. ‘Not close up enough and a bit whiskery, I fear.’

‘So are you,’ she said.

Razor blades for breakfast, I thought. I tried to rise to the challenge.

‘I was afraid you wouldn’t meet me, if I sent you an up-to-date photo.’

She didn’t reply. She looked uncertain and suddenly very young, in spite of the provocative way she was dressed. That reignited my interest, of course. I saw her glance towards the door. I couldn’t let her go, not now I was so close.

‘Don’t leave,’ I said. ‘Just have one drink.’

‘Uh, I shouldn’t have come.’

‘Yes, you should. Look, I really like you. I’m not so bad am I? Still fit?’

She pursed her lips and half smiled.

‘Just the one,’ I coaxed. ‘What do you like to drink?’

‘I’m underage.’

I damned well knew that, didn’t I? That was the whole point.

‘So have you never had an alcoholic drink, then?’ I asked in a teasing voice. ‘Not even an alcopop?’

She bristled.

‘Of course I have,’ she said. ‘And wine, well, just once or twice.’

‘So is it an alcopop then?’ I persisted.

‘All right.’

‘Any particular flavour?’

She shrugged.

‘How about blackcurrant? I’m told that’s very nice.’

She nodded.

I led her to the table by the door, where I’d been sitting before and where I’d left my pint of lager. It was as far way from the bar as possible. I didn’t want the staff questioning her age. From a distance, dressed the way she was, she could pass for late teens. I hoped so anyway. I went to the bar to order, keeping one eye on her as best I could, just in case she decided to leave. Not that I had any idea how I was going to stop her, if she simply stood up and went. I could hardly wrestle with her in a busy bar. I would just have to hope for the best.

I ordered the alcopop and a double vodka shot. As soon as the barman’s back was turned and making sure that Melanie couldn’t see what I was doing, I tipped the vodka into the glass of alcopop.

I hurried back to our table. She hadn’t left, that was the first hurdle over with.

She sipped gingerly at her drink. I took a big swallow from my previously untouched glass of beer.

‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Take a proper swig. It won’t bite you.’

She did so. This was encouraging, I thought.

I was good at talking to kids. Men like me always are. The trick is to be ever so interested in them and totally sympathetic. She’d already told me quite a lot about her life and, like so many teenagers, she wasn’t happy with it.

‘I can understand how hard it must be for you, living with your stepdad, you know,’ I said. ‘I had a stepdad. I hated him.’

She smiled.

‘Jim’s all right really,’ she said. ‘But he’s so strict. He’s stricter than my own dad. It’s like he’s trying to control me all the time and I just think, yeah, right, who are you, anyway, ordering me about like that?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘That’s exactly how I felt.’

She finished her drink quickly. That pleased me.

‘Just one more?’ I asked.

‘I shouldn’t,’ she said.

But she did. And had another. Each time I added a double vodka shot to her alcopop. Once I’d got her going, she couldn’t stop talking. It was like our online exchanges, only more. She gave me the run down on her entire family, her school, her school friends, everything.

The colour rose in her cheeks. Her eyes brightened. She was halfway through her third drink and a detailed account of a disastrous family holiday the previous summer, when she said she had to go to the loo. I hoped she wasn’t going to be sick, but I didn’t think she would be. Not yet. I didn’t care what happened to her later, after I’d finished with her.

I watched her carefully, as she walked across the room. She already seemed unsteady on her feet. If she wasn’t she soon would be. I was going to make sure of that. I nipped to the bar while she was away and ordered another shot, which I swiftly poured into her glass. What a cocktail she now had.

I listened, apparently intently, to more of her silly, childish ramblings, whilst she finished her, now heavily doctored, alcopop.

Then I suggested we leave.

‘Perhaps you’d like to eat something?’ I asked. ‘I know a really good restaurant down the road.’

She giggled.

‘Whatever,’ she said.

Her eyes were becoming glazed. I had to help her to stand. I needed to get her away from this public place, before her condition became noticeable and unwanted attention was drawn to us.

I wrapped one arm around her and steered her outside. She was giggling quite uncontrollably now and when the fresh air hit her she leaned more heavily against me. I adjusted the position of my hand. I could feel the shape and warmth of a firm, young breast beneath my fingers. I had her. Surely, I had her. The question was, what to do with her?