Pop Goes the Weasel

92

‘Are you absolutely sure?’

Helen was aware that she had raised her voice – several heads had popped up in the incident room – so she lowered her voice and continued the conversation, pushing the door of her office shut.

‘One hundred per cent,’ said the voice on the other end of the phone. It belonged to Meredith Walker, chief forensics officer at Southampton Central. ‘We compared the DNA from the saliva on Gareth’s Hill’s face with the DNA harvested from the two sources of blood on Anton Gardiner’s body. There’s no match. If the blood under Gardiner’s fingernails is that of his killer, then he was killed by somebody else.’

‘Not by Angel?’

‘Doesn’t look that way. We’re running it through the database to see if we can get a match. I’ll let you know as soon as I have anything.’

Helen ended the call. Once again this case had taken a lurch sideways. Whenever they seemed to get close to Angel, she drifted away from them again. Marching out of her office, she called Charlie over. Her news was hardly better – they were still no nearer to unmasking the other Bitchfest forum users. Which meant there was only one avenue to explore.

‘Ask Sanderson to take over the search for now and come with me,’ Helen said to Charlie. ‘You and I have got a date with a liar.’