Page 71 of The Scene of the Crime

‘Come see what I found,’ Taff shouted out from the bathroom. Walking into the hallway, they saw Taff holding up a dripping-wet, transparent waterproof bag containing a mobile phone.

‘Please tell me that wasn’t in the toilet,’ Diane said, making a face.

Taff smiled. ‘Well, it wasn’t hidden in the bath.’

‘That’s gross.’

‘I think he found it in the cistern, Di,’ Jessica said, noticing the cistern lid was on the toilet seat.

‘I’ve photographed it in situ. I’ll take a few more for DS Wood, then bag and tag it for fingerprint examination. Then Guy can have a look at the data on it,’ Taff said.

‘Any sign of prints on the bag?’ Diane asked.

‘I need to dry it out at the lab before using a light source or powders. There’s nothing else of interest in here, so I’ll help you in the bedroom, Jess.’ They meticulously checked all the clothing and trainers in the flat for bloodstains but found none. There was no sign of the Adidas Ultraboosts, Sealskinz gloves ora hydraulic door breacher, though Diane found a crowbar in the hallway cupboard.

‘Looks like he’s got rid of the clothing he wore and the door breacher, which suggests he’s forensically aware and has a criminal record,’ Taff suggested.

Jessica closed her eyes to think and didn’t acknowledge his comment. Taff looked at Diane, who put a finger to her lips and raised her other hand, indicating he should be patient and say nothing. Jessica’s head moved from side to side as if repeatedly scanning the flat. After a minute, she stopped, opened her eyes and turned to Taff. ‘There’s no photographs or memorabilia around, but there are some really worn work overalls on one side of the wardrobe, and large-size jackets. It could be the suspect is renting or hasn’t lived here for long. The flooring in the hallway, living room and bedrooms is laminate, and vinyl in the kitchen and bathroom. They’re all good surfaces for retaining footprints, and we need to light source them.’

‘I get what you’re thinking, but there will be all sorts of footprints in here, including all the detectives who were in here earlier.’

‘I’m only interested in any that fit the Adidas marks we found at the crime scene. You can ignore everything else . . . for now. If we find any matching footprints, it shows someone was in this flat wearing those trainers, so it has to be either the suspect’s or someone he knew who he let in . . . and that’s powerful evidence.’

‘We can’t prove it was Liam that left the footprints,’ Diane said.

‘I know. But if we find matching footprints, he has to explain how they got here. Check the base of the wardrobes and hallway cupboard. It will be even more difficult for him to explain if there are matching prints in there.’

‘A bit of reverse psychology,’ Taff grinned.

Jessica nodded and looked at Diane. ‘I want you to use luminol on any matching footprints that Taff finds to look for blood in them. If we find even the minutest speck that matches Johan De Klerk’s DNA, it can only have come from the trainers after the commission of the crime.’

‘The way your mind works is amazing. What you’ve come up with was staring us in the face, yet we don’t see it,’ Taff remarked.

‘If you trawl too deep, you can miss what’s on the surface,’ Jessica said.

‘Was that another Sherlock Holmes quote?’ Diane asked.

‘No, a lady called Anna Travis. She’s an agent on the FBI Behavioural Analysis Unit. I heard her say it at a lecture and never forgot it.’

‘Jessica, have you got a minute?’ DS Wood called out from the doorway. ‘You might like to come and see what the PolSA lads have found.’

‘What is it?’

‘I wouldn’t like to spoil the surprise,’ he smiled.

Jessica picked up her crime scene case and followed him to the lift. On their way down she asked about other residents in the flat they were searching, and he told her that it actually belonged to a Winston Brown who was currently in Jamaica. Their suspect’s mother had stayed there at some point but she had left and he had now been renting for a short while.

At the rear of the flats, eight search officers, dressed in protective overalls and gloves, had been carefully opening bin bags and sifting through the contents on large sheets of plastic they had laid out on the ground. The air smelt of the rotting meat, fish and other foods spread across the sheet. Wood pointed to a separate plastic sheet on one side, with an opened black bin bag on top of it.

‘They found that bag which wasn’t tied up. The officers had a quick look inside and noticed dark clothing in it. I thought it best to leave it in the bag and let you know before removing it.’

Jessica put on her hair cover, face mask and gloves before slowly removing black Adidas tracksuit bottoms and a matching hoodie from the bag. She shone her ultraviolet torch on the sleeves of the hoodie and saw what she thought might be a dried bloodstain. She needed to do a further test, so she took a container of Hemastix from her case and removed one of the three-inch plastic strips coated with a blood reagent on the tip. She put a tiny drop of sterile water on the tip, gently rubbed it on the stain and waited for any colour change. The orange tip slowly changed to green, then blue, indicating a high blood haemoglobin concentration.

‘Probably De Klerk’s blood,’ Wood remarked.

Jessica nodded. ‘Although it tested positive for blood, a Hemastix can’t differentiate between human and animal blood. Diane will do a further test at the lab, check the clothing more thoroughly for other bloodstains, and raise a DNA profile.’ She took a photo of the clothing and used more Hemastix before packaging them. She thanked Wood and the search team and asked him if he had managed to get the Jet garage CCTV.

‘Only for the night De Klerk was attacked. Unfortunately, the system temporarily crashed the night the car was set alight. If the bastard drove there in the Range Rover, purchased a petrol can or filled one up while it was down, he might not be on CCTV, but I’ll look through it back at the station. The garage gave me a copy of all in-store and petrol purchases for both nights, but I’ve yet to look through them.’