The Bullet That Missed (Thursday Murder Club #3)(96)

He is thinking that murdering people must have been so much easier before the era of DNA evidence. You almost had to feel sorry for homicidal maniacs these days.

If you kill somebody, particularly at close range with a gun, then, and there’s no nice way of putting it, their DNA will spatter all over you. All over your hands and your clothes. And that DNA is then transferred to anything you might touch.

At the Kent Police Awards, Patrice had wondered who Chris could arrest next to get another commendation? To get another night of black tie and free Prosecco next year. Another cute, shiny badge in another cute, velvet pouch.

Well, after the message he has just received, Chris knows he will definitely be invited back next year. And it is all thanks to Patrice.

The start of the whole thing was this. The gun was just so small. It had been niggling at Chris. For a man with access to so many guns, legal and illegal, why would Jack Mason have shot himself with a gun small enough to be slipped into someone’s pocket?

The answer, as so often, was very simple. It was because the gun had been slipped into someone’s pocket.

When Andrew Everton had stolen it from the dig in Heather Garbutt’s garden, he had chosen the smallest gun possible. Simply because he was going to have to walk out, past any number of police officers, without a soul spotting it. He couldn’t have hidden an AK-47, even though they had actually found two of them.

Chris had asked for more tests on the gun, and those tests proved the gun had been buried alongside four others uncovered on the dig. Same fibres from the cloth they were wrapped in, same acids from the soil. The ammunition too. So Andrew Everton had seen the gun, stolen it, and had then used Jack Mason’s own gun to shoot him.

It was good evidence, that’s for sure. But it was not perfect. No one saw Andrew Everton pocket the gun. Anyone at the dig might have stolen it. Jack Mason himself might have dug it up weeks previously. Planning his suicide, Jack might have thought, ‘I know what I’ll do, I’ll dig up a tiny gun I buried ten years ago.’ In court a decent lawyer would soon throw doubt on the gun, and Andrew Everton will have a decent lawyer.

But it was good enough evidence for Chris to know that Andrew Everton had killed Jack Mason. He just needed to prove it.

He and Donna had talked it through. They didn’t want Everton taking the stand and wriggling out of a murder charge on a technicality. Chris needed to find some evidence that placed Everton directly at the scene of Jack Mason’s murder, and at the moment it was happening. Some DNA.

But where to find it?

It was Patrice who had the idea in the end. She made the suggestion about exactly where the DNA might be found. Chris was dubious. More than anything it would just be too ironic. But, after a few more prompts, he had contacted the forensics lab, and today the results had come back. She was right. He has just texted her at a Parents’ Evening to let her know.

Everton would have cleaned himself thoroughly, of course. The blood and the gore, and the DNA of Jack Mason they contained, should have been long gone. But Andrew Everton had been sloppy. Or, knowing the man a little now, Chris thought it more likely he had been cocky. Perhaps he hadn’t destroyed his clothes until the day after the murder? The day he was all laughs and smiles, sitting next to Chris and Patrice at the awards ceremony? Perhaps he recontaminated himself while he was disposing of them?

Whatever the reason, it is going to be very hard for Andrew Everton to explain where traces of Jack Mason’s DNA have just been found.

On the cute, shiny badge and the cute, velvet pouch Andrew Everton had handed to Chris at the Kent Police Awards.

Chris pops another celebratory celery stick into his mouth.

Get out of that one.





91





There is something Bogdan isn’t telling her, Elizabeth can see that. It’s not about Donna – three cheers for the two of them and all that – but it’s definitely something. She has left him with Stephen again today, regardless. They will discuss it when she gets home.

‘It has been an adventure,’ says Viktor. ‘I am grateful for that. I have been shot, buried and brought back to life. And I’ve played a lot of snooker.’

‘Welcome to the Thursday Murder Club,’ says Elizabeth.

They are sitting on Viktor’s terrace, laptop open and gin and tonic poured. London spreads out before them in a vast panorama of greens and blue and greys. The buses like red blood cells. It all looks so genteel from up here, but they both well know the secrets that lie beneath the roofs of London. The money, the murder, the evil that people do. It was simply their stock in trade. Where you saw a cosy family chimney, they saw a corpse being burned. Such is the way of things after nearly sixty years in the business.

It is cold, but the cold helps them both think. Andrew Everton is behind bars, awaiting trial. Jack Mason and Heather Garbutt are in the ground. Henrik is back in Staffordshire, but has started sending Viktor cat videos from the internet. That feels a lot like a ceasefire to Elizabeth. She is pleased. Now that she has found Viktor again, she would rather not lose him.

But Viktor and she were agreed it was a job half done. Viktor had made Andrew Everton confess; Viktor made everyone confess sooner or later. But it didn’t feel right. To either of them. They had discussed it at length. Had they uncovered the full story? Had they got the wrong man?

‘How is Stephen?’ asks Viktor.