He pulled away, and watched her in the rear-view mirror, waving goodbye as if he was a relative who had come over for tea.

Chapter 18

Wednesday

Gillard had deferred yesterday’s incident room meeting, but now wanted to update everybody on the state of the case. The nine a.m. gathering was an ad hoc affair, everyone who worked on the case being called together. Gillard himself arrived half an hour early, hungover with tiredness after another night disturbed by wailing cats. He rearranged the whiteboards to try to bring some sense to the floundering inquiry. Claire Mulholland brought him a spare coffee and then DS Shireen Corey-Williams walked in with DC Rob Townsend, the young research intelligence officer, carrying an extra pile of documents. Gillard had to go out to find Tweedledum and Tweedledee, detectives Colin Hodges and Carl Hoskins, who were going over some CCTV footage. Finally they were ready to start.

Gillard stood up and went over to the first whiteboard, on which all the details of the investigation of Jason Waddington had been scrawled in marker pen. There were also the latest updates on the interviews with him, in which he had continued to deny any connection with the murder of Mrs Roy. He scrawled a list: fingerprints, footwear, fibres and DNA.

‘We have had no success getting fingerprints from either the murder weapon or Mrs Roy’s clothing. Likewise, we have not found at Jason Waddington’s house, or anywhere else, footwear that matches the snow imprint that we got at the crime scene nor the fibres recovered from the snout of our valiant boxer dog. That leaves us with DNA. The tiny sweat mark on the murder weapon yielded DNA of an unknown person. Unfortunately that sample was not large enough or in good enough condition to yield a mitochondrial element. The only other DNA is from the root of a single human hair, belonging to Mr Waddington, found on the lapel of Mrs Roy’s coat.’

Gillard stood in front of the whiteboard and said: ‘I’m now certain that Jason Waddington was nothing to do with this crime. The forensic connection between Waddington and the crime scene is not reliable, and I don’t think I’m the only one who has found his protestations of innocence convincing. Moreover, the thallium poisoning was clearly done by someone else. He had no access to her office.’

Colin Hodges, who had interviewed Waddington only yesterday, folded his arms and asked: ‘We knew that a few days ago. So what changed between yesterday and today, sir?’

‘Nothing. It’s just been a growing conviction of mine, and I’m sorry to have only communicated this quite late in the day.’

‘So, do we have any suspects, sir?’ Hoskins asked.

‘Not yet, but I think we are close.’

Claire Mulholland stuck a hand up. ‘So do you now think it was somebody within the family?’

Gillard nodded, and moved to the next whiteboard, which was labelled with the company name. ‘I’m convinced that her murder is intimately connected to the future of the company she headed. The difficult thing has been to narrow down to exactly who would have a financial motive for killing her. I think Shireen has more about this.’ He nodded at her. ‘I think most of you are aware by now that there are financial difficulties in Empire of Spice, and it is likely to be taken over by a rival.’