I looked Hannigan directly in the eyes as I spoke, trying to ignore the chinking of ice and splashing of vodka hitting the glass as Andie poured her cocktail. My thoughts began to swirl frantically. What if they’d found out I’d been continuing to spend time with Cris and had been trying to reach Adam? Would they be upset? Or had there been a major break in the case?

‘Yes, again, we’re sorry to bother you, Liz,’ said Beck kindly.

‘We’ve been diligently combing through your 23andMe and GEDMatch results and we know enough from your DNA data that we are still confident the suspect we’re seeking is a familial match to you,’ Hannigan started.

‘Rosie told me that you asked Cris for a DNA sample,’ I said, biting anxiously at the inside of my cheek. ‘Do you really think he’ll be a match?’

Hannigan looked at me thoughtfully for a moment. I realized I just outed myself about spending time with Cris despite their warning to be cautious, but he continued, ‘The DNA evidence that we have for our case comes from the first murder, which took place in 1974.’

‘1974? I thought you were investigating an active case? That’s what, over forty years ago?’

Hannigan paused for a moment and then said, ‘It is an active case but it goes back many years.’ I frantically tried to remember the details of the serial killers I’d looked up. Which ones have been operating for that long? Hannigan interrupted my mental backtracking, ‘Unfortunately, the sample was degraded, so even with current technology we won’t be able to get a match with 100 percent certainty,’ he explained.

‘What? So why bother putting him through the harassment of showing up at his place of work and trying to test his DNA if it can’t even clear him?’ I asked, clenching my teeth at the sound of Andie dragging an extra chair over with one hand to situate herself next to me, her cocktail in her other hand.

Hannigan’s eyes darted from Andie back to me. ‘Even though testing your grand uncle would not tell us whether the sample conclusively matches him or not, it can tell us if the familial match comes from the Dominio side of your family. If none of the markers match up with Cristian, then we can conclude that the killer resides in another branch of your family tree, like your biological father’s side. It helps narrow down our suspect pool immensely. Your uncle, however, did not give us a sample and has not returned any of our calls at this point,’ Hannigan said pointedly.