Page 113 of Maybe Tomorrow

Sitting on the iron stairs leading up to the main part of the police station, Freya removed the lid and looked inside. It was mostly filled with folders and paperwork. More lies Bishop had paid for, no doubt. She moved them to one side and thanked whoever was looking down on her for what she’d been praying to find. The clothing Alice Patterson had been wearing when she was murdered had been placed in individual, sealed, evidence bags.

Shortly after Alice Patterson’s murder in 1983, Dr Alec Jeffreys had a eureka moment in his lab when he noticed similarities and differences between strands of DNA in samples taken from his own family. From there, he deduced that every single person’s DNA was different and as unique as their fingerprints, and that the variations of genetic information could identify a person, particularly, a person wanted by police for a crime. All they had to do was leave a little piece of themselves behind, and, according to Locard’s Exchange Principle, with contact between two items, there would be an exchange. Basically, every contact leaves a trace.

Carefully, Freya took out a small bag containing Alice’s pink underpants. Hopefully, somewhere on this garment, a trace of the killer would be found.

When Alice was killed in 1983, Alec Jeffreys had yet to make his discovery, and during Anthony Winstanley’s first appeal, the information was not widely known. However, seven years had now passed, and technology had significantly advanced. Even a scrap of DNA, providing it didn’t belong to Anthony, could be enough evidence to re-open the case and release Anthony from prison.

There was no reason to contact Jennifer Ripley just yet and let her know what she thought she might have found. She didn’t want to get her hopes up. With DI Bishop being the officer in charge, she wouldn’t have put it past him to take all the clothing home and run it through the wash once Anthony Winstanley had been convicted.

She put the box of evidence in the back of her car and drove to the forensics laboratory just outside Guisborough in North Yorkshire. The police station in Whitby was only a small building so they had to share resources with their counterparts over the border. It saved money, but not wear and tear on the tyres. It was a forty-five-minute journey by car, that took Freya over the rough terrain of the North Yorkshire Moors.

She’d been there many times in the past and knew the majority of the staff by sight. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember the name of the man in charge and she spent most of the journey racking her brain. It was only once she’d pulled up, entered the building, walked down the corridor and saw the man through the round window in the door leaning over a bench that his name sprang to mind. Dr Caspian Tandy.

Tall and lean with a shock of jet-black hair, Dr Tandy was in his mid-thirties, but the bushy beard with a hint of grey aged him. He had dark eyes and pale skin. He wore an off-white lab coat that looked a couple of sizes too big for him and hung from his shoulders like a coat from a wire hanger.

Freya knocked and stood in the open doorway. She gazed around at the hectic lab.

‘Dr Tandy?’ she called out to him, after her weak knock failed to penetrate his concentration.

He looked up and gave her a wide smile. ‘Detective Sloan, lovely to see you. Come on in,’ he said. Any trace of an American accent was almost lost after he’d spent the past eighteen years in England.

‘I’m not interrupting you, am I?’

‘I would explain to you what I’m doing, but I don’t want you to die of boredom.’

‘I’m sure I wouldn’t. I find what you do fascinating.’

‘Listen,I’mbored, and I live for this kind of thing. Trust me, you’d be the first registered case of death by boredom, and I don’t want to do that to you.’ His smile widened. ‘So, is that box for me?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

Tandy made room for it on the bench, and she placed it down with a thud.

‘Do you remember the Alice Patterson case? 1983?’

‘I do,’ he said, furrowing his brow. ‘Young woman raped and murdered. She had a medical condition, didn’t she?’

‘She had Down’s syndrome, yes.’

‘Isn’t that case solved?’

‘Officially, yes.’

‘There’s doubt?’

‘Anthony Winstanley was convicted, though he always claimed his innocence. Recently, I’ve discovered some of the witness statements were falsified. We’re not officially opening the case, but I was wondering if you could do something for me.’

‘You want me to test Alice’s clothing for evidence of DNA?’

‘Wow. A mind-reader as well as a top forensic scientist,’ she grinned.

‘It’s a gift. So, what’s in the box?’

Freya removed the lid. ‘From what I can gather, it’s all of the clothes Alice was wearing at the time she was raped and murdered. I’m hoping Locard’s Principle is true.’

‘Trust me, it’s true.’

‘So, you should find evidence of the killer on these items?’