Page 52 of 36 Hours

Mitch pushed forward the molars.

‘Pulled out with what?’ Kim asked, already dreading the answer.

‘Household pliers would be my guess. Dentists use special forceps that can help loosen the teeth first. They’re designed to get the best grip to lessen the pain, and that’s with anaesthetic.’

Kim shuddered and moved on. ‘Last couple of questions and then I’ll let you go home and face the music.’

‘Shoot,’ he said as the tension dropped out of his face. He could now see the light at the end of the tunnel.

‘Can we confirm if the fingernails and teeth are definitely from the same person?’

‘Yeah, in about two weeks. Extraction of DNA from teeth takes time. It ain’t like a mouth swab.’

‘But you have blood on both the fingernails and the teeth,’ Kim argued. Blood was good for DNA surely.

‘It’s too late on a Sunday to talk to you about leukocytes, thrombocytes and erythrocytes…’

‘Gotta be a song in there somewhere,’ Bryant quipped.

Nobody laughed.

Mitch continued. ‘Only leukocytes contain a nucleus, so we have to?—’

‘You’ll look at it tomorrow?’ Kim pushed. If she’d wanted to know the details of forensic procedure, she’d have taken a course.

He sighed. ‘I’ll make a start tomorrow.’

‘And I’d like to know whether there’s the trace of any painkillers in his blood.’

‘I can try to look for some of the obvious over-the-counter medications if there’s enough blood, but how does that help you find your homeless guy?’

‘It doesn’t, but it does tell us a lot about the person who has him. Just how ruthless he is or if there’s an ounce of compassion in there somewhere.’

Mitch nodded his acknowledgement.

‘Thanks, Mitch,’ she said, heading out the door.

‘See you tomorrow,’ he called after her. She was unsure if it was a harmless farewell or a statement of fact.

She let it slide. He might be right…but who knew what they were going to find in the next box.

THIRTY-NINE

7P.M.

Frost admitted to herself that she wasn’t quite as blasé about losing her job as she seemed.

She was a single woman with a car and a mortgage. She had no partner who could pick up the slack until she found another job and, to be honest, there wasn’t that much else out there.

Yeah, there were days when the job was shit and she was covering local events instead of crime, but her editor kept her busy enough to earn a full-time wage.

Of course, there were jobs elsewhere if she wanted to move. But she’d tried that a couple of years back. She’d accepted a position in London, rented out her house for six months and had returned the day that six-month lease had expired. Luckily her editor had missed her as much as she’d missed her job and had been happy to call her absence an aberration.

Within days, it had felt like she’d never been away. If this lot thought she was ruthless, cold and unfeeling, she could tell them she was a pussycat compared to the tyrants in London. Her own bag of dirty tricks was like a game of tiddlywinks compared to some of the stunts she’d seen pulled. There had been the obvious ‘give you a chance to tell your side of the story tactic’, but that was par for the course. She’d seen reporters trespassing on victims’ properties to get a quote. She’d seen forged documents, false statements, bribery, threats and intimidation.

She shuddered just thinking about it. So despite the bravado she showed to other people, she really did care about keeping her job.

But much as this team would never accept it, she also believed in doing the right thing. There was no doubt in her mind that while this sicko was putting lives in danger, she was going to follow his instructions until her boss locked her out of the system or her hands dropped off.