‘What was that?’
‘You’ve told us that you didn’t have sex with Laura Vernon. Would you like to change that statement?’
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‘No. I didn’t do it with her. I told you.’ ‘Lee, when you were taken into custody last night you agreed to provide samples for forensic examination and DNA testing.’ The dark eyes wavered nervously. ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you understand what a DNA test is? Do you understand
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that this will enable us to match those samples we took with evidence found at the scene?’
‘I wasn’t at no scene.’
‘For example,’ said Tailby, ‘I mean the used condom we found in the greenhouse in the garden at the Mount.’
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Sherratt blinked and his face went a shade of yellow under the dark colour. His solicitor shook his head.
Tailby merely smiled, his eyes colder than ever. ‘A used condom contains semen. A good source of a DNA sample. Will we find that it’s yours, Lee?’
Cooper called first at Dial Cottage. Before he could knock, the front door was opened by Helen Milner. She was looking over her shoulder, calling to her grandmother.
‘I’m off now!’
She was taken aback when she saw him standing on the step. She was back in her shorts and a sleeveless cotton top, and her limbs seemed to glow in the brightness pouring through the doorway from the street.
‘Oh, hello, Ben.’
‘How are you?’
‘Fine. Have you come to see me?’
‘Your grandparents, actually.’
Was that a flash of disappointment that passed across her face? Intrigued, Cooper studied her expression. But it quickly became a friendly smile.
‘Grandma is in. She’ll be pleased to see you.’
‘Hold on. Do you have to rush off?’
‘I’ve got a few things to do. But — well, they’re not desperate.’ Faced with Helen again, Cooper found himself searching for what it was he wanted to say to her.
‘I’m sorry it had to be like this when we met again.’
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‘It’s your job, I suppose.’ she said.
The local postman was working his way down the road in his van, stopping every few yards to deliver his handfuls of mail. The radio in his van was tuned to Peak FM, and every time he opened the driver’s door, the village was treated to a blast of relentlessly lively pop music. But the chances were that the messages he was delivering were not so bright or so cheerful as the music.
Helen had unlocked the door of her red Fiesta, which stood at the kerb near the cottage. Cooper leaned on the roof of the car, trying not to flinch as the hot metal burned his arm through his shirt.
‘It’s a good job. But it can get in the way sometimes.’
‘How do you mean, Ben?’
‘It comes between you and other people.’
Helen nodded. ‘Everybody sees you as a policeman first and foremost, I suppose.’
‘All the time. But you didn’t, did you?’
‘What?’
‘On Monday. When I came here, to Dial Cottage. You saw me first as Ben Cooper.’
Helen laughed. ‘No. I saw you as the teenager I remembered at Edendale High. I would barely have recognized you if it hadn’t been for the photograph in the paper the other week.’
‘But you said I hadn’t changed much,’ he protested.
‘It’s what you say, isn’t it?’ Helen studied him. ‘Yes, I suppose at first it didn’t occur to me you were the police, Ben. I just remembered you as you were.’
Cooper smiled. ‘It brought memories back for me, too,’ he said.
The post van coasted past them and pulled into the kerb in front of the Fiesta. The postman emerged in a burst of Abba and stared at them curiously as he passed. But he had no letters to deliver to Dial Cottage.
Helen wound down the windows of her car, trying to let out the stifling air. Cooper straightened, sensing he would be unable to keep her any longer.
‘So aren’t you a policeman all the time, then?’ she said. ‘What are you like when you’re just being Ben Cooper?’
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‘You’ll have to find out one dav, won’t you?’
‘Maybe I will.’
Helen turned awav and walked back to the door of Dial
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