‘Any chance you can have a quick look at this, Bethany?’ Maggie waved the paper with Charlie’s handwriting sample.
‘Sure. What’s it for?’ Bethany took the paper from Maggie’s hand.
‘It’ll need to be formally analysed, but if you could compare it to the notes we have on file from the killer we might be able to provisionally rule out Charlie. The sooner we can do this, the better. He was pretty pissed off.’
Bethany took the paper and began searching the records. ‘I’m not surprised. I’d be pretty pissed off too. But surely he’ll understand our reasoning?’
‘I wouldn’t count on it. If he wasn’t a murderer before, he definitely wants to kill now.’
Nathan walked into the room. ‘Who wants to kill and why?’
Maggie filled in the details and Nathan shook his head.
‘He’ll calm down eventually. How close does his handwriting match up? Anyway, we’ve nothing to apologize for – part of our job is questioning everyone who has come into contact with our victims just prior to their deaths. Unfortunately, Charlie was one of those people. If he can’t see the logic, perhaps he’s in the wrong field.’
Maggie smiled. Nathan made a good point and if Charlie did lodge a complaint, at least she was confident that Nathan would back her up.
‘OK. At a glance, I’d say that the person who wrote this note’, Bethany held up Charlie’s paper, ‘was not the same person who wrote these notes. See the difference in the slant, spacing and the letters?’ She held up the evidence. ‘They are pretty distinct. Did he write this quickly or did it look like he was concentrating?’
‘Pretty quickly, but his hands were shaking. Why?’
‘My thinking is, if he’d taken his time, it’s possible that he purposely changed his handwriting style. But let’s let the professionals have a look and make the final decision. I’m no expert.’ Bethany loaded the document information onto the system. ‘I’ll send the original over now if you like.’
‘That’d be great. He’s worried about his colleagues finding out. The more we can contain this, the better.’
Nathan interrupted. ‘I think we’ll need to inform Dr Blake. He’s agency staff and she’ll want to know what’s going on. She’ll be furious to learn that we questioned one of her team without giving her a heads-up.’
‘I was hoping you weren’t going to say that. The question is, who is going to tell her? You or me?’ Maggie batted her eyelashes hoping that Nathan would take pity on her.
‘You’re off the hook for this one. It needs to come from me. I’ll reassure her that we didn’t want to cast any doubt on her team until we had spoken to him first. But don’t be surprised if you start getting the cold shoulder. She may be reasonable, but she doesn’t take kindly to her assessment skills coming under scrutiny.’
‘No one was questioning that though.’ Maggie didn’t want to jeopardize her personal or professional relationship with the pathologist.
‘You pulled one of her team into the police station to question him about a possible link to the murders. How would you feel if the tables were turned?’
Maggie looked away. She could see how Dr Blake might take the news, but there was nothing they could do about it now. It had been a long day. The team were shattered. Maggie packed up her stuff and headed out the door.