“Grace! There you are!”
Grace looked up from her laptop, which was balanced across the front seat of the crime scene van, plugged into the auxiliary socket, to see Chris Blenkinship bearing down on her along the grass verge. There was something baleful about the tilt of his head.
“I’m just downloading another memory card,” she said as he neared.
Blenkinship might have coveted command, she thought, but he was rapidly discovering how deceptively easy Richard Sibson had made it look. At the very thought of her mentor, Grace felt her throat close up.
“Grace, pet, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the scene.”
The download was in its last five seconds. Grace waited for it to finish, then turned and eyed him calmly.
“Might I ask why?”
Blenkinship puffed out a breath. “I’ve just had word from the lab. You remember those hair samples you collected from the first hide we found?”
Grace did not miss his usage of “you” and “we”. Manoeuvring, taking credit and shifting blame. Her mind skated back but could find no loopholes.
“I remember.”
He sighed again, more heavily this time. “They’ve just run another DNA sample you collected, totally unconnected, and got a match.” He shook his head. “You cocked up somewhere along the line, cross-contaminated the evidence.”
Grace closed down the program, ignoring the hollow clench in her belly, turned to face him. “We both know that didn’t happen. I’m good at my job, Chris. That would be a basic, careless mistake.”
He flushed. “Well, maybe you’re just not as good as you think you are,” he snapped. “You might have jeopardised the validity of this whole case. I always thought Sibson set too much store—” Even he stopped just short of saying it. “Just go home, Grace.” And he turned away.
“Compromised the samples how, exactly?”
He halted, irritated now. “I don’t have time to argue about this.”
“If you’re suspending me—officially or unofficially,” she added when he opened his mouth to protest, “then I have the right to know why, surely?” She masked her distress with a cool indifference she knew annoyed him. It was preferable to letting him see her rattled. He’d take the slightest hint of self-doubt as sure-fire guilt, and that was the last thing she could afford.
Blenkinship rolled his shoulders as though spoiling for a fight, said in a flat voice, “The hair sample came back a match to the routine DNA swab you took from the Airey girl over that thing with the dog. If you can manage to contaminate two totally different samples, taken more than a week apart—”
“—I’d be a genius,” Grace cut in. “Oh, come on, Chris! It would be hard enough to do on purpose, never mind accidentally. Even if I was as sloppy as you believe.” She frowned. “You are, of course, ignoring the other explanation.”
“What?” Blenkinship gave a snort of laughter, waved a hand up towards the remains of the barn, still smouldering. “That an anorexic teenage lass might be the one responsible for all this?”
But Grace had a sudden flashback to her conversation with Edith at Hunter Lane. The girl’s knowledge of the Ukrainian female sniper, her alienation, her rage. And the fingermarks around her neck did not correspond to the size of her father’s hands, that much they knew. So, who had tried to strangle her? And why?
“Responsible, no,” she murmured. “But she might be involved.”
Blenkinship made a swat of annoyance. “You’re clutching at straws, pet,” he said, exasperated now. “Your wild theories might have been given free rein in the past, but I’m not Sibson.”
“No.” Grace lifted her chin, giving way to the anger simmering just beneath the surface. “You most certainly are not.”
Blenkinship flushed dark red, features closing down into a scowl. He opened his mouth, just as Ty Frost appeared at a run along the verge behind him.
“Boss! There’s been another shooting!”
Just for a second, Blenkinship’s face was haunted, then he said coldly, “Go home, Grace. If I have to make it official, I will. Like it or not, I’m running this scene, and if I can’t trust you to do the job right, then you’re no use to me here.”