Murder Ring (A DI Geraldine Steel Mystery) by Leigh Russell Read Free Book Online

anyone came along to see what the noise was about. My guess is he scared himself off. I agree it sounds stupid, but I daresay the killer isn’t Brain of Britain. Probably high as a kite and didn’t know what the hell he was doing.’
    ‘And we sit back and let someone like that run around with a gun.’
    ‘We can’t stop it.’
    Geraldine sighed. ‘We could try.’
    Looking for one particular gun in London had become as difficult as looking for a specific leather jacket.
    ‘How?’ Sam challenged her. ‘If we ask nicely, everyone in possession of an illegal firearm will meekly hand it over, is that the idea? Oh, except those people who actually want to keep it. And why would that be? Because they might want to use it one day? It’s a no brainer. Only the good guys will play ball, law-abiding citizens who probably aren’t comfortable owning a gun anyway. It’s naive to the point of idiocy to think otherwise. Society’s riddled with illegal weapons and the sooner we arm ourselves the better.’
    ‘The day the police walk the streets with guns will be the start of a bloodbath.’
    ‘Why? Don’t you trust your colleagues not to go around shooting at people?’
    ‘That’s not the point. Do you have any idea how many people are shot every day in America? About three hundred. That’s every day. And the police there are armed. They say one in three people in America know someone who’s been shot. It’s like the witch burnings here in the Dark Ages. People are being killed, Sam. Arming the police doesn’t solve anything.’
    ‘That’s because everyone in the US has a gun. It’s nothing to do with the police being armed.’
    ‘Look, we’ll have to agree to disagree for now, because we need to get back to work.’
    ‘You mean you know I’m right.’
    ‘Bollocks. It’s self-evident that an armed police force solves nothing. But now we do need to get back to work. So, ballistics have confirmed that the bullets were all fired from the same gun, an old Smith and Wesson double action. There are a lot of them around, mostly illegal, so that’s not much help. Let’s focus on the jacket for now.’
    There was a chance the jacket could give them a lead. Geraldine instructed Sam to set up surveillance of film from security cameras along Wells Street. With a team searching for a figure leaving Wells Mews in a jacket like the one they had seen on the victim, they might be able to see the direction the killer had taken after he had shot David. The chances of recognising the victim’s jacket were slim, but it was possible. Geraldine left the canteen and made her way along the corridor to the detective chief inspector’s office. Not having worked with him before, she thought it best to explain her decision to him face to face. She was asking for a team of officers to search through hours of CCTV footage for a glimpse of a jacket they were unlikely to recognise.
    Before she reached his door, there were sounds of a disturbance behind her and Adam burst from his room.
    ‘I know,’ he told Geraldine. ‘I’m on my way to the incident room now.’
    Baffled, Geraldine turned and followed him back along the corridor. Clearly some new information had been received, but before she had a chance to ask what had happened, he disappeared into the incident room. Entering behind him, Geraldine saw Sam and hurried over to her.
    ‘What is it? What’s happened?’
    ‘You mean you haven’t heard?’
    ‘I was away from my desk for a moment. Honestly, you only have to blink in this place. What is it? What’s happened?’
    ‘They’ve got the killer’s DNA!’
    Geraldine gaped as the detective chief inspector began to speak.
    ‘You must all know by now that forensics have found the killer’s DNA. It seems he was stupid enough to spit at his victim. At any rate, saliva has been found on the victim’s face, and it isn’t his own.’
    A cheer went round the room. A grinning Adam held up his hand for silence.
    ‘It gets