Anya stood in the forensic-science student lab at the University of Technology in the city. Renowned for its forensic-science degree, the university had developed an excellent post-graduate research program.
The director of the degree course was a biochemist who was so passionate about the science that he was a major instigator in the World Congress of Forensic Medicine, organizing conferences in Sydney followed by Montpellier in the South of France.
Jean Le Beau was a small man with the blackest hair and dark brown eyes. He had the sort of eyelashes that mascara companies would die to promote, had they been on a woman. It was the only feminine thing about the gifted scientist. Jean was intense, and his face seemed set in a perennial frown. Anya often questioned whether supreme intelligence was a constant burden.
“Hello, Unya,” he said, in an accent that could melt the coldest heart. She knew it was shallow, but at the forensic conferences she’d been to, married women would find excuses to talk to him, just to hear his voice. His presentations were always standing-room only. Not bad for someone with relatively little charisma before he spoke.
“Do you come to teach or to learn today?”
“I have a hypothetical question, and you, or one of your students, may be able to answer it.”
Jean’s brow furrowed deeper as he pulled a stool from the lab bench and took a seat. “I am ready,” he said, as though about to start a quiz.
Anya felt like a student again, sitting at a chemistry bench. The whiteboard, sinks and gas-taps could have been at any university or high school. They were strangely comforting.
“I’ve been involved in a homicide case where a woman was repeatedly stabbed in her house. The suspect was found to have a shirt in his home with DNA that matched the blood from the crime scene. His mother tells us that the suspect had bought the shirt secondhand and that it was washed, but that the suspect had never worn it.”
“How much blood was on the shirt?”
“That’s the interesting thing. Small traces, it seems, which also appeared on another shirt confiscated from the house.”
“Ah, I see the problem. Your question is, how is this possible? Why would there be such little blood? Stabbings are messy, blood spurts everywhere. Yes?”
The scientist used his hands to emphasize the movement of blood.
Anya smiled. “Actually, I wondered if there’d been some kind of error at the lab, contamination of samples, perhaps?”
“There are other possible explanations,” he said, pulling his hands to his chest, while maintaining the frown. “The shirt from the murder may have been placed on top of the other shirts, in the laundry basket or perhaps in a cupboard. Come, we will see.”
Anya followed him along a tiled corridor with offices to each side. He kept his head down as they passed a couple of students laden with texts and backpacks.
Around the corner, he knocked on a door. The door had been wedged open, presumably for ventilation. The room was even more compact than Anya’s office at the SA unit. With shelving along one side, it had probably been a storage cupboard in earlier times.
A female with long brown hair kept off her face with an Alice-band worked at a laptop computer. “Just a minute, I need to back up.” She saved to a disc and removed it. Turning, her face broke into a warm smile. “Professor, sorry, I didn’t realize it was you.” She stood up, eager to please, it seemed.
“This is Doctor Crichton, a forensic physician who ’as an interesting case. Doctor, this is Shelly Mann, one of our honors students. She might be able to ’elp.”
In the doorway, Jean explained the scenario and Shelly’s eyes widened.
“Your research might be applied in a police case sooner than you thought,” he said, sounding for a moment like a proud father. “You should take Doctor Crichton to the testing center.”
Anya felt like she was about to attend the unveiling of a top-secret weapon. Instead, they arrived at a lab containing half-a-dozen washing machines.
Shelly’s posture straightened as she entered a more comfortable environment. Her professor excused himself for a moment and disappeared down the corridor.
“My thesis is about transfer of DNA material in the wash.” Shelly picked up a plain white T-shirt to explain. “We know it happens with spermatozoa, but the properties of blood differ. It coagulates and flakes when it dries. To start with, I bought six identical shirts and washed each one first. I pricked my finger and let some drops of blood spill onto the first shirt. I then washed the shirt with another control.”
The student spoke quickly, being so familiar with her experiments.
“After drying, some of the DNA material from the first shirt had transferred onto the second. It seemed to collect in the seams. I repeated the process and found that with further washings, smaller amounts were transferred to the other shirts. Even so, it was still discernible.”
“Blood’s pretty difficult to get out without cold water. Did you do it in hot or cold washes?”
“Both. Heat sets the stain, so I needed to use cold washes as well. Even though the stains weren’t visible to the naked eye, they showed up with luminol. I’m planning to repeat the whole process with semen.”
Anya didn’t ask about the source of the semen. It was probably the student’s long-suffering boyfriend, or one of the other students. Such was the shoestring budget for research.
She tried to absorb the information. If this were true, suspects could merely claim they had washed their clothes in a communal laundry as a form of defense. The implications were enormous. “Has your work been published yet?”
“No,” she said, “I’m still working on the conclusion to stage one with the blood-testing.”
Jean Le Beau reappeared with some papers. “Do you mind if Doctor Crichton has a look at the draft? I’ve made some comments.”
Shelly shook her head. “If this could be applied to a case already, I’d be thrilled.”
Anya thanked them both and returned to street-level. All she could think about was the DNA on the shirts owned by Geoff Willard. The pile of washing that Desiree was sorting was more than you’d expect for two people. If she used the machine at Lillian Willard’s home, it made sense that she did some of their washing, too.
Outside, she hastily dialled Hayden Richards. His phone diverted to voicemail.
“Hayden, please call me. It’s urgent. Geoffrey Willard really could be innocent. You should be looking at his cousin, Nick, and Desiree’s husband, Luke Platt, before more evidence washes away.”