due diligence report on a company purchase, share certificates. But it’s a maze. Yard’s offered us a forensic accountant, so I’ll get it all down to London by courier.’
Shaw and Valentine exchanged looks.
Hadden had made the link too. ‘She drove the Alfa, right — Baker?Sibley?’
‘Yeah,’ said Shaw. ‘Wife, ex?wife. Widow. Ex?widow.’
‘Ex?wife?’ asked Hadden. ‘She won’t be that upset, then.’
‘She’ll have the fucking flags out,’ said Valentine. ‘And a band.’
‘If it’s him,’ said Shaw, unable to resist the note of caution. ‘Passport?’
Lau handed it to him. He flicked to the picture. ‘That’s him, even if I say so myself.’ Shaw’s sketch had caught the ‘lifelong look’ — the bland, handsome symmetry of the face’s main features. At last, he thought, they’d stopped finding pieces of the jigsaw, and started fitting them together.
‘First off, there’s plenty of evidence at the scene. The side of the yacht’s got some pretty bad scratching and a smear of paint — heavy?duty marine, dark blue. I’d say there was a collision, something coming alongside in rough weather? Maybe. Anyway, something big. A sea boat. Trawler? Not a yacht — the marks are too high, and the paint’s all wrong.
‘And there’s what we’ve got here…’ He held the plastic envelope up to the light and Shaw could see the sickly glint of strawberry smearing the sides, the fish gaff a deadly black.
‘Same blood group as our man on the sands, and the hairs match on colour.’ He tapped a glass demijohn full of rose water. ‘This has got plenty of blood in it too — contents of the washing?up bowl. I’ll try and match DNA for you.’
He’d had the skein of blonde hair bagged too. He passed it to Shaw, who weighed it in his hand. He thought of brushing Francesca’s hair before school, the subtle smell of the natural oils, the irritable tugs as his daughter wriggled at the imposition.
‘We’re still doing the tests on that,’ said Hadden. ‘Nothing yet — but it clearly isn’t the dead man’s.’
Shaw remembered the pink plastic frame attached to Sarah Baker?Sibley’s dashboard in the Alfa. The snapshot of her daughter with luxuriant, nearly waist?length hair.
‘Rest of the boat?’ he asked.
‘Some blood, certainly — on a rug that’s been turned
Hadden pulled off his forensic gloves. His hands were as pale as his eyes, the freckles anaemic, the nails short and white.
The final bag: the framed snapshot unscrewed from the wooden panelling of the
Shaw held his thumb on the girl. ‘That’s Jillie Baker?Sibley. Who’s the boy — question one. Where’s Mum — question two. Taking the picture? Maybe.’ He held the picture closer, studying Jillie’s face, the tomboy’s shorts and T?shirt, the hair cut back to shoulder length. The boy was darker, older, the stance — one forearm across his knee — a mirror to his father. The son shared the father’s facial keystone, the balanced features. The girl had inherited the eyes and nose, but the bone structure was Sarah Baker?Sibley’s.
He handed the picture to Valentine. ‘Let’s get Baker?Sibley in first thing for interview,’ said Shaw. ‘And Jillie. Let’s do it out in the sticks — Burnham Market. That way she might not panic. Then we’ll bring her back here to ID the body from the sands.’
They heard the bell at St Margaret’s mark ten o’clock. ‘And I’ll pick you up at seven, George — your house.’ Valentine stood his ground, irked to be dismissed, sensing there was something else to say that he wasn’t going to hear. Hadden worked at a PC. Shaw helped himself to coffee.
‘Sir,’ he said, turning on his heel, slamming the door.
‘I owe you for this,’ said Shaw, stretching, bending his spine back so that he could see the Ark’s wooden vaulted ceiling.
‘It’s OK,’ said Hadden. ‘I don’t sleep much. Usually I read books about birds I don’t have time to see. I’ve made a start on Tessier — it’s intriguing work — but it’s just a start.’ He dragged a heavy black metal box out from under one of the work benches and placed the contents, all bagged, out on the conference table.
The last time Shaw had seen them they’d been crushed in the cellophane evidence bags. Now, laid out, following the order of the body, the sight was more intimate. The green?and?white Celtic football shirt, the white shorts, the odd socks, the studless football boots. The red sweatshirt had been laid to one side, on top the contents of the shorts pocket: the 40p change, the wrapped Opal Fruit — the paper discoloured with age.
Shaw produced two bottles of mineral water from his overcoat and offered one to Hadden, who took it, drinking in silence. Under the neon light his skin looked ghostly — especially the narrow scar just below his hairline where the last operation had removed a melanoma.
‘Right.’ Hadden closed his eyes. ‘I don’t have the case file but there were notes with the forensics and I’ve access to copies of the Home Office reports. They’re thorough,
‘I made some notes. Here.’ He opened the document, read for a second, clicked some more, then leant back in the seat. ‘This was one of your father’s cases, wasn’t it?’
‘Just tidying up.’
Hadden trusted him enough not to ask any more, or to wonder where the case file had gone. ‘There’s plenty of physical evidence that we could re?examine — but most of that would take time. But my first thought is that there is a real miss here…’ His face had flushed slightly, and his eyes for once caught the light radiating from the screen which now showed a series of microscope slides. Each picture was black, with a central image in a buttery yellow. Each one appeared to be a small distorted globe — some almost perfectly round, most smooth but asymmetrical.
‘These are really small — this is at 10,000 times magnification. You couldn’t get a pinhead into one of these shots, it would be too big.’
‘Where’d you find them?’
‘Everywhere — all surface clothing anyway — the Celtic top, the shorts, both socks outside the boot, but just the arms of the sweatshirt, and in bands. I’ve got a theory there — kids often wrap jumpers round their waists, the arms knotted. That would be consistent.’
‘What are they?’
‘Balls of paint. Thousands of them — in fact…’ He
‘From an aerosol can?’
‘No. There are traces of an industrial lubricant and a thinner. So I’d say the child was standing near some sort of paint?spraying operation at some point between the last time the clothes were washed and his death.’
‘A wash would have got rid of them?’
‘No — but these are distributed in a very fine mesh?like pattern over the clothes. Washing would have disrupted that — there’d be pools of them, they’d get caught up in the seams, the stitches. There’s no sign of that. The case file should have details on the last time the clothes were washed, but judging by the shorts I’d say they were clean on.’
‘And the paint?’
‘That’s why it really is your lucky day. It’s not a car paint at all — it’s a kind of yellow sealant paint used on tractors. It’s hardwearing and withstands chemicals used for spraying. It’s listed in the national database but the company that made it — Roncal — went bust in the mid?nineties.’ He picked up a printed list and gave it to Shaw. ‘This is a list of their customers — mostly agricultural engineers. Only local one is out at Castle Rising, on the edge of town. Outfit called Askit amp; Sons.’
Shaw held the list in his hand. ‘Thanks.’
‘That’s OK. I’m not done yet — and I won’t get done this week unless you push this up the priorities list. We’ve still got three vehicles out on Siberia Belt. And the basics from the
Shaw held up both hands. ‘No, no. Tom, I can’t justify
‘OK — when I can I’ll get back to it. One thing would make things quicker…’
Shaw nodded. ‘Go ahead.’
