“We can break this down the way we wouldinvestigate a problem in math. Begin by investigating our base assumptions,then check our working,” Dr. Applewhite continued. “Are you sure about the linkbetween the victims?”
“Yes,” Zoe said, with absolute certainty.“We have checked absolutely everything else. It is the serial number tattoosthat are the link. Nothing else makes sense. The first two victims weresomewhat connected in other ways, but the third has no connection at all if wediscount the tattoos.”
“All right. But that’s not what you saidfirst off,” Dr. Applewhite argued. “Your reasoning is that the Holocaustprisoner numbers are the link, and you have thus made the logical jump that thereason for the targeting is the fact that each of the victims is a relative ofa Holocaust survivor.”
“Like you said, it is logical,” Zoereplied.
“But not guaranteed. We start with whatwe can prove, remember? Only what we know for absolute fact. Go back to thenumbers. It might not be connected to the victims’ ancestry at all.”
Zoe mulled this over. “What otherconnection could it be? The serial numbers mark them out as part of thatheritage.”
“You know this more than I do, Zoe,” Dr.Applewhite said. She had a slight undertone of admonishment, like a teachertrying to push a bright student to do better. “Numbers can mean differentthings. Many different things. Is there another kind of pattern?”
Zoe bit her lip, remembering with someembarrassment her assumptions of the day before. “They all add up totwenty-three. Except they do not, because we were missing one of the digits atfirst. It took me down the garden path for a long while. I have explored thatavenue thoroughly. It was a dead end.”
“No pun intended,” Dr. Applewhite said,as though she couldn’t help herself from finishing off what would have been apoor joke. “That’s just one way of looking at them. Look again, from the otherside. Remember, if we can’t first solve for X, then sometimes we have to solvefor Y first. Come at the problem from another angle, and see if you can fill inthe blanks in a different way. Not to mix my metaphors, but the more puzzlepieces you can put in around an empty spot, the easier it is to guess at whatthe whole picture must look like.”
“The victims,” Zoe said, grasping holdof this inspiration like it was a life vest. “I was looking at everything totry to help me find the killer. Instead, I can use the numbers to help mefigure out who will be the next victim.”
“That’s it,” Dr. Applewhite said, andZoe could almost hear her smiling through the phone. “Look at the numbers againand try to figure out the victim profile, not the killer profile. If you findthe next one and they happen to be in danger, then you can find out who ishunting them.”
That choice of words—hunting—sent ashiver down Zoe’s spine. Whether it had something to do with the Holocaust, orwith the tattoos, Dr. Applewhite was right. It was like someone was hunting thevictims, taking them down one by one with clinical accuracy.
“Thank you,” she blurted out, in a rushto end the call and get stuck into her new line of inquiry.
“Don’t mention it,” Dr. Applewhitereplied, but Zoe was already hanging up on the connection.
***
The first thing she had done had been toverify the numbers. They had been caught out once. She did not want to becaught out again.
The register of bookings was once againinvaluable. Zoe murmured a quick thanks in the general direction of whicheverofficer it had been who had the forethought to grab it and bring it in asevidence, even though she did not know their name and couldn’t deliver thesentiment in person. The entries were all neat and clearly legible, and theytold her what she needed to know. They had the full, accurate serial numbersthat connected each of the victims.
John Dowling—159225
Callie Everard—35681
Naomi Karling—46535
But there was one interesting detail,something that stood out in a way that nothing else had. Callie’s booking inthe register had first been written in red ink, then changed later, one of thenumbers changed in blue pen. The first version was not easy to make out, butZoe flipped back a page and squinted at the marks left behind by the pen untilshe could make it out.
The third digit had been altered. Whenthe original booking was made, the serial number had been noted down as 35581,not 35681.
But did that even mean anything?
Zoe looked through the images of Callieshe had printed out before, checking for her own peace of mind that it was theversion with the six that had eventually been tattooed on her. There it was:unmistakable, the images leaving no room for doubt. It was the six that Frankshad used.
But what if someone had believed itshould have been a five?
Zoe had a thought, something she couldnot believe had not come to mind in the past. It did not take a long search tothrow up a website that had a long and almost complete list of Holocaustprisoner numbers, hundreds upon thousands of them all stored in a database withas much information about each of them as was possible. She looked up Callie’snumber—the one she had had correctly tattooed. It led her to a woman with thesame surname, and so therefore must have been the right one.
The other number, the incorrect onetaken down at the time of her booking, threw up a completely different result.A man this time, with the first name Evgeny and an unknown last name. Most ofhis details were incomplete. Sadly, he was like many other prisoners who losttheir lives at Nazi death camps: a simple man with a simple life, not somecelebrity who was recorded elsewhere. It was likely that all or most of hisfamily members had also perished, or that they never knew what happened
