‘Becky. But I trust her absolutely. She wouldn’t stoop to the sort of trick you’re suggesting.’
‘She put the clothes in evidence bags and hung them on the rack? Yes? And where was the rack kept overnight?’
‘This is absurd.’
‘I’m serious. The pants must have been introduced by some joker.’
For that, Diamond was given a look as if he’d messed the floor. ‘The lab is kept locked. I am scrupulous about security.’
‘I need to speak to Becky.’
‘She’s worked with me for three years.’
‘I don’t care how long. I must get to the bottom of this.’
Waghorn smirked. ‘The bottom decomposed a long time ago.’
‘Where can I speak to Becky?’
‘She’s at her break now. I don’t want her interrogated.’
‘It’s got to be done. You’ve uncovered a murder and it’s going to be investigated whether it took place fifty years ago or two hundred and fifty.’
He sighed like a slashed tyre. ‘Very well, but I hope you’ll treat her with more civility than you’re treating me.’
‘You haven’t gone out of your way to be helpful.’
‘It’s not my job to come up with an explanation.’ The smug little man had no idea how close he was to being thumped.
‘You must have known days ago about the Marks and Spencer label and you said bugger all about it until it was forced from you by that student asking a question.’
‘Today I was conducting an autopsy, superintendent, a serious procedure. Can you imagine the reaction from a roomful of students if I showed them the pants at the beginning?’
‘I’m not talking about today. It was bloody obvious something was wrong, yet you didn’t pick up the phone.’
Waghorn shrugged as if such obligations were beneath him. ‘I was preparing the skeleton for the autopsy table. You have no idea how demanding that is.’
Diamond shook his head. ‘The press are going to make us look like clowns. Right now your students are spreading it about on social media.’
‘I can’t help that. It’s public knowledge now.’
An alarming possibility had hammered Diamond’s brain ever since the autopsy ended. ‘Suppose this isn’t a stunt. We’ve all assumed up to now — or at least I did and so did my team — that the skeleton is a piece of history from 1760 or thereabouts. Could we be mistaken?’
‘Of course.’ Waghorn gave a sniff that was the nearest thing to an apology he would concede.
‘Not good enough,’ Diamond told him. ‘I need your advice here. How old are these bones? Is this a modern man?’
‘By modern, you mean since Y-fronts were invented? When was that?’ Waghorn took out his smartphone and worked it rapidly with his latex-covered thumb. ‘Chicago, 1935. I don’t know when they got into M&S, but it wouldn’t have been long after. We could be speaking of sometime in the last eighty years, then.’
‘This is ludicrous,’ Diamond said. ‘Can’t you tell?’
‘It’s not easy determining the time since death. I can’t say merely from looking at bones whether they go back twenty years or two hundred.’
‘There are tests, aren’t there? Carbon dating?’
‘That’s an archaeological measure in thousands of years. It wouldn’t help us. The best hope would be to look at the levels of nitrogen and amino acids remaining. This would be an indication of how far the bones have deteriorated. They lose proteins as time passes.’
‘Are we talking decades, hundreds of years, or what?’
‘Decades, possibly, but the test is still far from accurate. Other factors come into play.’
‘It’s a skeleton, for God’s sake. How long does it take for a corpse to be reduced to bones?’
Waghorn lifted his shoulders and pulled a face. He didn’t like being pinned down. ‘In our climate, and if it isn’t buried or in water, as little as one to two years. But let’s not forget where it was. A loft space can get exceedingly hot in the summer months and that would accelerate the process. The clothing may delay it a bit.’
‘So we could even be dealing with a twenty-first century murder?’
‘Except for the style of clothes.’
‘He could have liked dressing up in eighteenth-century gear. I’ve heard of stranger things.’
‘This is getting beyond me,’ Waghorn said.
‘Me, too,’ Diamond said. ‘But it can’t be ignored. Those tests you were talking about. We’d better get them under way.’
‘They’re not cheap.’
‘My gaffer will have to worry about that.’
‘There is one test we can run quite soon, using ultraviolet light. Fresh bones fluoresce. Under UV a cross-cut of one of the long bones will glow pale blue around the hollow part and the thickness of the ring of colour is a good indication of the timespan. The fresher the bone, the thicker the band of light.’
‘Go for it, then,’ Diamond said. ‘How soon can we get results?’
‘That isn’t up to me.’
‘Somehow, I thought that was what you’d say.’
‘And did you interview the technician?’ Georgina asked Diamond when he reported back. She’d come in late to work after taking an early taxi to Bannerdown to collect the car and drive it to the Mercedes garage to get the lamp bulb replaced. Needing a trouble-free, quiet morning today of all days, she’d walked into a hornets’ nest in CID.
‘Becky?’ The big detective was mired in gloom. All his theories were shafted. The failure was the most galling in his long career.
He forced himself to speak about Becky. ‘I was impressed with her. Waghorn was so taken up with his damned bones that he failed to see there was anything wrong with the clothing. Becky knew straight away that they were Y-fronts and found the Marks and Spencer label.’
‘This was when they were preparing the skeleton for the autopsy table?’
‘Yes.’
‘And she drew the label to his attention?’
‘She did. Takes her job seriously. I can’t see her as the weak link. She’s well drilled in continuity of evidence.’
‘You said Dr. Waghorn was preoccupied with the bones?’
‘He doesn’t see the pants as his problem.’
‘He’s right. The problem is ours, God help us,’ Georgina said. ‘It’s been mayhem here. The press have been demanding a statement since the autopsy finished this morning. Some mischief maker tipped them off.’
‘That’s no surprise,’ he said. ‘The autopsy room was full of students with their smartphones.’
She wasn’t listening. ‘So I’ve called a press conference for five this afternoon for you to update our media friends.’
Just when he was thinking his life couldn’t get any worse. ‘A press conference? Today?’
‘Give them the facts, Peter. Better than having them make things up — which they’re well capable of doing. And they want a picture of the pants. It’ll be all over the newspapers tomorrow and it won’t be pretty.’
He’d never thought of Y-fronts as pretty.
‘I see the look on your face,’ Georgina went on. ‘We can’t duck this. Long experience has taught me not to make enemies of that lot. They’re already annoyed that they weren’t allowed on site when the skeleton was hoisted from the loft.’
‘They still got their pictures.’
‘Once they get a sniff of a story they don’t go away. Prepare a statement. I don’t want you doing this off the cuff.’
‘The problem with a statement is knowing what to state,’ he said. ‘My first thought was that the pants were a stunt.’
‘University students?’
‘Highly likely. But Dr. Waghorn won’t have it. He insists the skeleton would have fallen to bits if anyone tried putting the pants on it. If he’s right, we’ve got a totally different case on our hands.’