The second run-through was slower. Leaman worked the zoom facility to feature sections they might have missed, but there were limits to the technology dealing with pictures scanned from a magazine and they soon went out of focus.
‘Frustrating,’ Algy said. ‘He would have been there somewhere. He definitely attended the balls.’
‘Stay with it.’
Another group from 1996 came up. ‘That’s obviously a footman behind them,’ Algy said. ‘You can see the tray of drinks.’
‘How about the man in the foreground with his back to the camera?’ Diamond asked.
‘Impossible to tell. There isn’t enough of him.’
The only part of the figure properly in shot was the hand curled around a champagne glass. The head and wig were a blur in the top left of the screen.
Leaman dragged the next image across.
‘Wait,’ Algy said. ‘Go back to the man holding the glass.’
He whistled softly when it reappeared. ‘Look at the hand. Can you make it any larger?’
‘We’ll lose some definition,’ Leaman said.
‘Hold it there, then,’ Algy said. ‘Would you mind handing me the laptop?’
Leaman did so.
Algy held the screen six inches from his face and then passed it to Diamond. ‘You have a look. Funny.’
Diamond studied the screen and saw that something was indeed funny, but not laughable. It was funny in the sense of odd. Most of that right hand was obscured by the lace sleeve, yet the fingers clutching the glass were visible and one — the forefinger — was only a stump below the knuckle.
Algy said, ‘The things you forget over the years. If I’d had my wits about me I would have told you yesterday. It’s only just come back to me that Sidney Harrod had most of his right forefinger missing. This must be him.’
Diamond wasn’t sure whether to hug him or thump him.
Here was the defining detail they needed — and it should have come so much more quickly.
In the autopsy, Dr. Waghorn had spoken about the forefinger of the right hand, telling his audience not to be deceived when they saw on screen that the skeleton was incomplete. He’d explained the absence of two sections of finger — calling them phalanxes — by saying they must have been lost when the skeleton was hoisted from the roof. Of far more interest, the anthropologist had said, was the left hand, and he’d gloried in pointing out the tiny nick he’d found, the proof of a defensive wound.
To be fair to Waghorn, the left hand was the more interesting. But in his keenness to show his discovery, he had made a wrong assumption about the other hand. The missing bones from the right hand hadn’t been lost in the recovery operation. They were missing already.
‘Have you got your phone with you, John?’ Diamond asked.
Leaman produced it and tapped the screen.
‘Can you find a picture of the skeleton?’
‘This one?’
‘Not that one, for pity’s sake.’
He’d brought up the infamous cherry-picker shot that had been in all the newspapers.
‘Sorry. It’s my wallpaper.’
‘Your what?’
Leaman didn’t explain. He instantly replaced the offensive image with multiple tiny pictures and selected the skeleton seated in its chair in the partly demolished loft. ‘Will this one do?’
‘Okay. Let’s have a look. Can we zoom in on the right hand?’
No question: the hand bones resting on the faded wool of the breeches were incomplete. The forefinger ended at the first joint. And the shot had been taken before the skeleton was moved.
‘This clinches it for me,’ Diamond said. ‘Sidney Harrod is our man.’
24
Paul Gilbert drove to the Podium car park and rode the escalator to the Central Library, a place he rarely visited. Books didn’t interest him much. In fact, he felt uncomfortable confronted by so many. He was only here because the boss had picked him for this. Much as he respected Peter Diamond, he didn’t have any confidence that the conman who called himself Sidney Harrod had come here twenty-odd years ago, and he was willing to bet there wouldn’t be any record of it.
The place was open plan and the reference section was at the far end, with rows of desks occupied mostly by students. He looked for a librarian his own age — which probably wasn’t a wise decision. The young woman he approached must have been an infant when Harrod was supposed to have used the library, but she was friendly and willing to check. Unsurprisingly she found nothing on her computer. ‘We do keep paper records from that time,’ she told him, and insisted on going off to some storeroom to look for them.
He found a rack of magazines while he waited and was leafing through the latest Autocar when his help came back, pushing a trolley loaded with ring binders. Thirty years of written requests to consult rare books were all recorded in loose-leaf files.
‘Are you going to leave me to it?’ he asked with a bleak look.
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘It’s my job to check these. Data protection. I brought them out here because I didn’t want to spend an hour or more going through them and finding you’d got bored and gone away.’
Would he have been so ill-mannered? He hoped not. He liked her. ‘Good thinking.’
‘So I’ll get on. You’d know all about data protection in the police.’
‘Right. I suppose I do.’
‘What was the title of the book this man may have asked to read?’
Twenty minutes later, she’d done the job.
Only three people had asked for The Jests of Beau Nash in thirty years and none of them was called Harrod.
‘Not much demand for Mr. Nash’s jests, then,’ Gilbert said. ‘It must have been the way he told them.’
The smile she gave him was nothing to do with library duties.
Gilbert made a snap decision that was nothing to do with police duties. He wouldn’t leave without asking for a date.
‘Do you mind if I take a look?’
He expected her to plead data protection again, but she gave a shrug and another smile. ‘I suppose it’s all right. They were all filled in a long time ago.’
She showed him the retrieval forms. They required a name, address, signature and details of the material to be consulted. Each recorded the issue and return of the material and was co-signed by a librarian. There were actually five entries for the Nash book because one person had asked for it on three occasions in 1996, which happened to be the year Sidney Harrod had been caught on camera — partially — at the Beau Nash Society ball. But the name on the forms was Mason. The other retrievals were dated 1991 and 1992.
‘Mind if I take a picture?’ he asked.
‘Of the forms?’
For one exquisite moment he thought she was inviting him to get a shot of her. He couldn’t be sure. Better not push my luck, he thought. ‘If photography isn’t allowed, I can make a copy in my notebook, but I’d really like to show the handwriting to my boss.’
She fingered her long hair nervously. ‘It’s not flash, is it?’
‘No.’
‘Go on, then.’
‘Thanks.’ He got busy with his iPhone. ‘This guy in 1996 — Mr. Mason — seems to have come three days running. I don’t recognise the address, do you? The Laurels, Victoria Street, Bath. Do we have a Victoria Street in Bath? I know Victoria Road in Oldfield Park, but Victoria Street is new on me.’
She checked on her computer. ‘You’re right,’ she said with admiration. ‘It doesn’t exist.’
‘Then I don’t suppose Mr. A. Mason existed either.’
‘Someone filled in the form.’
‘But with a made-up name and address.’
‘How peculiar,’ she said. ‘He returned the book.’