Lexi pointed to the right-hand side of the screen. ‘That’ll be the unknown cart tracks, the size twelve shoeprints and the list of people with a fishing licence for Langhorn Reservoir — no one on it related to the case yet.’
‘And the evidence we’d love to find — Dmitri’s and Olga’s computers.’
‘True. Now, suspects. Not a lot to say. Not a lot of them. Huw, the displaced wood-carver. Under arrest in Foreditch. Connected to Jerome Eleven through Foreditch Homeless Centre. Connected to all victims by living in the wood and his shoeprints near their graves. Not size twelve, though. And …’ She turned to face Troy. ‘Neither of us thinks he did it, do we?’
‘No. He doesn’t care enough about money to make more of it by harvesting bodies.’
Lexi nodded. ‘There’s just a niggling doubt he knows more than he’s saying, or he helped the bad guy in some way.’ Focusing on the screen again, she continued, ‘The Rural Retreat Transplant Clinic. Its location — and its business — makes the whole organization an obvious suspect. But no evidence whatsoever, despite camera surveillance.’ She shrugged. ‘And we’ve got vague online suspects. Samaritan 999 trawls The Solitude Network and Charon Angel’s active in the suicide chat room. Perhaps picking on the vulnerable. But Charon Angel posts stuff that could be perfectly innocent and lives in Switzerland. Which isn’t very convenient for committing murders in Shepford. So,’ she said, ‘what do you conclude, oh perceptive one?’
Troy smiled. ‘I conclude we need more information, oh methodical one. But …’
‘What?’
‘It’s still the internet trawlers I’m most interested in.’
‘You’re confusing gut instinct with logic and common sense. You can’t kill people here if you’re in Switzerland.’
‘True. But that begs a question.’
‘Does it?’
Troy nodded. ‘How do we know for sure Charon Angel’s in Switzerland?’
‘Terabyte found out online.’
‘Do you believe everything it says online? I don’t think so.’
‘The site administrator — Sergio Treize — said so as well.’
‘Do you always believe witnesses — and the data they’ve been given by a suspect?’
‘No, but it’s a good bet the size twelves don’t fit her,’ Lexi replied.
‘That begs another question.’
‘Oh?’
‘How do we know Charon Angel’s female?’
‘Because Terabyte found out her real name’s Sharon.’
‘More online information,’ Troy observed. ‘Not exactly proof.’
‘So, where do you go from here?’
Troy sighed. ‘I’m thinking about it.’
Distracted by her life-logger, Lexi read the latest messages with a broad grin on her face. ‘You know you wanted more information? Well …’
‘What have you got?’
‘The results on Olga Wylie,’ Lexi replied. ‘Something and nothing. First, the nothing. There’s no record of travel before she disappeared. Maybe she turned up and bought a train ticket with cash. Or the underground clinic is within walking distance.’
‘Or the clinic sent a car for her.’
‘Here’s the something,’ said Lexi. She transmitted a photograph to the screen so Troy could see the rich blue gemstone. ‘Found at Olga Wylie’s place. It’s a sapphire and the team found nothing that matched it among Olga’s jewellery, so it could have come from the intruder. It was hidden in the carpet pile near her desk.’
The round sapphire had been photographed alongside a ruler, showing that it was barely two millimetres in diameter.
‘It was clean,’ Lexi told him. ‘No DNA. The sort of stone that fits into a brooch or a ring. Part of a decoration.’
‘Well,’ Troy said. ‘You’re right. It’s something. Can your wizard forensics give it some welly?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Can you do any fancy analysis on it?’
‘Oh, yes. There’s always something. Microspectrometry in this case, I should think. Different gems absorb and reflect light at different wavelengths. That’s why the colour varies. It’s all down to charged iron particles in each bit of sapphire.’
‘So, you can tell if this stone matches another one in the same piece of jewellery?’
‘I can map the colours — in the visible and ultraviolet parts of the spectrum — and find out if they’re much the same. If they are, hey presto, they’ll have the same source.’
‘All we need is an item of jewellery with a hole instead of one of its sapphires, then.’
‘Yeah. And the person who’s wearing it.’ For the benefit of her life-logger, she said, ‘I’ll get the lab to do the spectrometry.’
‘Would it be expensive, this sapphire? It’s tiny but I don’t know anything about jewellery.’
‘Sapphire’s pricey, but one that size … Not cheap, but it wouldn’t ruin you.’
‘Any other finds?’ Troy asked.
‘No, but Kofi Seven wants to see us in Pathology.’
SCENE 20
Kofi stood back from the female body on the plinth and gave the small electric saw to his assistant. ‘You do it. Standard access to her brain, please. I need to talk to these two. It won’t take long.’
Shivering at the whine of the rotating blade and then the dreadful grinding noise, Troy didn’t look back to watch the deputy’s work. He left the room with Lexi and the lanky pathologist.
In the corridor, Kofi ran a hand over his hairless head. ‘I got a specialist to run more extensive tests on the DNA from the outer’s heart. L4G#4. As you’ll know, it’s usually about matching one DNA profile with another in a database. Does profile A match B? If so, A is B — or at least an identical twin. But with time and care, these days you can build up a picture from DNA. You can deduce gender, hair and eye colour and estimate height and weight. It’s never perfect but it’s better than nothing at all.’
‘What can you tell us about L4G#4?’ Lexi asked eagerly.
‘Gender, female. Almost certain. Brown eyes, ninety-four per cent sure. Blonde hair, but not so sure. Sixty-seven per cent likely, I’m told. Height somewhere between you and me. Average weight for an outer. Quite slender.’
‘Odds on the height and weight?’ Lexi prompted.
‘Slightly better than guesswork. Now,’ Kofi said, ‘if you don’t mind, I’ve got a brain to remove, slice and examine.’
‘Thanks,’ Troy said.
Lexi nodded her appreciation. Once Kofi had gone back into the cold laboratory, she said to her partner, ‘You did ask for more information. That god of yours is smiling on you today.’
SCENE 21
Troy and Lexi had agreed to share the workload. Troy tried to find out if a woman matching the description of L4G#4 had died recently in dubious circumstances. Lexi trawled through databases of missing persons.
‘How’s it going?’ Troy asked her.
‘Not easy. She could have been abducted ages ago and kept on ice. But I’ve got one candidate. I’m sending a crime scene officer to get a sample of her DNA from where she used to live. I’ll see if it matches L4G#4’s heart.’ She swallowed a crispy-fried beetle and washed it down with white wine. ‘How about you?’
‘Waiting. I’ve put out a request to hospitals for a female outer — brown eyes, blonde hair, average build and a healthy heart — who suffered a suspicious death in the last week of March. And I put in a bit about anything weird happening after death. Like a scar appearing on her chest. I sent it to all mortuaries, undertakers and crematoria, just in case.’
Lexi grinned mischievously. ‘Not to temples, though.’
Troy knew his partner was baiting him. ‘Somehow, I don’t think an outer would opt for a temple burial. But God made all creatures great and small. That includes outers, even if you won’t admit it.’