hapter 37

Professor David Soanes was a chubby butterball of a man. Rosy-cheeked, with a fringe of curling white hair round a gleaming bald pate and blue eyes that actually twinkled, he bore a disconcerting resemblance to a clean-shaven Father Christmas. He ushered Alex and Weird into a tiny cubicle that barely had room enough for his desk and a couple of visitors' chairs. The room was spartan, its only decoration a certificate that proclaimed Soanes a freeman of the city of Srebrenica. Alex didn't want to think about what he might have had to do to earn that honor.

Soanes waved them to the chairs and settled in behind his desk, his round belly butting up against the edge. He pursed his lips and considered them. "Fraser tells me you gentlemen wanted to discuss the Rosemary Duff case," he said after a long moment. His voice was as rich and plummy as a Dickensian Christmas pudding. "I have one or two questions for you first." He glanced down at a piece of paper. "Alex Gilbey and Tom Mackie. Is that right?"

"That's right," Alex said.

"And you're not journalists?"

Alex fished out his business card and passed it over. "I run a company that makes greetings cards. Tom is a minister. We're not journalists."

Soanes scrutinized the card, tilting it to check the embossing was real. He raised one bushy white eyebrow. "What is your interest in the Rosemary Duff case?" he asked abruptly.

Weird leaned forward. "We are two of the four guys who discovered her dying body in the snow twenty-five years ago. You probably had our clothes under your microscope."

Soanes inclined his head slightly to one side. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes tightened almost imperceptibly. "That was a long time ago. Why are you here now?"

"We think we're on somebody's hit list," Weird said.

This time, both of Soanes's eyebrows rose. "You've lost me. What has that to do with me or Rosemary Duff?"

Alex put a hand on Weird's arm. "Of the four of us who were there that night, two are dead. They died within the past six weeks. They were both murdered. I know that could just be coincidence. But at both funerals, there was an identical wreath saying, 'Rosemary for remembrance.' And we believe those wreaths were sent by Rosie Duff's son."

Soanes frowned. "I think you're in the wrong place, gentlemen. You should be talking to Fife Police, who are currently conducting a review which includes this very case."

Alex shook his head. "I've already tried that. ACC Lawson as good as told me that I'm paranoid. That coincidences happen and I should go away and stop worrying. But I think he's wrong. I think someone is killing us because they're convinced we murdered Rosie. And the only way I can see to get myself off the hook is to find out who really did."

An impenetrable expression flickered across Soanes's face at the mention of Lawson's name. "All the same, I still don't quite understand what has brought you here. My personal involvement with the case ended twenty-five years ago."

"That would be because they've lost the evidence," Weird interrupted, unable to do without the sound of his own voice for long.

"I think you must be mistaken. We recently carried out some tests on an item. But our tests for DNA were negative."

"You got the cardigan," Alex said. "But the important things, the clothes with the blood and semen on, they've gone missing."

There was no mistaking the upsurge in Soanes's interest. "They've lost the original exhibits?"

"That's what ACC Lawson told me," Alex said.

Soanes shook his head in disbelief. "Terrifying," he said. "Though not entirely astonishing under this command." His forehead wrinkled in a disapproving frown. Alex wondered what else Fife Police had done that had failed to impress Soanes. "Well, without the principal physical evidence, I'm really not sure what you think I can do to help."

Alex took a deep breath. "I know you did the original work on the case. And I understand that forensic experts don't always include every detail in their reports. I wondered if there was anything that maybe you hadn't written up at the time. I'm thinking particularly about paint. Because the one thing they haven't lost is the cardigan. And after they found that, they came and took paint samples from our house."

"And why would I tell you about anything like that, always supposing there were anything like that? It's scarcely normal practice. After all, one could say you were suspects."

"We were witnesses, not suspects," Weird said angrily. "And you should do it because if you don't and we are murdered, you'll have a difficult time squaring matters with God and your conscience."

"And because scientists are supposed to care about the truth," Alex added. Time to go out on a limb, he thought. "And I get the feeling that you're a man who sees truth as his province. As opposed to the police, who generally just seem to want a result."

Soanes leaned an elbow on the desk and fingered his lower lip, revealing its inner moist fleshiness. He looked at them as if he was considering long and hard. Then he sat up decisively and flipped open the cardboard folder that was the only other item on his desk. He glanced at the contents then looked up and met their expectant eyes. "My report dealt principally with blood and semen. The blood was all Rosie Duff's, the semen was assumed to belong to her killer. Because whoever deposited the semen was a secretor, we were able to establish his blood group." He flipped over a couple of pages. "There was some fiber evidence. Cheap brown industrial carpet and a couple of fibers from a charcoal-gray carpet used by several vehicle manufacturers in their midrange cars. Some dog hairs that were compatible with the springer spaniel belonging to the landlord of the pub where she worked. All of that was covered fully in my report."

He caught Alex's look of disappointment and gave a small smile. "And then there are my notes."

He pulled out a sheaf of handwritten notes. He squinted at them for a moment, then took a pair of gold-rimmed half-moon glasses from his waistcoat pocket and perched them on his nose. "My writing has always been something of a trial," he said dryly. "I've not looked at this for years. Now, where are we? Blood?semen?mud." He turned a couple of pages covered in a tiny, dense script. "Hairs?Here we go?paint." He stabbed the page with a finger. He looked up. "What do you know about paint?"

"Emulsion for walls, gloss for woodwork," Weird said. "That's what I know about paint."

Soanes smiled for the first time. "Paint consists of three principal components. There's the carrier, which is normally some sort of polymer. That's the solid stuff that ends up on your overalls if you don't clean it off straight away. Then there's the solvent, which is usually an organic liquid. The carrier is dissolved in the solvent to create a coating with a consistency suitable for a brush or roller. The solvent seldom has any forensic significance because it will usually have evaporated long since. Finally, there's the pigment, which is what gives the color. Among the most commonly used pigments are titanium dioxide and zinc oxide for white, phthalocyanines for blue, zinc chromate for yellow and copper oxide for red. But every batch of paint has its own microscopic signature. So it's possible to analyze a paint stain and say what kind of paint it is. There are whole libraries of paint samples that we can compare individual examples to.

"And of course, as well as the paint itself, we look at the physical stain. Is it a spatter? Is it a drop? Is it a scraping?" He held up his finger. "Before you ask anymore, I'm no expert here. This is not my area of specialism."

"You could have fooled me," Weird said. "So what do your notes say about the paint on Rosie's cardie?"

"Your friend does like to get to the point, does he not?" Soanes said to Alex, thankfully more amused than irritated.

"We know how valuable your time is, that's all," Alex said, wincing inside at his sycophancy.

Soanes returned to his notes. "True," he said. "The paint in question was a pale blue aliphatic polyurethane enamel. Not a common house paint. More the sort of thing you'd find on a boat, or something made of fiberglass. We didn't get any direct matches, though it did resemble a couple of marine paints in our reference library. What was most interesting about it was the profile of the droplets. They were shaped like minuscule teardrops."

Alex frowned. "What does that mean?"

"It means that the paint wasn't wet when it made its way on to the clothing. These were tiny, tiny drops of dried paint that were undoubtedly transferred to her clothes from a surface on which she was lying. Probably a carpet."

"So somebody had been painting something in the place where she was lying? And they'd got paint on the carpet?" Weird asked.

"Almost certainly. But I have to come back to the odd shape. If paint drips from a brush, or spatters on a carpet, the droplets would not look like this. And all of the droplets we looked at in this case shared the same profile."

"Why didn't you put all that in your report?" Alex asked.

"Because we couldn't explain it. It's very dangerous to the prosecution case to have an expert witness in the box answering, 'I don't know.' A good defense advocate would leave the questions about the paint to last, so what the jury would remember most clearly would have been my boss shaking his head and admitting he didn't know the answers." Soanes pushed his papers back into the folder. "So we left it out."

Now for the only question that mattered, thought Alex. "If you looked at that evidence again, would you be able to come up with a different answer?"

Soanes gazed at him over his glasses. "Me personally? No. But a forensic paint expert might well be able to provide a more useful analysis. Of course, your chances of finding a match twenty-five years later is negligible."

"That's our problem," Weird said. "Can you do it? Will you do it?"

Soanes shook his head. "As I said, I'm very far from being an expert in the area. But even if I were, I couldn't authorize tests without a request from Fife Police. And they didn't ask for tests on the paint." He closed his folder with an air of finality.

"Why not?" Weird asked.

"I would presume because they thought it was a waste of money. As I said, the chances of finding a match at this late stage are infinitesimal."

Alex slumped down in his chair, deflated. "And I'm not going to be able to change Lawson's mind. Great. I think you just signed my death warrant."

"I didn't say it was impossible to have some tests conducted," Soanes said gently. "What I said was that they couldn't be conducted here."

"How can they be conducted anywhere else?" Weird said belligerently. "Nobody's got any samples."

Soanes pulled at his lip again. Then he sighed. "We don't have any of the biological samples. But we do still have the paint. I checked before you came." He opened the folder again and took out a plastic sheet divided into pockets. Tucked inside were a dozen microscope slides. Soanes removed three of them and lined them up on the desk. Alex stared down at them hungrily. He couldn't quite believe his eyes. The specks of paint were like tiny flakes of blue cigarette ash.

"Somebody could analyze these?" he said, barely daring to hope.

"Of course," Soanes said. He took a paper bag from his drawer and placed it on top of the slides, pushing them a little closer to Alex and Weird. "Take them. We have others we can analyze independently, should anything come of it. You'll need to sign for them, of course."

Weird's hand snaked out and enveloped the slides. He gently put them in the bag and slid it into his pocket. "Thanks," he said. "Where do I sign?"

As Weird scribbled his name on the bottom of a log sheet, Alex looked curiously at Soanes. "Why are you doing this?" he said.

Soanes took off his glasses and put them away carefully. "Because I hate unsolved puzzles," he said, getting to his feet. "Almost as much as I hate sloppy police work. And besides, I should hate to have your deaths on my conscience should your theory prove correct."

"Why are we turning off?" Weird asked as they hit the outskirts of Glenrothes and Alex signaled a right turn.

"I want to tell Lawson about Macfadyen sending the wreaths. And I want to try and persuade him to get Soanes to test the samples he's got."

"Waste of time," Weird grunted.

"No more than going back to St. Monans to knock on the door of an empty house."

Weird said nothing more, letting Alex drive to police headquarters. At the front desk, Alex asked to see Lawson. "It's in connection with the Rosemary Duff case," he said. They were directed to a waiting area, where they sat reading the posters about Colorado Beetle, missing persons and domestic violence. "Amazing how it makes you feel guilty, just being here," Alex muttered.

"Not me," Weird said. "But then, I answer to a higher authority."

After a few minutes, a stocky woman came across to them. "I'm DC Pirie," she said. "I'm afraid ACC Lawson is unavailable. But I'm the officer in charge of the Rosemary Duff case."

Alex shook his head. "I want to see Lawson. I'll wait."

"I'm afraid that won't be possible. He's actually on a couple of days' leave."

"Gone fishing," Weird said ironically.

Karen Pirie, caught by surprise, said, "Yes, as it happens. Loch? before she could stop herself.

Weird looked even more surprised. "Really? I was just using a figure of speech."

Karen tried to cover her confusion. "It's Mr. Gilbey, isn't it?" she said, looking intently at Alex.

"That's right. How did you?"

"I saw you at Dr. Kerr's funeral. I'm sorry for your loss."

"That's why we're here," Weird said. "We believe the same person who killed David Kerr is planning to kill us."

Karen took a deep breath. "ACC Lawson briefed me on his meeting with Mr. Gilbey. And as he told you then," she continued, looking at Alex, "there really is no basis for your fears."

Weird gave a snort of exasperation. "What if we told you that Graham Macfadyen sent those wreaths?"

"Wreaths?" Karen seemed puzzled.

"I thought you said you'd been briefed?" Weird challenged her.

Alex intervened, wondering momentarily how the sinners coped with Weird. He told Karen about the curious floral tributes and was gratified when she appeared to take them seriously.

"That is strange, I'll grant you. But it's not an indication that Mr. Macfadyen is going around killing people."

"How else would he know about the murders?" Alex asked, genuinely seeking an answer.

"That's the question, isn't it?" Weird demanded.

"He'd have seen Dr. Kerr's death in the papers. It was widely reported. And I imagine it wouldn't be hard to find out about Mr. Malkiewicz. The Internet has made it a very small world," Karen said.

Alex felt that sinking feeling all over again. Why was everyone so resistant to what seemed obvious to him? "But why would he send the wreaths unless he thought we were responsible for his mother's death?"

"Believing you to be responsible is a long way from murder," Karen said. "I realize you feel under pressure, Mr. Gilbey. But there's nothing in what you've told me that leads me to think you're at risk."

Weird looked apoplectic. "How many of us have to die before you start to take this seriously?"

"Has anyone threatened you?"

Weird scowled. "No."

"Have you had any unexplained telephone hang-ups?"

"No."

"And have you noticed anyone hanging round your home?"

Weird looked at Alex, who shook his head.

"Then I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do."

"Yes, there is," Alex said. "You can ask for a new analysis of the paint that was found on Rosie Duff's cardigan."

Karen's eyes widened in astonishment. "How do you know about the paint?"

Frustration lent an edge to Alex's voice. "We were witnesses. Suspects, in all but name. You think we didn't notice when your colleagues scraped our walls and stuck Sellotape all over our carpets? So how about it, DC Pirie? How about actually trying to find out who killed Rosie Duff?"

Needled by his words, Karen drew herself up straight. "That's exactly what I've been doing for the past couple of months, sir. And the official view is that a paint analysis would not be cost effective, given the remoteness of the possibility of finding any sort of match after all this time."

The anger Alex had been buttoning down for days suddenly welled up in him. "Not cost effective? If there's any possibility, you should pursue it," he shouted. "It's not as if you've got any other expensive forensic testing to do, is it? Not now you've lost the only evidence that might finally have cleared our names. Do you have any idea what you people did to us back then because of your incompetence? You tainted our lives. He got beaten up? He pointed at Weird. "Ziggy got dumped down the Bottle Dungeon. He could have died. Mondo tried to kill himself, and Barney Maclennan died because of it. And if Jimmy Lawson hadn't come along at the right moment, I would have had the crap beaten out of me, too. So don't stand here and talk to me about cost effectiveness. Just do your bloody job." Alex turned on his heel and marched out.

Weird stood his ground, not taking his eyes off Karen Pirie. "You heard the man," he said. "Tell Jimmy Lawson to reel in his line and keep us alive."

Chapter 38

James Lawson slit open the belly and plunged his hand into the cavity, his fingers closing on the slippery guts. His lips twisted into a moue of distaste, the slithering of vital organs against his skin an offense against his basic fastidiousness. He drew the entrails out, making sure the blood and mucus stayed within the confines of the newspaper he'd spread out in preparation. Then he added the trout to the other three he'd caught that afternoon.

Not a bad result for the time of year, he thought. He'd fry a couple for his tea and put the others in the caravan's tiny fridge. They'd make a good breakfast before he set out for work in the morning. He got up and switched on the pump that supplied the little sink with a stream of cold water. He reminded himself to bring a couple of replacement five-gallon bottles the next time he came out to his bolthole on the shores of Loch Leven. He'd emptied the spare into the tank that morning, and although he could always rely on the local farmer who rented him the pitch in an emergency, Lawson didn't like to impose on his goodwill. He'd always kept to himself in the twenty years since he'd moved the caravan up here. That was the way he liked it. Just him and the radio and a pile of thrillers. A private place where he could escape the pressures of work and family life, a place to renew his energies.

He opened a tin of new potatoes, drained them and diced them. While he waited for the big frying pan to heat up for the fish and potatoes, he folded the newspaper fussily around the fish guts and thrust it into a plastic bag. He'd add the skin and bones after his meal, then tie the handles tightly and leave it on the caravan steps for removal in the morning. There was nothing worse than sleeping in the stink of the detritus of his catch.

Lawson dumped a chunk of lard in the pan, watched it sizzle into translucency then added the potatoes. He stirred them around, then, as they started to brown, he carefully placed the two trout in the pan, adding a squeeze of juice from a Jif lemon. The familiar sizzle and crackle cheered him up, the smell a promise of the delight to come. When it was done, he tipped his meal onto a plate and settled in at the table to enjoy his dinner. Perfect timing. The familiar theme tune of The Archers bounded out of the radio as his knife slid under the crispy skin of the first trout.

He was halfway through his meal when he heard something he shouldn't have. A car door slammed. The radio had covered the sound of the approaching engine, but the closing of the door was loud enough to be heard over the everyday story of country folk. Lawson froze momentarily then reached for the radio and turned it off, straining his ears to catch any sound from outside. Stealthily, he eased the curtain back a fraction. Just beyond the gate into the field, he could make out the shape of a car. Small-to medium-sized hatchback, he thought. A Golf, an Astra, a Focus. Something like that. It was hard to be more accurate in the dark. He scanned the gap between the gate and his caravan. No movement.

The rap at the door made his heart leap in his chest. Who the hell was this? As far as he was aware, the only people who knew exactly where his fishing lair was were the farmer and his wife. He'd never brought colleagues or friends here. When they'd gone fishing, he'd met them farther along the shore in his boat, determined to maintain his privacy.

"Just a minute," he shouted, rising to his feet and moving toward the door, pausing only to palm his razor-sharp gutting knife. There were plenty of criminals who might feel they had a score to settle, and he wasn't going to be caught unprotected. Keeping one foot behind the door, he opened it a crack.

In the sliver of light that spilled out on to the steps stood Graham Macfadyen. It took Lawson a moment to recognize him. Since their last meeting, he'd lost weight. His eyes burned feverish above hollow cheeks and his hair was lank and greasy. "What the hell are you doing here?" Lawson demanded.

"I need to talk to you. They said you were having a couple of days off, so I thought you must be here." Macfadyen's tone was matter-of-fact, as if there were nothing unusual about a member of the public turning up on the doorstep of the Assistant Chief Constable's fishing caravan.

"How the hell did you find me here?" Lawson demanded, anxiety making him belligerent.

Macfadyen shrugged. "You can find out anything these days. You gave an interview to the Fife Record last time you were promoted. It's on their Web site. You said you liked fishing, that you had a place up at Loch Leven. There's not many roads that go close to the waterside. I just drove around till I spotted your car."

There was something in his manner that chilled Lawson to the bone. "This isn't appropriate," he said. "Come and see me at the office if you want to discuss police business."

Macfadyen looked annoyed. "This is important. It won't wait. And I'm not talking to anybody else. You understand my position. You're the one I need to talk to. I'm here now. So why not listen to me? You need to listen to me, I'm the man who can help you."

Lawson started to close the door, but Macfadyen raised a hand and pressed against it. "I'll stand outside and shout if you won't let me in," he said. The nonchalance of his tone was at odds with the determination in his face.

Lawson weighed up the odds. Macfadyen didn't strike him as potentially violent. But you never knew. However, he did have the knife if it came to it. Better to hear the man out and get rid of him. He let the door swing open and stepped back, never turning his back on his unwelcome visitor.

Macfadyen followed him inside. In a dislocating perversion of normal discourse, he grinned and said, "You've made it very cozy in here." Then his glance fell on the table and he looked apologetic. "I've disturbed you at your tea. I'm really sorry."

"It's OK," Lawson lied. "What was it you wanted to talk to me about?"

"They're gathering. They're huddling together to try to avoid their fate," Macfadyen said, as if it were an explanation.

"Who's gathering?" Lawson asked.

Macfadyen sighed, as if frustrated at dealing with a particularly slow trainee. "My mother's killers," he said. "Mackie's back. He's moved in with Gilbey. It's the only way they feel safe. But they're wrong, of course. That won't protect them. I never believed in fate before, but there's no other way to describe what's happened to that foursome lately. Gilbey and Mackie must feel it too. They must be afraid time is running out for them like it has for their friends. And of course, it is. Unless they pay the proper price. Them coming together like this?it's a confession. You must see that."

"You might well be right," Lawson said, going for conciliation. "But it's not the sort of confession that works in a court of law."

"I know that," Macfadyen said impatiently. "But they're at their most vulnerable. They're afraid. It's time to use that weakness to drive a wedge between them. You have to arrest them now, make them tell you the truth. I've been watching them. They could crack at any time."

"We've no evidence," Lawson said.

"They'll confess. What more evidence do you need?" Macfadyen never took his eyes from the policeman.

"People often think that. But in Scots law, a confession on its own isn't enough to convict someone. There needs to be corroborative evidence."

"That can't be right," Macfadyen protested.

"It's the law."

"You've got to do something. Get them to confess, then find the evidence that will make it stand up in court. That's your job," Macfadyen said, his voice rising.

Lawson shook his head. "That's not how it works. Look, I promise I'll go and talk to Mackie and Gilbey. But that's all I can do."

Macfadyen clenched his right hand into a fist. "You don't care, do you? Not any of you."

"Yes, I do care," Lawson said. "But I have to operate inside the law. And so do you, sir."

Macfadyen made a strange noise in the back of his throat, like a dog choking on a chicken bone. "You were supposed to understand," he said coldly, grabbing the door handle and pulling it open. The door swung right back and banged against the wall.

Then he was gone, swallowed by the darkness outside. The damp chill of the night invaded the cozy fug of the caravan, smothering the smell of stale cooking and replacing it with the tang of marshes. Lawson stood in the doorway long after Graham Macfadyen's car had reversed erratically up the track, his eyes dark pools of worry.

Lynn was their ticket into Jason McAllister. And she wasn't leaving Davina with anyone, not even Alex. And that was why what should have been an easy forenoon run out to Bridge of Allan had turned into a major operation. It was amazing what had to travel with a baby, Alex thought as he made his third and final trip to the car, listing under the combined weight of the baby seat and Davina. Buggy. Backpack containing nappies, wipes, muslin squares, two changes of clothes just in case. Spare blankets, also just in case. A clean jumper for Lynn, because projectile vomit didn't always land on the muslin square. The baby sling. He was mildly amazed he'd gotten away with leaving the kitchen sink plumbed in.

He threaded the rear seatbelt through the restraints on the portable seat and tested its security. He'd never worried about the strength of seatbelts before, but now he found himself wondering just how reliable they might be under impact. He leaned into the car, straightened Davina's fleece hat and kissed his sleeping daughter, then held his breath in apprehension as she stirred. Please let her not scream all the way to Bridge of Allan, he prayed. He didn't think he could cope with the guilt.

Lynn and Weird joined him and they all piled into the car. A few minutes later they were on the motorway. Weird tapped him on the shoulder. "You're supposed to go faster than forty miles an hour on a motorway," he said. "We're going to be late."

Stifling his concerns for his valuable cargo, Alex obediently put his foot down. He was every bit as keen as Weird to drive their investigation forward. Jason McAllister sounded just the man to take them the next part of the journey. Lynn's work as a restorer of paintings for the national galleries of Scotland meant she'd become an expert in the sort of paint that artists used at different periods. It also meant she'd had to find her own expert who could analyze the samples from the original so she could make her match as accurate as possible. And of course there were times when there were question marks over the authenticity of a particular work of art. Then the paint samples had to be evaluated to check whether they were from the right time frame and whether they were consistent with the materials used by the same painter in other works whose provenance was not in doubt. The man she'd found to do the scientific end of the investigations was Jason McAllister.

He worked in a private forensic lab near Stirling University. Most of his working life was spent analyzing paint fragments from road-traffic accidents, either for the police or for insurance companies. Occasionally he'd have an interesting diversion into murder, rape or serious assault, but that happened too seldom to provide enough variation for Jason's talents.

At a private preview of a Poussin exhibition, he'd tracked Lynn down and told her he was passionate about paint. At first, she'd thought this slightly geeky young man was being pretentious, claiming kinship with great art. Then she'd realized he meant precisely what he'd said. No more, no less. What infused him with enthusiasm was not what was depicted on the canvas; it was the structure of the stuff used to make the painting. He gave her his card and made her promise she'd call him the next time she had a problem. He assured her several times that he'd be better than whoever she was using.

As it happened, Jason had struck lucky that night. Lynn was fed up with the pompous prat she'd previously been forced to rely on. He was one of the Edinburgh old school who couldn't stop themselves condescending to women. Even though his status was effectively that of a lab technician, he treated Lynn as if she was a menial whose opinion was of no importance. With a major restoration on the horizon, Lynn had been dreading working with him again. Jason felt like a gift from the gods. Right from the start, there had never been any question of him talking down to her. If anything, the problem was the opposite. He tended to assume she was his equal, and she'd lost count of the times she'd had to tell him to slow down and speak in something approaching English. But that was infinitely preferable to the alternative.

When Alex and Weird had come home with the bag of paint samples, Lynn had been on the phone to Jason within ten minutes. As she'd expected, he'd reacted like a child who's just been told he's spending the summer at Disneyland. "I've got a meeting first thing, but I'll be clear of that by ten."

As Alex had suggested, she'd tried to tell him they'd pay his fee privately. But he'd waved away her offer. "What are pals for?" he'd demanded. "Besides, I'm up to my back teeth with car paint. You'll be saving me from dying of boredom. Bring it on, woman."

The lab was a surprisingly attractive modern single-story building set off the main road in its own grounds. The windows were set high up in the brown brick walls, and CCTV cameras covered every angle of approach. They had to be buzzed through two sets of security doors before they reached the reception. "I've been in prisons with less security," Weird commented. "What do they do here? Manufacture weapons of mass destruction?"

"They do freelance forensic work for the Crown Office. And for the defense," Lynn explained as they waited for Jason to join them. "So they've got to be able to demonstrate that any evidence they take custody of will be held securely."

"So they do DNA and all that?" Alex asked.

"Why? Are you having doubts about your paternity?" Lynn teased him.

"I'll wait till she turns into the teenager from hell for that," Alex said. "No, I'm just curious."

"They do DNA and they do hair and fiber evidence as well as paint," Lynn told him. As she spoke, a burly man approached and clapped an arm round her shoulder.

"You brought the baby," he said, leaning over to peer into the carrier. "Hey, she's gorgeous." He grinned up at Lynn. "Most babies look like the dog sat on their faces. But she looks like a proper wee person." He straightened up. "I'm Jason," he said, looking uncertainly from Weird to Alex.

They introduced themselves. Alex took in the Stirling Albion shirt, the cargo pants with bulging pockets and the spiked hair, its tips bleached a blond never found in nature. On the surface, Jason looked as if he'd be home in any Friday-night pub, bottle of designer lager in his hand. But his eyes were sharp and watchful, his body still and controlled. "Come away through," Jason instructed them. "Here, let me carry the baby," he added, reaching for the carrier. "She is a beauty."

"You might not say that at three in the morning," Lynn said, her maternal pride obvious.

"Maybe not. By the way, I was sorry to hear about your brother," he said, glancing awkwardly over his shoulder at Lynn. "That must have been hellish."

"It's not been easy," Lynn said as they followed Jason down a narrow corridor, the walls painted eggshell blue. At the end, Jason led them into a daunting laboratory. Mysterious equipment gleamed in every corner. Worktops were neat and tidy, and the technician peering down the barrel of something Alex thought might be a futuristic microscope didn't move a muscle as they bustled in. "I feel like I'm contaminating the place just by breathing," he said.

"It's less of an issue with paint," Jason said. "If I was in DNA, you'd be getting nowhere near the sharp end. So, tell me again exactly what it is you've got for me."

Alex ran through what Soanes had revealed the previous afternoon. "Soanes thinks there's not much chance of finding a match for the paint, but maybe you can tell something new from the shape of the drops," he added.

Jason peered at the slides. "Looks like they've kept them in good condition, which is a plus."

"What is it you'll do with them?" Weird asked.

Lynn groaned. "I wish you hadn't said that."

Jason laughed. "Ignore her, she just likes to pretend she's ignorant. We've got a range of techniques that analyze the carrier and pigment. As well as using microspectrophotometry to establish the color, we can go more in-depth to nail down the composition of the paint samples. Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometry, Pyrolysis Gas Chromatography and Scanning Electron Microscopy. Stuff like that."

Weird looked dazed. "Which tells you what?" Alex asked.

"Lots of things. If it's a chip, what type of surface it came from. With car paint, we analyze the different layers and we've got a database we can refer to and discover the make, model and year of manufacture. With droplets, we can do pretty much the same, though of course we don't get the surface details because the paint was never stuck to a surface."

"How long is all of this going to take?" Weird asked. "Only, we're kind of up against it, time-wise."

"I'll be doing it in my own time. A couple of days? I'll be as quick as I can. But I don't want to do anything less than the best possible job. If you're right about this, we could all end up in court testifying about it, and I'm not taking any shortcuts. I'm also going to give you a receipt to say I got these samples from you, just in case anybody tries to say otherwise somewhere down the line."

"Thanks, Jason," Lynn said. "I owe you."

He grinned. "I do like that in a woman."