At 9.23 a.m. Finlay’s phone rang, and he answered it with a yawn: ‘Shaw.’
‘Good morning, this is Owen Whitacre from The National Archives. I apologise for the length of time it took to—’
Finlay waved at Wolf to catch his attention.
‘Have you got a name for us?’
‘As a matter of fact, I do. I am faxing over a copy of the certificate to you as we speak, but I thought I should probably contact you directly considering … well, considering what we found.’
‘What you found?’
‘Yes. Vijay Rana was born Vijay Khalid.’
‘Khalid?’
‘So we checked, and he has one sibling listed, a younger brother: Naguib Khalid.’
‘Shiatsu.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Nothing. Thanks,’ said Finlay before hanging up.
Within minutes, Simmons had assigned three additional officers to assist Wolf and Finlay delve into Rana’s hidden past. They isolated themselves in the meeting room, away from the noise and distractions of the main office, and set to work. They still had fourteen and a half hours to find him.
They still had time.
Edmunds’ neck was killing him after a night spent on his inconceivably uncomfortable sofa. He had returned home, to his ex-local authority maisonette, at 8.10 p.m. the evening before to find Tia’s mother washing up in the kitchen. He had completely forgotten about the arrangement. She greeted him with her usual warmth and wrapped two bubble-covered hands around him, standing on tiptoes just to reach his chest. Tia, on the other hand, had been far less forgiving. Sensing the tense atmosphere, her mother made her excuses and left as quickly as was polite to do so.
‘This has been arranged for more than a fortnight,’ said Tia.
‘I got held up at work. I’m sorry I missed dinner.’
‘You were supposed to pick up dessert, remember? I had to cobble together one of my trifles.’
He was suddenly a little less sorry that he had missed it.
‘Oh no,’ he said, sounding convincingly disappointed. ‘You should have saved me some.’
‘I did.’
Damn.
‘Is this what life’s going to be like from now on? You skipping dinners, turning up at all times with your nails all painted up?’
Edmunds picked self-consciously at the flaking purple varnish.
‘It’s half eight, T. Not exactly “all times”.’
‘So it’ll be worse then, will it?’
‘Perhaps it will. This is my job now,’ Edmunds snapped.
‘Which is why I never wanted you to move from Fraud,’ said Tia, her voice rising.
‘But I did!’
‘You can’t be this selfish when you’re a father!’
‘Selfish?’ shouted Edmunds in disbelief. ‘I’m out there earning the money for us to survive! What else are we going to live off? Your hairdressing wage?’
He regretted the spiteful retort immediately, but the damage had already been done. Tia stormed up the stairs and slammed the bedroom door behind her. He had hoped to apologise in the morning but left for work before she had even woken up, making a mental note to buy some flowers on the way home.
He met with Baxter first thing, hoping that she would not notice that he was wearing the same shirt from the day before (the others were hanging, freshly ironed, behind the locked bedroom door) or that he could not turn his head to the right. While she was busy contacting orthopaedic surgeons and physiotherapists regarding the reconstructed leg, he had been instructed to find out as much as possible about the plain silver ring.
He searched on his phone for the nearest reputable jewellers and set off, on foot, towards Victoria. When he arrived, the camp salesman was delighted to be of assistance, obviously revelling in the drama of it all. He led Edmunds through to a back room where the relaxed and elegant illusion projected by the front of house was dropped in favour of imposing safes, grubby tools, polishing equipment and feeds from over a dozen hidden cameras, surveying each and every one of the reinforced glass cabinets.
A pasty, scruffy man, hidden out of sight like a leper from the easily intimidated upper-class clientele, took the ring over to his workstation and examined the inner band through a magnifying glass.
‘Highest-quality platinum, hallmarked by the Edinburgh Assay Office, made in 2003 by someone going by the initials TSI. You can check with them to find out who that mark belongs to.’
‘Wow. Thank you. That’s all incredibly helpful,’ said Edmunds, making notes, astounded that the man had gained so much from the seemingly meaningless symbols. ‘Any idea what a ring like this would sell for?’
The man placed the chunky ring on a set of scales and then produced a dog-eared catalogue from the bottom of one of his drawers.
‘It’s not a designer brand, which would keep the cost down a little, but we’ve got similar rings marked up at around the three grand mark.’
‘Three thousand pounds?’ Edmunds confirmed. He was momentarily reminded of his argument with Tia the evening before. ‘That gives us an indication of our victim’s social class, at least.’
‘It tells you a lot more than that,’ said the man confidently. ‘This has to be one of the most boring rings that I have ever seen. It has virtually no artistic merit whatsoever. It is the jewellery equivalent of walking about with a fistful of fifty-pound notes: pretentious materialism. All show, no substance.’
‘You should come and work for us,’ said Edmunds in jest.
‘Nah,’ replied the man, ‘doesn’t pay enough.’
By lunchtime Baxter had phoned over forty hospitals. She had excitedly emailed copies of the X-ray and a photograph of the resultant scar when one surgeon confidently claimed responsibility for the limb-saving operation; disappointingly, just five minutes later, he had called back to say he would never have left such horrendous scarring and could be of no further assistance. Without a date or serial number her information was simply too vague.
She watched Wolf in the meeting room. He was also on the phone, working frantically with his team to locate Rana. She still had not even acknowledged the fact that his name had featured on the killer’s list, perhaps because she was not sure how he expected her to react. Now, more than ever, she had absolutely no idea what they were to each other.