14

Sergeant Ernest ‘Timber’ Woods had let George Valentine bring a bacon sandwich into the records room. They’d worked together in the seventies with Jack Shaw. But Timber was never in their league: he couldn’t catch a cold without uniformed assistance. He’d embraced early retirement and a nice little job to pay for his domino nights at the Institute — he was working the early shift that day: six till noon. West Norfolk had still to secure government funding to transfer all the force records to computer. Anything before 1995 was still on paper. So they needed Woods and the dusty box files which filled the old gunpowder magazines under St James’s — a Grade II listed relic of the barracks which had stood on the spot before the city walls had been demolished to make way for police headquarters.

Valentine had got two hours’ sleep at his desk, his feet up, then he’d gone out to the bus station to get his breakfast. He’d brought Woods a tea and a round of toast and dripping wrapped in silver paper.

‘Missing person, you say?’ asked Woods, pulling himself up from behind the steel desk they’d given him. He was built like an armchair and walked like a fisherman, with a roll of the shoulders.

‘Not my case, Timber, but I think Jack was involved. And Erebus Street — I know that address.’ Valentine

‘It’s got to be the early nineties,’ said Valentine. ‘It’s before I teamed up with Jack — I know that. That was ’94. I’d have been a DI — so that’s after ’91.’

Woods came to a halt. ‘Right — there’s one of these for each year; missing persons in alphabetical order.’ He tapped a printed sheet inside a metal frame holder. ‘Here’s 1990 — then go that way,’ he added, pointing down the room. ‘I’ll eat my toast,’ he said, hobbling away.

Valentine didn’t know if he’d recognize the name. But he liked long shots, especially when he was this tired. It was like gambling, a kind of listless excitement. There was nothing on 1990 — from Brent to Wynch. Or 1991. He was at the bottom of the list for 1992 when he knew his concentration had gone. He pressed two fingers on either side of his nose, and read them again. And there it was: JUDD, N. J.

‘Well, well,’ he said, the adrenaline flooding his bloodstream. ‘Family secrets.’

He found the box file using the code provided. There was a table and chair at the end of the aisle. He set his packet of Silk Cut to one side, the lighter beside it, and opened the file in the box to the first page, a typed sheet with a single line…

Investigating officer: DCI Jack Shaw.

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