The Stone Wife

6

‘Someone has to go undercover,’ Diamond said as they headed north to join the motorway.

‘You said.’ Halliwell took a glance in the mirror as if he needed to check who was following. Out of favour for challenging the idea when the boss had first put it to the team, he had no wish to be drawn into an argument that could last the rest of the journey.

‘It’s bloody obvious.’

‘If you say so.’ There’s no escape when you’re at the wheel and your passenger wants to thrust his opinion on you.

But the force of the last utterance struck home. Bloody obvious? Was it possible Diamond wanted him to be the fall guy?

‘I see it as an opportunity,’ Diamond said. ‘If I wasn’t running the show, I’d take it on myself. Somebody has to.’

Halliwell stared at the road ahead. He knew better than to show a scintilla of interest after such a statement.

Then Diamond surprised him by saying, ‘I’ve had an offer already.’

‘Oh?’

‘Not my number one choice.’

‘You don’t say?’ The response sounded feeble even to the man who made it.

‘I might as well tell you. Young Gilbert.’

‘Good lad.’

‘Up to a point, but…’

A long pause. Clearly Diamond wasn’t going to complete the statement. He could play this game for as long as both men were strapped into their car seats. The pressure on Halliwell was unrelenting.

‘But what?’

‘It’s not a risk I’m willing to take,’ Diamond said. ‘However…’

Halliwell waited yet again, flogging his brain for cast-iron reasons to reject what was coming.

‘… he did make one telling point. He’s not known to the local godfathers.’

‘Very true.’ This could be a lifeline. ‘You and I have tangled with too many of them, guv. We’d never get away with it.’

‘Not in a million years.’

Mightily relieved that he seemed to be off the hook, Halliwell asked, ‘Who were you thinking of — John? He’s more of a backroom man.’

‘Leaman? Too inflexible. He has qualities, certainly. Great in the office beavering away, but I can’t see him rubbing shoulders with crooks.’

‘Ingeborg?’

This time Diamond’s silence was as good as a nod.

‘She’s the only one I can think of,’ Halliwell said with more confidence. ‘More streetwise than Leaman, for sure.’

‘But she hasn’t volunteered. I was hoping she might. I’m not going to pressgang anyone into something as dangerous as this.’

‘She’s bright enough to carry it off,’ Halliwell said. ‘I don’t think she’s known to any of the mob. The only one she met was Soldier Nuttall and we put him away last year.’

‘What’s going on in her life these days? Is she in a relationship?’

‘If she is, she hasn’t spoken about it. Blokes come and go, I think. She lives alone, doesn’t she?’

‘A year ago, she would have been the first to volunteer. She’s more cagey since she got to sergeant. Doesn’t need to impress, I suppose.’

‘I can sound her out if you like,’ Halliwell said. ‘See what’s holding her back.’

‘Would you?’

They ignored the first sign on the M4. Driving anywhere near the centre of Reading is enough to reduce even long-serving policemen to quivering wrecks. Five miles further along the motorway, just when you think you’ve overshot, the next exit brings you without much hassle to the campus at Whiteknights Park, southeast of the town. It wasn’t long before they were seated in the office of the lecturer put up by the university as the colleague Gildersleeve had known best.

‘Unfortunate name,’ Diamond commented to Halliwell while they waited for Dr. Poke to finish a seminar.

‘I’ve heard worse.’

‘There was a story at police college about a new instructor on his first day. The old hands on the staff had already looked at the intake and handpicked his class to embarrass him when he first called the register. As far as I remember, it went Adcock, Allcock, Badcock, Balls. At that point he lost control and fled the room.’

Diamond had barely finished the story when Dr. Poke entered his office, a short man with a shock of fine, flame-red hair in a bouffant extravagance. ‘Don’t get up, gentlemen,’ he said in a voice that could only be described as precious. ‘I’m Archie Poke. I gather you’re here to enquire about the unfortunate John Gildersleeve, late of this parish.’

Diamond wasn’t new to academics. There were plenty in Bath. In their own surroundings their status gave them an air of importance not easily blown away — and their desire to impress could be useful when you wanted inside information. He identified himself and Halliwell. ‘The professor was a close colleague of yours, I was told.’

‘Depends what you mean by close,’ Poke said with a sharp glance. ‘We had adjoining offices with the same entrance, but that wasn’t our doing. They removed his name from the door only this morning. All his things are still in there.’

‘We’ll look inside presently, in that case. Is this the Chaucer suite, then? Are you another expert?’

‘Not to the extent Gildersleeve was. The Anglo-Saxon language is my specialty, but I do some lecturing in Middle English to take up the slack in the timetable.’ He made it sound like slumming.

‘Did you know about his trip to Bath for the auction?’

‘Everyone in the senior common room knew. He made no secret of his ambition to — how shall I put it? — possess the Wife of Bath.’ There was a twitch of the lips in case the visitors had missed the innuendo.

‘Put it any way you like,’ Diamond said. ‘Was he bidding on behalf of the university? Do you have a museum here?’

Poke raked a hand through the spectacular hair. ‘I’m not Gildersleeve’s spokesman, you know. I was asked to meet you because I saw more of him than anyone else. From all I can gather, his interest was entirely selfish. Quite where he intended to keep the lady he coveted so much, he didn’t ever say. She’s substantial, I was told.’

‘He’d have a job carrying her upstairs. So he was bidding with his own money?’

‘His wife’s, more likely. She’s comfortably well off. I can’t imagine any bank would have given him a loan.’

‘Is there any way he could have sold the carving on? He’d bid twenty-four thousand when the gunmen arrived.’

Each time Poke shook his head, the locks sprang out like solar flares. ‘I don’t think he had the slightest intention of making a profit. Owning her was the prize. From the way he was boring us all with his raptures about the wretched thing, he would have bought her at any price.’

‘What exactly was he saying?’

‘How miraculous it was that this amazing relic had been sitting in a small town museum for donkey’s years and no one had appreciated its importance. You’d think it was Tutankhamun’s tomb.’

‘But it wasn’t his discovery, was it?’

Dr. Poke laughed. ‘You’re right. The credit for that went to some sharp-eyed fellow who was working at the museum and is probably blissfully unaware of the curse of the Wife of Bath.’

‘The what?’ Diamond felt a creeping sensation down his spine.

‘Do I have to explain everything? A clumsy attempt at wit. Another allusion to Tutankhamun.’

‘Okay.’ Mostly reassured, Diamond said, ‘I still can’t understand why this lump of stone was so important to him.’

‘Possibly he knew something the rest of us didn’t.’

‘Such as?’

‘A connection to Chaucer himself. It’s old enough.’

‘Is there any chance of that?’

This was greeted with an indrawn, cynical laugh. ‘I can’t imagine how one would find out after so long.’

‘What sort of connection?’

Dr. Poke gave a shrug. Having raised this hare, he didn’t want to run with it.

Diamond refused to let it rest. ‘Is much known about Chaucer’s life?’

‘Considerably more than we know about Shakespeare’s. He had a public profile. Diplomat, justice of the peace, customs officer, member of parliament, clerk of the king’s works. The poetry was only a sideline. I can’t help wondering how he fitted in the time.’

‘When did he write The Canterbury Tales?’

‘Towards the end of his life. It was a hugely ambitious project that was not even a quarter finished when he died in 1400. He makes clear in the prologue that each of the pilgrims was to tell four tales, two on the journey to Canterbury and two on the return, making about a hundred and twenty in all.’

‘How many did he write?’

‘Twenty-odd that we know about — and some of those are incomplete. The tales we have aren’t even in Chaucer’s hand. Nothing has survived that shows us how he worked. They are all copies by fifteenth-century scribes, up to eighty of them, but it’s generally agreed that two manuscripts are the earliest and most reliable, one now in the National Library of Wales and the other in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.’

‘Professor Gildersleeve was an expert on all this?’

‘No question of that. He’d written some of the standard commentaries. I expect he visualised the Wife of Bath gracing the cover of his next volume.’

‘She’s no Gwyneth Paltrow.’

Light-hearted comments from anyone else passed Dr. Poke by. ‘But the finding of this unknown likeness would guarantee good publicity, especially as it seems to have been carved in the fourteenth century. The international press make hay with a story like this. Hardly a year passes without some report of a new Shakespeare play or an undiscovered portrait of Jane Austen. Why shouldn’t the father of English poetry get his share of the limelight?’

‘Why shouldn’t Professor Gildersleeve?’

Dr. Poke got the gist of that remark and appreciated it with a scythe-like smile. He wasn’t without envy.

‘So you seriously believe it was a sound investment for him?’

‘He acted as if it was. As you just pointed out, he was willing to put up twenty-four thousand of his wife’s money.’

‘Were they very well off?’

‘Monica came into millions when she divorced. I thought you’d met her. She travelled to Bath to identify him.’

Halliwell cleared his throat. ‘I should have told you, guv. She was at the mortuary first thing this morning, doing the ID before the autopsy.’

Diamond’s eyes rolled upwards. The drive from Bath had been a perfect opportunity to mention this. He wondered if Halliwell was losing his grip. He’d never known him so silent. ‘Did you speak to her?’

‘No, guv. She’d come and gone.’

‘A resourceful woman,’ Dr. Poke said. ‘Her second marriage. John’s first.’

‘How long were they together?’

Dr. Poke said primly, ‘Only the lady herself could tell you and I doubt whether she will.’

‘Why?’

‘They had what used to be known as an adulterous relationship for some time — I would say at least two years — before she obtained her divorce. They only tied the knot last autumn.’

‘We’ll need to speak to her.’

‘That shouldn’t be a problem. She’s staying in Bath with her sister, getting over the shock. It sounds as if you have her contact details.’

A glance towards Halliwell confirmed this much. ‘I presume Monica will tell us why the professor put such a high value on the carving.’

‘I wouldn’t count on it.’

‘If it was her money he was bidding with, she must have wanted a say in the deal.’

Poke released a long sigh, as if in despair at how little these so-called detectives knew. ‘It was a trifling amount to Monica. She brought a fortune to the marriage. Her ex is a property developer who floated his company on the stock exchange and trousered millions. She made sure she got her legal entitlement when they divorced.’

The high bidding at the auction was more understandable now. ‘Have you spoken to Monica since the shooting?’

‘I sent a sympathy card.’ Said without any sympathy at all.

‘Is her ex-husband still about?’

‘Bernie Wefers? He’s everywhere.’

Diamond blinked at that.

Poke said, as if to a dull first-year unlikely to make it to the second, ‘You see his name on boards all over the south of England. He’s been scarring the green belt with his affordable housing for years.’

Diamond recalled seeing the surname.

‘Was the professor popular with his colleagues here?’

‘Popularity isn’t a concept we’re familiar with. The faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Science is not a working man’s social club. We’re academics. He wasn’t overtly disliked, if that’s what you’re asking.’

‘Eccentric?’

‘Come now, we’re not all like that. I’d call him colourless.’

‘But capable of excitement?’

‘Admittedly, going by what happened at the auction, but it didn’t manifest itself in his professional life. It was obvious to all of us that the prospect of acquiring the Wife of Bath lit some kind of fuse. I’ve seen it with other people. A cloistered existence can be very dull. We need the occasional pick-me-up.’

‘Was he sure the piece was genuine?’

‘Supremely confident. They’re reputable auctioneers, aren’t they? And he wasn’t the only one prepared to bid high.’ He hesitated. ‘Don’t tell me it’s actually a fake. That would turn a tragedy into a fiasco.’

‘It’s real,’ Diamond said. ‘I tripped over the damn thing in my office yesterday and you can take it from me it isn’t polystyrene. It’s solid Bath stone.’

‘Fitting.’

‘Why?’

‘The Wife of Bath in Bath stone.’ From the look Dr. Poke gave Diamond, this conversation had become a pain.

‘Got you,’ Diamond said, unperturbed. ‘Let’s explore that. We know Chaucer got around a bit. Did he ever live in the West Country?’

‘He may have done, but it’s far from certain. I can’t give chapter and verse without checking the textbooks.’

‘Let’s do it now. There’ll be some in the professor’s office, won’t there? You said you’d show us.’

‘Did not,’ Poke said. ‘You announced that you’d be taking a look. It’s not for me to invite you into a colleague’s office, even if he’s dead.’

‘I can’t be bothered with the niceties. We’re on an investigation.’

The office next door was similar in layout to Poke’s, but with more evidence of its user, with poster-size maps of medieval Britain and Europe and behind the desk a small framed print of a figure on horseback reproduced from some medieval manuscript.

‘Geoffrey Chaucer,’ Poke said with a flick of the coiffure. ‘The Ellesmere portrait, from the manuscript I mentioned, now in California.’

‘Either the horses were small in those days or the artists were piss-poor at proportion,’ Diamond said. ‘This is like the poor old nag in the Wife of Bath sculpture, no bigger than a large dog.’

‘A miniature pony?’ Halliwell suggested.

‘The figure of the poet is exaggerated to give him status,’ Poke said. ‘It’s a good likeness.’

‘How do you know? You didn’t meet him.’

Dr. Poke was unamused. He reserved his smiles for his own wit. ‘It’s one of several portraits in existence. The National Portrait Gallery has another, an oil painting on a panel, a standing figure, without the horse, and there are at least two others in manuscripts.’

Diamond stepped closer to the picture. Chaucer was wearing some kind of head dress. Sharp brown eyes, a straight nose with a strong bridge and a moustache and beard trimmed at the edges to leave the side of his face clear of whiskers. A modern face, intelligent and with a sense of destiny. If you want to know more about me, the poet seemed to be saying, you’ll have to work harder than this. I don’t give up my secrets easily.

‘I can assure you, gentlemen,’ Poke added, ‘that John Gildersleeve knew what Chaucer looked like. He was the leading authority in this country and probably the world on portraits of the poet. A few years ago he was asked by the National Portrait Gallery to authenticate a newly discovered drawing said to have been of Chaucer. They were proposing to buy it for some ridiculous amount. He was able to demonstrate that it was of the poet’s son, Thomas, and thus saved the gallery a great deal of money.’

‘I hope they rewarded him.’

‘I’ve no idea. He didn’t discuss it with me, but the story was in the national press. The man trying to sell the drawing had some hard things to say. His own reputation as an art dealer was seriously dented.’

‘I’m surprised Professor Gildersleeve didn’t discuss it with you. You obviously know about these things.’

‘We only spoke when it was absolutely necessary.’

The notion of these two academics obliged to work closely together, yet unwilling to communicate, was puzzling Diamond. Pure chemistry — or had there been some issue between them?

Halliwell said in an awed tone from in front of a wall of books, ‘Do you think the professor read all of these?’

‘Some people still possess books,’ Dr. Poke said. His own collection was pathetic by comparison. ‘Others store them electronically.’

‘And others nick them from the library,’ Diamond said, taking one down and confirming what he’d suspected from the lettering on the spine by opening it at a date-sheet headed Reading Public Library. It was a life of Chaucer by an American. He thumbed through the pages and found a chronology of the significant events in Chaucer’s life. ‘This may be helpful.’ But presently he said, ‘Three pages of dates and places and not a mention of the West Country.’

‘We can’t expect to strike gold the first time,’ Halliwell said.

‘How true,’ Poke said. He selected a book and turned to the index with obvious confidence of finding what he was looking for.

Diamond went over to the desk and switched on the computer. He was no expert, but he knew the basics these days and after the condescending remark about e-books he intended to demonstrate that he wasn’t out of the Stone Age.

‘Should you be doing that?’ Poke asked. ‘It seems disrespectful.’

‘He isn’t going to object,’ Diamond said. ‘We’ll be taking it with us, anyway.’

He accessed the emails. A check of the inbox revealed little of interest. It seemed to be monopolised by online booksellers.

‘Found it,’ Poke said, looking up from the book in his hand. ‘Towards the end of his life Chaucer was named as deputy forester of Petherton Park in Somerset.’

‘Forester?’

‘Deputy. I expect it was a sinecure,’ Poke said. ‘A way of thanking him for services rendered to the king. He completed diplomatic missions to France and Italy and he was a senior civil servant, the clerk of the king’s works, with responsibility for the construction and repair of numerous buildings, including all the royal palaces.’

‘The Bernie Wefers of his day.’

Poke wasn’t amused. ‘Hardly. In case you were wondering, I doubt very much whether the clerk of the king’s works practised tree surgery as well.’ He raised a finger. ‘It’s come back to me now. Some years ago, John Gildersleeve spent a whole summer down there under canvas with a group of students on an abortive excavation of a house said to have been owned by Chaucer.’

‘Abortive?’

‘They found absolutely nothing. He became a laughing stock. I doubt if he ever got over it.’

‘This might explain why he got so excited when the Wife of Bath came up for sale.’

‘A vindication of his wasted summer?’ Poke said. ‘That’s not outside the realms of possibility.’

‘Have you heard of Petherton Park?’ Diamond asked Halliwell. ‘I’m damned if I have.’

‘There’s a small town called North Petherton on the A38, south of Bridgwater.’

‘The same place, but there’s no certainty Chaucer ever went there,’ Poke said with a clear desire to undermine them as well as his former colleague. ‘He was living in London at the end of his life.’

Diamond ignored him and spoke to Halliwell. ‘How far south of Bridgwater?’

‘Only two or three miles. Strange that the Wife of Bath should end up in the museum there.’

‘Correction,’ Diamond said. ‘She ended up in my office.’

‘There’s something else about the place,’ Poke said, pressing a hand to his forehead. ‘Something far more interesting. It’ll come to me presently.’

‘Petherton Park?’

‘North Petherton. I’m trying to think. It has associations with Anglo-Saxon studies. Would it be the church, I wonder? No, I have it now.’ He clasped his hands in triumph. ‘North Petherton is where one of the great Anglo-Saxon treasures was found — the Alfred Jewel, a spectacular piece from the ninth century, unearthed by a ploughman over three hundred years ago, filigreed gold enclosing a highly polished piece of clear rock crystal, now in the Ashmolean at Oxford. The lettering round the side provides evidence that it was made for King Alfred.’

‘All I know about Alfred is that he burnt the cakes.’

Dr. Poke’s tongue clicked in contempt. ‘Supposedly at Athelney, where he took refuge from the Vikings. Such stories must be treated with reserve. However, Athelney is a mere four miles from North Petherton. This is my period. I can tell you a lot about Alfred.’

‘We’ll pass on that, unless it ties in with Chaucer,’ Diamond said.

‘Hardly. Chaucer came five hundred years later.’

Halliwell spoke up. ‘Well, what if the jewel was presented to Chaucer in thanks for all the services he performed for the king? It may have been a gift from the royal family.’

‘And then he loses the thing?’ Diamond said. ‘Unlikely. I think we can safely forget about the Alfred Jewel. I’m interested in the link with Chaucer. It’s safe to say Professor Gildersleeve thought there was good evidence, even if he failed to find it.’

‘We can make a search online,’ Halliwell said.

Seated in front of the computer, Diamond could hardly refuse. Never comfortable with technology, he grasped the mouse and stared at the screen.

Halliwell said, ‘It’s one of the icons at the bottom.’

‘I know, I know.’ He found the Google icon and typed in PETHERTON PARK.

‘Put in Chaucer’s name while you’re at it,’ Dr. Poke said. ‘See what you get.’

Up came a welter of results. The one that caught Diamond’s attention was towards the bottom of the screen. In bold blue letters: CHAUCER CLOSE, NORTH PETHERTON.

‘Promising.’

The other two moved to his side to look. He pointed to the name and immediately the list of websites was replaced by an estate agent’s website with a list of houses.

‘How did that happen?’

‘It’s touch-sensitive,’ Poke said.

‘You see?’ Halliwell touched the screen and restored the list of hits. ‘But this is good news. North Petherton must be the right place.’

‘I wouldn’t get too excited. We’ve got a Chaucer Close in Reading,’ Poke said.

‘There’s a Chaucer Road in Bath,’ Diamond said.

Halliwell leaned over Diamond and brought up a map that showed the location of North Petherton. ‘Well, I wasn’t wrong about where it is, just down the road from Bridgwater.’

‘I saw another hit mentioning Petherton Park,’ Diamond said.

They returned to it and Halliwell was proved correct. Petherton Park, North Petherton, was, indeed, a one-time forest, and Geoffrey Chaucer had been the deputy forester from 1391. After his death in 1400, his son, Thomas, had succeeded him with the title of forester and had lived in the Park House in Park House Field, currently known as Parker’s Field.

‘This is getting better,’ Diamond said. ‘We have a house.’ He was starting to enjoy the hunt for evidence. He could even see some pleasure in using the internet.

‘It tells us the son lived there,’ Poke said, ‘not necessarily the father.’

‘But we now know that being the forester was more than — what was your word?’

‘A sinecure.’

‘Yes, Thomas Chaucer must have taken the job seriously, so why shouldn’t his father have lived in Petherton Park before him? Nothing says he did, but nothing says he didn’t. And if there was a house, it wouldn’t be remarkable if somewhere in the structure they commemorated The Canterbury Tales with a piece of sculpture. Does Park House still exist?’

‘You’re an optimist,’ Poke said. ‘Just as poor Gildersleeve was.’

Notes from a website called British History Online revealed that Park House had been in place as early as 1336 and may have been renamed The Lodge about 1400. Most of it was dismantled during Queen Elizabeth’s reign.

‘Pieces may have been preserved,’ Halliwell said, ‘particularly anything associated with Chaucer himself.’

‘All of this is tenuous, to say the least,’ Poke said.

Diamond nodded. ‘But at the end of the day, I have a chunk of masonry in my office that no one disputes is the Wife of Bath. And she must have come from somewhere.’

With the computer and other items from Professor Gildersleeve’s office stacked into the boot of Halliwell’s car, the two detectives drove home. They agreed on one thing: Dr. Poke was a jealous man as well as a pompous twit.

‘He thought he should have been the professor,’ Halliwell said.

‘With Gildersleeve dead, he may get his wish,’ Diamond said. ‘But in case you’re about to say it gives him a motive for murder, let’s keep a grip on what really happened. The professor was shot because he tried to take on the hold-up men. Everyone who was there agrees on that. The mystery is why he was so possessive about the Wife of Bath.’

‘And who hired the robbers.’

‘Exactly. I can’t picture Dr. Poke staging a hold-up himself, even if he thought it would upset his rival to this extent.’

‘He’d be obvious, with a voice like his, and that hair.’

‘They were wearing balaclavas, remember.’

‘Well, he isn’t the gun-toting type,’ Halliwell said.

‘Agreed. But I didn’t ask him where he was on the day of the auction. Slipped up, there.’

‘I wouldn’t lose any sleep over that, guv.’

‘One thing he said gave me a bit of a turn. About the curse of the Wife of Bath. I’m sharing an office with her.’

‘He was on about Tutankhamun’s curse, the old story about people dying during the excavations, supposedly because they disturbed the tomb. Load of balls dreamed up to sell newspapers.’

They checked in at the incident room at the end of the afternoon and found an email printout from the CSI team. Diamond read it, frowning, and jerked back in disbelief.

‘Something the matter?’ Halliwell asked.

He handed the paper across. ‘The bullet that killed the professor was more than fifty years old. It was a thirty-eight calibre designed to be used with a Webley Mark IV revolver.’

Halliwell looked it through. ‘That’s a name from the past. Webley. The army were using them as standard sidearms in the war.’

‘Both wars.’

‘Long time ago. It says here the Mark IV remained in service until 1963.’

‘When sexual intercourse began.’

From Halliwell’s dropjaw reaction, it was obvious he missed the reference.

In a lofty tone, Diamond said, ‘The Larkin poem. Do I have to quote the lines? And you thought I was just a Chaucer expert.’

Halliwell was lost for words.

‘Don’t look like that. Let’s stay with guns. You’re going to ask me how they can tell it was fired from a Webley and not some other weapon.’

Now Halliwell grinned. ‘No I’m not. It’s the striations.’

Diamond was impressed. He knew the basics, but he had never bothered much with the terminology.

‘The grooves on the side of the bullet,’ Halliwell went on. ‘All the makes have their own pattern so that when the bullet passes through the barrel it gets marked. You’ll find six grooves when it was fired from a Colt and seven with a Webley. A Colt has a left-hand twist and a Webley a right. Now, a BrowningБ’

‘Enough said,’ Diamond interrupted the lecture. ‘It was a Webley. If ballistics are convinced, so am I. My point was that this is an out-of-date weapon.’

Halliwell nodded. ‘But it doesn’t have to be the latest model. If it works, it can kill. Obviously this one did. In a way it’s fitting that an obsolete firearm was used at an antiques auction. At least it wasn’t a duelling pistol.’

‘Does it tell us anything about the hitmen?’

‘Only that they didn’t have state-of-the-art guns.’

‘Cut-price hitmen.’

‘They messed up badly, that’s true.’

‘The email goes on about making a check of the records. It’s not going to be a licensed gun, is it?’

‘Definitely not,’ Halliwell said. ‘But there are still plenty of old Webleys knocking around. Thousands of servicemen never handed them in. I expect what they mean is that they’re comparing the, um’ — pause for a smile — ‘striations with ammunition recovered from other firearms incidents. We may discover the gun was fired in some other raid.’

‘We could use some help like that. But let’s not get our hopes up. It may have been sitting in someone’s sock drawer since 1963.’