He looked down at the back of the group portrait and saw a smaller rectangle face down against it. The smaller photograph was older than the big portrait and bore the yellow discolouration of time.

Both photographs had the same single word written on their backs.

Family.

The word on the large picture was in an adult hand and the word on the smaller photograph was a child’s handwriting.

Cole took a pair of latex gloves from the box and snapped them on to his hands.

He took the edges of the old photograph between his index fingers and thumbs and turned it over.

It was a picture of a mother and her newborn baby.

129

2.08 pm

Clay stood at the back wall of Interview Suite 1, staring at Edgar McKee as he fidgeted on the seat next to his solicitor.

Hendricks faced him across the table and slid two pieces of paper from an A4 envelope. He placed the top sheet in front of McKee and asked, ‘Do you know what that is, Mr McKee?’

‘I suggest you look at it, Mr McKee,’ said his solicitor.

McKee looked down.

‘Answer the question. What is it?’ Clay served from the back line.

‘It’s a DNA profile, a series of broad and narrow bands.’

‘Do you know whose DNA it is?’ asked Hendricks.

‘No.’

‘It’s Annie Boyd’s. It was taken from a hair follicle found on a brush in her bedroom. It was found after her body had been dumped on the mud at the bottom of the River Mersey. It was found after her parents had been told that their daughter’s corpse had been discovered. Look at that picture very closely, look at the bands, look at the narrow bands, look at the broad bands, look at the spacing between them. It’s a genetic fingerprint. It’s what Annie Boyd was made of.’

Clay watched Hendricks sitting back and Edgar McKee staring down at Annie Boyd’s DNA profile. He placed the second sheet next to the first one.

‘Compare and contrast, Mr McKee. Not that there’s anything to contrast.’

McKee’s solicitor looked closely at the profiles and looked up at Hendricks. He whispered in McKee’s ear and, after a few moments of deeply troubled thought, McKee nodded.

‘Remember what we agreed, Mr McKee?’

Clay walked to the table and sat next to Hendricks.

‘Mr McKee acknowledges that the DNA from the hair follicle found on his hairnet in the abattoir does belong to Annie Boyd. He believes he can explain how this came to be.

‘Mr McKee would like an assurance that his co-operation will be taken into account when it comes to sentencing.’

‘We can convey that to the judiciary,’ said Clay. ‘Look at me. Where is Francesca Christie?’

He looked as if there were a pair of wasps hovering close up to his face, their beating wings brushing against the pupils of his eyeballs.