But he was unsatisfied, and went down into the bowels of the Yard to find the file that was stored there.

There was nothing more of interest in the folder—during their conversation, Cummins had given him a thorough summary of all the details. All the same, Rutledge sat there, studying the face of Harvey Wheeler in the photograph attached to the file.

What sort of person had he been in life? The dead eyes told Rutledge very little beyond their color, and there was nothing in the face to indicate greed or kindness, passion or cruelty, honesty or slyness. All expression had been smoothed away.

And yet there were details, if one looked closely. The eyes were wide set, the jawline firm, the nose straight, the ears well shaped. A pleasing face, structurally.

Hamish said, “Ye canna’ be sure, but dress him well, and he’d pass for a gentleman.”

And that would be useful, if the man had set out to swindle women of their life savings. The appearance of trustworthiness, at least, if nothing else.

The police in Kirkwall and in Edinburgh had identified the likeness as Wheeler’s. But what if they were wrong? They hadn’t seen the man for several years, after all.

Hamish said, “Ye ken, two constabularies canna’ be wrong.”

Yes, and that was the assumption that everyone had made: they couldn’t be wrong.

What if Wheeler, after his second brush with the police in Edinburgh, had turned himself around and lived an exemplary life thereafter? It was not likely, given his predilection for finding himself in trouble. But stranger things had happened. Men sometimes married a woman for whom they were willing and even eager to change. Or had a child, for whom a man would rethink his past and decide that being a proper father was worth the effort it entailed to transform himself into a hardworking, honest citizen. Even an encounter with the church could make a difference sometimes.

Or quite simply, Harvey Wheeler might have fallen under the wheels of a lorry or taken ill of pneumonia and died in a charity ward, an unknown consigned to a pauper’s grave.

“Aye, but he died on yon Sacrifice Stone.”

But what if he hadn’t?

Still, Chief Inspector Cummins was a seasoned and clever policeman. If he had found no trace of Wheeler, then possibly there was none to be found.

“Verra’ like yon inquiry in Hastings.”

Rutledge tried to ignore the comment.

If the dead man wasn’t Wheeler, it would mean starting the inquiry at the very beginning—so many years after the fact. With witness memories uncertain, with evidence tainted or lost, with no assurance that any resulting conviction would be any more correct than the initial one, person or persons unknown.

Cummins had been obsessed because the answers were out of his reach. It was the blot on his copybook, a personal failure that he couldn’t quite accept.