Jack flicked through the crime scene photos of the explosive Strand underpass robbery from 1984. Joe Pirelli and Terry Miller had been in the back of the van when it burst into flames. Pirelli had been identified from his dental records, as his hands were never found and he couldn’t be printed. Miller was identified from a partial thumb and forefinger print from what remained of his left hand. And “Rawlins,” assumed to have been the driver, was blown sky-high. All forensically identifiable parts of his body were too badly damaged to be of any use. However, a cadaver dog had eventually found a charred left forearm about seven feet from the van, not belonging to either Pirelli or Miller. This arm wore a gold Rolex watch with the inscription TO HARRY—LOVE DOLLY—2/12/62. And so the mangled, unidentifiable third body—missing its head, both legs and one arm—was documented as belonging to Harry Rawlins.

Jack looked at the images showing this mammoth jigsaw puzzle of body parts. He understood why 1980s forensics had identified this man as Harry Rawlins—but the fact remained that Rawlins had been shot to death by his wife several months later, so the third man in the Strand underpass robbery actually remained unidentified. It could be one of a dozen known criminals from the time. It could even be Jimmy Nunn. Jack sighed heavily as he weighed up the possibilities. His birth dad could be in a thousand pieces, wrongly buried in place of Harry Rawlins back in 1984, or he could be hiding out on some paradise island spending stolen money. Maybe even the money from the train robbery. Jack couldn’t decide which discovery would be more disappointing. Then again, neither might be true.

Jack woke at five o’clock in the morning. His body had molded into the shape of his desk chair, so for a good few minutes he had to sit motionless, waiting for the blood to start circulating back into his extremities. Jack stared at his computer screen—once again, he’d spent police time and used the police databases to research his own paternity case. If he was caught, he’d be sacked for gross misconduct, but that seemed to encourage him rather than anything else. He was working smart for the first time in a long time and it made him feel good.

The showers in the station reeked of lemon-scented bleach; the cleaners had been working into the early hours too. Jack watched the mass of shampoo suds slowly spiral down the drain and replayed the events of the previous day in his head. There were two key memories—Tony Fisher’s face being squashed into the blue lino by four prison guards . . . and Ridley asking if he’d found Angela and Julia yet. One memory made him grin with a new-found sadistic thrill; the other made him turn the shower off and race back to his computer.

“Ester Freeman said that Julia Lawson would be in a gutter or a morgue somewhere,” Jack announced to the attentive squad room.