Putting aside her thoughts, and her memories of the previous night, Michelle got down to work. She had a couple of things to do before Graham Marshall’s funeral service that afternoon, including tracking down Jet Harris’s wife and ringing Dr. Cooper. But before she could pick up the telephone, Dr. Cooper rang her.

“Dr. Cooper. I was going to ring you this morning,” said Michelle. “Any news?”

“Sorry it took me so long to get the information you wanted, but I told you Dr. Hilary Wendell’s a tough man to track down.”

“You’ve got something?”

“Hilary has. He won’t commit himself to this absolutely, so he’d be very unwilling to testify if it ever came to a court case.”

“It probably won’t,” said Michelle, “but the information might be useful to me.”

“Well, from careful measurement of the nick on the underside of the rib, he’s made a few projections and he’s pretty certain it’s a military knife of some kind. His money’s on a Fairbairn-Sykes.”

“What’s that?”

“British commando knife. Introduced in 1940. Seven-inch, double-edged blade. Stiletto point.”

“A commando knife?”

“Yes. Is that of any use?”

“It might be,” said Michelle. “Thanks a lot.”

“You’re welcome.”

“And please thank Dr. Wendell from me.”

“Will do.”

A commando knife. In 1965, the war had only been over for twenty years, and plenty of men in their early forties would have fought in it, and had access to such a knife. What worried Michelle most of all, though, was that the only person she knew had served as a Royal Naval Commando was Jet Harris; she remembered it from the brief biography she had read when she first came to Thorpe Wood. He had also been awarded a Distinguished Conduct Medal.

The thought of it sent shivers up her spine: Jet Harris himself, as killer, misdirecting the investigation at every turn, away from Bradford, perhaps because of Fiorino, as Banks had suggested, and away from himself. This was one theory she certainly couldn’t go to Shaw with, or to anyone else in the division, either. Harris was a local hero and she’d need a hell of a lot of hard evidence if she expected anyone to entertain even the remotest suspicion that Jet Harris was a murderer.

After he’d been in about an hour, Banks poked his head out of the interview room door, no doubt looking to see if Shaw was around, then carried one of the books over to Michelle.

“I think that’s him,” he said.

Michelle looked at the photo. The man was in his late twenties, with medium-length brown hair, badly cut, a stocky build, piggy eyes, and a pug nose. His name was Des Wayman, and according to his record he had been in and out of the courts ever since his days as a juvenile car thief, progressing from that to public disorder offenses and GBH. His most recent incarceration, a lenient nine months, was for receiving stolen goods, and he had been out just over a year and a half.