What it all meant Michelle wasn’t too sure, but it looked very much as if Carlo Fiorino had set up the perfect retail distribution chain for his wholesale porn business, and who knew what else besides? Drugs, perhaps? And maybe even some of those advertising cards in the newsagents’ windows weren’t quite so innocent after all.

All this she told to Banks as she drove through a steady drizzle down the A1 to Barnet. As they talked, she kept a keen eye on her rearview mirror. A gray Passat seemed to stay on their tail a bit too long and too close for comfort, but it finally turned off at Welwyn Garden City.

“Bradford must have got Graham involved somehow, through the magazines,” said Banks. “But it didn’t stop there. He must have come to the attention of Fiorino and Mandeville, too. It helps to explain where all that extra money came from.”

“Look, I know he was your friend, Alan, but you have to admit that it looks as if he was up to some unsavory stuff, as if he got greedy.”

“I admit it,” said Banks. “The photo must have been Graham’s insurance. Evidence. He could use it to blackmail Bradford into paying him more money, only he didn’t know what he’d got himself into. Word got back to Fiorino, and he signed Graham’s death warrant.”

“And who carried it out?”

“Bradford, most likely. He didn’t have an alibi. Or Harris. I mean, we can’t rule him out completely. Despite what his ex-wife told you, he could have kept the commando knife, and if he was being threatened with exposure as a homosexual, he might have been driven to kill. Remember, it wouldn’t only have meant his career back then, but jail, and you know how long coppers survive behind bars.”

“Jet Harris searched Graham Marshall’s house personally just after the boy disappeared,” said Michelle.

“Harris did that? Searched the house? How do you know?”

“Mrs. Marshall mentioned it the first time I went to talk to her. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but now…a superintendent conducting a routine search?”

“He must have been after the photo.”

“Then why didn’t he find it?”

“He obviously didn’t look hard enough, did he?” said Banks. “Adolescents are naturally very secretive. Sometimes, by necessity, they have an uncanny knack for hiding things. And at the time, if that photo had been securely Sellotaped to the inside of Graham’s guitar, nobody could know it was there without taking the guitar apart. It was only because the adhesive had dried out and the Sellotape had stiffened over the years that the photo broke free and I found it.”

“I suppose so,” Michelle said. “But does that make Harris a murderer?”

“I don’t know. It’s not proof. But he was in it. Deep.”

“I also rang Ray Scholes this morning,” Michelle said. “Remember, the detective who investigated Donald Bradford’s murder?”

“I remember.”

“It turns out there was a Fairbairn-Sykes knife among Bradford’s possessions.”