“Take a look now. Hard to say all this time after the event, but—dark grey? The sort that change with the light, but on the grey-blue spectrum. Definitely not brown. The hair—now pepper and salt, but must once in his youth have been a light brown. He could be Scandinavian or a bloke from Southend-on-Sea.”

“Any wounds?”

“Oh yes. He’s been in the wars, this chap! I mean—actually fighting in wars. Up close, front-line stuff. The Great War? He’s about fifty, I’d say. So he could have taken part at the upper end of the recruitment age in the last one. It’s just possible. A lot of keen blokes in their forties signed up, lying about their age. People turned a blind eye in the early days when the recruitment fever was raging. Nobody wanted to be handed a white feather of cowardice by some busybodying harridan on a street corner. ‘Sir! Why are you walking the streets in civvies? Be a man and join up!’ Even if you were merely being employed as a storekeeper back here in Blighty or over there in Northern France, shoeing horses miles behind the front where you could do no damage, it gave you the right to wear a uniform. And that’s what most men of all ages yearned for: an outward sign of patriotic duty faithfully done.”

“But he’s been wounded, you say?”

“Yes. Here, you see. And here. Well healed. Old ones. But the sort you get in battle, not streetfighting down King Street on a Saturday night. Two bullet wounds, one in each arm. Flesh only penetrated, not bone. He was twice lucky. And this here’s a graze in the flesh over the ribs that looks very like a glancing lunge from—of all things—a British bayonet or a blade with similar profile. Typical battle wound.”

“God, you’re right! Seen enough of those to confirm,” Redfyre muttered. “Sharp cutting weapon, anyway. Couldn’t be an assegai, could it? Too early? When were the Zulu wars?”

“1879. Too early for our chap. The first war against the Boers was sixteen years after that—1895. Hardly more than a skirmish, the throwing down of gauntlets. And the big one, the Second Anglo-Boer War, was in the final years of Victoria’s reign. 1899 to 1902 or thereabouts. When did the old lady die? 1901, was it?”

“I believe it was. So, we’re looking at a man who could have fought, certainly not against the Zulu, but against the Boer, either in the first or the second South African war. And/or played some part in the most recent Great War against the Germans.”