“Maybe. I’m not sure.”

“I heard on the radio, they’re sending a patrol to check the apartment. We need to scarper.”

She stared at the items revealed in the secret compartment, picked one of them up, flipped it open.

Atkinson came into the room where Harper was sitting on the bed, still with the metal box open on her lap, the bolt cutters and the broken padlock lying beside her.

“Did you cut that?” said Atkinson, pointing at the lock.

She ignored him. “Did we check Gregor Franks on the police computer?”

“Of course we did. I ran his details myself. He has a clean record, but I don’t see how—”

“Did we check his prints, I meant?”

“The prints from this place matched the ones we took from Franks at the hospital, yes.”

“But did anyone check the prints against the records on the police computer? To see if they matched any unsolved crimes?”

“No, of course not. I just told you, we checked his name and he had a clean record. We’re not investigating Franks, we’re trying to find out who attempted to kill him. Franks is our victim, Jo.”

“He’s a victim, sure,” said Harper, “but whether or not he’s actually who we think he is, that’s another matter.”

She handed over the passport that she’d found in the bottom of the box. The name was right: Gregor Christopher Franks. But the photo was of a different man entirely.

“I don’t understand,” said Atkinson.

“Whoever that man in hospital is,” said Harper, “he’s not Gregor Franks. And look,” she said, indicating the other item lying in the bottom of the box. It looked like a rolled-up handkerchief, edged in blue stitching, a posy of embroidered flowers at one corner. The white cotton was stained with something dark.

“Is that—”

“Yes,” said Harper, “I think it’s blood.”

With a gloved hand, she picked up the handkerchief and unwrapped it. Lying in her palm was a curl of something that looked like tree bark, but on closer inspection had a fingernail. A child’s pinkie finger, brown from age, dried up, mummified, and stored in the bottom of a box as if it were a keepsake.

CHAPTER

34

On a fine summer’s evening, an inhabitant of Unst happened to be walking along the sandy margin of a voe. The moon was risen, and by her light he discerned at some distance before him a number of the sea-people, who were dancing with great vigour on the smooth sand. Near them he saw lying on the ground several seal-skins.

—Thomas Keightley, “The Mermaid Wife,” 1870

The Injured Man

Remembers