On DNA, see Samantha Weinberg, Pointing from the Grave: A True Story of Murder and DNA, London: Hamish Hamilton, 2003; P. Gill, P. L. Ivanov, C. Kimpton, R. Piercy, N. Benson, G. Tully, I. Evett, E. Hagelberg, K. Sullivan, ‘Identification of the remains of the Romanov family by DNA analysis’, Nature Genetics, 6(2), February 1994, pp. 130–5.

On the tarot, see Will Adcock, Andy Baggott, Staci Mendoza and David Bourne, How to Predict the Future, London: Hermes House, 2003, and on the Sabian symbols and Dane Rudhyar, see www.zodiacal.com.

Tom Davis, ‘ESDA and the analysis of contested interview notes’, Forensic Linguistics 1 (1994), pp. 71–89, contains a detailed description of the working of the ESDA machine and Davis’s ground-breaking use of it.

The quotation on p. 236 is from Milton’s Paradise Lost, 2.891– 4: ‘The secrets of the hoary deep, a dark/Illimitable ocean without bound/Without dimension, where length, breadth, and highth,/And time and place are lost’.

All photographs, unless otherwise credited, are the author’s own.