He shakes his head. “I don’t think anything. But we do have some bones of a person unknown found in the last known address of a missing person. I’d be thought stupid if I didn’t at least consider it.”

“So, what, you think he’s been, I don’t know, under the bed for twenty-seven years?” I shake my head in disbelief. “With cleaners and rental tenants merrily passing through the building? It’s just not feasible.”

“Well, no,” he concedes, “obviously not under the bed the whole time. Or on top of it . . . But like I said, I don’t think anything.”

“That’s not feasible, either.”

My deliberately caustic tone earns a small lift of the corners of his mouth. “It’s not helpful if we alight on a theory too early. It leads to a fixed mind-set, and then crucial clues can be overlooked.” He raises his shoulders in the smallest of shrugs. “Or so the procedures manual says.” It’s possible that there’s a very dry sense of humor lurking within Detective Laws.

“How long before you know?” I ask abruptly.

He doesn’t have to ask what I mean. “It takes five to seven days to get the DNA results back. Depends on how busy the lab is.” He pauses, and fixes me with those pale eyes. Pale blue, perhaps. It’s hard to tell. “We’ve been told to expect the finger bones to be those of a male, though. It’s not an absolute confirmation, by any means, but men tend to have longer, thicker finger bones.”

“Oh,” I say faintly. I try to think of something else to say, but my head is filled with my father’s skeleton, scattered throughout the rooms of the Manse as if in some kind of macabre Easter egg hunt. I’ve never imagined a version of my father’s life that could have led to that.

Laws eyes me carefully, then goes on diffidently, “There hasn’t been time for any analysis on the skull yet, of course. It will take some time to know if it’s even from the same person.” He looks like he’s waiting for me to say something, but nothing springs to mind. He has smile lines, deep enough for the skin to be even paler within them, etched around eyes that don’t look like they have smiled for a very long time. After a moment he goes on. “And Carrie was the only one here when you found the skull?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do last night?”

I talk him through the evening, or a version of the evening. A version of the evening that has Fiona leaving before any skull can be discovered.

“How much did you have to drink?”