Same disclaimer as before

Chapter 2

Late March 2009, London

"My colleague, Stella, fed the fingerprints which we obtained from the document and its folder into the system and was sent directly to your intranet site. That was how we ended up with our noses pressed against your personnel records," explained Boyd. "The items should have been discovered by the forensics team at Scotland Yard, but those boys couldn't wait to dump the dead body on us and so they failed to discover the secret compartment in the dead boy's jacket. We were simply doing our job."

"The person in question is deceased. She died almost three years ago. There is nothing further for you to pursue where she is concerned."

"Really? That's interesting," said Boyd, giving Harry one of his patented Cheshire cat grins. "The work which we do here is sometimes described as 'waking the dead'. Well, it would appear that this time, we have, indeed, woken up the dead." Boyd started to go through the papers on his desk and when he found what he was looking for, he checked the information in the piece of paper which he had fished out before he handed it over to Harry. Boyd thought that Harry's name was familiar.

"You see, Stella was a little bored after she was denied entry into your intranet site, so she started to dig around some more and on a hunch, googled your officer. It would appear that someone with the same name did 'die' about two and a half years ago. There were newspaper reports about some political incident she was involved in. Stella then keyed in her name in the records maintained by the Deaths Registry and she found a hit," said Boyd as he gestured to the piece of paper which Harry was now holding. "But then you already know that don't you, Harry, because apparently you identified the body at the time. The problem is," said Boyd, saving the punch line till last, "the fingerprint records in the Deaths Registry do not match the ones which we found."

Harry's heart skipped a beat. Someone in Section D had slipped up, to put it mildly. When Ruth 'went away', they should have ensured that the records kept by the Deaths Registry matched Ruth's personal records, including her fingerprints and DNA samples. But Malcolm probably assumed that the body which they fished out of the Thames to use as Ruth's decoy had been in the water for so long that the technicians at the mortuary would not bother to obtain any prints or samples. Poor overworked Malcolm. Harry himself had rather assumed that once a body had been positively identified, then the mortuary would not bother to keep any sort of fingerprint records. The Government probably did not have sufficient server or storage space to keep such comprehensive records. Everyone was probably too distraught at the time over Ruth's departure to pay attention to this kind of detail.

Oh god, if it was so easy for this crew to find this mistake, it couldn't have taken some other unfriendly parties very long to figure out the truth about what really happened to Ruth. This little mistake might have cost Ruth her life! Oh Ruth, I'm so so sorry … Harry started to look really miserable. When Connie told him that the Cold Case Squad was sniffing around Ruth's file, he feared the worst. After all this time, could she be actually dead? Harry took a sip of his tea to stave off the nausea which was threatening to erupt from him. He handed the mortuary report back to Boyd.

Boyd saw the look on Harry's face and much as he enjoyed seeing a spook squirm, he thought that he should get on with his grand finale. "Apparently, your 'dead' officer is still very much alive. The fingerprints we collected from the document, and its folder, couldn't have been left there two or three years ago. They are recent prints."

What? What the heck is this man playing at? If I find out that he's been jerking me around, there'd be hell to pay. "Are you sure?"

"Oh yes, we tested the paper to verify this," said Boyd. "The paper was manufactured from pulp produced from trees grown in special forests in Norway or somewhere. You might have heard of those forests. The trees have been genetically modified to grow very quickly, and they are grown specially for the paper industry. The chemical composition of this kind of paper is quite unique. This type of forest is a recent phenomenon, so we're fairly certain that the prints are recent prints."

She's still alive! Harry shifted his weight in his seat and the look on his face improved somewhat. He had no idea how he should react to this information. Just a moment ago, he had feared the worst and now he was told that recent prints of Ruth were found on some document which was carried by an illegal Chinese immigrant. What can this mean?

"Oh, did I mention that the piece of paper contained a lot of gobbledygook? Looks like its been written in some sort of code. We don't have the manpower here to decipher what is in this document, and my guess is you might have someone on your team who will be able to make sense of it and do so quickly. Here's a photocopy of the document in question."

Before Harry took the photocopied document to have a look, several thoughts went through his brain. If Ruth's recent prints were found on these items, which were carried by an illegal Chinese immigrant, and the document contained an encoded message, it could mean that she is not only alive but might be mixed up with the Chinese Secret Service. Oh Ruth, what have you done now? Harry then gave the document a quick once over and looked quite distressed whilst doing so.

"You see, Harry, I'm a just simple policeman, and I accept that there may be aspects of your job which people like me will never understand. I'm not sure if our little discovery might have upset whatever scheme MI5 have put in place."

"It does complicate matters." Harry was not in the habit of discussing MI5 matters with people who were not part of his team, but this sudden discovery had somehow disoriented him. "We lost contact with the officer in question a few years ago …"

Boyd noted that Harry was no longer claiming that the person in question had been dead for some years. He also caught the look in Harry's eyes and immediately understood what it meant. This was an officer who was special to Harry, otherwise it would not have been necessary for someone so senior to appear in his office to enquire after this matter.

"Ruth Evershed was a valued member of my team," Harry began. "She was involved in an operation some years ago at the end of which it was necessary for her to disappear. If it is now known that she has resurfaced in some other part of the world, then yes, it could have certain repercussions for my Section."

"Were you close to this person?" Even though Boyd probably did not have the right to ask this kind of question, he was curious after having witnessed the emotional rollercoaster ride that Harry had gone through a moment ago. Boyd was an experienced policeman and had years of practice in reading people's faces. He felt a little sorry for Harry. "I have some personal experience in having lost a member of my team, who was killed on the job," said Boyd softly.

Boyd remembered how devastated he felt when he lost Mel Silver. Boyd had been a policeman for a long time and had seen his fair share of dead bodies over the years, including those of dead coppers. But nothing had prepared him for the sight of Mel, lying there on the pavement with her skull cracked open and her blood and brain matter splattered all over the place. She had been pushed by a suspect from a high floor in a multi storey apartment block. Boyd was very fond of Mel, in an avuncular sort of way, and took her death very hard. For years thereafter, Boyd refused to acknowledge his grieve and it was a long time before he finally had the courage to pay his respects at her grave site, having stayed away from her funeral altogether. He had been severely chastised by Grace Foley, his resident psychological profiler, on a number of occasions for repressing his feelings over Mel's death.

Boyd considered himself quite a good judge of character and even though he had only spent half an hour or so with Harry, he saw in his visitor the same arrogance that he carried around himself. He had a sense that like him, Harry took immense pride in his work and would protect members of his team come what may. When he caught that look in Harry's eyes, he thought that he knew exactly how Harry felt at that moment.

Harry took another look at the document in his hand and said, "I'll need to have one of my officers look at this. May I take this photocopy away with me?"

"Yes, certainly but after you've arranged for it to be decoded, you must let me know what it says so that I can judge for myself whether this information is relevant to our enquiry. A murder investigation is still a murder investigation. I'm not trying to ruffle any feathers here, but you should know that I will have to include this evidence in our report. Unless, of course, I have a good reason not to."

"Will the Official Secrets Act do?"

"Eh, yes, I suppose."

"Given the apparent involvement of my former colleague and the way this document appears to have been encoded, I would say that the information contained in this document probably has more to do with our line of work than yours."

"Look, I can hold off doing our report on this matter for a little while. If you can let me have the necessary paperwork to justify turning over the two items to you before close of business tomorrow, I'll see what I can do at this end. That should give you a little more than 24 hours. Deal?"

"Yes."

"And Harry, if this document can tell you where you can find your officer, you might want to do that before its too late."

"Thank you, I'll bear that in mind. You have been very helpful. I'll be in touch with you again tomorrow."

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"I understand from Spence that you had just been spooked, royally," Grace asked Boyd, tongue in cheek, after Harry left his office. "When I heard who was in your office, I called around a few friends in high places in order to find out more about your visitor, you know, just in case you needed some help, or ammunition."

"What did you find out?"

"Quite a lot actually. It would appear that you and Harry Pearce are very much alike, at least in your working styles, like two peas in a pod. The two of you should have gotten on like a house on fire, which is why there was no need for me to barge into your office to save you."

"What do you mean, Grace? In what ways am I like Harry Pearce?"

Grace turned around and walked out of Boyd's office with a huge grin on her face. She was not going to elaborate on what she said or answer Boyd's question. She might just let him stew for a couple of hours.

"Grace, Grace?" Boyd called after her. Why does that woman always have to speak in riddles? Bloody psychologists!

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