Later in the day, when Boyd had almost forgotten his conversation with Grace in his office, Sapphira had shown up at CCHQ with the lunch he'd apparently left in the fridge. Boyd had peered into the plastic container to find some sort of quiche with chicken and corn in it. Exactly how she kept making delicious meals when he forgot to properly shop half the time was beyond him; that said, she wasn't any stranger to working with what she had.

"Thank you for bringing me this, Sapphie." He told her as the plastic container found its way onto his desk behind him – though somewhat precariously. "You don't have to go to so much trouble though."

The raven-haired beauty shrugged a single shoulder. "It's no trouble at all. You're letting me stay with you, and you know I like cooking."

Yes, he'd learnt that the hard way. Brown eyes caught Grace's as she led Conrad Randall into her office; he'd not been happy when his team had casually informed him about their genealogist angle but hadn't shut it down. An angle was an angle, and they needed any help they could get locating surviving Callaghans.

Sapphria's borderline angelic voice pulled Boyd back to their conversation and soon had him cock an eyebrow. She'd explained – without any hint to the awkwardness lingering between them after their night of passion – that, right before her father had died, he'd made a little time capsule with his daughters that they'd buried in the backyard. A silly, childish thing that had brought much joy to five very unhappy girls. At first he'd wondered why Sapphira had bothered bringing up such a ridiculous thing, yet, as she'd gone on, Boyd had realized her point. Some of the items in that time capsule were photographs, including both Adam and Amanda, and if they had those images, Eve would surely be able to age-progress them enough for police to track them down. If he could have, Boyd would have shaken John Callaghan by the hand. Then again, maybe John had taken that time with his daughters because he'd known he wasn't long for the world. With him having been cremated, they'd never be able to figure out if Amanda had killed him or if it his time has simply come. Boyd tried not to think of how the lives of Sapphira and her sisters would have turned out had he been the surviving parent; they'd have been happy and loved; Sapphira never would have had to ever meet Boyd at all.

"The houses were leveled by heavy machinery, Sapphie. Are you sure you know exactly where the capsule is? Because, if you don't, we may never find it."

She shook her head, which caused her high ponytail to swish around her face. "No, I know where it is. Dad said we had to put it somewhere out of the way but where we'd not lose track of it. He'd wanted us to dig it up when Elizabeth and I turned thirty; something about us being old enough. It's somewhere in the flowerbeds."

Boyd nodded to himself as he mulled over what exactly 'old enough' could have meant. Just as with Conrad Randall, he'd make use of the lead Sapphira had brought him. Having the faces of Amanda and Adam would surely hurtle their cold case along rather than leaving it at a snail's pace.

"Okay. Yeah, you show us where it is, and my guys'll get digging. Wait here."

With powerful steps, Boyd marched out of his office to the bullpen, where he found only Spence at his desk; that made his choice of whom to send much easier. Retrieving a time capsule which was surely nothing more than some rusted tin had sounded far too much like a scavenger hunt for Spence's liking – a waste of time better suited for a police constable rather than a detective inspector. Although orders were orders, and those who defied Peter Boyd's orders tended to get yelled at, then whatever shred of dignity remained had to slither into his office so he could stomp on it. That was how the capable DI found himself saving his work and grabbing his jacket off the desk chair behind him while Boyd returned to Sapphira.

"Spence is going to go with you while I make preparations for Eve to enhance the photos and get them circulated. Okay?"

"Eve?" She questioned with a slight furrow of her brow.

"Oh yeah, you've not met her. Eve Lockhart, she's our forensic genius; a bit strange and unlikely to quit smoking any time soon, but she's good at her job." Sapphira worried her lip, which had Boyd instantly rest a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Everything all right?"

"Fine. Is she – did Eve examine my sister's and Donovan's bodies?"

Instead of having Sapphira view the remains of her sister and friend since they were totally unrecognizable, they'd instead shown her Mary's dress and a neckless Donovan had been wearing for identification. Nobody would have refused Sapphira if she'd asked to see the bodies; that was her right, but they'd certainly not encouraged it.

"Yes." Boyd nodded. "She processed them for evidence. I promise you that Donovan and Mary are in very good hands."

"Am I… allowed to see them?"

"If that's what you want. That said, they don't look like how you remember, Sapphie." Tears pricked inside those heavenly green eyes – a well of sorrows threatening to burst forth. "Once you see them, you can't unsee them. Maybe it would be better to remember how they were."

"No." She told him with a shake of her head. "No, I ran away once, and I don't want to do it again. Please let me see my sister and friend, Boyd."

He couldn't deny her, so Boyd told Spence to wait while he took Sapphira through to the lab. Eve did her best to brace Sapphira for what she'd see, but all of them knew the tears would fall, and fall they did. With agony and grief, they tumbled down her cheeks like endless streams – heartache seeping out. The innocent little sister she felt she'd abandoned and the only true friend she'd ever had lay dead and decomposed as though they'd never been people to begin with. Jigsaws; Boyd hated how crude the idea was, but ultimately humans were just jigsaws that eventually fell apart.

When Sapphira had slipped to the cold ground with anguish threatening to consume her, Boyd had been there to catch her and pull her close to his chest. Eve remained quiet, but he'd felt her eyes watching the pair of them. Sapphira clung to the white coat Boyd wore as he soothed her, stroked her hair, whispered comforting words, much as he had when Grace had interviewed her. Many wouldn't have been brave enough to look, would have chosen to keep the memories untarnished, but Sapphira had felt a need to return to them.

Eventually the two had ended up slumped on the floor with Boyd's legs half folded underneath himself and Sapphira sniffling against his burgundy shirt, his chin atop her head. 'I care about her' had been his words to Grace earlier in the day, but truthfully, Boyd wasn't sure if the word was care or something else.

After several long minutes of calming down and Eve being kind enough to offer up some tissues, Sapphira had straightened her ponytail and let Boyd stand up. Green eyes had watched as Donovan and Mary had been shut back into drawers to rest peacefully until their burial finally came. Then they'd returned to the main office to find Spence had grown impatient.

"If you can't find the time capsule, that's okay." Boyd said softly as she wiped the few remaining tears from her eyes, then he pressed a gentle kiss to Sapphira's forehead, which had Spence raise a questioning eyebrow. "Have fun digging, Spence."

"Mmm, I'm trying to contain my excitement."

Meanwhile, Grace had been in her office discussing everything Conrad Randall had managed to scrounge up on possible locations of the Callaghans. She'd not known quite what to expect from the genealogist, but a man who'd clearly gotten into one too many fights as a teenager hadn't been it. While tall and broad with blue eyes and golden locks to make angels jealous, his face was hard and lacked proper emotion. To be perfectly honest, had Grace not needed him and his help, she'd have chosen not to associate with him. For some reason he stank of engine oil and that plasticky tire smell. His website had been full of success stories about him helping people track down distant family and some they'd never even known existed, but the man himself appeared to contrast that vibe.

"I went through a lot of records, I mean a lot of records." Stressed Conrad as he busied himself with pulling printouts from a satchel he'd dropped on the coffee table. "There were numerous families scattered about that fit the bill, but only one stood up to investigation." He thrust one of the printouts at Grace, who took it with a smile and slipped on her glasses. "The Daniels, they live in Portsmouth but started out in London. They've got the right kids as well: Adam, Elizabeth, Rachel, and Abigail."

"It says here that the mother has recently been moved to a care home."

"Yep."

Conrad didn't sound all that much like a professional man now that he was actually in front of her either. Still, Grace chose to give him the benefit of the doubt; everybody could have a bad day, and he had been assisting out of the goodness of his heart.

"And Adam now has a wife and daughter of his own."

Part of her profile of Adam Callaghan had made it extremely clear that he'd almost certainly not be able to keep a relationship going longer than a few months at most. From what Sapphira had told them and the brutality Donovan Padmore had suffered, Grace had assumed Adam to be too volatile for a lasting relationship, the sort who couldn't keep up the act of being a nice guy for long. He'd seemed more likely to be controlling to the point of pushing away love interests. As for a daughter, Adam clearly wasn't to be trusted around children. Yet, Conrad had gone to the trouble of tracking them down so, Grace at least needed to take a closer look.

She caught sight of him looking through the window behind her then where Boyd, Spence and Sapphira stood talking. Grace couldn't really blame him; Sapphira was a stunning young woman and not all that much younger than Conrad himself.

"Is that Sapphira Callaghan?"

"Uh-huh, that's her. She's been very brave to help us as much as she has."

"She's gotten prettier."

That made Grace's brow furrow. "Prettier? You've met before?"

"No." Blue eyes snapped back to Grace. "I meant since that picture of her in the newspapers."

"Oh, yes, of course."

Honestly, Conrad wasn't wrong. She'd seen Sapphira on the day she'd first come to the Cold Case Unit, all skinny, exhausted, and wrapped up in greasy hair. Living with Boyd hadn't just kept her away from the press; it had rejuvenated Sapphira and let her blossom into the beautiful woman she truly was. Clean and happy – at least she had been until Boyd had taken her into the lab – and no longer hiding in her hair.

Out in the hallway, Spence and Sapphira finally departed while Boyd quickly rapped his knuckles on Grace's door before he pushed it open seemingly without a care in the world.

"Grace, Spence is taking Sapphie back to Sleighberry Street. I've got a meeting about our budget, so if I'm not here when Spence gets back, call me." She nodded and confirmed she would. "Sorry to interrupt."

"That's fine; I should be leaving anyway."

Grace frowned; she'd thought he'd stay to help her go over his research rather than just dumping it on her like some disinterested high schooler. Boyd couldn't have cared less; he just went in search of coffee before heading to his meeting while Conrad packed up his things and left the office with hardly a goodbye to Grace. A strange man Conrad Randall had turned out to be, but at least he'd gotten them the information they'd needed. Stella had returned to her desk, so splitting the printouts between the pair of them had been a no-brainer. Truthfully, that was probably why they'd grown confused as swiftly as they had.

"Grace," began Stella in that lovely French accent of hers. "Am I reading this wrong? Elizabeth is the oldest, right? Yet this says Elisabeth Daniels is nineteen while Abigail Daniels is thirty-one."

None of that made a lick of sense and soon had the women huddled around Stella's desk to examine everything carefully. The family had actually originated in London, but they had an extensive record of living in Portsmouth for the last fourteen years instead of the last seven, and the children were all obviously in the wrong age order. Sure, people like Amanda might have altered birthdates on documents to assist in keeping them hidden, but this extent of a change should have been easily noticed. The Abigail they looked for was seventeen; nobody would have thought her as old as thirty-one.

"You're not reading it wrong, Stella, this just really doesn't make sense. Conrad said this was the only family he'd found that fit our criteria, but they don't match at all. Look at this," she pointed to the bottom of one page. "The woman we're looking for spells Elizabeth with a Z, while all of these records show Elisabeth Daniels spells it with an S. None of this even remotely matches up."

"Shouldn't a genealogist have noticed all these errors at the start?"

"Yes, Stella, he should."

The redhead tossed everything down onto her desk knowing it was worthless – waste of a tree. "You think he got a little too eager to help and started overlooking things? Maybe he went down the rabbit hole, or maybe he's just crap at his job."

Grace sighed with frustration; she'd really hoped this would get them somewhere.

"Looks that way. I think I'm going to do a little more reading on Conrad Randall though, his website seemed to have such positive feedback."

Stella shrugged. "Just because someone sounds reputable doesn't mean they are." That was a damn fine lesson. "Good job Boyd isn't here, or he'd have lost his shit."

Curiously, and with a little disgruntled muttering under her breath, Grace retrieved her laptop and pulled up Conrad Randall's website. As always she was met with pragmatic and optimistic words about genealogy, how understanding one's history was good for the soul, that it would help people fully understand themselves; what Boyd would have called a crock of shit, while Grace surely preferred overzealous puffery.

"You think the feedback is fake?" Stella peered over Grace's shoulder.

"No, they seem genuine from what I've read, and they don't sound like they're all by the same person. Sentence structures change, as does spelling and tone."

"Go to his picture; let's see what he thinks of himself."

Stella kind of had a point; the way people posed for their pictures could tell a lot about a person when it came to their chosen occupation. For example, if someone chose to wink for a photograph in their cookbook, people might assume that person was fun – jovial even. However, if someone did the same as part of an investment firm, the result would have been off-putting and probably inspired a total lack of trust. Unfortunately for Grace, she didn't just get a bad photograph; she got the wrong man entirely. The Conrad Randall she knew was blond with blue eyes and around thirty, while the one on the website was closer to forty and brunet. Grace could have kicked herself. Why the actual hell hadn't she looked at the photograph until Stella had prompted her?

"They're not the same person." Unhelpful, but true.

"No they're not."

The two women were silent for a moment as they just stared at the real Conrad Randall as ambivalence settled amongst them. Grace quickly went over it all in her head: how he'd quickly focused on Sapphira as soon as he'd spotted her, that he'd wanted to leave the moment she and Spence had. Then the big memory had returned to her, of weeks ago when Spence had said he felt as though he were being followed, but they'd never had any evidence to back it up.

"Stella, do you think he could be the one Spence thinks was following him? Conrad – who I thought was Conrad – remembered the photograph of Sapphira in the newspapers. You've heard Boyd go on about tabloids, how they'd do unscrupulous things to get information. Maybe this is one of them. Besides, they were trailing her around."

"You think a journalist faked his name and a reason for getting in here to get a scoop?" She only needed a few seconds to mull the idea over. "Yeah, that sounds like something one of them would do. Explains why this research is next to useless as well. Sort of sounds like it's that or a murder junkie."

"Hmm, maybe he's both. Either way, Boyd isn't going to be pleased when he comes back from his meeting." That was something of an understatement; Boyd wasn't ever happy after budget meetings on the best of days, let alone when he came back to find a member of his team had been duped, placing an investigation in danger. "All right, we're onto him now. Whoever Conrad Randall really is, he doesn't get back into this building. When Spence and Boyd get back, we'll fill them in and go from there."

"Are you sure he's just a journalist? I mean, it's a lot of effort to go to without really getting him much of a result. Should we call Spence?"

"We'll wait for him to get back. There's no point interrupting him while Sapphira's with him. I saw Boyd take her to see her sister; she's had a rough day already without needing to know tabloids haven't quite given up yet."

So, they shoved the fake Conrad's so-called research into a corner like the useless paperweight it was and tried to get back to some proper policing. They'd fortunately caught this lie before it had gone too far – before he'd seen their investigation board – but that didn't mean they were all good, not when Grace had been forced to give over so much information about their case that should have remained confidential.

~X~

While Grace had lamented her choices and Boyd had done his best not to die of boredom in a meeting, Spence had driven Sapphira over to Sleighberry Street so she could track down the flowerbed in an otherwise unrecognizable patch of land. While technically still a crime scene, the place was in total ruin, and what bulldozers hadn't ripped down already would surely keel over on its own before too long. 'All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity,' were Gertrude's words, and she wasn't wrong. Something reminiscent of a graveyard lingered over the area, a morose taste to the air maybe, or the heaviness of a tainted land. Rain even began to tumble quietly after about fifteen minutes; very Shakespearean.

Spence had done his best to wait patiently while Sapphira attempted to properly orient herself in order to track down what had once been a flowerbed. Part of him had wanted to hurry her along so they could leave before the rain got worse, but he wasn't that cruel, and she'd looked heartbroken after leaving the lab. Understanding the horror Sapphira had lived through wasn't something Spence would ever be capable of. Sure, his father had gone into hiding, leaving him thinking the man dead, but he'd always known his mother loved him; this time capsule was Sapphira's last physical proof that her father had loved her.

"It's somewhere over here. I know that much because of the tree."

Silver birch trees were almost everywhere in London, but the one beside her was basically the only thing on the lot still intact; it just sat among the debris like an ancient chronicler.

"Take your time." He'd said instead of asking her to speed things along like he'd really wanted.

When Spence glanced around, he was unsurprised to spot a few curtains twitch across the street. People always had to be nosy on a residential street like Sleighberry, especially when there had been a grisly double murder. No matter the country, people always loved a public hanging, and since those didn't happen in many places any longer, folk had to get their bloodlust fix somehow; that was why true crime shows had taken off as well as they had. A fundamental part of human nature was the enjoyment of seeing death, and there were precious few people who'd admit to that. Of course, that didn't mean everyone and their dog was secretly just waiting for the day they could murder their neighbor – although, some neighbors did need killing – just that humans had an innately violent part of their DNA that wouldn't ever truly depart.

"Here!" Brown eyes snapped back to Sapphira, who'd moved a good five or so feet from the tree's base. "It's over here, but I'm not sure how deep."

Fortunately, Spence had possessed the smarts to bring a shovel with him; not that he'd told Eve he'd appropriated it; she'd never even know it was gone.

"All right, come out the way, Sapphira. This won't take long with the spade."

"That's a shovel, not a spade." She pointed out only for Spence to peer at her in confusion.

"There's a difference?"

"Spades have flat tips and are narrow. Shovels are wide and normally pointed."

Well, he'd store that away in his list of interesting but totally unnecessary things to know. With a shake of his head, Spence drove the shovel into the ground. The first five minutes of moving soil around yielded little, but eventually the shovel struck something metallic, and Spence soon hauled up a red lunchbox covered in rust. Tears pricked in Sapphira's eyes for the second time that day. She'd last seen the lunchbox when her father had handed it to Elizabeth to bury.

It took some determination, but Spence soon managed to force the corroded latch open revealing a plethora of pictures, little notes, and drawings, all remarkably intact.

"Do you think they'll be useful?" She asked Spence hopefully.

"I'm sure Eve can do something with them. They're more than we had before."

"Could I keep some of the pictures?"

He closed the lid and tucked it under one arm while he grabbed the shovel, then began his way back to the car with Sapphira at his side; that rain would grow violent before too long.

"I'll take it to forensics so they can do their thing. After that I'm sure we can release some of the photos to you."

She supposed that was fair; it was why she'd gone to Boyd about the time capsule in the first place. When he'd offered her a choice of going back to HQ with him or dropping her off at Boyd's house, she'd hardly thought about it. Sapphira had seen enough of the Cold Case Unit for one day and needed some time alone to finish mentally digesting the sight of Mary and Donovan in body bags. Spence hadn't blamed her; he knew all too well that some of those sights never left the mind.