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out of season to protect it from the winter gales.
    Letting himself into the cottage, he’d stopped for a second inside the closed door to smell the scents of home: pasta, paint, washing powder and – best of all – wood. He’d checked on his daughter Francesca, the terrier at the foot of her bed only raising its old head as Shaw looked in. He’d left Lena to sleep and taken a shower. In the bathroom, on the window ledge, had been a line of pillboxes he hadn’t seen before: he’d counted them – eight, each marked with the logo of the local allergy clinic. He’d let the water run down his skin, washing away the day, until he’d felt clean.
    Dry, in shorts and a T-shirt, he’d unlocked the door that led to the café down the short connecting corridor they’d built between the two buildings. Reflections from the café’s neon lights would have concealed the view outside, so he’d used the small light above the counter, then fired up the Italian coffee machine. Through the windows he’d just been able to see the ghostly white lines of the waves breaking out on the far sands, snow clouds beginning to blot out the moon.
    Booting up the laptop, he’d scanned in the pictures from the camera, then printed them out at precisely life-size. He’d taped up two of the pictures on an easel retrieved from the deckchair store, and illuminated them using an anglepoise lamp from the office, then stood back with his coffee to study them.
    He’d covered the two images on the easel with sheets of tracing paper and opened his copy of Rhines Tables: the standard set of multiples which would allow him to put flesh on bones. Then he’d worked on each set of features using Krogman’s Rule of Thumb to add fleshy details not dictated by skull structure – the mouth set at six teeth wide, the angle of the nose extrapolated from the nasal spine. He’d modified the rules, using some educated guesses based on the mixed ethnicity – for example he’d set the nose at 16mm wide compared to the standard 10mm for Caucasians. He’d made the eyes dark in the black-and-white image, but left the hair indistinct, reduced to just a few pencil lines. The pathologist had considered the clothing to be of good quality, so Shaw presumed a healthy weight, and he’d taken her guesstimate of the age at between twenty and twenty-five.
    He’d been brushing in the tonal shadows, adding art to the science, when Lena had wandered down the connecting corridor and stood at the door in a short silk nightdress the colour of antique silver. They’d kissed and stood back from the easel, Shaw holding her waist close, so that he could feel their hips touching.
    â€˜A brother,’ she’d said, and they’d laughed. Lena’s own skin was darker than the tone he’d chosen for the victim: Jamaican brown, though not so lustrous as it would be in the summer months, when it picked up a distinct bronze tint.
    â€˜The pills – in the bathroom?’ he’d asked, looking her in the eyes, one of which had a slight cast.
    â€˜Oh, yeah – for Fran. We’ve got to try each one – see what she’s allergic to. One a week.’
    Their daughter had been allergic to milk at birth – but the reactions, once violent, had dimmed over time. Then, suddenly, the previous September, she’d had a full-blown anaphylactic reaction to a pot of yoghurt.
    â€˜It’s the milk – right?’ asked Shaw, aware that there was too much aggression in his voice, which betrayed the guilt he felt for being absent that day, out on a case. No – that was self-delusion, out on the case, his father’s last, unsolved, murder inquiry, the case that seemed to run through his life like letters through seaside rock.
    â€˜No, Peter, it isn’t the milk,’ said Lena, failing to hide her anxiety. ‘She still has a slight sensitivity to it but