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Jennifer had seen that face. The memories came flooding back. She felt a catch in her throat and a shiver ran down her spine like a lone teardrop, lost in the wrong part of her body. Eighteen years, yet his face was just as she remembered.
    ‘Is this your husband?’ Lachlan asked gently.
    ‘It looks just like him,’ Jennifer said.
    ‘I need a positive ID from you, Ms Parkes.’
    ‘It can’t be Brian, Detective.’
    ‘But is it?’ Lachlan carefully retained the gentle quality to his tone. He could imagine how difficult this would be for any man or woman.
    ‘Of course not, detective. If he’d been alive up until yesterday then Brian would have been forty-three years old. This man looks to be in his twenties. Mid twenties.’
    Lachlan nodded in agreement. ‘I can see that.’
This is the age Brian Parkes was on the night of his disappearance.
He regarded Jennifer. The same thought must have been running through her head. ‘So, apart from the age discrepancy, this man appears to be your husband?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Any distinguishing marks you can recall?’
    Jennifer thought for a moment. ‘A mole,’ she said, ‘right in the centre of his shoulder blades.’ She remembered telling Brian that he should have it looked at; that she thought it was getting bigger. ‘Everyone has funny little moles that look like they’re getting bigger.’ That had been so typical of Brian’s gentle, cheeky humour. ‘I’ve only got one so you just leave it alone.’
    Lachlan gestured to the attendant, who turned the body over and lifted the sheet further. A mole rested in exactly the spot described by Jennifer. There was a slight drop to her jaw, and a gasp, but she said nothing.
    Lachlan escorted her into the adjoining office and invited her to sit. He took another seat, facing her across an interviewing table. He noted that her eyes were glassy, her expression unmoving, as if cast in stone. ‘Going by the physical description, and the personal effects he was carrying, it seems certain that the deceased is in fact your missing husband. I realise the shock-.’
    ‘But the body in there isn’t forty-three years old. Nowhere near it.’
    ‘I agree. Rest assured, I’ll be looking into that. I’m certain there’s an explanation. In the meantime, a match of dental records will be completed by this afternoon and, given your comments, I’ll wait for those records before finalising the identification. The dental check will confirm one way or another whether that man was your husband, or an imposter.’
    An imposter, thought Jennifer, that must be it. Someone who looked just like Brian had. But why would a look-alike be carrying Brian’s wallet? Where would he have got it? Why had he been run down on the same street where she and Brian had lived way back then?
    ‘You’ll let me know the result?’ Jennifer asked.
    ‘As soon as it comes through.’
    Jennifer left the building. She wanted to put as much distance as possible between herself and the morgue. She felt a dozen tiny shivers, like icy pinpricks, stabbing at her insides. None of this made any sense and she expected the dental check wouldn’t help, confirming that the body on that slab was Brian.
    Deep inside she knew it was Brian. This didn’t make any sense at all.
    And what would it mean to her daughter Carly, born almost eight months after Brian’s disappearance, to learn that the father she’d never known had been alive, somewhere, all these years? Carly, the living proof of Brian and Jennifer’s love for one another, the single greatest treasure that Jennifer had been blessed with these past eighteen years.
    How would Carly react to news as devastating as this? The thought made Jennifer shiver with an old despair.

FIVE
     
    Roger Kaplan, at forty-two, was a younger version of his father. Not as handsome, nor as athletic, or as suave, but with the same characteristic traces of all three. What he lacked most was the inner fire, the charisma that made his father,