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want to go back further on this geezer?”
    “I do.”
    “Don’t know why. He’s too young.”
    “Can you just have it done, please?”
    “Yeah, ’course. It’ll take a little while. They’ll have to do a manual search using the Henry system.”
    “What’s a while?”
    “Dunno exactly. I may have some lady friends still about in fingerprints. I’ll see what I can do.”
    Alone, John turned up the volume on the TV and listened for a while to the news on the manhunt in Dartford. A SKY helicopter was broadcasting live feed of police fanning out through a Dartford neighborhood of attached houses. He muted the sound and stared into space.
    Emily was gone.
    His fists balled up involuntarily in anger and frustration. He wanted a drink badly. He might not see her again. And his last memory would be her reproachful eyes.
     
     
    Night came, the car park thinned out, but John refused to leave. He rode the lift back down to the control room and turned on the lights. He sat at Emily’s work station and watched the empty floor, trying to will her to reappear at the spot where she had vanished. He stayed there for an hour and must have nodded off because he was startled into confused wakefulness by Trevor calling his name.
    “Sorry, guv.”
    “How’d you find me?”
    “I saw you on one of the cameras.”
    “What’s up?”
    “A mate of mine in the Met fingerprints bureau just rang me. They finished the manual search for us.”
    John recovered from his slouch and sat bolt upright. “That was fast.”
    “Told you I had a lady friend or two still there.”
    “Well?”
    “It doesn’t make any sense. It’s totally mad.”
    “Just tell me.”
    “There’s a match. It’s for a bloke named Brandon Woodbourne, a former resident of Dartford.”
    “Former? Any idea of his current whereabouts?”
    “No where close to here, guv,” Trevor said, shaking his head.
    “Don’t slow-play me. I’m not in the mood.”
    “Yeah, all right then, it's just that, like I said, it’s mad. Brandon Woodbourne was born 15 November 1915 and was executed by the hangman at the old Dartford prison on the eighth of April, 1949.”
    John ran his palms over his face. “It’s not mad. It’s just not the same guy. Either they made a mistake or the two sets of prints are very close.”
    “It’s no mistake. They said it was a perfect match. Two people can’t have prints that are identical like that, according to them.”
    “I don’t care what they say. This guy was here. He wasn’t dead. Do they have a mug shot of the guy?”
    “No. Just a fingerprint card.”
    “Well, it’s a waste of time, but to prove the obvious, go to the public library tomorrow and find the guy’s picture. It was probably in a newspaper.”
    “We can check right now, guv. A good lot of old newspapers have been digitally archived.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Had to help my sister with a school assignment, didn’t I?”
    “What’s the website?” John asked, logging onto Emily’s computer with his own logon ID.
    “Don’t recall. Just search for newspaper archives or British newspapers online. Something like that.”
    The top listing was The British Newspaper Archive.
    “Yeah, that’s the one. See if there’s any Dartford papers there.”
    There weren’t but there was a Kent newspaper called the Dover Express . John entered the date of Woodbourne’s hanging and stared at a thumbnail image of the front page of the paper. To view it properly he had to purchase a two-day access.
    “Waste of time,” John griped while entering his credit card. With an account open he clicked on the first page. “No photos, only text,” he said, but there was a prominent article proclaiming the execution day for the serial killer, Brandon Woodbourne of Dartford. He was to be hanged by the famous executioner, Albert Pierrepoint. Woodbourne, a roofer, had eight known victims from Kent and London, all young women, and though he was suspected of other unsolved murders he chose to