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from Pakistan.’
    That caught Morrow’s attention. Pakistan suggested a potential hundi connection to Brown.
    But the prints were impossible. She found herself wondering whether they had been found on something planted there, something movable, a cup or a bit of paper? An accomplice could have taken his prints in. There would be an explanation. She would find it.
    ‘Put it all on my desk.’ She hung up, slipping her phone into her pocket.
    Brown wasn’t jumping a wall but it was still a weak opening gambit. Morrow had expected something better. Maybe the lawyer giving him wily advice about inches beyond conveyancing perimeters had ducked out and this was a younger lawyer’s advice. It was a change of tone, certainly.
    She pulled on her raincoat and thought her way through some possibilities: visitors with cups, visitors with celluloid on their wrists, bribable officers.
    She should ask to see the ACE-V report by the fingerprint analyst. The match may well have come up high confidence but there could still be a mistake in the reading. They had to do that now, show their workings, how they analysed it, how they compared it, verify the points of confluence.
    She looked up and saw Anton Atholl. He was walking towards her across the lobby, clutching a bundle of files tied with pink ribbon. She found herself irritated by him now; she didn’t want to flirt any more, her mood had shifted, her thoughts on other things.
    Also, there was a duty of disclosure to Brown’s defence. She didn’t know the time frames or parameters of telling Atholl about the prints. If there was bogus mileage in it, Atholl was the last person she wanted to tell. The Fiscal’s office were already pissed off about the cost of the trial and knew they weren’t getting the major players. Brown was back in prison anyway and the trial was costing them a fortune. Everyone was on a budget these days.
    ‘We are adjourning,’ said Atholl. ‘But we’ll meet again tomorrow?’
    She wondered suddenly if he already knew about the prints. Atholl might have had them put there, for all she knew.
    ‘Yeah.’ Morrow wondered if Atholl was waiting for her to tell him.
    ‘You all off to get steaming this afternoon, then?’
    ‘Indeed,’ he said, nodding formally at his shoes. ‘It seems only proper in the light of a great drunk’s passing. I did my traineeship with McMillan.’
    She was a little surprised he was young enough to have studied under McMillan. ‘You trained under him? I thought you were the same age, sort of ...’
    He tutted playfully. ‘I’m not as old as I look,’ he said, ‘I’ve just had a lot of adventures. No’ – suddenly stern – ‘we must all go. Lend a little support to poor Margery. She’s his wife. I’m sort of looking for people to go with ...’
    She wanted to leave, get back to the office right now but was worried that it would seem abrupt and arouse his suspicion. ‘Did they have kids?’
    ‘One.’ He looked away, towards the wall of light. But for the daylight catching she wouldn’t have noticed the thin tear brimming in his eye. ‘A son.’
    He had a nice profile, a good big nose.
    ‘I have to go.’
    Atholl bowed from the neck and backed away. ‘See you tomorrow.’
    She walked off, slow-clapping herself through the metal detector. She took the revolving door and turned to the car park. From the corner of her eye she saw Atholl through the big window just as a white van pulled out and obscured her view. She walked on towards her car, glancing back to see if Atholl was still standing there, watching her.
    He wasn’t.

 
     
     
     
    3
     
     
     
     
    1997
     
    It was half ten on Sunday morning and Julius McMillan was watching the television news. Princess Diana was dead. Great racking sobs spewed up from his abdomen like hiccups, his eyes ran, tears dripping into his open mouth; he didn’t even know he was capable of such depth of emotion. He was crying so hard he couldn’t manage to light a cigarette. His