‘HB,’ she said.
‘And the flake of paint?’
‘Manufacturers all use slightly different colours. Bit like a pencil fingerprint.’
‘A pencil-print?’ he suggested, trying to lighten the mood.
She didn’t laugh. He’d known Bridgette almost as long as he’d been on the Force, but had never really worked out what made her tick.
‘We don’t have a database on pencil paint, wouldn’t you know,’ she said, speaking more to Rita than to Joe. ‘I mean, who uses pencils these days?’
Joe thought about the mug full of pens and pencils on his desk, and the time it always took him to find sharpeners and rubbers.
‘Fortunately,’ she added, ‘there was enough for the spectrometer, so we got an exact colour profile.’
She took a single sheet of printed paper and handed it to him.
‘It’s a slightly unusual shade of green. I’ve checked all the manufacturers I could find. A list of all the companies that paint their HB pencils in this colour.’
He took the paper from her. There were three words printed on it, right in the centre in a tiny font. Bridgette’s idea of a joke.
‘Gaia Office Supplies,’ he read out. ‘Do we know them?’
She clicked to something more interesting on her computer.
‘Not personally, but I believe there’s a new computer thing called Goggle or something. It’s magic. You just type in whatever you want to know and it tells you. It’s like the Deltic Oracles! I bet Gaia Office Supplies have one of those internet page thingies. They’re all the rage.’
He watched as she returned to her screen and scrolled down. She’d already lost interest. Forensic scientists never seemed to be very enthusiastic about their work. Yet for him this new information sent a rush of excitement through his body. A single flake of paint extracted from deep within the brain of a dead victim? Never mind the bloody internet, this was the magic.
Meanwhile, Rita was halfway out of the door, already staring down at her phone.
‘It was just the smallest bit of a pencil,’ he said to Bridgette. ‘And it might take us to a killer. Don’t you find that even slightly exciting?’
‘I’ll take dried sperm any day of the week. Sorry, just the way I am.’
He knew. The whole of Elland Road knew. Her divorce last year had briefly been the most talked about in the District. It wasn’t sperm that did it, though. It was human hairs. She’d found the same hairs in her husband’s underpants on various occasions and had kept them for analysis. They were all from the same person, and it wasn’t her. Or him.
‘Tell you what, though,’ she said, stopping what she was doing, just for a second. ‘If my green paint leads to an arrest, there’s a drink in it for me.’
‘Done.’
He folded the sheet of paper and was about to leave.
‘By the way,’ she added, a half-decent smile on her face, ‘pencils are better. Than dried sperm, I mean. And Gaia Office Supplies? It’s the sales director you’ll want to talk to. I texted you her name and number. A text message? Is that OK?’
He nodded. ‘Thanks. Text, yeah, that’s good.’
‘I would’ve used WhatsApp, but, y’know.’
‘I’m on the WhatsApp! Send me a WhatsApp! I’m a fluent WhatsApper!’
Her smile broadened. ‘Joe Romano on WhatsApp? Who knew!’
By the time they were back in the operations room, Bridgette’s message had already appeared on his WhatsApp. Her tiny profile photo was an enlargement of a dust mite, the motto below her name: There’s no escape. She’d re-sent the details for Gaia Office Supplies, no additional message, no gratuitous ‘x’ or ‘lol’, or one of those grinning emojis. He replied:
A moment later, another message appeared: a photo of a woman’s hand, the middle finger extended upwards. Fair.
Rita was now going through the various phone numbers on the Gaia Office Supplies website, and getting voicemail each time.
He sat at his desk and stared at the image of Bridgette’s hand, her fingers slim and pale, no nail varnish. She had just become his seventh contact on WhatsApp. Three of the other numbers were work-related. His brother Tony the fifth. Then there was a random message from an attractive young woman called Sonya, a smartphone scam from Russia, he’d been told, but for some reason he hadn’t deleted it. The final contact was his ex-wife Jackie, who had used WhatsApp a few times recently as their divorce was being finalized. Clipped and painfully cheerful messages to keep him up to date on the progress of various bits of paperwork and arrangements for the sale of the farmhouse in France. It had all been very efficient and cordial; her new partner had bought Joe’s share of the property, lock, stock and smoking Jackie.
As a summary of his recent life, the WhatsApp contact list was not what you’d call edifying. But it was accurate. Looking around the office he wondered who he’d like to add, and came up with a shortlist of zero.
‘Nearly four on a Saturday afternoon. No one’s there,’ Rita said, phone in hand. She screwed her mouth up, thought about it. ‘This sales director? I’m gonna sniff her out, give her a bell at home. You?’
‘Another chat with Jane Shaw. You fancy coming?’
‘Nah. I’ll make a start on the CCTV if you want. See you back here after you’ve ministered to the grieving mother.’
He stood up.
‘Just one thing. Gwyn Merchant and the one-sixty-six thing? You’ve heard that from him before?’
‘One per cent of the population is responsible for sixty-six per cent of all crimes committed. Yeah, he was always a bit of a hardliner, y’know…’
He waited. She let him wait. The little pauses didn’t work on her.
‘Well,’ he said in the end, ‘he’s clocked off for the day. That’s pretty clear.’
‘He’ll be around if you need him,’ she said. ‘He’s solid.’
‘Really?’
‘It’s all an act with Gwyn. He’s a pretty thoughtful lad, as it goes.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
‘And he’s not had an easy life. But who has, eh?’
‘Yep. Anyway, they’re getting the footage ready in the AV suite. I’ll join you in an hour or so.’