[PS & GV #6] Death on Demand by Jim Kelly

Farm. Before those two cases, a majority of the public thought the police never tampered with evidence; after them a majority thought they did. And all because of the innocent practice of taking notes in an interview room by leaning on a pile of fresh, unmarked, paper, so that each page, inadvertently, held an impression of its forerunner. The technology allowed them to compare original statements with their doctored, fraudulent successors, presented in court to secure convictions in high-visibility cases.
    ‘Nowt,’ said Hadden, giving the ESDA slope a light tap. Or rather, too much: they could see traces of written lines, each at a slightly different angle to the horizontal. But the result looked like spaghetti, and was unreadable.
    ‘Let’s try the top sheet from the headed notepaper.’
    As Hadden prepared the machine they heard the pathologist, Dr Justina Kazimierz, working on the far side of the glass divide: sluicing down a table, running an electric saw for thirty seconds, so that Valentine’s teeth seemed to vibrate in his narrow skull.
    Shaw stared at the ESDA’s brass table as it began to vibrate again, unable to slough off the image of George Valentine out in the street, sat on the kerb, head down. A detail of that picture was important, but he couldn’t see how. The scene appeared to his mind’s eye as if drawn for a Victorian newspaper, a morality tale like so many others; the fallen woman plunging from London Bridge into the Thames, the urchin stealing a loaf of bread. A black-and-white picture complete with a moral caption.

    ‘That’s strange,’ said Hadden. The cascading carbon had adhered quite distinctly to a small area of writing: three lines, set in a narrow space three inches by one-and-a-half.
    ‘It’s an address,’ said Shaw instantly, trying to turn his head to read the sense of it.
    Hadden applied an adhesive sheet to the cling-film layer to preserve the ESDA ‘lift’, and then slid the sheet out to reveal the writing, in so doing demonstrating one of the machine’s great benefits, that it didn’t in any way corrupt the original evidence. Such an experiment could be repeated in court with no deterioration in results. A forensic scientist could test the veracity of the evidence a thousand times, using the original on each occasion, even in court.
    It was an address of sorts.
Gordon Lee
Chief Reporter
Lynn Express
    The three lines were set at a wide angle to the horizontal.
    ‘So,’ said Hadden, ‘like this.’ He took a roll of address labels, tore off one, set it on a sheet of A4, and wrote an address, the paper at an angle to allow his right elbow to support his right hand. ‘It’s perfectly natural to set something this small at an angle to suit the hand-writer. She’ll be right handed, absolutely no doubt.’
    ‘So, it’s possible the last thing she wrote was this label,’ said Shaw. ‘Where’s the letter?’
    ‘Perhaps the killer’s the postman,’ said Valentine, already keying in the number of the Lynn Express news desk to his mobile. ‘I’ll check it out …’ he added, retreating back towards the fire doors and the sanctuary of Clennam Street. The image flashed again behind Shaw’s blind eye: the cigarette stub, Valentine’s feet in the kerb, and he knew then what he’d missed.

TWELVE
    M ark Birley, sleepless, in his gym kit, was at his desk in the CID suite, a wide-screen PC showing the six camera feeds he’d transferred from the Marsh House CCTV database: Cameras A, B, C, D, E and F.
    Shaw had ordered in a dozen Costa coffees and a round of sticky buns, so he had the team’s undivided attention, gathered round the desk. Hadden, still in his white forensic gown, completed the audience.
    ‘Mark, run me Camera D, please. Pick any time you like, but in darkness, please, and on the night of the murder.’
    The screen showed a single image of the terrace of Marsh House.
    Shaw let the images flicker forward for thirty seconds.
    ‘Mark, stop it there. Now,