‘A hair? And no one noticed until now?’
‘It’s small. They’re doing tests on it.’
‘How small is “small”?’
‘A few millimetres, that’s all. She said it was dark brown or black and rather coarse.’
‘From the victim?’
‘How can anyone tell?’
‘Fair point. Why should one hair survive, when nothing else was found?’
`I suppose if it was tight under the tab it may have been protected. Hair is supposed to last a long time after a body rots away. Could it be from the killer, do you think?’
‘We don’t get luck like that,’ Diamond said.
‘It’s probably a pubic hair, being found with the zip fly,’ Halliwell said.
‘You said it was a clipping.’
‘Well, guv, I’m not an expert, but I believe women sometimes trim their bushes.’
‘And I was thinking she’d been to the hairdresser’s. You’re a man of the world, Keith.’
‘Let’s hope they get DNA from it. They can, you know, even when it doesn’t include the root.’
‘If it’s as small as you say I wouldn’t bet your house on it. We can only wait for the science, as always.’
Paloma rang back soon after and asked if he could get to Bennett Street in the next twenty minutes. Now she was sounding businesslike, but he was wise enough not to say so.
‘You’re a star. Any particular address?’
‘The Assembly Rooms, front entrance.’
‘We’re only identifying a zip,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t we do it somewhere less formal, like a pub or a teashop?’
He could hear the sigh down the phone. ‘It’s where the Museum of Costume is,’ she told him. ‘One of the glories of our city. Admit it, Peter – you’ve lived in Bath all this time and never set foot in the place.’
‘You win,’ he said. ‘See you shortly.’
As he was leaving the incident room he looked over Keith Halliwell’s shoulder. He’d stopped working the keyboard and was gazing forlornly at a list of websites. The internet hadn’t delivered yet.
Diamond murmured something encouraging, but that devil inside him was hoping Paloma had the answer.
‘We’re meeting my friend Marcia Martindale,’ Paloma said. ‘If she doesn’t know, nobody in Britain does.’
Disregarding the splendours of the Assembly Rooms where Jane Austen once took tea and found inspiration for Northanger Abbey, they went down into the basement and walked rapidly past the tall showcases of the museum (‘Promise me you’ll come back and see it properly, you philistine,’ Paloma told him) to the Fashion Research Centre, a book-lined room where Marcia was waiting. She was over eighty and wore a black hat with a crimson band and long feather. Under the wide brim was one of those pale faces that ought never to be shown the sun. The effect was increased by deep-set intelligent eyes magnified by dark-framed glasses.
‘The zip isn’t allowed to leave the police station, being evidence,’ Diamond said, ‘but I made a sketch of the symbol we found under the tab.’
‘The puller,’ Marcia corrected him. ‘We call that the puller. May I see?’
He put the piece of paper in front of her. After being corrected over the puller, he enjoyed airing his new linguistic knowledge. ‘It’s from the Cyrillic alphabet, their version of a G.’
‘I know,’ Marcia said. ‘I read Russian. Well, if what you say is true, it’s rather unusual to have the trademark on the underside, and that may be helpful in identifying the maker. I presume the fastener is metallic?’
‘Yes.’
She placed her hand on a book the size of a dictionary she had ready on the table. ‘The history of the zip is worthy of study. Elias Howe, the American who also invented the sewing machine, applied for a patent as early as 1851, but he didn’t go into production with his “Automatic Continuous Clothing Closure” and we had to wait until 1914 for anything that really worked efficiently to be developed and that was Gideon Sundback’s “Hookless Fastener Number Two”. Of course it transformed the world of fashion.’
Diamond didn’t need the history lesson, but contained his impatience and it was Paloma who gently asked the old lady if the book had anything on Russian zips of the nineteen-eighties.
‘I’m sure it does,’ she said, slowly lifting the cover. ‘This is the Burke’s Peerage of the zip fastener.’ She started turning the pages with an arthritic finger and launched into another lecture. ‘The word “zipper”, as it is still known in America, was used first in the nineteen-twenties for a brand of galoshes with a zip fastening. All sorts of theories exist as to why the word was coined, but I won’t bore you with them. I can see your interest in the subject is limited.’ Her finger stopped and she held open the page. ‘Here’s the section on manufacturers. We’ll just have to work our way through the letter “G”.’
‘Do they show the trademarks as well?’ Paloma asked.
‘Yes. Give me a moment.’
They watched while Marcia ran her finger slowly down the entries. But unfortunately the Burke’s Peerage of the zip fastener let her down. She got to the end of the “G”s without a result.
‘I’d better try again. It must be here. This is the standard work of reference.’
Paloma started to say, ‘If it was just a small company- ’
Marcia cut her off with, ‘It would still be here.’
But it was not. She reached the end of the list again.
‘Could we be mistaken about the symbol?’ Diamond asked. ‘We took it to be the Cyrillic “G”, but maybe it represents something else.’
‘Ah,’ she said, and snapped her fingers. ‘You’re cleverer than you look. We’ll go through “H”.’
Bemused, they waited for her to try again. Working right through the alphabet would take the rest of the afternoon and evening.
Then Marcia gave a little murmur of recognition.
‘Got it. “Honta”. Here’s the logo beside it with a note that it appears on the underside of the puller.’
‘So it wasn’t Cyrillic,’ Diamond said.
‘Oh, it is, but it isn’t Russian Cyrillic. It’s Ukrainian. They pronounce the symbol a different way, as an “H”, so it makes sense that it’s not listed with the “G”s. Listen to this: “Honta was founded in Kiev in 1991, in the new, independent Ukraine”.’
‘What a turn-up.’
Marcia was her buoyant self again. ‘What you have here is a little piece of history. The choice of logo is an expression of independence. It says Ivan Honta was a leader of peasant revolts in eighteenth century Ukraine. The date when the company was founded, 1991, was of course the year the Ukraine broke free from Russia. You’ll recall that the Hungarians and the Czechs were the first to break away and others followed later. Oh, and I see it was a short-lived company. “Honta supplied zips for the Ukrainian Brovary Jeans Company in 1991 and 1992, but ceased trading, as did Brovary, early in 1993 after Levi Strauss set up factories in the former Soviet Union and the Russian Gloria Jeans co-operative began undercutting prices.” That’s rather sad.’
‘Rather sad for them, but good news for me,’ Diamond said. ‘It narrows the field appreciably. Do we know if Brovary exported to Western Europe? I’m still wondering if the jeans could have been bought by an Englishwoman over here.’
‘I doubt it,’ Marcia said, ‘but we can check.’ The misshapen fingers started turning pages again. ‘Bratislava, Break Dancer, Bright Boy, Brighton Beach – some of these sound more like racehorses than jeans – Brooks Sisters. Nice sense of humour there. Here we are, Brovary. “Manufactured for the Ukrainian market 1991-3. Exports: n/a.” What’s that?’
‘Not applicable,’ Paloma said. ‘They didn’t export.’
Diamond rubbed his hands. ‘Marvellous. That’s all I need to know. Our skeleton is almost certainly Ukrainian. Isn’t it amazing how much you can learn from one rusty zip fly?’