‘Through a points system. All students from abroad need a valid visa letter to say they’ve been accepted by an approved college. That gets them thirty points. Then they must prove they’ve got several thousand pounds in the bank for twenty-eight days. That gives them the remaining ten points they need.’
‘And you and I know there are loopholes. The money can easily be borrowed.’
‘Right. And the letters have been forged on occasions, but not by the Japanese. Like you said, it would be highly unusual to find them fiddling the system. If our young woman was a student, it’s more than likely she came officially and her name is known.’
‘Along with several thousand others.’
‘I’m not sure of the numbers,’ Leaman said.
‘Let’s assume she’s on the books. Can the Border Agency tell us if she’s dropped out?’
‘They’d rely on the colleges informing them.’
Diamond sighed. He’d found the flaw. ‘Which they don’t.’
Ingeborg said, ‘To be fair, guv, some of them do.’
‘Why would anyone drop out? Anyone from Japan, brought up to do the right thing, work hard and get results?’
‘Can’t keep up with their studies. Loss of face.’
He glanced across at the photos of the victim on the display board. ‘Can’t argue with that.’
No one smiled.
‘If the Border Agency doesn’t have a grip on this, we’re dependent on the colleges,’ Diamond said.
‘This is the problem I’m finding,’ Ingeborg said. ‘The colleges are a law unto themselves.’
‘Or no law at all?’
‘Not much of one, anyway.’
‘Haven’t they given you any names?’
‘Three are being followed up as we speak. It’s a matter of contacting the staff concerned and that takes time because the lecturers aren’t all in college at one time.’
‘Speak to the students. They’ll tell you if one of their mates has gone missing.’
Diamond had put his finger on it, as usual. Students would surely cooperate, especially if it was made clear that a body had been discovered. Going through official channels wasn’t the only option.
‘Thanks, guv. I’ll give it a go.’
By the end of the day all the checking had come to nothing. Everyone had been accounted for, even the three Ingeborg had mentioned. She had tried questioning groups of Japanese students. They were keen to help when they heard what she said and there was a useful grapevine of information between different colleges. They had answered the few queries that had come up.
‘It’s looking more and more as if she was a tourist,’ Halliwell said.
‘So what did Paul Gilbert find?’
Silence.
‘He must be still out there.’
The hotels had been easier to check than the colleges. Registers existed and were reliable. It was just a matter of getting round to them all. The extra help from uniformed officers had lightened the load. There remained a number of bed and breakfast houses that would wait for the morning.
‘A day visitor?’ Halliwell said.
‘In a coach party? They count them back in, don’t they?’
‘I was thinking she may have been travelling alone — by train, say, from London. Plenty do.’
‘There’s no way of finding out.’
‘Unless her people back in Japan report that she hasn’t returned. Have we asked the embassy?’
‘One of the first calls I made — and wouldn’t you know it, there’s a chain of command. It’s always the way with bureaucracy. They have to check ten times over before they tell you what day of the week it is.’
‘It’s in their interest to cooperate.’
‘I’m not saying anyone is being obstructive. The people I spoke to were ultra-polite. They’ll check with their government and the police and we’ll get a response by Christmas.’
‘We haven’t much to help them apart from describing the clothes.’
‘We emailed the dental record and the all-important tooth tattoo.’
‘DNA?’
‘DNA as well.’
‘Did we send a photo?’ Halliwell said.
Diamond tilted his head towards the shots of the corpse. ‘That? You wouldn’t identify anyone from that.’
From across the room John Leaman had overheard what was said. ‘Just a thought, guv.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Something we may be able to do. There are experts who can reconstruct a face from a skull.’
‘A decomposing skull?’
‘They put it through a CT scanner and get the digital data to produce a computer image, one you can rotate and look at from all angles. From that, they make an exact model in styrene foam with a computer-controlled milling machine—’
‘You’re losing me,’ Diamond said.
‘A replica of the actual skull. Then they use wax or clay to add the muscles and tissue.’
‘Hold on. How do they know how much wax to add on?’
‘I’m not sure. Generally you’ve got an artist — a sculptor — working closely with a forensic anthropologist.’
‘Not the best of combinations.’
‘It’s not infallible, I grant you.’
‘And slow, I wouldn’t mind betting.’
‘But there is a quicker method.’
‘What’s that?’
‘When it’s all done on the computer, using a high-resolution 3D image of the skull. They have a large stock of facial features that they manipulate into place until something fits.’
Diamond gave him a squint. ‘Is that more reliable than the wax?’
A pause. ‘I couldn’t say. I’m not an expert.’
‘Sounds like trial and error. Where did you pick up these pearls of wisdom?’
‘From one of those CSI shows on TV.’
‘Say no more.’
Halliwell came to Leaman’s defence. ‘Some computer-generated images would look good on the display board.’
Swayed by the suggestion, Diamond tapped the point of his chin. ‘D’you think so?’
‘Doesn’t matter what I think. The ACC would like it.’
‘Georgina?’ A fleeting smile. He knew exactly what Halliwell was getting at. The Assistant Chief Constable, Georgina Dallymore, had him down as a technophobe. ‘On second thoughts, maybe it’s worth a try.’
‘The computer graphics option?’ Leaman said.
‘Definitely.’ Even Georgina would think a wax head was over the top.
‘Why don’t you find out some more?’ Halliwell said to Leaman.
That evening Diamond walked the towpath alone. He’d heard nothing from Paloma since the bust-up at the Dolphin and his pride wouldn’t allow him to call her. She’d dumped him, so it was up to her to get in touch if she still had any regard for him. Actually the speed of her departure had caught him unprepared. A few unguarded words from him and she was off.
You and I are through.
He’d gone over it repeatedly. Maybe she had a point, he had decided as the days went on. He’d treated her as if she was staff. What was the word he’d used when she’d told him a trouble shared was a trouble halved? Claptrap. Not a nice thing to say in the circumstances, and she didn’t know she’d touched a raw nerve. He didn’t want to share his troubles with anyone.
Yet he knew the seed of the misunderstanding had been sown earlier, in Vienna, when they had come across the little shrine by the canal. It was clear from what she’d said that he shouldn’t have distanced himself from the death of the woman. He’d treated the tragedy professionally, as a policeman, sidestepping the sympathy Paloma had obviously felt. Someone had come to a tragic end and he’d not shown the concern expected of him. Paloma had wanted to learn more about the victim while his instinct was to move on and be grateful it was someone else’s case.
His bigger misjudgement had been to follow up on the Vienna incident, asking Ingeborg to find out the facts. If he’d been consistent, he would have let well alone. Stupidly, he’d wanted Paloma to be pleased he’d gone to this extra trouble — even allowing that he’d only delegated the duty. He hadn’t thought ahead, hadn’t sensed that by raising the subject again he was giving her a rerun of the same scene: his professional way of dealing with the fact of death against her heart-felt sympathy.