The Broken Window

and lead, consistent with bullets that had been milled or shaved. A few grains of gunpowder. And a few very small traces of mercury.My ballistics expert says he might be making a dumdum bullet.”
    “Yes, that’s right. Liquid mercury’s poured into the core. Causes hideous damage.”
    “They also found some grease used in lubricating the receivers of rifles. And there were traces of hair bleach in the sink. And several dark gray fibers—cotton, quite thick with laundry starch. Our databases suggest they match the fabric in uniforms.”
    “Do you think that the evidence was planted?”
    “Our forensics people say not. The traces were quite minuscule.”
    Blond, sniper, uniform . . .
    “Now, one other incident set off alarms here: an attempted break-in at an NGO near Piccadilly—that’s a nongovernmental organization. A nonprofit. The office was the East African Relief Agency, Reverend Goodlight’s outfit. Guards came by and the culprit fled. He threw away his lock pick down the sewer. But we had a stroke of luck. Fellow on the street saw where. Well, to summarize, our people found it and discovered some soil on the tool. It contained a type of hop that’s grown exclusively in Warwickshire. This hop had been processed for use in making bitter.”
    “Bitter? Like beer?”
    “Ale, yes. Now it so happens that we have a database of alcoholic drinks here at the Met. And their ingredients.”
    Just like mine, he reflected. “You do?”
    “Put that together myself,” she said.
    “Excellent. And?”
    “The only brewery that uses this hop is near Birmingham.Now, we got an image of the NGO intruder on CCTV and, because of the hop, I thought I’d check the Birmingham CCTV tapes. Indeed, the same man arrived at New Street station several hours later, getting off the train with a large rucksack. We lost him in the crowds, I’m afraid.”
    Rhyme considered this. The big question was: Were the hops planted on the tool to lead them off? That was the sort of thing that he could only get a feel for if he had examined the scene himself or had possession of the evidence. But now it was just down to what Sachs called a gut feel.
    Planted or not?
    Rhyme decided. “Inspector, I don’t believe it. I think Logan’s pulling a double reversal. He’s done this before. He wants us focused on Birmingham while he goes ahead with the hit in London.”
    “I’m glad you say that, Detective. I was leaning that way myself.”
    “We should play along. Where is everyone on the team?”
    “Danny Krueger’s in London with his people. So’s your FBI man. The French agent and the Interpol chap were checking out leads in Oxford and Surrey. They didn’t play out, though.”
    “I’d get them all to Birmingham. Immediately. In a subtle but obvious way.”
    The inspector laughed. “Making sure Logan thinks we’ve swallowed the bait.”
    “Exactly. I want him to think we believe we have a chance to catch him there. And send some tactical people too. Make a noise about it, make it look as ifyou’re pulling them back from the shooting zone in London.”
    “But in fact beef up the surveillance there.”
    “Right. And tell them he’s going for the long shot. He’ll be blond and dressed in a gray uniform.”
    “Brilliant, Detective. I’ll get right to it.”
    “Keep me posted.”
    “Cheers.”
    Rhyme ordered the phone to disconnect, just as a voice from across the room intruded. “Heh, the long and the short of it is your friends at SSD are good. I can’t get to first base, hacking in.” It was Rodney Szarnek. Rhyme had forgotten about him.
    He rose and joined the officers. “innerCircle’s tighter than Fort Knox. And so is their database management system, Watchtower. I really doubt somebody could break in without a massive array of supercomputers, which you just aren’t going to find at Best Buy or RadioShack.”
    “But?” Rhyme could see that his face was troubled.
    “Well, SSD’s got some security on the system I’ve never seen before. It’s pretty robust. And, I’ve got to say, scary. I had an anonymous ID and was wiping my tracks as I went. But what happens? Their security bot broke into my system and tried to identify me from what it found in the free space.”
    “And, Rodney, what exactly does that mean?” Rhyme was trying to be patient. “Free space?”
    He explained that fragments of data, even deleted data, could be found in the empty space of hard drives. Software could often reassemble it into