The four passports gave the passenger four names.
Peter Wycliffe. Andrew James Morton. Charles Everett. Michael Raines.
Two documents were convincing forgeries. Another used the identity of a man who had died eleven years earlier. The fourth was genuine.
"Wycliffe?" Eleanor asked.
Relf nodded.
"The checks confirm it. He's Peter Wycliffe."
She looked at the report again.
"Twenty-eight years."
"Yes."
"Where has he been?"
"He hasn't told us."
"Or why he came back?"
"Not yet. His solicitor arrived this morning."
Relf turned to another sheet.
There were records of journeys through France, Belgium, Switzerland, Singapore and Hong Kong.
"When was he last in Hong Kong?" Eleanor asked.
"Four years ago."
"Under his own name?"
"Yes."
"I thought he was wanted."
"He was. The investigation fell apart over the years. Witnesses died, companies disappeared, records were lost. He wasn't being actively sought at every port by then."
"So he could travel as Wycliffe."
"It seems he did."
"Then why carry the other three?"
Relf put the papers together.
"That's one of the questions I'd like answered."
Wycliffe eventually answered some of them.
Eleanor was not at the interview. Relf told her afterwards that the solicitor had advised his client to explain the documents.
"He bought identities," Relf said.
"From whom?"
"He won't name the supplier."
"What does buying an identity involve?"
"That depends on what you pay for. At the cheaper end, papers. The more expensive ones come with a history."
"What sort of history?"
"Banking, employment, tax records. A driving licence. Enough for someone to look beyond the passport and find a person who appears to exist."
"Someone else's records?"
"In some cases."
"A dead person?"
"Sometimes a living one."
Eleanor looked at the copied message on the table.
WED 2315 / 4 / WREN
"And the four?"
"Package four. A British identity with full documentation and an established history."
"So it wasn't the number of passports."
"No."
She had written several possible meanings beneath the message. She crossed out the quantities and circled identity to use.
"Wren was the reception point?"
"Yes. Wednesday at eleven fifteen was the collection time."
"What did he say about the cipher?"
"He says he never saw it. His instructions were supplied already decoded."
"By whom?"
"A contact in France."
"No name?"
"Not one he'll give us."
Eleanor put down her pen.
"Then how did Bull get the encoded message?"
Relf drew the notebook towards him.
"That's what we need to find out."
They had treated Bull's notes as historical research. Much of the notebook was exactly that: copied inscriptions, dates, references to documents he had consulted.
The message that had taken them to Wren's Cut stood apart.
Bull had boxed it. Above the box was one word:
received
No source was given.
Eleanor checked the pages on either side.
"Not copied, then. Sent to him."
"Or handed to him."
"Have you found it in his emails?"
"No."
"A letter?"
"Nothing retained."
She looked at the word again. It told them almost nothing about how the message had reached him, but it changed what they were looking for.
They began working backwards through the notebook.
Three pages earlier, Eleanor stopped.
Another group had been crossed through. Beside it, Bull had written a decoding:
FRI 0040 / 2 / LAMB
She turned the notebook so Relf could read it.
"Is there a date?"
He examined the surrounding entries.
They placed it six weeks before Wren.
"Another collection?" Eleanor asked.
"Possibly. We need to find Lamb."
Lamb took longer.
The name no longer appeared on the maps they first consulted. Eventually they traced it to an old waterside location.
There was no police incident recorded there on the relevant night. Customs had nothing that matched. Neither did the Coastguard.
Relf widened the search.
A missing-person report gave him a name.
Marianne Voss, a German national living in London, had disappeared the morning after the date in Bull's notebook.
Six weeks later, she was still missing.