The personnel file was thin.
Relf had kept his own notebooks from the Wycliffe investigation. The official records had been archived, then moved, then partly digitised. Some of the supporting documents had been lost.
The list of officers and attached personnel who had worked on the inquiry included a name he did not remember.
David Mercer. HM Customs and Excise.
Relf laid the page beside his current notes. The name alone proved nothing.
They waited for the personnel photograph.
It arrived shortly before noon.
David Mercer, HM Customs and Excise, 1998.
Eleanor leaned over the desk.
The man was younger than Hale had been on the video call, with darker hair and less weight in his face. But the long nose was familiar, as was the uneven line of his mouth.
Relf studied it without speaking.
"Is that him?" she asked.
"Yes."
He drew the photograph closer.
The man who had helped him search the coast was the man who now claimed to know how the organisation had moved people through it.
"Did Mercer know where Wycliffe was?" Eleanor asked.
"I don't know."
"But he could have steered the enquiries."
"Yes."
"As Weller did with Hatherley."
Relf laid the photograph beside the conference picture Weller had supplied.
"I need to go back through what Mercer gave us. What we checked, what we left alone."
Eleanor looked at the two faces.
"Hale said you hadn't changed."
Relf gave a small shake of his head.
"He recognised me. I didn't recognise him."
"You hadn't seen him for twenty-eight years."
"He'd seen enough to know that."
She pulled her notebook towards her and wrote David Mercer beneath Benjamin Hale.
"Which name do we use now?"
Relf looked at the personnel photograph.
"When we meet him, I'll start with the one I knew."