Chapter 60
CID Unit, Police Headquarters, Kingsbourne, Wealdshire. Monday 18 October 1999
DC John Bowyer walked along the corridor to the door marked 'DCI P. Carlton'. He raised a hand to tap on the door, hesitated, and looked at his watch. Two minutes before ten o'clock. Perhaps it would be better to be punctual rather than early. He continued along the corridor to where he could look out over the park.
He was nervous. Very nervous. He'd spent the whole weekend wondering what the boss would make of the dossier he had left with her on Friday afternoon. Would she refer him for psychiatric tests? Or simply humour him and tell him that what he had found out was interesting but not worth pursuing. Maybe she hadn't had a chance to look at it. Or had simply flicked through it and tossed it to one side.
Officially, the file on Andrew Starling had been closed six months ago. He had disappeared without trace and no-one had any idea where he had gone. John Bowyer's younger brother, a student at Slade Park Sixth Form College had casually remarked that Gerard Starling had said something vague about his father being in Australia. DC Bowyer had made enquiries through official channels but the police in Australia had been unable to offer any leads. No-one by the name of Andrew Starling had applied for a visa recently and there were no records of any resident with that name. John would have left matters there if he had not received a personal phone call from a young policewoman in Sydney asking if she could communicate with him privately using the Internet. He had given her his e-mail address and couldn't wait to get home that night to log on and see if there was a message waiting for him.
Andrea Bellaconi was an amateur historian who had spent the last few years researching convicts who had made a name for themselves. When she had seen John Bowyer's request for any information relating to an Andrew Starling, she had been rather amused because one of the successful convicts she had been investigating was called Andrew Starling. She would have left it at that if it wasn't for a rather bizarre coincidence. The road leading to Starling's residence in Murrumatta was called Kingsbourne Bypass.
'Weird, isn't it?' she had written. 'Your Starling failed to build a Kingsbourne Bypass but my Starling achieved it — over a hundred years ago.'
Most police officers would have dismissed the matter as a chance happening, but John and Andrea were sufficiently intrigued to want to find out if there were any other impossible links between the two men. The finding which caused total bewilderment was the photograph which Andrea unearthed. It was of Starling, taken shortly before his death. She faxed it through to John and he returned a photo of his Starling. They were baffled. The photographs could easily have been of the same person.
When Andrea studied the convict records and discovered that Starling, under the name of Jack Finch, had been sentenced at Kingsbourne Assizes, she didn't know what to think. The only explanation that sprang to mind was that the Starling who had disappeared had been related to the convict. That would explain the similarity in appearance — but not the name of the road.
John looked through the records for the assizes and found the entry for Jack Finch, but when he looked through parish registers he could find no record for either Jack Finch or Andrew Starling. It was as if one Andrew Starling had suddenly appeared in 1835 and another had disappeared, equally suddenly, in 1998.
DC John Bowyer walked back along the corridor to the Detective Chief Inspector's door.
He knocked.
He waited until he heard, 'Come in,' then opened the door.
'Take a seat,' the DCI told him. 'I've read your report. Fascinating stuff. I noticed, though, that despite the wealth of information — you were unable, or unwilling, to draw any conclusions.'
'No, ma'am . . . I mean, yes ma'am.'
Patricia Carlton tilted her head to one side. 'So which is it — unable or unwilling?'
John Bowyer squirmed in his seat. 'I have to say that I think it is no more than an interesting coincidence.'
The DCI smiled. 'An interesting coincidence. Yes. That is what we must conclude. But if we weren't police officers, of course, we might well have reached a different conclusion.'
She handed him his dossier. 'I should take this home if I were you. But if you turn up any more interesting coincidences — I'd love to hear about them.'
Did she really wink at me when she said that? DC John Bowyer wondered.