Seventeen years later, he found himself looking at it again.
It was one of several photographs arranged on the table before him. The office he shared with Pettifer was small. There was enough space for a desk and a computer each—facing away from each other in opposite corners of the room—and this semicircular table, placed against one wall, at which they were sometimes forced to sit cramped together, elbow to elbow, annoying them both enormously.
Fortunately, Pettifer was yet to arrive.
He looked down at the photographs.
The car, yes.
And Michael Hyde, obviously. This particular picture was the mug shot after he’d been taken into custody following the assault on Christopher Shaw. There were several others on file, but they all ultimately showed the same individual. Hyde was a small man with weak and insipid features. His pale, unhealthy skin appeared to have been wrapped around a skull that lacked any form of underlying bone structure, and his hair was sparse and tufty, like patches of lank grass.
Not a winner in life’s genetic lottery, Laurence thought. Hyde had been only in his midthirties when this photograph was taken but could easily have passed for two decades older. And yet, while unpleasant, he was not an obvious physical threat. A grown man could have smacked him down without issue—and indeed, a man had done just that.
But Christopher Shaw, of course, had not been a grown man.
Laurence turned his attention to photographs of the boy. Shaw had been barely fifteen years old when Hyde attacked him, and there was a strange contrast between their appearances. While Hyde looked older than he was, Christopher Shaw appeared far younger. It made the images themselves harder to view. The wounds to Shaw’s side, where Hyde had plunged the knife into him. The defensive injuries to the boy’s thin forearms. And the angry slice down the side of his face. In the photograph of that particular injury, Shaw’s jawline was horribly swollen, the stitched cut there forming a stark black tramline on the risen hill of his skin.
Laurence leaned on the table.
Just as with Hyde, there were other photographs of Christopher Shaw on file. The wounded boy in these pictures had grown into a troubled young man who had accumulated mug shots of his own over the years. But Laurence had been unaware of that when he watched the security footage last night. It was this particular image that he had recognized.
Shaw as a victim. Not only of Michael Hyde but of chance.
The door opened suddenly, with too much force, and Laurence jumped. And was then annoyed with himself as he looked up to see Pettifer grinning at him.
“Gotcha.”
Laurence picked up his phone and held it to his ear without dialing.
“Chief Barnes?” he said. “I’d like to report an attempt on an officer’s life.”
“When I’m really trying, it won’t be an attempt.”
Pettifer closed the door, put her bag on her chair, and shrugged off her coat. Then she came and stood next to him, looking down at the photographs.
“This our boy?” she said.
“It is. Or rather, it was our boy. Back in the day.”
“You worked this case?”
“Yes. Although it wasn’t really a case as such.”
“What happened?”
Laurence considered just handing her the file and letting her read through it for herself but then relented and filled her in with the basic details. The way Hyde had attacked Shaw and attempted to cut off his face before a passerby intervened and subdued him.
“Motive?” Pettifer said.
“The passerby? Probably common decency.”
“Hyde, I mean.”
Laurence shrugged. “He was delusional. Paranoid. By that point he already had a fair few burglaries on his record. Breaking and entering. Setting fires. He told us he had been hearing voices and driving around for days. When he saw Christopher Shaw, he felt like he had to attack him, but he didn’t understand why. Basically, Shaw was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“What happened to Hyde?”
“Twelve years for assault with intent,” Laurence said. “He didn’t have an easy time of things in prison. He was attacked several times and beaten so badly that he almost died. Men like him don’t have a good time inside.”
“I have no problem with that.”
“Do you not? I’m undecided. Anyway, he was released from prison a few years ago. He is registered disabled. As of this moment in time, he has not reoffended.”
Laurence walked over to a whiteboard mounted on the opposite wall. He picked up a cloth and then wiped away a swathe of notes.
“What are you doing?” Pettifer said.
“Clearing some space.”
“Did you even check what was there?”
“Yes, it was very important.”
He took the top off a marker and began writing, the nib squeaking against the whiteboard.
A) Christopher Shaw attacked by Michael Hyde (May 3, 2000)
He looked back. Pettifer was holding the photograph of Shaw’s injuries.
“How is this relevant?” she said.
“It isn’t. I was just killing time until you arrived.”
She glared at him and put down the photograph.
“But it isn’t totally irrelevant,” Laurence said. “I don’t think it necessarily has any bearing on the murder of Alan Hobbes. But it does provide context. If you want to understand the ailment, first understand the organism.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re aware we haven’t been able to locate Christopher Shaw overnight?”
“Yes, of course.”
Laurence gestured toward a folder on the table. It was filled with a sheaf of paper nearly a centimeter thick.
“That is the file we have on Christopher Shaw,” he said. “Those are all incidents that occurred in the years following the attack by Hyde. Have a look through. You will note a downward trajectory in the course of this young man’s life.”
Pettifer sighed, and then Laurence waited as she flicked through the file, working quickly through the various arrest reports, the photographs, the court records and recommendations. Since his late teens, Christopher Shaw had lived a vagabond existence. Drugs were a constant feature, but there had also been a number of arrests for shoplifting, soliciting, and public disorder.
“The last sighting of him was two years ago,” Laurence said. “He stole from his sister on what should have been their father’s birthday, and she reported him for the theft. Her statement is in the file here. It seems like she finally lost patience with him.”
“Yeah, I don’t blame her.”
It wouldn’t actually have occurred to Laurence to blame anyone. But he remembered Katie Shaw from the time of her brother’s assault—how he had met her at the cordon that day, and how upset she had been. How she had blamed herself for what had happened. It had been obvious to him that she loved her brother, and he imagined it must have taken a great deal for her to cut him off the way she eventually had.
He turned back to the board.
A) Christopher Shaw attacked by Michael Hyde (May 3, 2000)
B) Katie Shaw reports CS to the police (September 3, 2015)
—CS disappears
“After that,” he said, “Christopher Shaw seems to have dropped off the face of the earth.”