Page 67 of First Blood

Arthur frowned. ‘You want me to look at a nail that you don’t have?’

He took the sheet of paper from his pocket.

‘I have this.’

Arthur looked at it and humphed around the reception.

Dawson followed him past life-size photo boards with brief histories of prominent industrial figures from the area.

Dawson was about to ask where he was being led when Arthur stopped abruptly at a waist-high cabinet full of nails.

‘Okay, which one of these does it most resemble?’ Arthur asked him.

Dawson ran a hand through his hair. ‘Jeez, I’ve got no…’

‘Lad, have you even seen this nail?’

Dawson put aside his resentment at being called ‘lad’ as he knew the man was just trying to help.

‘Yeah, I’ve seen it, briefly.’

‘Well, take a closer look. They’re all very different.’

A nail was a bloody nail as far as he was concerned. You picked up a box from a hardware shop and hammered stuff into a wall. All he wanted to know was which bloody hardware store this particular nail had come from.

To pacify the man he took a closer look, thinking back to the ones he had seen at the crime scene.

Arthur talked as he looked.

‘Nails date back at least to Ancient Egypt, even as far back as 3400BC. Trust me, they’re not all the same.’

He looked hard and realised the man had a point.

‘That one,’ he said, resting his finger on the glass. ‘Or the one beside it.’

‘Well, make up your… oh, yes, they are quite similar. Those, my boy, are not your standard mass-produced nails we have today. In fact, they’re not even from this century, or the last, or even the one before.’

‘Go on,’ Dawson said, his interest piqued.

‘Those nails were made by hand, as was usual up until around the early 1800s. Do you see those marks on the side?’

Dawson nodded. That’s what he’d remembered from the one he’d seen.

‘They’re slitters’ marks. From the late sixteenth century, workmen called slitters cut up iron bars to a suitable size for nailers to work on. But over time manual slitters disappeared due to slitting mills.’

‘So, you’re saying it could be from the sixteenth century?’ he confirmed.

‘If it looks like that, yes.’

Dawson thanked him for his time and walked away.

He now had undeniable proof that those two murders were linked.

Chapter Sixty-One

Kim was reminded of scenes from cheap horror movies as she looked again at the separation of the head from the body. Only this wasn’t latex and paint or tomato ketchup. This was flesh, muscle, skin and veins all cut crudely, hacked and chopped after the killer cut.

Kim knew she was projecting when she sensed a sadness in the eyes that stared up to the sky. She knew that the muscles relaxed and that any emotions drained away from the eyes.