Powers shook his head. ‘It’s the Tanzanian, Johnny Brown, or whatever he’s really called. The one we’ve got in the bin.’

‘It’s not him. He’s lying.’

‘Jack, the little shit’s ’fessed to it about a thousand times. Straight cough – said he cut Dundas ’s hair, wanted to make some voodoo bracelet with it. And if it’s not him, then who the hell is it? The support group emptied that place out, raked the place clean. There was no one. And no way out.’

Caffery stared at the shape on screen. No one who’d seen the video had ever stated the obvious: that the figure on the screen didn’t look quite human. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not him. I had the guys in the custody suite measure him. He’s five four. Short, but not this short. The camera was set at exactly one metre fifty high and was two metres from the table. I’ve looked at the CSI plans. Johnny Brown would have stood here.’ He pointed at a place on the screen. ‘More than a head taller. And look at those shoulders. There’s something wrong there, seriously wrong.’

‘They dressed him up – he admitted it. They sent him out to scare people into buying their voodoo crap. Pretty crude beliefs, these people have – not that those exact words ever came out of my mouth, of course.’

Caffery stared at him stonily. ‘How’d they “dress” someone up to look like that? Look at it.’

‘Prosthetics. Lighting.’

‘There weren’t any prosthetics when we searched the place. And Brown didn’t have Dundas ’s hair on him when they took him in, did he?’

‘Says he tossed it. And call me slow, call me a woollie, or however you Met people refer to us, but out here in the boonies someone ’fesses up to something like that, we kind of find it easier just to go ahead and believe him.