Then he was gone, swallowed by the darkness outside. The damp chill of the night invaded the cozy fug of the caravan, smothering the smell of stale cooking and replacing it with the tang of marshes. Lawson stood in the doorway long after Graham Macfadyen's car had reversed erratically up the track, his eyes dark pools of worry.
Lynn was their ticket into Jason McAllister. And she wasn't leaving Davina with anyone, not even Alex. And that was why what should have been an easy forenoon run out to Bridge of Allan had turned into a major operation. It was amazing what had to travel with a baby, Alex thought as he made his third and final trip to the car, listing under the combined weight of the baby seat and Davina. Buggy. Backpack containing nappies, wipes, muslin squares, two changes of clothes just in case. Spare blankets, also just in case. A clean jumper for Lynn, because projectile vomit didn't always land on the muslin square. The baby sling. He was mildly amazed he'd gotten away with leaving the kitchen sink plumbed in.
He threaded the rear seatbelt through the restraints on the portable seat and tested its security. He'd never worried about the strength of seatbelts before, but now he found himself wondering just how reliable they might be under impact. He leaned into the car, straightened Davina's fleece hat and kissed his sleeping daughter, then held his breath in apprehension as she stirred. Please let her not scream all the way to Bridge of Allan, he prayed. He didn't think he could cope with the guilt.
Lynn and Weird joined him and they all piled into the car. A few minutes later they were on the motorway. Weird tapped him on the shoulder. "You're supposed to go faster than forty miles an hour on a motorway," he said. "We're going to be late."
Stifling his concerns for his valuable cargo, Alex obediently put his foot down. He was every bit as keen as Weird to drive their investigation forward. Jason McAllister sounded just the man to take them the next part of the journey. Lynn's work as a restorer of paintings for the national galleries of Scotland meant she'd become an expert in the sort of paint that artists used at different periods. It also meant she'd had to find her own expert who could analyze the samples from the original so she could make her match as accurate as possible. And of course there were times when there were question marks over the authenticity of a particular work of art. Then the paint samples had to be evaluated to check whether they were from the right time frame and whether they were consistent with the materials used by the same painter in other works whose provenance was not in doubt. The man she'd found to do the scientific end of the investigations was Jason McAllister.
He worked in a private forensic lab near Stirling University. Most of his working life was spent analyzing paint fragments from road-traffic accidents, either for the police or for insurance companies. Occasionally he'd have an interesting diversion into murder, rape or serious assault, but that happened too seldom to provide enough variation for Jason's talents.
At a private preview of a Poussin exhibition, he'd tracked Lynn down and told her he was passionate about paint. At first, she'd thought this slightly geeky young man was being pretentious, claiming kinship with great art. Then she'd realized he meant precisely what he'd said. No more, no less. What infused him with enthusiasm was not what was depicted on the canvas; it was the structure of the stuff used to make the painting. He gave her his card and made her promise she'd call him the next time she had a problem. He assured her several times that he'd be better than whoever she was using.
As it happened, Jason had struck lucky that night. Lynn was fed up with the pompous prat she'd previously been forced to rely on. He was one of the Edinburgh old school who couldn't stop themselves condescending to women. Even though his status was effectively that of a lab technician, he treated Lynn as if she was a menial whose opinion was of no importance. With a major restoration on the horizon, Lynn had been dreading working with him again. Jason felt like a gift from the gods. Right from the start, there had never been any question of him talking down to her. If