surface would be nearer to you, wouldn't it?" He paused, looking round the room. Everyone was shaking their heads, spellbound by his enthusiasm.
"So what are we left with? If it was a boat, then your man was probably painting the cabin roof. The inside of the cabin roof. Now, I did some experiments with a very similar paint and, to get this effect, I needed to be reaching quite high. And small boats don't have much headroom. So I guess your man had a pretty big boat."
"If it was a boat," Lynn said. "Couldn't it have been something else? The inside of a trailer? Or a caravan?"
"Could be. You probably wouldn't get carpet in a trailer, though, would you? It could have been a shed, or a garage too. Because paints that are designed for fiberglass are pretty good on asbestos as well, and there was a lot more of that around back in the seventies."
"The bottom line is that it doesn't take us any further forward," Weird said, disappointment in his voice.
The conversation veered off in several directions. But Alex had stopped listening. His brain was ticking, a train of thought triggered by what he'd just heard. Connections were forming in his mind, links between apparently unconnected pieces of information forging into a chain. Once you gave space to the first unthinkable thought, so many things made sense. The question now was what to do about it.
He suddenly realized he'd been out of it. Everyone was looking at him expectantly, waiting for an answer to some unheard question. "What?" he said. "Sorry, I was miles away."
"Jason asked if you wanted him to write a formal report," Lynn said. "So you can show it to Lawson."
"Yeah, great idea," Alex said. "That's brilliant, Jason, really impressive."
As Lynn showed Jason to the door, Weird gave Alex a penetrating look. "You've got an idea, Gilly," he said. "I know that look."
"No. I was just racking my brains, trying to think of anybody from the Lammas that had a boat. There were a couple of fishermen, weren't there?" Alex turned away and busied himself, popping a couple of slices of bread in the toaster.
"Now you come to mention it?We should remind Lawson about that," Weird said.
"Yeah. When he calls, you can tell him."
"Why? Where are you going to be?"
"I need to go into the office for a few hours. I've been neglecting the business. It doesn't run itself. There's a couple of meetings this morning I really need to go to."
"Should you be driving around alone?"
"I've no choice," Alex said. "But I think I'm pretty safe in broad daylight on the road into Edinburgh. And I'll be back long before it's dark."
"You'd better be." Lynn walked through the door carrying the morning papers. "Looks as if Jackie was right. They're plastered all over the front pages."
Alex munched his toast, lost in thought, as the others went through the papers. While they were occupied, he picked up the color chart Jason had left behind and tucked it into his trouser pocket. He seized a lull in the conversation to announce his departure, kissed his wife and sleeping baby and left the house.
He eased the BMW out of the garage and onto the street, heading for the motorway that would take him over the bridge to Edinburgh. But when he reached the roundabout, instead of turning south on the M90, he took the northbound slip road. Whoever was after them was on his turf now. He had no time to waste sitting in meetings.
Lynn got behind the wheel of her car with a sense of relief she wasn't proud of. She was starting to feel claustrophobic in her own home. She couldn't even retreat to her studio and regain her calm by working on her latest painting. She knew she shouldn't be driving, not so soon after a C section, but she had to get away. The need to shop had provided the perfect excuse. She promised Weird she'd get one of the supermarket staff to do all the heavy lifting. Then she'd wrapped Davina up warmly, tucked her into her carrier and escaped.
She decided to make the most of her freedom and drive up to the big Sainsburys at Kirkcaldy. If she had enough energy after shopping, she could always pop in to see her parents. They'd not seen Davina since she'd come home from hospital. Maybe a visit from their new granddaughter would help lift their gloom. They needed something to give them a