The Christmas Egg

The inspector nodded. Latimer was always telling him to be kinder to people. Or at least to be more aware of them. Not everyone’s a suspect. That was the phrase she liked to use. But Hobbes had his own rejoinder: ‘No, but everyone’s to blame for something.’ And she’d told him he was a hopeless, irredeemable cause.

Every contact leaves a trace. That was how they put it. Otherwise known in the trade as ‘Locard’s Principle of Exchange’. Jack Collingworth had taught him this, the DI who had taken Hobbes under his wing back in the sixties. Exchange, lad! Monsieur Locard got that spot on. Tit for tat. You just need to work it out. The perpetrator always leaves som