When I got to Forensic Services, I gave the bagged anonymous letter to Sarah Witticombe, our in-house document examiner. Nothing misses Sarah’s clear eyes. ‘I’ll do a full report for you,’ she said, standing near the door of her bright examination room, her white coat spotless, her skin polished. ‘I can tell you what sort of paper it was written on, what sort of laser jet printer printed it, where the envelope came from.’ She turned the letter over carefully in her gloved fingers. ‘I can’t tell from looking if it’s a “sticky” or a “licky” stamp, but we might get some saliva from that. Looks like a press-seal envelope.’ She sounded dejected. ‘But we still might get something trapped in the adhesive.’ I thanked her and walked down the hall, confident that soon I’d know where it had been posted, and that Sarah would pass it on to be tested for any DNA material she might find. Eventually she would tell me every possible fact about that letter and its envelope.
