Carl Webb’s hair.

Carl Webb, as we all know, was a wife-beating, suicidal drug addict, the sort of bloke who is regularly interviewed by the police these days, and given the rigid social niceties of Adelaide post- war, being the city of churches, they too would have had little patience with his type.

Picture it.

Carl Webb being escorted to the police station under the influence of barbiturates, sloppy like a drunk, probably needing some support, helped into the drunk tank.. Who hasn’t been there?

An interview some hours later after sobering up, a stern talking to then back out on the street and he’s missing only one thing. One of his hairs had been caught up on a detective’s jacket, the one who interviewed him. The same detective who watched over Paul Lawson as he did his work. And there goes that missing hair, detaching itself from the copper’s coat sleeve just as Lawson separates the mould from the cast. Drifting down so slowly and attaching itself to the cast.

Then again, perhaps it happened in a different way. Depends on how often PC Sutherland had his coat dry cleaned.