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Two years. I don't know if that means anything to the case or not."

Bosch scanned the report. Jesper's amendment to the report didn't really matter, since they had dropped Trent as a suspect and the skateboard had never been linked to Arthur Delacroix. But Bosch was curious about it, anyway.

"How'd you cut it down? Says here the same design was manufactured until 'eighty-six."

"It was. But this particular board has a date on it. Nineteen eighty."

Bosch was puzzled.

"Wait a minute. Where? I didn't see any —"

"I took the trucks off— you know, the wheels. I had some time here between things and I wanted to see if there were any manufacture markings on the hardware. You know, patent or trademark coding. There weren't. But then I saw that somebody had scratched the date in the wood. Like carved it in on the underside of the board and then it was covered up by the truck assembly."

"You mean like when the board was made?"

"No, I don't think so. It's not a professional job. In fact it was hard to read. I had to put it under glass and angled light.

Два года. Не знаю, имеет ли это какое-либо значение для дела или нет.

Босх пробежал глазами заключение. Поправка Джеспера, в сущности, значения не имела, поскольку они уже не рассматривали Трента как подозреваемого и скейтборд был не связан с Артуром Делакруа. Однако Босху все-таки стало любопытно.

- Как ты сократил этот срок? Здесь говорится, что данная модель выпускалась до восемьдесят шестого года.

- Так оно и было. Но на скейтборде есть дата. Тысяча девятьсот восьмидесятый год.

Босх пришел в недоумение:

- Постой-постой. Где? Я не видел никаких...

- Я снял подвески - то есть колеса. У меня выдалась свободная минута, и я решил посмотреть, есть ли там метка изготовителя. Патент или код торговой марки.

Их не оказалось. Но я заметил, что кто-то выцарапал с нижней стороны на древесине дату и затем закрыл ее подвеской.

- При изготовлении?

- Нет, вряд ли. Работа непрофессиональная, дату с трудом удалось прочесть. Пришлось восполь-зоваться увеличительным стеклом и боковым светом.

I just think it was the original owner's way of marking his board in a secret way in case there was ever a dispute or something over ownership. Like if somebody stole it from him. Like I said in the report, Boney boards were the choice board for a while there. They were hard to get — might've been easier to steal one than find one in a store. So the kid who had this one took off the back truck — this would have been the original truck, not the current wheels — and carved in the date. Nineteen eighty A.D."

Bosch looked over at Edgar. He was on the phone speaking with his hand cupped over the mouthpiece. A personal call.

"You said A.D.?"

"Yeah, you know, as in anno Domini or however you say it. It's Latin. Means the year of our Lord. I looked it up."

"No, it means Arthur Delacroix."

"What? Who's that?"

"That's the vic, Antoine. Arthur Delacroix. As in A.D."

"Damn! I didn't have the vic's name here, Bosch. You filed all of this evidence while he was still a John Doe and never amended it, man. I didn't even know you had an ID."