Blood Atonement (8 page)

He went over what Heather had just told him, seeking to hold it up to the light to see if it really was of no use.

Katie Drake and the person who left that hair shared some DNA and therefore an ancestor. Given that she appeared to have no past — or at least, one that was unclear — was there any relevance to that? Yes, the maternal ancestor they shared might have been a knuckle-dragger who cooked sabre-toothed tiger for Sunday lunch, but there was also a chance that it might have been someone during the past hundred years or so. The probable killer and the victim

and the missing girl shared DNA.

They shared the past.

‘Get Nigel and meet me at The National Archives asap.’

She heard the noise. Not for the first night she had to stifle her giggles to avoid waking her two sleeping sisters. Her youngest brother, Thomas, had crept in, too — wedged in amongst them all, scared to sleep on his own with his elder brothers away.

There it was again. She must tell him to change it. It sounded like no owl on God’s earth. She slipped from the covers and padded across the frozen floor, thankful for her thick woollen socks, slipping on her buckled shoes. Under her nightgown she was fully clothed; once she was outside in the woods she knew he would take off his coat and wrap it around her shoulders as always. Her heart beat quicker at the prospect of seeing him. It had been weeks since their last meeting.

She went to the window and eased it gently upwards, wincing at the gasp of cold air that blew into her midriff. She squeezed through the narrow opening and on to the wooden balcony that extended along the front of this wing of the farmhouse, closing the window behind her. Glancing upwards, she caught sight of the clear night sky, thousands of pinprick stars in the heavens. She crept slowly to the corner of the balcony, hitched her nightgown up and swung her leg over the rail. When both her legs were over the rail, her back to the house and her face towards the fields, she edged sideways along until she reached the central pillar, then holding on to the rails she lowered herself until her legs could grasp the pole. As they slipped down, so did her hands until she was low enough to jump without her landing making too much noise. Once on the floor she stopped. No sound from within that wing of the house. She turned. No sign of life in any other part either. She took a deep breath and from her right hand plucked a small splinter of wood that had become embedded on her descent. Then she cast her eyes over to the barn, behind which he was hiding.

The ground was firm, the edges of the grass tufts starting to crisp as the temperature plummeted. She hurried towards the barn. At the far end she turned the corner and there he was, on his haunches, back against the wall. He saw her and rose to stand. They embraced without a word, his arms wrapping around her, the smell of air and soil and the elements in his hair. Without a sound he took off his coat and put it around her, then took her hand in his and they half ran across the bare gracing field, to the shrouded sanctuary of the woods.

Once secluded in the dark he grabbed her waist and kissed her hard. After a few seconds, despite enjoying his warmth, she pushed him away. There was too much she wanted to say. The look in his dark-ringed eyes as she pulled apart was one of hunger. She bit her lip. What she wanted to say could wait a few more seconds…

He found a place where they could sit, him leaning back against the rough bark of a pine tree, her against his chest, his hand stroking her hair. She recounted her mother and father’s discussion of a few nights before, feeling his body stiffen when she mentioned Hesker Pettibone’s name. When she finished, he said nothing.

He remained silent for what seemed an age. ‘They are trying to force me to leave,’ he said eventually.

She sat up and looked at him. ‘What? Who is?’

‘My father. My elder brothers. My uncles. Their friends.’

‘But whatever for? You do so much good work for them.’

‘I know. It is not just me. The other day, Isaac Canfield was set upon and beaten. By his own kin. He’s no longer welcome in his own home.’

“I don’t understand.’

‘Because we are young, Sarah. And they are old. And there are few young, women like you. They suppose you would prefer me as a husband — or Isaac Canfield — rather than Hesker Pettibone, for example.’

And they would be correct.’

She shuddered, laid her head on his chest once more. “I would rather die than become a breeding mare for that fat pig.’

‘Then when I leave, I will take you with me,’ he said plainly and with absolute certainty.

They lay there with only the sounds of the secluded wood and their thoughts. She thought of her sisters and brothers. How much she loved them and how much they would miss her when she was gone. How much she would miss them. The thought broke her heart.

Yet she knew there and she knew then that she would follow Horton to the ends of the earth.

Nigel hurried past the fountains and pond in front of The National Archives, bag banging against his hip as he moved. Outside the main door he could see Heather and

Foster waiting, the latter pacing back and forth, clouds of breath billowing from his nostrils in the late autumn chill, like an impatient bull. Heather saw him approaching, nudged Foster and pointed. He immediately placed both

hands on his hips in a familiar pose that, despite its

inherent irascibility, caused Nigel to smile. Injury had not withered him.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ Nigel gasped.

‘Well, you’re here now,’ Foster said.

‘How are you, by the way?’ Nigel asked. The last time

he’d seen him was in a wheelchair at Karl Hogg’s funeral.

‘I’d be a lot better if people stopped asking me how I

am,’ he replied. Then he smiled and gave Nigel a wink.

‘It’s called small talk, sir,’ Heather interjected.

‘Yeah. Small talk, big waste of time,’ Foster said, smile vanishing. ‘Come on, let’s get inside and I’ll tell you what’s what.’

On first impressions, Nigel thought, Foster didn’t seem

transformed by his ordeal. He followed them to a table in the canteen.

‘I need to be somewhere else in ten minutes … actually, make that five now,’ Foster said, looking at his watch once more. He was due to interview Trevor Vickers. ‘I’ll get straight to the point. I know you’ve delved a bit into Katie Drake’s background. We’d like you to delve a bit more.’

‘What do you mean by “a bit more”?’

‘Into her maternal line.’

Nigel furrowed his brow. A few months ago, Foster

had had nothing but disdain for genealogy, now he was

talking about researching the ‘maternal line’.

‘Can I ask why?’

‘Let’s just say there’s a chance, an outside chance, that the person who killed her and abducted her daughter is some sort of distant relation. So if possible, we need to know anyone who might be alive today who shared a common maternal ancestor.’

Heather spoke. ‘We found a hair at the crime scene.

There are any number of explanations for how it might

have ended up on the victim’s clothing. But one is that the killer left it — and, even if it wasn’t, then the person who it belongs to is someone we’d like to speak to. Our problem is that we can’t get a full DN A profile from it. All we could get out of it was some mitochondrial DNA …’

‘Which proved they shared a common maternal ancestor.

Fascinating,’ Nigel said.

‘You know about DNA?’

‘I’m no scientist,’ Nigel explained, ‘to say the very least.

However, you can’t be a genealogist these days and not be aware of the use of DNA.’

You’ve lost me,’ Foster said. ‘How the hell does DNA

have anything to do with genealogy?’

‘Well, there you’re entering into a major debate. There

are some who think it should have nothing to do with

traditional genealogy, that we should all trace our ancestry the old-fashioned way, by following the paper trail. I have some sympathy for that view. But then there are those, an increasing number, who think DNA testing has a massive part to play, that it’s the future of genealogy.’

Foster didn’t seem interested in pursuing the debate.

‘How long will the research take?’

‘If you want the entire maternal line, then it might take longer than usual, simply because unlike the paternal line you’re dealing with a number of name changes, given that most of the women will have married. But pretty quickly if you give me the support you did last time and get the General Register Office to pull the certificates I find and read out the information over the phone.’

‘No problem,’ Foster said. ‘Heather will help you. She’s used to giving you a hand.’

Nigel felt his stomach turn. ‘Great,’ he said, squeezing out a smile. Her smile was as forced as his. He guessed it wasn’t her idea.

Foster left. They watched him go.

‘He’s lost weight,’ Nigel said, seeking to fill any awkward silence. Here he was, alone with Heather again. Someone up there was taunting him.

‘Six months sipping soup and red wine through a straw

while his jaw healed,’ she replied. ‘He could market it as a miracle diet.’

‘He seems OK, though.’

‘He’s back at work. I spoke to him a few times and he

feigned enjoyment at doing nothing, but he fooled nobody.

It’s quite sad. Other than his job, he has nothing.’

Nigel wracked his brain for something that defined his

existence other than work. His quest failed.

Back upstairs the centre was filling up slowly, just as

Nigel liked it. ‘Is it still as busy as ever down here?’ Heather asked as they walked.

‘Oh, yes. It’s a riot,’ Nigel replied, earning a laugh, the throaty traffic-stopping one he loved. He’d do all he could to hear it regularly. He’d forgotten how much he enjoyed just being with her. Recently he’d been telling himself to live more in the moment, not easy for one who spent his life working in the past. Here was a chance to try his new approach.

‘One day I’ll explain,’ she’d told him. Nigel wanted

to postpone that moment. Any hope he still clinged to

that she’d realized what a mistake she’d made might be

snuffed out.

He aimed to trace Katie Drake’s ancestry back as far as

possible, before coming forward through the maternal

line to identify as many living cousins as possible. With the help of the hotline to the GRO, the work was easy and without obstacle until 1891. In that year Horton and Sarah Rowley married four months before the birth of their daughter, Emma; he aged twenty-one, she just eighteen.

His occupation was given as carpenter. Neither gave the

name of their fathers.

Nigel discovered the couple had two more children,

Isaac and Elizabeth. In 1909, Horton — a Christian name Nigel had rarely encountered before — died in an accident, run over by an omnibus. Isaac was killed in the First World War. In 1913 Sarah died of pneumonia and pleurisy. Yet he could find no evidence of the couple’s births among

the indexes or on census returns for 1871 and 1881. He

located them on the 1891 and 1901 censuses. On both

occasions under ‘Where Born’ were the letters ‘NK’. He

showed the results to Heather.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Not known.’

‘I suppose that means their parents were itinerant.’

‘Hmm,’ Nigel said, pulling at his bottom lip in thought.

Something wasn’t right. He could sense it. Of course, he’d come across similar entries in the past. But rarely when both husband and wife were unaware of their birthplace.

‘You’re not convinced?’ Heather asked.

‘Well, there are many explanations. There’s every chance they really didn’t know where they were born. It’s just odd for that to apply to both of them. And it gets even odder when you factor in their marriage certificate — no names for either of their fathers. Of course, they could both be illegitimate; they are adopted, taken in by others, and they don’t know their original place of birth.’

‘You can’t say they had nothing in common.’

‘No, exactly. They could have met in the workhouse, or

some other place, discovered they shared a similar upbringing and that brought them together.’

‘Actually sounds quite sweet. Love against the odds and

all that.’ She flipped a fallen curl of dark hair out of her right eye and surveyed him. ‘But I see you don’t agree.’

‘It’d be the first time I’ve come across something like it, but that’s not to say it didn’t happen. And yet… you’d think one of them would declare the village, town or city they were eventually raised in, even if they weren’t aware of where they were born. Or that one of them might enter the name of their adoptive father, if there was one.

Both of them having similar gaps in their memory just,

well, it strikes me as a bit suspicious, to be honest.’

You think they deliberately left out those details?’

‘The census was deeply unpopular among some people;

the Victorian equivalent of Middle England thought it

was a gross intrusion into their private lives. People gave away as little as possible because they were scared how the information might be used. That’s one explanation. But there’s also another, slightly less principled one.’

‘What?’

‘They were running away and didn’t want to be found.

Four months after they were married their child was born.

Sarah was only eighteen. Of course we can only speculate, but it’s not too much of a leap to imagine that one set of parents might not have been too happy with the prospect, tried to get in the way, and that Horton and Sarah eloped to a new place and tried to cover their tracks. Lied about their names and deliberately obscured their birthplaces.’

‘That’s even sweeter,’ Heather added, tongue wedged

firmly in her cheek. ‘It has a Montague/Capulet thing

going on. Perhaps Horton was from the wrong side of

the tracks. She was the eldest daughter of a rich pompous landowner, he the horny-handed son of toil…’

‘There’s a future for you in romantic novels.’