The Blood Detective (23 page)

out. He could always go to the FRC but, by the time he had rattled across London on the tube, he would barely have time to get under way.

‘I’ve made it clear that I’m not interested, Dave.

Now, please, leave me alone. Surely you have some dirt to uncover about the ancestors of some second rate celebrity.’

Duckworth shook his head, as if rueing Nigel’s

lack of commercial nous.

‘Actually,’ he sniffed, ‘as well as the Cable stuff, I have a very lucrative private client. Doing a bit of bounceback for him; been doing it for several months. Currently working my way through some

Metropolitan Pohce records. Without much luck.’

‘Good for you,’ Nigel said, staring at the screen.

‘You know, Nigel,’ Dave said, standing up, ‘there’s no point returning to this job if you’re not willing to adapt to the times. Private clients are all well and good when they pay well, but there’s a fortune to be made from the press and media. I’ve got three jobs for TV companies at the moment: I’m hiring people to help me out. I can put a lot of work your way, if you’re interested.’

Nigel ignored him.

‘Suit yourself,’ Duckworth said and shuffled away.

Much as it pained him, Nigel knew Duckworth

was right. Private chents alone did not pay the bills and well-paid jobs involving serious research, losing yourself for weeks in another world, were rare. The best-paid jobs came from the press, either wanting you to trace the ancestry of the newsworthy and famous, or tracing descendants and relatives of someone in the pubhc eye they could doorstep, and from

TV companies seeking to satisfy their thirst for new formats. Working for the pohce might be thrilling, but it would soon end and was unlikely to lead to anything else. Given his paucity of chents, the time may well come when he would be forced to take a long spoon and sup with Duckworth.

That was for another time. Here was a job in which he could lose himself; and it was unfinished. The future could wait.

He entered Eke Fairbairn’s name into the 1871

search field, typed London and hit enter. Two results.

One fitted the bill. He was sixteen years old, living on Treadgold Street, North Kensington with his father, Ernest, and mother, Mary Jane. There were no other siblings in the home at that time. Nigel went back to 1861: the family were at the same address, Eke was six, and there was a girl, Hannah, aged nine, and a boy of four, Augustus. What had happened to Augustus in the intervening ten years? Perhaps he had died, which may have explained why the Fairbairns did not have any more children. Hannah was different; she would have been nineteen by 1871 and may well have

married. He made a note in his notebook to search out a death certificate for Augustus and a marriage, or death, certificate for Hannah.

The Fairbairns left Notting Dale, probably to

escape the shame and opprobrium Eke’s conviction had brought upon them. But where did they go? He scoured records for London, then widened out to the whole country, but found no trace of an Ernest and Mary Jane Fairbairn living together, or who were single, and the right age. He scoured online death certificates and found his answer: Ernest died aged forty-six in 1881; Mary Jane’s demise came two years later at the age of forty-five. In the same records he found confirmation of the death of their son, Augustus.

The National Archives were about to close. There was no more to be done here. He knew Hannah was the only survivor of the Fairbairn family. Had she managed to continue the bloodline?

It was late and Foster’s suit wore the ammonia smell of the tower block when he arrived home. Without even pausing to take his jacket off, he booted up his sleek chrome laptop that lived on the kitchen table.

It was the only time he used that piece of furniture; most of his food was eaten standing up, late at night or early in the morning.

He charged a large glass of wine and sat back down as the computer chuntered and whirred. The top of his head felt as if it was in a vice, pressure pulsating both sides. Each time he raised his eyes to focus, he felt a dull ache behind them.

The killer, if he was still at large - and something told Foster he was - was due to strike the next night.

The very next night, they would discover if Terry Cable was the right man: if no body was found, it meant Harris’s confidence was justified. If not, well, they had a fourth murder on their hands. Foster wanted to do all he could to prevent that happening.

By nine that evening he, Heather and Khan had

knocked on the door of every single flat in the block.

They had a list of everyone: who lived where, which flats were vacant, which had new tenants, all cross referenced with the electoral roll. There was little they could do about the empty flats, or those where they had received no reply, other than to watch while the hours counted down. He was meeting Heather at six the following morning to do just that.

He wanted help: the whole area under surveillance, ART if possible. He’d spoken to Drinkwater. The suspect still hadn’t been charged and they were going before the court the next morning to ask for another forty-eight hours. They were convinced of Cable’s guilt; he had no alibis for any of the nights when the victims had disappeared, nor when their bodies

were dumped. But they had not found any physical evidence, and Cable was not confessing.

Foster rang Harris to ask for help watching the tower block, but was knocked back; they were all employed trying to produce something with which to charge Cable.

‘He’s our man,’ Harris kept repeating.

Forest gave up. He asked to interview Cable, to look into his eyes and see him speak.

Harris was adamant he should take a few days off.

‘You look exhausted, Grant,’ he said.

Foster knew Harris didn’t want his doubtful,

brooding presence undermining the certainty of his men.

He checked his watch. If he went to bed now he

could get seven hours’ sleep, perhaps ease the ache in his head. But Nigel’s words at the National

Archives kept ricocheting around his brain. ‘Anyone who seeks to forget the past has a corpse in the basement,’ he had said, words that carried a gruesome resonance for him. Foster had done all he could to forget his past and its terrible events, devoting himself to work, surrounding himself with gadgets and shiny things, medicating himself with alcohol, in effect shutting down his life. Yet this case had brought forth a torrent of memories and images of his father and his final hours.

He forced himself to think of the case — was there anything he and Heather had neglected to do? — but Nigel’s words haunted him still. Perhaps Harris was right. Cable’s arrest could have laid the events of 1879 to rest-Time would tell.

In little more than twenty-four hours they would know if the past was about to give up more of

its dead.

He was sinking further. Tumbling head over paw into his own private Hades. His state of mind matched the squalor and filth and degradation of the stinking Dale in which he now plied God’s work. Jemima and the little ones kept well out of his way. For days he had not seen them, and when young Esau had crossed him that morning following his ablutions, he had whimpered and cried and sought sanctuary in his mother’s skirts. Her look was one of horror and bewilderment, no recognition for the creature he had become. But this was the Lord’s work he was doing he could not rebel, nor ignore his calling. God had total authority. He remembered Saul and knew he could not deviate from this chosen path. It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.’ It was for someone to show these pitiable creatures the foolhardiness of their ways, to show them the consequences of their alcoholic servitude. By walking the streets of that benighted Dale, those London avenues, gateway to the infernal regions, he could see his actions were justified; there were few souls staggering to and fro in their drunkenness, few women of loose virtue to allow those same fools to claw and paw at their soiled flesh. His mission would soon be over, he knew that; but these streets would be cleaner and less putrid for his actions.

Then he would meet his judgement.

The Dale was deserted, he noted with satisfaction. His fingers sought and held the hilt of his blade in his pocket, twitching against the cold steel. In this moment of distraction he inhaled through his nose, and at once almost retched at the sulphurous, rancid stink. He was not but a short walk from that mephitic swamp the local folk called the Ocean. A collection of clay pits in an ignored brickfield, great holes where stagnant water, pig effluent and human excrement and waste had gathered to create one noxious pond with an unholy stink that stayed in the nostrils for days. Swiftly, from the pocket of his woollen coat, he brought a handkerchief doused with scent and clasped it to his gagging mouth. The nausea passed. He stood up, chastised. Until the deed was done, or the Ocean’s miasma was downwind, he could take air only through his mouth.

He walked down the new Walmer Road, past those streets of shame. Nowhere in London was more degraded and abandoned than life in those wretched places. He shuddered when he thought of what passed for life in that acre of sin surrounding William Street and the disgusting habits of the deluded fools who inhabited them. Yes, these people were poor, but what little money they had they squandered. Dissolute half clad girls smoking in lice-ridden rooms, plying their awful trade with the steady inflow of certain submerged and criminal types.

They needed to learn the error of their ways. Once again his hand clasped the hilt of his dagger as he felt his gorge rise.

He managed to pass the despicable swamp without retching then turned right on to St James Square, the air becoming cleaner, breathing easier among the respectable class whose dwellings sat around that glorious church. It made his heart swell to see its awe, silhouetted against the mild night sky.

Passing it put purpose in his step, not that it had been waning.

He followed the road until it joined Saint Ann’s Villas, where he turned left towards the Royal Crescent on the edge of the Dale. A quick right took him down Queen’s Road. There were more people present here, the terror not as strong. He would soon change that…

He stood by the chapel on Queen’s Road, hidden in the shadows, watching that place. The Queen’s Arms. The stench of ale, wafting towards him on the breeze, was overpowering almost as unbearable as the stink from that stagnant pit he had passed earlier. Again he breathed only through his mouth.

He twisted his neck to one side, hearing it crack and feeling the relief from the pressure. He was calm, prepared, ready.

The door of the pub swung open; two men stumbled out.

They squared up to each other, as if fixing for combat. But another emerged to intervene and one was pushed away, turning to leave. A huge man. He let him pass by, not wanting to risk such a mighty foe. Seconds later the other protagonist in the brawl that never was staggered from the public house, muttering obscenities and oaths at no one in particular. Much more like it, he thought.

The smaller man hawked phlegm into his throat and expectorated copiously into the street. Then he adjusted his cap and set off walking veering slightly to his left before righting himself.

Once more he brought phlegm into his throat and cleared it.

He shook his head, as if to rid it of the fug and increased his speed. ‘Bastards,’ he muttered to himself

In the shadows he waited to see which way his victim would go. Praise God, the man went straight on, towards him. The man crossed the road, expectorating once more. He felt the knife in his hand and stepped from the shadow, falling in behind. The man turned instinctively, saw him and stopped.

Aye, what’s this business?’ the man slurred, his face pulled, addled.

Without breaking stride he continued walking to him, pulled the knife from his pocket and drove it home, twisting sharply when it was sunk to the hilt.

The victim’s eyes turned glassy, rolled heavenwards — he would find no comfort there — and a gasp of air hissed from below, accompanied by the gurgle of his death. When he pulled the knife clear, the man collapsed to the floor. Immediately he picked up his quarry, carried it ten yards to a patch of ground upon which it seemed they were building yet more dwellings.

Like a doll, he tossed it to the ground, not even bothering to hide the fruits of his labour. Only then did he look around: he saw no one. He was truly blessed. He replaced the knife in his pocket and hurried away from the scene, yet another night’s work complete.

Nigel reached the Family Records Centre as dawn approached after yet another night of fitful sleep, studded with dark, half-remembered dreams. Foster had arranged for the centre to be open at Nigel’s request. Phil on the desk was there waiting to let him in. It was barely six a.m., but he was still whistling. A tune Nigel could not make out. It was only as he returned from locking up his bag and coat that he realized it was ‘Where Do You Go To My Lovely?’

by Peter Sarstedt.

‘You whistling that for my benefit, Phil?’ he asked.

Phil looked bemused. ‘Didn’t realize I was,’ he said, vaguely hurt.

Nigel moved on. As he drifted towards the indexes, he heard Phil start up once more. This time he couldn’t make out the tune at all.

He went straight to the marriage indexes and

hunted down the reference for Hannah Fairbairn, to a carpenter named Maurice Hardie. Thank God it wasn’t John Smith, he thought. At a terminal upstairs he tracked them via the census. In 1881 they were living in Bermondsey with three children; a nine-year old girl and two boys, aged seven and three.

Next he was faced with a familiar problem. They simply vanished from the census. The death indexes told him that Maurice and Hannah died a day apart in 1889. A call to the General Register Office revealed influenza had claimed them both. They had been reduced to poverty, clinging on to the bottom rung of Victorian existence inside Bermondsey Workhouse.

Two days later, their younger son, David, succumbed to the disease in the same desperate place.