The Blood Detective (27 page)

‘Make them pay for the sins of their forefathers,’

Nigel added. ‘I said this to Foster earlier. The past is with us all the time, buried and hidden, yet it always comes to the surface. It refuses to be ignored.’

Her glass was empty. Nigel took it to the kitchen and filled it. His tiredness had lifted, the wine having a galvanizing effect. Heather’s company, too. When he returned she was staring at him, a look of curiosity on her face.

‘Do you wonder when your past will surface?’

‘What do you mean?’ he said, warily.

‘Your family past. When Foster and I first met

you, in that cafe, you mentioned you were adopted.

You didn’t know your own family history.’

‘Yes, occasionally I do think it will surface.’

That was half the truth. The secrecy of his past was a constant, lurking thought at the back of his mind. As hired historical help, he had performed thousands of successful searches of people’s family history. Yet the fact remained that he knew nothing of his own. One day, he knew, that would change.

‘I thought when you were adopted, you could

access the records and find out your natural parents,’

Heather said.

‘You can.’

‘But you haven’t?’

Tes, I did.’

‘So what happened? Sorry, I’m a bit nosy.’

He smiled. ‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘Not much to

report. It gave me the address of a woman, who

turned out to be dead. No record of a father and no one else around to speak to about it. I left it there.

Not knowing your past doesn’t stop you living your

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life. Actually, it can help you sometimes; no successes to live up to, mistakes to avoid. That can be liberating.

But there’s always an absence, a sense that something’s missing. Just a void and a lot of unanswered questions.’

Nigel took a large sip of his wine. Heather was looking at him, twining a strand of hair around her index finger. He sensed more questions. He didn’t mind. He welcomed her attention.

‘Do you have any music?’ she asked suddenly.

‘I have a record player,’ he replied, looking around at his room, piled with books and magazines, space at a premium. ‘Somewhere.’

‘What, vinyl? Jesus, Nigel, you’re a walking anachronism.’

‘I

just like old things. Everything now has built-in obsolescence; it goes out of fashion, or they bring out a new model, make you think you have to have it. Mass-produced crap that promotes dissatisfaction.

I like a thing well made. An object that, when you hold it, enables you to actually picture the man or woman who made it standing back and admiring their work.’

He got up out of his chair, wandered over to the bookshelf, shifting a pile of weathered periodicals to one side to reveal a dust-strewn record player. He lifted the lid; the arm had become detached.

‘The arm is broken,’ he said, waving the severed limb.

‘Funny, you don’t get that with a CD player,’

Heather said.

She got out of her chair and went over to the

radio, turning the dial slowly. Finally, she found a station playing music, an old soul song Nigel didn’t recognize. His tastes stretched to the work of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen and a few other ageing singer-songwriters of the early seventies. The collection stopped at about 1974, the year he was born. Given how she smiled when the sax-laden chorus of the radio song kicked in, that might not have been the latenight listening she was seeking.

She sauntered back to the chair, and drained the remnants of her wine. He went to give her a refill but Heather placed her hand over the top of the glass.

‘I’m driving,’ she said.

He poured himself another and they sat listening.

Heather had closed her eyes. Nigel wondered if she might fall asleep. When the song finished, she opened them again.

She sighed deeply. ‘It’s so good to be able to relax in the middle of all this,’ she said. ‘Foster can’t do it, can’t switch off. I think it’s vital’

Nigel could sympathize with Foster. Since

stumbling across Nella Perry’s body on Sunday morning, he could think of nothing but doing all he could to catch her killer. Sleep came in fitful spurts; only by chasing the killer through the past could he cope.

Heather seemed to sense his thoughts. ‘I know

how you’re feeling,’ she said. ‘It gets obsessive.’ She spread her hands out wide. ‘Welcome to my world.’

‘How did you get into detective work, if you don’t mind me asking?’

She shook her head. ‘Not at all. I did a criminology degree at university. When I finished, I wondered what I would do with it. The way I saw it, there were two options. I could continue to study, live in the world of theory and make bugger-all difference, or I could join the police force. I took the unfashionable option.’

‘Why London?’

‘I’d like to say all human life is here and, therefore, there is no more interesting and challenging place to do a job like mine. Which is true. But the fact is, I followed a bloke down here. It didn’t work out; me and London did.’

More silence. The song ended.

‘So who was it who broke your heart at the university?’

Heather asked.

Nigel was startled at first, but the wine emboldened him.

‘Who said she broke my heart?’ he replied, smiling-.

‘You did. When I was here Sunday morning. Well, you didn’t say that explicitly. But it was clear from the look in your eyes that it was painful You do the vulnerable look very well. It’s those blue eyes.’

He didn’t know what to say.

‘A combination of the eyes, the thick square

rimmed glasses, and the shy smile. Bet you went down a storm with the student body.’

His face must have betrayed a hint of panic.

She reacted immediately. ‘She was a student?’ voice rising with surprise.

He nodded. He felt it right to tell the whole story.

If this wasn’t to be the only time he was to share a drink with Heather, and he genuinely hoped it wasn’t, then it made sense to furnish her with the truth.

‘She was twenty-nine. A PhD student. Not one of mine. I was hired to try and set up a family history degree, but, while I was planning that, they asked me to take some history modules. Lily was chasing a job at the uni and, because she was doing a PhD and had a bit of time on her hands, she was assigned to help build, plan and research the family history course with me. We became close and eventually we …’ He tried to search for the right word.

‘Got it on?’ Heather offered, eyes twinkling.

‘You could say that, yes.’

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‘So, what went wrong?’

‘She was married.’

‘Oh.’

‘She was separated when we started seeing each other. I didn’t know there was a husband. Anyway, she told me about him one day. Then she said he had got back in touch, wanted to give it another go.’

‘She told you that on the same day she told you that her husband existed?’ Heather said with disdain.

‘The cow.’

‘Yes, well. Obviously, she didn’t choose me. They offered her a job at the university and, frankly, the idea of working with her every day after all that had happened was pretty unpalatable. Plus, there was a funding problem and so the family history course was being put on the back burner. So I walked away.’

‘You did the right thing.’

He shrugged. ‘I’m over it, by the way.’

She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘Why are you telling me that?’

He felt the burn of embarrassment in his cheeks.

Heather smiled, then glanced sideways in search of her bag. ‘Listen, you look knackered,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you go. Don’t want you to fall asleep in the birth indexes.’

She stood up, Nigel too.

‘You’re the first person I’ve ever told that to,’

he said.

‘Anything you say might be taken down and used in evidence against you,’ she replied.

He was tired, but he did not want her to go. Her presence was like a balm. He knew when he closed the door and went to his bed, the image of Nella Perry would be back and he would lie in the dark, unable to sleep, listening to the blood pumping around his body.

‘Thanks for coming round,’ he said.

Again she gave him one of her smiles.

‘I mean that,’ he added.

She stood by the door, lingering a few seconds.

Nigel felt the urge to say or do something.

‘No problem,’ she said. She walked towards him, put her hand on his shoulder and kissed his cheek.

Her lips were soft and brushed against him lightly.

She went back to the door.

‘Maybe we can do this again. Obviously, when the case is done.’

‘I’d like that,’ she said, putting her bag over her shoulder. ‘Though next time, try and get the cork out of the bottle properly.’

Nigel allowed himself four hours’ sleep and was back at the FRC within five, after being scooted across early-morning London by a cab driver eager to make use of the empty roads. With no one around he took the liberty of smoking a string of roll-ups in the canteen, to give him the energy rush the scalding machine-dispensed coffee failed to do.

From his notes on the investigation and trial, he worked out there were three other key figures whose descendants remained untouched: the ham prosecution barrister John J. Dart, QC, MP; Joseph

Garrett, who conducted Fairbairn’s defence; and Detective Henry Pfizer of Scotland Yard.

Dart first. Nigel wondered darkly if one of

his descendants was about to lose their tongue as well as their life in retribution for his verbosity. He found him immediately on the census of 1881, his age forty-seven, living in Bexley Heath, his constituency.

Heather

joined him; her smile was warm. Silently, he sighed with relief. He was not sure what the previous evening had meant, if anything, but the thought of seeing her again made him anxious. Would she act as if nothing had happened? Her smile had indicated she would not, though the tense look on her face betrayed the fact that time was running out and it was paramount they work fast. His mind returned to the task.

Dart’s prominence made tracing him and his family straightforward. The entire clan shared their time between houses in the country and central London.

It took the whole morning, but he had soon drawn up a list of descendants. Heather faxed it through to the incident room so the names could be checked and their whereabouts noted.

Nigel took a break. Heather went off to make a

phone call. In the canteen he was accosted by Dave Duckworth.

‘So, Mr Cable was innocent,’ he said, plunging his hands into his pockets and rocking back and forth on his heels.

‘Seems so.’

Duckworth stared at him. ‘A pain in the proverbial, because the background research was shaping up to be a well-paid little piece of work.’ Duckworth put his hands in his pockets and sighed, then looked back at Nigel. T saw your female amanuensis was back at your side this morning.’

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Nigel took a sip of his coffee. ‘You should be the detective with those levels of observation.’

‘Interesting work, is it?’ Duckworth said, ignoring the sarcasm.

‘Just doing some bounceback.’

‘Ah, like I did. It keeps body and soul together,’

Duckworth replied.

Nigel looked at him. ‘Not as much as lifting your skirt for the tabloids, though?’

Duckworth ignored the slight. ‘Sometimes one can have enough of finding the ancestral skeletons in the closets of the rich and famous. The work was a pleasant piece of research. And surprisingly lucrative, too. In fact, I’m hoping to make more money out of it. Not that the client, an intriguing fellow named Kellogg, knows that yet.’

Nigel nodded absent-mindedly - he’d switched off, wanting to be left alone to plan the rest of his research. He looked up and saw Heather weaving her way through the lunch crowds. Duckworth spotted her, too, and scuttled away. She watched him leave, lip curled.

‘What did that creep want?’ she asked.

‘Just poking his nose in,’ Nigel replied. ‘Goes with the job.’

‘He’s an oil slick,’ she shuddered. ‘The team have the Dart list. They’ve started working down it one by one.’

‘What about the Fairbairn list?’

‘Nothing so far. Couldn’t get much sense out of Foster. He sounds knackered. Told me he managed to grab a few hours’ sleep at his desk last night, first he’s had in three days. I told him to go home and get some rest, but he blustered. At this rate he’ll probably end up keeling over.’

Back at the indexes, Nigel turned his attention to Detective Henry Pfizer. The surname was soon explained: he was born in Berlin, then part of Prussia.

It seemed he left the country of his birth as a young man, escaping the turmoil and upheaval that permeated many parts of Europe in 1848. England was

a safe haven. Henry had met and married a London girl, Maria, and they had a son, Stanley. Much of this he gleaned simply from the 1881 census. He turned next to the 1891 census, but there was no sign of the family. A glance at the death indexes yielded no explanation either.

Nigel pulled a battered address book from his bag and found a number for a German genealogist he’d asked to carry out research for him in the past, usually tracing the roots of those who had emigrated from what was now Germany. He made the call, asked him

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to check records from 1881 onwards for Henry or Heinrich Pfizer and his English wife and child, making it clear that he would pay well for a prompt response.

The dead end frustrated him. They always did. The challenge came in overcoming such obstacles. You needed to think laterally, follow a hunch. He would return to Pfizer later; first there was Joseph Garrett.

This one was straightforward. He managed to tear through the generations. The two World Wars took their toll on the males in the Garrett line, and the name almost died out in the 1960s. But he managed to locate five living descendants.

He was listing their names when the call came

through from Germany with results of a preliminary census search. No records of any Pfizer of that age, or any with an English wife, on German censuses.