The Blood Detective (7 page)

As he reached the edge of the market, where it met Myddelton Street, he could see Heather, hands on hips, standing by the steps and ramp that led to the entrance of the building. He increased his pace even further, his satchel bouncing rhythmically on his hip so that, by the time he reached her, he could feel his clammy shirt sticking to his back. He was struggling for breath.

‘Sorry,’ he gasped.

Her look was one of amusement. Her gaze was

not directed at his sweating brow, however. It was below that.

‘You’re wearing tweed,’ she said simply.

He was. Grey herringbone jacket over an open

necked striped shirt, navy-blue cords. He thought it best to make an effort, even though the jacket was second-hand, and leave behind the jumpers, jeans and duffel coat.

‘Is that OK?’

She nodded and shot him a smile. ‘It suits

you. You’ve got that bookish, floppy-haired thing happening.’

She was wearing a short black skirt, black tights and a pair of black knee-length boots. Nigel was worried a few of the older gentlemen who used the records centre might keel over.

‘Have you two finished swapping fashion tips?’ A young confident-looking Asian man in a suit, his hair gelled back, had joined them.

‘Nigel, this is DC Khan,’ Heather said.

The men shook hands. Despite her reassurance,

Heather’s look and comment had made him feel

self-conscious. Given that he had yet to cool down, he wondered if his face had reddened.

‘After you,’ he said, and pointed his hand towards the door.

Once inside, security checked Nigel’s bags and they made their way into the main area. The place was already filling up.

‘I never thought this place would be so busy,’

Khan said, surveying the bustling interior. ‘It’s like Piccadilly Circus.’

Nigel nodded. ‘You should see it at a weekend.

Fights break out over files.’

‘They don’t look like the sort of people who get in a ruck,’ Khan said. ‘More likely to bore you into submission.’

Nigel smiled, yet felt mildly insulted. Yes, he was often scathing about the sorts of people who pursued their ancestors fanatically; the type more comfortable retreating into the silent, quiescent world of the dead, rather than dwelling in the awkward, insolent present. But the world today was awash with information about the wealthy, the famous and the tawdry. Somebody has to help remember the anonymous ordinary men and women, who make the world turn.

‘So what’s the brief?’ Khan asked, rubbing his hands together.

They moved across to one of the enclaves housing around twenty years of bound, red birth-certificate indexes, arranged chronologically on solid wooden shelves.

‘I’m going to go through the birth indexes; you’ll do marriage and, Heather, you’re going to do death.’

‘Very appropriate,’ Khan muttered darkly.

‘The method for searching the files is the same,’

Nigel said, eager to get started: he knew he could rattle through the birth files in a few hours.

He pulled a bulky file off the top shelf, its leather cover battered and torn by use, and put it down on an upturned V-shaped wooden desk with a lip at the bottom to prevent the volume slipping off.

‘This is the birth index file for 1879, the first quarter, January to April,’ he said, pointing to the print on the spine.

He opened the first page. Both Heather and Khan leaned in for a closer look. The page was smudged and grey from thousands of fingertips tracing down it in search of an elusive name, the bottom right-hand corner stiff and brittle from where people had wet their fingers to be better able to turn the page.

‘Luckily for us, the entries for 1879 have been typed so they all fit in one volume.’

‘There are loads of names on that page,’ Khan

said, without relish.

Nigel shrugged. ‘The entries are listed alphabetically: first the surname, then the Christian names. But the columns we are interested in are the district and page number, 1 a 1 3 7 in this case. Whenever you see that number, jot down the details and make a note of which quarter it’s in. Is that clear enough?’

‘Think so,’ Heather said. ‘Does that apply to

them all?’

‘More or less. Your death indexes have an extra bit of information: age at death. Write that down, too. DC Khan, your marriage index will be the same as this index.’

‘Hopefully with fewer names,’ Khan replied.

Three hours later, Nigel went downstairs to the canteen.

Heather and Khan were waiting for him. Both

seemed animated.

‘How did it go?’ he said, sitting down.

‘Heather’s in shock,’ Khan explained.

‘Why?’

‘I can’t believe how many kids died at birth,’ she said, eyes wide. ‘On every page, there must have been at least one where it said zero under “age at death”.

Unbelievable. God, we have it easy. I mean, my mate Claire had a kid six months ago, and she was in labour for more than forty hours. Forty! Eventually she had an emergency Caesarean. If that had been a hundred or so years ago then the baby would have died.’

‘She probably would have, too.’

Heather nodded and bit her lip. ‘Shocking. And while I was facing up to the horrific reality of infant mortality in Victorian England, Simon Schama here was jotting down all the silly names he came across.’

Khan picked up his notebook. ‘Listen to this:

Smallpiece, ShufTlebottom, Daft … Daft! Come on, if your name was Daft, you’d change it, wouldn’t you? But this is the best one: Fuchs. For Fuchs sake!’

He started to laugh. Nigel smiled. Heather’s face remained stern.

‘You’re a big bloody kid, you know that?’ she said, though a smile was playing on her lips. She turned once again to Nigel. ‘He’s like this now after less than a year as a detective. You just wait: in ten years’ time he’ll be as jaded and cynical as Foster.’

‘But I’ll have more hair.’

‘Have you finished your searches?’ Nigel asked.

Heather shook her head. ‘I’m up to September, but that’s only because the April to June file is missing.’

‘Being repaired?’

‘Yes, I asked at the information desk and they checked. It’ll be back next Monday, all being well.

Let’s hope what we need isn’t in there.’

‘That’s quite common,’ Nigel said. ‘They get

touched by a lot of grubby hands every day.’

‘So does …’

‘Don’t even think of cracking that joke, Maj,’

Heather interrupted, raising a finger in warning.

Khan adopted a mock-angelic look. ‘Would I?’

Heather ignored him.

‘I’ve nearly finished,’ he added.

‘Well, I have finished so I can give you both a hand,’ Nigel said.

Heather looked at him, eyebrows raised. ‘That

was quick.’

He shrugged. Nigel did not want to tell her that he had once searched through 163 years of indexes in 5 hours; or that he had once traced a bloodline back to 1837 in a single day, relying on his speed and a few hunches.

‘Who’s going to phone them through to Southport when we’re done?’ he asked.

‘I’m going to fax them from the office here,’

Heather explained. ‘I’ll do them all together, so we’ll hang on till we’re all done.’

‘Hello, Nigel.’

The voice was behind his right shoulder, out of his sight, but he recognized it instantly.

‘Hi, Dave,’ he said, before even looking around.

Sure enough, it was Dave Duckworth. Overweight, perennially sweaty, monobrowed Dave Duckworth.

He had worked with Nigel at the agency before the old man died.

‘So, Nigel, I hear Branches Agency, like Lazarus, has risen from the dead.’

Their paths had not crossed in the three weeks since Nigel had returned.

‘You hear right, Dave.’

Dave wore a look of fake surprise. ‘So am I to infer that the wisdom of a certain N. Barnes failed to take the world of academia by storm?’

‘Something like that.’

Dave smiled broadly, then nodded at Khan and

Heather. ‘But, it appears that you have been sufficiently remunerated as to actually hire some staff.’

Nigel could see Heather’s eyes narrow. Hers was the type of face that was quick to display emotion.

She both daunted and fascinated him.

Before Nigel could introduce them both, Dave

leapt in. ‘I jest, of course.’

Heather’s smile dripped insincerity. Nigel could tell she thought him a creep. He couldn’t fault her judgement of character.

‘I know you’re police officers,’ Dave added.

No one said anything.

‘It’s the talk of the FRC, how you rolled up with half of CID. What’s the undertaking?’

‘I think you’ll find that’s confidential, Mr … ?’

Heather said.

‘Duckworth. Dave Duckworth,’ he said, thrusting out his right hand. ‘If you require any further expert help, then don’t hesitate to give me a bell.’ He pulled a couple of his cards from a brown leather wallet.

‘Thank you, Mr Duckworth,’ Heather responded

icily. ‘Mr Barnes is doing a good job but we’ll bear your offer in mind.’

‘Please do,’ he said, beaming a smile, before turning to Nigel once more. ‘Could we have a brief tete-a tete?’

‘I’m busy, Dave.’

‘Ten seconds. No more.’

‘Excuse me,’ Nigel said to the detectives.

He followed Duckworth to the wall by the locker rooms, wondering what it was he wanted. Something to do with money, he guessed. It was Dave Duckworth’s god. His whole career, his whole life, was dedicated to making it. Jobs were not judged by the quality of the research, but by the quantity of the payment. Nigel never sensed any love of the past in Dave, the thrill of the search, an interest in the stories of the dead, only a need to obtain as much work, and therefore as much cash, as possible. No one knew what Dave spent it on. He dressed cheaply, had no social life to speak of, and was notoriously thrifty.

Nigel pictured him sitting at home in his fetid flat counting piles of coins with a thimble.

‘I really am in the middle of something, Dave,’

Nigel said, wearily.

‘I know. You’re in the middle of a murder investigation.’

For

a second, Nigel was speechless. ‘How do you

know that?’

Dave, infuriatingly, tapped his nose. ‘That’s for me to know, Nigel, and you and your friends to find out. More pressing is, what do we do next?’

‘What do you mean?’

Dave leaned in closer, breaching personal space.

Nigel didn’t like it: there was a strong smell of rancid coffee on his breath.

‘I mean, how about we inform one of my contacts among the fourth estate, brief them as to what’s going on here and receive an emolument for our trouble?’

he whispered.

‘How much do you know, Dave?’

‘That it’s something to do with the murder a

couple of nights ago in Notting Hill’

‘I still don’t know how you know.’

‘That doesn’t matter. As I said, the question is what happens next.’

Nigel straightened himself up. He looked across; Heather was staring at them both.

‘What happens next is this: I tell you to fuck off, Dave. I’ve got a job to do.’ He left Duckworth and went back to the table.

Heather gave him a look of concern. ‘Everything OK?’ she asked.

Nigel took a deep breath. ‘Yeah, he’s just an old colleague.’

‘You don’t exactly seem to be the best of friends.’

He shrugged. ‘Small world, professional genealogy and research. All chasing the same money, things get a bit competitive.’

He held back from telling her that Duckworth

made most of his money these days doing the bidding of national newspapers. Whenever someone became news, the tabloids would be on the blower, asking him to research their family history, see if there were any skeletons in the closet, or help them track down other family members to speak to. Before leaving for the university, Nigel had worked for the press a few times, though he’d always loathed himself for it. But the money compensated for that.

‘How did he know we were police?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps someone at the GRO, or

in the centre here.’

She shook her head. ‘No one knows about the

reference outside the team. Apart from you.’

Heather had swiftly mastered the art of making Nigel feel uncomfortable. As if realizing this, her face softened and she gave him a warm smile.

‘Don’t worry, Nigel. We don’t reckon you’ve told him. Christ, we only told you eighteen or so hours ago and you’ve barely been out of our sight since.

Perhaps you could use your skills of persuasion to find out his source?’

‘Consider it done,’ he said earnestly. ‘I don’t think he knows about the reference or he would have told me. He’s the sort of guy who can’t hide things, especially if he thinks he can lord it over you.’

‘So what did he want?’

‘Talked a bit of shop.’

Khan intervened. ‘We should tell Foster. Warn

him that the press might get this.’

‘Get what?’ Heather asked. ‘All he can say is that detectives were at the Family Records Centre. It means nothing. We could be tracing our family trees for all he knows, some sort of police genealogy drive.

Let the little creep do his worst.’

DC Khan stood up and went to the Gents.

Heather looked at Nigel.

‘So what was that about the “world of academia”?’

He enjoyed her interest in him, but she was veering too close to an area he wished to avoid. Nothing Duckworth said seemed to have gone unnoticed by her.

‘Eighteen months ago I gave this up. It wasn’t panning out the way I expected. I got an offer to work at Middlesex University, setting up a course in family history. Things didn’t work out,’ he explained, not wanting to go into any more detail.

*You got fed up with genealogy?’

‘Running a business doing other people’s

genealogy.’

‘But you’re back doing it.’

Yes I am, he thought. Except now I’m working

for the police on a murder case and it feels like a shot at redemption.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s find the rest of those certificates.’