‘He only found out he was adopted after the death of his parents. After his mother died he was going through her papers and found his original birth certificate. It was a big shock – he didn’t know.’
‘Has he made any attempt to find his birth parents?’
‘He says he had been planning to quite recently, but hadn’t yet done anything about it.’
Grace thought for a moment. ‘Did he by any chance tell you where his birth certificate is?’
‘Yes. It’s in a filing cabinet in his office at Dyke Road Avenue. It’s in a folder marked Personal. Would you like to tell me any more?’
‘Not at this stage,’ Grace replied. ‘But thank you. I’ll let you know what I find.’
He ended the call, then immediately dialled the number of the Operation Chameleon incident room.
107
Despite being desperately tired, Grace slept fitfully, woken by the slightest noise and not settling again each time until he was certain that it had come from outside Cleo’s house, not from inside.
His mind was a jumble of dark thoughts. A burning MG. A tattoo. A gas mask. A body with crabs falling off it, rolling through the surf on a Brighton beach, Janet McWhirter’s smiling, cheerful face in her PNC office.
Clear the ground under your feet.
The words of his own mentor, the recently retired Chief Superintendent Dave Gaylor, were rolling around like surf inside his head. Gaylor had been a detective inspector when Grace had first met him. The youngest ever DI in Sussex. Twelve years his senior, Gaylor had taught him much that he knew today. In a sense, his own attempts at helping Glenn Branson were his way of passing that knowledge on.
Clear the ground under your feet. It was an old CID expression. Gaylor had always impressed on him the importance of looking at what was immediately around you when you were at a crime scene. Of not ignoring anything, however irrelevant it might seem at the time. He had also told Grace that if something felt wrong, then it probably was wrong.
Janet McWhirter’s death felt wrong to him.
The words of one of his own personal mantras, cause and effect, were also tumbling around in his mind. Cause and effect. Cause and effect.
After fifteen years in the police PNC department, Janet McWhirter falls in love. She goes for a career change, a lifestyle change, plans to move to Australia. Was the cause of her lifestyle change the man she met? And the effect for her to end up dead?
It was really troubling him.
Dawn was breaking outside. Grace had never been afraid of the dark, even as a child, perhaps because he knew his policeman dad was there, in the next room, to protect him. But he had been worried during these past hours of darkness now. Concerned who might be out there wanting to harm Cleo. Her insanely jealous ex-fiancé, Richard?
Richard Northrop-Turner.
The man who had stalked Cleo relentlessly and increasingly nastily, until she had threatened to go to court. Then he had gone away, or so it seemed. Richard Northrop-Turner, who raced cars and did the mechanics himself. Despite all Cleo’s protestations that she did not believe her ex would go as far as trying to kill her, the first call he would make this morning, when he left here, would be to the SIO on the investigation into her attempted murder, a competent DI called Roger Pole, and suggest they concentrate on Richard Northrop-Turner as the prime suspect.
Cleo stirred and he kissed her lightly on the forehead, feeling her warm, sour breath on his face. He wanted to move her out of here and into his own house for the next few days, which would, ideally, mean getting rid of his lodger. For some moments, as he lay awake, he wondered whether he could do a swap with Cleo. Let Glenn Branson come and stay here – and act as a guard – while she stayed with him.
But when he suggested it to her as he was getting dressed a while later, she was less than enthusiastic.
‘It’s safe here,’ she said. ‘There’s only one way in and out, through the front gates. I feel secure here.’
‘You’re not secure when you leave here. How many more nights are you on call-out?’
‘All this week.’
‘If you have to go out again in the middle of the night, I’m coming with you.’
‘You’re sweet. Thank you.’
‘How secure are you at the mortuary?’
‘The doors are always locked. I have Darren there all the time, and Walter Hordern most of the time, as well.’
‘I’m going to get extra patrols around here, at night, and also have patrols keep an extra vigilant eye around the mortuary. Do you have a reasonably recent photograph of Richard?’
‘Loads,’ Cleo said. ‘On my computer.’
‘Email me one this morning – something that’s a good likeness. I’m going to get it circulated to the local police – in case they see him anywhere.’
‘OK.’
‘How will you get to work today?’
‘Darren’s picking me up.’
‘Good.’
Grace told Cleo he would bring round a Chinese takeaway tonight, as soon as he could get away, and a bottle of wine. She kissed him goodbye, telling him she thought that was a very good plan.
It was a quarter to six when he left the house and he just about had time to dash back to his home to shower, shave and change. He entered as quietly as possible so as not to wake up Glenn Branson – more to avoid having to endure another round of early-morning soul-searching from his friend than from any concern for the Detective Sergeant getting his requisite hours of beauty sleep.
As usual, Glenn had left the living room looking like a tip. CDs and DVDs, pulled from their sleeves, were spread around everywhere, and the detritus of some reheated ready meal in a foil box – fish pie, it smelled like – was lying on and around a tray on the carpet, along with two empty cans of Coke and an ice-cream carton.
Grace got himself ready and fled, pausing only to slip a CD, from a rapper he had never heard of, into the living room hi-fi and switch it on, turning the volume up high enough to shake a man’s fillings out five miles away.
It was far too loud for him to hear Glenn Branson’s shouts and curses as he drove away.
108
There was a brown envelope lying on Roy Grace’s desk when he walked in, just before seven, with an explanatory note from Bella Moy taped on top, stating these were the certificates for Brian Bishop he had requested. She had also written down the name and contact details of a post-adoption counsellor who, she said, had previously helped the local police through the obstacle course of finding out information on adopted people.
Inside were two creased, oblong documents, about six inches high and a foot wide. They were on yellowing paper with red printing, and handwritten details inserted in black fountain pen ink. He unfolded the first one. It was headed: Certified Copy of an Entry of Birth. Under that were a series of columns.
When and Where Born: Seventh September, 1964 at 3.47 a.m. Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton
Name, if any: Desmond William
Sex: Boy
Name and Surname of Father:
Name and Maiden Surname of Mother: Eleanor Jones
Then, in a space at the extreme right, was written Adopted. It was signed Albert Hole, Superintendent Registrar.