Grace then unfolded the second document. It was headed: Certified Copy of an Entry in the Records of the General Register Office. At the very bottom of the document were the words, Certified Copy of an Entry in the Adopted Children Register.
Then he read along the columns.
Date of Entry: Nineteenth September, 1964
Name of Adopted Child: Brian Desmond
Sex of Adopted Child: Male
Name and Surname, Address and Occupation of Adopter or Adopters: Mr Rodney and Mrs Irene Bishop, 43 Brangwyn Road, Brighton. Company director.
Date of Birth of Child: Seventh September, 1964
Date of Adoption Order and Description of Court by which Made: Brighton County Court
Signature of Officer Deputed by Registrar General to attest the entry: Albert Hole.
He read both documents through again carefully, absorbing the details. Then he looked at his watch. It was too early to call the post-adoption counsellor, so he decided he would do it straight after the eight-thirty briefing.
‘Loretta Leberknight,’ she answered in a warm, gravelly voice.
Grace introduced himself and explained briefly what he was looking for.
‘You want to try to find out if this Brian Bishop has a twin?’
‘Exactly,’ he replied.
‘OK, what information do you have on him?’
‘I have his birth certificate and what appears to be an adoption certificate.’
‘Is it a long birth certificate or a short one?’
Grace described it to her.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘It’s the long one – more information on it. Now, there’s usually one sure way to tell – if the birth is in England and Wales. Is it?’
‘Yes, he was born in Brighton.’
‘Can you read out to me what it says under When and Where Born?’
Grace obliged.
‘It says, Seventh September, 1964 at 3.47 a.m.?’ she checked.
‘Yes.’
‘And the place of birth is given as where?’ she asked, checking again.
‘Brighton. The Royal Sussex County Hospital.’
‘You have the information right there!’ She sounded pleased.
‘I do.’
‘In England and Wales the time of birth in addition to the date of birth is only put down for multiple births. From that information, Detective Superintendent, you can be 100 percent certain that Brian Bishop has a twin.’
109
Minutes after its ten a.m. opening time, Nick Nicholl walked through the entrance scanner poles and into the handsome, pastel-blue room of the Brighton Reference Library. The smells of paper, leather and wood reminded him of school, but he was so exhausted from yet another virtually sleepless night, courtesy of his son, Ben, that he barely took in his surroundings. He walked over to the inquiry desk and showed his warrant card to one of the librarians, explaining what he needed.
Five minutes later the young detective was seated, beneath the domed and stuccoed ceiling, in front of one of a bank of microfiche units, holding a rectangle of film with a red band along the top which contained the register of births in the whole of the UK for the third quarter of 1964. He inserted it the wrong way around three times, before finally getting the hang of the reader. Then he fiddled with the jerky controls, trying to scroll through the lists of first names beneath surname headers, in print that was almost too small and blurry to read – for his tired eyes at any rate.
As directed by the helpful post-adoption counsellor, Loretta Leberknight, he was looking for unmarried mothers with the surname Jones. The clear indicators would be a child with the same surname as the mother’s maiden name. Although, with one as common as Jones, the librarian had warned him, there would be some instances of two persons marrying who had the same surname.
Despite the words SILENCE PLEASE written in large, clear gold letters on a wooden board, a father somewhere behind him was explaining something to a very loud-mouthed, inquisitive boy. Nick made a mental note never to let his son speak that loudly in a library. He was fast losing track of all the mental notes he had made about irritating things he was not going to let his son do when he was older. He totally doted on him, but the whole business of being a parent was starting to seem daunting. And no one had ever really, properly warned him that you had to do it all while suffering sleep deprivation. Had he and Jen really had a sex life once? Most of their former life together now seemed a distant memory.
Near him, a fan hummed, swivelling on a stand, momentarily fluttering a sheaf of papers before it turned away again. Names in white letters on the dark screen in front of him sped past. Finally, he found Jones.
Belinda. Bernard. Beverley. Brett. Carl. Caroline.
Jiggling the flat metal handle awkwardly, he lost the Jones list altogether for a moment. Then, more by serendipity than skill, he found it again.
Daniella. Daphne. David. Davies. Dean. Delia. Denise. Dennis. Then he came to a Desmond and stopped. Desmond was Bishop’s first name on his birth certificate.
Desmond. Mother’s maiden name Trevors. Born in Romford.
Not the right one.
Desmond. Mother’s maiden name Jones. Born in Brighton.
Desmond Jones. Mother’s maiden name Jones.
Bingo!
And there was no other Desmond Jones on the list.
Now he just had to find another match of the mother’s first and maiden name. But that was a bigger problem than he had anticipated. There were twenty-seven matches. He wrote each one down, then hurried from the library to his next port of call, phoning Roy Grace the moment he was out of the door.
Deciding it would be quicker to leave his car in the NCP, he walked, heading past the Royal Pavilion and the Theatre Royal, cutting through the narrow streets of the Lanes, which were lined mostly with second-hand jewellery shops, and emerged opposite the imposing grey building of the town hall.
Five minutes later he was in a small waiting room in the registrar’s offices with hard grey chairs, parquet flooring and a large tank of tropical fish. Grace joined him a few minutes later – the post-adoption counsellor had advised them they would probably need to pull rank in order to get the information they required.
A tall, urbane but rather harassed-looking man of fifty, smartly dressed in a suit and tie, and perspiring from both the heat and clearly being in a rush, came in. ‘Yes, gentlemen?’ he said. ‘I’m Clive Ravensbourne, the Superintendent Registrar. You wanted to see me rather than one of my colleagues?’
‘Thank you,’ Grace said. ‘I appreciate your seeing us at such short notice.’
‘You’ll have to excuse me making this brief, but I’m doing a wedding in ten minutes’ time.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Actually, nine minutes.’
‘I explained to your assistant why we needed to see you – did she brief you?’
‘Yes, yes, a murder inquiry.’
Nicholl handed him the list of twenty-seven Jones births. ‘We are looking for a twin,’ he said. ‘What we need is for you to tell us if any one of these boys is a twin of –’ he pointed at the name – ‘Desmond William Jones.’
The registrar looked panic-stricken for a moment. ‘How many names do you have on this list?’