Nigel grimaced. 'Yes, but it won't be quick. A lot of people will have been born, married or died in 1879 m central and west London.'
'How long will that take?'
'A day. But then you have to order the certificates and wait for them to be copied and posted.'
'Can't we just go to the local register offices?'
'That reference is a General Register Office index number, not a local office one. It would be of no help there. If this is a reference to a birth, marriage or death certificate, then it was discovered through the central index.'
'Who handles that?' Foster asked.
'The General Register Office in Southport.'
'Southport? What the hell is it doing there?'
'London isn't the centre of the universe, sir,'
Heather said.
'It is when you work for the Metropolitan Police.'
There was a pause while Foster thought. Nigel watched him earnestly. The DCI drummed his right finger on the table.
'Heather, get on the phone to headquarters. Get them to ask Merseyside Police to send a couple of officers to the GRO.' He turned to Nigel. 'What do they need to do?'
'Commandeer a couple of staff to pull the full certificates - once you've identified the ones you need -- and pass the information on to you as quickly as possible.'
'Got that, Heather?' Foster asked.
She went upstairs to make her call. Both men watched her go.
'How busy are you at the moment?' Foster said.
'Relatively.'
'Well, can I hire you and your staff to hunt down these references for me?'
Nigel's cheeks flushed. 'There's a problem with my staff.'
'What?'
'I don't have one. Not at the moment. I. . .'
Foster held his hand up to stop him. 'Don't worry, Mr Barnes. I'll get you some help. They'll be with you first thing. What time does this records centre let people in?'
'Nine a.m.'
'They'll be waiting for the doors to open.'
Nigel experienced a feeling denied him for some time: excitement. For the first time in months, he couldn't wait to start a day's work.
4
It was after ten p.m. when Foster returned to his terraced house on a quiet, unspectacular street in Acton, too late to even think of going to the pub. He parked and then switched the engine off, but not the electrics so he could continue listening to the music.
He didn't know the song; it was piped through the stereo via his personal music player, a small metallic gadget no bigger than a matchbox. There were more than a thousand tracks on it, few of which he knew.
One of the guys at the station had downloaded them for him a few months before. You didn't have to build your own record collection these days, merely annex a friend's or even a complete stranger's off the Net. He couldn't remember what had happened to the boxes of vinyl he assembled as a teenager. His first single? 'Indiana Wants Me', R. Dean Taylor.
The simple fact that the protagonist was on the lam infuriated his father, which is probably why he treasured it so. God knows where the record was now.
He made a mental note to download it.
The car was warm, the lights on the dash illuminated against the dark. He felt cocooned, as if he could recline the seat and sleep for hours. But, when the song finished, he turned the volume down to a murmur, picked up his mobile and called Khan to tell him to meet Heather at the FRC the next morning.
Khan did not sound too enamoured at the prospect but Foster was beyond caring.
He climbed from the car, walked up the small paved path to his front door and unlocked it, flicking on the lights in the hall. He was relieved to see and smell that Aga, his Polish cleaner, had been that morning. He thumbed through some mail, found nothing interesting and added it to a growing pile of similar letters, then hung his coat up, took off his tie and jacket and went straight through to the kitchen, where he pulled the cork out of a half-drunk bottle of red wine that stood on the pine table in the middle of the clean tiled floor. He filled a vast glass. It was a '62 Cheval Blanc that had tasted a damn sight nicer the previous evening, but was still drinkable. Taste didn't matter so much: these days he needed at least a few glasses to ease his mind and body's nightly fight against sleep.
The wine wasn't his. None of the bottles were. His father, once he had retired from the force, sought a new passion and found it in wine, specifically Bordeaux. He collected bottles from all the best vintages, laying them down proudly, cataloguing them in a ledger. Occasionally, on special occasions, he would toode off to the cellar, blow the dust off one he thought may drink well, open it up and serve it to his guests, offering alongside it a description of the vintage, the maker, whether it had been a good year and why, and some of the wine's characteristics. Then he would sip and savour just one glass during the course of a meal, sometimes making it last a whole evening. Among the last phrases he remembered his father saying to him -- before he took the cocktail that ended his pain - was, 'Look after the cellar, son.'
'Sorry, Dad,' he muttered as he took another large slug, wincing at the acidic bite created by being left open twenty-four hours.
He wandered out of the kitchen and back into the hall, then turned into the sitting room. Occasionally, when he walked through the door, he detected a lingering hint of the lavender that formed part of the small bowls of potpourri his mother had left dotted around the place. They were one of the first things he threw out when he moved back into the house, on that drab November day a few weeks after his father's death. And they remained among the last.
The walls bore ghostly imprints, grey-white traces of now unwanted photographs and pictures. The sideboards were bare apart from a few well-thumbed magazines, the odd book and a couple of empty candleholders. The only photograph on display in the room -- in the entire house, as it turned out - was of Foster at his wedding, grinning with an insouciance he no longer recognized beside his best man and best mate, Charlie. They had been inseparable.
He cast his eyes around the room. Seven years ago he'd moved in. It still looked like he was lodging.
He thought about the day, the murder, the body; then he thought about Barnes. He'd asked Foster whether he was aware of his own family history. He wasn't, and he'd said as much. What was the point?
But Barnes's question reminded him of his father.
Of those last few days. That was his significant family history.
He headed over to the bureau in the far corner of the room, the place where his father used to sit and pore over his paperwork, glasses perched on the end of his nose, a cigarette balanced on the rim of an ashtray, spiralling smoke. He lowered the lid for the first time in years, the past leaping out. There was a cup with his father's pens, a half-shorn pad of writing paper, a Metropolitan Police paperweight detailing his years of service, 1954--1988, a letter opener in the shape of a sword and a photograph of Foster in short trousers, with his mum on Camber Sands. He stared at it for a few seconds then closed the bureau lid.
Closed the past.
He collapsed on to the sofa and turned on the television, immediately muting the sound. He was tired, but he knew he was not yet ready to sleep.
First he needed to switch off mentally, which meant emptying his head of all the thoughts swirling around in it.
They had nothing. The killer had left no detail, no trace, clue or weapon at the scene. No witnesses had yet come forward. There was no obvious motive.
They had a reference carved on a chest, a number left on a mobile phone, a missing, severed pair of hands. That was all. They were still fumbling for a way in. Foster wanted to find the detail, the piece of information that would flick the switch and illuminate the investigation.
The house was silent, save for the odd creak from some shifting floorboard or the rattle of an ageing radiator. The first spots of rain spattered against the bay window. Foster took another hefty slurp of wine, and then went back into the kitchen to make sure there was more. There was: he could see the bold vermilion lettering of a Petrus, albeit one of the 1980s bottles, which he found a bit underwhelming compared to the complex vintages of other years, but that was why it was one of his favourites among his dad's collection. Who wants wine that tastes the same every year? Not him, and not least when there were another six years downstairs to drink.