The Blood Detective Read online

  ‘The least we can do is find out who he is, and who his family are. He has every right to…’

  ‘Yes, he’s got every right to equal consideration. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to get it. I wish I could find the fool who invented the concept of rights, and deprive him of them. Violently.’

  Heather’s eyes, never docile, blazed bright with anger. Her face was always quick to express emotion, but Foster knew she would soon calm down. Having a go at her in front of the others was not the most politic thing to do, but her mission to turn detective work into another arm of the care services occasionally grated with him.

  The discussion moved on to the missing hands. A search of the scene had failed to find them, or a murder weapon. The team split into camps: those who thought they might be trophies; those who thought it was a way of avoiding detection; and a third camp who thought it was neither, that there was perhaps more to it than the obvious explanations.

  ‘What forensics do we have?’ Foster asked.

  ‘Initially, nothing really,’ said Drinkwater. ‘So far, the scene tells us nothing.’

  The room fell silent. It was rare for forensics to fail to provide them with a few leads. Foster nodded slowly. It was as if the body had fallen from the sky. But the lack of evidence or clues wasn’t insignificant.

  ‘What the crime scene tells us is that our killer worked very carefully, thought it through beforehand. And it confirms that our victim was killed elsewhere.’

  ‘Do we have any idea about motive?’ someone asked.

  Foster spread his hands wide; he had been giving this some thought. ‘We can rule out mugging because there was still a fair bit of money on his body. And his mobile phone, too. Of course, we don’t know the full story of his private life so there could be something there…’ His voice tailed off. Foster already knew that the motive for this was one his mind had not yet considered. Something told him it was beyond the usual mundane language of murder: drugs, money, rage and envy. ‘Have we got mobile-phone records?’ he said, changing tack.

  Drinkwater told him they had retrieved the last ten calls dialled, received and missed from Darbyshire’s mobile phone. Most of them had been identified as friends, family or work-related. The only call made or received after seven p.m., when Darbyshire was last seen in the pub, was to a number: 1879. The time dialled was 23.45.

  ‘Have you spoken to pathology?’ Foster asked.

  ‘Carlisle reckons that Darbyshire was dead by then.’

  ‘Any theories about that number?’ It sounded to him like it could be for message retrieval, or the number for the network.

  ‘We rang it, from several different networks. All of them went dead,’ Drinkwater said.

  It seemed the whole room reached for their mobile phones and starting staring at their keypads.

  ‘What sort of phone was it again?’ Foster asked.

  ‘One of those slim, dinky ones with the flip-up screen. Clamshell. Girl’s phone. Khan’s got one,’ Drinkwater added, with a smirk.

  So had Foster. A murmur of amusement went round the room.

  ‘Seven, eight and nine are on the same row,’ said Khan, examining his own keypad. ‘They easily could have been pushed accidentally. Where was the phone?’

  Drinkwater looked into the middle distance; with his left hand he patted his left suit pocket, while his right tapped lightly on the right-hand side of his chest.

  ‘Inside breast pocket, right-hand side,’ he said eventually. ‘If the key guard wasn’t on during the struggle, if there was a struggle, or after he was killed and the body was being moved, the buttons might have been pushed. The dial button, too.’

  ‘Sounds the likeliest option,’ Foster agreed. ‘But stick the number up on the whiteboard. Get back in touch with his wife and his bank; see if this number means anything to them. It may be the start of an account number, or a PIN number. We need to know.’ Foster rubbed his face, then ran his right hand over his head. ‘Darbyshire had drunk only four pints. He would’ve been merry, not arseholed, so how did the killer get him off the street in the first place? A 31-year-old man isn’t easy to lure into a car. Unless you’re giving him a lift. We have to accept the killer may have had some help. How many hits did we get, Andy?’

  Earlier that afternoon they had fed details of the murder into the computer to sift through suspects who had been cautioned, charged or convicted of stabbings and were out on the streets.

  ‘About two thousand,’ Drinkwater said.

  Each of them would be checked out in the coming days and weeks. A fair bit of mystery surrounded the workings of a murder inquiry, but most of it was simply a long, methodical slog.

  ‘Find out how many had, have had, or still have cab or minicab licences,’ Foster ordered. He clapped his hands together. ‘The rest of you know what comes next,’ he added, winding things up. ‘We need to crawl all over James Darbyshire’s life: his movements, his habits, his daily routine. Scour his credit cards and bank details; interview his friends, relatives, girlfriends, boyfriends and colleagues; check his emails; look at what sites he visited. Any porn, anything a bit dodgy, then I want to know.’

  The team got up, a few stretching, some starting conversations while others hit the phones.

  ‘Can I say something, sir?’

  The hubbub died down. It was Heather, her face still reddened from anger. Foster’s first thought was that she may publicly challenge him for having slapped her down when she arrived late for the meeting. But he knew she wouldn’t be that stupid.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  Everyone turned to look at her.

  ‘I must have missed your discussion about the letters and numbers carved on the victim’s chest,’ she explained. ‘But I’ve got an idea about them.’

  Foster realized the colour in her cheeks was not anger, it was excitement. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Have you heard of genealogy?’

  He thought for a second. He knew it; old people filling the last few days before death came knocking by tracing their dead relatives.

  ‘Yeah,’ Foster said. ‘Bloody stupid hobby.’

  A few of the others laughed.

  ‘Whatever,’ Heather said, ignoring them. ‘My mum traced our family tree a few years back. But you sort of need to leave the house, and the best place to do it is in London, not Rawtenstall. She came down to see me and we went to this place in Islington where they have loads of indexes for birth, marriage and death certificates. Place was heaving; no room to swing a cat.’

  Get to the point, Foster thought. ‘Where does it fit with the Darbyshire killing?’

  ‘When you want to order a certificate, you have to fill in a form. On that form you have to give the index number of the certificate you want. You follow?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The index numbers are like the reference we found; a mixture of letters and numbers.’

  Foster could see some of the others nodding their heads, murmuring assent. It sounded a better idea than the ones proposed in the meeting.

  ‘How are you going to check it out?’ he asked.

  ‘My mum gave up on it. She thinks London is a den of iniquity and depravity and won’t come down again. Anyway, she hired some guy who does it for a living and got him to do it for her. Turned out we come from a bunch of peasants. Nothing juicy. On the way over here, I gave her a call. She still has his number.’

  ‘Give him a call, but don’t spill any details over the phone. Arrange to meet.’

  They had nothing, Foster thought. This might be the break they needed.

  5

  Nigel was sitting at a table for two in the canteen – no one would ever be so bold as to describe it as a café – of the Family Records Centre in London’s Clerkenwell. He had chosen a small square table for two against the wall, rather than a large round one for four, so reducing his chances of being forced to share his personal space with a soap-dodging amateur keen to swap stories about an elusive ancestor who had lost a leg at the Somme.


  Located in the basement of a modern, functional beige-bricked building tucked away apologetically at one end of Exmouth Market, rows of tables filled the room to one side, glass lockers and coat racks to the other. There were no black-clad baristas serving coffee seven different ways; only a few vending machines touting tongue-scalding, mud-coloured water. Another machine sold sandwiches, limp and curled inside their plastic wrapping. The average age of people who used the centre was probably twice that of any other meeting place, family history being the preserve – with a few exceptions – of those for whom death is no longer a distant possibility but an imminent certainty.

  The Family Records Centre is a Mecca for genealogists and family historians, housing the indexes of almost every birth, death and marriage that has taken place in England and Wales since 1837, as well as copies of every census taken between 1841 and 1901. Nigel used to love delving into the indexes, looking forward to a day losing himself in the bureaucratic traces of the long departed, but now his presence there was a constant source of disappointment. Eighteen months ago he had left, vowing never to return, and adamant that he would never again spend a whole day researching the family tree of some middle-class dilettante who was not interested in the stories of the past, the narrative arc of their ancestors’ lives, all the stuff that fascinated Nigel, but who simply wanted the information to help produce a chintzy, beautifully drawn family tree to hang on their wall. Eighteen months ago he had headed off to the sunlit uplands of academia – real research. Now here he was back doing the bidding of others.

  At three thirty on that chilly late-March afternoon, Nigel was idling away time that would have been better spent among the indexes. The day, he thought to himself, had not been a bad one. Even the elderly gentleman on the next table, who was peeling an apple so slowly that, by the time he had finished and was ready to eat it, the flesh had turned a rusty brown, was struggling to spoil it. He had phoned in the discovery of Cornelius Tiplady’s grave to his client, much to her delight. Then, before coming to the FRC, he had stopped off to do a few hours’ research for another client, a Mrs Carnell, at the National Archives in Kew. Now he was trying to work out, and keep the smile off his face as he did so, what he was going to tell her when he called her later that day to inform her that he had discovered the truth about Silas Carnell, an ancestor of hers, who had died at sea in the 1840s, and about whose heroic death she had paid to know more.

  The thing was, Silas’s death wasn’t heroic. It was anything but. True, Nigel had unearthed naval records that confirmed the sailor had met his demise at sea. Though not in combat. Silas had been hanged as punishment. His offence? He’d had sex with one of the goats brought on board to provide milk. Any port in a storm, Nigel thought. Bizarrely, Silas was not the only one executed; the goat’s throat had been slit.

  Intending to waste more time by having a fag outside, he was just fishing out the rolling tobacco and papers from his pocket when his mobile phone startled him by coming to life. It was years old, the size of a small brick; he saw no need to trade it in, and his provider (or whatever name they gave themselves) had long since given up on trying to get him to upgrade. Given the choice, he’d downgrade – to not having one at all.

  He debated whether to ignore it. The number was unfamiliar. And, quite rightly in his view, speaking on mobiles was frowned upon in the FRC; those who did were at risk of being assaulted by fuming septuagenarians armed with half-peeled fruit. But the only other person in the room had just disappeared into the toilets, so Nigel decided to risk it. He needed all the business he could get.

  ‘Nigel Barnes,’ he said.

  ‘Hello, Mr Barnes.’

  The voice was female, the accent broad but not one Nigel could place.

  ‘This is Detective Sergeant Heather Jenkins of the Metropolitan Police. Sorry to ring out of the blue like this.’

  The police? What did they want? He scanned the last few weeks of his life in a millisecond and failed to come up with any misdemeanours. He felt his throat constrict. Surely not…

  ‘Not at all,’ he whispered eventually.

  ‘We’re wondering if you could help us with a case we’re investigating.’

  He felt a sense of relief mingled with excitement, undercut by the suspicion that this was a wind-up. ‘What sort of case?’

  ‘Murder.’

  Nigel’s mind scrambled as he sought the appropriate response. ‘Yes,’ he managed to blurt out.

  ‘Good. Look, it’s not something I’m comfortable talking about over the phone. Is there any chance I could come to see you? Maybe at your office?’

  This presented Nigel with a dilemma. His ‘office’ was the crowded sitting room of his flat in Shepherd’s Bush.

  ‘I’m currently away from my office for the day, Detective Sergeant,’ he lied.

  ‘Oh,’ came the disappointed response.

  ‘I’m at the Family Records Centre.’

  ‘Oh, I know that,’ the detective said.

  Lancashire, Nigel thought to himself. Her accent’s definitely Lancastrian.

  ‘Is there a discreet place where we could meet?’

  Nigel’s brain kicked in at last. The canteen was a no-no: in thirty minutes it would be four o’clock and time for afternoon tea. The place would be crammed with the cardigan-wearing hordes wielding thermos flasks and potted-meat sandwiches. There was only one place he could think of.

  ‘There’s a coffee shop on Exmouth Market. I know the owner and I’m pretty sure he’ll let me use the downstairs for an hour or so.’

  There was a pause at the other end of the phone. When the detective’s voice returned it was stripped of its courteous veneer.

  ‘Well, if you can guarantee us some privacy, then OK. Does four thirty suit you?’

  Nigel said it did, and the detective hung up. He swept his documents into his bag and left the canteen, praying that Beni would be willing to close half his café – or he’d look a complete fool.

  Foster and Heather drove to Exmouth Market in his car. The interior still bore the leathery smell of the showroom. It was an aroma he loved, and one of the reasons he had managed to come up with a scam that persuaded the Met to give him a new set of wheels annually. From one of the many car magazines he bought each month, he’d learned that almost every solid surface in a car was held together by adhesives and sealant. Research suggested that the gases given off by the compounds may even be addictive, and every time he sat behind the wheel of that year’s model, he could well believe it.

  On the way across London they spoke about genealogy. Heather said she wanted to know more about her family, how they lived, the struggles they endured; Foster just sneered. To him, it was a bit like stamp collecting, or grown men building a train set in their attic with hills and signals and sheep and stuff. He couldn’t care less who his ancestors were; all you needed to know was that your great-great-great-grandfather wasn’t firing blanks.

  Foster found a meter near Exmouth Market and parked. He completed the entire manoeuvre one-handed, spinning the steering wheel furiously first one way and then the other with an open palm. He could sense Heather looking at him, not without disapproval. But she drove like a vicar, as he often told her. Hands at ten-to-two, like a seventeen-year-old out with her dad for her first drive.

  They found Beni’s almost immediately. It was a spartan, wooden-fronted coffee shop that thrived on the lunch-time trade, but was in the process of winding down for the day.

  ‘Can I have a decaf latte please?’ Heather asked.

  ‘God’s sake,’ Foster muttered, but she failed to hear. Or ignored him again.

  The jovial, rotund man with thick hairy arms nodded. ‘And you, sir?’ he asked Foster.

  ‘Black coffee, please. Hot as you can make it.’

  ‘We’re looking for Nigel Barnes,’ Heather said to the barista.

  ‘Downstairs,’ he replied, motioning towards a narrow staircase in one corner of the café. ‘The smokers always sit downstairs.’ He l
ooked them up and down, clocking their suits and demeanour. His eyes narrowed. ‘You’re not police, are you?’

  ‘God forbid,’ Foster muttered.

  Nigel was waiting, wondering if he’d picked a good place to meet. When he’d spoken to DS Jenkins on the phone, the only discreet place he could think of was the sparsely populated room beneath Beni’s café. The handful of people who used it were smokers, allowed by Beni to continue feeding their habit out of sight, if not smell, of the other clientele. He came here every morning on his way to the FRC for a cig and a scan of the newspaper. But now he was wondering if a windowless dungeon filled with the scent of stale smoke was not, after all, the best place to meet a female detective. All of a sudden the place seemed seedy.

  She will have experienced worse, Nigel thought. He shifted nervously in his seat, nursing his coffee, waiting for the arrival of DS Jenkins. He had tried to imagine what she might look like – she had sounded young, perhaps around his age, early thirties – but he’d given up when all he could muster were images of sour-faced ball-breakers whose femininity and softness had been eroded by years of work in the brutal, relentlessly male world of crime and detection.

  Two people descended the stairs, something in their bearing marking them out as police officers. The female was wearing a tight-fitting black trouser suit. Her black corkscrew hair was tied back, her kohl-lined eyes suggested chilliness, and his fears appeared to be founded. Her aquiline nose wrinkled on meeting the polluted air. But on seeing him, and realizing, as the only person in the room, he must be the person she wanted to see, she broke out into a beaming smile that breathed life and warmth into her entire face. The smile was genuine, not forced. He felt himself smiling back.

  Ms Nice, he concluded. Presumably that meant the tall, thickset figure, bored and looming at her shoulder, holding their drinks, was Mr Nasty. DS Jenkins introduced him as DCI Grant Foster and, once he had put down their coffee, Nigel felt his enormous paw grasp his own less-weathered, perspiring hand and grip tightly. The detective was over six feet in height, his head closely shaved, he guessed in response to a receding hairline, with a face that looked like it had seen a few fights. Unlike his female colleague, the smile was fleeting and perfunctory.