by Dan Waddell
‘The arm is broken,’ he said, waving the severed limb.
‘Funny, you don’t get that with a CD player,’ Heather said.
She got out of her chair and went over to the radio, turning the dial slowly. Finally, she found a station playing music, an old soul song Nigel didn’t recognize. His tastes stretched to the work of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen and a few other ageing singer-songwriters of the early seventies. The collection stopped at about 1974, the year he was born. Given how she smiled when the sax-laden chorus of the radio song kicked in, that might not have been the late-night listening she was seeking.
She sauntered back to the chair, and drained the remnants of her wine. He went to give her a refill but Heather placed her hand over the top of the glass.
‘I’m driving,’ she said.
He poured himself another and they sat listening. Heather had closed her eyes. Nigel wondered if she might fall asleep. When the song finished, she opened them again.
She sighed deeply. ‘It’s so good to be able to relax in the middle of all this,’ she said. ‘Foster can’t do it, can’t switch off. I think it’s vital.’
Nigel could sympathize with Foster. Since stumbling across Nella Perry’s body on Sunday morning, he could think of nothing but doing all he could to catch her killer. Sleep came in fitful spurts; only by chasing the killer through the past could he cope.
Heather seemed to sense his thoughts. ‘I know how you’re feeling,’ she said. ‘It gets obsessive.’ She spread her hands out wide. ‘Welcome to my world.’
‘How did you get into detective work, if you don’t mind me asking?’
She shook her head. ‘Not at all. I did a criminology degree at university. When I finished, I wondered what I would do with it. The way I saw it, there were two options. I could continue to study, live in the world of theory and make bugger-all difference, or I could join the police force. I took the unfashionable option.’
‘Why London?’
‘I’d like to say all human life is here and, therefore, there is no more interesting and challenging place to do a job like mine. Which is true. But the fact is, I followed a bloke down here. It didn’t work out; me and London did.’
More silence. The song ended.
‘So who was it who broke your heart at the university?’ Heather asked.
Nigel was startled at first, but the wine emboldened him.
‘Who said she broke my heart?’ he replied, smiling.
‘You did. When I was here Sunday morning. Well, you didn’t say that explicitly. But it was clear from the look in your eyes that it was painful. You do the vulnerable look very well. It’s those blue eyes.’
He didn’t know what to say.
‘A combination of the eyes, the thick square-rimmed glasses, and the shy smile. Bet you went down a storm with the student body.’
His face must have betrayed a hint of panic.
She reacted immediately. ‘She was a student?’ voice rising with surprise.
He nodded. He felt it right to tell the whole story. If this wasn’t to be the only time he was to share a drink with Heather, and he genuinely hoped it wasn’t, then it made sense to furnish her with the truth.
‘She was twenty-nine. A PhD student. Not one of mine. I was hired to try and set up a family history degree, but, while I was planning that, they asked me to take some history modules. Lily was chasing a job at the uni and, because she was doing a PhD and had a bit of time on her hands, she was assigned to help build, plan and research the family history course with me. We became close and eventually we…’ He tried to search for the right word.
‘Got it on?’ Heather offered, eyes twinkling.
‘You could say that, yes.’
‘So, what went wrong?’
‘She was married.’
‘Oh.’
‘She was separated when we started seeing each other. I didn’t know there was a husband. Anyway, she told me about him one day. Then she said he had got back in touch, wanted to give it another go.’
‘She told you that on the same day she told you that her husband existed?’ Heather said with disdain. ‘The cow.’
‘Yes, well. Obviously, she didn’t choose me. They offered her a job at the university and, frankly, the idea of working with her every day after all that had happened was pretty unpalatable. Plus, there was a funding problem and so the family history course was being put on the back burner. So I walked away.’
‘You did the right thing.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m over it, by the way.’
She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘Why are you telling me that?’
He felt the burn of embarrassment in his cheeks.
Heather smiled, then glanced sideways in search of her bag. ‘Listen, you look knackered,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you go. Don’t want you to fall asleep in the birth indexes.’
She stood up, Nigel too.
‘You’re the first person I’ve ever told that to,’ he said.
‘Anything you say might be taken down and used in evidence against you,’ she replied.
He was tired, but he did not want her to go. Her presence was like a balm. He knew when he closed the door and went to his bed, the image of Nella Perry would be back and he would lie in the dark, unable to sleep, listening to the blood pumping around his body.
‘Thanks for coming round,’ he said.
Again she gave him one of her smiles.
‘I mean that,’ he added.
She stood by the door, lingering a few seconds. Nigel felt the urge to say or do something.
‘No problem,’ she said. She walked towards him, put her hand on his shoulder and kissed his cheek. Her lips were soft and brushed against him lightly. She went back to the door.
‘Maybe we can do this again. Obviously, when the case is done.’
‘I’d like that,’ she said, putting her bag over her shoulder. ‘Though next time, try and get the cork out of the bottle properly.’
24
Nigel allowed himself four hours’ sleep and was back at the FRC within five, after being scooted across early-morning London by a cab driver eager to make use of the empty roads. With no one around he took the liberty of smoking a string of roll-ups in the canteen, to give him the energy rush the scalding machine-dispensed coffee failed to do.
From his notes on the investigation and trial, he worked out there were three other key figures whose descendants remained untouched: the ham prosecution barrister John J. Dart, QC, MP; Joseph Garrett, who conducted Fairbairn’s defence; and Detective Henry Pfizer of Scotland Yard.
Dart first. Nigel wondered darkly if one of his descendants was about to lose their tongue as well as their life in retribution for his verbosity. He found him immediately on the census of 1881, his age forty-seven, living in Bexley Heath, his constituency.
Heather joined him; her smile was warm. Silently, he sighed with relief. He was not sure what the previous evening had meant, if anything, but the thought of seeing her again made him anxious. Would she act as if nothing had happened? Her smile had indicated she would not, though the tense look on her face betrayed the fact that time was running out and it was paramount they work fast. His mind returned to the task.
Dart’s prominence made tracing him and his family straightforward. The entire clan shared their time between houses in the country and central London. It took the whole morning, but he had soon drawn up a list of descendants. Heather faxed it through to the incident room so the names could be checked and their whereabouts noted.
Nigel took a break. Heather went off to make a phone call. In the canteen he was accosted by Dave Duckworth.
‘So, Mr Cable was innocent,’ he said, plunging his hands into his pockets and rocking back and forth on his heels.
‘Seems so.’
Duckworth stared at him. ‘A pain in the proverbial, because the background research was shaping up to be a well-paid little piece of work.’ Duckworth put his hands in his pockets and si
ghed, then looked back at Nigel. ‘I saw your female amanuensis was back at your side this morning.’
Nigel took a sip of his coffee. ‘You should be the detective with those levels of observation.’
‘Interesting work, is it?’ Duckworth said, ignoring the sarcasm.
‘Just doing some bounceback.’
‘Ah, like I did. It keeps body and soul together,’ Duckworth replied.
Nigel looked at him. ‘Not as much as lifting your skirt for the tabloids, though?’
Duckworth ignored the slight. ‘Sometimes one can have enough of finding the ancestral skeletons in the closets of the rich and famous. The work was a pleasant piece of research. And surprisingly lucrative, too. In fact, I’m hoping to make more money out of it. Not that the client, an intriguing fellow named Kellogg, knows that yet.’
Nigel nodded absent-mindedly – he’d switched off, wanting to be left alone to plan the rest of his research. He looked up and saw Heather weaving her way through the lunch crowds. Duckworth spotted her, too, and scuttled away. She watched him leave, lip curled.
‘What did that creep want?’ she asked.
‘Just poking his nose in,’ Nigel replied. ‘Goes with the job.’
‘He’s an oil slick,’ she shuddered. ‘The team have the Dart list. They’ve started working down it one by one.’
‘What about the Fairbairn list?’
‘Nothing so far. Couldn’t get much sense out of Foster. He sounds knackered. Told me he managed to grab a few hours’ sleep at his desk last night, first he’s had in three days. I told him to go home and get some rest, but he blustered. At this rate he’ll probably end up keeling over.’
Back at the indexes, Nigel turned his attention to Detective Henry Pfizer. The surname was soon explained: he was born in Berlin, then part of Prussia. It seemed he left the country of his birth as a young man, escaping the turmoil and upheaval that permeated many parts of Europe in 1848. England was a safe haven. Henry had met and married a London girl, Maria, and they had a son, Stanley. Much of this he gleaned simply from the 1881 census. He turned next to the 1891 census, but there was no sign of the family. A glance at the death indexes yielded no explanation either.
Nigel pulled a battered address book from his bag and found a number for a German genealogist he’d asked to carry out research for him in the past, usually tracing the roots of those who had emigrated from what was now Germany. He made the call, asked him to check records from 1881 onwards for Henry or Heinrich Pfizer and his English wife and child, making it clear that he would pay well for a prompt response.
The dead end frustrated him. They always did. The challenge came in overcoming such obstacles. You needed to think laterally, follow a hunch. He would return to Pfizer later; first there was Joseph Garrett. This one was straight-forward. He managed to tear through the generations. The two World Wars took their toll on the males in the Garrett line, and the name almost died out in the 1960s. But he managed to locate five living descendants.
He was listing their names when the call came through from Germany with results of a preliminary census search. No records of any Pfizer of that age, or any with an English wife, on German censuses. He had not returned to the land of his birth.
Foster was dying on his feet as the day wore on. He stalked up and down the incident room, manically running his hand back and forth over his head. Coffee no longer had a galvanizing effect. All it did was make his head and eyes ache. He felt the old craving for nicotine. During times like this, when sleep was in scarce supply, he would chain-smoke his way through the exhaustion. Now there seemed to be no repelling it. Harris had told him to get some rest, but there were a few things he needed to do first.
Patricia MacDougall, the fourth victim, had last been seen on Sunday afternoon, walking her dog in Holland Park, something she did every day, though usually in the evening. She had been seen drinking a coffee and smoking a cigarette outside the café mid-afternoon. She paid and left. No one had seen her since. A team had been blitzing the park since yesterday, accosting every parkgoer with pictures of her and the artist’s depiction of the man seen drinking with Nella Perry in the pub. But no one had seen her leave and no one had recognized the suspect. The dog had also vanished. Foster didn’t bet against it turning up dead on someone’s doorstep at any second.
Nigel Barnes had begun filing the first batches of descendants’ names. With the help of Andy Drinkwater, Foster had sketched out a condensed family tree for the Fairbairns, Darts and Garretts on the whiteboard, their names on the top, lines leading down to each of their living descendants. Those who had been spoken to on the Fairbairn list were marked, as were those whose movements were deemed worth following for the next twenty-four hours. There were still seven descendants to be contacted. None of those they had located matched the fingerprints found at the scene.
As for the descendants of John J. Dart and Joseph Garrett, Foster had decided to put a car outside the house or place of work of each likely victim and follow them for twenty-four hours, without them knowing. Informing them there was a possibility they might be the next victim of a serial killer would create understandable panic. The whole operation yoked together hosts of officers from other investigations and other departments, but Detective Superintendent Harris, scared witless by the mocking of that morning’s press, was willing to offer Foster all the support he needed.
As Foster scratched an innocent Fairbairn name from the list, Drinkwater approached him.
‘Another one bites the dust,’ Foster said, wearily.
Only six Fairbairns were left outstanding. Was the killer among them or was Foster heading down a cul-de-sac?
‘What do you want, Andy?’
‘Sir, forensics say they’ve found some DNA on the last victim. On her clothes. Seems the effort of getting her up the stairs to the flat caused him to sweat. They found drops on her shirt.’
This perked Foster up immediately. The pace was beginning to tell; the killer was getting sloppy. Making mistakes he had avoided earlier in his spree, becoming too ambitious.
They had a link. He got in touch with forensics and asked someone to get along to the Hunterian museum and get a sample from the skeleton of Eke Fairbairn. If it matched the killer’s, then the theory that it was one of his descendants was on the money.
His phone went. Heather Jenkins, filling him in on what they had discovered that morning at the FRC.
‘Pfizer has disappeared from the records,’ she told him. ‘Every mention of him and his wife and child.’
Foster cursed their luck. Of all the protagonists in the 1879 case, he felt he was the one who deserved the most opprobrium; perhaps the killer felt the same. Part of Foster hoped the bent bastard’s conscience had got the better of him, that he’d left his clothes on the beach and walked into the sea, never to be found. But that didn’t explain why his family had vanished, too.
‘Tell Nigel to keep working on it,’ he told her. ‘Wherever he wants to go, whichever archive, it’s open for him.’
Foster and Drinkwater arrived at a draughty community hall in Hounslow as the light started to ebb from the day. Foster felt so tired that putting one foot in front of the other was an effort. After paying a visit to the West London Family History Society he vowed to get some sleep. Everyone was in place; they would watch the suspects and their potential victims all night. Each inch of Powis Square had already been searched and was under surveillance. For the first time they appeared to be a step ahead of, not behind, the killer, though it made Foster feel uneasy. Did he have one final sleight of hand?
Inside the hall the air was cool, wintry even. Yet there were rows and rows of people sitting down, a sea of white hair bearing out John Fairbairn’s claim that few of his fellow members were below retirement age. Fairbairn, seated in the middle, saw them enter and gave a wave. Foster nodded back. At the front a tall, elderly gentleman in a knitted cardigan was giving a talk, referring to diagrams on an overhead projector. He and Drinkwater stood at
the back and listened, waiting for the man to finish so they could begin the task of collecting everyone’s prints.
The voice was flat, without tone. Just listening made Foster’s head feel heavy. At first, the words washed over him. But then, to keep himself awake, he tuned in to what the man was saying.
‘Those who know nothing of history, who are ignorant of the sacrifices made by others to build their country and their family, have no appreciation at all of the struggles and sacrifices involved in making and building something that will last. History gives us a sense of proportion, of the longer view of things. We are self-centred beings at our core. The world revolves around us, around our individual needs. If we do nothing, if we study no subject outside ourselves, we cease to believe that anything else matters. And nothing could be further from the truth.’
Foster was reeled in. He’s talking about people like me, he thought. I have studied no one. I have cared about no one but myself. All that matters to me is work, the here and now. I have no sense of the past and no sense of the future. I don’t know where I came from, who my people were.
I don’t know who I am.
He was roused from this bout of introspection by his vibrating phone. He took it outside. It was the barman from the Prince of Wales, calling from a payphone. He had more information on the man seen drinking with Nella Perry the previous Friday. He wasn’t working that evening, but would be at the pub. Foster decided to head straight there. He told Drinkwater something had come up and left him to handle the family history society.
As he left, he checked his watch. It was six in the evening. He remembered the newspaper account he had read of the fifth killing, in which it stated the victim’s body had been found as ‘the bell of All Saints Church tolled for the first time after midnight’. One a.m. They had thirty-one hours before the killer ended his spree and retreated into the crowd.
Nigel sat in the back of a black cab as it edged forwards with the mass of central London traffic that choked the city every Friday night. The great escape. People watching precious seconds of their weekend tick away as they crawled along congested roads.
