'Right, well, I'm sure you weren't expecting it to be straightforward…'
She looked up and across at them, smiling. Thorne couldn't quite manage one in return. 'All I can really tell you with any certainty is that they were never fostered by anybody who is still registered with us as an active carer.'
Holland shrugged. 'I suppose it would have been too much to hope for…'
'Right,' Thorne said. He had been hoping nevertheless.
'We're talking over twenty-five years ago,' Lesser said. 'It's possible that the people who fostered them are still active, but have moved to another area.'
'How do we check that?' Thorne said.
She shook her head. 'Not a clue. It's pretty unlikely anyway, I'm just thinking aloud, really…'
Thorne could feel a headache starting to build. He shuffled his chair a little closer to the desk, pointed to the fan. 'I'm sorry, could we…?'
She leaned across and switched the fan off.
'Thanks,' Thorne said. 'We'll try to get through this as fast as we can. Why was what you told us the only thing you could tell us with any certainty?'
'Because the only files I have access to here are current. Those are the ones concerned with active carers.'
'That's the stuff on computer?'
She snorted. 'It wasn't until ten years ago that things even started being typed, and even now there's drill a load of stuff that's handwritten. It's not just the building that's past it…'
Thorne blinked slowly. It was just his luck to need help from an organisation whose systems were even more fucked up than the ones he worked with every day.
'But there are records, in one form or another, that go back further…'
'In one form or another, I suppose so. God knows what state they'll be in if you manage to lay your hands on them, a few scribbled pages nearly thirty years old. Hang on, some are on microfiche, I think…'
Thorne tried not to sound too impatient. 'There are records though?'
'Dead files…'
'Right, and the dead files, the files that would have the records from the mid-seventies, will be stored somewhere?'
'Yeah, they should be in Chelmsford, at County Hall. The law says we have to keep them.'
Holland muttered. 'Data Protection Act…'
'That's it. Everybody who's received a service from us has a right to see their records, to have access. Some people wait years. They come back in their forties or fifties, looking for details on people who fostered them when they were kids.'
'How come it takes them so long?' Holland said.
'Maybe it's the distance that makes them appreciate it. At the time, when they're kids, it can be a bit traumatic…'
Thorne thought about Mark and Sarah Foley. Anything they went through as foster children could not possibly have been more traumatic than what had happened before. 'What do you tell them?' he asked. 'These people that come looking.'
'Good luck.' She leaned back on her chair, took the material of her blouse between thumb and forefinger and pulled it from her skin. She flapped it back and forth, blew down on to her chest. 'We've got the records, but I couldn't really tell you where. Like I said, they should be over at County Hall, but laying your hands on them is another matter.'
Joanne Lesser smiled a nothing I can do smile and Thorne remembered a similar moment: he and Holland sitting in almost identical positions in Tracy Lenahan's office at Derby Prison. It seemed like a long time back. A few deaths ago…
Thorne rolled his head around on his neck. 'I know that we're talking about stuff that dates back a long way and you've made it clear that the system's not all it should be, but surely there's some sort of central storage place…?'
'Sorry, I thought I'd explained. We only have the active files because each time you move, each time the office relocates, you leave the dead files behind. Now, in theory, they should get taken back to County Hall and, like you say, stored somewhere. In reality, stuff just gets chucked in boxes. It goes missing…'
'Why would you move?'
'Council buildings are interchangeable. Somebody could decide tomorrow that this should be the new headquarters for the DSS or Refuse Collection. Unless the council renews the lease, this place might be a hotel in a couple of years.'
'Right. So, have you moved often?'
'I've only been doing this ten years and we've moved three – no, four – times since I started.' Thorne had to fight quite hard to stop himself swearing, or kicking a hole in the front of the desk. 'It gets worse. I know that some stuff got destroyed a couple of years ago when part of the archive was flooded…'
Thorne and Holland exchanged a glance. They were catching every red light…
'What about school records?' Lesser said. 'You might have more luck…'
Holland glanced down at his notebook. 'They attended local primary and secondary schools until 1984, after which there's no record of them.'
She considered this. 'Are you sure they're still alive?'
'We're not really sure about anything,' Thorne said. In truth, the idea that Mark and Sarah Foley might be dead was something that had been only briefly considered. It had even been suggested that the suicide of Dennis Foley might have been a second murder made to look like a suicide. That whoever had been responsible might have wanted the children dead too. Half an hour spent looking at the files on the original case, at the post-mortem report on Dennis Foley, had soon put paid to that clever theory.
'This is probably clutching at straws,' Holland said, 'but I don't suppose there's anybody still working here, in your department, who was around back in 1976?'
'Sorry. Staff tend to move around as often as the offices do.'
'A bit like footballers,' Holland said.
'I wish we got paid as much.' Thorne thought the smile she gave Holland was of an altogether different sort from the one she'd given him.
Thorne shifted on his chair. It was enough to drag Holland's eye from Joanne Lesser back to him. Time to go.
'Right, well, thanks…'
'It's a long way back,' she said.
Holland reached for his jacket. 'There shouldn't be too much traffic at this time of the day…'
'No, I meant you're going back a long way. To look for these people, for Mark and Sarah Foley. I mean, what about National Insurance? DVLA? Sorry, I don't want to teach my grandmother to suck eggs, but…'
'It's OK,' Thorne said.
She leaned forward in her chair. 'Why do you want to find them?'
Holland stuffed his notebook away. 'I'm sorry, but we can't really…'
Thorne cut him off. What did it matter? 'They were fostered after their parents died. Their father killed their mother and then himself. The children discovered the bodies.' Lesser's lower jaw sagged a little.
'We think that what happened back then is connected with a series of murders that we're investigating now.'
'A series?' She spoke it like it was a magic word.
'Yes.'
'They're connected to it, you mean? Mark and Sarah Foley?'
Thorne could see a flush developing at the top of her chest. Her voice was suddenly a little higher. She was excited. Thorne stood up and began pulling on his leather jacket. 'Listen, Joanne, we'll be sending someone down to County Hall to start looking for these records. I'm sure you're busy, but we'd be very grateful if you could give him as much help as you can…'
She rolled her chair back and stood too. 'You don't need to send anyone. I'd be happy to do it for you. I mean,
