but the arm of the sofa was in its way and a gentle collision was enough to cause him discomfort. Foster rubbed his face, preparing himself. A chink of light through the curtains told him it was morning, the end of one of the longest nights of his life -- and there had been many. He knew when he sat up his aches and pains would scream for attention and the stiffness would be with him for a few hours afterwards. His battered body was no longer fit for sleeping on couches, but with Gary upstairs in the spare room, he wanted to be ready if the boy tried to run away.
As a result, he'd spent most of the night awake, primed to react, listening to the wind in the leaves and the clank of the central heating system shutting down slowly and then later, much later, shuddering to life.
He rose groggily to a sitting position, a dull ache behind his eyes.
'Brian Harris,' he thought to himself for the hundredth time. 'Of all the bloody blokes in the world.'
After a few more moments summoning the will, he stood, wincing with discomfort. All told, it wasn't too bad.
He made his way gingerly upstairs to the bathroom and splashed some cold water on his face. He dried off and went to the spare bedroom. The door was closed. He knocked. No answer. He knocked again. Silence. That meant nothing. When he was a kid that age, he could sleep through a marching band passing his bed. He eased the door open and popped his head round.
The bed was empty.
The window was open, the curtain billowing in the breeze. Foster went over and looked out. It was a sheer drop into the garden. That wouldn't have fazed Gary. He remembered one of his previous convictions for escaping from police custody. He'd scaled the high, flat wall of a magistrates' court and got out through a ceiling window, down the side of the building and away. A miniSpider-Man.
Looks like I slept more than I realized, he thought.
He went downstairs and filled the kettle. His mobile phone, charging on the sideboard, showed a missed call.
Nigel Barnes.
Foster struggled to understand. Barnes was babbling about a breakthrough, so he agreed to meet him in Farringdon near the London Metropolitan Archives, in the same cafe where he and Heather had approached him about the Hogg case earlier that year. First he phoned in a missing persons report for Gary, giving a description and asking anyone who found the boy to call him immediately.
He phoned the care home. No sign of him there. Please stay out of trouble, he thought. If he starts robbing after I signed him out of the home then my arse will be toast, he thought.
Barnes was waiting, hair mussed and wild, running his hands frantically through it. He was wired on coffee and adrenaline. It turned out he'd barely slept. That makes two of us, Foster thought. He ordered a black coffee, sat down and emptied two sachets of sugar into it. Barnes must have spent most of his night smoking, because he reeked of tobacco. His experience with Karl Hogg made him very sensitive to the smell, plunging him right back into the box-filled room, the pain, the sickly sweet nicotine breath of his tormentor . . .
'Come on then, what's the news?' he asked, snapping himself out of his brief, unpleasant rever
Barnes drew a deep breath, pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. He told him about Anthony Chapman, how his mother gave him away shortly after his birth because she believed that his life was in danger if he remained in the family bosom. The Church privately arranged the adoption and all details of it were erased.
After her husband died she had confessed to the new vicar of her parish that it was the word of an aunt that convinced her to take such drastic action. That aunt had been locked up for most of her life in a notorious mental hospital, Colney Hatch. It had retained the old moniker informally despite changing its name to Friern Hospital in the 1930s. The hospital was long gone, demolished to make way for luxury flats, though the old facade had been retained. Princess Park Manor. Foster knew it as a haven for city boys, football players and minor glitterati. He chuckled inwardly. Did they know their pads were built on the drool of tens of thousands of raving nutters?
'All very interesting, but how does it help us?' he asked.
'The records for Colney Hatch are in the London Metropolitan Archives. Case notes, admittance registers, that sort of thing. This aunt may well have told the doctors about her fears. Who these people were that sought some sort of revenge. In which case, they may have made a record of it.'
'Back up,' Foster said, holding up his hands. You're telling me there might be something in the delusional rantings of a woman so mad that she spent her life in the nuthouse, the same woman who was ignored by her entire family bar one for being completely doolally?'
Barnes shrugged. Well, I'd put it in slightly more sympathetic terms, but yes, I am. What this woman said so spooked Edith Chapman that she gave away her child.
From what I know, Edith Chapman was a decent, upstanding member of the community --'
'She gave away her child,' Foster interrupted. 'Hardly a decent and upstanding act, is it?'
'No. But we know that someone appears to be tracking down and killing the descendants of Horton and Sarah Rowley. We don't know why. This aunt prophesied all this.
OK, she was a few decades out, but what's to say she wasn't right? From where I'm sitting, it certainly looks like she might have been.'
Foster sipped at his coffee. He knew Barnes was on to something -- this was a lead worth pursuing. If they could work out why this was happening, finding out who was behind it would become a damn sight easier. He could only imagine what Harris might say when he went to him claiming the words of a long-deceased mental patient marked a breakthrough.
Were Harris and Susie going out? Was it a one-off? Did he stay the night? No, stop it, he thought. Don't think about Harris.
'OK,' he said eventually. What do we do?'
Nigel flicked open his notebook. 'The patient's name was Margaret Howell. She was born in 1909, first child of Emma Howell, nee Rowley, the elder daughter of Horton and Sarah Rowley, the couple who moved here in 1891
from regions unknown. She died in 1964, aged 55, in Friern Mental Hospital from a 'seizure', though what sort it doesn't say. Epilepsy, perhaps.'
'Doesn't tell us much,' Foster said.
'No, but her case notes might. There's one problem: patient records are usually subject to a hundred-year closure rule. Unless.'
'Unless what?'
'Unless the police make an application.'
'That could take days, even weeks,' Foster replied. He rubbed his chin. It had been a few days since he'd last shaved. You said the archives have the records for the mental hospital?'
Barnes nodded.
'They have them even though they're not available to the general public'
Nigel nodded again.
Foster drained his coffee cup. 'In that case, follow me.'
Nigel sat at the desk waiting for Foster. He'd been invited into the back office where he'd been sitting patiently for the best part of an hour. The archive was sparsely populated, just a few dedicated researchers, most of them students, he guessed, going quietly about their task, alongside the occasional amateur. Foster returned clutching a faded brown packet.
'Here you go,' Foster said, dropping the bundle on the desk in front of him.
'I'm impressed. Thought they'd want a written application.'
'They
did. But I made it clear there was little time to waste. They want one sent retrospectively'
Nigel picked the packet up. Closed documents. It was rare that a researcher like him got his hands on them, and he couldn't deny the thrill. The front bore Margaret Howell's name, date of birth and patient number. It was, to his disappointment, surprisingly thin.
He pulled out the records, a sense of rising excitement.
Foster sat down opposite, watching him closely.
The first document was Margaret Howell's admittance papers. The date was 29 May 1924. She was just
