Drinkwater shrugged. 'Anything that has anything to do with the murder. The name, Darbyshire, or the location, St John's Church: there might be a few who got married there. Put them to one side and we can have another look at them.'
He picked up a certificate and the room became silent. Nigel could hear voices coming from elsewhere, the persistent ringing of phones, but the three of them sat and sifted through the documents without saying a single word, reading and rereading, checking every name, every address, every witness on every form for any link. During the course of the next few hours, several links began to turn up: Drinkwater found the birth certificate of a girl who lived on St John's Crescent; Nigel a couple of marriages that took place at St John's Church. These formed the basis of a meagre pile requiring further inquiry.
Heather found nothing relevant; it was heavy going.
Many of the causes of death listed on the certificates were conditions she had never heard of, described in terms no longer used.
Nigel found it enthralling. The thrill of the chase had always been the job's main attraction, yet here the rewards were even greater, the purpose more noble. He scanned each document. His pile was reducing more quickly than the other two. For a second he thought he might be going too fast, but then he realized he was the only one used to reading the handwriting and scrutinizing the documents at a glance. Yet he had not come across anything he
deemed significant and wondered whether he should have subjected the discarded documents to closer scrutiny.
'Bingo!' Heather shouted, startling the other two.
'What?' Drinkwater asked.
She held her finger up to quieten him as she reread the form. 'Bloody hell,' she said, inserting an emphatic 'a' between the 'b' and T to show her surprise. 'Jesus!' She scrabbled in the pocket of her jacket on the back of the chair and found her mobile.
She dialled quickly.
'Tell us what it is, Heather,' Drinkwater demanded.
Without speaking she tossed the certificate in front of him. 'Sir, it's Jenkins,' she said into the phone.
'Get back here as soon as you can. We've found it.'
Nigel watched as Foster, lounging on the table, his tie pulled loose from his neck, read the death certificate.
'It's got to be it, hasn't it?' Foster said eventually, looking at Heather and Drinkwater.
The certificate belonged to an Albert Beck, a 32year-old tanner of Clarendon Road, North Kensington.
He had been found stabbed to death in the grounds of St John's Church, Ladbroke Grove on 29th March 1879. The day James Darbyshire's body had been discovered.
Foster stared at the certificate, pulling at his bottom lip.
'We need to see if we have anything in our archives about this crime,' he said at last.
Drinkwater scribbled in his notebook.
Nigel had been quiet ever since Foster arrived.
'Much of the Metropolitan Police archives were destroyed in the Blitz. I think you'll find that the records from the second half of the nineteenth century were decimated.'
Foster nodded. 'Thanks. But get someone to check it out, Andy.' He turned to Nigel. 'The killer must have seen this death certificate, or known of it in order to have led us to it, correct?'
Nigel nodded.
'And you said this reference was from the central index. Does that mean he or she could only have ordered it from the Family Records Centre?'
'Not necessarily,' Nigel replied. 'There are several websites where you can browse the indexes online, though it costs you; or you can order online from the GRO.'
'Anywhere else?'
'There's always a possibility they already owned the death certificate.'
'What do you mean?'
'It's in the family; they could be related to the dead man. Or it could simply have fallen into their possession.'
'Let's discount that for now. For all the other possibilities, the person would have had to order it and get it sent to an address?'
'Unless they paid for it at the FRC and collected it a few days later.'
Foster went back to scanning the document, as if it would yield more secrets the longer he stared at it.
'Well, that gives us something to work on,' he said to his two officers. 'We need to get someone along to the FRC, get hold of any CCTV footage, find out if anyone else has ordered this certificate, who they were, OK?'
Drinkwater left the room.
Foster looked at Nigel. 'There is something else you can do for us, which sort of relates to your last theory about how the killer got hold of the certificate.
Is it possible to trace someone's family going forwards?
Not their ancestors but their descendants?'
Nigel nodded. 'It's called the 'bounceback technique'.
You go back in time to trace the path of someone's family to the present day.'
'So you could trace the living descendants of Albert Beck?'
'No problem.'
'Will you go and do that?'
Nigel had his bag and coat in his hand before Foster finished his request.
The last train chased into the night. He could hear the great clank and wheeze of its infernal engine while he stood, waiting at the dark secluded end of the street, his eyes fixed on the Elgin.
The warm orange glow of its light poured out, illuminating the dark wall of the convent across the street. The door occasionally flapped open and the drunken chatter and laughter would waft its way towards him. He jerked his head sharply to the right, feeling his neck click. He'd watched them come and go, many of them, but not yet the perfect one.
The one that strayed.
The sulphur stink of the underground train was in his nostrils. He shuddered. Out of curiosity, he had ridden it once.
It was worse than he imagined: Hades on wheels. It had been the previous summer. The weather intolerably warm, barely a cough of wind to chase away the heat and smoke. He descended the stairs at Baker Street with fear in his heart. The first rush and roar of the train, the hot blast as it steamed in, all of it damn near had him running back up the wooden steps; but he ventured on.
Underground, in that coffin on tracks, he knew the devil was with him. The decadent, the godless, the drunks and the whores; it was their chosen chariot. Around him men smoked their pipes, the smoke billowing through the airless carriage, mingling with the foul odour of the gas lamps. As they passed west they were plunged alternately into bright, eye-blasting light and profound darkness. He lasted two stops in the fetid atmosphere before he thought asphyxiation would claim him.
At Paddington he emerged, gulping in great lungfuls of air.
I'll go to Hell when the Lord tells me and not before, he vowed, and had not been anywhere near it since. He wasn't alone in his fear, most people he knew hated the thing.
Then he saw him leave. The perfect one. He stepped out of the pub, staggered forwards, righted himself, and then lurched to the side. He kept out of sight as the man stuttered across the Grove. Great drunken fool could barely lift his head. The drunk reeled towards the station; he stepped from the shadows to follow. He wondered where the chase would lead; north of the station, into the farmlands and fields of Notting Barn?
That would be perfect: they were building streets there, rows and rows of townhouses for the rich folk brought in by the underground and its feeder railway.
But no. Just before the station, the drunk took a left. He kept his distance, was able to give thanks to another night without the fog but quickened his pace when he saw they were reaching the area where the lights became scarce. The man swayed and he felt himself smile; this was too easy.
