'Sorry, did I wake you up?'
'No. Not at all. I just got back, actually. Just had the radio on and . . .'
'Can I come in? Very nice, Shepherd's Bush, but I don't want to stand here all night.'
'Of course,' he said. 'Sorry. Bit dazed.'
He pressed the release button. He heard the entrance door slam and her feet shuffling up the stone steps. He opened the door to his flat. As Heather came towards his landing, he could see she was carrying something in her right hand. Looked like a bottle of wine.
He let her in and she walked through to the sitting room. Nigel caught a waft of her perfume as she passed. She took her jacket off and laid it over the arm of the sofa.
'Be a sweetheart and open that up,' she said, handing him the bottle of wine wrapped in white paper.
'Barely had a glass all week and, given the week it's been, I need one. Just been round to the house of one of the Fairbairns from your list. Nothing doing.
It was only down the road so I thought I'd drop by, see how you were.'
Nigel smiled. Despite his exhaustion and the fact he had only come home to snatch a few hours' sleep before heading back, he was delighted to see her and the wine. Before, on the morning after Nella Perry's murder, her visit seemed routine -- more out of professional concern. This was different. Or, at least, it felt so. For a second he cursed the circumstances in a few hours both of them would be back at work - and wished it was a normal Friday night and their time was their own. He went through to the kitchen, rattled around in a drawer teeming with loose cutlery, tin openers and other appliances until he found a corkscrew that worked.
'How did the research go?' Heather asked, appearing at the door behind him.
'Good,' he said, cursing as the blunt corkscrew gouged the cork to shards. He forced it back in and slowly pulled it out without losing too much of the cork in the wine. From the back of the cupboard he selected two wine glasses, part of the best set he had, infrequently aired. He handed her the glass.
'Here's to catching the killer in the next twenty four hours,' she said, clinking glasses.
She gave him a smile. Nigel loved the way it animated her whole face. She took a sip then pushed a wisp of hair from her forehead.
'How good is good?' she said, walking to the armchair.
She sat kneeling, curling her legs underneath her.
Nigel sat on the sofa. 'Well, Ellis is going to be difficult to trace, given how common the surname is.
So I've put that to one side. I did Darbyshire first.
Bit tricky due to the possible variations in the spelling of his name, either with an 'a' or an 'e'. But I managed to get back to around 1879. His direct ancestor of that time, his greatgreat-grandfather, was a guy named Ivor Darbyshire, newspaper editor.'
'Which newspaper?'
'Don't know yet. He's not listed in the old copies of Who's Who, so it's unlikely to be a national. He lived in Kensington. I thought perhaps he might have edited the Kensington News; they were the ones who piled a lot of pressure on the police back then.'
Heather nodded. 'Darbyshire's hands were cut off.
Journalists write or type with their hands, even if they talk out of their arse. Makes sense.'
'I got a much better hit with Nella Perry's ancestry.'
Heather pulled out a notebook from her bag.
'Her direct ancestor was Stafford Pearcey, the main witness at Fairbairn's trial'
'Bingo.'
'It wasn't easy. There was no sign of anyone named Pearcey being involved with the family. But I did find that, in 1892, Seamus Perry was born a bastard. His mother was Irish; her name was on the birth certificate but the father's wasn't. In 1891 I found her on the census. Niamh Perry. She was Stafford Pearcey's housekeeper.'
*Was he married?'
He nodded.
'Dirty old sod.'
'At least he didn't cut her off without a penny,'
Nigel said. 'Looks like he paid for Seamus to go to Harrow.'
'And as a result we have the Perrys of Notting Hill. Wonder if they're aware they only exist because their ancestor shacked up with someone below stairs.'
'I think I know why Stafford Pearcey gave evidence that implicated Eke,' Nigel added. 'In 1893, he died.
In prison. He'd been sentenced for embezzlement.
He was probably at it for years, but he either paid the cops off or did favours for them, like the one at Fairbairn's trial'
Heather shook her head sadly. They sat in silence, the radio chuntering away in the background. Nigel usually leapt in to fill moments like these, feeling awkward. Not now.
'At least we now know his motivation,' Heather said eventually. 'If you want revenge for something that happened more than a hundred and twenty-five years ago and don't have access to a time machine, then the best you can do is torture and kill those who carry the guilty men's genes.'
'Make them pay for the sins of their forefathers,'
Nigel added. 'I said this to Foster earlier. The past is with us all the time, buried and hidden, yet it always comes to the surface. It refuses to be ignored.'
Her glass was empty. Nigel took it to the kitchen and filled it. His tiredness had lifted, the wine having a galvanizing effect. Heather's company, too. When he returned she was staring at him, a look of curiosity on her face.
'Do you wonder when your past will surface?'
'What do you mean?' he said, warily.
'Your family past. When Foster and I first met you, in that cafe, you mentioned you were adopted.
You didn't know your own family history.'
'Yes, occasionally I do think it will surface.'
That was half the truth. The secrecy of his past was a constant, lurking thought at the back of his mind. As hired historical help, he had performed thousands of successful searches of people's family history. Yet the fact remained that he knew nothing of his own. One day, he knew, that would change.
'I thought when you were adopted, you could access the records and find out your natural parents,'
Heather said.
'You can.'
'But you haven't?'
Tes, I did.'
'So what happened? Sorry, I'm a bit nosy.'
He smiled. 'That's OK,' he said. 'Not much to report. It gave me the address of a woman, who turned out to be dead. No record of a father and no one else around to speak to about it. I left it there.
Not knowing your past doesn't stop you living your life. Actually, it can help you sometimes; no successes to live up to, mistakes to avoid. That can be liberating.
But there's always an absence, a sense that something's missing. Just a void and a lot of unanswered questions.'
Nigel took a large sip of his wine. Heather was looking at him, twining a strand of hair around her index finger. He sensed more questions. He didn't mind. He welcomed her attention.
'Do you have any music?' she asked suddenly.
'I have a record player,' he replied, looking around at his room, piled with books and magazines, space at a premium. 'Somewhere.'
'What, vinyl? Jesus, Nigel, you're a walking anachronism.'
'I
just like old things. Everything now has built-in obsolescence; it goes out of fashion, or they bring out a new model, make you think you have to have it. Mass-produced crap that promotes dissatisfaction.
I like a thing well made. An object that, when you hold it, enables you to actually picture the man or woman who made it standing back and admiring their work.'
