'Really?'
'Yes. I mean, don't get me wrong, the coffee isn't that great, but at least it tastes like coffee. And it rather lacks for comfort in here, but it makes me feel better to know I'm supporting an independent place with a bit of history, rather than some faceless, corporate monolith.'
She smiled at him once more. 'Hear, hear.'
'You're a genealogist, then?' DCI Foster asked, cutting in impatiently, as if he hadn't heard the preceding exchange.
'More of a family historian,' Nigel replied.
'There's a difference, is there?'
'Only a bit. But you wouldn't believe how offended some people feel if you get it wrong.'
'Much money in it?'
Nigel shrugged. No, he thought. 'It's a living.'
'How do you get into something like that?'
'It depends,' Nigel answered. 'I did a history degree at uni, and during the summer holidays I did some research for a guy who traced people's family trees.
I did it full time for a while. Then he dropped dead of a heart attack while giving a talk at a conference on early medieval finance, so I took over the business.'
Last year I tried to get out of it, he thought. But, like the Mafia, I was sucked back in.
'And enough people actually pay you to trace their ancestors?'
'Yeah. Genealogy's a very popular pursuit. The third most popular on the Internet. Behind porn and personal finance.'
Foster's face showed surprise.
'Or wanking and banking,' Nigel added. His face reddened immediately, unaware of how police officers reacted to smut.
DS Jenkins stifled a laugh; Foster smiled weakly.
Nigel felt the urge to smoke. The craving was too strong to ignore. He picked up his cigarette papers from the table. 'Mind if I... ?'
Heather gave her head a quick shake. He thought maybe she did mind. He felt a twang of disappointment for inciting her disapproval. But it would look pathetic to put away his fixings now, so he looked at Foster, who was staring intently at Nigel's pack of tobacco. In the absence of a complaint, Nigel plucked a paper from the packet.
'You ever traced your family tree at all?' he said as he placed a wad of tobacco in the crease and started to roll it out expertly between the forefinger and thumb of each hand.
Foster shook his head.
'My mum did,' DS Jenkins said. 'She hired you to do it for her.'
Nigel's eyes shot up from the cigarette he was rolling. 'Really? When?'
'Two or three years ago. That's how I got your number.'
Funnily enough, the reason they had chosen to call him, and not someone else, had simply not crossed his mind.
'Jenkins,' he said to himself. He could not remember and wondered whether he should pretend to, but realized she was sharp enough to know instantly whether he was bullshitting.
'It's all right. I don't expect you to recall my family tree,' she said, helping him out. 'I bet you've traced your family tree back to the Domesday Book or something, haven't you?' she added.
He shook his head. 'I can't trace my own father.'
'Your father?' Heather said, eyes widening.
'It's a long story.'
'Your mother's side?'
He shook his head once more. 'As I said, it's a long story.'
'Oh.' A waty look crept across her face.
'History has a habit of putting obstacles in your way,' he explained. 'It's one of the reasons I liked the job.'
Neither Heather nor Foster appeared to notice his use of the past tense.
'You get a real sense of achievement from helping people overcome those obstacles, track down relatives and ancestors they knew nothing about.'
Heather smiled at him. 'I can imagine you do.'
'I'm also interested in surnames: their origins, their meanings.'
'Really? What does Jenkins mean?'
'Kin of John. Or Jones, perhaps. 'Kin' is Flemish in origin, but it's one of those names that doesn't really indicate an area or locality. Too popular, really. It was the forty-second commonest surname in America in 1939.'
'What about him, then?' she said, indicating Foster.
'What does his surname mean?'
Nigel pulled a face. 'Literal meaning is difficult to pin down, as is origin, the study of surnames being inexact, to say the least.'
'Fair enough,' Foster said, sitting forwards. 'About why we're here
'Oh, go on,' Heather interrupted. 'What about the name Foster?'
'There are several possibilities. It could be derived from a forester, a man who is in charge of a forest.
Or someone who lived near a forest, or worked in a forest.'
Nigel thought it politic to leave out another explanation: one of Foster's ancestors was either a foster child or a foster parent.
'Fascinating,' Foster said, as if it was anything but.
'Now can we get on?' He looked at his colleague.
She spread her arms wide, as if to say, 'It's your show.'
'This morning we discovered a man's body. He'd been murdered. At the scene we discovered a reference written by the killer. We believe it refers to a birth, marriage or death certificate. We thought you could help us out.'
Nigel lit his roll-up and inhaled deeply. 'Could I see the reference?'
Foster shook his head slowly. 'No. But I can tell you what it was: 1 A 1 3 7.'
'Small 'a' or capital?' Nigel asked.
'Capital'
'Should strictly be a small 'a'. But it could be the reference for a birth, marriage or death certificate for central and west London issued between 1852
and 1946.'
'Why those specific areas? And why those dates?'
'Every district was given an index reference.
Between the dates I mentioned 1 a was assigned to Hampstead, Westminster, Marylebone, Chelsea, Fulham and Kensington.'
'The body was found in Kensington,' Heather said, looking across at Foster. 'Think there's anything in that?'
Foster rubbed his chin slowly. 'I don't think we can ignore it. Is there any way you can tell whether it's a birth, marriage or death certificate?'
'It could be any one of them,' Nigel replied.
'So could you go off and locate the certificate with this reference?'
'Yes, no problem. But we'd get thousands of results. This is simply a reference to a registration district and a page number. If I'm going to have any chance of finding the certificate quickly then I need to know an exact year, preferably a name. The Family Records Centre has indexes going back as far as 1837.'
Both detectives sat back, frustrated. Heather took a sip of her coffee, while Foster stared at Nigel. The DCI sat forwards once more.
'We found the victim's mobile phone,' Foster said.
