14
The Last Trump apart, there was probably only one thing that would have induced Dover to rise from his bed of pain the following morning, and by some miracle MacGregor came armed with it.
‘The Chieth Conthtable?’ repeated Dover, taking out his top set and blearily examining it for unfair wear and tear. ‘You can thuff that for a lark, laddie!’ He munched his teeth defiantly back into place.
‘Half past nine in his office, sir,’ said MacGregor, really putting the frighteners on. ‘And he wants a full progress report.’
‘’Strewth!’ moaned Dover, rolling miserably over and hiding his head in the blankets. ‘Tell him I’m not well. Unfit for duty. Gastric flu. The runs. Typhoid.’
MacGregor grinned to himself. ‘He’d be round like a shot, sir,’ he pointed out. ‘With a police surgeon.’
Dover unveiled a face pallid with fear, constipation and hangover. ‘Save me!’ he begged.
‘I think even the Chief Constable would be prepared to admit that our trip to Birmingham should take priority, sir,’ lied MacGregor smoothly. ‘We can’t be expected to postpone serious investigations for something that doesn’t amount to much more than a courtesy call. If we were to make an early start . . .’ He saw that Dover was hoisting the white flag. Birmingham it was! ‘Shall I ask them to serve you breakfast up here, sir?’
Dover shook his head and wished he hadn’t. ‘No breakfast, laddie!’ he gasped – and showed how the mighty were fallen.
They eventually reached Birmingham after lengthy halts at every public convenience en route. In spite of this, Dover’s first question when he arrived at the premises of the Bullrush Interdenominational Adoption Society was where was the lavatory?
Luckily Mrs Vincent had been a social worker for more than thirty years and it took more than the vagaries of Dover’s bladder to disconcert her. Indeed, she got Dover’s number with commendable speed.
‘I suppose I’d better order a large pot of black coffee,’ she remarked acidly as she and MacGregor watched Dover disappearing at an anxious trot down the long and highly polished corridor.
But Dover was gradually regaining his health and strength and by the time he returned to Mrs Vincent’s office he’d at least found his appetite again. While MacGregor plodded conscientiously through the preliminaries, Dover equally conscientiously gobbled down every biscuit on the coffee tray. It was only when he’d finished these and eaten all the lump sugar as well that he paid much attention to the rest of the proceedings.
Mrs Vincent was handing the photograph of the dead girl back to MacGregor. ‘Yes, that’s her all right. Pearl Wallace. Poor child!’
MacGregor tucked the photograph away. ‘And she came here to see you on Saturday, the eighth of this month?’
‘That’s right, sergeant. She’d telephoned earlier. I wouldn’t normally have given her an interview on a Saturday but I wasn’t free earlier and she seemed so distressed that I felt I had to make an exception. After all, it isn’t the first time and this isn’t a five-day-a-week job.’
‘She came to see you about having her baby adopted?’
Mrs Vincent stared unhappily at MacGregor for quite a long time. ‘I’m so sorry, sergeant,’ she said with a rueful laugh. ‘It’s just that I’m so used to total confidentiality in my work that I’m finding it rather difficult to break old habits.’
‘This is a murder case, madam,’ MacGregor reminded her. ‘Anything not strictly relevant to our enquiries will, however, be treated with as much discretion as . . .’
‘Oh, yes, I’m only hesitating, sergeant, not refusing. I’ve taken the trouble to clarify my position with our Head Office and they have authorized me to give you full co-operation. That still doesn’t mean I enjoy doing it, of course.’
MacGregor thought Mrs Vincent was really rather nice and he rewarded her by giving her one of his special twinkles. ‘It may help us find the girl’s murderer.’
Mrs Vincent sighed. ‘I suppose so. Now, you want to know why she came to see me. It wasn’t anything to do with having any baby of hers adopted, I’m afraid. She simply wanted as much information as we could give her about her own natural mother. Pearl Wallace, as you probably know, was offered for adoption through us some eighteen years ago. I wasn’t here at the time, as it happens, but we have records. We are obliged by law to keep them for at least twenty-five years, so the papers relating to Miss Wallace were readily available.’
‘Here, just a minute!’ Dover broke in pugnaciously. ‘I thought everything to do with adoptions was top secret.’
‘It’s this new law that’s been passed, sir,’ explained MacGregor. He prided himself on keeping abreast of current affairs and read the Daily Telegraph nearly every day. He could, therefore, be forgiven if he tended to expound at length to such as Dover who rarely got beyond the headlines in the Sun and always went to the toilet when the television news came on. ‘From now on, adopted children can, when they reach the age of eighteen, obtain details of their birth, if they want to. And I believe’ – he glanced for confirmation to Mrs Vincent – ‘that the legislation is retrospective.’ Dover wasn’t very good at thirteen letter words so MacGregor explained further. ‘That means, sir, that it’s not only children adopted after the passing of this new Act who can apply to see their birth certificates and so on. Those adopted before it was passed have been given the same rights.’
‘And that’s where our troubles begin,’ said Mrs Vincent.
Dover was still truculent. ‘I’m blowed if I see why!’
‘Well, take this poor girl, Pearl Wallace.’ Mrs Vincent had found from long experience that people with low iqs did better with concrete examples. ‘When she was adopted eighteen years ago, everything was done in an atmosphere of the greatest secrecy. The natural mother gave up all her rights. She usually never met the adopting parents or knew
