by Peter James
It was far too loud for him to hear Glenn Branson’s shouts and curses as he drove away.
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108
There was a brown envelope lying on Roy Grace’s desk when he walked in, just before seven, with an explanatory note from Bella Moy taped on top, stating these were the certificates for Brian Bishop he had requested. She had also written down the name and contact details of a post-adoption counsellor who, she said, had previously helped the local police through the obstacle course of finding out information on adopted people.
Inside were two creased, oblong documents, about six inches high and a foot wide. They were on yellowing paper with red printing, and handwritten details inserted in black fountain pen ink. He unfolded the first one. It was headed: Certified Copy of an Entry of Birth. Under that were a series of columns.
When and Where Born: Seventh September, 1964 at 3.47 a.m. Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton
Name, if any: Desmond William
Sex: Boy
Name and Surname of Father:
Name and Maiden Surname of Mother: Eleanor Jones
Then, in a space at the extreme right, was written Adopted. It was signed Albert Hole, Superintendent Registrar.
Grace then unfolded the second document. It was headed: Certified Copy of an Entry in the Records of the General Register Office. At the very bottom of the document were the words, Certified Copy of an Entry in the Adopted Children Register.
Then he read along the columns.
Date of Entry: Nineteenth September, 1964
Name of Adopted Child: Brian Desmond
Sex of Adopted Child: Male
Name and Surname, Address and Occupation of Adopter or Adopters: Mr Rodney and Mrs Irene Bishop, 43 Brangwyn Road, Brighton. Company director.
Date of Birth of Child: Seventh September, 1964
Date of Adoption Order and Description of Court by which Made: Brighton County Court
Signature of Officer Deputed by Registrar General to attest the entry: Albert Hole.
He read both documents through again carefully, absorbing the details. Then he looked at his watch. It was too early to call the post-adoption counsellor, so he decided he would do it straight after the eight-thirty briefing.
‘Loretta Leberknight,’ she answered in a warm, gravelly voice.
Grace introduced himself and explained briefly what he was looking for.
‘You want to try to find out if this Brian Bishop has a twin?’
‘Exactly,’ he replied.
‘OK, what information do you have on him?’
‘I have his birth certificate and what appears to be an adoption certificate.’
‘Is it a long birth certificate or a short one?’
Grace described it to her.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘It’s the long one – more information on it. Now, there’s usually one sure way to tell – if the birth is in England and Wales. Is it?’
‘Yes, he was born in Brighton.’
‘Can you read out to me what it says under When and Where Born?’
Grace obliged.
‘It says, Seventh September, 1964 at 3.47 a.m.?’ she checked.
‘Yes.’
‘And the place of birth is given as where?’ she asked, checking again.
‘Brighton. The Royal Sussex County Hospital.’
‘You have the information right there!’ She sounded pleased.
‘I do.’
‘In England and Wales the time of birth in addition to the date of birth is only put down for multiple births. From that information, Detective Superintendent, you can be 100 percent certain that Brian Bishop has a twin.’
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109
Minutes after its ten a.m. opening time, Nick Nicholl walked through the entrance scanner poles and into the handsome, pastel-blue room of the Brighton Reference Library. The smells of paper, leather and wood reminded him of school, but he was so exhausted from yet another virtually sleepless night, courtesy of his son, Ben, that he barely took in his surroundings. He walked over to the inquiry desk and showed his warrant card to one of the librarians, explaining what he needed.
Five minutes later the young detective was seated, beneath the domed and stuccoed ceiling, in front of one of a bank of microfiche units, holding a rectangle of film with a red band along the top which contained the register of births in the whole of the UK for the third quarter of 1964. He inserted it the wrong way around three times, before finally getting the hang of the reader. Then he fiddled with the jerky controls, trying to scroll through the lists of first names beneath surname headers, in print that was almost too small and blurry to read – for his tired eyes at any rate.
As directed by the helpful post-adoption counsellor, Loretta Leberknight, he was looking for unmarried mothers with the surname Jones. The clear indicators would be a child with the same surname as the mother’s maiden name. Although, with one as common as Jones, the librarian had warned him, there would be some instances of two persons marrying who had the same surname.
Despite the words SILENCE PLEASE written in large, clear gold letters on a wooden board, a father somewhere behind him was explaining something to a very loud-mouthed, inquisitive boy. Nick made a mental note never to let his son speak that loudly in a library. He was fast losing track of all the mental notes he had made about irritating things he was not going to let his son do when he was older. He totally doted on him, but the whole business of being a parent was starting to seem daunting. And no one had ever really, properly warned him that you had to do it all while suffering sleep deprivation. Had he and Jen really had a sex life once? Most of their former life together now seemed a distant memory.
Near him, a fan hummed, swivelling on a stand, momentarily fluttering a sheaf of papers before it turned away again. Names in white letters on the dark screen in front of him sped past. Finally, he found Jones.
Belinda. Bernard. Beverley. Brett. Carl. Caroline.
Jiggling the flat metal handle awkwardly, he lost the Jones list altogether for a moment. Then, more by serendipity than skill, he found it again.
Daniella. Daphne. David. Davies. Dean. Delia. Denise. Dennis. Then he came to a Desmond and stopped. Desmond was Bishop’s first name on his birth certificate.
Desmond. Mother’s maiden name Trevors. Born in Romford.
Not the right one.
Desmond. Mother’s maiden name Jones. Born in Brighton.
Desmond Jones. Mother’s maiden name Jones.
Bingo!
And there was no other Desmond Jones on the list.
Now he just had to find another match of the mother’s first and maiden name. But that was a bigger problem than he had anticipated. There were twenty-seven matches. He wrote each one down, then hurried from the library to his next port of call, phoning Roy Grace the moment he was out of the door.
Deciding it would be quicker to leave his car in the NCP, he walked, heading past the Royal Pavilion and the Theatre Royal, cutting through the narrow streets of the Lanes, which were lined mostly with second-hand jewellery shops, and emerged opposite the imposing grey building of the town hall.
Five minutes later he was in a small waiting room in the registrar’s offices with hard grey chairs, parquet flooring and a large tank of tropical fish. Grace joined him a few minutes later – the post-adoption counsellor had advised them they would probably need to pull rank in order to get the information they required.
A tall, urbane but rather harassed-looking man of fifty, smartly dressed in a suit and tie, and perspiring from both the heat and clearly being in a rush, came in. ‘Yes, gentlemen?’ he said. ‘I’m Clive Ravensbourne, the Superintendent Registrar. You wanted to see me rather than one of my colleagues?’
‘Thank you,’ Grace said. ‘I appreciate your seeing us at such short notice.’
‘You’ll have to excuse me making this brief, but I’m doing a wedding in ten minutes’ time.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Actually, nine minutes.’
‘I explained to your assistant why we needed to see you – did she brief you?’
‘Yes, yes, a murder inquiry.’
Nicholl handed him the list of twenty-seven Jones births. ‘We are looking for a twin,’ he said. ‘What we need is for you to tell us if any one of these boys is a twin of –’ he pointed at the name – ‘Desmond William Jones.’
The registrar looked panic-stricken for a moment. ‘How many names do you have on this list?’
‘Twenty-seven. We need you to look at the records and see if you can get a match from any of them. We are pretty sure one of them is a twin – and we need to find him urgently.’
He glanced at his watch again. ‘I don’t have the – I – hang on, though – we could short-circuit this.’ He nodded to himself. ‘Do you have a birth certificate for this Desmond William Jones?’
‘We have copies of the original and the adoption certificate,’ Nicholl replied.
‘Just give me the birth certificate. There’ll be an index number on it.’
Nicholl pulled it out of the envelope and handed it to him.
He unfolded it and scanned it quickly. ‘There, you see,’ he said, pointing at the left-hand edge of the document. ‘Just wait here. I’ll be right back.’
He disappeared through the doorway and re-emerged after a couple of minutes, holding a large, dark red, leather-bound registry book. Still standing, he opened it approximately halfway through and quickly turned over several pages. Then he appeared to relax a little.
‘Here we are!’ he said. ‘Desmond William Jones, mother Eleanor Jones, born at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, 7 September 1964 at three forty-seven a.m. And it says Adopted, right? Got the right chap?’
Grace and Nicholl both nodded.
‘Good. So, right underneath it, bottom of the page, we have Frederick Roger Jones, mother Eleanor Jones, born at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, 7 September 1964 at four o five a.m. Also subsequently adopted.’ He looked up with a smile. ‘He sounds the ticket to me. Born eighteen minutes later. That’s your twin. Frederick Roger Jones.’
Grace felt a real surge of excitement. ‘Thank you. That’s enormously helpful. Can you give us any further information?’
The registrar shut the book very firmly. ‘I’m afraid that’s as much as I can do for you. Adoption records are more tightly protected than the crown jewels. You’ll now have to do battle with Social Services. And good luck to you!’
Ten minutes later – most of them spent on his mobile phone, in the hallway of the town hall, being shunted from extension to extension within Social Services, Grace was beginning to understand what the man had meant. And after a further five minutes on hold, listening to a perpetual loop of ‘Greensleeves’, he was ready to kill.
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Twenty minutes later, still standing in the grand entrance of the town hall, Grace finally got put through to the Director of Social Services. Managing – just – to keep his temper under control, he explained the circumstances and his reasons for needing access to an adoption file.
The man listened sympathetically. ‘Of course, Detective Superintendent, you understand that to do this would be a very big exception to our policy,’ he said pedantically. ‘I would need to be able to justify releasing this information to you. And I would need assurances that it would only be for the purposes you have outlined. Some adopted people do not know they are adopted. The effects on them, from hearing the news, can be very traumatic.’
‘Probably not as traumatic as it was for the two women who have been murdered in this city in the past week,’ Grace responded. ‘Or for the next woman on this maniac’s list.’
There was a brief silence. ‘And you really think this twin might be the killer?’
‘As I’ve just told you, it’s possible he could be responsible – and if he is, he could kill again. I think the public’s safety is more important at this stage than hurting the feelings of one middle-aged man.’
‘If we did release information that would enable you to find him, what would your intentions be?’
‘My intentions? I don’t have any interest or agenda for this information other than finding the man as quickly as possible, with a view to questioning him and eliminating him from our inquiries.’
‘Or arresting him?’
‘I can’t speculate. But if we have reason to believe, after interviewing him, that he is involved in the very savage murders of two innocent young women, then that is almost certain, yes.’
There was another long silence. Grace felt his temper straining again, pulling like a tattooed pit-bull terrier on a leash. And the leash was fraying.
‘It’s a difficult decision for us.’
‘I appreciate that. But if a third person is murdered, and it turns out that this twin was the killer, or could have led us to the killer – and you could have prevented it – how would you feel about that?’
‘I’ll have to make a phone call and check something with our legal department. Can you give me five minutes?’
‘I need to make a decision whether to go back to my office or hang around downtown,’ Grace replied. ‘Will it be just five minutes or longer?’
‘I will be very quick, Detective Superintendent, I assure you.’
Grace used the time to make a quick call to Roger Pole, the SIO on the investigation into the attempted murder of Cleo Morey, to get a progress update. Two officers had gone this morning to interview her former fianc�Richard Northrop-Turner, at his chambers in Chichester, Pole told him. And it looked like the barrister had an alibi. Before they had finished speaking, Grace’s phone started beeping with an incoming call. He thanked Pole and switched to the new call. It was the Director of Social Services again.
‘All right, Detective Superintendent. You won’t need to explain all of this to the post-adoption social worker – I will get her to bring you the file and let you have the information you require. Is it the names of the people who adopted Frederick Roger Jones that would suffice for your purposes?’
‘That would be a good starting point,’ Grace responded. ‘Thank you.’
A bus rumbled past the first-floor window of the small, sparsely furnished conference room in the Council office building. Grace glanced out, through the venetian blinds, at the pink banner advertising the television series Sugar Rush below its top deck. He had been sitting in this damn room with Nick Nicholl for over a quarter of an hour, with no offer of a coffee or even a glass of water. The morning was slipping by, but they were at least making some progress. His nerves were badly on edge. He was trying to concentrate on his own cases, but he could not stop thinking and worrying about Cleo, almost every second.
‘How’s your lad?’ he asked the young DC, who was yawning and pallid-faced despite the glorious summer weather.
‘Wonderful!’ he said. ‘Ben’s just amazing. But he doesn’t sleep very well.’
‘Good at changing nappies, are you?’
‘I’m becoming world class.’
A leaflet on the table was headed Brighton & Hove City Council Directorate of Children, Families and Schools. On the walls were posters of smiling, cute-looking children of different races.
Finally the door opened and a young woman entered, managing to put Grace’s back up even before she opened her mouth, just from the way she looked, combined with her scowl.
She was in her mid-thirties, thin as a rake, with a pointed nose, a hoop-shaped mouth ringed with red lipstick, and her hair was dyed a vivid fuchsia, gelled into small, aggressive-looking spikes. She was wearing an almost full-length printed muslin dress and what Grace thought might be vegan sandals, and was carrying a buff file folder with a Post-it note stuck to it.
‘You’re the two from the police?’ she asked coldly, in a south London accent, her eyes, behind emerald-framed glasses, finding a gap between the two detectives.
Grace, followed by Nicholl, stood up. ‘Detective Superintendent Grace and Detective Constable Nicholl fro
m Sussex CID,’ Grace said.
Without giving her name, she said, ‘The director has told me that you want to know the adopted name of Frederick Jones, who was born on 7 September 1964.’ Now she looked straight at Grace, still intensely hostile.
‘Yes, that’s right. Thank you,’ he said.
She pulled the Post-it note off the folder and handed it to him. On it was written, in neat handwriting, the name Tripwell, Derek and Joan.
He showed it to Nick Nicholl, then looked at the folder. ‘Is there anything else in there that could give us any help?’
‘I’m sorry, I’m not authorized,’ she said, avoiding eye contact again.
‘Did your director not explain that this is a murder inquiry?’
‘It’s also someone’s private life,’ she retorted.
‘All I need is an address for the adoptive parents – Derek and Joan Tripwell,’ he said, reading from the yellow note. Then he nodded at the folder. ‘You must have that in there.’
‘I’ve been told to give you their names,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been told to give you any more.’
Grace looked at her, exasperated. ‘I can’t seem to get it across – there may be other women in this city whose lives are in danger.’
‘Detective Superintendent, you and your colleague have your job to do, protecting the citizens of Brighton and Hove. I have my job to do, protecting adopted children. Is that clear?’
‘Let me make something clear to you then,’ Grace said, glancing at Nicholl and clenching up with anger. ‘If anyone else is murdered in this city, and you are withholding information that could have enabled us to prevent it, I’m going to personally hang you out to dry.’