Not Dead Enough (50 page)

Grace thanked him and walked along to his own office. He went and closed the door, then sat quietly at his desk for some moments, planning what he was going to say very carefully before he rang the mobile number in front of him.

‘Leighton Lloyd,’ the man answered, his voice crisp and ready for a fight, as if he already knew who his caller was.

‘It’s Detective Superintendent Grace, Mr Lloyd. Can we have this conversation off the record?’

There was some surprise in the solicitor’s tone. ‘Yes. OK. We’re off the record. Do you have some new information?’

‘We have some concerns,’ Grace said, remaining guarded. He still didn’t trust the man. ‘Would you happen to know if your client has a twin?’

‘He hasn’t mentioned anything. Do you want to elaborate on this?’ Lloyd asked.

‘Not at this stage. It might be helpful to all of us if we could establish or eliminate this. Could you ask your client urgently?’

‘It’s after visiting hours. Can you authorize Lewes prison to let me speak to my client on the phone?’

‘Yes, I’ll get that done now.’

‘Would you like me to call you back tonight?’

‘I’d appreciate it.’

As Grace hung up, his phone rang again, almost immediately. ‘Roy Grace,’ he answered. The voice at the other end sounded very serious and pensive.

‘Detective Superintendent, it’s John Pringle. I’m with SOCO and I was asked to look at a fire-damaged MG motor car that was brought into the pound this morning. Brian Cook told me to report my findings to you.’

‘Yes, thank you. He said you’d be calling.’

‘I’ve just completed my examination of the vehicle, sir. Extensive fire damage to the interior has caused some of the wiring to melt, so I cannot give as complete a report as I would have liked.’

‘Understood.’

‘What I can say, sir, is that the fire wasn’t caused by anyone trying to steal the vehicle or by vandalism.’ There was a long silence.

Grace clamped the phone tighter to his ear and hunched over his desk. ‘I’m listening. What did cause it?’

‘The vehicle had been tampered with. Deliberate sabotage without any question. An extra set of fuel injectors had been added and positioned to spray petrol directly into the driver footwell when the ignition was switched on. A wiring loop had been connected from the starter motor so as to send out sparks into the footwell when it activated. Combined with that, although it is hard to be certain, because so much of the wiring has melted, it looks to me as if the wiring of the central door locking had been altered, so that once locked the doors could not be unlocked.’

Grace felt a cold prickle crawl down his spine.

‘This has been done by someone very clever, someone who knew exactly what they were doing. It wasn’t about harming the car, Detective Superintendent. In my view, they were intending to kill the driver.’

Grace sat on one of the two large red sofas in the downstairs room of Cleo’s house, with Cleo snuggled up beside him, the empty fish tank sitting on the table still filled with water. He had one arm draped around her and he was holding a large glass of Glenfiddich and ice with his free hand. Her hair smelled freshly washed and fragrant. She felt warm, alive, so intensely, beautifully alive. And so vulnerable.

He was scared as hell for her.

Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers was playing on the hi-fi. It was exquisite music, but it was too poignant, too sad for this moment. He needed silence, or something cheerful, but he didn’t know what. He suddenly felt that he didn’t know anything. Except for this. That he loved this beautiful, warm, funny creature he was holding. He loved her truly and deeply, more than he had ever imagined he could love anyone after Sandy. And that somehow he had to let Sandy go. He did not want her shadow destroying this relationship.

And he could not stop thinking what would have happened if that sad little villain, who was still fighting for his life, had not beaten her to her car.

If there had been no police stakeout. Nobody around to pull her out.

The thought was almost unbearable. Some psycho had planned to kill her and had gone to great trouble.

Who?

Why?

And if that person had tried once and failed, then was he – or she – going to try again?

His mind went back to Sunday, when someone had sliced open the soft-top of the MG. Was that just a coincidence or was there a connection?

Tomorrow a detective would sit down with her and go through a list of all the people she might have upset during her work. There were plenty of relatives of victims who got angry about their loved ones having post-mortems – and invariably they took their anger out on Cleo rather than on the coroner, who was actually the person responsible for that decision.

Cleo had initially greeted the news with disbelief, but during the past hour, since he had arrived home, it was starting to sink in, and the shock was now hitting her.

She leaned down, picked up her wine glass and drained it. ‘What I don’t understand is—’ She stopped in mid-sentence, as if a thought had struck her. ‘If someone was going to wire my car to blow up, wouldn’t they do it to make it look like an accident? They’d know that forensics would be crawling all over it afterwards. It sounds like what this person did made it look very obvious.’

‘You’re right. Whoever it was, they did, they made it very obvious. Although I doubt they could have easily disguised what was done. I’m not a mechanic, but it was a lot more elaborate than just crossing a couple of wires.’ It was vicious, sadistic, he thought but did not say. He hadn’t yet told her that her car was now being treated as a crime scene, the event categorized as a major incident, with a senior investigating officer being appointed and a full inquiry team.

She turned and looked at him with round, worried eyes. ‘I just can’t think of anyone who could have done this, Roy.’

‘What about your ex?’

‘Richard?’

‘Yes.’

She shook her head. ‘No, he wouldn’t go this far.’

‘He stalked you for months. You had to threaten him with a court order at one point – that was when he backed off, you said. But some stalkers don’t go away.’

‘I just cannot imagine him doing this.’

‘Didn’t you say he raced cars?’

‘He did, until God started occupying his weekends.’

Grace’s mobile rang. He put his glass down and disentangled himself from Cleo, to retrieve it from his jacket pocket. Glancing at the caller display, he saw it was Lloyd.

‘Roy Grace,’ he answered.

‘OK, I’ve spoken to my client,’ the solicitor said. ‘He was adopted. He doesn’t know anything about his birth parents.’

‘Does he know anything about his background at all?’

‘He only found out he was adopted after the death of his parents. After his mother died he was going through her papers and found his original birth certificate. It was a big shock – he didn’t know.’

‘Has he made any attempt to find his birth parents?’

‘He says he had been planning to quite recently, but hadn’t yet done anything about it.’

Grace thought for a moment. ‘Did he by any chance tell you where his birth certificate is?’

‘Yes. It’s in a filing cabinet in his office at Dyke Road Avenue. It’s in a folder marked Personal. Would you like to tell me any more?’

‘Not at this stage,’ Grace replied. ‘But thank you. I’ll let you know what I find.’

He ended the call, then immediately dialled the number of the Operation Chameleon incident room.

107

Despite being desperately tired, Grace slept fitfully, woken by the slightest noise and not settling again each time until he was certain that it had come from outside Cleo’s house, not from inside.

His mind was a jumble of dark thoughts. A burning MG. A tattoo. A gas mask. A body with crabs falling off it, rolling through the surf on a Brighton beach, Janet McWhirter’s smiling, cheerful face in her PNC office.

Clear the ground under your feet.

The words of his own mentor, the recently retired Chief Superintendent Dave Gaylor, were rolling around like surf inside his head. Gaylor had been a detective inspector when Grace had first met him. The youngest ever DI in Sussex. Twelve years his senior, Gaylor had taught him much that he knew today. In a sense, his own attempts at helping Glenn Branson were his way of passing that knowledge on.

Clear the ground under your feet. It was an old CID expression. Gaylor had always impressed on him the importance of looking at what was immediately around you when you were at a crime scene. Of not ignoring anything, however irrelevant it might seem at the time. He had also told Grace that if something felt wrong, then it probably was wrong.

Janet McWhirter’s death felt wrong to him.

The words of one of his own personal mantras, cause and effect, were also tumbling around in his mind. Cause and effect. Cause and effect.

After fifteen years in the police PNC department, Janet McWhirter falls in love. She goes for a career change, a lifestyle change, plans to move to Australia. Was the cause of her lifestyle change the man she met? And the effect for her to end up dead?

It was really troubling him.

Dawn was breaking outside. Grace had never been afraid of the dark, even as a child, perhaps because he knew his policeman dad was there, in the next room, to protect him. But he had been worried during these past hours of darkness now. Concerned who might be out there wanting to harm Cleo. Her insanely jealous ex-fiance Richard?

Richard Northrop-Turner.

The man who had stalked Cleo relentlessly and increasingly nastily, until she had threatened to go to court. Then he had gone away, or so it seemed. Richard Northrop-Turner, who raced cars and did the mechanics himself. Despite all Cleo’s protestations that she did not believe her ex would go as far as trying to kill her, the first call he would make this morning, when he left here, would be to the SIO on the investigation into her attempted murder, a competent DI called Roger Pole, and suggest they concentrate on Richard Northrop-Turner as the prime suspect.

Cleo stirred and he kissed her lightly on the forehead, feeling her warm, sour breath on his face. He wanted to move her out of here and into his own house for the next few days, which would, ideally, mean getting rid of his lodger. For some moments, as he lay awake, he wondered whether he could do a swap with Cleo. Let Glenn Branson come and stay here – and act as a guard – while she stayed with him.

But when he suggested it to her as he was getting dressed a while later, she was less than enthusiastic.

‘It’s safe here,’ she said. ‘There’s only one way in and out, through the front gates. I feel secure here.’

‘You’re not secure when you leave here. How many more nights are you on call-out?’

‘All this week.’

‘If you have to go out again in the middle of the night, I’m coming with you.’

‘You’re sweet. Thank you.’

‘How secure are you at the mortuary?’

‘The doors are always locked. I have Darren there all the time, and Walter Hordern most of the time, as well.’

‘I’m going to get extra patrols around here, at night, and also have patrols keep an extra vigilant eye around the mortuary. Do you have a reasonably recent photograph of Richard?’

‘Loads,’ Cleo said. ‘On my computer.’

‘Email me one this morning – something that’s a good likeness. I’m going to get it circulated to the local police – in case they see him anywhere.’

‘OK.’

‘How will you get to work today?’

‘Darren’s picking me up.’

‘Good.’

Grace told Cleo he would bring round a Chinese takeaway tonight, as soon as he could get away, and a bottle of wine. She kissed him goodbye, telling him she thought that was a very good plan.

It was a quarter to six when he left the house and he just about had time to dash back to his home to shower, shave and change. He entered as quietly as possible so as not to wake up Glenn Branson – more to avoid having to endure another round of early-morning soul-searching from his friend than from any concern for the Detective Sergeant getting his requisite hours of beauty sleep.

As usual, Glenn had left the living room looking like a tip. CDs and DVDs, pulled from their sleeves, were spread around everywhere, and the detritus of some reheated ready meal in a foil box – fish pie, it smelled like – was lying on and around a tray on the carpet, along with two empty cans of Coke and an ice-cream carton.

Grace got himself ready and fled, pausing only to slip a CD, from a rapper he had never heard of, into the living room hi-fi and switch it on, turning the volume up high enough to shake a man’s fillings out five miles away.

It was far too loud for him to hear Glenn Branson’s shouts and curses as he drove away.

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.’

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.

110

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 fiance 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.