Free The Blood Detective by Dan Waddell Page A

he was
    given the name “drink water” ironically.’
    ‘It’s not ironic any more,’ Foster said derisively.
    ‘Andy here doesn’t drink, spends his time working out and running on treadmills with all the other pod people.’ He grinned. ‘That’s made my day.’
    Foster left for the press conference.
    Drinkwater was smiling. ‘Thanks for that, Mr
    Barnes,’ he said half seriously and sat down.
    On the table were three piles of paper: birth,
    marriage and death certificates.
    ‘Nigel, you take the marriage certificates.’
    ‘Are we looking for anything in particular?’ he asked.
    Drinkwater shrugged. ‘Anything that has anything to do with the murder. The name, Darbyshire, or the location, St John’s Church: there might be a few who got married there. Put them to one side and we can have another look at them.’
    He picked up a certificate and the room became
    silent. Nigel could hear voices coming from elsewhere, the persistent ringing of phones, but the three of them sat and sifted through the documents without saying a single word, reading and rereading, checking every name, every address, every witness on every form for any link. During the course of the next few hours, several links began to turn up: Drinkwater found the birth certificate of a girl who lived on St John’s Crescent; Nigel a couple of marriages that took place at St John’s Church. These formed the basis of a meagre pile requiring further inquiry.
    Heather found nothing relevant; it was heavy going.
    Many of the causes of death listed on the certificates were conditions she had never heard of, described in terms no longer used.
    Nigel found it enthralling. The thrill of the chase had always been the job’s main attraction, yet here the rewards were even greater, the purpose more noble. He scanned each document. His pile was reducing more quickly than the other two. For a second he thought he might be going too fast, but then he realized he was the only one used to reading the handwriting and scrutinizing the documents at a glance. Yet he had not come across anything he
    deemed significant and wondered whether he should have subjected the discarded documents to closer scrutiny.
    ‘Bingo!’ Heather shouted, startling the other two.
    ‘What?’ Drinkwater asked.
    She held her finger up to quieten him as she reread the form. ‘Bloody hell,’ she said, inserting an emphatic ‘a’ between the ‘b’ and T to show her surprise. ‘Jesus!’ She scrabbled in the pocket of her jacket on the back of the chair and found her mobile.
    She dialled quickly.
    ‘Tell us what it is, Heather,’ Drinkwater demanded.
    Without speaking she tossed the certificate in front of him. ‘Sir, it’s Jenkins,’ she said into the phone.
    ‘Get back here as soon as you can. We’ve found it.’
     
    Nigel watched as Foster, lounging on the table, his tie pulled loose from his neck, read the death certificate.
    ‘It’s got to be it, hasn’t it?’ Foster said eventually, looking at Heather and Drinkwater.
    The certificate belonged to an Albert Beck, a 32year-old tanner of Clarendon Road, North Kensington.
    He had been found stabbed to death in the
    grounds of St John’s Church, Ladbroke Grove on
    29th March 1879. The day James Darbyshire’s body had been discovered.
    Foster stared at the certificate, pulling at his bottom lip.
    ‘We need to see if we have anything in our archives about this crime,’ he said at last.
    Drinkwater scribbled in his notebook.
    Nigel had been quiet ever since Foster arrived.
    ‘Much of the Metropolitan Police archives were
    destroyed in the Blitz. I think you’ll find that the records from the second half of the nineteenth century were decimated.’
    Foster nodded. ‘Thanks. But get someone to check it out, Andy.’ He turned to Nigel. ‘The killer must have seen this death certificate, or known of it in order to have led us to it, correct?’
    Nigel nodded.
    ‘And you said this reference was from the central index.