Not Dead Enough

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.