Lethal Intent

Seventy-eight

Normally, Andy Martin was a patient man, but as five o'clock approached, he found himself beginning to fret. The contact he had made in the General Register Office in Southport had promised him that he would have the information he sought before the day was out, but time was wearing thin.

He was on the point of making a wake-up call when his direct line rang. He snatched it up.

'Bet you thought I was never going to get back to you, Mr Martin,' said an amiable voice.

'That's not a bet I'm going to take, Mr Donald.' He chuckled. The two men had never met, but when Martin had identified himself to the GRO switchboard, he had been put through to the office of the Deputy Registrar General, who had introduced himself as Rex Donald.

He had expected that he might have some difficulty in persuading him to do a search of the English birth, death and marriage registers, but he had found him more than willing to help. Donald had explained that it was policy to co-operate with official requests from the police and other departments, and that he was not hindered by the Data Protection Act.

When Martin had given him the name of the person whose birth he wanted traced, he had listened for a reaction, but had picked up none. He had smiled to himself, wondering how Tommy Murtagh would have taken the knowledge that a high-ranking English civil servant had never heard, apparently, of Scotland's top politician.

'Has your search been successful?' he asked.

'The birth one has, in triplicate,' Donald told him. 'I've found three male children born thirty-six years ago and named Thomas Murtagh. However, only one of them has a mother called Rachel.'

'And the father?' asked Martin, trying to sound matter-of-fact.

'That information is not on the register. Rachel Murtagh was the mother's maiden name.'

'I see. Where was the birth registered?'

'In the city of York, where the mother lived. Obviously, since the mother was single, your second request, for details of her marriage, fell by the wayside. However, I had some additional checking done, just to make sure, and I can tell you that she did not enter into any subsequent union, not in England at any rate. Finally, there is no record of anyone named George Murtagh dying in the year you mention. Is all that helpful?'

'Very. Thank you, Mr Donald.'

'May I ask, Mr Martin, out of sheer, naked curiosity, what's behind your enquiries? Is it a fraud?'

The police officer grinned. 'You could put it that way,' he replied. 'Some people might see it as a very big fraud indeed.'

He hung up, musing over what he had been told. So the story of the motor mechanic's tragic death, the one that Diana Meikle had believed, was a fabrication, and the First Minister's official biography was a lie.

He found himself thinking about the man's sad family background and of his long-gone sister, whose birth certificate, as a Scottish check had revealed, had also been lacking in information on her paternity. How much light could she shed on her brother's world? Suddenly, he found himself thinking about the Herbert Groves Charitable Trust.

He picked up the phone again and called an old friend of his, someone who went all the way back to his Special Branch days. 'Excellent,' he murmured, as the phone was answered.

'Veronica Hacking.'

'Hi, Ronnie. It's Andy Martin. How's the Inland Revenue these days?'