The Blood Detective

6

By early afternoon Heather had faxed through the references for 457 birth, death and marriage certificates.

The most Nigel had ever ordered at the end of one day was seventeen. It had taken four days before he could collect the copies. The 457 were all found, copied and faxed through to West London Murder Command in less than two hours.

Nigel was told to meet at murder squad HQ in Kensington at four p.m. He was there ten minutes early. He announced himself downstairs to a woman on the desk and was told to take a seat. He had nothing to read and there was nothing on the table for him to flick through, but then this was hardly the dentist's.

Heather finally emerged from a lift and passed him through the security gate. They ascended several floors, stopping at an open-plan office. Only a few people were milling about, some on the phones, a few more staring at their computer screens. Nigel expected more activity, hubbub, not the sort of inertia you would witness in a provincial insurance office.

The only giveaway that this was the incident room at the heart of a murder investigation was at the back of the room: a large whiteboard, which was attracting Nigel's appalled fascination long before they turned right and started walking towards it.

A series of photographs was arranged on it, two rows of two, surrounded by notes scribbled in red pen. As he neared he could see the pictures were of a person, a body. Darbyshire's. Nigel had never seen a corpse before. Without thinking, he stopped, stomach lurching. The first picture top left was of the dead man's corpse at the scene, clad in a pinstripe suit. Only the pallid, lifeless face and the pale blue lips gave any indication that the man had not just passed out. The next was more graphic. Taken from a position just below the victim's feet, Nigel could clearly make out two ragged stumps, white bone protruding where the hands had been removed.

His eyes fell on the next picture, a close-up of a naked chest, showing a small scar. The knife wound, he assumed. The last was of a series of marks and cuts; he could make out no order until he realized that it was the reference he'd been working on that day.

Nigel turned and looked at Heather.

She held his arm, squeezed it softly, then turned away. 'Come on,' she urged gently.

Nigel fell in behind her, casting a last glance back at the whiteboard.

They went to the left-hand corner of the office, across a small corridor and through a large door. The meeting room was bare apart from a wooden table in the middle. DCI Foster was there, sitting on one end of the table, scanning a certificate. He nodded at Nigel, his glance flickering with concern.

'You look like shit,' he said.

'We just walked past the whiteboard,' Heather explained.

'Sit down there.' Foster pulled out a chair with his foot. When Nigel sat, he got up, reached over to the tray in the middle of the table and poured a tea.

'Sugar?'

Nigel shook his head, the images still haunting his mind. 'I've never seen a dead person before,' he mumbled.

Foster put the cup in front of him.

'It gets easier,' Heather said. 'But not much.'

'I think I'll stick with death certificates. Less messy,' he added, looking up at her.

'Definitely less messy,' she repeated. Again the smile was warm. Other than the thrill and the excitement, he was finding another reason why he wanted to stick around this murder investigation for as long as he was allowed.

Nigel sipped a lukewarm mouthful of tea as Foster pointed to another man in the room, who Nigel hadn't noticed. He was tall, well-built, in his mid-thirties, blandly handsome.

'This is DI Andy Drinkwater.'

They shook hands.

DI, Nigel thought. Detective Inspector. A rank below Foster, one above Heather.

'DI Drinkwater and DS Jenkins will be helping you go through this pile of certificates. I have to do a press conference with the victim's widow in front of a mass of reptiles, all of them wanting to know one thing: Did she do it?' He peeled his coat from the back of the chair. 'And before you ask. No, she didn't.'

Nigel felt the shock at seeing the whiteboard's contents begin to wear off. The surname of the detective to whom he'd just been introduced finally registered with him. 'Your surname's Drinkwater?'

The detective eyed him suspiciously. 'Yes,' he said slowly.

'I've never met a Drinkwater.'

'Really,' said Drinkwater slowly.

'It's not a common name any more. Do you know what it means?'

'No.'

'It's a very interesting name,' Nigel said.

'It'll be about the only thing interesting about Andy,' Foster interrupted. He'd paused at the door, wanting to hear the etymology of his junior's surname.

Drinkwater gave him a sardonic smile. 'Why's it interesting?'

'There are two theories: either your ancestors lived in such poverty that they could not afford to buy beer, they could only drink water 'Or?' Drinkwater asked, curiosity aroused.

'Or your ancestor was such a drunk that 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. Does that mean he or she could only have ordered it from the Family Records Centre?'

'Not necessarily,' Nigel replied. 'There are several websites where you can browse the indexes online, though it costs you; or you can order online from the GRO.'

'Anywhere else?'

'There's always a possibility they already owned the death certificate.'

'What do you mean?'

'It's in the family; they could be related to the dead man. Or it could simply have fallen into their possession.'

'Let's discount that for now. For all the other possibilities, the person would have had to order it and get it sent to an address?'

'Unless they paid for it at the FRC and collected it a few days later.'

Foster went back to scanning the document, as if it would yield more secrets the longer he stared at it.

'Well, that gives us something to work on,' he said to his two officers. 'We need to get someone along to the FRC, get hold of any CCTV footage, find out if anyone else has ordered this certificate, who they were, OK?'

Drinkwater left the room.

Foster looked at Nigel. 'There is something else you can do for us, which sort of relates to your last theory about how the killer got hold of the certificate.

Is it possible to trace someone's family going forwards?

Not their ancestors but their descendants?'

Nigel nodded. 'It's called the "bounceback technique".

You go back in time to trace the path of someone's family to the present day.'

'So you could trace the living descendants of Albert Beck?'

'No problem.'

'Will you go and do that?'

Nigel had his bag and coat in his hand before Foster finished his request.

The last train chased into the night. He could hear the great clank and wheeze of its infernal engine while he stood, waiting at the dark secluded end of the street, his eyes fixed on the Elgin.

The warm orange glow of its light poured out, illuminating the dark wall of the convent across the street. The door occasionally flapped open and the drunken chatter and laughter would waft its way towards him. He jerked his head sharply to the right, feeling his neck click. He'd watched them come and go, many of them, but not yet the perfect one.

The one that strayed.

The sulphur stink of the underground train was in his nostrils. He shuddered. Out of curiosity, he had ridden it once.

It was worse than he imagined: Hades on wheels. It had been the previous summer. The weather intolerably warm, barely a cough of wind to chase away the heat and smoke. He descended the stairs at Baker Street with fear in his heart. The first rush and roar of the train, the hot blast as it steamed in, all of it damn near had him running back up the wooden steps; but he ventured on.

Underground, in that coffin on tracks, he knew the devil was with him. The decadent, the godless, the drunks and the whores; it was their chosen chariot. Around him men smoked their pipes, the smoke billowing through the airless carriage, mingling with the foul odour of the gas lamps. As they passed west they were plunged alternately into bright, eye-blasting light and profound darkness. He lasted two stops in the fetid atmosphere before he thought asphyxiation would claim him.

At Paddington he emerged, gulping in great lungfuls of air.

I'll go to Hell when the Lord tells me and not before, he vowed, and had not been anywhere near it since. He wasn't alone in his fear, most people he knew hated the thing.

Then he saw him leave. The perfect one. He stepped out of the pub, staggered forwards, righted himself, and then lurched to the side. He kept out of sight as the man stuttered across the Grove. Great drunken fool could barely lift his head. The drunk reeled towards the station; he stepped from the shadows to follow. He wondered where the chase would lead; north of the station, into the farmlands and fields of Notting Barn?

That would be perfect: they were building streets there, rows and rows of townhouses for the rich folk brought in by the underground and its feeder railway.

But no. Just before the station, the drunk took a left. He kept his distance, was able to give thanks to another night without the fog but quickened his pace when he saw they were reaching the area where the lights became scarce. The man swayed and he felt himself smile; this was too easy.

His quarry crossed the road, away from the track, to the verge beside the underground line. There was dark sodden earth. Away from the light, he found it hard to find him, but his eyes adjusted and he could see why the drunk had listed towards the dark: he needed to urinate. He stopped and looked behind: nothing not a peep. The drunk was staggering over the verge, up a dirt track that would soon be a road. The empty husks of a few houses were around them, silhouettes in the pitch-black night. He watched the man stop near a wall and could hear the drill of urine hit the sopping ground.

From his pocket he pulled the knife, clutching it tight in his hand. His last few steps were bounding and cat-like, swallowing the ground between them. The drunk was shaking himself dry, unaware of danger, lifting his head to drink in the night air. As he did so, his pursuer wrapped his left arm around his throat, dragging him back, and the knife was plunged deep into his chest. He barely made a noise, other than a grunt, before he sank to the ground.

His night's work done, he slipped back into the tar-black night. . .

By the time Nigel left the station on Friday, the Family Records Centre was closed. When the doors opened on Saturday morning he was waiting outside eagerly. He was relishing the day ahead, wondering what secrets and lies would be disinterred. The new guy -- Phil, Nigel thought his name was -- was behind the customer inquiries counter, whistling the tune to 'One Day At A Time' by Lena Martell. Nigel nodded as he walked past.

'Made quite a stir yesterday,' Phil said.

'Who did?' Nigel answered innocently, even though he knew exactly what Phil was referring to.

'Your friends from the Met. What's the crime?'

'Nothing much,' Nigel lied. 'Just helping them out with a bit of research.'

Phil nodded while leafing through a pile of documents.

He still hadn't looked at Nigel.

'Good work if you can get it, eh?' he said, finally making eye contact, his face round and friendly.

'I suppose,' Nigel said, wondering if Duckworth had been his less than reticent self.

Phil went back to sorting his pile of documents.

As he wandered over to the birth indexes, Nigel could hear Phil begin whistling the first few bars of'Coward Of The County' by Kenny Rogers.

He was looking forward to the search, intrigued by what he might discover. It was this sense of expectation that he enjoyed most about the job. Like a potato plant, the best part of family history lies beneath the surface. By digging deep, the stories of the dead, silent through the years, could be told once more.

Yet immediately he faced a problem. Given his age on the death certificate - thirty-two - Nigel thought Beck might have been born in 1846 or 1847. Yet he could not find the birth of a single Albert Beck during those years. This was no surprise; it was not compulsory to register births, marriages and deaths until 1865, so not everyone did. Scanning the marriage indexes from 1865 onwards, Nigel had better luck. In September 1873 ne na^ married. A call to the police hotline at the GRO revealed his wife was named Mary Yarrow.

Nigel used this information upstairs at the FRC.

The 1881 census is held electronically on a database on one of the terminals in the census room, which houses all the censuses from 1841 to 1901. He knew that Beck, being dead, would not be listed, but he hoped that his widow, and whatever children the couple had, would still be at the Clarendon Road address. He could then acquire the ages of their children and track them through the following census returns, discover who they married and whether they had any children of their own.

'Where are you, where are you?' he muttered to himself as he keyed in the search terms, a familiar refrain of his at the beginning of a quest. He was waiting for that one discovery, the detail, the name, the entry that would help him unravel the past.

There it was, on Clarendon Road. Mary was listed as head of the household. There were two children: a daughter, Edith, who was five on census night 1881; and a son, Albert (at least the name lived on), who was three. Interestingly, a John Arnold Smith, thirty-four, was listed as a lodger. Nigel guessed he might be the new man in Mary's life. Life as a widow with two children in mid-Victorian England would be tough, almost impossible to survive without the mercy of the parish, the looming gothic turrets of the workhouse casting a shadow over every step. A man around the house was essential. However, living in sin was not a fact you wished to advertise, hence the reason they would have neglected to tell the census numerators.

Part of Nigel hoped his hunch was wrong; if Mary was living with, and then chose to marry, her 'lodger', her surname and that of her children would have changed to Smith, making tracing their descendants virtually impossible because of the millions and millions of Smiths who would have been born, married or died in the next 125 years.

Back downstairs he searched the indexes of 1881

onwards for the marriage of a Mary Beck and John Smith. Unfortunately, he found it, in the summer of 1882. A new address was given for the couple, in Kensington. Nigel went back upstairs to the 1891

census and managed to track down the Smiths. The couple appeared to have had two children of their own, but one of the Beck children seemed to have disappeared. Edith was there, aged fifteen; yet there was no mention of Albert junior. Nigel managed to solve that mystery with a quick check of the death indexes: young Albert had died of tuberculosis in 1885, aged six, leaving only Edith from her first marriage.

Life was not proving kind to Mary. Nigel could picture her, weatherbeaten face drawn, aged before its time, the misery of losing first her husband then her only son etched across her features in the downward turn of her mouth and the dullness of her eyes.

But she would have borne her tragedies and her life of quiet desperation with dignity and without self-pity, because so many like her did. These people did not parade or exhibit their emotions; nor did they seek to blame anyone for their misfortunes. Stoicism, forbearance, sobriety -- these were often the words that sprang to his mind when he was blowing the dust off long-forgotten lives, in sharp contrast to the emotional incontinence he perceived in the modern world.

Only Edith was left of Albert's offspring. At least it narrowed his options. Given she was fifteen in 1891, he calculated that she would be twenty-five in 1901 and there was every chance she would be married by then. Before he searched the marriage indexes -- and the idea of dredging through hundreds of thousands of Edith Smiths to find the right one made his heart sink -- he gambled on her not being married by 1901. He typed in the Kensington address and there they were: Mary Smith, John Arnold Smith, Edith Smith. Perhaps Edith was not marriage material, Nigel thought. He pictured a plain, dowdy young woman, lonely and unloved. He hoped he was wrong and that eventually she had married, and not simply because it would prolong the search.

His only option was to trawl the marriage indexes for the next twenty years, until 1921, when Edith would have been forty-five and too old to bear children.

It took him two hours to list the details of the nineteen Edith Smiths who were married in the Marylebone district between the Aprils of 1901 and 1921. He went outside and phoned these to the GRO, and mentioned that he was looking only for an Edith Smith whose father's name on the marriage certificate was given as either Albert Beck or John Smith, a railway signalman. They said it would take some time to pull nineteen marriage certificates.

Three-quarters of an hour later he got the call to tell him that neither of the two possible fathers' names was recorded on any of the certificates. Edith Smith was almost certainly a spinster; the pitiful picture he had created in his mind wasn't fanciful.

He went down to the canteen to clear his head of the names and the dates before ringing Foster. He got himself a plastic cup of scalding brown water and sat down.

'Hello, Nigel,' a voice said hopefully.

Nigel turned and was greeted by a man in a brown suit with slicked-back hair. He knew him. Gary Kent, a reporter from the London Evening News. He'd hired Nigel a few times to poke around in people's pasts.

He expected to bump into Duckworth, unsavoury as the prospect was: but he'd hoped never to encounter Kent again.

'Hello, Gary,' he said suspiciously.

'Been a while, hasn't it?'

'It has.'

'I hear the job at the university fell through.'

'Been speaking to Dave, then?'

Kent tapped his nose theatrically. 'So does that mean you're back in use?'

Nigel shook his head. 'No, straight genealogy for me.'

'Well, that's not strictly true, is it? You're working for the cops.'

Duckworth, Nigel thought. He said nothing.

'Look, I'm interested in the story,' Kent said. 'Why have the Met hired you to work on the Notting Hill slaying?'

'My indiscreet days are over, Gary. No comment.'

He knew Kent would not leave it there.

'There must be some sort of family history angle there. You know I'll find out: the cops are leakier than a Russian submarine. You might as well make a few quid from it while you can.'

'I'm not saying anything. Not today, not tomorrow.

Not forever. My days being your lapdog are over.'

Kent shook his head ruefully.

'Duckworth's cleaning up all the press work. You really want that fat toad lording it over you every time you see him?'

'He's welcome to it.'

'What happened at that university to make you so holier-than-thou all of a sudden? Maybe I should make a few calls, have a poke around. There could be a story in it, particularly now you're working for the forces of law and order.'

Nigel wondered whether he knew, whether he had already made those calls. 'Do your worst, Gary.'

Kent shrugged and sucked in air between his teeth.

'Shame. As I said, this genealogy game is pretty popular.

Our newspaper might be looking for someone to do a piece or two about it. Maybe troubleshooting a few readers' problems, some sort of ancestral agony aunt. Pains me to say it, but you could do all right if they need a photogenic young expert: twinkling blue eyes, good cheekbones, full head of hair, pair of glasses that make you look clever.'

'Flattery will get you nowhere, Gary.'

Kent just stared at him, nodding as if he understood exactly what Nigel was doing, as if every word confirmed his expectations. 'You obviously feel some loyalty to the police,' he said, tossing his business card on to the table in front of Nigel. 'Which reminds me. You must pass on my regards to DCI Foster.'

He turned to leave, but looked back over his shoulder.

'Tell him it's good to see him dealing with deaths outside the family for a change.'

Nigel was intrigued by Kent's comment. He went outside and waited for the hack to leave before he called Foster.

The detective answered the phone with a growled 'yeah'. He sounded distracted. Flustered, even.

'His descendants died out,' Nigel said succinctly.

'What, all of them? How?'

'Nothing suspicious. He had two kids: one died of TB when he was six; the other never married. I suppose there is a chance the daughter had a child even though she never married, but that would be impossible to trace, given the surname is Smith. The wife married again and had two more kids with another man. I could trace them, I suppose . . .'

Nigel's voice trailed off. Despite his desperation to remain involved, he hoped to God that Foster would not make him do that: he was looking at two or three days' backbreaking work, ploughing through thousands and thousands of Smiths; and he suspected it would be in vain.

'No, they're not the link. Beck wasn't even their dad. I can hardly see them passing the story of his murder down the generations. Knock it on the head for now.'

'One more thing.'

'Yeah,' Foster said, impatiently.

'I've just been tapped up by a reporter from the Evening News. Gary Kent.'

Foster sighed.

'Told me to pass on his regards.'

'Forget him. He's a creep. Right now, to be blunt, I couldn't give a rat's arse. Did he know about the reference?'

'No, he didn't mention it and I didn't tell him anything. But he knows I'm working for you.'

'Bully for him. If any more reptiles come crawling, tell them to shove it, too. And don't fall for the money thing: newspapers will always find a way not to pay, so you won't see a dime.'

There was a pause.

'Detective, I was thinking: the Metropolitan Police archives have been destroyed, so there are no details of the murder.'

Foster murmured his assent.

'The National Newspaper Library has copies of every single local and national newspaper going back a couple of hundred years. There's a good chance it will have been reported in the press in 1879. I thought it might be worth digging the reports out.'

'OK, sounds good. The one in Colindale? Is it open on Saturday?'

'Yes, until four.' He glanced at his watch. It was coming up to one p.m.

'Will you have time?'

'Let's see,' Nigel said.

'Look, I tell you what. I'll get someone to give this place a call and see if we can get it to stay open a bit later. Would that help?'

'It would.'

'Consider it done. Give me a call if you turn anything up.'

The line went dead.

Thanks to the vagaries of the Northern Line, it was approaching two thirty when Nigel exited the station at Colindale. The sun was out, offering even this ignored and unloved part of London a healthy glow.

Nigel turned right and strode with purpose down Colindale Avenue, a soulless strip of road, eating up the forty or fifty yards to the newspaper library. It was built in 1903 as a repository for yesterday's news, and opened to the public in 1932, a dirty red-brick building that still wears the austerity of the period.

Once inside the main reading room Nigel was hit by the familiar, rich, almost sickly smell of fading, worn paper. Becoming immersed in the bound volumes of newspapers was like entering a portal to the past. Here he was able to flesh out the stories of the people he hunted, their times and the events that shaped them. Inquests, court reports, obituaries, news reports, all these were genealogical gold. At the FRC, the act of looking through indexes rather than original forms removed you from history: at Colindale, you climbed a ladder and dived in.

Nigel found a seat. The whole archive is the size of several football fields - almost every single British newspaper, local and national, printed since 1820 is housed there -- but the area given over to researchers is not much bigger than a penalty box. The main room has barely changed since 1932: the stark white walls, the wooden clock that has never shown the right time and, most of all, the fifty-six original reading tables. These were, to Nigel, objects of beauty.

Not the tables themselves, but the reading stands perched on them. Made of brass in art deco style, each possesses a strip lamp -- turned on by a switch that flicks with a satisfying thud - the table number and wooden frames, chipped and tattered from decades of use, on which to stand the huge bound volumes. If not for the odd, usually neglected computer terminal and the hysterical whirr of rewinding microfilm reels from the neighbouring room, it could be any time since 1932.

Nigel went to the inquiries desk first.

'Hi,' he said to the timid woman sitting behind the counter. 'Nigel Barnes. I believe someone from the Metropolitan Police might have said I was coming.'

He winced at how formal his introduction sounded. Her eyes lit up.

'Oh, yes,' she said eagerly. 'Ron on the order desk is expecting you. He'll be helping you out.'

A minute or so later a proud-looking fat man, hands the size of shovels, was greeting him. He had a stubbled chin and an enormous stomach that strained against his T-shirt.

'Sorry about keeping you here,' Nigel explained.

'Don't worry, mate,' Ron said. 'I only had a night in front of the TV with the wife planned; frankly, you're doing me a favour. Now what do you want first?'

He started with national newspapers: they carried stories of murder, the more gruesome the better, while the local papers were unpredictable. They came and went quickly, and often carried nothing more than market times and the price of apples. He asked for March 1879 copies of The Times, the paper of record. Although it was unlikely the murders would be in there, it was worth a try; he also ordered The Daily Telegraph -- then The Times'1* cheaper, downmarket rival - and finally, the News of the World, which served up a weekly diet of murder and sin even in 1879.

Ron disappeared into the depths of the repository.

Nigel went to his seat and waited, trying to stop himself checking his watch every other minute. The reading table would be superfluous. All the volumes he'd ordered came on that most dreaded substance: microfilm. Nigel hated it. Scanning through endless reels of the stuff on badly lit screens coated in inches of dust, developing repetitive strain injury by having to rewind whole reels manually, threading the crumpled, creased pieces of film over the rollers and not under, it was as much fun as gouging his eyeballs out with a teaspoon.

When they came, he took the boxes through to the room filled with microfilm readers, huge machines with screens the size of 1950s televisions.

He teed up The Times first. For the week following the murder, it carried nothing. Not for the first time, Nigel marvelled at the verbosity of the Victorian press. In one edition there was a report of a parliamentary debate that must have comprised more than 15,000 words, the newspaper columns densely packed, unbroken by illustrations or advertisements.

How anyone read it without losing the will to live was beyond him.

Relieved, he turned next to the News of the World. The Screws was founded in 1843 and quickly established itself as a primary source of salaciousness, mining the magistrates' courts of London for stories of murder and adultery. If Albert Beck's death had not made its pages, then it was unlikely to have been reported by anyone else. The microfilm reel carried every edition for 1879. It was his intention to scroll briskly through January but, as always, he found it impossible to avoid being consumed by the past. As he spooled sedately through the weekly editions his eye was caught by wonderful, evocative yet matter-of fact headlines: 'Atrocious Outrage Near Bristol' and 'Threatening Attitude Of Nihilists'. The front page of each edition had a list of 'Jokes Of The Week'

culled from other publications, so unfunny they seemed to have been filed from another planet which, in effect, they were.

He found the first edition for April. There was a report from the Zulu War and a report on the exploits of the Kelly gang in Australia. He was about to scroll down to the next page when, at the bottom, he saw a headline that made his heart stop.

KENSINGTON: THIRD HORRIFIC

MURDER

The story beneath read:

The bodies of all three men lay in pools of blood on the ground, a demon having wielded a sharp instrument to open them up. Up to one o'clock yesterday North Kensington had no clue as yet to the motive or identity of the fiend whose deeds have sown considerable terror within the local community. The first victim was named as Samuel Roebuck, a brickworker of Notting Dale, whose mutilated body was discovered in the fields near his home.

The man had last been seen drinking on the evening of Monday March 24th, and the police initially believed the killing to be the consequence of a drunken altercation.

But then on the morning of Saturday March 29th, the stabbed form of Albert Beck, a tanner, of nearby Clarendon Road, North Kensington, was discovered in the undergrowth of St John's Church by a passer-by close to Ladbroke Grove. He leaves a widow and two small children in penury. The third victim was named as Leonard Childe, a 38-year-old blacksmith of Harrow Road, North Kensington, who leaves a widow and four children, the eldest being just thirteen. He was discovered during the early morning of Tuesday April 1st, near to Notting Hill station. Police authorities have called for calm in the area and are said to be closing in on the ghoul who perpetrated these wicked acts. Those who have witnessed any suspicious activity among relatives or neighbours, such as the sighting of blood-drenched clothes or lunatic behaviour, are entreated to present themselves at North Kensington police station to provide information.

Nigel finished reading, then left the room, headed down the short flight of stairs, all the time dialling Foster. By the time he made it out of the doors the phone was ringing.

Foster answered straightaway.

'I've found a report of the murder of Albert Beck.'

'What does it say?'

'The killer struck three times. A body was found on Tuesday 25 th, Saturday 29th, and Tuesday 1 st April.' He paused. 'April 1st is tomorrow,' Nigel added.

He heard Foster sigh. 'I'm aware of the date,' he drawled. 'That's not the only thing that bothers me.

If he's following this pattern, then he killed someone last Saturday and we haven't found the body. Where were the first and third victims found?'

Nigel trawled his memory. Years of scanning documents had given him almost photographic recall.

'The first was Brick Field, Notting Dale. The third near Notting Hill station.'

'Find out as much as you can about each of the killings, in particular the spot where they were found.

Call in when you have something.'

Foster collected his jacket from the back of his chair and put it on. He went through to the incident room and clapped his hands to get everyone's attention.

'Listen up. I've just had Nigel Barnes on the phone: he's found a newspaper report from 1879 about three killings in North Kensington in the space of a week.

The second killing was of Albert Beck.'

'The second}' Heather said.

Foster nodded. 'That's not the only surprise. The third victim was murdered on 31st March 1879, the body found the next day.'

A silence fell across the room.

'So this is what's going to happen. Andy and Heather, get a team to Notting Hill Gate. That's where Barnes says the third body was found in 1879.

Scout it out, get plain clothes on the street, digging up the roads, begging for small change, whatever you can think of, as long as it's low-key: just get some bodies around there. Find a place overlooking the station if you can and keep an eye on it. I'll come and join you there later.'

'What about the first killing?' Heather asked. 'If he's followed the pattern . . .'

'I'll deal with those who might already be dead.

You try and stop someone else joining their ranks.'

The mortuary attendant, the only person on duty that evening, at least until the inevitable victims of a Saturday night in the city were wheeled in later on, looked ill at ease when DCI Foster strode in purposefully.

'Can I help?' he asked, blinking furiously behind his wire-rimmed glasses.

'You can. I want to see every body that was brought in last weekend. The ones you still have, anyway.'

'Did you ring and ask about this in advance?' he asked nervously.

'Look,' Foster stopped himself. 'What's your name, son?'

'Luke.'

'Luke, I'm in the middle of a murder investigation.

It is extremely important that I see those bodies and that I see them immediately. Now I'm going to walk in there and have a look. I think it's best you don't try and stop me. Agreed?'

Luke nodded slowly.

'Good man.'

Foster left him at his desk and barged through a set of double doors that led downstairs to the cold store. He could feel the temperature fall as he went further into the depths. At the bottom was another door. Locked.

'Luke!' he shouted. He could feel a draught coming from somewhere, he guessed the hidden approach where hearses and ambulances came to load and unload.

The young man scurried downstairs and punched a code into a keypad to one side of the door. There was a click and Foster pushed. He was inside. The air was chilly, though not freezing. He exhaled and caught a fleeting glimpse of his breath in front of him. Rows of cabins filled either side of the room, leaving a wide central area in the middle where a few tables stood. Only one was in use; Foster saw a black body bag. It wasn't empty.

'That one's waiting to be prepared for the tray,' Luke said, noticing where Foster's eyes were straying. 'Alcoholic,' he added, as if that explained the delay.

At the far end of the room was a chrome mechanism, a lift, a sort of dumb waiter that delivered the body to the autopsy room upstairs. Next to it Foster saw a large whiteboard. On it were the numbers of each cabin, written beside the surname of the deceased.

'Do you have any record of when these people died, or when their bodies were brought in?'

'It's in the register.'

'Get it, please.'

Luke departed while Foster went to a dispenser and put on a pair of latex gloves. By the time he'd worked them on, Luke had returned, his breathing slightly heavier, with a large black book in his hands.

'What dates interest you?'

'For a start, I want to have a look at everyone who was brought in late last Saturday night or on Sunday, regardless of when they actually died.'

Luke put the book down on one of the unoccupied metal tables, running down the page with his finger, then flicking it over. Foster wanted to grab it and look himself but, as he was about to, the technician spoke.

'Right, we have Fahey.'

Foster looked at the whiteboard. Couldn't see the name.

'Released to the funeral parlour on Thursday,'

Luke added. 'Road traffic accident.'

Foster made a note of which funeral parlour.

'Gordon.'

This one was on the wall. Cabin 13. Foster went over himself and pulled hard on the handle and the drawTer slid out. He unzipped the bag to reveal a man, slightly overweight, in his early fifties, he guessed.

His colour was pale blue and his jaw hung open.

Foster looked closely at his chest and torso, then lifted both arms. When he found nothing, he summoned Luke and asked him to help sit the body up.

With much effort, Foster carefully inspected his back.

There wasn't a blemish on the whole body.

'Heart attack?' he asked Luke, who nodded.

'At home on Saturday night.'

'Perhaps he won the lottery,' Foster said, zipping up the bag and shunting the cabin back into its home.

The next name on the list was Ibrahim.

'This one's in the deep freeze. Number 30,' Luke said.

Great, Foster thought, just what I need. There was always at least one cabin where the temperature was 200 below. It stored bodies that required freezing to prevent decomposition. Then, when they were needed, for a second autopsy perhaps, they were thawed out with hot water from the boiler.

'Is this a keeper?' he asked.

Luke shook his head. 'No, it was in an advanced state of decomposition when it was found.'

'Marvellous,' Foster muttered.

He pulled the door open and dragged out the tray.

The bag was smaller, not body-shaped. He opened it carefully, breathing deeply.

The cold prevented the stench from overpowering him, but what he saw almost did. The body was in bits. An arm here, a leg there, the torso in the middle, the head missing; it was green, not pale blue, and had obviously been maggot food for some time. Foster recalled the case. Another team was on it; probable honour killing was the word.

He picked up the severed stumps and examined them carefully. His nose caught a whiff of rotting flesh, so he started to breathe through his mouth. He checked every part, lifting them all up apart from the torso, which he flipped over like a burger, but there was nothing else. With as much haste as possible, he bundled the body parts back into their cover and out of his sight.

Next on the list was a John Doe. Luke said this one was brought in on Sunday morning. His age was difficult to gauge, though late forties had been the estimate. The face was sagging under the weight of death, black hair tangled and the black-grey beard unkempt. Foster did a double take. It was the tramp whose suicide they had been called to the previous Sunday, the one that Heather had been taking so personally.

He was about to zip it back up there and then, but something made him carry on looking. The chest was clear, the stomach too. He picked up the left arm, saw nothing; then the right, nothing apart from a few track marks. Obviously a junkie . . .

Tilting his head to one side, he looked once more at the punctures on his arm. Small nicks, all the world like the scars caused by injecting smack. But then they appeared to coalesce, to join together. He peered more closely. There it was: two slanted red cuts, a small cut bridging them. An 'A'. It was even less distinct than before, and done with less care, but it was possible to make out the other marks, letters and numbers. The same letters and numbers they had found on Darbyshire: 1 A 1 3 7.

He owed Heather an apology.

He put the arm down. 'Cause of death,' he shouted to Luke, his eyes still fixed on the body.

'Strangulation seems the likeliest option.'

'Anything from toxicology?'

'No. But there were signs of heavy drug and alcohol abuse.'

Foster completed a clockwise lap of the body.

He picked up one of the man's limp feet by the ankle. Strange, he thought. This guy's feet are in immaculate condition. He couldn't have been on the streets for too long. Most tramps' feet are knackered: covered in corns, bunions and blisters, filthy and stinking. It didn't make sense. Unless the guy used to be married to a chiropodist. The hands were soft, too; smooth and uncalloused like a clerical worker's, not the gnarled hands of a derelict who slept on the streets, smoked tab ends from the gutter and drank meths.

Something didn't add up.

Nigel had asked Ron for microfilm copies of the Evening News and the Evening Standard. It seemed to take him an eternity to return. Nigel sat there, cursing his name and his bulk, the building empty and quiet apart from the silent hum of a distant generator.

Darkness was beginning to fall and the huge bowls of light, suspended by chains from the ceiling, cast a sepulchral glow across the main reading room.

I need to do something, he thought. He got up and wandered into the second, smaller room. To one side of that was the microfilm reading room, a dark space bereft of natural light, lit only by an occasional lamp and the illumination of the reading screens.

Nigel had spent hours of his life in here, spooling through centuries of copy.

To his left, away from the microfilm readers, was a bank of computer terminals, a few of which were allocated for searching recent issues of the national newspapers by keywords. He sat down at one, hit a key and the screen burst to life. There was nothing on this database that would be much use to the investigation, it only went back a decade or so at most. It was the recent past, but still he fancied losing himself in it for a short time.

He wondered how high-profile a cop Foster was. In the search field he typed 'Detective+GrantsFoster'

and hit return. The machine chuntered reluctantly then produced its results: nineteen hits. The first few were reports of murder investigations in which he'd been quoted. But it was the seventh that caught Nigel's eye: 'Top Cop Cleared of "Killing"

Father'.

The story was nearly eight years old. Nigel clicked the link immediately.

A Scotland Yard detective suspended after being suspected of murdering his father in a mercy killing has been cleared and reinstated after no charges were brought against him.

Detective Inspector Grant Foster, 39, was arrested two months ago after his father, Roger Foster, a retired detective, was found dead at his home in Acton last July. His son made the call to the emergency services reporting his father's death.

Last month an inquest into Mr Foster senior's death recorded an open verdict. The coroner said at the time: 'It is clear that Detective Inspector Foster helped his father end his life. It is not the duty of this inquest to decide whether that help was criminal. That is a matter for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service.'

The news that DC I Foster will not be charged and will return to his job has already attracted criticism from anti euthanasia compaigners.

Last night, Adrian Lewis, Conservative MP for Thewliss, said: 'I'm not sure what message this sends out to the general public. It is not for us to decide whether someone has the right to die - it is our Lord's decision. I do hope this isn't a case of one rule applying to members of the public, and another to members of the Metropolitan Police.'

Nigel sat back to absorb what he'd read. Regardless of whether he had been charged, there seemed to be an admission that Foster in some way assisted his father's death. In that case, how did he keep his job?

Nigel checked his watch. He could plough on and find more stories, but it had been half an hour since Ron had descended into the bowels of the building and time was getting on.

Back in the reading room there was no sign of life.

He decided to go and find Ron himself, hurry him up, get an estimate for how long it would take. He walked across the reading room to the double doors through which the attendants disappeared when they retrieved an order. Nigel had always wondered what lay behind them. A vast cavernous hall stacked with shelf upon dusting shelf of yellowing files? He opened the door and stepped on to the landing of a brightly lit staircase. In front of him was a lift.

He pushed the button and it opened immediately.

He half expected Ron to step out, clutching his microfilm or file. But it was empty. He entered and looked for the list of buttons on the wall. There was only one: B. He pressed it, the doors closed and with a slight judder the lift began its long descent.

It juddered once more when it hit the bottom, and with a weary clank the doors parted. Nigel was faced with an area with three exits: one ahead, one to the left, the other to his right. Which to choose? The window of each door was frosted, so he could not peer through. There was no light behind the glass on either side, but the path ahead appeared to be lit. Ron must be down there, he thought.

He opened the door to a long corridor, its walls uninterrupted by doors or windows. At the far end was another double door. Nigel hesitated. What if Ron wasn't down here? What if he was upstairs wondering where the hell Nigel was? He should turn back. But, no, he was certain Ron was down there and he needed those newspapers. He started to walk, his footsteps the only sound.

He reached the door, dark green and swinging slightly on its hinges. He pushed at it slowly and was immediately hit by the unmistakable, sweet waft of ageing paper and dust. But the area beyond was inky black. Funny, he thought. If Ron is down here, then why isn't the light on? The corridor light behind him was on, the only source of illumination. He shrugged and stepped through into the darkness. He reached with his left hand to the wall inside the door. His hand touched something cold and hard. Steel, he thought. He patted the area around the door hinges, finally locating a switch. He turned it on.

It took him a while to fully realize the dimensions of the room in front of him. Then he saw that it was a long, low tunnel. He looked up. He was an inch under six feet tall, yet the ceiling could not have been more than two feet above him. There were metal shelves either side from floor to ceiling, containing bound volumes of various newspapers. He thought of Ron and smiled. How did he fit down here? He must weigh twenty stone. Perhaps that's why he had taken so long. Perhaps, like an adult Augustus Gloop, he had become wedged in one of these tunnels.

Nigel knew enough about the newspaper library to realize that this was one of the four storage units.

These were more than 260 feet long. Nigel believed it: he was unable to see the door at the far end. But he could see rows and rows of files. This is what becomes of yesterday's news, he thought. Not wrapping chips, but bound together in silent volumes in this tomb.

There was the sound of a door shutting. Ron, he thought. He called his name out, though it emerged only as a hoarse whisper, which caused him to cough, choking on the dust generated by twenty-eight miles of shelf. When he finished, there was silence.

'Ron,' he said, louder this time.

No reply. Had the sound of the door closing come from behind or in front? It was difficult to tell. It must be the front, he decided. He peered down the long tunnel in front of him, waiting to see Ron's bovine figure heave into view.

Another door closed. That was definitely in front of him. He stepped away from the door at his back and called again. His uneasiness increased. I should have stayed upstairs and waited, he told himself. The door behind him opened without noise, but he sensed it, a waft of musty air at his back. He spun around.

'Shit!!/' he screamed.

Ron dropped the microfilm boxes he was clutching to his chest.

'Jesus,' he said, putting his hand on his heart.

Nigel held his hands up, more out of reflex than anything else. For a few seconds, neither man could speak.

Ron broke the silence. 'What the hell are you doing here?' he said, his face turning from surprise to anger.

'I came looking for you,' Nigel said eventually.

'I thought you ... I don't know what I thought, actually.'

'You scared the crap out of me,' Ron said.

He bent down and collected the microfilm boxes.

Nigel helped him. When the boxes had been located and picked up, both men looked at each other.

'Sorry,' Nigel said. 'I'm a bit jumpy. Like I said, don't know what I was thinking.'

Ron shrugged. 'Well, promise me you'll leave the collecting to me, eh?'

Nigel nodded.

Ron handed the films over to him. 'But you can take these up,' he said. 'I need a fag after that.'

Nigel made his way back to the reading room with the reels. He delved first into the Evening News, finding reports on each of the murders, each filling increasing space as a connection between them was made. But in the report of the third murder, and the shock and fear it had spread throughout Kensington - or 'dread and consternation', as the Evening News described it - there were no further details on the location of the body, only mention of it being found near Notting Hill station. He checked the next day's paper to see if any more mention was made. While there was a large report about how terrified local residents were, again no exact location was given.

He loaded the Evening Standard. It was as if the same reporter had penned both sets of articles; they were identical in detail and length. He scanned every report, soaked up every word, but there was nothing new for him to pass on to Foster. He sat back and rubbed his eyes. He checked his watch; an hour had passed in seconds, peering at the dimly lit screen in a dark booth. He noticed the familiar signs of a headache settling in behind his eyes, and he decided to go outside and grab some air to clear his head.

He told Ron, who was back at his station.

'I'll join you, mate,' Ron said jovially, obviously having forgiven him for his trespass. 'Need another fag.'

Nigel had put his coat on. Ron wandered down in just his T-shirt. Outside the front entrance, he lit his cigarette while Nigel watched a few cars flash past, not interested in a roll-up. He pulled his mobile from his pocket and switched it on.

No new messages. Not that he expected to be the first person to be told when they arrested the killer.

'Low battery' flashed up on his screen. He cursed himself for failing to charge it that morning and turned it off once more to save what little power he had.

'How's it going?' Ron asked, exhaling with force.

Nigel looked at him apologetically.

"I know you can't tell me the details, but you can tell me whether it's going well, can't you?'

'It's going ... OK. Just got microfilm eyes, that's all.'

Ron nodded in sympathy. 'You know how they used to get the papers flat enough so they could be filmed?'

'Can't say I do.'

'Iron. Used to have a team of women that flattened them with domestic irons.'

'Really?'

'Straight up,' Ron replied and took another enormous, loud drag on his cigarette.

Nigel realized he had to get more specific in his search. 'I need the Chelsea Times,' he said.

'I'll get down there and get it for you once I've finished smoking this,' Ron offered. 'Might take me a while, though. It's not life or death, is it?'

Nigel smiled. 'It could be.'

Foster was in his car, reliving the memory of the previous Sunday in Avondale Park in Notting Dale when he'd been called to the scene of the tramp's death. There had seemed little remarkable at the scene when he first arrived there. The rain had fallen steadily throughout the night, and he remembered the trees appeared to be bowing under the weight of water. The tramp had been found hanging from the frame of a children's swing, though he had been cut down by the attending officer in a vain attempt at resuscitation, so Foster did not see the body in situ.

He'd been back to the office and collected some pictures. The rope, the swing, the tramp's body, the area around the scene. None of it looked in any way out of the ordinary. The rope had been sent to forensics for examination and Carlisle had been summoned to do a second postmortem. Foster had called the park keeper, who had found the body at dawn, and been assured, as he had been the previous week, that no one had witnessed anything strange or different the day or night leading up to the body's discovery. Yet the park had been closed at five p.m., which meant the killer must have dragged or hauled the body into the park by some means. Foster had walked around the park perimeter and could see no obvious way in.

The question that bothered him was: Why was there no stab wound? Barnes had told him that all three victims in 1879 had been stabbed. So why hang the first one?

They needed an ID. He had asked for dental records to be prepared and compared against those on the missing persons database, but that would take time. So, here he was in his car, kerb-crawling through the streets of Ladbroke Grove and Notting Hill, armed with a stack of pictures of a dead man. He started by St John's Churchyard. Pieces of police tape attached to the railings still fluttered in the wind. But the churchyard itself was empty.

He drove along Portobello Road; the market stallholders had long since packed away their stalls, though the detritus of a busy Saturday still littered the road. He parked up when he reached the railway bridge, at the northern, darker end of the street. It was here the winos liked to hang out, in and around the alleys, buildings and dark corners that constituted life under the Westway.

He checked Acklam Road, a pedestrianized street running parallel to the overhead motorway. There was no sign of anyone, homeless or not. He crossed back over Portobello and walked beside the Westway towards Ladbroke Grove. There was a small park called Portobello Green, a haven for local workers eating their lunch by day, and for the chaotic and confused drifters drinking fortified wine by night. He pushed the gate that led into the park, and heard it creak. From the other side he could hear voices, people laughing and shouting. As he got closer he could see a group of homeless gathered around one park bench, falling quiet as he drew near, recognizing him as trouble.

The person he wanted was sitting in the middle, the others circled around her, like children hearing a story.

'Good evening, Sheena,' he said, as silence fell.

Ciderwoman was wearing the same clothes as on their previous meeting. In the late dusk, and away from the harsh lights of the police station, she appeared less grimy. Her eyes, yellow and narrow, stared long and hard at him for some time before informing the brain.

'What the fuck do you want?' she said, remembering him at last. She looked at the gnarled old man next to her, bald head, bushy dirty-grey beard, sucking on a cigarette as if his life depended on it while he rocked forwards and back. 'This one's a copper,' she slurred. 'Asked me about that murder in the church.'

'Sorry to gatecrash the party when it's going so well,' Foster said. 'But I'm afraid I need your help again, Sheena. The rest of you might be able to help me, too.' He pulled a copy of the photo of the dead tramp from his inside jacket. 'Do any of you know this guy?'

Ciderwoman snatched the photo from his hand and put it within an inch of her face. She shut one eye and tried to focus. Foster pulled a small torch from his pocket and flicked it on.

'This might help.'

He gave it to Ciderwoman. She held it unsteadily in one hand and shone it on the picture.

'He's fucking dead,' she said eventually.

'I know that. Do you recognize him?'

She looked again. The others had crowded behind both her shoulders to take a look. She passed the torch and picture to a few others.

'Never seen 'im,' she said with certainty.

The photo did the rounds: no one else had seen him either.

'If he did hang around this part of town, would it be fair to say you'd know him?'

She cracked her tombstone smile. 'If he'd hung around here, it'd be fair to say I'd probably shagged him,' she said, then let rip with her wheezy, gasping laugh.

The rest joined in.

That's an image that will take some time to dispel, Foster thought.

Nigel was browsing the online catalogue when Ron returned, a couple of bound volumes under his arm, wheezing with the effort. No microfilm, Nigel thought with some relief. He took them from him and placed one volume on the reading stand. He pushed his glasses back from the tip of his nose and opened the front cover. The pages were dry as sandpaper and as stiff in his hand. It felt wonderful; he could almost sense the years falling away. He flicked giddily through the pages, until he reached the edition of April 2nd.

He thought wrong. There wasn't a single word.

The newspaper consisted of two pages, both filled with advertising, grocery prices, a trade directory and other minutiae of Victorian life. Any other time it would have been a fascinating insight. But not now.

He needed news.

Ron had shuffled away towards his station. Nigel called him back.

'Can you get the Kensington News and West London Times for 1879?' Nigel asked.

'Never heard of them,' Ron said mournfully.

'It's one newspaper,' Nigel replied. 'A weekly.'

Ron ambled slowly out of the room, back towards the depths.

Half an hour later, Ron returned with another bound volume. Nigel found the edition for April 4th.

The murder spree was front page. It concentrated on the worried reactions of Notting Hill residents, including a number who believed the killer to be some sort of golem. One 'eyewitness' had described seeing a man 'more than seven feet in height, hair overgrowing his visage' in the vicinity of the first murder.

Nigel read the report carefully. Nothing was new until he reached the point where the reporter had managed to find a talking head who claimed to know the person who had found the body. The man, unnamed, had been taking an early-morning walk beside the Hammersmith and City Railway when he came across the body near the station.

He rose to go and ring Foster. Then he stopped: Notting Hill Gate was underground. Unless this guy lived in a tunnel, what the hell was he doing walking alongside the track?

Nigel sat back down. Hammersmith and City Railway.

Which line was that now? The Hammersmith and City Line still ran, of course, but it didn't go to Notting Hill Gate. That was on the Central Line.

He thought the Circle and District Lines ran through it too.

He needed a reference book. He checked a few of the shelves, but they had nothing useful. The Internet, he thought. He went to the library catalogue and clicked the Internet icon. His first search term was 'London underground'. A minute later he had 369,000 results to choose from. The first was an online journey planner; the second was the Transport for London official website. He clicked that. For what felt like an age nothing seemed to happen. Just when he was about to try again, the page appeared. He clicked the link marked 'tube'. He scanned the page as quickly as he could, looking for a link to the network's history. He could not see anything about history. On the browser, he clicked 'back' to the list of search results.

The next result was more promising. It was 'Underground history: the disused stations on London's underground'. It concentrated on the 'ghost' stations on the tube: the platform you can see, if your eyes work in the dark, between Tottenham Court Road and Holborn on the Central Line, which has been closed since 1932, and used to be the station for the British Museum; or Down Street on the Piccadilly Line between Green Park and Hyde Park Corner.

He clicked back on the browser once more. He entered 'Notting Hill station' and hit return. The first listed site was Wikipedia: a free encyclopedia, the entries submitted by punters. He clicked it and read the short, bland entry.