Dan Waddell - The Blood Detective

We are self-centred beings at our core. The world revolves around us, around our individual needs. If we do nothing, if we study no subject outside ourselves, we cease to believe that anything else matters.

And nothing could be further from the truth.'

Foster was reeled in. He's talking about people like me, he thought. I have studied no one. I have cared about no one but myself. All that matters to me is work, the here and now. I have no sense of the past and no sense of the future. I don't know where I came from, who my people were.

I don't know who I am.

He was roused from this bout of introspection by his vibrating phone. He took it outside. It was the barman from the Prince of Wales, calling from a payphone. He had more information on the man seen drinking with Nella Perry the previous Friday.

He wasn't working that evening, but would be at the pub. Foster decided to head straight there. He told Drinkwater something had come up and left him to handle the family history society.

As he left, he checked his watch. It was six in the evening. He remembered the newspaper account he had read of the fifth killing, in which it stated the victim's body had been found as 'the bell of All Saints Church tolled for the first time after midnight'. One a.m. They had thirty-one hours before the killer ended his spree and retreated into the crowd.

Nigel sat in the back of a black cab as it edged forwards with the mass of central London traffic that choked the city every Friday night. The great escape. People watching precious seconds of their weekend tick away as they crawled along congested roads.

The National Archives were his destination. At Kew Bridge the traffic formed a bottleneck to cross the river, and his patience broke. He got out and walked the last half-mile. A soft rain began to fall.

The lights of the archives were on, casting a glow across the shadowed lake. As Nigel approached a security guard unlocked the door, checked his bag and allowed him through. He headed straight upstairs to the main reading room. A young staff member, a pale, pencil-thin PhD student, who looked as if he saw daylight by accident, was waiting to fetch and retrieve. As Nigel had requested, he had laid out a series of ledgers and documents on a reading table.

Service records for the Metropolitan Police.

Nigel recognized a problem immediately. In 1881

Pfizer was forty-three. There was a gap in the record of new recruits between 1857 and 1878, almost certainly the era in which Pfizer would have signed up.

So he went first to the Register of Leavers, which began in 1889. Pfizer would have been in his fifties by then; he would have done his time. Nigel hunted through several volumes of dry pages for his name, taking his search up until the turn of the century, well beyond the date he would have retired. No sign of any H. Pfizer. If there were no records of him leaving, there would be no record of any pensions, ruling out yet another source. He checked the lists detailing the deaths of serving officers, which expired in 1889. No Pfizer in there. These records would not solve the mystery.

Foster pulled up outside the pub and parked on a single yellow. He could see through the large glass windows that the Friday-night crowd was out in full, braying force. Inside there was barely standing room.

He fought his way to the bar. No sign of the barman behind the counter. In fact, he didn't recognize any of the staff from the previous Sunday.

He tried to recall the barman's name through the fog of exhaustion. He'd said it on the phone. Karl, that was it. He asked one of the other staff, a tall blonde with her hair tied back in a bun.

She motioned towards the door with her head.

'He's not working tonight. But he was here.'

'He's gone to get some money out,' added another member of staff, passing by with two brimming pints in her hand.

Nothing to do but wait, Foster thought. A couple vacated two bar stools next to where he stood. After hearing what Karl had to say, unless it was so significant that it required immediate action, he was going home, so he ordered a pint. The pub was loud but, given his weariness, it felt good to be surrounded by people, by music, by conversation, by life.

The pint came. He took a long slug, feeling the tension ebb. There was a tap on his shoulder. Karl.

He was dressed in denim, jacket and jeans.

'Sorry,' he said. 'Cash crisis.'

Foster said he didn't mind. Karl ordered a bottle of lager Foster had never heard of and took the stool next to him. Foster began to feel hot, as if all the blood was running to his head. Tiredness, he thought. His system was fusing; his body struggling to regulate his own temperature. He yawned, unable and unwilling to stop himself.

'Hard week?' Karl asked.

'You could say that,' Foster muttered.

Karl cast a look over his shoulder at the teeming pub. 'Busy in here tonight,' he said.

Foster noticed his right leg danced as he spoke, unable to keep still. He took another sip, not in the mood for small talk.

'What's funny is, that this place is full of young rich kids,' Karl said. 'Princedale Road used to be the epicentre of the counter-culture and political protest of the 1950s and 60s.'

'Really?' Foster said, interest awoken.

'Yeah, just up the road at number 5 2 is where they founded 0% magazine. You know, the one that urged people to "Turn on, Tune in and Drop dead"? Got closed down; the publishers were sent to Wormwood Scrubs on obscenity charges. Then, at number 74, you had the opposite side of the coin in the 50s, the White Defence League, who wanted to keep out the blacks. And, at number 70, there was Release, the first drug-awareness charity. Now we've got two gastropubs and not a lot else.'

'You know your stuff,' Foster said.

'Local history is a bit of a hobby of mine. This area has a lot of stories in its past.'

Tell me about it, Foster thought. 'So what is it you wanted to tell me? Something about Dammy Perry?'

Karl nodded. From the back of his jeans pocket he pulled a pack of cigarettes, lit one and inhaled deeply, as if sucking all the goodness out of it. Foster felt the familiar pang.

'Want one?'

Sod it, Foster thought. Once a smoker always a smoker. He nodded. Karl pulled a cigarette out and handed it to him. Foster took it, enjoying the feel of it between his forefinger and index finger, rolling it back and forth. It was the sensuousness of smoking he missed as much as the nicotine; the pack in his pocket, tapping the cigarette on the pack, sliding it between his lips, watching the smoke curl in the air.

He leaned forwards. Karl sparked his lighter and lit the cigarette for him.

'Yes, it dawned on me this morning. Don't know why it didn't earlier.'

Foster drew long and hard, taking the smoke deep into his lungs where he held it, filling every space.

'Not sure how significant it is . . .'

Foster exhaled. The world in front of him swam.

He felt a firm hand on his shoulder. Karl's, he presumed.

He was about to ask what he was doing, but his head felt hot, hotter than before, then like it was filling with water. His chin lolled on to his chest. His body weight went with it, making him lurch forwards.

He would have fallen off the stool but for Karl's hand.

'Easy,' he heard a voice say.

Noises swirled; his vision blurred.

'What's wrong?' a woman's voice asked.

'It's OK. He's a mate. Had a bit too much. Don't worry, I've got him.'

The voices sounded miles away.

Then the world went white.

Nigel accessed the site where it was possible to search thousands of passenger manifests for ships that left Britain during the 1880s. There was a chance Pfizer had chosen the New World or one of the colonies as a final destination. An experienced Scotland Yard detective would have no trouble in finding well-paid work overseas. There was no Pfizer listed.