Peter James - Not Dead Enough

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.

110

Twenty minutes later, still standing in the grand entrance of the town hall, Grace finally got put through to the Director of Social Services. Managing – just – to keep his temper under control, he explained the circumstances and his reasons for needing access to an adoption file.

The man listened sympathetically. ‘Of course, Detective Superintendent, you understand that to do this would be a very big exception to our policy,’ he said pedantically. ‘I would need to be able to justify releasing this information to you. And I would need assurances that it would only be for the purposes you have outlined. Some adopted people do not know they are adopted. The effects on them, from hearing the news, can be very traumatic.’

‘Probably not as traumatic as it was for the two women who have been murdered in this city in the past week,’ Grace responded. ‘Or for the next woman on this maniac’s list.’

There was a brief silence. ‘And you really think this twin might be the killer?’

‘As I’ve just told you, it’s possible he could be responsible – and if he is, he could kill again. I think the public’s safety is more important at this stage than hurting the feelings of one middle-aged man.’

‘If we did release information that would enable you to find him, what would your intentions be?’

‘My intentions? I don’t have any interest or agenda for this information other than finding the man as quickly as possible, with a view to questioning him and eliminating him from our inquiries.’

‘Or arresting him?’

‘I can’t speculate. But if we have reason to believe, after interviewing him, that he is involved in the very savage murders of two innocent young women, then that is almost certain, yes.’

There was another long silence. Grace felt his temper straining again, pulling like a tattooed pit-bull terrier on a leash. And the leash was fraying.

‘It’s a difficult decision for us.’

‘I appreciate that. But if a third person is murdered, and it turns out that this twin was the killer, or could have led us to the killer – and you could have prevented it – how would you feel about that?’

‘I’ll have to make a phone call and check something with our legal department. Can you give me five minutes?’

‘I need to make a decision whether to go back to my office or hang around downtown,’ Grace replied. ‘Will it be just five minutes or longer?’

‘I will be very quick, Detective Superintendent, I assure you.’

Grace used the time to make a quick call to Roger Pole, the SIO on the investigation into the attempted murder of Cleo Morey, to get a progress update. Two officers had gone this morning to interview her former fiancé, Richard Northrop-Turner, at his chambers in Chichester, Pole told him. And it looked like the barrister had an alibi. Before they had finished speaking, Grace’s phone started beeping with an incoming call. He thanked Pole and switched to the new call. It was the Director of Social Services again.