The Blood Detective by Dan Waddell Read Free Book Online

said, helping him out. ‘I bet you’ve traced your family tree back to the Domesday Book or something, haven’t you?’ she added.
    He shook his head. ‘I can’t trace my own
    father.’
    ‘Your father?’ Heather said, eyes widening.
    ‘It’s a long story.’
    ‘Your mother’s side?’
    He shook his head once more. ‘As I said, it’s a long story.’
    ‘Oh.’ A waty look crept across her face.
    ‘History has a habit of putting obstacles in your way,’ he explained. ‘It’s one of the reasons I liked the job.’
    Neither Heather nor Foster appeared to notice his use of the past tense.
    ‘You get a real sense of achievement from helping people overcome those obstacles, track down relatives and ancestors they knew nothing about.’
    Heather smiled at him. ‘I can imagine you do.’
     
    ‘I’m also interested in surnames: their origins, their meanings.’
    ‘Really? What does Jenkins mean?’
    ‘Kin of John. Or Jones, perhaps. “Kin” is Flemish in origin, but it’s one of those names that doesn’t really indicate an area or locality. Too popular, really. It was the forty-second commonest surname in America in 1939.’
    ‘What about him, then?’ she said, indicating Foster.
    ‘What does his surname mean?’
    Nigel pulled a face. ‘Literal meaning is difficult to pin down, as is origin, the study of surnames being inexact, to say the least.’
    ‘Fair enough,’ Foster said, sitting forwards. ‘About why we’re here
    ‘Oh, go on,’ Heather interrupted. ‘What about the name Foster?’
    ‘There are several possibilities. It could be derived from a forester, a man who is in charge of a forest.
    Or someone who lived near a forest, or worked in a forest.’
    Nigel thought it politic to leave out another explanation: one of Foster’s ancestors was either a foster child or a foster parent.
    ‘Fascinating,’ Foster said, as if it was anything but.
    ‘Now can we get on?’ He looked at his colleague.
    She spread her arms wide, as if to say, ‘It’s your show.’
    ‘This morning we discovered a man’s body. He’d
    been murdered. At the scene we discovered a reference written by the killer. We believe it refers to a birth, marriage or death certificate. We thought you could help us out.’
    Nigel lit his roll-up and inhaled deeply. ‘Could I see the reference?’
    Foster shook his head slowly. ‘No. But I can tell you what it was: 1 A 1 3 7.’
    ‘Small “a” or capital?’ Nigel asked.
    ‘Capital’
    ‘Should strictly be a small “a”. But it could be the reference for a birth, marriage or death certificate for central and west London issued between 1852
    and 1946.’
    ‘Why those specific areas? And why those dates?’
    ‘Every district was given an index reference.
    Between the dates I mentioned 1 a was assigned
    to Hampstead, Westminster, Marylebone, Chelsea, Fulham and Kensington.’
    ‘The body was found in Kensington,’ Heather
    said, looking across at Foster. ‘Think there’s anything in that?’
    Foster rubbed his chin slowly. ‘I don’t think we can ignore it. Is there any way you can tell whether it’s a birth, marriage or death certificate?’
    ‘It could be any one of them,’ Nigel replied.
     
    ‘So could you go off and locate the certificate with this reference?’
    ‘Yes, no problem. But we’d get thousands of
    results. This is simply a reference to a registration district and a page number. If I’m going to have any chance of finding the certificate quickly then I need to know an exact year, preferably a name. The Family Records Centre has indexes going back as far as 1837.’
    Both detectives sat back, frustrated. Heather took a sip of her coffee, while Foster stared at Nigel. The DCI sat forwards once more.
    ‘We found the victim’s mobile phone,’ Foster said.
    ‘The last-dialled number wasn’t a telephone number; it was punched in after his death. We thought it might have been pressed by accident, when the body was moved. But perhaps it was