Chapter Ten

Late Saturday morning, Adam was giving Hamish a spruce up—how did one young dog manage to accumulate so much muck on his ears?—when his phone notified him of a call from Robin.

"Hiya! You've caught us before we hit the road to the pub. How's life?"

"Interesting. Met a couple of people who've helped fill in some of the details around Mark's life, one of whom gave us some of the best shortbread I've ever tasted. I was given a piece to have later, but there's none for you chaps-who-lunch." Robin chuckled.

"Mean."

"Actually, one of the things that turned up has made me think about our family mystery. Mark was rugby mad and it seems his grandmother was Scottish, so I keep thinking how that would mess with a supporter's mind. Mine too, if it turned out my ancestry had an element of one of the other six nations in it. Daft, isn't it?"

"Not a bit daft. I've always thought of myself as a fully paid-up Englishman, shouting for the three lions or the red rose, so if I ever found out I might have a drop of Scottish blood in my veins, I'm not sure how I'd feel about the fact. But whatever the outcome of your mum's enquiries, you're still you and always will be."

"No wonder I love you so much."

"The feeling's mutual." And hopefully it always would be. "What are your plans for the rest of the day?"

"Heading home, in stages. Ashok and I have to go and follow up a new lead this afternoon, but it's only at Oxford, so we can swing round via the A34. Should be home in time for dinner, unless we find out something that sets us off on our travels again. I hope it won't, or else I'll run out of boxer shorts."

"We'll see you when we see you, then." Maybe it was as well that Adam would get a decent lunch and could make do with a roll at dinnertime given the uncertainty. "You can have your portion of yesterday's dinner, reheated. That's a treat, not a punishment. There's crumble for pud too."

"Excellent. I'll have earned it."

"Is Ashok's driving that bad?"

"No, he's coming on. We'll see what he makes of the dual carriageway stretch down from the M40."

"Yeah. That's always trickier than it should be." Adam's mum had vowed she'd never drive on it again and that the intersection with the M4 was a nightmare. "What's up, then?" Because clearly something was bothering him.

"I'm having the usual doubts about whether we're on the right track, despite it being my favourite track. Friends and family. When you see Ryan, could you casually mention that I've been to Lincolnshire to see Mark's great-uncle, and that we've been put on the trail of his mum's half brother, then see where that leads?"

"Will do. Although I'll have to drop the bombshell that we're married, for a start, because I don't think your mum let on and he may not connect the surname. If Ryan's a rampant homophobe, he might storm out on us. Potential clients or not."

Robin grunted. "I've met him. If I had to place a bet, I'd say he rides on our bus."

"I'll see if I'd put my money on that." Not that either of their gaydars were terribly reliable. "I'll tell him about your travels. Anything in particular you want to know?"

"If Ryan knew about this half uncle, for a start. If Mark had mentioned him at any point over the last few weeks, especially if he spoke about meeting up with the bloke. Said uncle has been travelling around down our way over the last week or so. It may be nothing other than a big coincidence he was there, although something important must have drawn Mark to Kings Ride Woods."

"Okey-dokes. Should I fess up about you at start or end of lunch, by the way?" At the start would make it less likely to catch Ryan off his guard and so reduce the chance of an offhand remark. At the end didn't feel like fair play, although Adam wasn't bound by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.

"Do it at the start. I don't want a defence barrister screaming, ‘Entrapment!'"

"Will do. I'll brief your mum in advance too. She may not want us using her meet-up to do some subtle detecting."

"Knowing Mum, she'll relish being involved."

"I can see me being her wingman. Don't forget the milk, by the way."

"I won't. Don't you forget it, either."

"It's code," Adam explained to Hamish, as he ended the call and went back to tending the dog's ears.

Mrs. Bright had chosen to meet Ryan at The Lamb and Flag, a pub about five miles from where Adam lived and one that was fast building up a reputation as a gastropub. They settled at their allotted table in the conservatory, Hamish evidently delighted to be given a bowl of water and a handful of dog biscuits.

"Get a load of that face," Adam said. "He thinks he's the king of the bar."

"He is." Mrs. Bright patted the Newfoundland. "A prince, anyway. Ooh, is that Ryan coming in? He said he'd wear a vivid red tie so that I'd recognise him."

"Mrs. Bright?" A chap in his thirties—not bad looking, well dressed and bearing a briefcase—came over to their table. "Lovely to meet you. Is this your son?"

"No. This is Adam, my son-in-law. Robin's husband." Mrs. Bright played her part well. In the car on the way, Adam had explained about the need to be upfront, and she'd suggested it would be less awkward if she broached the subject."The same Robin Bright you met when you were so helpful about the murder case."

"Oh!" Ryan's surprised expression soon turned to one of delight. "How terribly exciting. I would never have guessed the Chief Inspector would have been ... you know ... or that the police force would be so enlightened. Is that why you contacted me, Mrs. Bright, because your son had run across me already? It's not a problem if so."

"Call me Alison, please." She flashed him a smile. "And it's a total coincidence. The lads had no idea I was after professional help, nor that I'd found someone local. When I saw a friend's name—Natalie Dow—among the people giving testimonials on your website, I asked her about you, and she was full of praise."

"That's wonderful." Ryan sat down, laid his briefcase on the spare seat, and gave Hamish—who had clearly put himself on scrutiny duty—a friendly pat. "Obviously I hope this will be the start of a productive working relationship between us, but as I said over the telephone, it's important that we feel we can get on with each other before I start to do any research. All sorts of personal things can come out that people subsequently decide might have been better hidden." He turned to Adam. "Since I met your husband and that other charming young constable, I've been stewing over whether something I discovered about Mark's family—or something he found out for himself—led to his death."

The frustratingly ill-timed arrival of a waiter to take their orders meant that Adam had lost the natural opportunity to probe, assuming he'd been able to get a word in edgewise.

Again, Mrs. Bright played her part. As soon as the waiter had gone, she said, "Robin would never forgive me if I didn't ask you what you'd concluded with your stewing."

Ryan sat up straighter, almost preening himself at being asked his opinion. "I'm afraid I haven't a lot to tell. Has Robin mentioned what I'd found out for Mark?"

"That his mother was born up in Lincolnshire and that she had an uncle whom Mark was supposed to be visiting the weekend he was killed." Which was only the previous one, although it now seemed a lifetime ago to Adam.

"That's right. What Mark may not have known—because I hadn't seen him since I turned it up and I didn't want to drop the bombshell via a text—is that he also had an uncle. Half uncle, to be precise. The grandmother married relatively late and had another child."

Adam grinned. "I'm afraid I know that too. Robin's meeting him today, so I'm sorry to steal your thunder."

Ryan returned the smile, evidently unbothered. "I should have known he'd keep you in the loop. Let's see if he told you this, though. The half uncle, Alex Hanley, has a conviction for assault, which was reported all over the Lincolnshire Live local news website. He'd got drunk as a skunk in Skeg-Vegas and belted some bloke who insulted his family. Not a specifically personal insult, as I understand it, just the random kind of slur about female relatives that I won't repeat here. It must have cut too close to the bone, and Alex said he wanted to stick up for his own. He got a suspended sentence."

Adam couldn't recollect any hint that Robin was meeting someone with a criminal past.

"He didn't tell me about an assault, although that means nothing. He meets people with criminal records all the time."

"How do you find all this stuff out?" Mrs. Bright asked, evidently impressed. "I mean, I can see how you'd find the local news stories once you have a name to put into Google, but how do you get the name in the first place? Or is that a trade secret?"

Ryan chuckled, plainly enjoying the banter. "I could be doing myself out of a job now, couldn't I? Mainly it's a matter of knowing where to search, and that comes from years of experience, because it isn't always in the obvious places. Once you have one name—from a register of births or a list of ship's passengers or wherever—then you're away. Often some of the work has already been done for you because somebody else is interested in part of the same family tree, so you find they've laid it out on one of the online sites. You always have to check their work, naturally, because people do make false assumptions that the Freddie Finch they've found is their Freddie Finch when it isn't. That first step is the big one, though, and it can be a stroke of luck which helps, like the name on a wedding telegram or a newspaper clipping that somebody kept. Which is what helped in Mark Bircher's case."

Adam, about to excuse himself so he could contact Robin, held his fire, in case there was anything else he needed to report. "A newspaper clipping?"

Ryan nodded. "Mark had found them among his mother's things. There was a whole box of stuff, some of which appeared completely random—to an untrained eye, that is. We were lucky someone hadn't chucked it all, because as I started to go through it, I began to see patterns. The newspaper clippings were all from 1969 or later, although other material, for example cruise liner brochures and postcards from holidays to Scotland, was dated much earlier. Some of those went back to when Eleanor—that was Mark's mother—was only a little girl, so I doubt she'd collected it. I concluded, rightly or wrongly, that her parents might have told her she was adopted when she turned twenty-one and she began to assemble information that she might have felt relevant. I also assumed that her parents had some details about Eleanor's birth mother, and what I subsequently discovered supports that idea."

For once, Ryan paused—to take a drink—at the point things were becoming interesting. What if this was something else that Robin needed to know about before talking to Bircher's uncle?

"You can't leave it at that," Mrs. Bright said, flicking her hand at Ryan's wrist although not actually slapping it. "What was it that helped you up that first big step?"

"The name of a book. In that box there was a list of old titles and their authors. Most were to do with particular Scottish families. You know those kind of glorified pamphlet things you can get in souvenir stores that give a brief insight into some aspect of local history. A couple of the listed titles had notes by them, saying they'd been read. Mark wasn't sure whose handwriting those notes were in but he guessed it could have been his mother's from when she was younger. There was also a note of some novels, which I subsequently discovered have a common theme of abandoned or adopted children. Bunched with those was a title that turned out to be nonfiction. Another one of these local little books, although this was about a woman who had a reputation as a bit of a white witch, who lived at Kirkby on Bain. To cut a long story short, I discovered she'd helped local young women who'd found themselves in a difficult situation. Not by the usual herbs and potions which would make the situation go away, if you get my drift, but by delivering the baby safely and finding it a new home. That bit happened via an unnamed vicar she knew who helped childless couples in the Peterborough, Kings Lynn, and Cambridge triangle. Eleanor was registered in Peterborough by the people who adopted her. That was the big clue."

"Why didn't Mark follow any of this through himself?" Adam asked, itching to get on the phone to Robin but still afraid that some gem might be lurking.

Ryan spread his hands. "Like many people, he didn't know where or how to start. Lacked the hands-on experience, for a start. Anyway, I promised I'd cut this story short, so I should. I started poking around the Kirkby on Bain area for a family with a Scottish surname and a daughter of the right age to have a child in 1948, a daughter who might subsequently have worked on cruise ships. About three weeks ago, I hit gold dust on a forum where someone from another branch of the McKay family was following the story from her side. Rumours of an illegitimate child which she was asking about. So, a mixture of knowledge, luck and an ability to follow through family tittle-tattle, which is what I have to offer all my clients. I'm afraid I can't work magic; I'm not Gandalf."

An interesting insight, although it didn't feel relevant to report back to Robin at this moment.

"I need to make a phone call," Adam said, rising from the table. "I won't be long."

"Give Robin my love," Mrs. Bright replied, with a grin. Adam waved away the remark.

Once in the car park, Adam crossed his fingers that he wouldn't be greeted with either the answerphone or Ashok: for a start, would the constable know about this meeting with a witness? Luckily, Adam got straight through to his husband.

"That's good timing," Robin said, against a background of noise. "We're taking a comfort break. A minute later and I'd have been in the gents'."

"Don't pee yourself, then. I'll be quick. Mark's uncle Alex has a conviction for assault."

"What? Hold on, I'll find somewhere less like a scrum." After a few moments, Robin resumed. "That's better. Say it again, please."

"Mark's uncle got drunk and lumped someone in Skegness. Apparently because they'd insulted his family. I wasn't sure if you'd checked his record already, and Ryan could have got his facts mixed up."

"I bet he hasn't. I've been waiting for the team to get back to me with anything about him, but you've beat them to it. What else turned up over your lunch?"

"Not much else important, so far. Details about how he made progress on the Bircher family history but they can wait. They're a bit convoluted."

"You've not died of boredom yet?"

"No, although it's tricky trying to get a word in." Adam snorted. "Right, I'm off. See you later."

He returned to the table at the same time as their food was arriving. Mrs. Bright—who'd evidently decided to commission Ryan's services—had clearly begun the process of giving him details of her husband's family history as far as they knew it, many of which she'd typed up and printed off. They'd reached the matter of the mysterious inheritance and tax treaties, Ryan making further notes for himself on an A4 pad, notes that appeared to be as verbose as he was. Still, the guy obviously loved what he did and appeared to be good at it.

"Shall we concentrate on eating for the moment?" Mrs. Bright suggested. "My sandwich looks too good to spoil with me trying to explain things and you jotting them down."

A flicker of disappointment on Ryan's face was soon covered over. "Good idea. Would it be rude to ask if you've had any thoughts about your inheritance, because what with those cruise brochures I mentioned and having just come off one myself, I wondered if you'd considered something like that?"

The rest of the meal passed in a discussion of the pros and cons of cruising, especially for passengers who were singletons. Adam tried to contribute but soon found himself zoning out and thinking about the upcoming difficult conversation he was going to be having with Jane, the Wickley learning assistant whose performance, never great, had gone downhill and who was refusing to acknowledge anything was wrong. That wasn't an unusual situation in a primary school, especially where the staff members were older and weren't used to being held to account for what they did in the classroom. Matters weren't helped by Jane starting to depict herself as a victim to anyone who'd give her an ear in the staffroom.

Planning that interview felt a more profitable use of time than listening to whatever Ryan was banging on about. Even Hamish had begun to gently snore, either the talk or the excitement of a new place having tired him out.

The arrival of a waiter to take their emptied plates brought Adam's attention back to the present, and Ryan soon returned to business. "I guess it's too much to hope that your husband left a similar treasure trove to the one Eleanor Bircher did?"

Mrs. Bright shook her head. "I'm afraid not. As I said, David didn't want to know anything about his biological parents. I can't think of a single clue to give you, apart from what I've already said or written down."

Ryan flashed her a smile. "No problem. Now, this next question is quite intrusive so feel free not to answer, although it could help if you did. Are there any little medical things you could tell me about? I know it's a long shot, but something genetic, maybe, that David could have inherited?"

"He was born with two webbed fingers. Can that be passed on through the family?"

That got Adam's attention. If the condition was an inherited trait, Robin didn't show any sign of it.

"Syndactyly? Yes, I believe it can sometimes be passed down. There are various versions, I think, although I'd have to check if there's a genetic link to one of them. While it's not something in and of itself that would give me a start, it could be corroborative, rather like the information about Scotland that Eleanor's parents kept, because she had Scottish blood."

To prevent Ryan launching into a diatribe on the topic, Adam asked, "Which of David's fingers were webbed?"

"These." Mrs. Bright indicated the middle and ring fingers on her left hand. "Not that the webbing was there when he and I met, because he'd had it operated on when he was younger, so there was simply an old scar to show. He used to tell people who noticed it that he'd fallen on some glass when he was a toddler, because it was easier than going into the taradiddle about the fingers being joined. Children can be very cruel and take the mickey something wicked."

Adam, nodding, couldn't recall Robin having any blemishes like those on his hands, either. Maybe it was as well, given how he'd been bullied at school anyway, irrespective of scars.

"His parents were clearly upfront about David being adopted, so did they mention if the syndactyly was familial?" Ryan asked.

Mrs. Bright nodded. "They'd explained about the webbing once he was old enough to ask why he had marks on his hand that other children didn't have. Later they told him that any children he fathered might have syndactyly, so almost the first thing he did when Robin was born was check his fingers and toes. Here's a confession." She gave Adam a sheepish grin. "David and I wrestled with whether we should tell Robin about that risk, given that he came out to us quite early and we doubted he'd have any offspring. But in this modern world you never know what will turn up, so we did tell him, although David didn't know for certain which of his parents he'd inherited it from. None of which helps, I suppose."

"It could, if I discover somebody who had the condition, who's recently died in Australia and has left peculiar bequests in his will." Ryan appeared excited at the prospect.

"Can you find out that kind of detail?" Mrs. Bright asked.

"You'd be amazed what you can turn up on the internet or by poking around old parish records. I could bore for England on the topic if I wanted to." Ryan waved his hand, clearly oblivious to his tendency to bore at the best of times. He outlined some of the remarkable—to him at least—things he'd stumbled across, Mrs. Bright giving every impression of finding the topic fascinating and chipping in comments and questions. Perhaps she did find it interesting, but most of it left Adam cold.

He returned to contemplating his upcoming staff interview and how it was likely to progress to a full-blown competency procedure. As Adam drifted back into the moment, he found that Ryan had swung round to the fact Mrs. Bright had contacted him independent of her son and how coincidences cropped up with scary regularity. Apparently, he'd got involved with Mark's enquiry because he'd known a friend of a friend of Mark's wife, Suzy.

"And the things I could tell you, Alison, about her when she was younger. As I said, she reminded me of a character from a story." Ryan took a breath, clearly about to launch into another of his tales. It seemed an appropriate moment to wind things up.

"Sorry to interrupt, but shall we get the bill?" Adam asked. "I need to get this boy out to cock his leg."

"Take him out to the car park while I settle up," Mrs. Bright said. "No arguing, boys. My treat. I'll see you out there in a moment."

Adam shook Ryan's hand, said that he was keen to see what he discovered, then led Hamish from the pub—not a moment too soon, as it turned out.

"Who's a good boy for holding on so long?" he asked, once the dog had relieved himself. "You're a very good dog. Yes, you are."

Hamish looked adoringly into Adam's face, clearly pleased as punch.

"I'll tell your other dad all about how well you've behaved yourself today. A credit to the Matthews-Bright household." He tickled the Newfoundland behind his ear. "He'll probably need something to brighten his day. Unless he can wrap up the case because this uncle bloke suddenly confesses and we can get back to a normal life."

There were two chances of that, though. Fat and slim.