Not Dead Enough

to read – for his tired eyes at any rate.
    As directed by the helpful post-adoption counsellor, Loretta Leberknight, he was looking for unmarried mothers with the surname Jones . The clear indicators would be a child with the same surname as the mother’s maiden name. Although, with one as common as Jones, the librarian had warned him, there would be some instances of two persons marrying who had the same surname.
    Despite the words SILENCE PLEASE written in large, clear gold letters on a wooden board, a father somewhere behind him was explaining something to a very loud-mouthed, inquisitive boy. Nick made a mental note never to let his son speak that loudly in a library. He was fast losing track of all the mental notes he had made about irritating things he was not going to let his son do when he was older. He totally doted on him, but the whole business of being a parent was starting to seem daunting. And no one had ever really, properly warned him that you had to do it all while suffering sleep deprivation. Had he and Jen really had a sex life once? Most of their former life together now seemed a distant memory.
    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