Matthew and Thomas got to the Family Records Office just before ten-thirty. Inside there was a big, light room with long rows of metal shelves divided by high, sloping desks where the searchers could read the heavy index books: black binders for deaths, green for marriages and red for births. There was a constant repetition of thuds as the books hit the desks or got replaced on the shelves. Everyone using the place seemed to Thomas to be both old and preoccupied, their fingers inky from copying out the entries in the index books onto the certificate application forms, which they then took up to a bored young woman sitting at a pine desk by the door.
It took Matthew no time at all to show Thomas how the system worked. There were seven or eight index books for each year, divided alphabetically. They started with the births and found the entry for Greta Rose Grahame after less than five minutes in the “G-H” book for 1971. Thomas wasn’t disappointed; he hadn’t really imagined that the certificate in Greta’s desk was a forgery. However, he felt his heart beating fast as they moved into the central aisles and began to search through the green marriage books. They started in 1987 and worked their way systematically forward through the years, searching under the name Rose. This was the only way of doing it, given that the index worked entirely by reference to the husband’s last name. There was in fact very little other information in the books. Just the last name followed by the husband’s first and middle initials, and beyond that the wife’s maiden name and the district in which the marriage had taken place. Finally there were the reference numbers that enabled the invisible workers on the upper floors of the building to enter the full details of each marriage on the certificates that had been applied for down below.
Matthew and Thomas searched through every Rose that had gotten married in Great Britain in every one of the previous fourteen years, but there was not one who had married a Grahame in Manchester or anywhere else. There were John Roses and Jonathan Roses, who had married a variety of names, but none bore any resemblance to Grahame.
They searched again and again without success until Thomas got careless and knocked one of the huge index books off a high desk onto the floor. It fell with a great crash, and suddenly there was silence in the records room. Everyone in their vicinity turned around to look at the culprits. They were all old and Thomas and Matthew were young. “Old people wouldn’t drop precious index books on the floor,” they seemed to be saying. “Old people would be more careful.”
“Come on,” said Matthew, beckoning Thomas to follow him into the black section. They took shelter in an obscure corner of the great room housing Deaths 1860–1868. Behind them the thud-silence-thud noise of the index books hitting shelves and tables began again.
“It’s no good, Matthew,” said Thomas in a depressed voice. “There’s no point in looking anymore. We’re not going to find anything. It was a long shot anyway. She could easily have been his Greta Rose without being married to him.”
“Welcome to Death Row,” said Matthew, relating their present surroundings to Thomas’s mood of resignation.
“What did you say?” asked Thomas, suddenly alert.
“Death Row — or Death Row H to be precise,” said Matthew, reading a notice on the wall.
“Leading to Death Row I. Put the two together and you’ve got Death Rows H and I.”
“What are you talking about, Thomas? It was a joke but it wasn’t that funny.”
“Rows. Don’t you get it, Matthew? There are other ways of spelling Rose. We need to check those out too.”
They went back to the front of the marriages section where they had been before, braving the disapproving glances that met them on their way, and started to search again. They found what they were looking for quite quickly. There were no Rows, but one or two bridegrooms did have the surname Rowes, and a Jonathan B. Rowes had married a Grahame in Liverpool in 1989.
“It’s them!” said Matthew excitedly. “It’s got to be. It’s just the right date. She’d have been eighteen. That’s when Pierre told you she went off the rails.”
“The date’s all right but the city’s not,” said Thomas. “Greta was in Manchester, remember. Not Liverpool.”
“They’re both towns in the north though, aren’t they? Not everyone gets married in their hometown. Maybe they didn’t want anyone to know about it.”
“Maybe. I’m not saying it’s not them. I’m just saying that there isn’t enough to know one way or another. We couldn’t take this to anyone; we’d need the proper certificate. That gives dates of birth and stuff like that, doesn’t it?”
“No. Just the ages on marriage certificates,” said Matthew. “I remember that. They have the fathers’ names though, and their occupations. Greta can’t pretend it’s not her if the father’s name on the marriage certificate is the same as that on her birth certificate. We’ll have her then.”
“If it’s her and if we get the certificate in time and if we get them to the right people before the evidence is over. We’ve got nothing at the minute,” said Thomas. Underneath his cautious exterior he was as excited as Matthew. It was just that he was determined to keep control of himself. He didn’t want to repeat his experience of the day before with the birth certificate.
Matthew refused to share his friend’s somber mood.
“But we’ve got hope, which is more than we had twenty minutes ago,” he said. “We ought to get on and order the certificates now. They take twenty-four hours if you make a priority application. That’s what it says on that notice over there.”
Thomas filled out the application forms and handed them in. The bored young woman at the desk by the door had been replaced by a bored young man, who glanced at his watch before writing the collection time on Thomas’s receipt — 12:21 on Thursday. Thomas wondered, as he went down the steps of the records building, whether he might find himself tomorrow with the crucial evidence in his hand at last, when it was already too late to use it.
Chapter 25
The Family Records Office opened at ten o’clock on Thursday morning, and by five past ten Thomas was already well embarked on an argument with a cadaverous young man wearing a plastic badge on his lapel identifying him as Andrew, Applications Clerk. Thomas seemed completely unaware of Matthew’s efforts to calm him down and of the disapproving impatience of the people queuing for priority collections behind him.
“I know it’s ten-oh-five and the receipt says twelve twenty-one,” said Thomas, allowing his exasperation to increase the volume of his voice still further. “I know that. I’m just asking you as a special favor to see if my certificates are ready. Maybe they are, maybe they’re not, but it won’t hurt you to try, will it, Andy?”
“I’m not Andy, I’m Andrew,” said the clerk.
“I’m sorry,” said Thomas. “Really I am. I didn’t mean to offend you, Andrew. Won’t you just do me this favor?”
“I can’t help you, sir,” said Andrew for the third time. “You’ll simply have to wait like everyone else.”
“Can’t or won’t?” shouted Thomas, losing his temper. “You government employees are all the same. Everything’s got to be by the bloody rule book, and meanwhile justice goes down the drain.”
“All right, Thomas, calm down,” said Matthew, pulling his friend away from the counter. He’d noticed Andrew’s hand straying toward a buzzer on the side of his desk and feared ejection would follow any minute at the hands of the two burly security guards whom they had passed at the front of the building.
“I’m sorry about all this,” Matthew said to Andrew. “He’s got big problems with his family. We’ll come back later.”
“Twelve twenty-one,” said Andrew mechanically, ignoring the explanation.