He led the way to the garage. He made sure he stood behind Akiko as she got closer to the body, putting one arm around her to stop her if she fell.
Foster had asked that the victim be placed on her side, covered with a blanket.
'Kneel down with me,' Foster said.
While he could see her trepidation, he also sensed Akiko was more resolute than her fragile frame suggested. They both bent down and Foster flicked back one corner of the sheet revealing the shoulder and a few strands of blonde hair. He pointed to the tattoo.
Her response was instant.
'It means "light that shines".'
'You sure?'
She nodded.
'Does that have any special significance?'
She thought for some time. Then shook her head.
Foster replaced the blanket and stood up. 'Thanks for doing that. Sorry you had to go through it.'
'It's OK,' she said, turning to leave, but then swinging round to face Foster. 'It's very fashionable at the moment to be tattooed with the Japanese translation of your name. Quite a few celebrities do it.'
Even after years of policing in west London, where parents named their children Alfalfa and Mezzanine, Foster had yet to come across anyone called Shining Light.
9
The morning sun was too watery to cast more than a weary light into the sitting room of Nigel's flat in Shepherd's Bush. But even a blinding sun found it difficult to illuminate a room brimful with objects and books, occupying every corner and empty space.
The musty smell of old books filled the air; Nigel possessed few that weren't second-hand, used and yellowing, their covers and binding tattered and torn.
As well as being balanced in perilous, towering piles on the floor, volumes were scattered across his computer table and filled two floor-to-ceiling wooden bookshelves, their titles rendered even more indecipherable for being hidden behind a mass of ornaments, knick-knacks and photographs. There was no method to it, which is why he was scrabbling on his knees to find a book of names.
'Well, at least you're not the sort who stores his books and CDs alphabetically,' he heard Heather mutter, though he did not reply, so intent was he on finding the volume he needed. Shining Light was the name Foster wanted. He felt certain Eleanor, taken from the Greek, bore that meaning and had told Foster that. But when Heather took him home, with instructions to rest from Foster, he was keen to find out for sure.
'Are these ancestors of yours?' Heather asked.
She was holding a photograph from Nigel's mantelpiece, a family portrait. Father was standing sternly at the back, beard bristling with pride. His left arm was cradled in the elbow of his wife, who was seated. Her hair was tied back, her eyes so bleached of colour by the print she looked almost ghostly.
Beside her was a serious-faced boy in a buttoned-up frock coat holding a hoop, while the two girls were seated; the elder, a mirror of her mother, holding a bunch of flowers, the younger mournfully staring with wide brown eyes at the camera, her frilly white shirt in joyous contrast to the monochrome solemnity elsewhere. All, apart from Father, looked as if they had just received the worst news of their lives. It was a picture Nigel loved.
'No,' he said.
'Then who are they?'
'The Reeve family.'
'And they are?'
'I have no idea.'
'So how do you know the name?'
'It's written on the back in pencil. It was taken in 1885.'
'So how come you have it?' Heather asked, gazing intently at it one more time. She was frowning.
'I like it. These people took their family portraits seriously.'
'I can see that. No saying "cheese" back then.'
'Most people wanted to convey an image of being serious, dependable and honest. You didn't do that by smiling.' He took the picture from her. 'I like to wonder what happened to them all. The younger girl with the sad face, especially. To be three or four, however old she is, and to seem so daunted by life.
It was a different world.'
'I suppose you don't know enough to have traced them.'
'Don't know where they lived, otherwise I would have. Without that detail it'd be impossible.'
Nigel returned the picture, conscious all of a sudden of the thick layers of dust that had accumulated on top of most of the surfaces in his flat.
'How did you get it?' Heather asked.
'It fell out of a book I bought. I got it framed.'
'What about this?' She was holding a picture of a football team. The men, all bar one, bore moustaches; their striped jerseys were woollen and heavy while their shorts reached their knees. The goalkeeper in the front row was enormously fat and held a ball so solid it appeared to have been fired from a cannon.
'That's the Sheffield United side from 1905,'
Nigel said.
'You follow them?'
'No, I hate football. I just love the fact the goalie is so fat. "Fatty Foulkes", they called him. Can you imagine him fitting into modern football?'
'He'd struggle to fit in the dressing room.'
Heather continued browsing while he carried on the search.
Nigel was glad of having something to do. It took his mind off the trauma of the previous night's events. He knew at some stage tiredness would engulf him but, at that moment, the adrenalin, the disbelief at what he had experienced served to heighten his senses.
'I'll make a brew,' Heather said. She weaved her way through to the kitchen, a small space to one side of the sitting room.
'Sorry about the mess,' Nigel said, wondering when it had last been cleaned.
'I'm a murder detective,' she said, popping her head around the door. 'I'm used to dealing with scenes of carnage.' She winked and disappeared back inside.
Nigel smiled. 'The kettle's on the hob. It's not electric, I'm afraid. The tea is in a metal tin next to the oven. The pot should be around there somewhere.
I can't remember where the strainer is.'
Heather's face appeared around the door once more.
'The tea cosy?'
'I don't have one.'
'I was winding you up.'
'Oh,' he said, feeling foolish.
'I'm not au fait with making tea with leaves,' she admitted.
'I thought you were northern,' he said.
'Funnily enough, we have tea bags up there now.
Electricity too.'
He smiled, realizing he was being teased once more. It felt good. Heather returned to the kitchen.
'You might find a box of some in a cupboard somewhere,' he shouted.
'Welcome to the twenty-first century.'
He smiled again and went back to his shelves.
Finally he found the book he wanted, lurking in an alcove under a treble volume detailing the development of land enclosure. A book he still intended to get around to reading, but which suddenly lost its lustre whenever he picked it up.
It was one of his newer books, a simple dictionary of first names. He flicked through to Eleanor and saw his hunch was correct. Good, he thought. He made a note of the other derivations of the name -- Ellie, Nell, Nella, Nellie - and variant spellings so that they could be passed on to Foster.
Heather emerged with two cups of tea. 'You might want to do the genealogy of the contents of your sink,' she said, smiling. 'Some of it looks like it goes back centuries.'
She stopped, trying to find a free space to put the cups down. Nigel quickly swept a pile of books and magazines off the table in the middle of the room and on to the floor. Heather sat down on the sofa and took a wincing sip of hot tea.
'I've made a note of the derivations of Eleanor,'
Nigel told her. 'I was right: it means "shining light".'
She took the piece of paper from him, looked at it and then put it in her jacket pocket. 'I'll phone it through to him,' she said, sighing. 'God, I'm knackered. How you doing?'
Nigel didn't know. He felt shaken, frayed, as if he needed to keep occupied, to have a task. He stood, cradling his tea, in preference to sitting down.