had expected - some name on the list, perhaps, to tally with that of a witness in the case or with someone he had talked to in connection with it. As it was, because he had gone so far, everyone whose name was here would have to be seen. Archbold or Davidson could do that. Among those whose names were followed by a cross Burden noted that of a man who had lived in the sheltered housing at Highlands opposite the Robsons’ own home: Eric Swallow, 12 Berry Close, Highlands. But what could that signify? The only difference between Eric Swallow and the others was that he was a ‘client’ who happened to have lived on the other side of the street from his home help.
The alibi of Clifford Sanders was the next important question of Burden’s day. He saw from his notes that Clifford had told him he had left the psychotherapist Serge Olson at six p.m. Queen Street, where Olson had his premises in the flat over the hairdressers, was metered and except on Saturday mornings there were usually meters available. Burden, due to see Olson at half-past noon, stood in Queen Street observing that now, late on a Monday morning, three of the twelve meters were vacant. Clifford could easily have been in his car and away by two minutes past six if he left Olson at six. The worst of the Kingsmarkham rush hour traffic would have been over by then and he could have got into the Barringdean Shopping Centre car park with ease by ten- past six. But there was no way, if he was telling the truth, that he could have been there before five minutes to six.
Briefly calling in at the police station, Burden had phoned Stowerton Royal Infirmary to be told that Wexford was ‘satisfactory and comfortable’, a formula that conveys to the nervous caller the imminence of death. Burden had wasted no more time on the Infirmary, but phoned Dora at her elder daughter’s. They had said that if Wexford continued to make good progress he could leave the hospital on Thursday. Wexford said he was going out tomorrow. Bomb experts were at the house, sifting through rubble and until they were finished nothing could be done about clearing up the mess. Burden was early for his appointment and he walked up and down looking in the windows of the newly refurbished Midland Bank, the shoe boutique and the toy-shop, but thinking about the bomb and wondering if it had really been meant for Sheila. Why would anyone want to blow up Sheila? Because she had cut the wire round a Ministry of Defence air base?
Burden strongly disapproved of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and ‘all those people’. This was one of the few issues on which he and his wife disagreed, or on which his wife had not won him over to her point of view. He thought they were all cranks and anarchists, either misguided or in the pay of the Russians. But it was quite feasible that other cranks, equally if not more reprehensible, might try to blow them up. Such a thing had been attempted - and indeed had succeeded - in the case of the Greenpeace vessel in the South Pacific. On the other hand, suppose some enemy of Wexford’s - even if it were not too far-fetched, someone involved in the Robson case - knew that when Sheila stayed with him he was always in the habit of moving her car in order to put his own away? Whether or not this was true Burden was unsure but he thought it likely, knowing his chief. It had a been dark, misty evening. Would it have been possible to creep unseen across the wasteland and fasten that bomb to the underside of the Porsche? Burden found he knew very little about bombs.
The hairdressers was called Pelage which Wexford, who had looked it up out of curiosity, said was a collective noun for the fur, hair or pelt of a mammal. It had been open only six months and the interior decor was very hi-tech, resembling nothing so much as the inside of a computer. But the building in which it was housed was as ancient as any thing in this
The alibi of Clifford Sanders was the next important question of Burden’s day. He saw from his notes that Clifford had told him he had left the psychotherapist Serge Olson at six p.m. Queen Street, where Olson had his premises in the flat over the hairdressers, was metered and except on Saturday mornings there were usually meters available. Burden, due to see Olson at half-past noon, stood in Queen Street observing that now, late on a Monday morning, three of the twelve meters were vacant. Clifford could easily have been in his car and away by two minutes past six if he left Olson at six. The worst of the Kingsmarkham rush hour traffic would have been over by then and he could have got into the Barringdean Shopping Centre car park with ease by ten- past six. But there was no way, if he was telling the truth, that he could have been there before five minutes to six.
Briefly calling in at the police station, Burden had phoned Stowerton Royal Infirmary to be told that Wexford was ‘satisfactory and comfortable’, a formula that conveys to the nervous caller the imminence of death. Burden had wasted no more time on the Infirmary, but phoned Dora at her elder daughter’s. They had said that if Wexford continued to make good progress he could leave the hospital on Thursday. Wexford said he was going out tomorrow. Bomb experts were at the house, sifting through rubble and until they were finished nothing could be done about clearing up the mess. Burden was early for his appointment and he walked up and down looking in the windows of the newly refurbished Midland Bank, the shoe boutique and the toy-shop, but thinking about the bomb and wondering if it had really been meant for Sheila. Why would anyone want to blow up Sheila? Because she had cut the wire round a Ministry of Defence air base?
Burden strongly disapproved of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and ‘all those people’. This was one of the few issues on which he and his wife disagreed, or on which his wife had not won him over to her point of view. He thought they were all cranks and anarchists, either misguided or in the pay of the Russians. But it was quite feasible that other cranks, equally if not more reprehensible, might try to blow them up. Such a thing had been attempted - and indeed had succeeded - in the case of the Greenpeace vessel in the South Pacific. On the other hand, suppose some enemy of Wexford’s - even if it were not too far-fetched, someone involved in the Robson case - knew that when Sheila stayed with him he was always in the habit of moving her car in order to put his own away? Whether or not this was true Burden was unsure but he thought it likely, knowing his chief. It had a been dark, misty evening. Would it have been possible to creep unseen across the wasteland and fasten that bomb to the underside of the Porsche? Burden found he knew very little about bombs.
The hairdressers was called Pelage which Wexford, who had looked it up out of curiosity, said was a collective noun for the fur, hair or pelt of a mammal. It had been open only six months and the interior decor was very hi-tech, resembling nothing so much as the inside of a computer. But the building in which it was housed was as ancient as any thing in this
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