An Unkindness of Ravens Read Free Page B

considered an idea that came to him and then dismissed it as absurd and out of character. Burden was the last man to dread the coming child just because he was now in his mid-forties. That he would take in his stride.
    ‘What’s wrong, Mike?’ he asked as the silence became oppressive.
    ‘Nothing.’
    The classic answer. One of the cases in which a statement means the precise opposite of what it says, as when a man in doubt says he’s absolutely certain.
    Wexford didn’t press it. He walked along, looking about him at the old market town which had changed so much since he had first known it. A huge shopping complex had been built, and since then an arts centre, incorporating theatre, cinema and concert hall. The university term was three weeks old and the place was thronged with blue jeaned students. But up at this end of the town, where preservation orders proliferated and buildings were listed, things were much the same. Things were even rather better since the local authority had woken up to the fact that Myringham was beautiful and worth conserving and had therefore cleaned and tidied and painted and planted.
    He looked into the bow windows of Sevensmith Harding, first at the Hepplewhite chair, then at the vase. Beyond the dried grasses he could see a young girl receptionist talking on the phone. Wexford and Burden crossed the road and went into the Old Flag.
    Wexford had been there once or twice before. It was not a place ever to be crowded in the middle of the day. The busy lunch trade went to the cheaper brighter pubs and the wine bars. In the smaller of the lounge bars where food was being served several vacant tables remained. Wexford was making for one of them when he caught sight of Miles Gardner sitting alone.
    ‘Won’t you join me?’
    ‘You look as if you’re waiting for someone,’ Wexford said.
    ‘Any congenial company that offers itself.’ He had a gracious warm manner of speaking that was in no way affected. Wexford recalled that this was what he had always liked about him. ‘They do a nice prawn salad,’ Miles Gardner said. ‘And if you can get here before one they’ll send up to the butcher for a fillet steak.’
    ‘What happens at one?’
    ‘The butcher closes. He opens at two and then the pub closes. There’s Myringham for you.’
    Wexford laughed. Burden didn’t laugh but sat wearing the sort of stiff polite expression that indicates to even the most insensitive that one would be happier—or less miserable —on one’s own. Wexford made up his mind to ignore him. Gardner seemed delighted with their company and, having bought a round of drinks, began to talk in the easy rather elegant way he had about the new house he had just moved into which Sylvia’s father-in-law had designed. It was a valuable gift, Wexford thought, to be able to talk to people, one whom you had only just met and the other a mere acquaintance, as if they were old friends whom you conversed with regularly.
    Gardner was a small, undistinguished-looking man. His style was in his voice and manner. He had a much taller wife and two or three rather noisy daughters, Wexford remembered. From the new house and the time it had taken to get itself built, Gardner had moved on to talk of work, lack of work and unemployment, eliciting mild sparks of interest from Burden, at least to the extent of extracting monosyllables from him. Sevensmith Harding had battled against laying off workers at their Harlow
    ‘Rod Williams?’
    ‘Yes. He lives in the next street to me.’
    Gardner said in a patient tone, ‘Rod Williams is our former marketing manager, the one I was telling you resigned.’
    ‘Williams?’
    ‘Yes, I thought I explained. Perhaps I didn’t say the name.’
    ‘Somebody,’ said Wexford, ‘is getting hold of the wrong end of the stick here.’
    ‘It’s you,’ said Gardner, smiling.
    ‘Yes, I expect it is. Somebody has given me the wrong end of the stick. Am I to take it then that Williams wasn’t one of