Wexford 14 - The Veiled One Read Free Page B

businessman Andrew Thorverton.
       ‘I would have liked to be told, I suppose,’ Wexford said. ‘About the divorce, I mean. I wouldn’t expect her to tell us she was going to chop up the fence around a nuclear bomber base. We’d have tried to stop her.’
       ‘We’d have tried to stop her getting a divorce.’
       It was then that the phone rang. Since Sheila had been released on bail, pending a later court appearance, Wexford thought it must be her at the other end. He was already hearing her voice in his head, the breathy self-reproach as she tried to persuade her parents she didn’t know how the paper had got that report about her divorce . . . she was overcome . . . she was flabbergasted . . . it was all beyond her. And as for the wire-cutting . . .
       Not Sheila though. Inspector Michael Burden.
       ‘Mike?’
       The voice was cool and a bit curt, anxiety underlying it, but he nearly always sounded like that. ‘There’s a dead women in the shopping centre car park, the underground one. I haven’t seen her yet, but there’s no chance it’s anything but murder.’
       ‘I was there myself,’ Wexford said wonderingly. ‘I only left a couple of hours ago.’
       ‘That’s OK. Nobody thinks you did it.’
       Burden had got a lot sharper since his second marriage. Time was when such a rejoinder would never have entered his head.
       ‘I’ll come over. ‘Who’s there now?’
       ‘Me - or I will be in five minutes. Archbold. Prentiss.’ Prentiss was the Scene-of-Crimes man, Archbold a young DC. ‘Sumner-Quist. Sir Hilary’s away on his hols.’
       In November? Well, people went away at any old time these days. Wexford rather liked the eminent and occasion ally outrageous pathologist, Sir Hilary Tremlett, finding Dr Basil Sumner-Quist less congenial.
       ‘There’s, no identification problem,’ said Burden. ‘We know who she is. Her name’s Gwen Robson, Mrs. Late fifties. Address up at Highlands. A woman called Sanders found her and got hold of someone in Pomeroy Street who phoned us.’
       It was five-past eight. ‘I may be a long time,’ Wexford said to Dora. ‘At any rate I won’t be back soon.’ 
       ‘I’m wondering if I ought to phone Sheila.’
       ‘Let her phone us,’ said Sheila’s father, hardening his heart. He picked up the bag with Dora’s present in it and hid it at the back of the hail cupboard. The birthday wasn’t until tomorrow anyway.
       The car-park entrance was blocked with police cars. Lights had appeared from somewhere, the place blazed with light. Someone had shot the linked shopping trolleys across the parking area to clear a space and trolleys stood about every where but at a distance, like a watching crowd of robots. The gates in the fence at the pedestrian entrance in Pomeroy Street stood wide open. Wexford pushed trolleys aside, spinning them out of his way, squeezed between the cars, opened the lift door and tried to summon the lift. It didn’t come, so he walked down the two levels. The three cars were still there - the red Metro, silver Escort and dark blue Lancia - but the blue one had been backed out of its parking slot up against the wall and reversed into the middle of the aisle, no doubt to allow room for pathologist, Scene-of-Crimes officer and photographer to scrutinize the body that lay close up against the offside of the silver Escort. Wexford hesitated a moment, then walked towards the group of people and the thing on the concrete floor.
       Burden got to his feet as Wexford approached and Archbold, who had old-fashioned manners, nodded and said, ‘Sir!’ Sumner-Quist didn’t bother to look round. The fact that he happened at that moment to move his shoulder so that the dead woman’s face and neck were revealed was, Wexford thought, purely fortuitous. The face bore the unmistakable signs of someone who has met her death by strangulation. It was bluish, bloated, horrified, and the mark on her neck