what her brother did. ..` `So we have a whole series of bogeymen terrorists, a lone random crazy, and a victim whose brother ...` He stopped as the name David March suddenly connected with a jigsaw puzzle in his head. `That David March?" He looked at her, knowing his eyes had widened. `The one who kept the heads?" She gave a fast little nod. `See for yourself.
Fredericka reached for the leather shoulder bag, but Bond shook his head.
`No, when we get there. I'll read it then. How in heaven's name?
I mean how didn't her people unearth it during her positive vetting?" `How indeed? I rather gather there're a lot of red faces in London.
She didn't even change her name. Nobody in their right mind should have given her a sensitive job with that family skeleton in her closet." `It was her brother, not her." `Read what the shrinks have to say before you make statements like that. Lord, James, think about it.
If you remember only small details of the case, he was an horrific, walking, talking, living monster. Yet, two years after his death, sweet little Laura, his sister, lets someone forge a passport with his birth details. What's that make her? To allow someone to use his name, his details. Read it, James. Please just read it." She had reached down and taken a heavy folder from out of the bag just as the waitress came over to ask if they would like to take coffee. They could use the residents' lounge, she said.
So it was, amidst the normal, pleasant chatter of guests enjoying holidays, or passing through on business, that Bond glanced at Fredericka, who sat beside him, impassive, as he opened the folder and began to read about Laura March's brother.
He was only two paragraphs into the file when the hair on the back of his neck bristled, and rose in fear.
CHAPTER FOUR
BROTHER DAVID
He had barely read the first four paragraphs before the whole story came flooding back. At least the facts read in the newspapers at the time returned vividly. Some of it had been lurid, sensationally reported, with the usual sensitivity of ghoulish newspaper men, but he was certain that, even with I.
the gruesome highlights which became public knowledge after the trial, there were still some things that had been left out. He recalled talking, some years before, to a senior police officer who had assisted in identifying the body of a child buried in dense woodland and found some six months after her murder.
`We don't even bring some things out in court,' the detective had said. `I identified that child's fingerprints certainly, but they had to remove the hands and bring them down to London. I never saw the poor kid's body." The bulk of the file was a detailed and annotated report on the case by the police officer in charge, a Detective Superintendent Richard Seymour, and, even though the lengthy document was couched in official police jargon, the language did nothing to reduce the sense of blind horror.
The events took place in the town of Preston around thirty-five miles north-west of Manchester deep in the old cottonmill country.
Bond thought of grey granite buildings, and the uncompromising, no-nonsense though cheerful people of Lancashire who were the actors in this story of terror.
When Christine Wright, of 33 Albert Road, Preston, went missing, just before Christmas 1971
her name was simply added to the missing persons file. She was twenty-two, blonde, very pretty and at constant odds with her parents who, she was always telling her friends, still treated her like a child. The file did pass across Superintendent Seymour's desk, but all the indications were that young Christine had run off: she was always talking about getting away, living on her own, or finding Mr Wright-this last was, naturally, a little running joke with her friends. Later it would smack of grim gallows humour.
She did tell her closest confidante-one Jessie Styles, who worked with her at the National Westminster Bank that she had met someone truly exciting. The
Fredericka reached for the leather shoulder bag, but Bond shook his head.
`No, when we get there. I'll read it then. How in heaven's name?
I mean how didn't her people unearth it during her positive vetting?" `How indeed? I rather gather there're a lot of red faces in London.
She didn't even change her name. Nobody in their right mind should have given her a sensitive job with that family skeleton in her closet." `It was her brother, not her." `Read what the shrinks have to say before you make statements like that. Lord, James, think about it.
If you remember only small details of the case, he was an horrific, walking, talking, living monster. Yet, two years after his death, sweet little Laura, his sister, lets someone forge a passport with his birth details. What's that make her? To allow someone to use his name, his details. Read it, James. Please just read it." She had reached down and taken a heavy folder from out of the bag just as the waitress came over to ask if they would like to take coffee. They could use the residents' lounge, she said.
So it was, amidst the normal, pleasant chatter of guests enjoying holidays, or passing through on business, that Bond glanced at Fredericka, who sat beside him, impassive, as he opened the folder and began to read about Laura March's brother.
He was only two paragraphs into the file when the hair on the back of his neck bristled, and rose in fear.
CHAPTER FOUR
BROTHER DAVID
He had barely read the first four paragraphs before the whole story came flooding back. At least the facts read in the newspapers at the time returned vividly. Some of it had been lurid, sensationally reported, with the usual sensitivity of ghoulish newspaper men, but he was certain that, even with I.
the gruesome highlights which became public knowledge after the trial, there were still some things that had been left out. He recalled talking, some years before, to a senior police officer who had assisted in identifying the body of a child buried in dense woodland and found some six months after her murder.
`We don't even bring some things out in court,' the detective had said. `I identified that child's fingerprints certainly, but they had to remove the hands and bring them down to London. I never saw the poor kid's body." The bulk of the file was a detailed and annotated report on the case by the police officer in charge, a Detective Superintendent Richard Seymour, and, even though the lengthy document was couched in official police jargon, the language did nothing to reduce the sense of blind horror.
The events took place in the town of Preston around thirty-five miles north-west of Manchester deep in the old cottonmill country.
Bond thought of grey granite buildings, and the uncompromising, no-nonsense though cheerful people of Lancashire who were the actors in this story of terror.
When Christine Wright, of 33 Albert Road, Preston, went missing, just before Christmas 1971
her name was simply added to the missing persons file. She was twenty-two, blonde, very pretty and at constant odds with her parents who, she was always telling her friends, still treated her like a child. The file did pass across Superintendent Seymour's desk, but all the indications were that young Christine had run off: she was always talking about getting away, living on her own, or finding Mr Wright-this last was, naturally, a little running joke with her friends. Later it would smack of grim gallows humour.
She did tell her closest confidante-one Jessie Styles, who worked with her at the National Westminster Bank that she had met someone truly exciting. The
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