had a job.
Still had a job.
In the early 1990s, Oxfordshire's potential facilities for business and
industry had attracted many leading national and international companies.
During those years, for example, the county could boast the largest
concentration of printing and publishing companies outside the metropolis;
and it was to one of these, the Daedalus Press in North Oxford, that on
leaving school Simon had applied for the post of apprentice proof-reader.
And had been successful, principally (let it be admitted) because of the
employers' legal obligation to appoint a small percentage of semi-disabled
applicants.
Yet the 'apprentice' appellation was very soon to be deleted from Simon's job
description, for he was proving to be surprisingly and encouragingly
competent: accurate, careful, neat - a fair combination of qualities required
in a proof-reader. And with any luck (so it was thought) experience would
gradually bring with it that needful extra dimension of tedious pedanticism.
On the morning of Friday, 17 July, he found on his desk a photocopied extract
from some unspecified tabloid which some unspecified colleague had left, and
which he read through with keen attention; then read through a second time,
with less interest in its content, it appeared, than in its form, since his
proof-reading pen applied itself at five points in the article.
NEW CLUE TO OLD MURDER
Information received by son in. Nobody knows who he Thames Valley Police
seems was. Or she was. ' 5 likely to prompt renewed en- ij^ difficult to
disagree. Would '% Qi^/ quir^jb into the bizzarre murder we still be reading
about the Ripof Mrs Yvonne Harrison just per if we knew who it was who over a
year ago. murdered and mutilated a sucResidents of the small hamlet cession
of prostitutes in the East of Lower Swinstead in Oxford- End of London in the
1870s? As shire are bracing themselves for it is, his ideality remains un-
Cy/ further statements and a fresh known, just like that of Yvonne's ^
upsurge of media interest in the murderer.
^L ghastl^y murder of their former The villagers themselves are '~q/
neighbour;' less than forthcoming, and seem Tom Biffen, landlord of the
dubious about any new break- Maidens Arms, remains phi lo through in the
case.
'Let's just sophical however
'You can't wish the police a bit better luck blame people, can you? Exactly
this time round,' says Mrs May the same as Jack the Ripper. Kennedy, who
runs the surpris- Nobody knows who he was. ingly well-stocked village shop.
That's why he's so interesting. And so say all of us. All of us, Same with
who done Mrs Harri- that is, except the murderer.
Chief Inspector Morse had not as yet encountered Simon Harrison; but he would
have been reasonably impressed by the proof-reader's competence. Only
reasonably, of course, since he himself was a man who somewhere, somehow, had
acquired the aforementioned dimension of 'tedious pedandcism', and would have
made three further amendments.
And, of course, would have corrected that gross anachronism, since historical
accuracy had engaged him from the age of ten, when he had taken it upon
himself to memorize the sequence of the American presidents, and the dates
of the kings and queens of England.
37
chapter eight Bankers an just like anybody else, Except richer (Ogden
Nash, I'm a Stranger Here Myself) the london offices of the Swiss Helvetia
Bank are tucked away discreetly just behind Sloane Square. The brass plaque
pin-pointing visitors to these premises, albeit highly polished, is perhaps
disproportionately small. Yet in truth the Bank has little need to impress
its potential clients. On the contrary. Such clients have every need to
