Tomorrow's ghost

'He was an opportunity murderer. Lack of opportunity - say on the Monday night -

that might have pushed him further out.'

'Lack of opportunity?' His mouth twisted. 'You don't know modern girls.'

'I'm a modern girl, Mr Hedges.'

'Would you accept a lift from a stranger?'

'It was raining,' said Frances.

'She wasn't far from home.' He pressed his advantage. 'Would you have accepted a lift?'

'I'm not her.'

'She was a lady.'

A compliment. The blonde hair was forgotten.

'So was Jane Wentworth. Maybe you don't know modern ladies.'

He shrugged. 'Maybe.'

'But ... you don't think it was Parker, then?' He looked at her warily. 'I didn't say that at all.' Then he was playing devil's advocate. 'So you do think it was Parker?'

'I didn't say that either. It could have been Parker. But the circumstantial evidence wasn't strong - it was never strong enough for a coroner's inquest, not for her. And that's a fact.'

It was indeed a fact, thought Frances. And it was also a fact that Hedges was well-placed to state: no CID officer of all the forces liaising with the North Mercian Incident Room had worked harder than he had done to connect Patrick Parker with any of their missing women. He had really pulled out all the stops.

And in vain.

'But strong enough to write the case off, Mr Hedges.'

'It's still open, Mrs Fisher.' He spoke as though his mouth was full of liquid paraffin.

'Of course.' She smiled at him innocently. 'But Parker remains on your books as the strongest suspect ... particularly as you'd written Major Butler off the list long before - before Parker's name came over the telex.'

Something flickered in his eyes that wasn't a reflection of the flames in the grate.

'What makes you think that, Mrs Fisher?'

Frances checked herself just in time. It was as if the ground had trembled beneath her, warning her of a hidden pit in front of her. Another step - another word, another sentence or two - and she would be over the edge: she would be telling him how clever she was, she would be patronising him, and that would close his mouth just when she needed him to tell her not what he thought about Major Butler, but why he thought it.

She put her empty glass carefully down on the hearth. It had been David Audley -

again, and always, David - who had said in his interrogation lectures that truth is the ultimate weapon. So it was time to pretend to drop her guard again. And this time it had to work.

'Of course, my name isn't really 'Fisher', Mr Hedges - as I'm sure you will have guessed.'

His face blanked over with surprise.

'But the 'Mrs' is genuine. My husband was killed in Ulster a few years back.'

It was more than a few now, strictly speaking. How time accelerated with its own passage! In a year or two Robbie would be ancient history. But in the meantime he surely wouldn't mind helping her, anyway.

'I'm sorry.'

'There's no need to be. It was an accident, actually - not the IRA. He was on foot patrol one day, and he slipped on the edge of a pavement just as an armoured personnel carrier was passing. It was a road accident, I always think of it as that, now.' Was that how Major - Colonel - Butler remembered his Madeleine Francoise? If it had been Patrick Parker cruising by ... she might just as easily have been knocked down by his car on that country road as by the unknowable madness that had driven him.

'We had bought a cottage on the edge of a village, about an hour's run from here. I still live there.'

His mother had thought that was a mistake, and that a flat in London, near her work, would be far more sensible, far less lonely. But she would have been just as lonely in London; or even more lonely, since the loneliness of the cottage had been - and still was

- something natural and inevitable which she could accept, and with which she could come to terms. And which, if she faced the truth (that ultimate weapon), was what she wanted. (Mother-in-law only wanted to get her married off again as soon as decently possible, anyway; gaining an unwanted daughter-in-law had been bad enough, but then losing a son and gaining only the responsibility of a young widow was unbearable - the more so when the widow had made it abundantly plain that once was enough.) Mustn't think of all that again though, sod it! ' - but I'm away a lot of the time, so the local police keep an eye on the place for me.'

He nodded to that. Keeping an eye on places was also something he understood; and since there was more that he had to understand that was encouraging.

'There's a policeman who comes to see me regularly. He's an old chap, and he's pretty close to retirement - he's very nice and kind, and he knows everything that goes on in the village ... Like, an old-fashioned bobby.'

Was that the right word?

'A dying breed,' said ex-Chief Inspector William Ewart Hedges.