Tomorrow's ghost

sleepy warmth of a little girl's summer afternoon, already rich with the prospect of grown-up dinner and the wearing of the new dress - perhaps not surprisingly the old abbeys had become as jumbled in the little girl's recollections as their own tumbled stonework, while the taste of chicken legs and wine and the crisp feel of the dress were as well- remembered as yesterday -

* * *

'Mrs Fisher!'

Frances found herself staring fixedly at the whitewashed wall in front of her nose.

Thornervaulx Abbey, where Major Butler had questioned Trevor Anthony Bond on the afternoon (repeat afternoon) of 11.11.69 about his recent contacts with Leslie Pearson Cole (q.v. deceased, restricted) and Leonid T. Starinov (q.v. restricted).

'I'm sorry. I'm still here - I'm just thinking...'

'About Trevor Bond? There isn't much in the file, I can tell you. He didn't have much to say for himself.'

No, thought Frances. But what he had said had been distinctly odd.

'He gave Colonel Butler an alibi at first, though - didn't he?'

'Which Butler promptly contradicted. And when the Special Branch went back to him, Bond simply said he'd got it wrong - that he made a mistake. What's the point of double-checking that, may I ask?'

No point, of course, thought Frances.

And that was the point.

'It seems a funny sort of mistake - to say 'morning' instead of 'afternoon'. It couldn't have been more than a week afterwards, when they came to check up on him again, probably not so long. He must have a very short memory.'

For a moment he said nothing. 'I don't think it was quite like that.'

He'd read the file quite recently, but the details-hadn't registered with him as being important. It had merely been a minor matter of routine for him, just as it had been for the Special Branch originally. So minor that now he couldn't recall the details precisely.

'What was it like?'

'Hmm ... Hold on a minute, and I'll tell you ...' His voice faded.

It wasn't quite fair to Colonel Butler to say that he'd contradicted Bond, reflected Frances. He would have put in his report independently, in which the afternoon interview with Bond had been recorded. And almost certainly the Special Branch men who had subsequently checked it out with Bond would never have seen that report, which must have had a security classification. The discrepancy between Butler's

'afternoon' and Bond's 'morning' would only have been spotted when the two reports reached the same desk.

And then, quite naturally, it would have been re-checked, because all discrepancies had to be resolved. But it would still have been only a minor matter of routine because it had been Butler himself who had established that he had no alibi for the material time of his wife's disappearance:

Although I had originally planned to interrogate Bond in the morning I decided on reflection that the afternoon might be more productive. Having approximately three hours on my hands, and there being no other duties scheduled for the day, I adjusted my route to take in my home town of Blackburn, arriving there at 1020

hours and departing at 1125. While in Blackburn I spoke to no one and recognised no one. I then proceeded to Thomervaulx, via Skipton and Blubberhouses, purchasing petrol at the Redbridge Garage, near Ripley (A61), at 1305 hours, arriving at 1425 after lunch at the Old Castle Hotel, Sutton-on-Swale.

As a not-alibi that could hardly be bettered, Frances concluded. If the Colonel had been trying to set himself up, that change of plan plus I spoke to no one and recognised no one had done the job perfectly. Trevor Bond's conflicting 'morning' stood no chance against such an admission, and once Bond had obligingly changed his tale to conform with it there had seemed no point in the Special Branch men treble-checking him any further. It was 9 o'clock in the morning that they were after, not 3 o'clock in the afternoon, 200 miles north.

* * *

'Hullo there, Mrs Fisher.'

'Yes?'

'You're quite right. He does seem to have a remarkably poor memory, does Master Bond. Even worse than you thought, actually.'

'Yes?'

'It was only two days. Butler visited him on the 11th - Tuesday the 11th. And the Special Branch checked him two days later, the first time, November 13th, when he said Butler was there in the morning ... And then they did the re-check on Monday the 17th, when he changed it to the afternoon ... So - only two days ... But they do appear to have been perfectly satisfied with his explanation.'

Yes, thought Frances, but it had just been routine for them. For Butler, on the 11th, Trevor Bond had been a suspect in a security matter. But on the 13th and the 17th, for the Special Branch, he had merely been an alibi witness in a missing persons case in which they were only indirectly involved - and in which Bond himself was also only indirectly involved, come to that.

'Is there a verbatim?'

'For the 13th? There's a statement for that ... a very brief statement. But to the point, nevertheless:

'A man came to see me on Tuesday morning, when I was having my tea at about 11 o'clock, and asked me a lot of silly questions about people talking to me. I never did