when the budget eventually ran to it. But as she rang the bell beside the small door set in one of the larger pair, she noted with some surprise that no expense had been spared on security. The several locks all looked substantial and in spite of the peeling paint, the doors were solid. She didn’t have time to speculate further, for the door was opened abruptly by Simon Crabtree.
He frowned and demanded, “What do you want?”
“A few words,” Lindsay replied. “Won’t take long, I promise.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to the press,” he retorted angrily. “You’ve had enough mileage out of my mother. Bloody vultures.”
Lindsay smiled wryly. “Fair enough. But I’m not really here in my role as bloody vulture. Think of me as a seeker after truth. Your father has been murdered and the police seem keen to put one of my oldest friends in the frame for it. I know she didn’t do it, and I’m trying to prove that. All I want is a bit of information.”
“Why should I help you? You and your bloody friends are no business of mine.” He started to close the door, but Lindsay leaned gently against it.
“You don’t owe me anything; but I’d have thought you owe your sister,” she replied.
He was clearly taken aback. “Ros? What’s she got to do with it?”
“I spent yesterday evening at Rubyfruits. She understood the importance of what I’m trying to do. If you rang her, I’m sure she’d tell you to help. And from what I hear, you’ve got a few debts to pay in that area.”
His frown deepened. “You’d better come in, I suppose.”
She followed him inside. It was her turn to be taken aback. Inside the shabby lock-up was a complete high- tech environment. The walls were painted matt grey. There was sound-absorbent carpet tile on the floor and the ceiling was covered with acoustic tiling, relieved only by discreet, low-level lighting. One wall was lined with filing drawers. There were four desks, each with a different type of computer terminal on it, including a small portable one, and two expensive-looking, ergonomically designed desk chairs. Several other pieces of equipment, including a standard cassette player and three printers, were sitting on the desks. In the background, baroque music played softly. Simon stood looking truculently at her as she walked round, desperately trying to memorize the names on the computers.
“Quite a set-up you’ve got here,” she said admiringly. “You must be doing well to afford all this.”
“I’m good with computers,” he said.
“What sort of software do you produce, then?”
“Mainly programs for managers. So they can interpret what’s going on in the business. Now, what did you mean about my sister?”
“People like me and Ros live our lives on the edges of society. That makes it that little bit harder to achieve things. Ros has managed to get something together. And you blew it out of the water for her by telling your father what the score was. In my book, that means you owe her. And because she perceives herself as being part of a group, that means you owe the women she identifies with. Like my friend Deborah. If you don’t agree with that analysis, ring up Ros and ask her yourself.” Lindsay stopped abruptly, challenging him to make the phone call she knew would have her thrown out instantly.
Her gamble on his sense of guilt paid off. His scowl didn’t lift, but he said grudgingly, “And what would you want to know?”
Lindsay hastily searched for a question that would justify her presence. “I wanted to know about his routine with the dog-was it something he always did at around the same time? Would someone have been able to rely on him being on the common with the dog at that time?”
Simon shrugged. “Not really. Rex always gets a walk any time between ten and midnight, depending on all sorts of things like the weather, what’s on the box, who’s at home. It wasn’t always my father who took him out. I did sometimes, too. So if someone had been lying in wait, they might have had to hang around for hours on more than one occasion. If I’d been home earlier on Sunday, it could just as well have been me that walked him.”
“So you think it’s more likely that he met someone by arrangement?”
“Not necessarily. It might have been a chance meeting that turned nasty.”
Lindsay recalled Crabtree’s distinctive figure. “Your father would have been easy to recognize at a distance and chase after if you were looking for a chance encounter. After all, Deborah thought she spotted him from quite a way off on the night he died, when he was walking the dog,” she added. “And she wasn’t even on the common. She was walking back from the phone box.” Simon shrugged. “But he was carrying a gun, Simon,” Lindsay continued. “Surely that suggests he was expecting trouble?”
Simon paused to think. “Yes, but maybe he was just expecting trouble in a general way and had started carrying the gun when he took Rex out last thing.”
Lindsay shook her head in disbelief. “This is rural England, not the New York subway. People don’t wander round with guns just because they think someone might give them a hard time. If he was genuinely afraid of being attacked, if he’d been threatened in any serious way, surely he’d have gone to the police?”
Simon shrugged. “Don’t ask me. It would probably have given him a buzz to confront someone with his gun and then turn them over to the cops. And I think he was genuinely frightened by those peace women. Especially after that one attacked him.”
Lindsay shook her head. “I can’t believe he thought the peace women were coming after him,” she said. “It must have been something else. He said nothing?”
“No. And if you’ve no more questions, I’d appreciate the chance to get back to work,” he replied.
“Okay. Thanks for the time. I’m sure Ros will appreciate your solidarity,” she threw over her shoulder as she left.
Back in the car, she scribbled down the names of the computers she had seen and drove off, keeping an eye out for the red Fiesta. But her rear-view mirror was clear, so she stopped at the first phone box she came to. Typically, it was prepared to allow 999 calls only. Three boxes later, she found one that would accept her money, and she dialed an Oxford number. She was quickly connected with a friend from her student days, Annie Norton, a whiz kid in computer research.
After an exhaustive exchange of gossipy updates while she pumped coins into the box, Lindsay wound her way round to the point of the call. “Annie, I need your help on an investigation I’ve got tangled up with,” she tossed into a gap in the conversation.
“If it’s anything to do with Caroline Redfern’s much publicized love-life, my lips are sealed,” Annie replied.
“No, this is serious, not chit-chat. It’s about computers. I’ve acquired a cassette tape that I think is a computer program. It could have been made on any one of four computers, and I need to know what it says. Can you help?”
“A cassette tape? How extraordinary. We’re talking real computers here, are we, not video games?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Hmm. No indication of what language it’s in?” Annie asked.
“English, I suppose.”
“No, no, what computer language-BASIC, FORTRAN, ALGOL, etc., etc.”
“Oh,” said Lindsay, bewildered. “No, nothing at all, unless there’s a computer language called Sting: The Dream Of The Blue Turtles‘:’
“What? Are you serious?”
Lindsay laughed. “No, that’s what’s written on the cassette, that’s all.”
“And what computers are we talking about?”
“An Apple Macintosh, an IBM, an Apricot, an Amstrad, and a Tandy.”
“A Tandy? Little lap-top job, would fit in a briefcase? With a flip-up screen?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Annie sighed in relief. “That explains the tape. It’s probably been transferred from one of the other machines,” she mused. “It should be fairly simple to run it through our Univac and read it for you. When can you get it to me?”
“I could drop it off in an hour or so-I’m only down the road in Fordham.”
“Tremendous. We could have dinner together if you fancy it.”
Lindsay was tempted. She had reached the point where she wanted more than anything to walk away from the conflict of interests with the peace camp, the police, and the job. She felt guilty about two-timing Cordelia and was unsure how she felt about Debs. But she had promised to be at the vigil, and she had to keep that promise.
