Road Rage Read Online Free

from former days on the road that Burden first interviewed Stanley Trotter.
    At first Trotter denied all knowledge of Ulrike Ranke. His memory jogged by Vine’s quoting from William Dickson and mentioning the German girl’s accent, Trotter eventually recalled taking Ulrike’s phone call—taking the call, not driving out to the Brigadier. He had intended to do that himself, he said, but was due to pick up someone off the last train from London, so passed the job on to one of the other drivers, Robert Barrett.
    The difficulty there was that when questioned, Barrett had no recollection of his movements on the night of April 3 beyond being sure that he had fares throughout the evening, it was a busy evening. The whole week had been busy—something to do with Easter, he thought. But he was sure of one thing: he had never, in the five months he had worked for Contemporary Cars, picked up a fare from the Brigadier.
    Burden asked Stanley Trotter to come to Kingsmarkham Police Station. By then he had discovered that Trotter had a criminal record, previous convictions of no inconsiderable kind. His first offense, committed some seven years before, was breaking and entering shop premises in Eastbourne; his second, far more serious, was robbery, a definition that implied assault. He had punched a young woman in the face, knocked her to the ground, and kicked her, then taken her handbag. She was walking home along Queen Street, quite alone, one midnight. Forboth these offenses Trotter had gone to prison, and would have served a much longer sentence for the second if his victim had suffered more than a bruise on her jaw.
    But it was enough, or almost enough, for Burden. He had got Trotter to confess that he did in fact drive out to the Brigadier at 10:45 on April 3. Originally, he said, he had been too scared to admit it. He drove there, reaching the pub just before eleven, but the fare wasn’t waiting. If she had been there once she was gone by then.
    At this point Trotter demanded a lawyer, and Burden had no choice but to agree. A sharp young solicitor from Morgan de Clerck of York Street arrived promptly and, when Trotter said he couldn’t recall whether or not he had rung the bell at the Brigadier, told Burden his client had said he couldn’t remember and that must be sufficient.
    Outside the interview room Vine said, “Dickson said she was out in the street. Trotter wouldn’t have had to ring the bell.”
    “No, but he didn’t know she’d be out in the street, did he? He’d have thought—anyone would have thought—she’d be inside the pub and have rung the bell as a matter of course. Are you telling me he’d have turned up at the pub at eleven at night and finding no one there just turned round and gone back to Station Road?”
    “That’s what
he’s
telling you,” said Vine.
    They went on questioning Trotter. The solicitor from Morgan de Clerck took them up on every small point while providing his client with an unending supply of cigarettes, though not a smoker himself. Trotter, a round-shouldered, thin, and unhealthy-looking man of about forty, got through twenty by the end of the afternoon and the atmosphere in the interview room was blue with smoke. The solicitor interrupted everything by incessantly asking how long they intended to keep Trotter and finally asked if he was to be charged.
    Recklessly, Burden, hardly able to breathe, gasped out a yes. But he didn’t charge him; he just kept him at Kingsmarkham Police Station. When Wexford got to hear of it he was dubious about the whole thing, but Burden got a warrant and Trotter’s home in Peacock Street, Stowerton, was searched for evidence. There, in the two-room flat over a grocery market kept by two Bangladeshi brothers, Detective Constables Archbold and Pemberton found a string of imitation pearls and a holdall of brown canvas bound in dark green plastic.
    To Wexford it wasn’t much like the shoulder bag in Dickson’s photograph, nor did it conform to