Road Rage Read Online Free Page A

the description of his daughter’s bag Dieter Ranke had given the police. This one was an altogether cheaper affair and brown and green instead of brown and black. The Rankes were comfortably off, both parents professionals with significant jobs, and Ulrike, an only child, had wanted for nothing. Her pearls were a cultured string, carefully matched, an eighteenth birthday present for which her mother and father had paid the equivalent of thirteen hundred pounds.
    “That poor chap will have to take a look at the bag,” Wexford said, meaning Ranke and thinking of himself and his daughters. “He’s still in this country for the inquest.”
    “It won’t be so bad as identifying the body,” said Burden.
    “No, Mike, I don’t suppose it will.” Wexford didn’t want to pursue that, he might say something he’d be sorry for afterward. “I’m told the Department of Transport are applying to the High Court for leave to evict the tree people.”
    Burden looked pleased. The idea of the bypass had alwaysbeen attractive to him, largely because he thought it would put an end to traffic congestion in the town center and on the old bypass.
    “No one made all this fuss in the old days,” he said. “If government decreed a road was to be built people accepted it. They took the entirely proper view that if they voted their representatives into Parliament they’d done their democratic duty and they must abide by government decisions. They didn’t build tree houses and—and
streak
—is it called streaking? They didn’t do criminal damage and cripple tree fellers who are only doing their job. They understood that a road such as this is being built
for their own good
.”
    “ ‘He didn’t know what the world was coming to,’ ” said Wexford. “That’s what they’ll put on your tombstone.” He gave Burden a sidelong look. “Big demonstration tomorrow. KABAL, the Sussex Wildlife Trust, Friends of the Earth, and Sacred Globe, the whole lot led by Sir Fleance McTear, Peter Tregear, and Anouk Khoori.”
    “It will just make more work for us. That’s all it’ll accomplish. They’ll still build the bypass.”
    “Who knows?” said Wexford.
    He didn’t question Trotter himself. Burden, harassed by Damian Harmon-Shaw of Morgan de Clerck, succeeded in getting an extension of twelve hours to the time he was allowed to keep Trotter. He knew that when that time was up he would either have to charge him or let him go as the Magistrates’ Court was unlikely to be persuaded by the evidence to issue a warrant of further detention.
    The three Vauxhalls and the three VW Golfs used by Contemporary Cars were all examined. Peter Samuel put up no objection. The cars had each been cleaned inside and out at least ten times since April 3 and had each carried hundreds of fares. If there had ever been traces ofUlrike Ranke’s brief occupancy of one of them, a hair perhaps, a fingerprint, a thread from her clothes, these had long ago been removed or obliterated.
    “You haven’t any evidence, Mike,” Wexford said after he had listened to the tape. “All you have are his previous convictions and the fact that he went to the Brigadier and finding no one there, turned around and went home again.”
    “He knows Framhurst Great Wood. He’s admitted going to the picnic area when his kids were young.” Trotter’s desertion of his wife and small children and his subsequent divorce, remarriage, and very rapid second divorce were other factors which had prejudiced Burden against him. “He knows the lane into the wood and he knows all about parking at the picnic place. The body was found two hundred yards from there.”
    “Half the population of Kingsmarkham knows that picnic area. I used to take my kids there, you used to take yours. One might say it was pretty open of him to admit knowing it. He wasn’t obliged to.”
    Burden said coldly, “I know he’s guilty. I know he killed her. He killed her for that string of pearls, the most