Wexford 14 - The Veiled One Read Online Free Page A

eyes met Wexford’s he stopped altogether. Archbold went up to him and said something. He was a young man with a pale heavy face and dark moustache and he was dressed in a way which while quite suitable for a man of Wexford’s own age, looked incongruous on someone of - what? Twenty-one? Twenty-two? The V-necked grey pullover, striped tie and grey flannel trousers reminded Wexford of a school uniform.
       ‘I’ve come for the car,’ he said.
       ‘One of these cars is yours?’
       ‘The red one, the Metro. It’s my mother’s. My mother said to come over and bring it back.’
       His eyes went fearfully to where the body lay, the body that was now entirely covered by a sheet. It lay unattended - pathologist, photographer and policeman having all moved away towards the central aisle or the exits. Wexford noted that awe-stricken glance, the quick withdrawing of the eyes and jerk of the head. He said, ‘Can I have your name, sir?’
       ‘Sanders, Clifford Sanders.’
       Burden asked, ‘Are you some relation of Mrs Dorothy Sanders?’
       ‘Her son.’
       ‘I’ll come back with you,’ Wexford said. ‘I’ll follow you; I’d like to talk to your mother.’ He let Clifford Sanders, walking edgily, pass out of earshot and then said to Burden, ‘Mrs Robson’s next-of-kin . . . ?’
       ‘There’s a husband, but he hasn’t been told. He’ll have to make a formal indentification. I thought of going over there now.’
       ‘Do we know who that blue Lancia belongs to?’
       Burden shook his head. ‘It’s a bit odd, that. Only shoppers use the car park - I mean, who else would want to? And the centre’s been closed over two hours. If it belongs to the killer, why didn’t he or she drive it away? When I first saw it I thought maybe it wouldn’t start, but we had to move it and it started first time.’
       ‘Better have the owner traced,’ said Wexford. ‘My God, Mike, I was in here, I saw the three cars, I drove past her.’
       ‘Did you see anyone else?’
       ‘I don’t know, I’ll have to think.’
       Going down in the lift, he thought. He remembered pounding footsteps descending, the girl in the red Vauxhall following him, the half-dozen people in the above-ground parking areas, the mist that was visible and obscuring but really hid nothing. He remembered the woman carrying the two bags coming from the covered way, strolling, languidly kicking the trolley aside. But that was at ten-past six and the murder had already taken place by then . . . He got into the car beside Archbold. Clifford Sanders in the red Metro was waiting a few yards along the roadway while a uniformed officer - someone new that Wexford didn’t recognize - trundled the scattered trolleys out of their path.
       The little red car led them along the High Street in the Stowerton direction and turned into the Forby Road. Arch- bold seemed to know where Sanders lived, in a remote spot down a lane that turned off about half a mile beyond the house and parkland called ‘Sundays’. In fact it was less then three miles outside Kingsmarkham, but the lane was narrow and very dark and Clifford Sanders drove even more slowly than the winding obscurity warranted. Thick, dark, leafless hedges rose high on either side. Occasionally a pulling-in place revealed itself, showing at least that passing would be possible if they met another vehicle. Wexford couldn’t remember even having been down there before, he doubted if it led anywhere except perhaps finally to the gates of a farm.
       The sky was quite black, moonless, starless. The lane seemed to wind in a series of unneccessary loops. There were no hills for it to circumvent and the river to flow in the opposite direction. No longer were any pinpoints of light visible in the surrounding countryside. All was darkness but for the area immediately ahead, illuminated by their own headlights, and the twin bright points glowing red on the rear of the