Gift Wrapped by Peter Turnbull Page B

can’t be extracted from it we can always ask your two sons to cooperate. So yes, thank you. It will be useful. Very useful indeed.’
    Reginald Webster returned home after recording the visit he and Carmen Pharoah had made to Mrs James Wenlock, while Pharoah had arranged the conveyance of James Wenlock’s bloodstained toothbrush to the forensic science laboratory at Wetherby for their attention. He drove leisurely, returning to Selby, though not to the prestigious home of Mrs Wenlock but his much more modest home on a modern housing estate which surrounded an ancient village on the edge of the town. As he approached the house he sounded the car’s horn, giving the agreed and long-established sign of two short beeps. Doing so was a violation of traffic laws, he knew that, as did his neighbours, but none complained for they all knew the reason. He halted his car at the kerb outside his home just as Joyce opened the door and allowed Terry, their long-haired Alsatian out of the house, who bounded up to him with his tail wagging in greeting. He patted the dog and then strode up to the house, talking to his wife as he approached so that she could gauge the shortening distance between them. He embraced her and kissed her gently on the lips. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry.’
    Joyce Webster lifted the glass covering the face of her watch and ‘read’ the time with her fingertips. ‘Not late at all,’ she replied. ‘I have prepared a salad for us.’
    â€˜Lovely,’ Reginald Webster replied, knowing how his wife enjoyed summer, that being the only time of the year when she could prepare a meal for her husband because he forbade her to even attempt to prepare hot food. ‘A salad sounds perfect. I’ll likely be busy over the next few days.’ He slipped off his jacket and hung it in the wardrobe which stood in the hallway.
    â€˜Big case?’ Joyce Webster led the way to the dining kitchen.
    â€˜New ... and yes, big enough. Dare say you’ll hear about it – the boss seems keen to use the press as much as he can.’
    Later that mellow summer evening as he took Terry for a walk, Reginald Webster once again found himself pondering what he always saw as his wife’s indomitable courage. She had tragically lost her sight in a car accident when she was just twenty years of age and at university studying fine art, of all things, and nonetheless was forever feeling herself fortunate to have survived because her three companions had been fatally injured. Her fortitude and her optimism was, he thought, inspirational.
    In northern France Antoine Chadid sat silently in the living room of his house and read and reread the letter he had received from his brother Jules that day, in which Jules outlined his travelling plans once his present contract of employment had come to its end. His mind turned unbidden to his boyhood and the summers spent with Jules concealed in their hide photographing birds with the camera and its telephoto lens. Sometimes in acts of impish behaviour they would also photograph human activity ... the two young lovers lying in the meadow ... the middle-aged couple arguing ... the drunken man being carried into a vehicle with UK number plates, and then driven away by two despairing women.
    It was Wednesday, 22.10 hours.

TWO
    Thursday, 1 June, 09.20 hours – 22.50 hours
    In which James Wenlock’s private life unfolds, a woman tells her tale and Carmen Pharoah is at home to the gracious reader.
    G eorge Hennessey leaned leisurely back in his chair and cupped his fleshly and slightly liver-spotted hands round the mug of hot tea which he was holding. ‘Just can’t think without this lovely stuff,’ he commented, lifting the tea to his lips and, finding it to be still too hot to drink, lowered it again. ‘So,’ he said, ‘we can begin to assume that the identity of the person in the shallow