Road Rage by Ruth Rendell Page B

in the wind. She ran to Quilla, embracing her and crying.
    “We’ll go to the Elder Ditches camp,” said Gary. “I’ve had it with tunnels. You can show us how to build a tree house, Freya. We’ll build a big tree house for the three of us.”
    “I am a tree,” cried Freya, once more spreading out her arms.
    “We’re all trees here,” said Gary.
    *   *   *
    While Wexford’s daughters made the kind of breakfast for him that he never ate, fussed over him, and begged him to rest, Burden went into work half an hour earlier than he need have done. His mind was full of Stanley Trotter. No amount of argument was going to convince him Stanley Trotter wasn’t involved in this up to his neck and deeper. The man had murdered Ulrike Ranke and now he was engaged in a conspiracy to kidnap. It was probably a perverts’ ring. The German girl had been raped before she was strangled and Burden believed this was developing into some sort of elaborate sex crime.
    He had been at his desk ten minutes when a call was put through to him from the front desk.
    “The editor of the
Kingsmarkham Courier
to speak to someone in authority. The governor’s not in yet.”
    “I suppose I’ll do,” said Burden.
    “He said you failing the governor.”
    The editor, who had been there for some years now, was a man called Brian St. George. Burden had met him once or twice, often enough apparently for St. George to feel justified in calling him by his Christian name in full.
    “I’ve just received a funny sort of letter, Michael. Come in the post just now. It was the first one my personal assistant opened.”
    If St. George had a P.A., Burden thought, he was Sherlock Holmes.
    “What do you mean, a funny letter?”
    “Maybe it’s a hoax, but somehow I don’t reckon it is.”
    Trying to keep sarcasm out of his voice, Burden suggested St. George tell him the letter’s contents.
    “Or do you think you’d better come down here, Michael?”
    “Tell me what’s in it first.” Suddenly Burden had a warning feeling, what Wexford called
fingerspitzen
-something.“Don’t handle it too much. Read it to me without handling it if you can.”
    “Okay, Michael. Will do. Funny, isn’t it? A letter in these days. I mean, a phone call, a fax, E-mail, whatever, but a letter! Wonder it wasn’t brought in by a guy on horseback.”
    “Could you read it?”
    “Right. Here goes. ‘Dear Sir, We are Sacred Globe, saving the earth from destruction by all means in our power. We are holding five people: Ryan Barker, Roxane Masood, Kitty Struther, Owen Struther, and Dora Wexford …’ They have to be wrong there, don’t they? I mean, that’s your boss’s wife, isn’t it? Since when’s she been missing?”
    “Go on.”
    “Okay. ‘… Owen Struther, and Dora Wexford. They are safe for the moment. You will not find them. We will be in touch today to tell you our price for them. Inform all national newspapers and Kingsmarkham Police for maximum publicity. We are Sacred Globe, saving the world.’ ”
    Burden said quietly as Wexford came into the room, “We’ll come to you now and take possession of that. In the meantime tell no one. Is that understood? No one.”

7
    T he sheet of paper was A4 size, Wexford guessed, 80 grams weight, plain white, the kind you can buy by the ream from any office supplier. Once the letter would have had to be handwritten, later typed—and typing was almost as great a giveaway as handwriting. Now, with computers, detection was nearly impossible. The expert would probably be able to say which software had been used, which word-processing program, and that was all. No spelling mistakes anymore, no capitals in error for lowercase, no slipped letters, no chipped digits.
    There might be fingerprints, but he doubted it. The writer had folded the sheet once and then, in the same direction, once more. The envelope it had come in lay beside it. Most laser printers are unable to print envelopes but a program is available for