I was amazed she’d come out in person, since she was really a number-cruncher these days, as she was the first to point out. However, perhaps she liked to escape into the real world from time to time, especially when it was Robin who put in the call. ‘Cheap and cheerful makes, easy to get hold of on the Internet. Plus he’s scraped something off both sets of tyres, for some reason. Just cleared out a bit of the tread. I’d like you to get them changed before you think of driving off – you’re both members of a car-rescue service, yes? And our forensic people will have a look.’ The village street was quiet again. It hadn’t been very noisy before, apart from a few indrawn breaths and the sigh of curtains being twitched as our neighbours watched a guy operate a robot from the safety of an armoured car. He might have been working in Afghanistan. At least he didn’t find anything nasty enough to warrant blowing anything up. Any moment an AA van might turn up for Trev, but Robin was going to have to change his wheel himself, since it seemed letting his membership lapse had been one of his recent economies.
