CHAPTER 25 -Something's frustrating

Part 1

'Is this absolutely necessary, Chief Inspector?' asked a seriously disgruntled Ms Frazil as she cast her eyes despairingly around her office which was rapidly filling up with uniformed policemen, each issued with precise instructions as to which part of the Oxford Mail's office they were to turn upside down.

'I'm afraid so, Ms Frazil,' replied a solemn DCI Thursday who understood her concern but was unable to afford her any special favours or treatment as this was a murder investigation and, as such, took precedence over any personal feelings of friendship he may have had towards the Oxfords Mail's editor.

'What are you looking for, exactly?' She turned a beady eye towards the two coppers who stood side by side opposite her, each resolute in their determination to follow their instincts and ransack the office from top to toe.

'A letter,' said Morse tersely.

'What sort of letter? Who from? What about?' Ms Frazil's journalistic instincts snapped into action, as if she was grilling some local councillor or politician about a tip-off she had received that something grubby or shady had taken place at the Town Hall which she was determined to try to get to the bottom of.

'We don't know but we're certain it has something to do with Ronald Fraser's murder,' said Thursday. 'He was seen with it on the night he was murdered, just a few hours earlier. But it wasn't found at the scene of the crime.'

'Haven't you tried searching his home? Surely it's far more likely to be there?' Ms Frazil clearly needed convincing there was any merit to be had turning the Mail's office inside out with the inevitable significant disruption to the newspaper's working day.

'We've already searched his cottage,' said Morse, his blank eyes returning Ms Frazil's unwelcoming stare. 'It's not there. Therefore that really only leaves the Mail, I'm afraid, Ms Frazil.'

Dorothea Frazil let out a heavy sigh. 'Well, obviously I can't stop you, gentlemen, but I would be grateful if you could be as quick as you can…and put everything back in its place when you've finished, please. I don't want my staff to have to spend the rest of the day tidying up after all of you.'

Thursday nodded briefly. Fair enough, he thought. Morse went across to the uniformed sergeant who was directing the search operation and repeated the gist of Ms Frazil's entirely reasonable request while Thursday continued talking to her.

'Who amongst the staff knew Ronald Fraser best, apart from yourself, of course?'

Ms Frazil gave the question a few seconds' serious consideration before answering. 'Well, I suppose our PA, Moira Stewart. She's worked closely with both of us for four or five years. She would know more about Ronald and his movements and habits better than anyone, I guess.'

'Can we have another chat with her, do you think?'

'I suppose so,' replied Ms Frazil throwing her hands in the air in a gesture of utter helplessness. 'It's not as if any of us can do any work while you lot are here, traipsing all over the place with your size nines.'

'Where is she right now?' asked Thursday as Morse reappeared by his side.

'I've sent all the staff over to the canteen to get themselves a drink and stay out of your way while the search is being conducted. I'll go and fetch her for you.'

'Can we use the usual room to interview her?' asked Thursday to which Dorothea Frazil nodded briefly and silently before moving off towards the office canteen.

'I've said we'll want to speak to Ms Stewart, Fraser's PA, again. She didn't have anything much to say when we spoke to her the first time, but we didn't know about this letter back then.'

Morse nodded and the two detectives moved out of Ms Frazil's office and made their way over to the small room that they had used on all their previous visits to the Mail to conduct interviews. A minute or two later Fraser's PA knocked on the door and was invited in by DCI Thursday and asked politely to take a seat opposite them. She looked slightly nervous as she sat down and looked across at the two coppers with big bright eyes and a mass of cascading brown hair that went halfway down her slender back.

'Now, you're not in any trouble, Ms Stewart,' Thursday quickly sought to reassure the young woman, having immediately picked up on her anxiety as soon as she had entered the room. 'We just need to ask you a few more questions about Mr Fraser, that's all. Ms Frazil tells us you probably knew Mr Fraser better than anyone, having been his PA and worked closely with him for a number of years.'

'Well, I've been PA to both Ms Frazil and Mr Fraser for a few years now. I didn't just report to him.'

'But you did work closely with Mr Fraser, nonetheless, didn't you, Ms Stewart?' asked Morse trying to sound kind and understanding whilst still probing for precise details.

'I suppose so,' nodded Ms Stewart, seemingly anxious not to say anything to arouse the suspicions of the two policemen whose solemn presence across the desk from her she found rather intimidating and unsettling.

'Did you notice anything odd about Mr Fraser's behaviour in the weeks or months leading up to his death? Anything strange or unusual took place that was out of character? Take your time and have a good think back.'

Moira did as she was directed and sat in silence for a few moments, staring into space and screwing her eyes up hard as if she was making a huge effort to cast her mind back. 'I don't think so,' she replied with more than a little uncertainty which didn't inspire the two detectives. She didn't come across as a solid, reliable witness who knew what she knew with the utmost confidence and conviction.

'You didn't notice him doing anything strange or unusual? Did you ever see him appearing nervous, unsettled or especially secretive, more than normal, for instance?' Morse was gently trying to prod her along in the direction they were hoping she would take but Moira seemed intent on staying rooted to the crossroads, unsure which way to go.

She shook her head slowly, causing both detectives to bite their lip so as not to let out an unhelpful, tell-tale cry of frustration when suddenly she gasped in surprise as something significant dawned on her which made her open her eyes wide in triumph.

'Oh, wait a minute,' she cried with unmistakeable joy in her voice. 'I do remember something rather odd happening.'

'Go on,' said Thursday encouragingly, holding his breath and hoping it wouldn't turn out to be a complete anti-climax.

'I remember a couple of weeks back, I came over to Mr Fraser's desk and I noticed he was completely engrossed in reading something. I couldn't see what it was, but he was so preoccupied with reading it that he didn't realise I was standing right beside him. I gave a little cough, just to let him know I was there, you know.' She paused a moment, unsure possibly if this story was really important enough to continue with.

'And then what?' asked Morse, smiling at the young woman in an attempt to encourage her to continue her story without backing down.

'Well, he was obviously terribly startled when he looked up and saw me. He was totally shocked to see me standing there and he immediately took whatever it was that he had been reading, opened the top drawer to his desk and just shoved it inside and slammed the drawer shut.

'Did you see what it was that he had been reading?' Thursday asked, his interest now thoroughly aroused, and he mentally crossed his fingers that the trail wouldn't fizzle out into nothing.

'I'm not sure,' said Moira, hesitantly as she looked across at the two coppers with an expression that spoke of someone anxious to please but unwilling to make anything up just so as to make them happy with her.

'Could it have been a letter, perhaps?' asked Morse, desperate not to put words into her mouth but hoping to conjure up an image in her mind that might correspond with what they were searching for.

'Maybe,' said Moira, screwing her eyes up again. It looked as if that was her regular procedure for trying to recall events in the almost dim and distant past. 'Yes, it could have been, you know. It certainly wasn't a newspaper or a file or anything work-related like that, I'm sure of it.'

Thursday and Morse looked at each other with a telling stare before they moved swiftly to conclude their interview with this well-meaning but rather vague and unreliable witness.

'Did you ask him about it?' said Thursday but he knew the answer before she had even started replying.

'Oh God, no. I wouldn't dare! He would have bitten my head off if I had.'

'Did you ever see him with this letter or whatever it was again?'

Moira shook her head with more conviction than any previous response. 'Definitely not,' she said confidently. 'That was the only time I can remember him looking startled or guilty about anything when I was with him.'

'Guilty?' asked Morse, picking up on the word immediately. 'Why do you say guilty? You didn't use that word before.'

'Didn't I? Oh, well, I don't know, I guess…I guess it just seemed like he had a rather guilty expression on his face when he looked up and saw me standing next to him.'

'Guilty about what, do you think, Ms Stewart?' Thursday attempted one final push to squeeze the last dregs of helpful information out of the young woman before she had outlived her usefulness.

'I don't know, Chief Inspector. Maybe he was shocked or ashamed of what he was reading and was afraid I might have seen part of the letter.'

'So you do now think it was a letter, then?' asked Morse quickly.

'Well, I suppose it must have been,' sighed Ms Stewart heavily, reverting back to her initial anxiety and trepidation. 'I don't know what else it could have been, now that you mention it.'

'Well, that's all for now, Ms Stewart. Thank you very much for your time. If you do think of anything else, you will contact me down at the station, won't you?' Thursday stood up and gave Ms Stewart his card before he and Morse bade her a courteous farewell.

'Right,' said Thursday without bothering to sit down again. 'Let's get over to Fraser's desk and see if there's anything in that top drawer.'

'We wouldn't have missed that, surely?' said Morse. 'Someone would have found it already if it was there and would have come and told us.'

Thursday shrugged his shoulders in silence and made his way purposefully out of the room with Morse in tow, heading for Dorothea Frazil's office which she shared with her deputy editor. They would know one way or the other soon enough, he thought.

Part 2

At the earliest opportunity Fancy broke for lunch and went off on a frantic search for WPC Trewlove, ignoring the laughter and whispers behind his back from his colleagues who were still having enormous fun at his expense. He would have loved to have been able to put out a call for her on the station's police radio in the communications room but didn't dare. He would have been asked why he needed to speak to Trewlove so urgently and he couldn't tell them the truth any more than he could make up some cock and bull story which would be checked up on later and found to be a complete fabrication which in turn would have landed him in even more trouble.

No, he would have to track her down himself the hard way, by scouring the streets of her beat and finding her like any half decent detective should be capable of doing. There was still at least half an hour for her to complete on her morning shift so she should be on her way back to the station, assuming she hadn't been side-tracked off her normal circuit by an unforeseen incident that she had called in. To his knowledge no such incident had been reported so she shouldn't be too difficult to track down, thought Fancy.

Luck was on his side for the first time that morning as he found Trewlove within the first ten minutes of his search, not more than a mile or so away from the station, chatting to some of the small shopkeepers and catching up on the latest news and street gossip on the front line.

'Shirley"' he cried enthusiastically before a stern look from Trewlove alerted him to the fact that he had been very unprofessional in his greeting of her in front of members of the public.

'Sorry! WPC Trewlove? May I have a word, please?' he backtracked promptly and waited impatiently while Trewlove made her apologies to the shopkeeper she had been talking to and came over to join him.

'Not professional, George!' she reprimanded him sharply.

'I'm sorry,' he said forlornly. 'I just really needed to speak to you urgently in private.'

'Couldn't it have waited until I got back to the station?' Trewlove didn't see what all the fuss was about. What on earth could George have got his knickers in a twist about now, she wondered. Would it never end, this constant need for her to act as his confidant, his mentor, his life coach, Good God, even his mother sometimes?!

'Let's go somewhere a little more private, shall we?' suggested Fancy who began to stride off away from the row of small shops in search of somewhere a little further afield where they could not be so easily overheard.

'You're doing this cloak and dagger stuff again, George! I've warned you about that before. Stop being so melodramatic. What the hell is it about this time?' Trewlove's voice betrayed her annoyance at having her patrol duties, which she always took extremely seriously, so rudely interrupted by another one of George's personal problems which she was being called upon to help him out with.

'They've found out down at the nick about Sunday afternoon, Shirley!' Trewlove didn't believe him at first but the sight of Fancy's miserable, despairing face quickly disabused her of that notion.

'How do you mean? Has anyone said anything? DCI Thursday or the Chief Super?'

'No, not yet, thank God,' replied Fancy with the tiniest of sighs of relief.

'Well, who then?' She waited impatiently for him to finally get to the nub of the problem.

'All the lads back in the office. They all know. They've been taking the mickey out of me all morning. Singing stupid nursery rhymes, in whispers. You know, the one that goes 'Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream?'

Trewlove stared back at Fancy in utter disbelief at first before, without any warning, bursting out in a fit of hysterical giggles. Almost as soon as the giggles tumbled out of her mouth in a torrent she regretted her insensitive, unhelpful and probably downright mocking reaction but she couldn't stop herself in time. To her the image that immediately popped up in her head of all the lads back at the nick singing Row Your Boat in barely muffled and stifled whispers behind George's back was just the most side-splittingly funny thing she had heard of in a very long time. After a few moments of uncontrolled laughter which practically brought tears to her eyes, Trewlove manged to stop and now she contemplated an utterly woebegone and humiliated Fancy who simply stared down at the ground, presumably wanting the earth to swallow him up whole and bury his embarrassment in the soil for all eternity.

'I'm sorry, George,' said Trewlove with genuine instant remorse, as she laid a comforting arm on the poor lad's shoulder. 'I didn't mean to make fun of you like that. It just…came out, I suppose, before I could stop myself.'

'What am I going to do, Shirley? I've become a laughing stock in the station now. Not to mention my career being virtually ruined.' Fancy was happy to overlook Trewlove's reaction and accept her apology. In her place he would probably have reacted in the same way if he was being honest with himself. Besides, he had bigger worries on his mind than a temporarily bruised relationship with his girlfriend.

'Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves, shall we? Just how much actual damage has really been done? As long as DCI Thursday and Mr Bright don't get wind of it, then I can't see it being a major problem. I mean, the lads down at the nick are giving you a bit of stick. So what? That's par for the course, if you're a copper! You're never going to avoid having the mickey taken out of you from time to time if you want a long career in the police force. Being overly sensitive to a bit of occasional light-hearted banter is not going to serve you well, George, I promise you that.'

Fancy pondered long and hard Trewlove's well-chosen and thoughtfully presented words of advice and her cool and calm interpretation of the issue at hand. Maybe she had a point, he reasoned.

'Ok, you may be right,' he said with a long, drawn-out sigh. 'But I'd still like to know who spilled the beans to everyone down the nick. I mean, it can only be Morse, can't it? Obviously, it wasn't you.'

Fancy looked up at Trewlove with one eyebrow raised as he waited silently for her to confirm to his face that she wasn't the one who squealed. Trewlove returned Fancy's anxious gaze with an impassive stare of her own for a few seconds before she deigned to issue a response.

'I'm not even going to dignify that question with an answer, George. If you really have to ask me that, then I don't think we have anything more to say to each other.'

Trewlove made the slightest of motions suggesting she was about to turn her back on Fancy and walk away before George cried out in blind panic. 'No! Shirley, I wasn't accusing you, honestly! I said I knew it wasn't you, so it had to be Morse! Please, don't walk away from me!'

'You still looked at me, George. You still looked at me like you weren't one hundred per cent sure.'

'I was. I mean, I am! Shirley, please believe me. It has to be Morse, doesn't it? Why would he do that to me?'

'I can't imagine he would do something like that. Not Morse. I can believe it of a few others in CID I could mention but not Morse.'

'Why not?' asked Fancy, clearly not quite as convinced of their colleague's innocence as she was.

'He's not vindictive or mischievous like that. It's …' Trewlove paused for a moment, searching for the right word or expression that would completely exonerate her much respected senior colleague before settling on one such deliciously appropriate epithet. 'It's not his style, George. He would see spilling the beans on a colleague like that to be beneath him.'

'Are you sure, Shirley?'

Trewlove nodded. 'Absolutely. Trust me George. Don't even go there. You'd be wasting your time.'

'So, who then?' asked Fancy, who was now as confused and bewildered as he was ever likely to be in a long while.

'I don't know, George. We'll have to give it some more thought. But there'll be an answer to the riddle, somewhere. It's just a question of finding it, that's all. A bit of detective work is needed, George. Ought to be right up your street, I'd have thought.'

She gave Fancy a telling look and Fancy nodded ruefully, forcing out the ghost of a wry smile. He couldn't help marvelling at the way Shirley was able to find the funny side of almost everything, even those incidents that looked to have 'disaster' and 'catastrophe' written all over them.

Part 3

'Have we gone through all of the victim's desk drawers?' demanded DCI Thursday of no-one in particular the moment he arrived in the Dorothea Frazil's office.

'Yes, Sir,' replied a uniformed sergeant who took it upon himself to speak for all of the uniform boys who had been carrying out the fingertip search of the Mail's office.

'Found anything? Like a letter addressed to the victim?'

The sergeant looked around at all the other coppers who to a man returned his steely gaze with blank looks and a few shakes of the head. 'No, Sir. Nothing like that, Sir. Just a few odds and sods, really. Nothing of any significance.'

Morse went over to Fraser's desk, sat down in his chair and pulled open the top drawer and carefully inspected all the contents. There were various items of office stationery – pens and pencils, rubbers, a couple of unused notebooks, a stapler and a jar of paper clips and a box full of drawing pins- in addition to an old fashioned dictating machine with the lead wrapped around it and a small pocket calculator. Morse poked around for a while in a methodical search for anything remotely resembling a letter, with or without a corresponding envelope but without success, while Thursday looked on, hoping for a breakthrough but deep down not expecting one. Fraser might have temporarily chucked the offending letter into his top drawer while Miss Stewart was hovering around his desk, but he was never going to leave it there, not now she had witnessed him throw it carelessly inside and snap the drawer shut, away from immediate prying eyes.

Morse looked up at Thursday and shook his head minutely as he pushed shut the top drawer before he had a quick look inside the other two drawers of Fraser's desk. Again, nothing akin to a letter could be found, despite Morse poking and prodding around at some length inside the two drawers. Thursday grimaced and was about to turn away when Morse seemed to have an idea which halted Thursday momentarily in his tracks. The detective sergeant pulled open the top drawer again but this time he clasped the two sides of the drawer and pulled it all the way out so that he held the whole drawer in his hands. Thursday leaned forward a little, his heart racing a touch as he wondered if Morse had just had one of his famous brain waves but when Morse turned the drawer round firstly a hundred and eighty degrees to examine the back and then upside down to inspect the underside, there was sadly no letter to be found.

'Damn it!' fumed Thursday with a degree of venom in his cry of exasperation. 'Are we never going to get a lucky break?!'

'Hold on a minute, Sir,' said Morse as he took a much closer look at the back panel of the drawer. After a few seconds of examination with his eyes and hands, he held out the drawer to DCI Thursday for him to take a look himself. 'It might not be there now, but I'll lay good odds it was there before.'

Thursday took the drawer proffered by Morse and peered closely at the back panel of Fraser's top drawer. There were unmistakeable traces of adhesive in the four corners of the wood panel, suggesting that something had been stuck to the back of the drawer at some point. 'Sellotape!' he pronounced with a degree of disappointment as he realised that this time they had been on the right track but had sadly been just a little bit too late to hit the jackpot. Finding the evidence that a letter must have been secretly concealed at the back of Fraser's drawer for quite some time represented the closest they had come to making a crucial breakthrough in the case.

'Fraser must have concealed it there after everyone, including Ms Stewart, had left the building that evening,' concluded Morse intuitively.

'And removed it from its hiding place when he left the Mail the last time he was here,' added Thursday. 'The night before he died, on Thursday. He was supposed to be going on a fishing weekend up North, wasn't he?'

'Which we believe he never even set out on,' said Morse. 'Because the weekend wasn't about going fishing at all. It was about meeting his killer.'

'The writer of this letter, you reckon?' Thursday looked across at Morse for confirmation that the two coppers were thinking along the same lines.

'I'd say so, wouldn't you? Although one theory we haven't considered yet which might be worth exploring is blackmail.'

Thursday paused for a moment to look off into thin air as he gave this suggestion a respectable amount of speedy consideration. 'Yeah, could be, I suppose. So, who was blackmailing who and what about?'

'Indeed,' said Morse with a wry grimace. This case looked for all the world to his eyes like it might turn darker and nastier still.

'Right,' said Thursday, not wanting to waste a minute longer at the Mail. 'You keep looking for this letter, all of you,' he said raising his voice, so all the uniformed policemen were left in no doubt as to what their jobs for the remainder of the afternoon were to be focused on. 'Check the back and the underside of every drawer, cabinet, and cupboard in these offices. Every single one, do you hear me! Just in case he moved it again to another secret hidey hole in the office.' A barrage of 'Yes, Sir's rang out all around the room as the brusqueness and urgency of DCI Thursday's tone left every copper fully aware that he would have their guts for garters, and the rest, if anyone didn't check and double check precisely as he had instructed.

'Come on, Morse,' Thursday said to his frustrated colleague. 'Let's get back to the nick and start looking at this case again with fresh eyes. Right back to the start. Let's summarise everything we know as well as the things we don't know. Let's consider all possible motives, including blackmail and anything else we haven't thought of yet.'

Morse nodded at his boss and followed him out of the Mail. It could be the guvnor was making a good call, he thought. Perhaps taking a step or two back and trying to take in the whole picture was what was needed. Maybe they had, in a perverse kind of way, got a little too close to the case and had become blinded by the courses of action they had been following. A fresh start, a thorough recap of all the facts and evidence they had been able to muster so far might open their eyes to new possibilities. Morse knew from his own experiences how easy it was to get side-tracked from logical thought processes or, worse, dangerously fixated on a particular theory or hunch. He had made that mistake enough times already. This would not be a good time to repeat that all too easy mistake.

Part 4

Jim Strange was making his leisurely way back to Cowley Police Station when he unexpectedly bumped into Joan Thursday while he was walking back to where he had parked his car. Normally he would have parked the car right outside the building where he was making his enquiries but recently he had made a promise to himself that he would try to take a bit more exercise than usual so he had got into the habit, when making enquiries on his own, of parking the car some distance away so he was forced to complete his journey on foot. He wouldn't do it when he was making enquiries with another copper in tow, such as George Fancy, to avoid any awkward questions as he was afraid of being laughed at for his rather late in the day attempts at improving his fitness. Besides, he was a little concerned about his annual physical exam, which was fast approaching, after the doctor had given him some fairly stern words of warning a year ago about the quality of his diet and his almost complete lack of physical exercise. A little bit of light, regular walking wouldn't do him any harm, he thought and at least he would be able to reassure the doc honestly and truthfully that he had recently been taking concerted steps to address the issue of his excess baggage. He was keen to convince the medical department that he didn't intend to eat his way into an early grave with a heart attack borne of a constantly potent cocktail of fatty, fried food and zero physical exercise.

His mind was miles away, deep in thought, so much so that he didn't take in at first that it was Joan whom he all but collided with. He instinctively blurted out an apology as you do in that situation when you know you are partly to blame for not concentrating on where you are going but when he saw it was Joan's eyes that were looking at him a trifle accusingly perhaps, he broke out into a broad smile.

'Hello, Joanie!' he exclaimed. 'I'm sorry, that was my fault. I wasn't looking where I was going. Are you all right?'

Joan Thursday reciprocated Strange's warm smile as she stood gazing up at him and slowly shook her head. 'What is it with you coppers that you're always literally bumping into people? You're as bad as Morse, you know, Jim. He's forever trying to knock me off my feet around town. And now you've started doing it. It's not safe for a girl to walk down the street anymore what with you lot trying to knock us over!'

Jim Strange burst out laughing to hide his mild embarrassment at having nearly swept Joan clean off her feet. If he had really collided with her it wouldn't have been a pretty sight, what with his huge physical bulk and her slight, fragile frame. There would have been no prizes for guessing who would have come off worst in that confrontation.

'Point taken,' he said. 'I'll pay more attention next time. So, what are you up to, then?'

'Not a lot,' replied Joan with a shrug of her slender, bare shoulders. 'I've finished work for the day so I'm just…. mooching around town.'

'Well, if you don't have any plans, might I interest you in a spot of lunch? I was on my way back to the nick, but I can easily stop off for a bite to eat if you're up for it.'

'Blimey, Jim. Two lunches together in two days? People will start talking, you know!' She grinned mischievously back at Strange who couldn't stop himself turning a little pink and he stared hard down at the ground to avoid direct eye contact with her. He knew she was only teasing him, but he still felt tongue-tied and awkward, being the big lump that he was compared with this stunningly attractive young woman who he felt would forever be so far out of his league as to be almost from another planet.

'Only if you've nothing on, of course. I wouldn't expect you to change your plans just for me. It was just a thought, that's all.'

'Well, that's very kind and sweet of you, Jim. Ok. Why not?' She smiled encouragingly back at him and Jim Strange's heart missed several beats as her sparkling eyes and warm smile seemed to penetrate the very core of his being. He made a monumental effort to contain his joy and excitement at her acceptance of his kind offer and the two of them continued walking side by side as they discussed possible options for lunch amongst other general topics of conversation.

'So you only work mornings, do you, at this charity?'

Joan nodded. 'For now, yes. It suits me fine, actually. I don't really know what I want to do yet so something part-time which leaves me the afternoons free to have a look round for something more permanent is ideal.'

'Not thinking of joining the police force, are you, Joan?' He meant it as a light-hearted joke but immediately he could see that Joan thought he had meant it as a serious question.

'Oh my God, Jim. Are you kidding me? I'd rather die, I think.'

Jim chuckled at her unambiguous response. 'One copper in the family's enough, is it?'

'One too many already,' she replied emphatically. 'There's no way I want any more coppers in my life. I've got enough trouble dealing with Dad being one without spending my time with any more of them!'

Strange fell silent as they continued walking, pondering at length over Joan's last remarks which had rained down on him like an enormous clap of thunder from the heavens above.

Author's Notes

I've finally managed to catch up on this story in the last week or so and got several chapters ahead of the game again. I hope you enjoyed this latest chapter and are still keen to stick with the story as we gradually head on down to the climax. If you have any comments to make, please feel free to post them – I'd love to get some more feedback, positive or otherwise.