But he couldn’t do it. Just like all the other times he had tried and failed. He had such a forlorn expression on his face, such a hopelessness about him. His eyes pleaded with her, and this time, almost without thinking, she walked over to him, tenderly wrapped her hand around his, kissed his forehead and pressed his finger on the trigger.
Outside Starke Prison the crowd was dancing and chanting, shaking up bottles and spraying beer at each other. In the hotel room, Vivian Elmsley let her tears flow freely for the first time in more than fifty years and reached again for her gin.
Acknowledgements
Many people helped, both directly and indirectly, with this book. On the writing side, I would particularly like to thank my wife, Sheila, for her perceptive first reading and my agent, Dominick Abel, for his encouragement and hard work. Special thanks to my editor at Avon, Patricia Lande Grader, for her faith and for pushing me to the limit, and to Cynthia Good at Penguin for keeping me on track, as ever. I would also like to thank Robert Barnard for reading and commenting on the manuscript, and copy editors Mary Adachi and Erika Schmid for spotting those important details the rest of us overlooked.
Then there are those who helped me reconstruct the past. Thanks to my father, Clifford Robinson, for sharing his wartime memories of Yorkshire; to Jimmy Williamson for informing me about the war in Burma; to Dan Harrington, USAFE History Officer, for patiently answering my E-mail messages; to Jack McFadyen for tracking down the uniforms and buttons; and to Dr Aaron Elkins for his help with the forensic anthropology. Also, thanks to Dr. Jeffrey Shnall for the dental information.
A number of police officers also answered my questions, and if I got any of it wrong, it’s not their fault. Thanks to Detective Sergeant Keith Wright, as ever, and to the crowd who drink in The Whale: Sergeant Claire Stevens, Chief Inspector Phil Gormley and Detective Inspector Alan Young. Particular thanks to Alan for the tour of the police station and the pint in the police bar afterwards.
Last but not least, thanks to John Halladay, of the Law faculty at the University of Buckingham and to Judith Rhodes, of the Leeds Library Services, for answering a variety of questions.
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In a Dry Season Page 44