Free More Than Meets the Eye by J. M. Gregson

their game, so it was very cheap. No doubt that appealed to council staff perennially in pursuit of economies. The slight young man with freckles and ginger hair spoke very little, but he showed a talent for the game unexpected by him as well as those who controlled his life. Ken Jackson persuaded the authorities to buy Alex a yearly ticket for the municipal course; at least one of their charges would be safe from the multiple temptations which beset youth in their great city. The boy improved rapidly, and his fiery red hair made him recognizable from great distances on the fairways, so that his excellence was apparent to all observers.
    When Fraser moved to that strange country called England and that strange district they called the Cotswolds, Ken Jackson had made a few phone calls and arranged for him to join the Ross-on-Wye golf club. Alex’s low handicap secured him immediate entry; every golf club was anxious to have young players of his standard. It was a course set in beautiful country, with the Malvern Hills splendidly visible and scarcely a house in sight. That in itself was strange for Alex Fraser, who had never played on anything but a public course surrounded by housing.
    But the strangest experience of all was belonging to a private golf club. Alex Fraser was still tackling the arcane mysteries of etiquette and precedence that this involved. Perhaps because it was so different from any experience he had ever had before, he was secretly rather enjoying it. The English gentry at play revealed more of themselves than they ever suspected to the shrewd young observer from north of the border. He found it both amusing and instructive. He’d even played a couple of weeks ago with a detective chief superintendent and a detective sergeant, and he’d actually enjoyed it. What would the lads in Glasgow have made of that?
    Alex had taken to riding his battered little motorbike down to the club on summer evenings. Once there, he would either team up with someone for a few holes or hone his considerable skills on the practice ground. He was fit and well fed through his work at Westbourne and hitting golf balls even further and straighter as a result. ‘Keep out of trouble and join a golf club’ had been good advice from Ken Jackson.
    If only he had held to it, life might have continued serenely for Alex Fraser.
    It was Tom Bracey and Matt Garton, the two local apprentice gardeners, who persuaded him to go into Cheltenham for the night. Matt’s brother was having his twenty-first birthday party; a room had been set aside for the celebration in one of the pubs near the centre of the town. It would be a laugh and a good piss-up. They’d arranged a lift to Cheltenham with one of the other gardeners and they’d share a taxi back. A responsible way to end a riotous night.
    â€˜But I’m not invited,’ Alex Fraser objected.
    â€˜Don’t matter,’ said Matt in his confident West Country accent. ‘Our Jake won’t mind us being three instead of two, and after an hour no bugger will give a shit!’
    Secretly, Alex was pleased to be asked, to be included as part of the group. He wasn’t a natural loner. Besides, he’d never been to Cheltenham. He knew its reputation as a quiet spa town, the haunt of retired army colonels and ageing ex-pats. Vicarage tea party this place would be, compared with the Gorbals on a Saturday night.
    All the same, he couldn’t get rid of a strange feeling that he was doing the wrong thing. He decided he’d better take certain precautions, even though it was odds-on that they’d never be needed. ‘Be with you in a minute,’ he called after the others. Then he slipped back to the tallboy in the corner of his tiny cottage bedroom and opened the bottom drawer. He moved the socks aside, stared for a moment at what was beneath them, and slipped it into the pocket of his jeans.
    In the early evening, Julie Hartley watched the three