Skinner's festival

48

Reported sightings of Typhoid Mary began to flood the Fettes switchboard, from the moment the first reports were broadcast.

Indeed the earliest claims were made even before the first edition of the Evening News had hit the streets, giving her photograph page-one prominence.

As Skinner had surmised, all the calls were fruitless. Members of the public from as far afield as Barra and Lerwick called in to declare that they had seen the native American fugitive, but although these sightings were all followed up, none was even close to the mark. The only action that the police saw was when a young lady with a pronounced Sloane Ranger accent was detained in Shetland, before being identified as the daughter of a minor peer, on a back-packing tour of the Scottish Islands.

As Thursday stretched into Friday with no sign of further action by the Fighters, Skinner was able to report an incident-free twenty-four hours at the next morning's briefing.