To all of them it was just another day

 In London, Sir Martin Rolfe, Treasury adviser, had the usual reports to prepare, decisions to make, conferences to attend

 in his overheated office, General Kirk, Intelligence chief, smoked cigars, and imagined he'd got everything taped in Moscow Peter Vanin, civil servant, looked forward to a routine interview, and then to a pleasant evening with his family in Ireland. Kate Reilly, landscape artist, had just primed her canvas for another picture

 in a decayed, suburban house John Flack, madman, smiled at his tin soldiers and scribbled matchstick drawings on torn scraps of paper

 ... until triple murderess Elsie Grant, who had been buried twenty years, started to climb out of her grave