Surrey appears not as the setting of the journey but as a place Joe Silvermann says he will not visit. His brief explanation makes it a small, comic point of character: the county holds bad memories, but the dreadful case behind them was flu.

Mention and Context

Surrey enters a conversation during a drive from Oxford to Littleton. When the discussion turns to places for a country outing, Joe dismisses Surrey while naming it as somewhere he avoids. The journey itself is described as anything but a country drive: plastic bollards, metal signs, and barricades clutter the roads. Surrey is therefore a conversational destination, not the location of the drive.

The Bad Memory

Joe says Surrey holds bad memories and refers to a dreadful case there. Sarah asks whether he means a murder; his answer, flu, abruptly undercuts the expectation of a criminal investigation. The exchange leaves the alleged past incident deliberately slight in detail while making the joke depend on the contrast between the language of a case and its mundane explanation.

Narrative Significance

The reference gives Surrey a narrowly personal association rather than a developed role in the story's geography. Its significance lies in Joe's deadpan deflation: a potentially ominous allusion to a past case resolves into an illness, and the place becomes the setup for his humor.