Death Is Now My Neighbour (39 page)

He'd written to Julian not to me, and he'd done his homework properly. He knew I'd been a call-girl (sounds better, doesn't it?). He knew about Julian's latest floozie. And he knew about Julian's illness and guessed he was hiding it from the College. He said he'd be ringing and he did, and they met in the Chapters' Bar at The Randolph. All Owens wanted was money, it seems, and Julian's never been short of that. But Julian played it cool and he went back to the bar later on and had a bit of luck because one of the barmaids knew who Owens was because he'd covered quite a few functions there for the newspapers. We didn't need to hire a detective to find his address because it was in the phone-book!

I knew what I was doing that morning because I'd already driven round the area twice and I'd done my homework too. I parked on the main road above the terrace and got through a gap in the fence down to the back. I don't think I meant to shoot him but just frighten him to death if I could and let him know that he'd never be able to feel safe in life again if he kept on with his blackmail. Then I saw him behind the kitchen blind, and I suddenly realized how ridiculously easy it would be to solve all our problems. It wouldn't take more than a single second. I knew he lived alone, and I knew this must be him. His head was only a couple of feet away and I saw the pony-tail tha
t Julian had told me about. I'd
planned to knock on the door and go in and sort things out. But I didn't. I just fired point-blank and that was that. There was a huge thud and a splintering noise and lots of smoke, but only for a second it seemed. Next thing I remember I was sitting in the car trembling all over and expecting to see people rushing around and police sirens and all that. But there was nothing. A few cars drove by and a paper-boy rode past on his bicycle.

It was all a bit like a nightmare I've often had -standing on top of some high building with no rail in front of me and knowing it would be so easy to jump off, and if I did jump off, that would be the end of everything. In the nightmare I was always just about going to jump off when I woke up sweating and terrified. It was the same sort of thing at that window. It was like somebody saying 'Do it!' And I did it. Julian knew what happened but he didn't have anything to do with it.

We planned the second murder together, though. Nothing to lose, was there?

Julian knew someone must have shopped him down at the clinic and he soon found out it was Dawn Charles. So we had the hold on her now and it wasn't difficult to get her to co-operate. She'd got money problems and Julian promised to help if she did what we wanted. Which wasn't much really.

Things went as we planned them. Julian drove down to Bath in the BMW and I followed in my car. He went M4.1 went Burford way. He booked in and left his car in the hotel
garage. I left my car in one of
the side-streets behind the hotel. Dawn Charles went by train to Bath changing at Didcot, so Julian told me. She booked into the hotel as herself of course. After we got back from the Abbey, Julian and I had dinner together, and then I left. Julian rang Dawn Charles on the internal phone system and all she had to do was to walk across the garden. I drove back to Oxford and then up to Bicester where I'd got the key to Dawn's flat. It would have been far too risky to go back to Polstead Road.

Unless Julian persuaded her to sleep in the raw Dawn wore my pyjamas, and the hotel-girl took them breakfast in bed the next morning. Mistake about all that sugar, I agree! Dawn Charles is my sort of height and shape, so Julian tells me, and if she wore something that was obviously mine there wouldn't be much of a problem. The whole thing was very neat really. It didn't matter if she was seen round the hotel or if I was, because both of us were staying there officially.

I'd phoned Owens to arrange everything and last Sunday morning I drove round to Bloxham Drive again. Probably he'd have been more wary if I'd been a man instead of a woman but I told him I'd have the money with me. So he said he'd meet me and have a signed letter ready promising he wouldn't try any more blackmail. I went down the slope at the back like before and knocked on the right door this time. It was about a quarter past seven when he let me in and we went through to his front room. I don't think either of us
spoke. He was standing there in
front of the settee and I took the pistol out of my shopping bag and shot him twice and left him there for dead.

Angela Storrs 11.3.1996

(As it happened, Lewis was not to read this final version. Had he done so, he might have felt rather surprised -and a
little
superior? - to notice that his own 'burnt sienna' had been amended to 'burnt Siena', since he had taken the trouble to look up that colour in
Chambers,
and had spelt it accordingly.)

Be
lbroughton Road is bonny, and pinkly burst the spray Of prunus and forsythia across the public way, For a full spring-tide of blossom seethed and departed hence, Leaving land-locked pools of jonquils by a sunny garden fence (John Betjeman,
May-Day Song
for North Oxford)

Spring was
particularly beautiful, if late, in North Oxford that year, and even Morse, whose only potential for floral exhibitionism was a small window-box, much enjoyed the full-belled daffodils and the short-lived violets, though not the crocuses.

Sir Clixby Bream received a letter from Julian Storrs on Tuesday,
12
March. Both contestants had now withdrawn from the Mastership Stakes. At an Extraordinary General Meeting held the next day in the Stamper Room, the Fellows of Lonsdale had
little
option but to extend yet again the term of the incumbent Master; and by a majority vote to call in the 'Visitor', that splendidly tided dignitary (usually an archbishop) whose right and duty it was, and is, periodica
lly to inspect and to report on
College matters, and to advise and to intervene in any such disputatious circumstances as Lonsdale,
omnium consensu,
now found itself. An outside appointment seemed a certainty. But Sir Clixby accepted the situation philosophically, as was his wont
..
. and the College lawns were beginning to look immaculate again. Life had to go on, even if Denis Cornford was now a broken man, with Julian Storrs awaiting new developments - and death.

Adele Beatrice Cecil had rece
ntly
learned that the membership of the Young Conservatives had fallen from
500,000
twenty years earlier to
5,000
in January
1996;
and anyway she had for several weeks been contemplating a change in her lifestyle. Morse may have been right in one way, she thought -
only
one way, though - in suggesting that it was the personnel rather than the policies which were letting the Party down. Yes, it might be time for a change; and on Wednesday,
13
March, she posted off her resignation to Conservative Central Office. She did so with deep regret, yet she knew she was never destined to be idle. She could write English compete
ntly
, she knew that; as indeed did Morse; as did also her publishers, Erotica Press, who had rece
ntly
requested an equally sexy sequel to
Topless in Torremolinos.
And already a nice
little
idea was burgeoning in her brain almost as vigorously as the wall-flowers she'd planted the previous autumn: an idea about an older man - well, say a whitish-haired man who wasn't
quite
so old as he looked - and a woman who was considerably younger, about her own age, say. Age difference, in heterosexual encounters, was ever a guaranteed 'turn-on', so her editor confided.

One man was to conti
nue his officially unemployed status for the remainder of the spring; and probably indefinitely thereafter, although he was a
little
troubled by the rumour that the Social Security system was likely to be less sympathetic in the future. For the moment, however, he appeared to be adequately funded, judging from his virtually permanent presence in the local pubs and betting-shops. It was always going to be difficult for any official down in the Job Centre to refute his claim that the remuneration offered for some of their 'employment opportunities' could never compensate for his customary lifestyle: he was a recognized artist; and if anyone doubted his word, there was a man living in North Oxford who would always be willing to give him a reference
...

On the mantelpiece in his bedroom, the
little
ormolu clock ticked on, keeping excellent time.

In the immediate aftermath of Mrs Storrs' arrest, Sergeant Lewis found himself extremely busy, happily i/c the team of companionable DCs assigned to him. So many enquiries remained to be made; so many statements to be taken down and duly typed; so many places to be visited and revisited: Soho, Bloxham Drive, the newspaper offices, the Harvey Clinic, Polstead Road, Lonsdale College, Wo
odpecker Way, The Randolph, the
Royal Crescent Hotel
...
He had met Morse for lunch on th
e Wednesday and had listened pati
e
ntly
as a rather self-congratulatory Chief Inspector remembered a few of the more crucial moments in the case: when, for example, he had associated that photograph of the young Soho stripper with that of the don's wife at Lonsdale; when the elega
ntly
leggy Banbury Road receptionist had so easily slipped alongside that same don's wife in a chorus line at the Windmill. That lunchtime, however, Lewis's own crucial contributions to such dramatic developments were never even mentioned, let alone singled out for special praise.

Late on Thursday evening, Morse was walking home from the Cotswold House after a generous measure of Irish whiskey (with an 'e', as the proprietor ever insisted) when a car slowed down beside him, the front passenger window electronically lowered. 'Can I give you a lift anywhere?'

'Hello!
No, thank you. I only live
...'
Morse gestured vaguely up towards the
A40
roundabout. 'Everything OK with you?'

'Will be - if you'd like to come along and inspect my penthouse suite.'

'I th
ought
you said it was a flat'

Though clearly surprised to find Morse in his office over the Friday lunch-period, Strange refrained from his usual raillery.

'Can you nip in to see me a bit later this afternoon about these retirement forms?' 'Let's do it
now, sir.' 'What's the rush?' ‘I’
m off this afternoon.' 'Official, is that?' 'Yes, sir.'

Strange eyed Morse shrewdly. 'Why are you looking so bloody cheerful?'

'Well, another case solved
...
?'

'Mm. Where's Lewis, by the way?'

'There's
still
an awful lot of work to do.'

'Why aren't you helping him then?'

'Like I say, sir, I'm off for the weekend.'

You're lucky, matey. The wife's booked
me
for the lawn-mower.'

'I've just got the window-box myself.'

'Anything in it?'

Morse shook his head, perhaps a
little
sadly. 'You, er, going anywhere special?' asked Chief Superintendent Strange.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you (Philip Larkin,
This Be the Verse)

For several seconds
after she opened her eyes, Janet McQueen had no idea whatsoever about where she was or what she'd been doing. Then, as she lay there in the green sheets, gradually it flooded back
...

'Ah! Can I perhaps begin to guess our destination?' she'd asked, as the car turned left at Junction
18
and headed south along the
A46.
'B&B in Bath - is that what it's going to be?' You'll see.'

As she
had
seen, for soon the Jaguar turned into the Circus, into Brock Street, and finally straight across a cobbled road, where it stopped beside a large magnolia tree. She looked at the hotel, and her green eyes

' widened as she brought her ringless, manicured fingers together in a semblance of prayer. 'Beautiful!'

Morse had turned towards her then, as she sat beside him in her navy pin-striped suit; sat beside him in her V-necked emerald-silk blouse.

You're beautiful, too, Janet,' he said simply, and qui
etly
.

You've booked rooms for us
here?'

Morse nodded. 'Bit over the top, I know - but, yes, I've booked the Sarah Siddons suite for myself.'

'What have you booked for me?'

'That's also called the Sarah Siddons suite.'

She was smiling contentedly as the Concierge opened the passenger-seat door.

'Welcome to the Royal Crescent Hotel, madam!'