Last Seen Wearing (10 page)

   Morse opened the file. Inside was a cheap brown envelope, already opened, posted the previous day in central London, and addressed to the Thames Valley Police. The letter inside was written on ruled, white note-paper.

Dear Sir,

I heard you are trying to find me, but I don't want you to because I don't want to go back home.

Yours truly, Valerie Taylor.

He handed the letter to Lewis. 'Not the most voluminous of correspondents, our Valerie, is she?'

   He picked up the phone and dialled the lab, and from the slight pause at the other end of the line he knew he must be speaking to the computer itself.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

All women become like their mothers.

That is their tragedy.

(Oscar Wilde)

F
OR THE SECOND
time within twenty-four hours Morse found himself studying a photograph with more than usual interest. Lewis he had left in the office to make a variety of telephone calls, and he himself stood, arms akimbo, staring fixedly at the young girl who stared back at him, equally fixedly, from the wall of the lounge. Slim, with dark-brown hair and eyes that almost asked if you'd dare and a figure that clearly promised it would be wonderful if you found the daring. She was a very attractive girl and, like the elders in Troy who looked for the first time upon Helen, Morse felt no real surprise that she had been the cause of so much trouble.

   'Lovely-looking girl, your daughter.'

   Mrs. Taylor smiled diffidently at the photograph. 'It's not Valerie,' she said, 'it's me.'

   Morse turned with undisguised astonishment in his eyes. 'Really? I didn't realize you were so much alike. I didn't mean to er . . .'

   'I used to be nice-looking, I suppose, in those days. I was seventeen when that was taken—over twenty years ago. It seems a long time.'

   Morse watched her as she spoke. Her figure was a good deal thicker round the hips now, and her legs, though still slim, were faintly lined with varicose veins. But it was her face that had changed the most: a few wisps of greying hair trailed over the worn features, the teeth yellowing, the flesh around the throat no longer quite so firm. But she was still . . . Men were luckier, he thought; they seemed to age much less perceptibly than women. On a low cupboard against the right-hand wall behind her stood an elegant, delicately proportioned porcelain vase. Somehow it seemed to Morse so incongruously tasteful and expensive in this drably furnished room, and he found himself staring at it with a slightly puzzled frown.

   They talked for half an hour or so, mostly about Valerie; but there was nothing she could add to what she had told so many people so many times before. She recalled the events of that far-off day like a nervous well-rehearsed pupil in a history examination. But that was no surprise to Morse. After all, as Phillipson had reminded him the previous evening, it
was
rather an important day. He asked her about herself and learned she had recently taken a job, just mornings, at the Cash and Carry stores—stocking up the shelves mostly; tiring, on her feet most of the time, but it was better than staying at home all day, and nice to have some money of her own. Morse refrained from asking how much she spent on drink and cigarettes but there was something that he had to ask.

   'You won't be upset, Mrs. Taylor, if I ask you one or two rather personal questions, will you?'

   'I shouldn't think so.'

   She leaned back on the crimson settee and lit another cigarette, her hand shaking slightly. Morse felt he ought to have realized it before. He could see it in the way she sat, legs slightly parted, the eyes still throwing a distant, muted invitation. There was an overt if faded sensuality about the woman. It was almost tangible. He took a deep breath.

   'Did you know that Valerie was pregnant when she disappeared?'

   Her eyes grew almost dangerous. 'She wasn't pregnant. I'm her mother, remember? Whoever told you that was a bloody liar.' The voice was harsher now, and cheaper. The facade was beginning to crack, and Morse found himself wondering about her. Husband away; long, lonely days and daughter home only at lunchtimes—and that only during Valerie's last year at school.

   He hadn't meant to ask his next question. It was one of those things that wasn't really anyone else's business. It had struck him, of course, the first time he had glanced at the Colour Supplement: the cards for the eighteenth wedding anniversary, and Valerie at the time almost twenty—or would have been, had she still been alive. He took another deep breath.

   'Was Valerie your husband's child, Mrs. Taylor?'

   The question struck home and she looked away. 'No. I had her before I knew George.'

   'I see,' said Morse gently.

   At the door she turned towards him. 'Are you going to see him?' Morse nodded. 'I don't mind what you ask him but . . . but please don't mention anything about . . . about what you just asked me. He was like a father to her always but he . . . he used to get teased a lot about Valerie when we were first married especially . . . especially since we didn't have any kids ourselves. You know what I mean. It hurt him, I know it did, and . . . and I don't want him hurt, Inspector. He's been a good man to me; he's always been a good man to me.'

   She spoke with a surprising warmth of feeling and as she spoke Morse could see the lineaments of an erstwhile beauty in her face. He heard himself promise that he wouldn't. Yet he found himself wondering who Valerie's real father had been, and if it might be important for him to find out. If he
could
find out. If anyone knew—including Valerie's mother.

   As he walked slowly away he wondered something else, too. There had been something, albeit hardly perceptible, something slightly off-key about Mrs. Taylor's nervousness; just a little more than the natural nervousness of meeting a strange man—even a strange policeman. It was more like the look he had several times witnessed on his secretary's face when he had burst unexpectedly into her office and found her hastily and guiltily covering up some personal little thing that she hoped he hadn't seen. Had there been someone else in the house during his interview with Mrs. Taylor? He thought so. In an instant he turned on his heel and spun round to face the house he had just left—and he saw it. The right-hand curtain of an upstairs window twitched slightly and a vague silhouette glided back against the wall. It was over in a flash. The curtain was still; all sign of life was gone. A cabbage-white butterfly stitched its way along the privet hedge—and then that, too, was gone.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Even the dustbin lid is raised mechanically

At the very last moment

You could dispose of a corpse like this

Without giving the least offence.

(D. J. Enright,
No Offence: Berlin)

I
T OCCURED TO
Morse as he drove down the Woodstock Road into Oxford that although he had done most things in life he had never before had occasion to visit a rubbish tip. In fact, as he turned into Walton Street and slowed to negotiate the narrowing streets that led down to Jericho, he could not quite account for the fact that he knew exactly where to go. He passed Aristotle Lane and turned right into Walton Well Road, over the hump-backed bridge that spanned the canal, and stopped the Lancia beside an open gate, where a notice informed him that unauthorized vehicles were not allowed to drive further and that offenders would be prosecuted by an official with (it seemed to Morse) the portentous title of Conservator and Sheriff of Port Meadow. He slipped the car into first gear and drove on, deciding that he would probably qualify in the 'authorized' category, and rather hoping that someone would stop him. But no one did. He made his way slowly along the concreted pathway, a thin belt of trees on his right and the open green expanse of Port Meadow on his left. Twice when corporation lorries came towards him he was forced off the track on to the grass, before coming finally to the edge of the site, where a high wooden gate over a deep cattle-grid effectively barred all further progress. He left the car and proceeded on foot, noting, as he passed another sign, that members of the public would be ill-advised to touch any materials deposited on the tip, treated as they were with harmful insecticides. He had gone more than 200 yards before he caught his first sight of genuine rubbish. The compacted surface over which he walked was flat and clear, scored by the caterpillar tracks of bulldozers and levellers, with only the occasional partially submerged piece of sacking to betray the burial of the thousands of tons of rubbish beneath. Doubtless grass and shrubs would soon be burgeoning there, and the animals would return to their old territories and scurry once more in the hedgerows amid the bracken and the wild flowers. And people would come and scatter their picnic litter around and the whole process would begin again. Sometimes
Homo sapiens
was a thoroughly disgusting species.

   He made his way towards the only observable sign of life—a corrugated-iron shack, once painted green but ramshackle now and rusty, where an indescribably grimy labourer directed him deeper into the network of filth. Two magpies and an ominous-looking crow reluctantly took to flight as he walked by, and flapped their slow way across the blighted wilderness. At last Morse came to the main area of the tip: Pepsi and Coca-Cola tins, perished household gloves, lengths of rusting wire, empty cartons of washing-up liquid, and a disintegrating dart-board; biscuit tins, worn-out shoes, a hot-water bottle, ancient car seats and a comprehensive collection of cardboard boxes. Morse swatted away the ugly flies that circled his head, and was glad to find he had one last cigarette left. He threw the empty packet away; it didn't seem to matter much here.

   George Taylor was standing beside a yellow bulldozer, shouting to its driver above the deep-throated growl of the engine, and pointing towards a great mound of earth and stones piled like a rampart along the side of the shallow tip. Morse idly conjured up the image of some archaeologist who, some thousand years hence, might seek to discover the life-style of twentieth-century man, and Morse commiserated with him on the dismal debris he would find.

   George was a heavily built, broad-shouldered man, not too intelligent, perhaps, but, as Morse saw him, honest and likeable enough. He sat down upon a ten-gallon paraffin tin, Morse himself having declined the offer of similar accommodation, supposing that by this time George's trousers were probably immune from the harmful effects of all insecticides. And so they talked, and Morse tried to picture the scene as it must have been each night in the Taylor household: George arriving home, dirty and tired, at 6.15 or thereabouts; Mrs. Taylor cooking the evening meal and washing up the pots; and Valerie—but what did he know of Valerie? Occasionally condescending to do a modicum of homework? He didn't know. Three isolated personalities, under the same roof, somehow brought and kept together by that statistical unit beloved by the sociologists—the family. Morse asked about Valerie—her life at home, her life at school, her friends, her likes and her dislikes; but he learned little that was new.

   'Have you ever thought that Valerie may have run away because she was expecting a baby?'

   George slowly lit a Woodbine and contemplated the broken glass that littered the ground at his feet. 'You think of most things, don't you, when summat like that happens. I remembered when she were a young gal she were a bit late sometimes—and I used to think all sorts of things had happened.' Morse nodded. 'You got a family, Inspector?'

   Morse shook his head and, like George, contemplated the ground about his feet.

   ' 'S funny, really. You think of the most terrible things. And then she'd come back and you'd feel all sort of happy and cross at the same time, if you know what I mean.'

   Morse thought he knew; and for the first time in the case he saw something of the heartache and the sorrow of it all, and he began to hope that Valerie Taylor was still alive.

   'Was she often late coming home?'

   George hesitated. 'Not really. Well, not till she were about sixteen, anyway.'

   'And then she was?'

   'Well, not too late. Anyway, I allus used to wait up for her.'

   Morse put it more bluntly. 'Did she ever stay out all night?'

   'Never.' It was a firm and categorical answer, but Morse wondered if it were true.

   'When was the latest she came in? After midnight?' George nodded rather sadly. 'Much after?'

   'Sometimes.'

   'Rows, were there?'

   'The wife got cross, of course. Well, so did I, really.'

   'She often stayed out late, then?'

   'Well, no. Not often. Just once every few weeks, like, she'd say she was going to a party with her friends, or summat like that.' He rubbed his hand across his stubbled chin and shook his head. 'These days it's not like it was when we was boys. I don't know.'

   They brooded silently and George kicked a flattened Coca-Cola tin a few yards further away.

   'Did you give her much pocket money?' asked Morse.

   'Quid a week—sometimes a bit more. And at weekends she used to work on the till down the supermarket. Used to spend it on clothes mostly—shoes, that sort of thing. She was never short of money.'

   With a powerful snarl the bulldozer shovelled a few more cubic yards of earth across a stinking stretch of refuse, and then slowly retreated to manoeuvre diagonally into position behind the next heap, criss-crossing the ground with the patterned tracks that Morse had noticed earlier. And as the gleaming teeth of the scoop dug again into the crumbling soil, something stirred vaguely in the back of Morse's mind; but George was speaking again.

   'That inspector what was killed, you know, he came to see me a few weeks back.'

   Morse stood very still and held his breath, as if the slightest movement might be fatal. His question would appear, he hoped, to spring from casual curiosity.

   'What did he want to see you about, Mr. Taylor?'

   ' 'S funny really. He asked me the same as you. You know, about Valerie staying out at nights.'

   Morse's blood ran slightly cold, and his grey eyes looked into the past and seemed to catch a glimpse of what had happened all that time ago . . . Another corporation lorry rumbled up the slight incline, ready to stock-pile the latest consignment of rubbish, and George stood up to direct proceedings.

   'Not been much help, I'm afraid, Inspector.'

   Morse shook George's dirty, calloused hand, and prepared to leave.

   'Do you think she's alive, Inspector?'

   Morse looked at him curiously. 'Do you?'

   'Well, there's the letter, isn't there, Inspector?'

   For some strange, intuitive reason Morse felt the question had somehow been wrong, and he frowned slightly as he watched George Taylor walk over to the lorry. Yes, there was the letter, and he hoped now that Valerie had written it, but . . .

   He stood where he was and looked around him.

   How would you like to be stuck in a filthy hole like this, Morse—probably for the rest of your life? And when anyone calls to see you, all you can offer is an old ten-gallon paraffin tin sprayed with harmful insecticide. You've got your own black leather chair and the white carpet and the desk of polished Scandinavian oak. Some people are luckier than others.

   As he walked away the yellow bulldozer nudged its nose into another pile of earth; and soon the leveller would come and gradually smooth over the clay surface, like a passable cook with the chocolate icing on a cake.