Last Seen Wearing (12 page)

   'Did you ever teach Valerie yourself?' asked Morse.

   Baines chuckled. 'In the first form—just for a year. She didn't know a trapezium from a trampoline.'

   Morse grinned, too. 'Did you like her?'

   It was a sobering question, and the shrewdness gleamed again in Baines's eyes.

   'She was all right.' But it was an oddly unsatisfactory answer and Baines sensed it. He went on glibly about her academic prowess, or lack of it, and veered off into an anecdote about the time he'd found forty-two different spellings of 'isosceles' in a first-year examination.

   'Do you know Mrs. Taylor?'

   'Oh, yes.' He stood up and suggested there was just time for another pint. Morse knew that the momentum had been broken, quite deliberately, and he felt very tempted to refuse. But he didn't. Anyway, he was going to ask Baines a rather delicate favour.

Morse slept fitfully that night. Broken images littered his mind, like the broken glass strewn about the rubbish tip. He tossed and turned; but the merry-go-round was out of control, and at 3.00 a.m. he got up to make himself a cup of tea. Back in bed, with the light left on, he tried to concentrate his closed, swift-darting eyes on to a point about three inches in front of his nose, and gradually the spinning mechanism began to slow down, slower and slower, and then it stopped. He dreamed of a beautiful girl slowly unbuttoning her low-cut blouse and swaying her hips sensuously above him as she slid down the zip at the side of her skirt. And then she put her long slim fingers up to her face and moved the mask aside, and he saw the face of Valerie Taylor.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I am a man under authority.

(Matthew, viii, 9)

I
T WASN'T TOO
bad working with Morse. Odd sort of chap, sometimes, and should have got himself married long ago; everybody said that. But it wasn't too bad. He'd worked with him before, and enjoyed it most of the time. Sometimes he seemed a very ordinary sort of fellow. The real trouble was that he always had to find a complex solution to everything, and Lewis had enough experience of police work to know that most criminal activity owed its origins to simple, cheap, and sordid motives, and that few of the criminals themselves had sufficiently intelligent or tortuous minds to devise the cunning stratagems that Morse was wont to attribute to them. In Morse's mind the simple facts of any case seemed somewhere along the line to get fitted out with hooks and eyes which rendered the possibility of infinite associations and combinations. What the great man couldn't do, for all his gifts, was put a couple of simple facts together and come up with something obvious. The letters from Valerie were a case in point. The first one, Peters had said, was pretty certainly written by Valerie herself. Why then not work on the assumption that it was
,
and go on from there? But no. Morse had to believe the letter was forged, just because it would fit better with some fantastical notion that itself owed its abortive birth to some equally improbable hypothesis. And then there was the second letter. Morse hadn't said much about that; probably learned his lesson. But even if he had to accept that Valerie Taylor had written the letters, he would never be prepared to believe anything so simple as the fact that she'd got fed up with home and with school, and had just gone off, as hundreds of other girls did every year. Then why not Valerie? The truth was that Morse would find it all too easy; no fit challenge for that thoroughbred mind of his. Yes, that was it.

   Lewis began to wish he could have a few days on his own in London; use his own initiative. He might find
something.
After all, Ainley probably had—well, according to Morse he had. But there again the chief was only guessing. There was no evidence for it. Wasn't it far more likely that Ainley hadn't found anything? If he was killed on the very day that he'd actually found some vital clue—after well over two years of finding nothing—it would be a huge coincidence. Too big. But no. Morse himself took such coincidences blithely in his stride.

He went to the canteen for a cup of tea and sat down by Constable Dickson.

   'Solved the murder yet, sarge?'

   'What murder?'

   Dickson grinned. 'Now don't tell me they've put old Morse on a missing persons case, 'cause I shan't believe you. Come on, sarge, spill the beans.'

   'No beans to spill,' said Lewis.

   'Come off it! I was on the Taylor business, too, you know. Searched everywhere we did—even dragged the reservoir.'

   'Well, you didn't find the body. And if you don't have the body, Dickson boy, you don't have a murder, do you?'

   'Ainley thought she was bumped off, though, didn't he?'

   'Well, there's always the possibility, but . . . Look here, Dickson.' He swivelled round in his chair and faced the constable. 'You kill somebody, right? And you've got a body on your hands, right? How do you get rid of it? Come on, tell me.'

   'Well, there's a hundred and one ways.'

   'Such as?'

   'Well, for a start, there's the reservoir.'

   'But that was dragged, you say.'

   Dickson looked mildly contemptuous. 'Yes, but I mean. A bloody great reservoir like that. You'd need a bit of luck, wouldn't you, sarge.'

   'What else?'

   'There was that furnace in the school boiler room. Christ, you wouldn't find much trace if they stuck you in there.'

   'The boiler room was kept locked.'

   'Come off it! S'posed to have been, you mean. Anyway,
somebody's
got keys.'

   'You're not much help, are you, Dickson?'

   'Could have been buried easy enough, couldn't she? It's what usually happens to dead bodies, eh, sarge?' He was inordinately amused by his own joke, and Lewis left him alone in his glory.

   He returned to the office and sat down opposite the empty chair. Whatever he thought about Morse it wasn't much fun without him . . .

   He thought about Ainley.
He
hadn't known about the letters. If he had . . . Lewis was puzzled. Why
hadn't
Morse worried more about the letters? Surely the two of them should be in London, not sitting on their backsides here in Kidlington. Morse was always saying they were a team, the two of them. But they didn't function as a team at all. Sometimes he got a pat on the back, but mostly he just did what the chief told him to. Quite right and proper, too. But he would dearly love to try the London angle. He could always suggest it, of course. Why not? Why indeed not? And if he found Valerie and proved Morse wrong? Not that he wanted to prove him wrong really, but Morse was such an obstinate blighter. In Lewis's garden ambition was not a weed that sprouted freely.

   He noted that Morse had obviously read the notes he had made, and felt mildly gratified. Morse must have come back to the office after seeing the Taylors; and Lewis wondered what wonderful edifice his superior officer had managed to erect on the basis of those two interviews.

   The phone rang and he answered it. It was Peters.

   'Tell Inspector Morse it's the same as before. Different pen, different paper, different envelope, different postmark. But the verdict's the same as before.'

   'Valerie Taylor wrote it, you mean?'

   Peters paused. 'I didn't say that, did I? I said the verdict's the same as before.'

   'Same odds as before, then?'

   He paused. 'The degree of probability is just about the same.'

   Lewis thanked him and decided to communicate the information immediately. Morse had told him that if anything important came up, a message would always get through to him. Surely this was important enough? And while he was on the phone he would mention that idea of his. Sometimes it was easier on the phone.

   He learned that Morse was in the witness box, but that he should be finished soon. Morse would ring back, and did so an hour later.

   'What do you want, Lewis? Have you found the corpse?'

   'No, sir. But Peters rang.'

   'Did he now?' A note of sudden interest crept into Morse's voice. 'And what did the old twerp have to say, this time?' Lewis told him and felt surprised at the mild reception given to this latest intelligence. 'Thanks for letting me know. Look, Lewis, I've finished here now and I'm thinking of taking the afternoon off. I had a bloody awful night's sleep and I think I'll go to bed. Look after my effects, won't you?'

   To Lewis, he seemed to have lost interest completely. He'd tried his best to make a murder out of it; and now he'd learned he'd failed, he'd decided to go to bed! It was as good a time as any to mention that other little thing.

   'I was just wondering, sir. Don't you think it might be a good idea if I went up to London. You know—make a few inquiries, have a look round—'

   Morse interrupted him angrily from the other end of the line. 'What the hell are you talking about, man? If you're going to work with me on this case, for God's sake get one thing into that thick skull of yours, d'you hear? Valerie Taylor isn't living in London or anywhere else. You got that? She's dead.' The line was dead, too.

Lewis walked out of the office and slammed the door behind him. Dickson was in the canteen; Dickson was always in the canteen.

   'Solved the murder yet, sarge?'

   'No I have not,' snarled Lewis. 'And nor has Inspector bloody Morse.'

   He sat alone in the farthest corner and stirred his coffee with controlled fury.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

'Tis a strange thing, Sam, that among us people can't agree the whole week because they go different ways upon Sundays.

(George Farquhar)

T
HE BRIEF INDIAN SUMMER
, radiant and beneficent, was almost at an end. On Friday evening the forecast for the weekend was unsettled, changeable weather with the possibility of high winds and rain; and Saturday was already appreciably cooler, with dark clouds from the west looming over North Oxfordshire. Gloomily the late-night weatherman revealed to the nation a map of the British Isles almost obliterated by a series of close, concentric millibars with their epicentrum somewhere over Birmingham, and prophesied in minatory tones of weak fronts and associated depressions. Sunday broke gusty and raw, and although the threatened rain storm held its hand, there was, at 9.00 a.m., a curiously deadened, almost dreamlike quality about the early morning streets, and the few people there were seemed to move as in a silent film.

   From Carfax (at the centre of Oxford) Queen Street leads westwards, very soon changing its name to Park End Street; and off Park End Street on the left-hand side and just opposite the railway station, is Kempis Street, where stands a row of quietly senescent terraced houses. At five minutes past nine the door of one of these houses is opened, and a man walks to the end of the street, opens the faded-green doors of his garage and backs out his car. It is a dull black car, irresponsive, even in high summer, to any glancing sunbeams, and the chrome on the front and rear bumpers is rusted to a dirty brown. It is time he bought a new car, and indeed he has more than enough money to do so. He drives to St. Giles' and up the Woodstock Road. It would be slightly quicker and certainly more direct to head straight up the Banbury Road; but he wishes to avoid the Banbury Road. At the top of the Woodstock Road he turns right along the ring-road for some three or four hundred yards and turns left at the Banbury Road roundabout. Here he increases his speed to a modest 45 m.p.h. and passes out of Oxford and down the long, gentle hill that leads to Kidlington. Here (inconspicuously, he hopes) he leaves his car in a side street which is only a few minutes' walk from the Roger Bacon Comprehensive School. It is a strange decision. It is more than that; it is an incomprehensible decision. He walks fairly quickly, pulling his trilby hat further over his eyes and hunching deeper into his thick, dark overcoat. He walks up the slight incline, passing the prefabricated hut in which the Clerk of Works directs (and will direct) the perpetual and perennial alterations and extensions to the school, and as deviously as he can he penetrates the sprawling amalgam of outbuildings, permanent and temporary, wherein the pupils of secondary school age are initiated into the mysteries of the Sciences and the Humanities. Guardedly his eyes glance hither and thither, but there is no one to be seen. Thence over the black tarmac of the central play area and towards the two-storeyed, flat-roofed central administrative block, newly built in yellow brick. The main door is locked; but he has a key. He enters quietly and unlocks the door. Within, there is a deathly silence about the familiar surroundings; his footsteps echo on the parquet flooring, and the smell of the floor polish takes him back to times of long ago. Again he looks around him and quickly mounts the stairs. The door to the secretary's office is locked; but he has a key, and enters and locks the door behind him. He walks over to the headmaster's study. The door is locked; but he has a key, and enters and feels a sudden fear. But there is no reason for the fear. He walks over to a large filing cabinet. It is locked; but he has a key, and opens it and takes out a file marked 'Staff Appointments'. He flicks through the thick file and replaces it; tries another; and another. At last he finds it. It is a sheet of paper he has never seen before; but it contains no surprises, for he has known its contents all along. In the office outside he turns on the electric switch of the copying machine. It takes only thirty seconds to make two copies (although he has been asked for only one). Carefully he replaces the original document in the filing cabinet, relocks the study door, unlocks and relocks the outer door, and makes his way down the stairs. Stealthily he looks outside. It is five minutes to ten. There is no one in sight as he lets himself out, relocks the main door and leaves the school premises. He is lucky. No one has seen him and he retraces his steps. A man is standing on the pavement by the car, but moves on, guiltily tugging a small white dog along the pavement and momentarily deferring the imminent defecation.

This same Sunday morning Sheila Phillipson is picking up the windfalls under the apple trees. The grass needs cutting again, for in spite of the recent weeks of sunshine a few dark ridges of longish grass are sprouting in dark-green patches; and with rain apparently imminent, she will mention it to Donald. Or will she? He has been touchy and withdrawn this last week—almost certainly because of that girl! It is unlike him, though. Hereto he has assumed the duties and responsibilities of the headship with a verve and a confidence that have slightly surprised her. No. It isn't like him to worry. There must be something more to it; something wrong somewhere.

   She stands with the basket of apples on her arm and looks around: the tall fencing that keeps them so private, the bushes and shrubs and ground-cover that blend so wonderfully with their variegated greens. It is almost terrifyingly beautiful. And the more she treasures it all the more frightened she is that she may lose it all. How she wants to keep everything just as it is! And as she stands beneath the apple-heavy boughs her face grows hard and determined. She
will
keep it all—for Donald, for the children, for herself. She will let nothing and no one take it from her!

   Donald comes out to join her and says (praise be!) that it's high time he cut the grass again, and greets the promise of apple pie for dinner with a playfully loving kiss upon her cheek. Perhaps after all she is worrying herself over nothing.

   At midday the beef and the pie are in the oven, and as she prepares the vegetables she watches him cutting the lawn. But the shaded patterns of the parallel swaths seem not so neat as usual—and suddenly she bangs her hands upon the window and shouts hysterically: 'Donald! For God's—' So nearly, so very nearly has he chewed up the electric flex of the lead with the blades of the mower. She has read of a young boy doing just that only a week ago: instantly and tragically fatal.

The Senior Tutor's secretary has had to come into Lonsdale College this Sunday morning. In common with many she feels convinced there are far too many conferences, and wonders whether the Conference for the Reform of French Teaching in Secondary Schools will significantly affect the notorious inability of English children to learn the language of any other nation. So many conferences, especially before the start of the Michaelmas Term! She is efficient and has almost everything ready for the evening's business: lists of those attending, details of their schools, programmes for the following two days' activities, certifications of attendance and the menus for the evening's banquet. There remain only the name-tags, and using the red ribbon and the upper case she begins typing the name and provenance of each of the delegates. It is a fairly simple and quick operation. She then cuts up the names into neat rectangles and begins to fit them into the small celluloid holders: MR. J. ABBOT, The Royal Grammar School, Chelmsford; MISS P. ACKROYD, High Wycombe Technical College; MR. D. ACUM, City of Caernarfon School . . . and so on, to the end of the list.

   She is finished by midday and takes all her bits and pieces to the Conference Room, where at 6.30 p.m. she will sit behind the reception desk and greet the delegates as they arrive. To be truthful, she rather enjoys this sort of thing. Her hair will be most cunningly coiffured, and on her name-tag she has proudly printed 'Lonsdale College' as her own academic provenance.

With the new stretch of the M40 blasted through the heart of the Chilterns, the journey to and from London is now quicker than ever; and Morse feels reasonably satisfied with his day's work when he arrives back in Oxford just after 4.00 p.m. Lewis was quite right: there were one or two things that could only be checked in London, and Morse thinks that he has dealt with them. On his return he calls in at Police HQ and finds an envelope, heavily sealed with Sellotape, and boldly marked for the attention of Chief Inspector Morse. The pieces are beginning to fall into place. He dials Acum's home number and waits.

   'Hello?' It is a woman's voice.

   'Mrs. Acum?'

   'Yes, speaking.'

   'Could I have a word with your husband, please?'

   'I'm afraid he's not here.'

   'Will he be in later?'

   'Well, no. He won't. He's away on a teachers' conference.'

   'Oh, I see. When are you expecting him back, Mrs. Acum?'

   'He said he hoped to be back Tuesday evening—fairly late, though, I think.'

   'I see.'

   'Can I give him a message?'

   'Er, no. Don't worry. It's not important. I'll try to ring him later in the week.'

   'You sure?'

   'Yes, that'll be fine. Thanks very much, anyway. Sorry to trouble you.'

   'That's all right.'

   Morse sits back and considers. As he's just said, it isn't really important.

Baines is not a man of regular habits, nor indeed of settled tastes. Sometimes he drinks beer, and sometimes he drinks Guinness. Occasionally, when a heavy burden weighs upon his mind, he drinks whisky. Sometimes he drinks in the lounge, and sometimes he drinks in the public bar; sometimes in the Station Hotel, and sometimes in the Royal Oxford, for both are near. Sometimes he doesn't drink at all.

   Tonight he orders a whisky and soda in the lounge bar of the Station Hotel. It is a place with a very special and a very important memory. The bar is fairly small, and he finds he can easily follow long stretches of others' conversations; but tonight he is deaf to the chatter around him. It has been a worrying sort of day—though not worrying exactly; more a nervy, fluttery sort of day. Clever man, Morse!

   Several of the customers are waiting for the London train; smartly dressed, apparently affluent. Later there will be a handful who have missed the train and who will book in for the night if there are vacancies; relaxed, worldly men with generous expense allowances and jaunty anecdotes. And just once in a while there is a man who deliberately misses his train, who rings his wife and tells his devious tale.

   It had been a chance in a thousand, really—seeing Phillipson like that. Phillipson! One of the six on the short-list, a list that had included himself! A stroke of luck, too, that
she
had not seen him when, just after 8.30, they had entered arm-in-arm. And then they had actually appointed Phillipson! Well, well, well. And the little secret glittered and gleamed like a bright nugget of gold in a miser's hoard.

   Phillipson, Baines, Acum; headmaster, second master, ex-Modern Languages master of the Roger Bacon School, and all thinking of Valerie Taylor as they lay awake that Sunday night listening as the wind howled and the rain beat down relentlessly. At last to each of them came sleep; but sleep uneasy and disturbed. Phillipson, Baines, Acum; and tomorrow night one of the three will be sleeping a sleep that is long and undisturbed; for tomorrow night at this same time one of the three will be dead.