The Remorseful Day (10 page)

Nor was she looking forward to the regular resumption of cooking and washing and ironing that had monopolized her time in the years prior to his arrest…

Nor—she ought to be honest with herself!—was she at all anxious to witness his eating habits again, especially at breakfast, when he would regularly offer some trite and ill-informed commentary on whatever article he was reading in the
Sun
, and openly displaying thereby a semimasticated mouthful of whatever …

And—oh, most definitely!—she would never never ever tolerate again the demands his erstwhile criminal dealings had made upon the space,
her
space, in the quite unpleasantly appointed little semi he'd bought three years earlier at rock-bottom price during the slump in the housing market. After which, at almost any given time, every conceivable square foot of space had been jam-packed with crates of gin and whiskey, cartons of cigarettes, car radios, video recorders, cameras, computers, and hi-fi equipment. No! There'd have to be an end to all that stolen-property lark; and surely (now!) there'd be little further risk of Harry himself taking part in any of the actual burglaries. For he
had
taken part occasionally, Debbie knew that, although the police hadn't seemed to know, or perhaps just couldn't find sufficient evidence to prosecute. Certainly Harry had never asked for any further offenses to be taken into consideration. He'd made only the one plea in mitigation of his sentence: he might have known the possible provenance of the miscellaneous merchandise he'd acquired;
might
have known, if only he'd asked—but he'd just never asked. He was in business, that was
all. He knew a few clients who wanted to buy things at less than market price. Who didn't? “Just like yer duty-frees, innit? Everybody's always looking round for a bargain, officer” …

So?

So why was she still standing there at the window, staring up and down the quiet road? The answer was simple: she just wanted a man
around
the place. Without Harry she felt isolated, lonely, unshared. She'd lost her man; and there was no man there to talk to, to talk to others about, to grumble at, to argue with, even to walk out on—because you couldn't walk out on a man who wasn't there to start with, now could you?

Where was he? What had happened? …

Not that her grass-widowhood had been entirely minus men. There'd been that nice little affair with the young plasterer who'd come in to patch up a crack in the kitchen wall. And that civilized little liaison with the Oxford don (so undemanding, so appreciative) she'd met in a Burford pub. But in each case, and on every occasion, she'd been so very, very careful…

Only once had she had
that
dreadful worry, after buying a Home Pregnancy Kit from Boots, when she'd just had to tell Harry, and when he'd been surprisingly sympathetic. If they did have a kid, it'd be good for him (him!) to have a mum
and
a dad. Yeah! He'd hated both his mum and his dad—but he'd hated his mum
less
, and it was proper to have a choice. Something else too: you know, when the poor little bugger went to school and one of the other kids said what's your name or what's your dad do—well, it was probably old-fashioned to think like that but, yeah!, better to have two of them, two parents. So she ought to change her name to his, but no need for any of all that nuptial stuff! Just for the kid's sake, mind—nothing to do with any social worker!

But she'd be “Debbie Repp,” then; and that would be too close to “demirep” (a word she'd met in the “inter-crural” article), which she'd looked up in the biggest dictionary she could find in the Burford Public Library: “a person, esp. a woman, of dubious and libidinous disposition.”
Her name, she'd decided, would henceforth remain “Richardson.” And in any case the subsequent messy miscarriage had settled
that
domestic crisis.

At 12:50
P.M.
she left her vigil for the kitchen, where she felt the neck of the champagne bottle, standing beside two glasses on the table there. Inappropriately
chambré
she decided (another recent addition to her vocabulary), and she put it back in the fridge. Not Premier Division stuff: £8.99 from the supermarket, although in truth she'd begrudged even that. Money! God, how important that was in life! They had enough money—what's more, money temporarily held in her own name. But that was Harry's money, and she would never dare to touch more of it than the reasonably generous allowance he'd authorized.

She'd taken some occasional office-cleaning jobs in Burford, usually from 6
P.M.
to 8
P.M.
But £4.75 per hour was hardly the rate of remuneration to support any reasonable lifestyle; certainly not the style she'd begun to get accustomed to with Harry. So did she find herself
almost
hoping that he might pick up again on some of those very shady but very profitable activities?

No! No! No!

At 1:15
P.M.
she rang Bullingdon Prison, learning that Harry Repp had left on schedule that morning with a bus warrant for Oxford. Nothing further they could tell her: no longer their responsibility, was he? She could ring the Probation Office in Oxford—that might have been his first port-of-call. Which number she was about to dial when she noticed a car pulling up outside—an R-Reg., dark blue, expensive-looking model; and a man she'd never seen before getting out of it, and walking toward her up the narrow, amateurishly cemented front path.

Already, an hour or so before driving out to see Debbie Richardson, it had been an unusual morning for Sergeant Lewis.

Morse had insisted on buying the second round in the Woodstock Arms, albeit one consisting only of one pint of Morrell's Best Bitter for himself, since as yet Lewis was only halfway down his obligatory orange juice.

Unusual? Yes. And quite certainly surprising.

“Do you really mean it—about the car number, sir?”

“Just be patient!”

“What do you think I
am
being?”

“You say the car was darkish, newish, toppish range?”

“Like I said, I was really concentrating on the bus.”

“Be more
specific
, man! Go for it. Back your hunches!”

“All right: black; R-Reg.; twenty thou.”

“That's better.”

Lewis smiled dubiously. “Thank you.”

“And how many people in that car of yours? One? Two? Three?”

“Certainly one, sir.”

“We'll make a detective of you yet,” mumbled Morse, leaning forward as he buried his nose in the froth.

“Could've been two, I suppose. I can't really remember but… you know, it was a bit like one of those cars going off on a family holiday, you know what I mean?”

“No.”

“Well, you know—”

“For Christ's sake stop saying ‘you know'!” 73

“Well, you've got things packed everywhere, haven't you? Not just cases and things but nappies, bedding, towels, boots, wellingtons, thermoses, carrier bags—all piled up so you can hardly see out of the back window.”

“What sort of bags?”

Lewis was trying hard to revisualize the scene, and fortunately Morse had picked on the one thing that finally jogged his fading memory. Bags! Yes, there'd been bags in the back of that car: bags you could stick all sorts of things inside. And suddenly the picture had grown clearer:

“Black bags!”

“You think he was off to the rubbish dump?”

“Could've been. ‘Waste Reception Area,’ by the way, sir.”

“Where's the biggest rubbish dump in Oxfordshire?”

“Or in Oxford, perhaps?” Lewis's face had brightened. “Redbridge. People go there from all over the county—straight down the A34—then turn off—” But Lewis stopped. “Forget it, sir. From Bullingdon you'd turn on to the A41, and then straight on to the A34. You wouldn't go into Bicester at all.”

“And you're quite sure the car went into Bicester?”

“That's one thing I am sure about.”

“If only you'd concentrated on that car, Lewis, and forgotten all about the bus!”

“I just don't understand why you're so interested in the car. Repp was on the
bus.”

“So you keep saying,” said Morse quietly. “But you're not right, are you? Repp
wasn't
on the bus.”

“Not when he got to Oxford, no.”

“You lost him. You might as well face it.”

Lewis drained his orange juice. “Yep! I agree. I lost him. And that's exactly why I need a bit of help.”

“Like the number of that car, you mean?”

“I think you're having me on about that.”

“Oh no. And if you think it'll help …”

Morse took out his pen and pushed his empty glass across the table: “Your round! And pass me your notebook.”

A minute later, Lewis stared down at Morse's small, neat handwriting:

And incredulity vied with amazement in his face as Morse continued quietly: “You know, you weren't your usual sharp self this morning, were you? You failed to observe the car in
front
of you—and you failed to observe the car
behind
you.”

“ You—you don't mean… ?”

“I do mean, yes.
I
was right behind you this morning. But being the law-abiding citizen I am, I instructed my driver to keep an appropriately safe distance from the vehicle in front.”

“I just don't believe this. I just don't understand.”

“Easy, really. I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to keep an eye on our Mr. Repp, just like Strange did. So I rang up the prison Governor, an old friend of mine, and told him what I was intending to do; and he said there was no need because he'd had a call from Strange setting up
your
surveillance. So I just told him to forget it—told him we'd got some crossed wires—came out in an unmarked car, like you did—parked in the visitors’ area—listened to Mahler's Eighth—and watched and waited.
And
took a flask of coffee—yes,
coffee
, Lewis—and the rest is history.”

“You're having me on!”

“Oh no! How the hell do you think I could give you that car number unless I'd
seen
the bloody thing? You don't think I'm psychic or something, do you?”

Lewis reflected on this extraordinary new development. Then slowly formulated his thoughts aloud. “You saw the car in front of me. You saw who was in it and what was in it—”

“Black plastic bags, yes. You were right.”

“—and you saw the Registration Number.”

“Only just. You know, I'll have to see an optician soon.”

“You told me off for saying ‘you know',” snapped Lewis.

Morse curled his right hand lovingly round his beer glass. “Sometimes, you don't fully appreciate my help, you know.”

Lewis let it go. “And you knew the car went into Bicester, to the bus station. You knew it all the time.”

“Yes.”

“So when I went to get a paper you saw Repp get out of the bus and get into the car. But you didn't tell
me
—oh no! You just left me to go on a wild goose chase after the bus. Well, thank you very much.”

For a while Morse was silent. Then: “How many times have I been to the Gents this morning?”

“Twice since you've been here.”

“Six times in all, Lewis! And the reason for such embarrassingly frequent retirements is not any lack of bladder control. It's those diuretic pills they've put me on.”

The light slowly dawned; and Sergeant Lewis suddenly looked a happy man. “The thermos, sir? Three cups of coffee in that, say?”

Morse nodded. Not a happy man.

“So when you got to Bicester bus station you were dying for a leak and you saw the Gents’ loo there, and when you came out—the car was gone. Right?”

Reluctantly Morse nodded once more. “And we followed you, you and the bus, back to Oxford.”

A gleeful Lewis looked as if he'd won the Lottery. “You really should have kept your eyes on that car, sir!”

“You mean the black R-reg Peugeot, Lewis? You were right, by the way: £19,950 licensed and on the road, so they inform me. Not far off, were you?”

“And the owner?”

“Some insurance broker in Gerrard's Cross reported it missing two days ago.”

Unlike the (equally unknown) man who had called upon her the previous evening, he held up his ID for several seconds in front of her face, like a conjurer holding up a playing card toward an audience.

But she didn't really look at it; didn't even notice his name. He seemed a decent, honest-looking sort of fellow—not one of those spooky pseuds who occasionally sought her company. And she was hardly too bothered if he
wasn't
one of those decent, honest-looking sort of fellows.

“Deborah Richardson?” (He sounded rather shy.)