The Remorseful Day (23 page)

Seated at a wall-settle in the bar, Morse tasted his pint of cask-conditioned ale and proclaimed it “not so bad.” And Lewis, seated opposite, sipped his iced orange juice and said nothing.

Morse looked sourly out of sorts.

“Just nip and get me a packet of cigarettes, Lewis. Dunhill, if they've got them. I don't seem to …” In time-honored fashion, he patted his trouser pockets with little prospect, as it seemed, of finding any funds therein.

“I thought you'd stopped,” ventured Lewis, as minutes later Morse peeled off the cellophane.

“First today!” said Morse as with obvious gratification he inhaled deeply.

In turn, Lewis took a deep breath himself:

“You mustn't get cross with me if—”

“Certainly not.” Morse pushed his empty glass across the table.

Waiting at the bar, Lewis was rehearsing his carefully formulated sentence; was ready with it once he took his seat again.

“You mustn't be cross with me, sir, but—”

“Someone's been round to Mrs. Barron? You've seen to that?”

“Dixon, yes. With WPC Towle—she's an experienced officer.”

“PC Towle, you mean. They're all PCs now, whatever the sex. Stands for Politically Correct.”

For the umpteenth time in his working life with Morse, Lewis knew that any potentially favorable wind had suddenly stopped blowing for him; and that it would be Morse who would now be sailing serenely on, whatever the state of the weather. As he did now:

“Something worrying you, Lewis?”

“Yes. Something
is.
We started off with two murders and you said you knew who the murderer was. And now this murderer of yours gets murdered himself and …”

“And there's not all that much point in sitting around
in a pub all day just thinking about things. Is that what you're saying?”

“Yes! Why don't we sit back and look at what we've
got
—look at the
evidence?
”

“You're talking to me in italics, Lewis.”

“All right! But don't you think it
is
time—to start again—at the
beginning?
”

“No,” said Morse (no italics). “Let's start with those red trainers.”

“All right. Good news that. There can't be more than a dozen people in Oxfordshire who've got a pair like that. Give us a few days. We'll find him. Guaranteed!”

“Let's hope you're right. Bit odd, though. Quarter to eight? And still running when Barron fell at ten past ten?”

“We're not all as unfit as you.”

“What? I could have run a marathon in that time. Once.”

Lewis smiled quietly to himself as Morse continued: “You know, what worried me about the murders of Flynn and Repp was how anyone could have got away from that car without people noticing all the blood on his clothes. Then it struck me. Barron could have got away with it easily. His overalls were already covered in red—covered in the maroon paint from Debbie Richardson's outhouse—
before
the murders. Nobody's going to worry about what he looks like, not in Lower Swinstead anyway. It's not exactly like spilling a bottle of Claret over your white tuxedo on the
QE2.
Is it now?”

“I wouldn't know, sir.”

“Being too clever, am I?”

“Perhaps.”

“You see, I thought
he
was clever, Barron. And in spite of what some of these criminologists say, some criminals
are
clever.”

Lewis agreed. “ Pretty clever of our murderer to knock him off his ladder: no weapon, no fingerprints …”

“Mm.” Morse drained his beer and stood up. “You will be glad to know that the brain is now considerably clearer, although I am still, if it's of interest to you,
exceedingly puzzled as to why our murderer should decide to draw almost inevitable attention to himself by wearing such a conspicuous pair of plimsolls and running around Burford for two and a half hours.”

“Truth is, sir, some of ‘em
aren't
all that clever. We both know that.”

By the time they were back at Kidlington HQ, the strangely disturbing news was already beginning to filter through.

Not that Morse himself was to be in his office that late Monday afternoon, for he had instructed Lewis to drop him off at his flat in North Oxford. He longed for some music: some Mozart (though not
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik)
, some Wagner (though not the
Ride of the Valkyries)
, some Vivaldi even (though not
The Four Seasons)
, or some Vaughan Williams (though not
The Lark Ascending).

Most especially not
The Lark Ascending
, since Morse (as we have seen) had already spent enough of his time with the dawn that day.

Sergeant Dixon swallowed the last of the jam-filled, sugar-coated doughnut: “I'm beginning to think he's losing his marbles. First he says we go and bring Barron in—and the next thing is we're telling his missus he's croaked it.”

Sergeant Lewis looked up. “How did she take it?”

“Not very well. Kate was very good with her but…”

“Her GP knows?”

“Yep. And she's got her mum and sister there, so …
The kids though, innit? Poor little buggers: six and four.”

“Easier for them, I suppose.”

“Perhaps so. I just had the feeling though, you know, the marriage wasn't all that…” Dixon held out a shaky right hand, like that of a man with delirium tremens.

“What gave you that impression?”

Dixon tapped his right temple with a firmer finger. “Experience, mate.”

He got up, walked over to the canteen counter, and looked hopefully along the glass shelves.

Lewis was summoned to Caesar's tent just after 5:30
P.M.

“Sorry state of affairs, Lewis, when a man can't even get a round of golf in on a Monday afternoon!”

“I just thought you ought to—”

“Winning I was. Two up at the turn. The swing really in the groove. And then …”

“I'm sorry, sir. But as I say I thought—”

“Where's Morse?”

“He, er, just went back home for a while.”

“Best place for him. Nothing but disaster since he took over things.”

“It was
you
wanted him,” said Lewis gently.

“Too clever—that's Morse's trouble! Time he jacked it in—like me. Make way for these bright young buggers checking in through the fast track. It's all degrees these days, Lewis, and DNA, and …”

“Clipboards?”

Strange smiled sympathetically. “Old Morse doesn't like clipboards much, does he?”

“No.”

“You'll miss him when he goes, won't you?”

“Is he going?”

“You'll be a richer man, for certain.”

Lewis made no reply.

“Did he have a couple of beers out at Burford?”

“Just the one.”

“Remarkable! And who paid for that, pray?”

“Oddly enough,
he
did.”

Strange looked across the desk shrewdly. “Know something, Lewis? You're nearly as big a liar as that American president.”

For the next ten minutes, and with no further lies, Lewis told the Chief Superintendent as much as he or anyone else (including Morse?) could know about the deliberate murder of J. Barron, Builder (and increasingly, as it appeared, Decorator) of Lower Swinstead.

“Mm!”

Strange contemplated the phone awhile, then rang Morse. But the ex-directory number was engaged. A minute later, he rang again; and, a minute later, again. Still engaged.

“Taken his phone off the bloody hook. Typical! He's supposed to be solving an assortment of murders.”

“He's a bit tired, sir. I don't think he's been sleeping very well.”

“Hardly surprising, is it? Having to get up for a pee every half hour?”

“I don't think it's
just
that.”

“What d'you mean?” Strange's voice was sharper.

“Well, nothing really.”

“Out
with it, Lewis.”

“Just that sometimes perhaps it almost seems as if he doesn't really care all that much …”

“Interesting!”

For a while Strange pondered matters. Then decided: “Go and knock him up!”

“Couldn't we give him a rest, just for today?” suggested a diffident Lewis. “Not much
he
can do for the minute, is there? Not much
you
can do, either.”

“Mm. You could be right.”

“Why not get back to the golf course?”

“Because, Lewis—
because
I've let him off the hook. Three up at the turn …”

“I thought you said it was
two
up, sir.”

“Did I?”

Strange reached for the phone and rang Morse's number yet again.

Still engaged.

He stood up and repeated Lewis's words: “Not much
you
can do, either. Why don't you just bugger off home. Eggs and chips, what?”

For a good deal of these exchanges between Strange and Lewis, Deborah Richardson had been standing, head tilted, in the narrow passageway at the back of the property, wondering whether she'd been sensible in choosing that particular shade of maroon for the newly established outhouse. Two of the re-plastered walls had received their first coat—several weekends ago now—and they reminded her, according to the light, either of black currant jam or of blood.

She thought she'd probably change things.

The phone rang.

She reached it at the sixth ring.

The arrangements, unusually involved, took a little while to get sorted out.

Once they were, she felt almost unprecedentedly excited.

After he had locked the door behind them she immediately, albeit a little nervously, commented upon the civilized appearance of the bachelor flat, listening with half an ear to a love duet from one of the operas, although she had no idea which one; standing appreciatively for a while in front of a reproduction of
The Milkmaid
, although she had only just heard of Vermeer; looking wide-eyed along the shelves and shelves and shelves of books that lined three of the walls there; noticing too,
although not herself a particularly houseproud woman, the thin layer of dust on the CD player and the thicker layer along the top of the skirting boards.

On the glass-topped coffee table there stood a chilled bottle of champagne, with two sparklingly bright glasses on their coasters beside it.

As quietly bidden, she sat down, the hem of the minidress riding more than halfway up her black-stockinged thighs as languidly she crossed her lengthy legs. Then, as he untwisted the wire at the top of the bottle, she turned away, holding the palms of her hands over her ears.

“No need for that,” he said. “I'm an expert.”

Tilting the bottle to 45 degrees, he turned the cork sharply, pulling only slightly—and that was it. Out! He filled the two glasses, sat opposite her, raised his glass, and said, “Cheerio!”

It seemed to her a strange thing to say. “Hello!” would surely have been more appropriate? It was obviously something he'd stored away in his verbal baggage from a period at least twenty-five years (she decided) earlier than her own.

Not that
that
mattered.

She sipped the champagne; sipped it again; and concluded, although she knew nothing whatever of Bruts and Crus, that it might well be fairly expensive stuff.

“Specially bought for the occasion?”

“No. I won it in a raffle.”

She took a further sip, then drank off the rest in a single draught. “Lovely!”

He leaned forward and refilled her glass.

“Are you trying to get me drunk?”

“It might even things up a bit.”

“Mind if I smoke?”

“No. I'll join you.”

“You took a lot of trouble about gettin’ me here—”

“Don't you like taxis?”

“—and I've never been told exactly what to wear before.”

He surveyed her vertically striped brown-and-white dress, and counted the buttonholes: seven of them, the top three straining across her breasts.

“I like buttons. I've read that ‘unbuttoning’ was Philip Larkin's favorite present participle.”

She let it go, fairly certain that she understood, and slowly unfastened the top button of her dress. “I shall expect a fee, you know that.”

“Fee? You mean as well as the taxi and the champagne?”

She nodded and pointed to the bottle. “Will one be enough, do you think?”

“I won
two
in the raffle. The other one's cooling in the fridge.”

She drained her second glass, and sat back in the deeply comfortable settee, unfastening the second button as he again refilled her glass.

She patted the cushion beside her. “Come and sit next to me.”

“In a little while. It's just that I'd like to get my fill of sitting here and lusting after you.”

She smiled. “I wonder how we would have been together?”

“Know something? You've just quoted T. S. Eliot, virtually verbatim.”

She let it go, fairly certain that Eliot was a poet. But there wasn't much poetry out there—not in the world in which she moved. It all made her feel pleasingly important and decidedly sexy. Something more, too. As she tilted the third glass of champagne into her lipstick-moistened mouth; as she worked the third button of her dress loose; as she looked down at her braless breasts now almost fully exposed, she felt an animal sense of her own power—and she felt
good.

He was right, though. She was enjoying teasing him, and he was enjoying being teased. No need for that rush to sexual congress the great majority of men (she knew full well) preferred.

“You know,” she said, “I thought first of all when you rang that you wanted to ask me about the murders.”

“Afterward, don't you think?”

She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward to light another cigarette. “No. Let's get the inquisition over. Where's the bedroom, by the way?”

He pointed to a door on his left. “Top sheet turned back in a very neat hypotenuse.”

She let it go, for her own mathematics had stopped well short of Pythagoras.

“I didn't ask you here for any grilling—you know that. But there
is
one thing I'd like you to tell me.”