The Remorseful Day (28 page)

“What time will he be back?” asked Lewis.

She shrugged her narrow shoulders.

“You worry about him?”

“Everybody worries about him.”

“How long's he been on drugs?”

“Year—over a year.”

“How does he pay for them?”

“You tell me.”

“Not much of a son, is he?” said Morse.

She shook what once must have been a very pretty head with a gesture of desperation.

“Does he get the money from you?”

“I've got nothing to give him. He's not stupid. He knows that.”

“But… ?” Morse pointed to the empty beer can; the empty packet of cigarettes.

“Idunno.”

Morse got to his feet. Lewis too.

“How long… ?” Morse nodded to the wheelchair.

“Six years.”

Morse stopped in front of the one framed picture in the dingy hallway. Not a picture, though. A diploma.

For the second time that day Lewis noticed a film of tears in a woman's eyes; and for the second time that day Morse felt a shudder of excitement run along his shoulders.

Before they left, Morse turned to the erstwhile athlete. “The gods haven't smiled on you much, have they?”

“Not that I've noticed.”

“It's important for your son to do exactly what they've told him—with his Police Protection Order. You know that?”

“I suppose so.”

“And if you want cheering up a bit, Mrs. Holmes, I'll tell you a big secret: I was about his age when I started drinking myself. A year younger, in fact.”

But the confession appeared to bring little comfort to the woman maneuvering her wheelchair to the front door.

Morse gave her his card. “One last thing. If there's anything you've forgotten to tell me? Anything you've not been willing to tell me… ?”

As the two detectives walked along the litter-strewn path up to a wooden front gate stripped of all but two of its vertical slats, Lewis's mind puzzled itself over those last few words. But Morse seemed deep in thought; and any questions for the moment, he knew, would be wholly inopportune.

In his own way, Lewis was not unhappy that Morse had failed to put in his usual, comparatively early appearance the following morning. His own preferred program of alibi confirmation had earlier (as we have seen) been endorsed by Morse, albeit with muted enthusiasm; and Lewis was content to pursue such a program solo.

It now appeared that Morse's simplistic hypothesis—that of casting Barron as a double murderer—was wholly discounted. It would have been convenient, certainly, if it
had
been Barron; and if Barron in turn had been murdered by whoever was behind … well, behind everything, really. Frank Harrison, say. And why
not
Frank Harrison? In Lewis's betting book he was the one
runner in the field with the requisite bank balance to fork out the regular dollops of hush money. But with the potential collapse of global equity markets, such a bank balance might soon not be looking so healthy. And one of the laws of economics, as Lewis knew, was that people with pots of money could easily
lose
pots of money, including the person who hitherto had seen it as a matter of self-interest to divert some proportion of such monies to others: to Flynn, to Repp, perhaps to Barron. Then, almost miraculously, two of them had been crossed off the payroll; and if the third one …

Lewis could understand Morse's thinking perfectly well. But it had been wrong, as the great man had (virtually) admitted the previous evening. There had been that dramatic development in the case: Barron's death had been an accident. And the coincidence of Barron being knocked off a ladder
by accident
at virtually the same time someone else had planned to murder him
by criminal design
had clearly struck even Morse (a confirmed believer in coincidence) as quite extraordinarily improbable.

So what was needed now was a bit of old-fashioned procedure: some immediate phone calls; some speedy arrangements of interviews; some urgent checking of alibis. And so fortunate was Lewis that by 9:45 he had written down a firm timetable:

Back in HQ just after 2
P.M.
(still no news from Morse), Lewis looked down, not without some satisfaction, at the notes he had made:

SIMON H

Friday, July 24:
at his desk all
A.M.
—lunch in
canteen—back at his desk till 4
P.M.
when he took bus down to Summertown dentist (hr). Home c. 6
P.M.
Plenty of witnesses on and off all day, it seems.
Monday, Aug 3:
(day off work)
A.M.
drove via M40 → Stokenchurch hoping for siting of red kite there—tried earlier in the year at Llandudno—both trips unsuccessful (keen bird-watcher). Back for lunch in White Hart (Wytham)—witnesses would include landlord etc.

Impossible for him to have been in on the Flynn/Repp murders.
Could
have pushed Barron off the ladder, if we wanted him for that, which we don't. Deafer than I thought and lip-reads a lot. Names a big problem: Flynn OK, but Repp and Barron hard for him—its something to do with the labial consonents (so he says). Intelligent, bit too
intense
, loner (?).

FRANK H

Friday, July 24:
meeting in London office 10-11:45
A.M.
with four colleagues. (Check!)
Monday, Aug 3:
at Randolph (booked in the day before). Breakfast 7:50-8:40
A.M.
(approx) with “partner” (real honey acc. to Ailish at the bar). Car apparently not moved from Resident's garage that day. As suspect? Same as SH (see above). Smart business exec. type, pleasant enough, bit abrupt, not short of the pennies—asked me to join him in glass of champange (£7 a go!) Thinning on top, thickening in middle. Seems used to getting what he wants in life.

SARAH H

Friday, July 24:
at BDA Conference in Manchester with boss—arr 12.30
P.M.
ret 9:50 p.m.—rail both ways. Forget her!

Monday, Aug 3:
consultant duties at Diabetes Centre in Ratcliffe Inf. Saw ten patients. Lunch in League of Fiends cafeteria. Forget her!

Attractive, clever, but perhaps hard streek somewhere?

Yes! Lewis felt pleased with his morning's work; and even more pleased with his afternoon's work, after he'd typed up the notes, correcting four of the six misspellings and tidying up one or two of the punctuational blemishes. There remained quite a bit of checking to be done, but none of it would be particularly onerous, and most of it probably unnecessary. The general upshot was unambiguous. None of the Harrison clan had murdered Flynn or Repp. Two of the three
could
have been on the scene when Barron was killed but neither of them had murdered him, because
no one
had murdered him. That was the only thing in the whole tragic business that now seemed wholly incontrovertible.

In nowise was Lewis surprised to meet Dixon in the police canteen.

“Busy day?”

“Well, yes and no really. Morse rang me up early—”

“He
what?”
spluttered Lewis.

“Well, early for me. Wanted me to check out on a few things, didn't he?”

“Such as?”

“Well, names of those going to lipreading classes these last few years.”

“Simon Harrison, you mean?”

“Didn't say, did he? No problem, though. Just got the lists photocopied, didn't I?”

“What else?”

“Well, funny really. He wanted me to find out who Flynn's dentist was—”

“He what?”

“Well, easy that. Then to find out something about that
Mrs. Holmes—you know, before she was married… before she had her accident.”

Yes, Lewis could understand that.

“Then to ring that SOCO chap Andrews, the one who was out at Sutton Courtenay. Ask him to get a bit of a move on—you know, give him a kick up the arse, like, about the fingerprints. Morse got him to take Barron's, you knew that, didn't you?”

“Of course I knew that!” lied Lewis, euphoria fading fast.

“Well, there we are then. I suppose old Morse was just hoping, you know …”

Yes, Lewis knew exactly what Morse had been hoping.

“Has Andrews found anything?”

“Well, still working on it, isn't he? Messy old job, he said. Soon as he had any news though … Anyway I called round and stuck the stuff through the door. He was there, I reckon. The telly was on—”

“What?”

“ Yeah, pretty certain of it. But he didn't come to the door. Odd sort of chap, isn't he?”

But the introductory “Well”s and the inquisitorial clausulae, (hallmarks of every Dixon sentence) had become too tiresome; and Lewis was glad when the canteen intercom cut across the conversation:

Where are you, Dixon, in the hierarchy here? I'll tell you, mate. Nowhere
—
no bloody where
—
that's where!

Yet Lewis left such ungracious thoughts unspoken, jumping to his feet and leaving Dixon where he was, cheeks now jammed once more with a doughnut.

Two minutes later Lewis was through to an exultant Andrews, who wasted no time in breaking the dramatic news: there was a “hit—”yippee!—a match of fingerprints! In the car. Two sets—definite, distinct. The prints of J. Barron, Builder, of Lower Swinstead!

As he walked back to the canteen (Morse's phone still engaged), Lewis reflected on his brief exchange of views with Andrews. Morse had asked for any news to be communicated to him direct, and if necessary at his home number, though as both men knew there'd been little chance of that. Yet the situation was now perfectly clear; and Lewis freely conceded that Morse's early conviction that Barron had been involved in the murders seemed wholly vindicated. No room for more than three people in the cluttered stolen car, surely? And since neither Flynn nor Repp had stepped out of that car alive, the discovery of that third set of prints, Barron's, was of momentous significance:
Barron himself had been in the car.
The logic sounded pretty childish when it was put like that but…

Andrews's guess had been that Morse had suddenly fallen into some deep slumber after—well, after whatever; and Dixon's guess that he'd been watching TV with the volume too high. But the latter explanation seemed unlikely. Morse could (Lewis succumbed to his second unworthy thought that day)
could
have purchased some pornographic video; but would he have been able to master the operating instructions? Doubtful—especially having no children (better still, grandchildren) to explain things to him. Morse seldom watched TV anyway, or so he claimed. Just the news. Just occasionally.

Lewis finished his coffee, slowly coming to terms with the extraordinary news he'd just received: that Barron was a murderer—the second thing in the whole tragic business that now seemed wholly incontrovertible.

He rang Morse once again. If the call wasn't answered, he would drive down and see the situation for himself because he was getting a little worried.

The phone was ringing.

The call was answered.

Morse opened the front door. “And there's me hoping for a rest day, like they tell me they have in the middle of test matches.”

But, in truth, he had not tried overhard to have much of a rest day …

Early that morning (as we have seen), he had rung Sergeant Dixon and given him a list of duties.

At 10
A.M.
he had received a middle-aged, palely intelligent gentleman from Lloyds Bank, a guru on (inter alia) wills, dispositions, codicils, and covenants.

“From what you tell me, Mr. Morse, you're not exactly going to bequeath a large fortune, are you? And with no relatives, no immediate dependents, no unmanageable debts—well, you might just as well write down a few things on half a page of A4. Save yourself money that way. Do it now, if you like. Just write a few simple sentences—'I leave the house to blank, the bank balance to blank, the books and records to blank, the residual estate to blank.’ That'll cover things for now—and you say you
do
want things covered? Just sign it, I'll witness it, and I'll see it's carried through, in case, you know … Then we can flesh it out a bit later.”

“No problems really then?”