by Colin Dexter
She picked him up somewhere that's for certain. Most of these people
released from the nick have somebody to pick 'em up. "
"Except she doesn't drive a car."
"All right. She arranged for somebody else to pick him up."
"Why did he ask for a travel warrant, then?"
Morse looked less than happy.
"He got on the bus at Bicester and while he was sitting there somebody saw
him and tapped on the window and offered him a lift to Oxford or wherever he
was going and we know where that is, don't we? Home. Which is exactly where
he is now, you can put your bank balance on that! It's a racing certainty.
And if you don't believe me, go and see for yourself!"
Lewis considered what he had just heard.
"It must have been somebody unexpected, sir. Like I say, he'd asked for a
warrant."
"You're right, yes. Well, partly right. Either unexpected or not really
expected . . . Perhaps not really welcome, either," added Morse slowly, a
weak smile playing on his lips as though for the first time that morning his
brain was possibly engaged in some serious thinking.
"You reckon that's what happened?"
"Lewis! Something happened, didn't it? If you think your man decided to
de materialize you've been watching too many space videos."
"I don't watch ' 79
" Look! Remember what I've always told you when we've
been on a case together unlike this one! There's always, without exception,
some wholly explicable, wholly logical causation for any chain of events, in
any situation. In this case, you've just got to ask yourself where the link
broke, then how it broke, then why it broke and nothing in that sequence of
events is going to be anything but simple and commonplace. "
Lewis looked the troubled man he was.
"I just can't see how. . ."
Morse's question was quietly spoken.
"You remember that car, the one you said somehow squeezed in between you and
the bus from Bullingdon?"
Lewis looked across the desk in pained surprise.
"You don't think. .
"" What do you remember about it? "
"Dark colour black, I think pretty recent Reg - one person in it - man, I
think pretty sure it was a man."
"Not very observant ' " I was looking at the bus all the time, for God's
sake! "
' - and not much help, if you want the truth. "
No, it wasn't, Lewis knew that.
"What do I tell the Super, though?"
"If I were you? I certainly wouldn't tell him the truth. Not a very wise
thing, you know, going through life telling nothing but the truth. So in
this case, I'd tell him I'd followed the bus to Bicester, then followed the
bus to Oxford, then seen Repp get off outside The Randolph, get picked up
there in a car, and get driven off in the general direction of Chaucer Lane,
Burford. Easy!"
Uneasy, however, was Lewis's minimal nod.
"But I'm not you, Lewis, am I? I'm a very accomplished liar myself, but I've
never rated you too highly in that department."
A puzzled look suddenly came over Lewis's brow.
"How come you know where Repp lives?"
"Great man Chaucer, born in 1343, it's thought '
"You're not answering my question!"
"I know a lot of things, Lewis far more than you think."
"You've still not told me what I'm supposed to say to the Super."
"Cut your losses and tell him the truth."
"He'll tear me apart."
"You may well be surprised."
But, as he rose to his feet, Lewis appeared far from convinced.
"Well, I suppose I'd better ' " Hold your horses! " (Morse looked at his
wristwatch.) " It may just be that I can help you. "
Lewis's eyebrows lifted a little as Morse continued: ' You promise to buy roe
a couple of drinks, and I'll promise to give you a big, fat juicy clue. "
"If you say so, sir."
"Off we go then."
"What's this big, fat ?"
"I'll give you the Registration Number of the car that you followed from
Bullingdon to Bicester! Bargain, is it?"
Lewis's eyebrows lifted a lot.
"No kidding?"
Morse rechecked his wristwatch.
"First things first, though. They've already been open five minutes."
81
chapter nineteen It's good to hope; it's the waiting that spoils it
(Yiddish proverb) with increasing impatience and with incipient disquiet,
lighting one cigarette from another, drinking cup after cup of instant
coffee, Deborah Richardson had been watching from the front-room window, on
and off from 10. 30 a. m. " on and off from 11.30 a.m." and virtually on
and on from midday and thereafter at first with that curiously pleasing
expectation of happy events which Jane Austen would have swopped for
happiness itself. Not that Debbie had ever read Jane Austen. Heard of her,
though, most recently from that elderly Oxford don (well, wasn't fifty-eight
elderly? ) with whom she'd spent the night at the Cotswold Hotel in Burford
. . .
It wasn't that she was keenly anticipating any renewal of sexual congress
with her newly liberated partner. Although she felt gratified that
physically he'd always been so demanding of her, it had often occurred to her
that he was probably enjoying the sex more for its own sake than because he
was having it with her. And perhaps that was why only occasionally did she
experience that inter crural effusion' of which she'd read in one of the
women's magazines . .
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 break- fast, 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
semi-masticated 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 whisky, 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 of fences 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 your duty-frees, in nit Everybody's always looking round for a
bargain, officer' . . .
So?
So why was she still standing uiere 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
83
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 chanbre 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 towards her up the
narrow, amateurishly cemented front-path.
85
chapter twenty Then said the Jews unto him. Thou art not yet fifty years
old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said unto them. Verily, verily, I
say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am (The Gospel according to St John, ch.
VIII, w. 57, 58) 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, ne wish top pish 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"
"
"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 re-visualize 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.
"Red- bridge.
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."
87
"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:
R456 LJB
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
