by Colin Dexter
What's the alternative for you?
Well, get someone to meet me somewhere and bring me a full change of clothes.
Where would you meet?
Anywhere. How do I know. Except. . .
Go on!
If we met in a lay-by, say, I'd have to leave the car there, wouldn't I? I
couldn't get back in and get the new clothes 139
almost as blood-stained as
the old. And the car would pretty certainly get reported almost immediately.
So . So?
So I'd have somebody to meet me. Friend? Wife, perhaps?
Where do you meet?
I don't know.
You do know. You know the Chesterton story I've often mentioned it.
Remind me.
Where do you hide a leaf?
Ah, yes. In the forest.
Where do you hide a pebble?
On the shore.
Where do you hide a corpse?
On the battle-field.
And where do you hide a car?
In a car park.
Which car park?
I don't know.
The bigger the better?
Yes.
In Oxford?
Probably.
How many car parks are there in Oxford?
Dozens.
If you'd committed a murder near Oxford what would you want to do above all?
Get the hell out of the place.
How?
Drive away.
You haven't got a car now, have you ?
Bus?
Where's the bus station? , Gloucester Green, l Isn't there a car park
opposite?
Yes.
And you could catch a train?
Yes.
Isn't there a station car park opposite?
Yes . As he drove down towards Oxford, Lewis felt pleased with himself, and
just after he'd negotiated the Cutteslowe round- about he was tempted to call
in on Morse. But he put the temptation behind him. He felt fairly certain
that the great man would be asleep.
And on this occasion he was right.
Instead, he decided to continue the Socratic dialogue, though this time
installing himself as Chief Inquisitor, and making the far bolder hypothesis
that if only the blurred outlines of the anonymous murderer could be adjusted
more sharply, it was Harry Repp who would come into focus.
Don't you think it would be easier, sir, for Debbie Richard- son to take a
change of clothes to him? Wouldn't it be dangerous for him to go out to
Lower Swinstead?
/ don't know, Lewis.
I asked you two questions.
/ don't know. I don't know.
What do you think Harry Repp did?
I just don't know.
What about the car? Where's that? Come on! Back your hunch!
The car? Oh, I know where the car is, Lewis. It's parked at the back of
Oxford Railway Station.
141
chapter thirty-one His voice was angry: "What time do you call thisf She
stood penitently on the doorstep: " Sorry! "
"Where* we you parked?" (It was the decade's commonest question in Oxford.
) "Exactly. I just couldn't find a parking space anywhere."
(Terry Benczik, Still Life with Absinthe) lucky lewis!
He was walking up the steps to the station when the auto- made doors opened
in front of him, and Sergeant Dick Evans of the British Transport Police came
towards him. Old friends, they greeted each other with appropriate
cordiality.
"Know anything about a stolen car R456 LJB?"
"Parked here?"
"Dunno," Lewis admitted.
"Well, not as far as I know. I've been in Reading all day, though.
Just got back. Bob Mitcheli'd know, perhaps. He's on duty here. "
"I'd better go and wake him up then."
"He's not in the office. I looked in a couple of minutes ago - door's
locked. Probably called out on some trouble some- where. Saturday!
Football yobos and all that. "
"But it's not the football season," protested Lewis.
"What's that got to do with it?"
"You straight off home?"
"Well, yes. It's getting late. If I can do anything to help an
old mucker though . . . What's the trouble? "
Lewis told him; and the two men walked down the steps and across to the
station car park.
It had been more than a year since Lewis had visited the station complex; and
he was immediately surprised to find that the previously fairly extensive
car-parking space had been drastically reduced: the northern section had been
taken over by
"Another Prestigious Development' - a series of Victorian- style town-houses,
built in attractive terra-cotta bricks, with white stuccoed lower storeys;
'spacious and luxurious' as the site-board guaranteed.
"Year or two back," volunteered Evans, Td've parked up there if I'd wanted to
keep out of sight for a while. Used to be a bit dark and creepy late at
night, if you got back late from Paddington on the milk float. "
Lewis nodded, but without comment. Late-night returns from concerts and
operas in the capital had never figured large in the lifestyle of the
Lewises. But now, in sunny daylight, the area seemed wholly benign, and
still almost packed with cars marshalled there in semi-legitimate rows.
"What if you come," asked Lewis, 'and you just can't find a space? "
"Not easy, is it? You can always try Gloucester Green' (Evans pointed
vaguely across towards Hythe Bridge Street) 'or one of the side roads."
The two sergeants walked together to the northern area of the park, away from
the main road where, with any choice in the matter, any murderous villain (as
well as Sergeant Evans) would surely have headed with an incriminating car.
But things had changed. Parading the site, tall stanchions now stood there,
topped with video-cameras and floodlights. No guarantee of complete security
perhaps, but a sufficient deterrent for casual car thieves.
"You could still squeeze one or two more cars in?" suggested Lewis (himself
a wizard at vehicular maneuvering) pointing to
^S
a few square me tres amid heaps of sand and piles of jagged half-bricks and
broken tiles.
"Not if you're worried about your suspension."
"Which he wasn't, Dick."
"No sign of it though, is there?"
They walked systematically through the lines of cars down to the southern end
of the car park, bounded by the Botley Road.
Again, nothing.
And the questions that had already worried Morse were worrying his sergeant
now. Was there any sign of criminal activity here? Were they on some
profidess pursuit of a questionable quarry?
Morse!
Top-of-the-head Morse!
Things just didn't happen like that.
At bottom, any police investigation was a matter of pretty firm facts; of
accumulating such facts; and of aggregating them into a hard core of
evidence, on which suspicion could be progressively corroborated, until an
arrest could be made, a charge brought, a prosecution formulated, and finally
a case heard in a court of law.
That's how things happened.
A dispirited Lewis stood with Evans for only a few seconds longer before
walking up to the exit-booth, where a red-and- white striped barrier was
being intermitt
ently raised as a few patrons returning early to Oxford
inserted their parking- tokens, and where a uniformed Transport Policeman,
clearly not at the peak of physical condition, came running towards them:
"What the 'ell are you doing here, Dick?"
Just back from Reading, Bob. And what the 'ell's up with you? You know
Sergeant Lewis here from HQ? "
Mitchell had regained some of his breath.
"HQ? Huh! That's exactly what's up. Chap who said he was from HQ. Rang
about a car said it was parked here at the station . .."
Evans finished the sentence for him.
"But it wasn't."
"No. But I thought I'd look around a bit. This chap'd sounded pretty
positive, like. So I went over to Gloucester Green and Bingo! Just behind
the Trish pub there."
"You've got this chap's number?" asked Lewis.
"In the office, yes. He said he couldn't get here himself. Said he was
tired. Huh!"
"He must have given his name?"
' "Moss" , I think it was. Look, I'll just. . . "
A temporarily rejuvenated Mitchell was bounding up the station steps three at
a time as Evans turned to Lewis: "Reckon he mis-heard a bit."
"Just a bit," said Lewis, with quiet resignation.
^5
chapter thirty-two Should any young or old officer experience incipient
or actual signs of vomiting at the sight of some particularly harrowing scene
of crime the said person should not necessarily attribute such nausea to some
psychological vulnerability, but rather to the virtually universal
reflex-reactions of the upper intestine (The SOCO Handbook, Revised 1999)
barry edwards was another of the SOCO personnel called out that busy
Saturday. In fact, simply because he lived only a short distance away along
the Botley Road, he was the first of the team to arrive at the scene of the
crime. A well-set, dark-haired man in his late twenties, he had a pair of
diffident brown eyes that seemed to some of his colleagues strangely naive,
as if he would ever be surprised by the scenes that would inevitably confront
him in his new career.
His SOCO training had been completed only a few months previously, and now he
was a fully fledged (civilian) officer, employed by the Thames Valley Police.
Furthermore, thus far, he was enjoying his job.
After leaving school, with a comparatively successful performance in the
comparatively undemanding field of GCSE, he had worked as a supermarket
shelf-filler, hospital porter, barman, and ironmonger's shop-assistant,
before finally completing a police recruitment questionnaire and duly
learning of the opportunities in his present profession. He had taken his
chance; and he was enjoying his choice.
He felt quite important sometimes, especially when he dealt
THE REMORSEFUL
DAY
off his own bat with some fairly minor affair, when (as he knew) he was
important. And he'd looked forward to the time when he would be called out
to a big job, to some major incident. Like murder. Like now as he sensed
immediately when he drove his van into the Gloucester Green Car Park. The
full complement of the team would have been called in, and almost certainly
he would witness, for the first time, the operation of those basic principles
preservation of the scene, continuity and non-contamination of evidence which
had guided his training in photography, fingerprinting, forensic labelling,
and the meticulous procedure vital to all in-situ investigations.
Edwards had introduced himself immediately to the plain- clothed Sergeant
Lewis, obviously the man in charge: yet perhaps only temporarily in charge,
since (as Edwards guessed) it would only be a matter of time before some more
senior-ranking officer would put in an appearance -just as he himself was
awaiting Bill Flowers, the senior SOCO, a man who had seen everything in
life. As he, Barry Edwards, hadn't. Not yet. For the moment, however, the
appropriate procedure had been applied, with blue-and-white police ribbon
cordoning off an area containing three cars, noses all to the wall: R
456 LJB;
to its left, a grey H-Reg Citroen; to its right a dark-blue P-Reg Rover the
owner of the latter (just arrived) making a statement to one of two uniformed
PCs summoned from the St Aldate's Station. No effort had as yet been made to
disperse the growing band of curious onlookers who stood in silent, hopeful
expectation of some gruesome discovery. Things were happening, though.
Flowers arrived just before the other two SO COs and soon everything would be
ready, once they got the word from someone. Doubtless the same someone
awaited by Sergeant Lewis, the latter a man with 'under authority' written
all over his honest and slightly worried features.
But there was a frustrating twenty-minute wait before the 'authority' put in
his appearance, stepping from the back of a 147
marked police car with a
marked un suppleness of limb, the slate-grey suit decidedly rumpled, the
tell-tale crease around the waistband betokening an increase in girth over
recent months. A white-haired man, of medium height, his face of a
pale-olive colour, as if perhaps he had spent a holiday of less than
uninterrupted sunshine in Torremolinos, or was suffering from incipient
jaundice. But his voice was that of someone who demanded immediate attention
like another voice that Edwards once had known, that of his old Latin master.
Vox auctoritatis.
Lewis had approached the newcomer, and the two were in brief conversation
before coming over to the others. Chief Inspector Morse (for such was he)
appeared to recognize the other SO COs and nodded briefly as he was
introduced to the youngest member of the team.
"Hello, Edwards!" He'd said nothing more, and Edwards gathered that the
Chief Inspector was not a convert to the currently widespread practice of
everyone addressing everyone - superiors, equals, and subordinates alike by
their Christian names. Yet he seemed a pleasant enough fellow, now surveying
the scene with a keen if somewhat melancholy eye, while the SOCO team began
to put on their green boiler suits and over boots
"Anyone touched anything?"
"No more than we needed to, sir." (It was Lewis who replied. ) Morse looked
again at the car for some lingering while the car he'd followed when Harry
Repp had turned his back on Bullingdon. Then he lifted his eyes, and looked,
again for some lingering while, at the pub sign of the Rosie O'Grady.
Bill Flowers was standing beside him.
"All yours!" pronounced Morse.
"Car's locked."
"How do you know?"
"Door catches all in the locked position."
Morse pressed a hand down on the near side front handle.
"Don't !" But Rowers checked his admonition in mid-voice.
"You're right. Any of your lads here ever a juvenile car thief?"
"I know somebody who was."
"Where's he live?"
"Silverstone."
Morse turned to Lewis.
Give Johnson a ring. "
"Know his number?"
"Saturday afternoon? He'll be in the Summertown bookie's."
"It's long gone after
noon, sir."
"Ah!"
"There'll be a Local Directory in the pub."
"You won't find him listed. They've cut his phone off."
"So how ?"
"He'll be in the Dew Drop if he's won a few quid."
"Perhaps he's not won a few quid."
"He'll still be in the Dew Drop."
"Do you know the number?"
"Get me a mobile!" snapped Morse.
Edwards watched as Morse turned his back on his col- leagues, tapped out a
