Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

by Colin Dexter

  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?"

  "No. We shall, as a bank, charge a small commission of course. But you

  expected that."

  "Oh yes, Mr Daniel. I'd expected that," said Morse.

  At 11. 15 a. m. he had taken the 2A bus down the Banbury Road as far as

  Keble Road, where he alighted and walked across the Woodstock Road to the

  Radcliffe Infirmary, where he was directed up to an office on the first floor.

  "Yes? How can I help you?" The woman behind the desk seemed to be a fairly

  important personage with carefully coiffured grey hair and carefully clipped

  diction.

  "I'm thinking of leaving my body to the hospital."

  "You've come to the right place."

  What's the drill? "

  She took a form from a drawer.

  "Just fill this in."

  "Is that all?"

  "Make sure you tell your wife and your children and your GP. You'll avoid

  quite a few problems that way."

  "Thank you."

  "Of course, I ought to tell you we may not want your body. The situation

  does, er, fluctuate. But you'd expected that."

  "Oh yes, I'd expected that," said Morse.

  "And you must make sure you die somewhere fairly locally. We can't come and

  collect you from Canada, you know."

  Perhaps it was a bleak joke.

  "No, of course not."

  It had been a joyless experience for Morse, who now walked slowly down St

  Giles' towards The Randolph. He'd thought at the very least they'd have

  shown a little gratitude. Instead, he felt as though they were doing him a

  favour by agreeing (provisionally! ) to accept a corpse that would surely be

  presenting apprentice anatomists and pathologists with some

  appreciably interesting items: liver, kidneys, lungs, pancreas, heart. .

  In the Chapters' Bar, Ailish Hurley, his favourite barmaid, greeted him in

  her delightful Trish brogue; and two pints of bitter later, as he walked

  round into Magdalen Street and almost immediately caught a bus back up to the

  top of the Banbury Road, he felt that the world was a happier place than it

  had been half an hour earlier.

  Once home, he treated himself to a smallish Glenfiddich, deciding that his

  liquid intake of calories that lunchtime would nicely balance his dosage of

  insulin. Yes, things were looking up, and particularly so since the phone

  hadn't rung all day. What a wonderful thing it would be to go back to the

  days pre telephone (mobile and immobile alike), pre FAX, pre e-mail!

  And, to cap it all, he'd bought himself a video in front of which, in mid

  afternoon, he'd fallen fairly soundly asleep, though at some point

  half-hearing, as he thought, a slippery flop through the letter-box.

  It was an hour later when he opened the envelope and read Dixon's notes on

  Simon Harrison; on Paddy Flynn; on Mrs Holmes.

  Interesting!

  Interesting!

  Interesting!

  And very much as he'd thought. .

  Only one thing was worrying him slightly. Why hadn't Lewis been in touch?

  He didn't want Lewis to get in touch but . . . perhaps he did want Lewis

  to get in touch. So he rang Lewis himself only to discover that the phone

  was out of order. Or was it? He banged the palm of his right hand against

  his forehead. He'd rung Dixon early that morning from the bedroom; then he'd

  had to go downstairs to check an address

  in the phone book, finishing the

  call there, and forgetting to replace the receiver in the bedroom. He'd done

  it before. And he'd do it again. It was not a matter of any great moment.

  He'd ring Lewis himself not that he had anything much to say to him; not for

  the minute anyway.

  He was about to pick up the phone when the door-bell rang.

  266

  chapter fifty-eight It remains quite a problem to play the clarinet with

  false teeth, because there is great difficulty with the grip (this may even

  result in the plate being pulled out! ). In addition there are problems

  with the breathing, because it is difficult to project a successful airstream

  (Paul Harris, Clarinet Basics) 'been trying to get you all day, sir. "

  "I've had other things to do, you know."

  "You just said you'd wanted a rest day."

  "Come in! Fancy a quick noggin?"

  Lewis hesitated.

  "Why not?"

  "Ye gods! You must have had a bad day or was it a good day?"

  "I've had a good day, and so have you."

  Morse now listened quietly to the extraordinary news from Andrews, though

  without any sign of triumphalism.

  Equally quietly he slowly read through Lewis's typed reports. Then read them

  a second time.

  "Your orthography has come on enormously since they put that spell-check

  system into the word-processor."

  "Don't you have any problems with spellings sometimes?"

  "Only with " proceed"."

  "Where does this all leave us, sir?"

  "Things are moving fast."

  "We're getting near the end, you mean?"

  "We were always near the end."

  "So what do you think happened?"

  "Shan't ever know for certain, shall we? With all three of them dead, all

  three of them murdered ' " Only two, surely? "

  "If you say so, Lewis. If you say so."

  "You're not suggesting ?"

  But Morse was not to be deflected: "There were three people who had a vested

  interest in Yvonne Harrison's murder: Repp, Barren, and Flynn. Repp because

  he'd been casing the property for a burglary; because he happened to be there

  on the night of the murder; and because he knew who the murderer was.

  Barren a man with an SAS background, who'd found a woman who could gratify

  his sexual fantasies, and who also knew who the murderer was because he was

  the fellow in bed with Yvonne that night. Flynn the fellow who lied about

  the events that night and who, like the other two, knew who the murderer was.

  The three of them had got their clutches into the only person who could pay

  their price, the person who did pay their price: Frank Harrison. He was

  becoming a fatter and fatter cat in his banking business, so they thought

  and, rightly it seems. So they were ready to up the stakes. And on the day

  Repp was released, they'd agreed to meet and co-ordinate some plan of action.

  But things went wrong. Pretty certainly they somehow discovered that they'd

  each been treated differently dangerously differently and bitterness,

  jealousy, rivalry, all surfaced, and there was one almighty row. I've said

  all this before! They'd stopped, perhaps in a lay-by along the A34 - take

  your pick! - and Barren got his Stanley knife out and threatened Flynn, the

  man who'd just happened to be at the taxi
-rank that night, and who was now

  overplaying his hand. And soon it must have occurred to the other two that

  half a cake is considerably better than a third of one; and Flynn was

  murdered and

  dumped at Redbridge in those black bags, the ones the owner of the car was

  originally going to cart off to the rubbish dump. "

  "Waste Disposal Centre."

  "After that? Who knows? But suddenly the situation was becoming more

  dangerous sdll. If half a cake is better than a third, what about a whole

  cake? So the two of them must have wrangled about the best way to capitalize

  on Flynn's beneficial departure . . . But how and why and when and where

  things went on from there, I've no more idea than you have and that's not

  saying much, is it?"

  "No," said Lewis flatly.

  Morse looked at his sergeant, and smiled wearily: "You're annoyed, aren't

  you?"

  "Annoyed? What about?"

  "Dixon."

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "You'd've accused me of wasting police resources. Do you know what I got him

  to do today?"

  "Vaguely."

  "Well, let me tell you, specifically. First, I asked him to do a bit of

  fourth-grade clerical stuff at Oxpens, and get copies of those attending

  lip-reading classes these last five years. And he did it.

  Very efficiently. He found Simon Harrison's name there, for three years; and

  Paddy Flynn's there, for two years overlapping. Very interesting that,

  because they must have known each other!

  "Second, I asked Dixon to find out more about Flynn. Flynn was known as an

  amateur entertainer round the local pubs and clubs in Oxfordshire, playing

  the clarinet and compering his little pop group.

  Till about three years ago, when things started to go wrong: he began to

  experience trouble with his hearing something that later compromised his job

  with Radio Taxis; and at about the same time, according to the

  post-mortem

  details, he had a lot of dental trouble which meant he had to have all his

  top-front teeth extracted. And that's not a good thing for a

  clarinet-player. "

  "It's not?"

  "Well-known fact. Louis Armstrong had the same sort of trouble."

  "He was a trumpet-plsyerV " Same sort of thing! Then I asked Dixon to look

  into Mrs Holmes's background. I had the impression when we spoke to her that

  she might have been a most attractive woman when she was younger; and I just

  wondered . I got Dixon to check up on her, that's all. Seems she used to

  live in Lower Swinstead before she moved to Burford and, well, look at things

  for yourself. "

  Lewis read Dixon's notes: Elizabeth Jane Thomas (b. 7. ".53) 1976 (Feb.)

  Son b. (Alan) il leg

  1983 (March) Son b. (Roy) il leg 1983 (Dec. ) m. Kenneth Holmes (Registry

  Office) 1991 (Sept. ) Husband killed in pile-up on A40 - same accident that

  caused all her trouble "They don't call them " illegitimate" these days, and

  it should be " Register" Office."

  Morse nodded.

  "You're missing the main point, though."

  "I am?"

  "Remember when we were in the village pub? Remember Biffen greeting his

  customers?"

  Yes. Lewis remembered that

  "Evening, Mr Thomas': the young fellow forever playing the fruit machine, the

  young fellow who had spoken to him in the car park.

  "You mean they're half-brothers? Roy Holmes and Alan Thomas?"

  "Why not full brothers with the same father? I knew there was something

  familiar about young Holmes . . . Anyway, there it is.

  Elizabeth Thomas was an unmarried mum in the village; Alan was already seven

  when his younger brother was born; and everybody knew him as Alan Thomas. So

  he kept the name when his mother married a few months later, and kept it when

  he went along with the family to live in Burford. "

  "Interesting enough but is it important?"

  "I don't know," said Morse slowly. Tjust don't know. But it throws up one

  or two new ideas. "

  "If you say so, sir. Aren't you going to offer me another Scotch, by the

  way?"

  What a strange day it had been! Even stranger, perhaps, in that Morse now

  left his own glass un replenished

  "Shall I tell you something else, Lewis? You'd never believe it, but I've

  been watching the telly this afternoon. I picked up one of those RSPB

  videos."

  "You mean you know how to work the machine?"

  "It's Strange's fault. Genuine bird-watcher, Strange! He told roe the

  sparrow population in North Oxford's down by fifty per cent these last few

  years; and he told me the sparrow-hawks along Squitchey Lane are getting

  fatter. So I bought this video on birds of prey you know, eagles, falcons,

  hobbies, merlins, red kites . . . did you hear me, Lewis? Red kites."

  Lewis looked puzzled.

  "I'm not with you."

  "Your interview with Simon Harrison. He's a phoney bird- watcher, that

  fellow. Said he'd been off to Llandudno to try to spot a red kite.

  Llandudno! He meant Llandovery, Lewis that was the only home of the red kite

  . in the UK until they introduced a few near Stokenchurch. "

  "I didn't know you were an expert ' " I'm not. And nor is Simon Harrison.

  His alibi for Monday

  morning's worthless. He wouldn't know a red kite from

  a red cabbage. "

  Unaccustomedly relaxed, Lewis sipped his Glenfiddich and involuntarily

  repeated an earlier comment: "Interesting enough but is it importanfi' " I

  just don't know," said Morse slowly, himself now involuntarily repeating an

  earlier comment: " But it throws up one or two new ideas . .

  "Perhaps they've all been telling us a few lies, sir ... except Mrs Barren,

  perhaps."

  Morse smiled.

  "Don't you mean especially Mrs Barron?"

  272

  chapter fifty-nine Wherever Cod erects a house of prayer, The Devil

  always builds a chapel there; And 'twill he found, upon examination, The

  latter has the largest congregation (Daniel Defoe, The True-horn Englishman)

  mrs linda bar ron walked steadily up the aisle between the small assembly of

  mourners, her arm linked through that of her mother, both women dutifully

  dressed in bible-black suits . .

  On the whole, it hadn't been quite the ordeal she'd expected: in practical

  terms, the shock of it all continued to cocoon a good half of her conscious

  thoughts; whilst emotion- ally she had long since accepted that her love for

  her husband was as dead as the man who had been lying there in the coffin -

  until mercifully the curtains had closed, and the show was over. He would

  have enjoyed the hymn though, "He Who Would Valiant Be', for he had been

  valiant enough (she'd learned that from his army friends) - as well as vain

  and domineering and unfaithful. Yes, she'd found herself moved by the hymn;

  and the tears ought to have come.

  But they hadn't.

  Outside, in the clear sunshine, she whispered quickly into her mother's ear.

  "Remember what I said. The kids are fine, if anybody asks. OK?"

  But the grandmother made no reply. She was the very last person in the

  world to let the little ones down, especially the one of them. As
for Linda,

  she girded up her loins in readiness for the chorus of commiseration she

  would have to cope with.

  And indeed several of the family and friends of her late husband, J. Ban-on,

  Builder, had already emerged through the chapel doors, including Thomas

  Biffen, Landlord, whose creased white shirt was so tight around the neck that

  he had been forced to unfasten the top button beneath the black tie;

  including the perennial opponents, Alf and Bert, who had exchanged no words

  in the chapel, but whose thoughts were perhaps in tune during the service as

  each of them must have mused on their imminent mortality, and the prospects

  of encountering that great cribbage-player in the sky.

  Including Frank Harrison.

  Chief Superintendent Strange, who had been seated in the back row next to

  Morse, was the last but one to leave. His thoughts had roamed irreverently