by Colin Dexter
I reckon."
"Who did she want?"
Alf chuckled.
"Didn't want me Bert neither! One or two was luckier though, mister."
The light in Alf's old eyes suddenly sparked, like the coals on a fire that
were almost ready to sink back to an ashen-grey; and he nodded his head -just
as Bert, in his turn, would have nodded across the cribbage-board.
Enviously.
With the consulting rooms all taken up with a series of interviews for
diabetes students, Lewis sat with Sarah Harrison behind a curtain in the
Blood-Testing Room.
"Did you see your father while he was staying at the Randolph last week?"
"I always see my father when he comes to Oxford. In fact, I had a meal with
him one evening."
"So you get on well with him?"
Lewis's smile was not reciprocated, and she almost spat her reply at him:
"WTiat the hell's that supposed to mean?"
"I'm not sure really. It's just that I've got a list of questions here from
Chief Inspector Morse by the way, I think you know him .
. ? "
295
"I've met him once."
"Well he's asked me to ask you not very well phrased, that- ' " What's he
want to know? "
"What the relationships were like in your family."
"I can't speak for Simon you must ask him. If you mean did I have any
preference? No. I loved Mum, and I loved, love, Dad. Some children love
both their parents, you know."
"You never felt that your mother loved Simon a bit more than she loved you
you know, because he was a bit handing- capped, perhaps because he needed
more affection than you did?"
There was a silence before Sarah answered the question; and as Lewis looked
at her he realized how attractive she must have appeared to all the men and
boys in the village; how attractive she was now, and would be for many years
to come, in whatever place she found herself.
"You know I've never thought of it quite like that before, but yes ... I
suppose you could be right. Sergeant Lewis."
After leaving the Maiden's Arms, where the fruit machine had stood unwontedly
and unprofitably silent, Morse called on Alien (sic) Thomas at his home in
Lower Swinstead. Alf had told him where to go: the lad was sure to be there.
He'd not be at work, because he'd never done a hand's turn in his life.
And Alf was right.
The dingy room was untidy and un dusted with three empty cans on the top of
the TV and a hugely piled ash-tray on the arm of the single armchair. But
Thomas (the facial resemblance between him and Roy Holmes so very obvious to
him now) was a paragon of civility compared with the crudity of that sibling
of his, and Morse found himself feeling more pro than and the unshaven youth
in front of him.
"How often do you keep in touch with your dad?" began Morse.
The cigarette that had been dangling from Thomas's loose mouth fell to the
carpet; and although it was swiftly retrieved the damage had been done.
Thomas knew it. And Morse knew it. And fairly soon the truth, or what Morse
took to be half of the truth, had started to surface.
Yes, Elizabeth Holmes was his natural mother.
Yes, Roy Holmes was his stepbrother or his real brother he'd never really
known.
Yes, he kept in touch with his natural father, and his natural father kept in
touch with him: Frank Harrison, yes he'd always known that.
No. His father had never sent him what could loosely be called a
fruit-machine allowance.
No. His father had never asked him to keep him regularly informed about any
developments in the enquiries into Yvonne Harrison's murder.
No. He'd had no contact whatever recently either with his father or his
mother or his brother.
Morse was half-smiling to himself as finally he drove back to Oxford, knowing
beyond any peradventure that the No No No was in reality a Yes Yes Yes.
In the semi-coordinated strategy earlier agreed between the pair of them,
Lewis's last allotted task had been some further enquiries into the balances
and business activities of Mr Frank Harrison. Somewhat trickier than
anticipated though. Yet far more exciting, as Lewis discovered after
depositing (as agreed) the Sainsbury's bag, with contents, in Morse's office
late that same afternoon, and ringing the London offices of the Swiss
Helvetia Bank.
Reaching the senior manager surprisingly speedily.
Being informed that he, Lewis, ought really to get to London immediately
and urgently.
Deciding to go.
Using the siren (one of Lewis's greatest joys) if he found himself stuck, as
he knew he would be, amidst the capital's inevitable grid locks
Morse took the red trainers from the bag and placed them on Simon Harrison's
desk.
"These yours?"
"Pardon? What shorts?"
The interview wasn't going to be easy, Morse conceded that. Yet already the
suspicion had crossed his mind that any deaf man, and especially a canny deaf
man, might occasionally pretend to mis-hear in order to give himself a little
more time to consider an awkward question.
"Your car, Mr Harrison? Toyota, P-Reg?"
"It ought to be what, Inspector?"
"Llandudno? Mean anything to you?"
"Did you know, you say? Didn't know?"
"The time for playing games is over, lad," said Morse quietly. "Let's start
at the beginning again, shall we?" He pointed to the trainers.
"These yours?"
The truth, or what Morse took to be half of the truth, was fairly soon out.
The teenaged Simon had known Ban-on well enough because the builder had done
a few things around the house, including a big structural job on the back
patio. Frequently he'd found Barren in the kitchen having a mug of coffee
with his mother, and he'd sensed that Barren fancied her. Jealous? Yes,
he'd been jealous. Angry, too, because his mother had once confided in him
that she found Barren a bit of a creep.
Then, so very recently, there'd been this upsurge of interest
in his mother's murder, bringing with it a corresponding upsurge in his
hatred of Barren.
Yes, he'd bought the trainers 70! No, he'd not driven out to Stokenchurch
that Monday morning. He'd driven out to Burford instead, where he knew that
Barron was working.
Here Morse had interrupted.
"How did you know that?"
"Pardon?"
Was it a genuine plea? Morse was most doubtful, but he repeated the question
with what he trusted was legible enunciation, conscious as he had been
throughout of Simon's eyes upon his lips.
"He told me himself. You see, I wanted the outside of my flat, er . .
you know, the windows, doors . . . they were all getting a bit . .
Anyway, I asked him if he could do it and he said he'd come round and give me
an estimate after he'd finished his next job. And I don't know why but he
just happened to mention where it was, that's all. "
Morse nodded dubiously. Even if it wasn't the truth, it wasn't a bad answer.
And Simon Harrison continued his unofficial statement: He'd just felt well,
murderous. Simple as that. He
'd always suspected that Barron was involved
somehow in his mother's murder, and he was conscious of an ever-increasing
hatred for the man. So he'd decided to go and see if Barron was there, in
Sheep Street, balanced precariously (as he hoped) on the top of an extended
ladder, painting the guttering or some- thing. And he was.
Morse made a second interruption: "So why didn't you . . .?"
Simon understood the inchoate query immediately, and for Morse his answer had
the ring of truth about it: "I wanted to make sure he could be pushed off.
I'd noticed when he was doing Mum's roof that he used to anchor the top of
his ladder to the troughing or chimney stack or something. And he'd done the
same there, in Sheep Street I could see
it easily. So even if I'd had the
guts to to it, the ladder wouldn't have fallen. He might have done, agreed,
but. . . Anyway, I was a nervous wreck when I got back home; and when I
read in the Oxford Mail that Mrs Somebody-or-other had mentioned seeing a
jogger there wearing red trainers ... I should have put them in the dustbin.
Stupid, I was! But they'd cost me well, I told you. And I've always loved
animals, so . well, that's it really. "
Although less than convinced by what sounded a suspiciously shaky story.
Morse was adequately impressed by the manner of the plea sandy spoken young
man. Had he been as vain as Morse and many other mortals, he would probably
have grown his hair fairly long over his temples in order to conceal his
hearing-aids. But Harrison's dark hair was closely cropped, framing a
clean-shaven face that seemed honest. Or reasonably so.
Asking Harrison to remind him of his home address and telephone number.
Morse got to his feet and prepared to leave.
"You'll have to make an official statement, of course."
"I realize that, yes."
Morse pushed the trainers an inch or two further across the desk.
"You might as well keep them now. I only wish I were as fit as you."
Was there a glint of humour in Simon's eyes as, in turn, he got to his feet?
"Fit a shoe, did you say, Inspector?"
Morse let it go. The man's hearing was very poor, little doubt of that.
Which made it surprising perhaps that a mobile phone lay on the desk beside
him.
On his second impulse that day, Morse drove down to North Oxford and stopped
momentarily outside Simon Harrison's small property at 5 Grosvenor Street.
The replacement windows with their aluminium frames had clearly been
installed there fairly recently frames whose glory (as advertised) was
never to need any painting at all.
Courteously if somewhat cautiously received, Lewis listened carefully as one
of the Bank's important personages spelled out the situation with (as was
stressed) utter confidentiality, with appropriate delicacy, and with (for
Lewis) a leavening of incomprehensible technicalities. In simple terms it
amounted to this: Mr Frank Harrison, currently on furlough, was currently
also, if unofficially, on suspension from his duties with the Bank on
suspicion, as yet unsubstantiated, of misappropriation of monies: viz. an
unexplained black hole of some 520,000 in his department's Investment
Portfolios.
chapter sixty-four Refrain to-night And that shall lead a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence: the next more easy; For use almost can change the
stamp of nature (Shakespeare, Hamkt) sloane square . . . gridlock . . .
Siren . . . Gridlock . . . Siren . It is not a matter for any surprise
that car drivers occasionally contract one of the minor strains of the
road-rage virus even that patient man in the siren-assisted police car who
finally pulled over on to the hard shoulder of the M40 and rang his chief.
"Been stuck in traffic, sir. Be with you in about an hour."
"Lewis! Can't you hear the wireless? It's five-past seven bang in the
middle of The Archers. It can wait, surely!"
Lewis supposed it could; and would have said so. But the phone was dead.
Wireless! Huh! Everybody called it a 'radio' these days well, everybody
except Morse and one or two of the old 'uns, like Strange.
Yes, come to think of it. Morse and Strange were the oldest of the HQ lot,
with Strange six months the older, and due for retirement that next month.
The road was free and Lewis drove fast. It could wait of course it could the
news about Harrison Senior. Perhaps it didn't matter all that much; and as
Morse frequently reminded
him nothing really mattered very much at all in the end. But he was looking
forward to a swopping of notes. There had been some interesting
developments, certainly on his own side; and he doubted not that Morse's
researches that day had generated a few new ideas.
Not that they needed any more high-flown ideas really, he decided, as a
sudden torrential downpour called for more terrestrial concentration. He
reduced his speed to 80 m. p. h.
At 7. 20 p. m. Morse was sitting back in the black-leather arm- chair,
knowing that only a few of the pieces in the jigsaw remained to be fitted.
Earlier in the case the top half of the puzzle had presented itself as a
monochrome blue, like the sky earlier that evening, although of late the
weather had become sultry, as though a thunderstorm were brewing. But the
jigsaw's undifferentiated blue had been duly broken by a solitary seagull or
two, by a piece of soft-white cloud, and later perhaps (when Lewis arrived?
) by what Housman so memorably had called 'the orange band of eve'. He felt
almost happy. There was something else, too: he Would quite certainly wait
until that arrival before having his first drink of the day. It was quite
easy really (as he told himself) to refrain from alcohol for a limited period.
The storm reached North Oxford fifty minutes later, travel- ling from the
south-west at a pace commensurate with Lewis's speed along the
M40.
It may have had something to do with Wagner, but Morse enjoyed the intensity
and the electricity of a thunderstorm, and he watched with deep pleasure the
plashing rain and the dazzling flashes in the lightning-riven sky. From his
viewpoint by the window of his flat, a slightly sagging telephone-wire cut
the leaden heavens in two; and he watched as a succession of single drops of
rain ran along the wire before finally falling off, reminding him of soldiers
crossing a river on rope-harness, 303
and finally dropping off on the other
side. As he had once done himself.
Crossing the river . His mother would never speak of 'dying': always of
'crossing the river'. It was a pleasing conceit; a pleasing metaphor. If
he'd been a poet, he might have written a sonnet about that telephone-wire
just outside. But Morse wasn't a poet. And the storm now ceased as suddenly
as it had started.
And the front-door bell was ringing.
It was after 10 p. m. when, with Lewis now gone, Morse took stock of the
situation with renewed interest, though (truth to tell) with little great
surprise. Lewis had declined the offer of alcohol, and Morse had decided to
prolong his own virtually unprecedented abstinence. He felt tired, and at
been counselled that beer made a lumpy mattress, that spirits made a hard
pillow, and that in general alcohol was the stuff that nightmares were made
of. So, if that were true, he could perhaps expect to be sleeping the sleep
of the just that night. It would be a new experience.
He put on the RSPB video, and once again watched the wonderful albatross
gliding effordessly across the Antarctic wastes. So relaxing . .
At 11. 15 he switched off the bedroom light and turned as ever on to his
right-hand side, conscious of a clear head, a freshness of mind, and a gently
slumbrous lassitude.
Wonderful.
In spite of his occasional disillusionment about being cast up on to the
shores of light in the first place, it would be wholly untrue to say that
Morse was over-eager to embark upon diat final journey to that further land.
Indeed, like the majority of
mortals, he was something of a hypochondriac; and that night he found himself
becoming increasingly fearful about his own physical well-being. Or
