by Colin Dexter
‘A bit of a shock! Christ Almighty, it’s not just a bit of a shock, believe me; it’s sheer bloody lunacy!’
There was a short delay at the other end. ‘Look, old boy, I think you’d better come up and see for yourself, don’t you? If you still think it’s a mistake – well, that’s up to you.’
‘Don’t keep saying “if” it’s a mistake. It is a mistake – you can put your shirt and your underpants on that, believe me!’ He calmed himself down as far as he could and resumed the conversation in a tone more befitting his station. ‘Trouble is I’ve got a damned inquest today.’
‘Shouldn’t let that worry you. Anybody can do that for you. Unless you’ve arrested somebody, of course.’
‘No, no,’ muttered Morse, ‘nothing like that. It would have been adjourned anyway.’
‘You sound a bit fed up one way or another.’
‘I bloody am fed up,’ snapped Morse, ‘and who wouldn’t be? I’ve got the case all ready for bed and you send me a scratty little note that’s blown the top off the whole f— thing! How would you feel?’
‘You didn’t expect us to find anything – is that it?’
‘No,’ said Morse, ‘I didn’t. Not a load of cock like that, anyway.’
‘Well, as I say, you’ll be able to see for yourself. I suppose it could have been somebody else with the same name, but it’s a whacking big coincidence if that’s the case. Same name, same dates. No, I don’t think so. You’d be pushing your luck, I reckon.’
‘And I’m going on pushing it,’ rejoined Morse, ‘pushing it like hell, have no fear. Coincidences do happen, don’t they?’ It sounded more like a plea to the gods than a statement of empirical truth.
‘Perhaps they do, sometimes. It’s my fault, though. I should have got hold of you yesterday. I did try a couple of times in the afternoon, but . . .’
‘You weren’t to know. As far as you were concerned it was just one more routine inquiry.’
‘And it wasn’t?’ said the voice softly.
‘And it wasn’t,’ echoed Morse. ‘Anyway, I’ll get there as soon as I can.’
‘Good. I’ll get the stuff ready for you.’
Chief Inspector Rogers of New Scotland Yard put down the phone and wondered why the letter he had dictated and signed the previous afternoon had blown up with such obvious devastation in Morse’s face. The carbon copy, he noticed, was still lying in his out-tray, and he picked it up and read it through again. It still seemed pretty harmless.
CONFIDENTIAL
For the attention of Det. Chief Inspector Morse,
Thames Valley Police HQ,
Kidlington, Oxon.
Dear Morse,
You asked for a check on the abortion clinics for the missing person, Valerie Taylor. Sorry to have taken so long about it, but it proved difficult. The trouble is all these semi-registered places where abortions still get done unofficially – no doubt for a whacking private fee. Anyway, we’ve traced her. She was at the East Chelsea Nursing Home on the dates you gave us. Arrived 4.15 p.m. Tuesday, under her own name, and left some time Friday a.m. by taxi. About three months pregnant. No complications. Description fits all along the line, but we could check further. She had a room-mate who might not be too difficult to trace. We await your further instructions.
Yours sincerely,
P.S. Don’t forget to call when you’re this way again. The beer at the Westminster is drinkable – just!
Chief Inspector Rogers shrugged his shoulders and put the carbon back in the out-tray. Morse! He always had been a funny old bird.
Morse himself sat back in his black leather chair and felt like a man who had just been authoritatively informed that the moon really was made of green cheese after all. Scotland Yard! They must have buggered it all up – must have done! But whatever they’d done, it was little use pretending he could go ahead with his intended schedule. What was the good of bringing two people in for questioning about the murder of a young girl if on the very day she was supposed to be lying dead in the boot of a car she had walked as large as life into some shabby nursing home in East Chelsea – of all places? For a few seconds Morse almost considered the possibility of taking the new information seriously. But he couldn’t quite manage it. It just couldn’t be right, and there was a fairly easy way of proving that it wasn’t right. Central London lay no more than sixty miles away.
He went in to see Strange, and the superintendent, reluctantly, agreed to stand in for him at the inquest.
He rang Lewis, and told him he had to go off to London – he mentioned nothing more – and learned that Lewis would be reporting for duty again the next morning. That is, if he was needed. And Morse said, in a rather weak voice, that he thought he probably would be.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
She’ll be wearing silk pyjamas when she comes.
Popular song
BY ANY RECKONING Yvonne Baker was a honey. She lived alone – or to be accurate she rented a single flat – in a high-rise tenement block in Bethune Road, Stoke Newington. She would have preferred a slightly more central spot and a slightly more luxurious apartment. But from Manor House tube station in Seven Sisters Road, just ten minutes’ walk away, she could be in Central London in a further twenty minutes; and anyone looking around the tasteful and expensive décor of her flat would have guessed (correctly) that, whether from money honourably earned in the cosmetic department of an exclusive store in Oxford Street, or from other unspecified sources of income, Miss Baker was a young woman of not unsubstantial means.
At half-past six she lay languorously relaxed upon her costly counterpane, idly painting her long, beautifully-manicured nails with a particularly revolting shade of sickly green varnish. She wore a peach-coloured satin dressing-gown, her legs, invitingly long and slender, drawn up to her waist, her thoughts centred on the evening ahead of her. The real trouble with pyjama parties was that some of the guests hadn’t quite the courage to conform to the code, and wore enough under their nightshirts or pyjamas to defeat the whole object of the simple exercise. At least she would show them. Some of the girls would wear a bra and panties, but she wasn’t going to. Oh no. She experienced a tingle of excitement at the thought of dancing with the men, and of knowing only too clearly the effect that she would have upon them. It was a gorgeous feeling anyway, wearing so little. So sensuous, so abandoned!
She finished her left hand, held it up before her like a policeman stopping the traffic, and flexed her fingers. She then poured some removing fluid on to a wad of cotton wool and proceeded to rub off all the varnish. Her hands looked better without any nail polish, she decided. She stood up, unfastened and took off her dressing-gown, and carefully lifted out of one of the wardrobe drawers a pair of palish-green pyjamas. She had a beautiful body, and like so many of her admirers she was inordinately conscious of it. She admired herself in the long wall-mirror, fastened all but the top button of her pyjama top and began to brush her long, luxuriant, honey-coloured hair. She would be collected by car at half-past seven, and she glanced again at the alarm clock on her bedside table. Three-quarters of an hour. She walked into the living room, put a record on the turntable, and lit a cigarette of quite improbable length.
The door bell rang at ten minutes to seven, and her first thought was that the alarm clock must be slow again. Well, if it was, so much the better. She walked gaily to the door and opened it with a beaming smile upon her soft, full lips, a smile which slowly contracted and finally faded away as she stared at a man she had never seen before, who stood rather woodenly upon the threshold. Middle-aged and rather sour.
‘Hullo,’ she managed.
‘Miss Baker?’ Miss Baker nodded. ‘I’m Chief Inspector Morse. I’d like to come in and have a word with you, if I may.’
‘Of course.’ A slightly worried frown puckered the meticulously plucked eyebrows as he stood aside and closed the door behind him.
As he explained the reason for his visit, she felt that he was the only man within living me
mory upon whom she appeared to have no visibly erotic effect. In her pyjamas, too! He was brisk and businesslike. Two years the previous June she had shared, had she not, a room in the East Chelsea Nursing Home with a girl named Valerie Taylor? He wanted to know about this girl. Everything she could conceivably remember – every single little thing.
The door bell rang again at twenty-five past seven and Morse told her in an unexpectedly peremptory tone to get rid of him, whoever he was.
‘I hope you realize I’m going out to a party tonight, Inspector.’ She sounded vexed, but in reality was not so vexed as she appeared. In an odd sort of way he was beginning to interest her.
‘So I see,’ said Morse, eyeing the pyjamas. ‘Just tell him you’ll be another half-hour with me – at least.’ She decided she liked his voice. ‘And tell him I’ll take you myself if he can’t wait.’ She decided she’d rather like that.
Morse had already learned enough; and he knew – had known earlier, really – that what Rogers had written was true. There was now no doubt whatsoever that Valerie Taylor had somehow found her way into a London abortion clinic on the very same day on which she had disappeared. The doctor who ran the nursing home had been pleasantly co-operative, but had categorically refused to break what he termed the code of professional confidentiality by revealing the identity of the person or persons who had negotiated Miss Taylor’s visit. It had amazed Morse that the affluent abortionist should have heard of, let alone practised, any code of professional confidentiality; but short of a forcible entry into his filing cabinets, the ambivalent doctor made it abundantly clear that further information was not forthcoming.
After explaining the situation to her pyjama-bottomed beau Miss Baker retired briefly to the bedroom, examined herself once more in the mirror, and wrapped her dressing-gown – not too tightly – around her. She was beginning to feel chilly.
‘There was no need to worry too much about me,’ said Morse. ‘I’m pretty harmless with women, they say.’ For the first time she smiled at him, fully and freely, and immediately Morse wished she hadn’t.
‘I’ll take it off again if you’ll turn the fire on, Inspector.’ She purred the words at him, and the danger bells were ringing in his head.
‘I shan’t keep you much longer, Miss Baker.’
‘Most people call me Yvonne.’ She smiled again and lay back in the armchair. No one ever called Morse by his Christian name.
‘I’ll turn on the fire if you’re not careful,’ he said. But he didn’t.
‘You tell me she said she was from Oxford – not from Kidlington?’
‘From where?’
‘Kidlington. It’s just outside Oxford.’
‘Oh, is it? No. She said Oxford, I’m sure of that.’
Perhaps she would anyway, thought Morse. It did sound a bit more imposing. He had nearly finished. ‘Just one last thing, and I want you to think very hard, Miss – er Yvonne. Did Miss Taylor mention to you at any stage who the father was? Or who she thought the father was?’
She laughed openly. ‘You’re so beautifully delicate, Inspector. But as a matter of fact she did, yes. She was quite a lass really, you know.’
‘Who was it?’
‘She said something about one of her teachers. I remember that because I was a bit surprised to learn she was still a schoolgirl. She looked much older than that. She seemed much more . . . much more knowing somehow. She was nobody’s fool, I can tell you that.’
‘This teacher,’ said Morse. ‘Did she say anything else about him?’
‘She didn’t mention his name, I don’t think. But she said he’d got a little beard and it tickled her every time he . . . every time . . . you know.’
Morse took his eyes from her and stared sadly down at the thick-piled, dark-green carpet. It had been a crazy sort of day.
‘She didn’t say what he taught? What subject?’
She thought a moment. ‘Do you know, I . . . I rather think she did. I think she said he was a French teacher or something.’
He drove her into the West End, tried to forget that she was off to an open-ended orgy dressed only in the pyjamas he had eyed so lovingly in her flat, and decided that life had passed him by.
He dropped her in Mayfair, where she thanked him, a little sadly, and turned towards him and kissed him fully on the lips with her soft, open mouth. And when she was gone, he looked after her, the flared pale-green bottoms of her pyjamas showing below the sleek fur coat. There had been many bad moments that day, but as he sat there in the Lancia slowly wiping the gooey, deep-orange lipstick from his mouth, he decided that this was just about the worst.
Morse drove back to Soho and parked his car on the double yellow lines immediately in front of the Penthouse Club. It was 9.00 p.m. At a glance he could see that the man seated at the receipt of custom was not Maguire, as he hoped it would be. But he was almost past caring as he walked into the foyer.
‘’Fraid you can’t leave your car there, mate.’
‘Perhaps you don’t know who I am,’ said Morse, with the arrogant authority of a Julius Caesar or an Alexander walking among the troops.
‘I don’t care who you are, mate,’ said the young man, rising to his feet, ‘you just can’t . . .’
‘I’ll tell you who I am, sonny. My name’s Morse. M-O-R-S-E. Got that? And if anyone comes along and asks you whose car it is tell ’em it’s mine. And if they don’t believe you, just refer ’em to me, sonny boy – sharpish!’ He walked past the desk and through the latticed doorway.
‘But . . .’ Morse heard no more. The Maltese dwarf sat dutifully at his post, and in a perverse sort of way Morse was glad to see him.
‘You remember me?’
It was clear that the little man did. ‘No need for ticket, sir. You go in. Ticket on me.’ He smiled weakly, but Morse ignored the offer.
‘I want to talk to you. My car’s outside.’ There was no argument, and they sat side by side in the front.
‘Where’s Maguire?’
‘He gone. He just gone. I do’ know where.’
‘When did he leave?’
‘Two day, three day.’
‘Did he have a girlfriend here?’
‘Lots of girls. Some of the girls here, some of the girls there. Who know?’
‘There was a girl here recently – she wore a mask. I think her name was Valerie, perhaps.’
The little man thought he saw the light and visibly relaxed. ‘Valerie? No. You mean Vera. Oh yeah. Boys oh boys!’ He was beginning to feel more confident now and his dirty hands expressively traced the undulating contours of her beautiful body.
‘Is she here tonight?’
‘She gone, too.’
‘I might have known it,’ muttered Morse. ‘She’s buggered off with Maguire, I suppose.’
The little man smiled, revealed a mouthful of large, brilliantly white teeth, and shrugged his oversized shoulders. Morse repressed his strong desire to smash his fist into the leering face, and asked one further question.
‘Did you ever take her out, you filthy little bastard?’
‘Sometimes. Who know?’ He shrugged his shoulders again and spread out his hands, palms uppermost, in a typically Mediterranean gesture.
‘Get out.’
‘You want to come in, mister policeman? See pretty girls, no?’
‘Get out,’ snarled Morse.
For a while Morse sat on silently in his car and pondered many things. Life was down to its dregs, and he had seldom felt so desolate and defeated. He recalled his first interview with Strange at the very beginning of the case, and the distaste he had felt then at the prospect of trying to find a young girl in the midst of this corrupt and corrupting city. And now, again, he had to presume that she was alive. For all his wayward unpredictability, there was at the centre of his being an inner furnace of passion for truth, for logical analysis; and inexorably now the facts, almost all the facts, were pointing to the same conclusion – that he had been wrong, wrong from the start.
/> A constable, young, tall, confident, tapped sharply on the car window. ‘Is this your car, sir?’
Morse wound the window down and wearily identified himself.
‘Sorry, sir. I just thought . . .’
‘Of course you did.’
‘Can I be of any assistance, sir?’
‘Doubt it,’ replied Morse. ‘I’m looking for a young girl.’
‘She live round here, sir?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Morse. ‘I don’t even know if she lives in London. Not much hope for me, is there?’
‘But you mean she’s been seen round here recently?’
‘No,’ said Morse quietly. ‘She’s not been seen anywhere for over two years.’
‘Oh, I see, sir,’ said the young man, seeing nothing. ‘Well, perhaps I can’t help much then. Good night, sir.’ He touched his helmet, and walked off, uncomprehending, past the gaudy strip clubs and the pornographic bookshops.
‘No,’ said Morse to himself, ‘I don’t think you can.’
He started the engine and drove via Shepherd’s Bush and the White City towards the M40. He was back in his office just before midnight.
It did not even occur to him to go straight home. He was fully aware, even if he could give no explanation for it, of the curious fact that his mind was never more resilient, never sharper, than when apparently it was beaten. On such occasions his brain would roam restlessly around his skull like a wild and vicious tiger immured within the confines of a narrow cage, ceaselessly circumambulating, snarling savagely – and lethal. During the whole of the drive back to Oxford he had been like a chess player, defeated only after a monumental struggle, who critically reviews and analyses the moves and the motives for the moves that have led to his defeat. And already a new and strange idea was spawning in the fertile depths of his mind, and he was impatient to get back.
At three minutes to midnight he was poring over the dossiers on the Taylor case with the frenetic concentration of a hastily summoned understudy who had only a few minutes in which to memorize a lengthy speech.
