The Remorseful Day

by Colin Dexter

  It was twenty minutes later that the fourth customer arrived.

  “Usual?”

  The newcomer nodded and placed the requisite monies on the counter. The white van in the car park economically proclaimed the newcomer's profession: “J. Barron, Builder.”

  “Not out at Debbie's today, John?”

  “What do you think? The day after the funeral?”

  “No. Have you seen her since Harry…?”

  “No. Well, I wouldn't have gone last weekend anyway, would I? Thought they'd like being on their own, like—you know, the day after they'd let him out and all that.”

  “No.”

  The youth was standing beside them, a £10 note folded lengthways between the index and middle fingers of his right hand.

  “You're taking all me change,” complained Biffen as he exchanged the note for ten £1 coins from the till.

  “You'll have bugger all left for the honeymoon,” ventured the builder; but the youth, unhearing or uncaring, had already walked back to what was perhaps the first great love of his life.

  At the bar a few low-voiced confidences were being exchanged.

  “When's the wedding, Biff?”

  “Five weeks today.”

  “Nice bit o'skirt?”

  “Yeah. Dental receptionist down in Oxford somewhere.”

  “Glad one of ‘em's earning!” The builder half-turned toward the unremunerative machine. “Nobody earns much of a living on them things.”

  “Except the Company,” corrected the landlord.

  “Except Tom Biffen,” corrected one of the cribbagers.

  The landlord grunted.

  Odd really. Most men in their latish seventies would ever have been susceptible to deafness, arthritis, baldness, sciatica, hemorrhoids, incontinence, impotence, cataracts, dementia, and all the rest. And perhaps (for all the landlord knew) the two old codgers suffered from every single one of them—except quite certainly the first.

  Biffen lowered his voice: “Did you get to the crematorium?”

  “No. Family, wasn't it? I wasn't exactly a friend of the family.”

  “I thought you builders and plumbers were friends of everybody, especially a strapping young fellow like you?”

  “Young?”

  But the landlord had a point. John Barron, tall and well built, with dark close-cropped hair and clean-cut features, certainly looked younger than his forty-one years; and what appeared a genuinely open smile appealed to all the local ladies—except his wife, who had been known occasionally to feel jealous.

  “What exactly are you doing for Debbie?”

  “In the back passage, off the kitchen—you know, the old coal shed and the old loo. Knocking ‘em into one so she can get her washing machine in—retiling the floor—replastering the walls—new electrical sockets—usual sort of thing.”

  “Just at weekends?”

  “Yeah, well…”

  “Bit o’ moonlighting? Cash payment?”

  For a second or two Barron's mouth tightened distastefully, but he made no direct reply. “I was hoping to finish it off before Harry was out.”

  “Poor sod! Bet he was looking forward … you know. Attractive woman, our Debbie!”

  “Yeah.” The builder took a deep draught of his bitter. “Did you go—to the crem?”

  “No. Like you said …”

  “Have you seen her at all since…?”

  “No. Like you said …”

  “The police've been round, they tell me.”

  “Yeah. Came in—when was it?—Tuesday.”

  “What'd they want?”

  Doubtless the builder would have been enlightened immediately had not two further customers entered at that point: an elderly, backpacking, stoutly booted couple.

  “Two glasses of orange juice, please!”

  “Coming up, sir.”

  “Beautiful little village you've got here. So quiet. So peaceful. ‘Far from the madding crowd'—you'll know the quotation?”

  The landlord nodded unconvincingly as he passed over the drinks.

  “And you serve meals as well!”

  The couple walked over to the corner farthest from the fruit machine: she consulting the hostelry's menu; he plotting a possible P.M. itinerary from Family Walks in the Cotswolds.

  “Quiet and peaceful!” mumbled the landlord, as one of the elders stepped forward with two empty straight glasses. Words were clearly superfluous.

  “You were saying?” resumed the builder.

  “Saying what?”

  “About the police?”

  “Ah, yes. That sergeant came in and asked some of us about Harry and Debbie.”

  “But you hadn't seen either of them?”

  “Right! But, I would've done, see—would've seen her, anyway, if it hadn't been for them—for the police. That Sat'day night I thought I'd just nip over and take ‘em a bottle o’ Shampers, like—give ‘em both a bit of a celebration. Well, I'd just parked the car and I was just walking along when I saw this police car driving slowly round and the fellow inside making notes of Reg numbers by the look of it.”

  “What'dyousay?”

  “Didn't say nothing, did I? Just waited till the coast was clear, then buggered off back here smartish. They'd seen the number, though. So not much point in …”

  “Good story!”

  “Bloody true story, mate!”

  The builder finished his pint. “Beer's in good nick, Biff.”

  “Always in good nick!”

  (“Is it fuck!” came sotto voce from the region of the cribbage board.)

  “Summat else too,” continued the landlord as he pulled the builder a second pint. “The police tell me there was a phone call for Debbie that Sat'day night—from the pay phone here.”

  “Could have been anybody.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “Sat'day nights? Come off it! Full up to the rafters, ain't we?”

  The elderly lady now came to the bar and ordered gammon-and-pineapple with chips for two; and during this transaction the builder turned round and, with a fascination that is universal, watched the unequal struggle at the fruit machine.

  From outside came the jingle of an ice-cream van—as happy a noise as any to the youngsters of Lower Swin-stead that sunny lunchtime; almost as happy a noise as that clunk-clunk-clunk of coins falling into the winnings tray of a fruit machine.

  Conversation at the bar was temporarily suspended, since several noisy customers were now arriving, including three members of the highly unsuccessful Lower Swinstead Cricket Club. There was therefore a comparatively large audience for the seemingly endless music of the machine: clunk—clunk - clunk - clunk - clunk - clunk - clunk - clunk - clunk - clunk - clunk - clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk; and an even larger audience as the impassively faced youth pressed the “Repeat” button—successfully—with a further twenty £1 coins duly clanking into the winnings tray.

  “Nearly enough for that honeymoon,” said the builder.

  “Nonsense! He'll be putting it all back,” said one of the cricketers.

  But he wasn't.

  With a temporary lull in business, the landlord resumed the conversation. “Business still pretty good, John?”

  “Plenty o’ work, yeah. Having to turn some things down.”

  “What you got on at the minute?”

  “Job in Burford in Sheep Street: bit o’ roofing, bit o’ pointing, bit o’ painting.”

  “High up, is it?”

  “High enough. I'll need a coupla extensions on the ladder.”

  Biffen screwed up his face and closed his eyes. “You'd never get me up there.”

  “You're OK, so long as things are firm.”

  “Not if you get vertigo as bad as me.”

  The coins bulged proudly in his trouser pocket as the bridegroom designate walked out of the bar. Once in the passage that led to the toilets, he lifted the receiver from the pay phone there, inserted 20p, and dialed a
number.

  But what he said, or to whom he spoke, not even the keen-eared elders could have known.

  Thirty-eight

  All persons are puzzles until at last we find in some word or act the key to the man, to the woman; straightway all their past words and actions lie in light before us.

  (Emerson, Journals)

  For much of the week Lewis had been working three-quarters of the way round the clock; but on Sunday, the day following the events described in the previous chapter, he felt refreshed after a good sleep and arrived at Kidlington Police HQ at 8:45 A.M. No sign of Morse. But that mattered little. It had been facts that were required. Not fancies. Not yet, anyway. And as he sat taking stock of the past week's activities, Lewis felt solidly satisfied—both with himself and with the performance of the personnel readily allocated to the case. There had been so much to cover …

  Lewis had personally supervised the Monday and Tuesday inquiries into the activities of Paddy Flynn in the years, months, days—and morning—before his murder; and if the net result was perhaps somewhat disappointing, at least it had been thorough. Flynn had been living in an upstairs flat (converted a few years previously) on Morrell Avenue. He had been there for just over five months, paying £375 per calendar month for the privilege, and having virtually nothing to do with the tenant of the downstairs flat—a middle-aged accountant who, rain or shine, would walk each day down to St. Clements, across Magdalen Bridge, and up the High to his firm's offices in King Alfred Street. He knew Flynn by sight, of course, but only exchanged words when occasionally they encountered each other in the narrow entrance hall. Of Flynn's lifestyle, he had no knowledge at all: no ideas about the activities in which his fellow tenant might have been engaged. Well, just one little observation, perhaps, since not infrequently there was a car parked outside the semi—always a different car, and almost always gone the following morning. Lewis's notes had read: “Has no knowledge of F's professional or leizure time activities.” But he'd consulted his dictionary, ever kept beside him, in case Morse decided to look at his notes, and quickly corrected the antepenultimate word.

  By all accounts Flynn had led a pretty private, almost secretive life. He was quite frequently spotted in the local hostelries, quite frequently spotted in the local bookmakers, though never, apparently, the worse for excessive liquor or for excessive losses. His name figured nowhere in police records as even the pettiest of crooks, although he was mentioned in dispatches several times as the taxi driver who had picked up Frank Harrison from Oxford Railway Station on the night of Yvonne's murder. Radio Taxis had been his employer at the time, but he had been suspected of (possibly) fabricating fares for his own aggrandisement and duly dismissed—without rancor, it appeared, and certainly without recourse to any industrial tribunal. Dismissed too, subsequently, by the proprietors of Maxim Removals, a firm of middle-distance haulers, “for attempted trickery with the tachometer.” (Lewis had spelled the last word correctly, having checked it earlier.) Since that time, five months previously, Flynn had reported regularly to the DSS office at the bottom of George Street. But lacking any testimonials to his competence and integrity, his attempts to secure further employment in any field of motor transport had been unsuccessful, his completed application forms seldom reaching even the slush pile. It was all rather sad, as the woman regularly dealing with the Flynn file had testified.

  He'd been thirty-two when, seven years earlier, he'd married Josie Newton, and duly fathered two daughters upon that lady—although (this the testimony of a brother in Belfast) the offspring had appeared so dissimilar in temperament, coloration, and mental ability, that there had been many doubts about their common paternity.

  Josie Flynn had been unable or unwilling to offer much in the way of “character profiling” of her late husband (they'd never divorced); had scant interest in the manner of his murder; and, quite certainly, no interest in attending his “last rites,” whatever form these latter might take. Although he had treated her with ever-increasing indifference and contempt, he had never (she acknowledged it) abused her physically or sexually. In fact sex, even in the early months of their relationship, had never been a dominant factor in his life; nor, for that matter, had power or success or social acceptability or drink or even happiness. Just plain money. She'd not seen him for over two years; nor had her daughters—she'd seen to that. It was (again) all rather sad, according to Sergeant Dixon's report. Mr. Paddy Flynn may not have been the ideal husband, but perhaps Ms. Josephine Newton (now her preferred appellation) was hardly a paragon of rectitude in the marital relationship. “Not exacly a saint herself?” as Dixon's handwritten addendum had suggested. And Lewis smiled to himself again, feeling a little superior.

  It had been Lewis himself (no Morse beside him) who had visited Flynn's upstairs flat: smell of cigarette smoke everywhere; sheets on the single bed rather grubby; dirty cutlery and plates in the kitchen sink, but not too many of them; the top surface of the cooker in sore need of Mrs. Lewis; soiled shirts, underpants, socks, handkerchiefs, in a neat pile behind the bathroom door; a minimal assemblage of trousers, jackets, shirts, underclothes, in a heavy wardrobe; a Corby trouser-press; eleven cans of Guinness in the otherwise sparsely stocked refrigerator; not a single book anywhere; two copies of the Mirror opened at the Racing pages; a TV set, but not even the statutory hard-core video; one CD, Great Arias from Puccini, but no CD player for Flynn to have gauged their magnitude; no pictures on the walls; no personal correspondence; and very little in the way of official communications, apart from Social Security forms; no sign of any bank account or credit facility.

  Nothing much to go on.

  And yet Lewis had sensed from the start that there was something missing. Sensed that he knew where that “something missing” might well be.

  And it was.

  Most petty crooks had little in the way of imagination, having two or three favoured niches wherein to conceal their ill-gotten gains. And Paddy Flynn proved no exception. The small, brown-leather case was on the top shelf of the old mahogany wardrobe, tucked away on the far left, beneath a pair of faded-green blankets.

  It took one DC just under twenty minutes to itemize the contents; a second DC just over thirty minutes to check the original itemization—a cache of legitimate banknotes, in fifties, twenties, tens, and fives. The confirmed tally was £17,465 and Lewis knew that Morse would be interested.

  And Morse, on being told, most decidedly had been interested.

  A similarly painstaking review of Repp and Richardson had taken up the whole of the Wednesday. Little new had come to light except for the unexpected (?) discovery that an account with the Burford and Cheltenham Building Society showed a robust balance of £14,350 held in the name of Deborah Richardson, with regular monthly deposits (as was confidentially ascertained) always made in cash. Debbie Richardson had smilingly refused to answer Lewis's questions concerning the provenance of such comparatively substantial income, stating her belief that everybody—bishops, barmaids, presidents, prostitutes—all deserved some measure of privacy. Yes, Lewis had agreed; but he knew that Morse would be interested.

  And Morse, on being told, most decidedly had been interested.

  The Thursday and Friday had been taken up largely with a preliminary scrutiny and analysis of the scores of reports and statements taken from prison officers, bus drivers, rubbish-dump employees, car-park attendants, forensic boffins, and so on and so on—as well as from those members of the public who had responded to appeals for information. But so far there'd been little to show for the methodical police routine that Lewis had supervised. Vital, though! Criminal investigation was all about motives and relationships, about times and dates and alibis. It was all about building up a pattern from the pieces of a jigsaw. So many pieces, though. Some of them blue for the sky and the sea; some of them green and brown for the trees and the land; and sometimes, somewhere, one or two pieces of quirky coloration that seemed to fit in nowhere. And that, as Lewis knew, was where Morse would
come in—as he invariably did. It was almost as if the Chief Inspector had the ability to cheat: to have sneaked some quick glimpse of the finished picture even before picking up the individual pieces.

  Frequently when Lewis had seen him that week, Morse had been sitting in HQ, immobile and apparently immovable (apart from an hour or so over lunchtimes), occasionally and almost casually abstracting a page or two of a report, of a statement, of a letter, from one of the bulging box-files on his desk, yvonne harrison written large in black felt-tipped pen down each of the spines. Clearly (whatever else) Morse had come round to Strange's conviction that some causal connection between the cases had become overwhelmingly probable.

  But that was no surprise to Lewis.

  What had occasioned him puzzlement was the number of green box-files there, since he had himself earlier studied the same material when (he could swear it!) there had only been three.

  Thirty-nine

  Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?

  A: All of my autopsies are performed on dead people.

  (Reported in the Massachusetts Lawyers ‘Journal)

  After (for him) an unprecedented early hour of retirement that same Sunday evening, at 9:30 P.M., Morse had awoken with a troublous headache. Assuming that the dawn was already breaking, he had confidently consulted his watch, to discover that it was still only 11:30 P.M. Thereafter he had woken up at regular ninety-minute intervals, in spite of equally regular doses of Alka-Seltzer and Paracetamol—his mind, even in the periods of intermittent slumber, riding the merry-go-round of disturbing dreams; his blood sugar ridiculously high; his feet suddenly hot and just as suddenly icy cold; an indigestion pain that was occasionally excruciating.

  Ovid (now almost becoming Morse's favorite Latin poet) had once begged the horses of the night to gallop slowly whenever some delightfully compliant mistress was lying beside him. But Morse had no such mistress beside him; and even if he had, he would still have wished those horses of the night to complete their course as quickly as they could possibly manage it.