by Colin Dexter
law-abiding citizen I am, I instructed my driver to keep an appropriately
safe distance from the vehicle in front."
"I just don't believe this. I just don't understand."
"Easy, really. I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to keep an eye on our Mr
Repp, just like Strange did. So I rang up the prison Governor, an old friend
of mine, and told him what I was intending to do; and he said there was no
need because he'd had a call from Strange setting up your surveillance. So I
just told him to forget it told him we'd got some crossed wires came out in
an unmarked car, like you did parked in the visitors' area listened to
Mahler's Eighth - and watched and waited. And took a flask of coffee yes,
coffee, Lewis and the rest is history."
"You're having me on!"
"Oh no! How the hell do you think I could give you that car
THE REMORSEFUL
DAY
number unless I'd seen the bloody thing? You don't think I'm psychic or
something, do you? "
Lewis reflected on this extraordinary new development. Then slowly
formulated his thoughts aloud. "You saw the car in front of me. You saw who
was in it and what was in it ' "Black plastic bags, yes. You were right."
' - and you saw the Registration Number. "
"Only just. You know, I'll have to see an optician soon."
"You told me off for saying " you know"," snapped Lewis.
Morse curled his right hand lovingly round his beer glass.
"Sometimes, you don't fully appreciate my help, you know."
Lewis let it go.
"And you knew the car went into Bicester, to the bus station. You knew it
all the time."
"Yes."
"So when I went to get a paper you saw Repp get out of the bus and get into
the car. But you didn't tell me oh no! You just left me to go on a wild
goose chase after the bus. Well, thank you very much."
For a while Morse was silent. Then: "How many times have I been to the Gents
this morning?"
"Twice since you've been here."
"Six times in all, Lewis! And the reason for such embarrassingly frequent
retirements is not any lack of bladder-control. It's those diuretic pills
they've put me on."
The light slowly dawned; and Sergeant Lewis suddenly looked a happy man.
"The thermos, sir? Three cups of coffee in that, say?"
Morse nodded. Not a happy man.
"So when you got to Bicester bus station you were dying for a leak and you
saw the Gents' loo there, and when you came out the car was gone. Right?"
Reluctantly Morse nodded once more.
"And we followed you, you and the bus, back to Oxford."
A gleeful Lewis looked as if he'd won the Lottery.
"You really should have kept your eyes on that car, sir!"
89
"You mean the black R-reg Peugeot, Lewis? You were right, by the way:
19,950 licensed and on the road, so they inform me. Not far off, were you?"
"And the owner?"
"Some insurance-broker in Gerrard's Cross reported it missing two days ago."
chapter twenty-one BURMA (Be Undressed Ready My Angel) (An acronym
frequently printed on the backs of envelopes posted to sweethearts by
servicemen about to go on leave, or by prisoners about to be released) unlike
the (equally unknown) man who had called upon her the previous evening, he
held up his ID for several seconds in front of her face, like a conjurer
holding up a playing card towards an audience.
But she didn't really look at it; didn't even notice his name. He seemed a
decent, honest-looking sort of fellow not one of those spooky pseuds who
occasionally sought her company. And she was hardly too bothered if he
wasn't one of those decent, honest-looking sort of fellows.
"Deborah Richardson?" (He sounded rather shy. ) "Yes."
"Sergeant Lewis, Thames Valley CID."
"He's not here, yet. It was Harry you wanted?"
"Can I come in?"
"Be my guest!"
As she sat opposite him at the Formica-topped table, Lewis saw a woman in her
mid-thirties, of medium build, with short blonde hair, and wearing a white
dress, polka-dotted in a gaudy green, that reached halfway down (or was it
halfway up? ) a pair of thighs now comfortably crossed in that uncomfortable
kitchen. She was not by any standards a beautiful woman; 91
certainly not
a pretty one. Yet Lewis had little doubt that many men, including Morse
perhaps, would have called her quietly (or loudly) attractive.
She lit a cigarette and smiled rather nervously, the pleasingly regular teeth
un pleasingly coated with nicotine.
"He's OK, isn't he?"
"I'm sure he is, yes."
"It's just well, I was expectin' him a bit before now."
"You didn't arrange to meet him at the prison?"
"No. We've got a car, in the garage, but I never got on too well with
drivin'."
"Perhaps one of his mates . . .?"
"Dunno, really. Expect so. He just said he'd be here as soon as he could."
"He might have rung you."
"Havin' a few beers, I should think. Only natural, in nit The champagne's
back in the fridge anyway."
Lewis looked at his watch, surprised how quickly the latter part of the
morning had sped by.
"Only half-past one."
"So? So why have you called then, Sergeant?"
Lewis played his less than promising hand with some care. "It's just that
we've received some . .. information, unconfirmed information, that Harry
might have . . . well, there might be some slight connection between him
and the murder of Mrs Harrison."
"Harry never had nothin' to do with that murder!"
"You obviously remember the case."
"Course I do! Everybody does. Biggest thing ever happened round here."
"So as far as you know Harry had nothing ' " You reckon I'd be tellin' you if
he had? "
"But you say he hadn't?"
"Course he hadn't!"
'you see, all I'm saying is that Harry's a burglar ' "Was a burglar."
"and there was some evidence that there could have been a burglary that
night that might have gone a bit wrong perhaps. "
"What? Her lyin' on the bed there with her legs wide open? Funny bloody
burglary!"
"How did you know that? How she was found?"
"Come off it! How the hell do any of us know anythin'? Common knowledge,
wasn't it? Common gossip, anyway."
"Where did you hear it?"
"Pub, I should think."
"Maiden's Arms?"
"Shouldn't be surprised. Everybody talks about everythin' there. The
landlord, 'specially. Still, that's what landlords ' " Is he still there? "
"Tom? Oh, yes. Tom Biffen. Keeps about the best pint of bitter in
Oxfordshire, so Harry said." (Lewis made a mental note, for Morse would be
interested. ) "You know him fairly well, the landlord?"
She lit another cigarette, her eyes widening as she leaned forward a little.
"Fairly well, yes. Sergeant."
Lewis changed tack.
"You saw Harry pretty regularly while he was inside?"
"Once a week, usually."
"How did you get there?"
"Friends, mostly."
"Awkward place to get to."
Yep. "
> "When did you last see him?"
"Week ago."
"What did you take him?"
"Bit o' cake. Few cigs. No booze, no drugs nothin' like that. You can't
get away with much there."
"Can you get away with anything there?"
She leaned forward again and smiled as she drew deeply on her cigarette.
"Perhaps I could have done if I'd tried."
93
"Could he give you anything? To take out?"
"Well, nothin' he shouldn't. Just as strict about that as the other way
round. We all sat at tables, you know, and they were watchin' us all the
time all the screws. You'd be lucky to get away with anythin'."
But Lewis knew that it was all a little too pat, this easy interchange.
Things got in, and things got out every prison was the same; and everybody
knew it. Including this woman. And for the first time Lewis sensed that
Strange was probably right: that the letter received by Thames Valley Police
had been written by Harry Repp at Bullingdon Prison, handed to one of his
visitors, and posted somewhere outside at Lower Swinstead, say.
For whatever reason.
But as yet Lewis couldn't identify such a reason.
"Did Harry ever ask you to take anything out of prison?"
"Come off it! What'd he got in there to take out?"
"Letters perhaps?" suggested Lewis quietly.
"If he'd forgotten some address. Not often, though."
"To some of his old cronies?"
"Crooks, you mean?"
"That's what I'm asking you, I suppose."
"Few letters, yes. He didn't want them people in there lookin' through
everythin' he wrote. Nobody would."
"So you occasionally took one away?"
"Not difficult, was it? Just slip it in your handbag."
"What was the last one you took out?"
"Can't remember."
"I think you can." Lewis was surprised with the firm tone of his own voice.
"No, I can't. Just told you, didn't I?" (Yet another cigarette. ) "Please
don't lie to me. You see, I know you posted a letter at Lower Swinstead.
Harry'd asked you to post it there because he thought he was wrong as it
turned out that it would be postmarked from there."
For the first time in the interview, Debbie Richardson seemed unsure of
herself, and Lewis pressed home his perceptible advantages.
"How did you get to Lower Swinstead, by the way?"
"Only three or four miles--' " You walked? "
"No, I drove--' She stopped herself. But the words, in Homeric phrase, had
escaped the barrier of her teeth.
"Didn't you say you couldn't drive?"
"Lied to you, didn't I?"
"Why? Why lie to me?"
"I get used to it, that's why." She leaned forward across the table.
And Lewis saw for certain what he had already suspected for semi-certain that
she wore no bra beneath her dress; probably no knickers, either.
"How often do you go to the pub there, the Maiden's Arms?"
"Often as I can."
"Not in the car, I hope?"
"Sometimes get a lift there you know, if somebody rings."
"When were you there last?"
"When I posted the letter."
"Open all day, is it?"
"What's all this quizzin' about?"
"Just that my boss'll be interested, that's all."
"You're all alike, you bloody coppers!"
It seemed a strange reply, and Lewis looked puzzled.
Pardon? "
"What you just asked me about the pub being' open all day. Exactly what the
other fellow asked."
"What other fellow?"
"Can't remember his name. So what? Can't remember yours, come to that."
"When was this?"
"Last night. Asked me out for a drink, didn't he? I reckon he fancied me a
little bit. But I was already--' 95
" From the police, you say? "
"That's what he said."
"You didn't check?"
Debbie Richardson shrugged her shoulders.
"Nice he was sort o' well educated. Know what I mean?"
"You can't recall his name?"
"No, sorry. Tell you one thing though. Sergeant, er . .."
"Lewis."
"Had a lovely car, he did. Been nice it would ridin' round in that.
A Jag maroon-coloured Jag. "
chapter twenty-two . a mountain range of Rubbish, like an old volcano, and
its geological foundation was Dust. Coal-dust, vegetable-dust, bone-dust,
crockery-dust, rough dust, and sifted dust all manner of Dust in the
accumulated Rubbish (Dickens, Our Mutual Friend) 'not for scrap, is she? "
Stan Cox nodded towards the Jag parked in the no-parking area outside his
office window in the Redbridge Waste Disposal Centre.
"Getting on a bit," conceded Morse, 'like all of us. You know, windscreen
wipers packing up, gear-box starting to jam, no heat. "
"Sounds a bit like the missus!"
"Pardon?"
"Joke, sir."
"Ah, yes." Morse's smile was even weaker than the witticism as he looked
round the cramped office, his eyes catching a girlie calendar in the corner,
from which a provocatively bare- breasted bimbo, with short blonde hair,
stared back at him.
"Nice, ain't she!"
Morse nodded.
"Past her sell-by date, though. She's the May girl."
"Remember the of' song, sir " From May to September"?"
"You just like having her around."
It was Cox's turn to nod: "Drives me mad, she does. Keeps me sane at the
same time though, if you follows me meaning."
97
Morse wasn't at all sure that he did, but he was conscious that he'd
drunk too much beer that lunchtime; that he should never have driven himself
out to Redbridge; that what he'd earlier seen as a clear-cut oudine had now
grown blurred around the periphery. In the pub, with Lewis, he'd felt
convinced he could see a cause, a sequence, a structure, to the crime.
Perhaps two crimes now.
It was the same old tantalizing challenge to puzzles that had faced him ever
since he was a boy. It was the certain knowledge that something had happened
in the past happened in an ordered, logical, very specific way. And the
challenge had been, and still was, to gather the disparate elements of the
puzzle together and to try to reconstruct that 'very specific way'.
Not too successfully now, though. For here, at Redbridge, there seemed a
great gulf fixed between the fanciful hypothesis he'd so recently formulated,
and the humdrum reality of a rubbish dump.
Is that what Cox was trying to say?
"How d'you mean? Keeps you sane?"
"Well, it's not exactly your Botanical Gardens here, is it? Just all the
filth and useless stuff people want shut of. So the re not much good to look
at, 'cept her, bless her heart! Pearl in a pigsty that's what she is."
"Why don't you write her a fan-letter?"
"Think she'd read it?"
"No."
"So what can we do for you. Chief?"
Morse told him, making most of it up as he went along.
And when he'd finished. Cox nodded.
"No problem. We'd better just let the County Authorities know."
"Already done," lied Morse. And refusing a cup of coffee, he left the office
and walked unaccompanied around the site, only a few hundred yards from the
soutfiem stretch of
Oxford's Ring Road, thinking about the things he'd learned from Cox .