by Colin Dexter
the bed."
"Couldn't the murderer have folded them? Doesn't take me long to fold a pair
of pyjamas."
Lewis shook his head slowly.
"Naked, gagged, hand- cuffed .. ."
"Yes," agreed Morse.
"Don't forget the handcuffs."
"Not much good remembering them, either."
"No. I recall they were, er, not to be found later on."
"But all the proper procedures were gone through. Left on her wrists till
the PM, and the path people did all the usual checks blood, fib res hairs.
Couldn't come up with anything though, could they? And they checked them for
prints job they'd normally leave to the SO COs Bit of a muddle, by the sound
of it. Probably that's how they came to be lost."
"Temporarily misplaced, Lewis."
"Not the only things that went missing, were they? There was a file of
personal letters . .."
"I doubt they'd ever have been much help."
"We still didn't do a very good job."
"Bloody awful job."
"If only we knew who rang Frank Harrison in London that night!"
"One of his children, the builder, the burglar, the lover, the
candlestick-maker? I'm like you: I don't know. But unlike you I'm not
concerned with the case."
Lewis looked shrewdly into Morse's face. You're interested though, I think.
"
Morse got to his feet.
"Just give me a lift down to Oddbins. I'm out of Glenfiddich."
The phone rang as they were leaving.
"Morse?" (Strange's unmistakable voice. ) "Sir?"
"Listen to this!"
"Not me, sir. It just so happens that Sergeant Lewis ' 'morse! But the
receiver had already been transferred; and although aware of the explosions
at the other end of the line, Morse walked out into the corridor and along to
the Gentle- men's loo.
On his return, the telephone conversation had concluded.
"They've found a body. Out at Sutton Courtenay."
Just like I said. "
"No, sir. Not just like you said. You told the people there not to worry
any more. It was me who told them to keep looking."
"Well done! You were right and I was wrong. I thought Repp was due for his
comeuppance and probably he thought so too. But I just didn't follow it
through. That letter he wrote from prison was a cry for help in a way,
asking us to keep a protective eye on him. Which we did, of course. Or
rather which we didn't."
Suddenly he gave his chest a vigorous massage with his right hand.
"OK, sir?"
"Bit of indigestion."
"You sure?"
"They've found the body, you say?"
"Half an hour ago."
"You'd better get off then."
"Will you come along?"
"Certainly not. I'm not worried about him any longer. He was a cheap crook,
a part-time burglar, a nasty piece of work should have been rumbled years
ago. Good riddance. Harry Repp!"
121
chapter twenty-seven In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it
seemed always afternoon, All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream (Tennyson, The Lotus-eaters) after
an excited, if somewhat dispirited, Lewis had dropped him off at Oddbins,
Morse picked up two bottles of single-malt Glenfiddich (' 4 Off When Two Are
Purchased'); then walked further down the Summertown shops to Boots, where he
bought two large boxes of Alka-Seltzer (sixty tablets in all) and two packets
of extra-strength BiSoDoL (sixty tablets in all), reckoning that such
additional medicaments might keep him comparatively fit for a further
fortnight. But in truth his acid-indigestion and heartburn were getting even
worse. All right, it was a family affliction; but it gave little comfort to
know that father and paternal grandfather had both endured agonies from
hiatus hernia a condition not desperately serious perhaps, but certainly far
more painful than it sounded. The cure so simple! had been repeatedly
advocated by his GP: "Just pack up the booze!" And indeed Morse had
occasionally followed such advice for a couple of days or so; only to assume,
upon the temporary disappearance of the symptoms, that a permanent cure had
been effected; and that a resumption of his erstwhile modus vi vendi was
thenceforth justified.
He would try again soon.
Not today, though.
He walked down South Parade to the Woodstock Road, turned right, and soon
found himself at the Woodstock Arms, where the landlord rightly prided
himself on a particularly fine pint of Morrell's Bitter of which Morse took
liberal advantage that early Saturday lunchtime. The printed menu and the
chalked-up specials on the board were strong temptations to many a man. But
not to Morse. These past two decades he had almost invariably taken his
lunchtime calories in liquid form; and he did so now. Most of the habitues
he knew by sight, if not by name; but after a few perfunctory nods he settled
himself in a corner of the wall-seating, and thought of many things . . .
Instinctively (or so he told himself) he'd known that Harry Repp was doomed
to die from the moment he'd left Bulling- don. Harry had known too much.
Harry had been a bit-player - a bit more than a bit-player in the drama that
had been enacted on the evening Yvonne Harrison was murdered. But Harry had
decided to remain silent. And the reason for such silence was probably the
reason for many a silence money.
Someone had ensured that Harry's discreet silence had been profitably
rewarded. On his release Harry had probably decided that the goose could
soon be persuaded to change the golden eggs from medium to large. But he'd
miscalculated: something had happened probably there'd been some
communication during the last few weeks of his imprisonment that had cast a
cloud of fear over his impending release; justifiable fear, since he now lay
stiff and cold amidst the trash and the filth of Sutton Courtenay.
It seemed a predictable outcome though far from an in- evitable one, and
Morse felt no real cause for any self- recrimination. Lewis would go along
there was probably there already; would join the SO COs and supervise the
necessary procedures; would draw a few tentative, temporary 123
conclusions; would report to Strange; and all in all would probably do as
good a job as any other member of the Thames Valley CID in seeking the motive
for Repp's murder.
He ordered himself a third pint, conscious that the world seemed a
considerably kindlier place than heretofore. He even found himself listening
to the topics of conversation around him: darts, bar-billiards, Aunt Sally,
push-penny . . and perhaps (he thought) his own life might have been
marginally enriched by such innocent divertissements.
Perhaps not, though.
Leaving the Woodstock Arms, he slowly walked the few hundred yards north to
Squitchey Lane, where he turned right towards his bachelor flat.
No messages on the Ansafone; no letters or notes pushed through the
letter-box. A free afternoon! - for which, in his believing days, he would
have given thanks to the Almighty. His dark-blue Oxford Univers
ity diary was
beside the phone, and he looked through the following week's engagements.
Not much there either, really: just that diabetes review at the Radcliffe
Infirmary at 9 a. m. on Monday morning. Only an hour or so that; but the
imminent appointment disturbed him slightly. He had promised his consultant,
and promised him- self, that he would present a faithful record of his
blood-sugar measurements over the previous fortnight. But he had failed to
do so, and there was little he could now do to remedy the situation except to
take half a dozen such measurements in the remaining interval of thirty-six
hours and to extrapolate backwards therefrom, in order to present a neatly
tabulated series of satisfactory readings. He'd done it before and he would
do it again.
Kem Problem.
He half-filled a tumbler with Glenfiddich, then topped it up with
commensurate tap-water. Such dilution (a recent innovation) would, as Morse
knew, mark him out in the eyes of many
a Scot as a sacrilegious Sassenach. But according to his GP, the liver
preferred things that way; and Morse's liver (according to the same source)
was in need of a bit of tender loving care, along with his heart, kidneys,
stomach, pancreas, lungs.
Lungs. Well, at least he'd finally managed to pack up smoking, a filthy
habit, as he now recognized; but one which had given him almost as much
pleasure as any other vice in life. And he knew that were he privy to the
date and time of an early Judgement Day (the following Monday, say) he would
set off immediately to the nearest news agent to buy in a store of
cigarettes. And he almost did so now, as if he could already hear the
trumpets sounding on the other side.
In the living room, he selected Bruno Walter's early recording of the
Walkiire, with Lauritz Melchior and Lotte Lehmann singing the roles of
Siegmund and Sieglinde. Wonderful! So Morse turned the volume-control to
maximum as he listened to the anagnorisis at the end of Act I, and heard
neither of the telephone calls made to his ex-directory number that
afternoon, conscious only that he was falling deliciously asleep as the
benighted brother and sister rushed off into the forest to beget Siegfried .
It was coming up to 2. 45 p. m. when Morse jerked abruptly awake,
disappointed that his semi-erotic dream was prematurely terminated: a dream
of a woman seated intimately close to him a dream of Debbie Richardson, with
legs provocatively crossed, the texture of the cheap black stockings tautly
stretched along her upper thighs.
Wonderful!
But even as she'd leaned towards him, he'd voiced his deep anxiety: "Aren't
you frightened someone will come in?"
"No one'll come in. Harry won't be comin' back. Ever. I'll get you another
drink. Just stay where you are."
So Morse had stayed where he was, awaiting her return with
^S
impatience, and with an empty glass beside him. And when he awoke, he was
still sitting there alone, awaiting her return with impatience, and with an
empty glass beside him.
Wagner had long since run his course, and finally Morse got to his feet and
turned off the CD player. He felt tired, hot, thirsty and a sharp pain in
his chest betokened another bout of indigestion. In the bathroom, he cleaned
his teeth and dropped three Alka-Seltzer tablets into a glass of water; then
he filled up the wash-basin and thrice dipped his head into the cold water.
The tablets had fizzed and dissolved and he downed the dosage at a single
draught. Thence to his bed- room, where he took his blood-sugar level: 24.
8 - almost off the scale. His own fault, since he'd forgotten to inject
himself at lunchtime ~ making up for it now, though, with an extra four units
ofActrapid insulin. Just to be on the safe side. Back in the bathroom, he
drank two further glasses of cold water, acknowledging how surprisingly
pleasing was its taste, since water had seldom figured prominently in his
drinking habits. Finally he decided that a couple of Paracetamol would be
appropriate. So he shook out the tablets on to his palm; shook out three in
fact and decided to take the three. Just to be on the safe side.
Suddenly he was feeling much better, his faith in this curious combination of
assorted medicaments seemingly justified once more.
Suddenly, too, he decided to follow his consultant's somewhat despairing
exhortation to take a bit of exercise occasionally. Why not? It was a warm
and gentle summer's day.
In the small entrance hall, he noticed the figure '2' on the window of his
Ansafone. Pressing
"Play' he listened to the first message: Morse? Janet! Ten-fast one
Saturday afternoon. Good news! I hope to be back in Oxford on the 14th. So
you'll be able to take me somewhere? To bed perhaps? Give me a ring soon.
Bye!
Any semi-remembrance of Debbie Richardson was lingering no longer, and Morse
smiled happily to himself. He would ring immediately. But the second
message had followed with- out a pause, and he was destined not to ring
Sister McQueen that afternoon.
Instead he dialled HQ and finally got through to the young PC who had driven
him out to Bullingdon the previous morning in an unmarked police car.
"Get the same car, Kershaw - nice, comfy seats and pick me up from home quam
ceterrime."
"Pardon?"
"Smartish!"
"Sir, I was just going off duty when you rang and I've ' " Make it five
minutes! "
Deeply puzzled. Morse walked back into the sitting-room where he sat in the
black-leather armchair; and where his right hand reached for whisky once more
as mentally he rehearsed that second, quite extraordinary message on the
Ansafone: Sir? Lewis here half-fast one, nearly I'm out at Sutton Courtenay.
Please come along as soon as you can -for my sake if nobody else's. I think
you should get here before we move the body. You see, sir, it isn't the body
of Harry Repp.
127
chapter twenty-eight Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio
(Shakespeare, HamUf) it was just after 4 p. m. that same Saturday afternoon
when Morse and Lewis finally sat down together in the requisitioned office of
the site manager.
"Straightaway I knew it wasn't him, sir, when I saw his arms. Harry Repp had
this tattoo: all twisted chains and anchors, you know a sort of. . ."
Lewis undulated his hands vertically, as if tracing a woman's willowy figure.
"Convoluted involvement," suggested Morse gently.
"Well, this fellow's not got any, has he? Anyway he's much smaller, only
what? - five-four, five-five. Doesn't weigh much either eight, nine stone?
No more."
Morse nodded.
"And he's got different coloured hair, and he's got a port-wine stain on his
neck, and he's not wearing Repp's clothes, and his shoes are three sizes
smaller ' " All right. I wasn't expecting the Queen's Medal! "
At which Eddie Andrews, the 2i/c senior SOCO, knocked on the door and entered
the office, at once uncertain whether to address himself to Morse or to
Lewis. He decided on the former: "Safe, I
reckon, to move him now? Dr
Hobson says there's not much else she can do here."
Morse shrugged.
"You'd better ask Sergeant Lewis. He's in charge."
And Lewis rose to the occasion.
"Yes, move him. Thank you."
As he was about to leave, Andrews noticed the TV set. "Mind if I just see
how Northants are getting on in the cricket?"
"Important to you, is it?" queried Morse mildly. Andrews was digitally
discovering Sport (Cricket) on Ceefax when the office door burst open to
admit a florid-faced Chief Superintendent Strange, an officer resolutely
determined to retain the appellation
"Chief, whatever most of his collateral colleagues in the Force were doing.
"You've ruined my afternoon's golf, Lewis! You know that?"
Surprisingly, the words were spoken with little sign of animus. But before
Lewis could respond in any way, Strange was addressing Morse in considerably
sharper tones: "And how exactly do you come to be here?"
"Same as you really, sir.
Ruined my day, too. I was just indulging in a little Egyptian PT - ' "After