by Colin Dexter
virtually nothing to do with the tenant of the downstairs flat a middle-aged
account- ant 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 ofF'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
rancour, it appeared, and certainly without recourse to any industrial
tribunal.
Dismissed too, subsequently, by the proprietors of Maxim Removals, a firm of
middle-distance hauliers, '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 relation- ship, 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 hand- written 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 every- where; 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 'some- thing 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 bank-notes, 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 Burfbrd 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 jig
saw. 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 lunch times
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
ha prison 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.
184
chapter 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 favourite Latin poet) had once begged the
horses of the night to gallop slowly when- ever 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.
He finally rose from the creased and crumpled sheets, and was shaving, just
as rosy-fingered Dawn herself was rising over the Cutteslowe Council Estate.
At 6 a. m. he once more measured his blood-sugar level, now
dipped
dramatically from 24. 4 at 1 a. m. to 2. 8. Some decent breakfast was
evidently required, and a lightly boiled egg with toast would fit the bill
nicely. But Morse had no eggs; no slices of bread either.
So, perforce, it had to be cereal. But Morse could find no milk, and there
seemed no option but to resort to the solitary king-sized Mars bar which he
always kept some- where in the flat. For an emergency. In rebus extremis,
like now. But he couldn't find it. Then bless you St Anthony! - he
discovered that the Coop milkman had already called; and he had a great bowl
of Corn Flakes, with a pleasingly cold pint of milk and several liberally
heaped spoonsful of sugar. He felt wonderful.
Sometimes life was very good to him.
At 6. 45 a. m. he considered (not too seriously) the possibility of
walking up from his North Oxford flat to the A40 Ring Road, and thence down
the gentle hill to Kidlington. About what? - thirty-five to forty minutes
to the HQ building. Not that he'd ever timed himself, for he'd never as yet
attempted the walk.
Didn't attempt the walk that morning.
After administering his first insulin-dosage of the day, he drove up to
Police HQ in the Jaguar.
Far quicker.
In his office, as he re-read the final findings of the two postmortems (sic).
Morse decided, as he usually did, that there was no point whatsoever in his
trying to un jumble the physiological details of the lacerations inflicted on
the visceral organs of each body. He had little interest in the stomach; had
no stomach for the stomach.
In fact he was more familiar with the nine-fold stomach of the bovine ilk
(this because of crossword puzzles) than with its mono-chambered human
counterpart. Did it really matter much to know exactly how Messrs Flynn and
Repp had met their ends? But yes, of course it did!
If the technicalities pointed to a particular type of weapon; if the weapon
could be accurately identified and then found; and if,
finally, it could be traced to someone who was known to have had such a
weapon and who had the opportunity of wielding it on the day of the murders .
. .
Hold on though, Morse! Be fair! Amid a plethora of caveats, Dr Hobson had
pointed to a fairly specific type of weapon, had she not? And he read again
the paragraph headed
"Tentative Conclusions': The knife was quite probably not all that long,
maybe no more than 6" -9", since in each case the lacerations seem the result
of forceful twisting, as if the murderer had gripped a handle that was short
and firm, say perhaps not much more than 1" -1%" in width. The knife-blade
was fairly certainly short too (? W), but very sharp, with its end shaped in
triangular fashion ([^). It could have been something like a Stanley knife,
the sort of thing commonly used in DIY household jobs, carpentry, building,
that sort of thing.
Morse suddenly stopped reading, sat back in his chair, and placed his hands
on his head, fingers inter linked as he'd done so often at his teacher's
bequest in his infant class. And what had been a faraway look in his eyes
now gradually focused into an intense gaze as he considered the implications
of the extraordinary idea which had suddenly occurred to him . . .
Very soon he was re-reading the whole report from Forensics where almost all
the earlier findings had been confirmed, although there remained much
checking to be done. Prints of Flynn; prints of Repp; prints of the
car-owner; and several other prints as yet to be identified. Doubtless some
of these latter would turn out to be those of the car-owner's family. But
(Morse read the last sentence of the report again): "One set of
fingerprints, repeated and fairly firm, may well prove to be of considerable
interest'.
He leaned back again in his chair, pleasingly weary and really quite pleased
with himself, because he knew whose fingerprints they were.
Oh yes!
188
chapter forty Odd instances of strange coincidence are really not all
that odd perhaps (Queen Caroline's advocate, speaking in the House of Lords)
morse jerked awake as Lewis entered the office just before 8 a. m. ,
wondering where he was, what time it was, what day it was. Yet it had been a
wonderful little sleep, the deep and dreamless sleep that Socrates
anticipated after swallowing the hemlock.
"No crossword this morning, sir?"
"Shop wasn't open." "Why don't you pay a paper-boy?" "Because, Lewis, a
little occasional exercise .. ."
Lewis sat down.
"Do you mind if I ask you something?" Morse pointed to the reports laid out
on the desk. "You've read these? "
Lewis nodded.
"But, like I say, I've got something to ask you."
"And I've got something to tell you. Is that all right, Lewis?" The voice
was suddenly harsh.
"You'll remember from all our times together how coincidence occurs in life
far more frequently than anyone except me is prepared to accept. Coincidence
isn't unusual at all. It's the norm. Just like those consecutive numbers
cropping up in the National Lottery every week. But in this case the
coincidence is even odder than usual."
(Lewis raised his eyebrows a little. ) "Let's go back to Yvonne Harrison's
murder. She was a woman with exceptional sex-drive; but she certainly wasn't
just the deaf-and-dumb nymphomaniac with a bedroom just above the public bar
that many a man has fantasized about. Oh, no. She was highly intelligent,
highly desirable, like the woman in the Larkin poem with the 'lash-wide
stare', who in turn was attracted by a variety of men.
A lot of men. So many men that over the years she inevitably came across a
few paying clients with kinky preferences. I doubt she ever went in for S
and M, but it looks very likely that a bit of bondage was on her list of
services, probably with a hefty surcharge. It's well known that some men
only find sexual satisfaction with women who put on a show of being utterly