The Remorseful Day

by Colin Dexter

  The kind of thing they ‘d rather not.

  (Lessing, Nathan der Weise)

  During “Jammie” Jarnold's twenty-two years’ service on the Sutton Courtenay site, he'd seen most things. Not everything. For example, he'd never caught a glimpse of that sack of notes the Metropolitan Police were certain had been deposited in one of the trucks on that long train which arrived in the early hours of each morning from Brentford, via a branchline from Didcot, with its thousands of tons of the capital's refuse. Four hundred and fifty thousand pounds, they'd said, in fivers and tenners. Yes, Jammie had kept his eyes wide open on that occasion; had occasionally climbed down from his cab to prod anything that seemed even minimally promising.

  If, on balance, it was a steady old job, it was also a job that was unmemorable and predictably monotonous. For this reason, neither Jammie nor his colleagues in the team of BOMAC tractor operators had dismissed as so much negligible bumf the single Xeroxed sheet which had been handed out that Saturday morning, both to permanent on-site personnel and to every dump truck driver entering the site from the far quarters of Oxfordshire.

  (Morse himself would have been pleased to write such a succinct note—though inserting, of course, an apostrophe in the humorous parenthesis.)

  Just after the start of the shift, a colleague shouted across at Jammie, waving a copy of the memo.

  “Better keep your eyes open!”

  “What's the reward?”

  “Night with Sophia Loren in the Savoy.”

  “Bit young for me.”

  “I still reckon you'll keep your eyes open.”

  “Yeah! I reckon.”

  “Like looking for a needle in an ‘aystack though.”

  “Like finding a shadow in the blackout, as me ol’ mum used to say.”

  “I like that, Jammie. Sort o’ poetic, like.”

  Jarnold braked his tractor at 10:05 A.M. and jumped down from his cab on to the semileveled, semicom-pacted mound of recently deposited rubbish. It was not that the specific item he'd spotted was unusual in any way. In fact, any pair of shoes was a very common sight: thousands of pairs were ever to be observed on every part of the site, worn down, worn out, worn beyond any possible repair. But there were unusual aspects about this particular pair of shoes. For a start, they looked comparatively new and were clearly of good quality; then, they were the only objects sticking out of a large black bag; what's more, they seemed strangely reluctant to drop out of that large black bag, as if (perhaps?) they might be attached, permanently, to something inside that large black bag.

  Jarnold shouted over to a colleague.

  “Come over ‘ere a sec!”

  But already he had half-torn one side of the plastic.

  “Christ!”

  He turned away to vomit full-throatedly over a piece of conveniently positioned carpeting.

  Had he been dining with Miss Loren at the Savoy, this would have caused considerable consternation. Not here, though. Not at the landfill site at Sutton Courte-nay in Oxfordshire.

  Twenty-six

  UNDERGRADUATE: But you're blowing up the wrong tyre, sir. It's the back one that's flat.

  DON: Goodness me! You mean the two of them are not connected?

  (Freshman seeking to assist his tutor outside Trinity College, Oxford)

  Morse (for some reason) was in that Saturday morning when Lewis knocked on his office door just after ten.

  “Spare a few minutes, sir?”

  “C'm in! I've finished the crossword.”

  “How long?”

  “Let's just say the brain is deteriorating.”

  “Thirty thousand brain cells a day we lose after thirty, so you told me once.”

  Morse nodded morosely. “I just thought I was the exception, that's all. Si’ down!”

  Lewis did so, and took a deep breath. “I've been following you, sir.”

  Morse looked across at his sergeant uncomprehendingly.

  “You were at Debbie Richardson's house—before me; you were at the Maiden's Arms—before me; you were at Bullingdon—before me; you were at Redbridge—before me; you were out at Sutton Courtenay—before me. You've been one move ahead of me all the time.”

  “Only one?”

  “Why couldn't you just tell me?”

  “Tell you what?” asked Morse. “And don't forget that time when it was me following you: from Bullingdon. At exactly the distance recommended in the Highway Code.”

  “Which is?”

  “Next question?”

  “You will be taking on the case, won't you?”

  “Next question?”

  “Why not?”

  “Pass.”

  “You're getting people's backs up here, you know that?”

  “Nothing new about that.”

  “But surely—?”

  “Listen!” Unblinking blue eyes glared across the desk. “I am not taking on the Harrison case.”

  “I was just hoping you'd help me, that's all.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, do you mind me asking you if … if you've got any personal interest in all of this?”

  “Nil.” If there had been a quick flicker of unease in Morse's eyes, it was as quickly gone.

  “But you know a lot about it, don't you? So you must have some idea about what happened on the night she was murdered?”

  “Ideas—plural.”

  “There was a logical sequence of events, as you would say.”

  “There was a concatenation of events, yes, with each link of the chain causally connected to its predecessor.”

  “What do you think happened that night?”

  “Not much argument about that, is there?”

  “You'd agree with this, then?” Lewis produced a sheet of A4 on which he had typed a timetable for the day of the murder:

  7 A.M.-1 P.M. Yvonne on early shift at JR2 Ward 7C

  1:15-2 P.M. Lunches in staff canteen

  2:15-4 P.M. (?)Drives down to Oxford shopping at M&S and Austin Reed

  4:00(?)-4:30 P.M. Drives home avoiding main traffic exodus

  6-7 P.M. Evening meal of mushroom omelette

  9:00 P.M. Local builder rings—number engaged or phone off hook

  9:10 P.M. Frank H gets phone call and catches 21.48 Paddington to Oxford train

  9:30 P.M. Builder rings again—ringing-tone but no reply

  11:00 P.M. F H gets taxi to Lower Swinstead

  11:20 P.M. Discovers wife naked, gagged, handcuffed and dead

  Morse glanced at the sheet in perfunctory fashion.

  “You ought to use the Oxford comma more.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The presumption was—is—that somewhere between nine and half-past…”

  “Pathologist's report seemed to confirm that.”

  “Would I had your faith in pathologists!”

  “Not just that though, is it? The whole thing hangs together. Pretty well everything there's confirmed: statements from the hospital; receipts from the two shops; postmortem details on the meal; phone calls checked out—”

  “Nonsense! The builder? First time the number's engaged? Second time nobody answers? How the hell do you check that?”

  “You can't check absolutely everything—”

  “What about the husband? Odd sort of call, wasn't it? Drop whatever you're doing and get here double-quick! So who was it who rang him?”

  “That's what I'm asking you, sir.”

  “His number couldn't have been too well known. He was renting a flat, wasn't he?”

  “Still is.”

  “But somebody knew it—and rang him. Did we check the phone records of the suspects?”

  “What suspects?”

  “The two children?”

  “They weren't suspects. And if they were, why shouldn't they ring their dad occasionally?”

  “How did he pay for his train journey?”

  “No credit card record—must have paid cash. And for the taxi ride. Anyway, he'd got the best alibi of a
nybody: taxi driver remembers the time exactly. He was just listening to the 11 o'clock news headlines.”

  “Was the train a bit late that night? If it's the one I sometimes catch, it's due in at 22:53.”

  “Too late to find out, sir.”

  “Rubbish! Too difficult, possibly. But they keep all these times of arrivals: they make statistical tables out of ‘em, for heaven's sake.”

  “Must've been on time, surely?”

  “What? Seven minutes for somebody in one helluva rush? From Platform 2 to the taxi-rank? It'd only take a geriatric like me a couple of minutes.”

  “Perhaps there was a queue.”

  “Was there a queue?”

  “Dunno. Perhaps he nipped into the snack bar.”

  “Closed.”

  “I don't quite see what you're getting at.”

  “What is essential, Lewis, is usually invisible to the outward eye.”

  “Which doesn't help me much, does it?”

  “All right. Get back to your facts.”

  “She was burgled. At some point that evening the back patio window was smashed in from the outside and somebody was after something. The TV was unplugged—”

  “But not taken.”

  “—so he was probably disturbed. He must have thought the place was empty. Probably none of the lights would have been on—not then anyway. Midsummer, wasn't it? Sunset was about a quarter-past nine—I looked it up.” (Morse nodded approvingly.) “I know some people always leave one or two lights on anyway when they go out—”

  “But she didn't go out.”

  “No. So as I say the burglar must have thought the coast was clear, and must have been prepared for the alarm to ring—it's quite a way to the next house—while he grabbed a few of the valuables, smartish like.”

  “The alarm was ringing when Harrison got there, wasn't it? Twenty-past eleven.”

  Lewis nodded. “Two hours or so after she was murdered.”

  “And the alarm would cut out automatically after twenty minutes’ ringing?”

  “Yes.”

  “So?”

  “I dunno, sir. But it seems we didn't discount the theory that the murderer might have set it off himself.”

  “You mean two hours later?”

  “I don't know what I mean.”

  “Pretty little puzzle.”

  “You're not trying to help me, are you? You've usually got some theory or other of your own.”

  Morse smiled amiably. “The obvious one. Mrs. H. surprised a burglar and the burglar panicked and murdered her. Or perhaps…” (the smile had faded) “… perhaps she was entertaining one of her lovers that night and things went wrong—things went sadly wrong. That's all I've got to offer: the burglar theory and the lover theory. What else is there?”

  “Maybe a bit of both, sir? Say she was in bed with some fellow when she heard the window being smashed in and …”

  “Could well be.”

  “You see, she'd not had sex that night, sir—certainly not been raped or tortured or physically assaulted. Clothes all neatly folded by the side of the bed.”

  “Couldn't the murderer have folded them? Doesn't take me long to fold a pair of pajamas.”

  Lewis shook his head slowly. “Naked, gagged, handcuffed …”

  “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, fibers, hairs. Couldn't come up with anything though, could they? And they checked them for prints—job they'd normally leave to the SOCOs. 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 Gentlemen'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!”

  Twenty-seven

  In the afternoon they came unto a land

  In which it seemèd 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 Sum-mertown 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 hiatal 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 vivendi 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 habitués 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 Bullingdon. 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 inevitable one, and Morse felt no real cause for any self-recrimination. Lewis would go along there—was probably there already; would join the SOCOs and supervise the necessary procedures; would draw a few tentative, temporary 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 toward 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 University 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 himself, 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 backward therefrom, in order to present a neatly tabulated series of satisfactory readings. He'd done it before and he would do it again.