The Remorseful Day

by Colin Dexter

  “Yours.”

  Morse consulted his wristwatch. “Good gracious me! Time you drove me home. I need a shot of insulin, Lewis. You should've reminded me.”

  “You still haven't told me why you thought it was Flynn,” complained Lewis as he drove north through the Summertown shopping area.

  “Small man—that's why.”

  “So's the landlord of the Maiden's Arms.”

  “Ah, but Flynn was very fond of Guinness.”

  “What the hell's that got to do with anything?”

  “I forget. I'm, er, I'm getting muddled.”

  Lewis pulled up outside Morse's flat.

  “Anything … anything I can do for you, sir?”

  “Certainly not. It's just that I'm beginning to feel exquisitely sleepy, that's all. The day's still comparatively young, I grant you. But don't ring me—not tonight—not unless anything dramatic happens.”

  “You mean” (Lewis's heart rose within him) “you mean you are going to take on the case?”

  “Different ball game, isn't it? As they say in Chicago or somewhere.”

  “Shall I let the Super know?”

  “I've already told him—when we were at the rubbish tip.”

  Lewis shook his head in benign bewilderment as Morse made to get out of the car.

  “And I'll take possession of this—just temporarily, of course. And if you can find out whose it is …”

  He pocketed the Parsifal cassette and was walking toward his front door when Lewis wound down the car window.

  “You can keep it as long as you like, sir. But let me have it back when you've finished with it. They said at Blackwell's it's the top recording—by a fellow called Napperbush.”

  “You mean …?”

  Lewis nodded happily.

  “Thou art a man of taste.”

  “I thought you'd be pleased, sir.”

  “By the way, Lewis, we pronounce him ‘K-napper-t-s-busch',” amended the Chief Inspector, pedantically separating the consonantal clusters.

  Thirty

  Often would the deaf man know the answers had he but the faculty of hearing the questions. Likewise would the unimaginative man guess wisely at the answers had he but the wit of posing to himself the appropriate questions.

  (Viscount Mumbles, from Essays on the Imagination)

  As Lewis drove up to HQ, one particular thought was troubling him—as it often had: the marked inferiority of his own mental processes compared with those of the man he had just left; the man who was doubtless now sleeping off the effects of what had been (even for Morse) a hyper-alcoholic afternoon. It wasn't that his own processes were necessarily all that much slower; just that they seemed always to leave the starting blocks way after Morse had sprinted on ahead. Obviously (Lewis knew it!) innate intelligence was a big factor in everything: the speed of perception and understanding, the analysis of data, the linkage of things. But there was something else: the knack of prospective thinking, of looking ahead and asking oneself the right questions, as well as the wrong questions, about what was likely to happen in the future; and then of coming up with some answers, be they right or wrong.

  So frequently in previous cases had Morse led him along, and by prompting the right questions evinced the right sort of answers. “Socratic dialectic,” Morse had called it, recounting how Socrates had managed to elicit from a totally untutored slave boy the basic principles of plane geometry—just by asking the right questions.

  So.

  So, in his office that early evening, Lewis visualized himself seated opposite Morse—opposite Socrates, rather.

  You've got to find the car, haven't you? The car that dumped the body? Where will you find it?

  I don't know.

  Where would you have driven that car?

  I don't know. Anywhere, I suppose.

  Isn't there blood everywhere? Blood all over your clothes?

  Yes.

  Haven't you got to change your clothes then?

  Yes.

  So you couldn't just leave the car anywhere, could you? You couldn't walk too far all covered in blood?

  No.

  So where would you go?

  I'd go home, like as not.

  Before, or after, you'd ditched the car?

  Before, probably, although …

  Go on!

  Might be a bit risky. Neighbors would probably notice the strange car. Might even notice the bloodstained clothes.

  What's the alternative for you?

  Well, get someone to meet me somewhere and bring me a full change of clothes.

  Where would you meet?

  Anywhere. How do I know. Except…

  Go on!

  If we met in a lay-by, say, I'd have to leave the car there, wouldn't I? I couldn't get back in and get the new clothes almost as bloodstained as the old. And the car would pretty certainly get reported almost immediately. So…

  So?

  So I'd have somebody to meet me. Friend? Wife, perhaps?

  Where do you meet?

  I don't know.

  You do know. You know the Chesterton story—I've often mentioned it.

  Remind me.

  Where do you hide a leaf?

  Ah, yes. In the forest.

  Where do you hide a pebble?

  On the shore.

  Where do you hide a corpse?

  On the battlefield.

  And where do you hide a car?

  In a car park.

  Which car park?

  I don't know.

  The bigger the better?

  Yes.

  In Oxford?

  Probably.

  How many car parks are there in Oxford?

  Dozens.

  If you'd committed a murder near Oxford, what would you want to do above all?

  Get the hell out of the place.

  How?

  Drive away.

  You haven't got a car now, have you?

  Bus?

  Where's the bus station?

  Gloucester Green.

  Isn't there a car park opposite?

  Yes.

  And you could catch a train?

  Yes.

  Isn't there a station car park opposite?

  Yes…

  As he drove down toward Oxford, Lewis felt pleased with himself, and just after he'd negotiated the Cuttes-lowe roundabout he was tempted to call in on Morse. But he put the temptation behind him. He felt fairly certain that the great man would be asleep.

  And on this occasion he was right.

  Instead, he decided to continue the Socratic dialogue, though this time installing himself as Chief Inquisitor and making the far bolder hypothesis that if only the blurred outlines of the anonymous murderer could be adjusted more sharply, it was Harry Repp who would come into focus.

  Don't you think it would be easier, sir, for Debbie Richardson to take a change of clothes to him? Wouldn't it be dangerous for him to go out to Lower Swinstead?

  I don't know, Lewis.

  I asked you two questions.

  I don't know. I don't know.

  What do you think Harry Repp did?

  I just don't know.

  What about the car? Where's that? Come on! Back your hunch!

  The car? Oh, I know where the car is, Lewis. It's parked at the back of Oxford Railway Station.

  Thirty-one

  His voice was angry: “What time do you call this?”

  She stood penitently on the doorstep: “Sorry!”

  “Where've you parked?” (It was the decade's commonest question in Oxford.)

  “Exactly. I just couldn't find a parking space anywhere.”

  (Terry Benczik, Still Life with Absinthe)

  Lucky Lewis!

  He was walking up the steps to the station when the automatic doors opened in front of him, and Sergeant Dick Evans of the British Transport Police came toward him. Old friends, they greeted each other with appropriate cordiality.

  “Know anything about a stolen car—
R456 LJB?”

  “Parked here?”

  “Dunno,” Lewis admitted.

  “Well, not as far as I know. I've been in Reading all day, though. Just got back. Bob Mitchell'd know, perhaps. He's on duty here.”

  “I'd better go and wake him up then.”

  “He's not in the office. I looked in a couple of minutes ago—door's locked. Probably called out on some trouble somewhere. Saturday! Football yobos and all that.”

  “But it's not the football season,” protested Lewis.

  “What's that got to do with it?”

  “You straight off home?”

  “Well, yes. It's getting late. If I can do anything to help an old mucker though … What's the trouble?”

  Lewis told him, and the two men walked down the steps and across to the station car park.

  It had been more than a year since Lewis had visited the station complex, and he was immediately surprised to find that the previously fairly extensive car-parking space had been drastically reduced: the northern section had been taken over by “Another Prestigious Development—”a series of Victorian-style town houses, built in attractive terra-cotta bricks, with white stuccoed lower stories; “spacious and luxurious” as the site board guaranteed.

  “Year or two back,” volunteered Evans, “I'd've parked up there if I'd wanted to keep out of sight for a while. Used to be a bit dark and creepy late at night, if you got back late from Paddington on the milk float.”

  Lewis nodded, but without comment. Late-night returns from concerts and operas in the capital had never figured large in the lifestyle of the Lewises. But now, in sunny daylight, the area seemed wholly benign, and still almost packed with cars marshaled there in semilegitimate rows.

  “What if you come,” asked Lewis, “and you just can't find a space?”

  “Not easy, is it? You can always try Gloucester Green” (Evans pointed vaguely across toward Hythe Bridge Street) “or one of the side roads.”

  The two sergeants walked together to the northern area of the park, away from the main road where, with any choice in the matter, any murderous villain (as well as Sergeant Evans) would surely have headed with an incriminating car. But things had changed. Parading the site, tall stanchions now stood there, topped with video cameras and floodlights. No guarantee of complete security perhaps, but a sufficient deterrent for casual car thieves.

  “You could still squeeze one or two more cars in?” suggested Lewis (himself a wizard at vehicular maneuvering), pointing to a few square meters amid heaps of sand and piles of jagged half-bricks and broken tiles.

  “Not if you're worried about your suspension.”

  “Which he wasn't, Dick.”

  “No sign of it though, is there?”

  They walked systematically through the lines of cars down to the southern end of the car park, bounded by the Botley Road.

  Again, nothing.

  And the questions that had already worried Morse were worrying his sergeant now. Was there any sign of criminal activity here? Were they on some profitless pursuit of a questionable quarry?

  Morse!

  Top-of-the-head Morse!

  Things just didn't happen like that.

  At bottom, any police investigation was a matter of pretty firm facts; of accumulating such facts; and of aggregating them into a hard core of evidence, on which suspicion could be progressively corroborated, until an arrest could be made, a charge brought, a prosecution formulated, and finally a case heard in a court of law. That's how things happened.

  A dispirited Lewis stood with Evans for only a few seconds longer before walking up to the exit booth, where a red-and-white-striped barrier was being intermittently raised as a few patrons returning early to Oxford inserted their parking tokens, and where a uniformed Transport Policeman, clearly not at the peak of physical condition, came running toward them:

  “What the ‘ell are you doing here, Dick?”

  “Just back from Reading, Bob. And what the ‘ell's up with you? You know Sergeant Lewis here from HQ?”

  Mitchell had regained some of his breath. “HQ? Huh! That's exactly what's up. Chap who said he was from HQ. Rang about a car—said it was parked here at the station …”

  Evans finished the sentence for him. “But it wasn't.”

  “No. But I thought I'd look around a bit. This chap'd sounded pretty positive, like. So I went over to Gloucester Green—and Bingo! Just behind the Irish pub there.”

  “You've got this chap's number?” asked Lewis.

  “In the office, yes. He said he couldn't get here himself. Said he was tired. Huh!”

  “He must have given his name?”

  “‘Moss,’ I think it was. Look, I'll just…”

  A temporarily rejuvenated Mitchell was bounding up the station steps three at a time as Evans turned to Lewis:

  “Reckon he misheard a bit.”

  “Just a bit,” said Lewis, with quiet resignation.

  Thirty-two

  Should any young or old officer experience incipient or actual signs of vomiting at the sight of some particularly harrowing scene of crime the said person should not necessarily attribute such nausea to some psychological vulnerability, but rather to the virtually universal reflex-reactions of the upper intestine.

  (The SOCO Handbook, Revised 1999)

  Barry Edwards was another of the SOCO personnel called out that busy Saturday. In fact, simply because he lived only a short distance away along the Botley Road, he was the first of the team to arrive at the scene of the crime. A well-set, dark-haired man in his late twenties, he had a pair of diffident brown eyes that seemed to some of his colleagues strangely naive, as if he would ever be surprised by the scenes that would inevitably confront him in his new career.

  His SOCO training had been completed only a few months previously, and now he was a full-fledged (civilian) officer, employed by the Thames Valley Police. Furthermore, thus far, he was enjoying his job. After leaving school, with a comparatively successful performance in the comparatively undemanding field of GCSE, he had worked as a supermarket shelf-filler, hospital porter, barman, and ironmonger's shop assistant, before finally completing a police recruitment questionnaire and duly learning of the opportunities in his present profession. He had taken his chance; and he was enjoying his choice. He felt quite important sometimes, especially when he dealt off his own bat with some fairly minor affair, when (as he knew) he was important. And he'd looked forward to the time when he would be called out to a big job, to some major incident. Like murder. Like now—as he sensed immediately when he drove his van into the Gloucester Green Car Park. The full complement of the team would have been called in, and almost certainly he would witness, for the first time, the operation of those basic principles—preservation of the scene, continuity and noncontamination of evidence—which had guided his training in photography, fingerprinting, forensic labeling, and the meticulous procedure vital to all in situ investigations.

  Edwards had introduced himself immediately to the plainclothed Sergeant Lewis, obviously the man in charge: yet perhaps only temporarily in charge, since (as Edwards guessed) it would only be a matter of time before some more senior-ranking officer would put in an appearance—just as he himself was awaiting Bill Flowers, the senior SOCO, a man who had seen everything in life. As he, Barry Edwards, hadn't. Not yet. For the moment, however, the appropriate procedure had been applied, with blue-and-white police ribbon cordoning off an area containing three cars, noses all to the wall: R 456 LJB; to its left, a grey H-Reg. Citroën; to its right a dark-blue P-Reg. Rover—the owner of the latter (just arrived) making a statement to one of two uniformed PCs summoned from the St. Aldate's Station. No effort had as yet been made to disperse the growing band of curious onlookers who stood in silent, hopeful expectation of some gruesome discovery. Things were happening, though. Flowers arrived just before the other two SOCOs; and soon everything would be ready, once they got the word from someone. Doubtless the same someone awaited by Sergeant L
ewis, the latter a man with “under authority” written all over his honest and slightly worried features.

  But there was a frustrating twenty-minute wait before the “authority” put in his appearance, stepping from the back of a marked police car with a marked unsup-pleness of limb, the slate-grey suit decidedly rumpled, the telltale crease around the waistband betokening an increase in girth over recent months. A white-haired man, of medium height, his face of a pale-olive color, as if perhaps he had spent a holiday of less than uninterrupted sunshine in Torremolinos, or was suffering from incipient jaundice. But his voice was that of someone who demanded immediate attention—like another voice that Edwards once had known, that of his old Latin master.

  Vox auctoritatis.

  Lewis had approached the newcomer, and the two were in brief conversation before coming over to the others. Chief Inspector Morse (for such was he) appeared to recognize the other SOCOs, and nodded briefly as he was introduced to the youngest member of the team.

  “Hello, Edwards!” He'd said nothing more, and Edwards gathered that the Chief Inspector was not a convert to the currently widespread practice of everyone addressing everyone—superiors, equals, and subordinates alike—by their Christian names. Yet he seemed a pleasant enough fellow, now surveying the scene with a keen if somewhat melancholy eye, while the SOCO team began to put on their green boilersuits and overboots.

  “Anyone touched anything?”

  “No more than we needed to, sir.” (It was Lewis who replied.)

  Morse looked again at the car for some lingering while—the car he'd followed when Harry Repp had turned his back on Bullingdon. Then he lifted his eyes and looked, again for some lingering while, at the pub sign of the Rosie O'Grady.

  Bill Flowers was standing beside him.

  “All yours!” pronounced Morse.

  “Car's locked.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Door catches all in the locked position.”

  Morse pressed a hand down on the nearside front handle.

  “Don't—!” But Flowers checked his admonition in midvoice.