The Remorseful Day

by Colin Dexter

  “You're right. Any of your lads here ever a juvenile car thief?”

  “I know somebody who was.”

  “Where's he live?”

  “Silverstone.”

  Morse turned to Lewis. “Give Johnson a ring.”

  “Know his number?”

  “Saturday afternoon? He'll be in the Summertown bookie's.”

  “It's long gone afternoon, sir.”

  “Ah!”

  “There'll be a Local Directory in the pub.”

  “You won't find him listed. They've cut his phone off.”

  “So how—?”

  “He'll be in the Dew Drop if he's won a few quid.”

  “Perhaps he's not won a few quid.”

  “He'll still be in the Dew Drop.”

  “Do you know the number?”

  “Get me a mobile!” snapped Morse.

  Edwards watched as Morse turned his back on his colleagues, tapped out a number, and spoke sotto voce into the mouthpiece for a while, before blasting out fortissimo:

  “Well, just tell him to get here on the bloody bus and get here bloody quick!”

  Yet this order was not obeyed with either accuracy or immediacy, since there was a further twenty-minute wait before a rusting A-Reg. Ford pulled up on the main road outside the Rosie O'Grady, whence emerged from the passenger seat a sparely built, nondescript man, in his late forties, a self-rolled cigarette dangling from a thin mouth that even from a few yards exuded the reek of strong, excessive alcohol.

  “Mr. Morse?”

  The latter pointed to the car.

  “Fee, is there?”

  “Just open it, Malcolm!” (Edwards was surprised with the Christian-name address.)

  The key wizard made no further remonstration as he winched a bunch of skeleton keys and bits of wire from his right-hand trouser pocket. Then, turning his back on his expectant audience, he surveyed the problem synop-tically. Like Capablanca contemplating his next move in the World Chess Championship.

  “It's central-locking,” volunteered Flowers.

  But Johnson said nothing, responding only for a semisecond with a look of contemptuous ingratitude.

  As far as Edwards could make out, Morse had enjoyed that moment, since more than a semismile formed around his mouth when fifteen seconds later there was a quiet “clunk” as the catches on the four doors sprang upward in simultaneous freedom.

  R456 LJB was open for inspection.

  After pulling on a pair of green latex gloves, Flowers now opened the two offside doors; and Morse glanced over the front seats, before contemplating for a good deal longer the darkly glutinous covering of blood that stained the seats and flooring in the back. With a softly spoken “OK,” he was walking away toward the Rosie O'Grady when Johnson tapped him on the shoulder.

  “You mentioned expenses, Mr. Morse?”

  “I did. You're right.”

  “Well, there's that taxi I came in—eight quid—two-quid tip—ten quid—here and back. Twenny, I make that.”

  “Since when's Snotty Joe been running a taxi business?”

  “Well, you know, more a sort of…private hire, like.”

  Morse felt in his pockets and pulled out a handful of coins. “85p, isn't it, the bus fare to St. Giles? And, you're right, you've got to get back.”

  He handed Johnson two £1 coins. “Keep the change. You can buy a copy of The Times to read on the ride back.”

  “Wrong, aincha, Mr. Morse! Times is 50p Sat'days.”

  Unsmiling, Morse handed over a further 20p, and the pair parted without any further word. And Edwards, who had witnessed the brief scene, found himself wondering what exactly were the favors each had bestowed upon the other in the prosecution and pursuance of crime in North Oxford over recent years.

  Morse was a few steps ahead of Lewis as he made his way to the pub entrance. “We'd better leave ‘em for half an hour or so. They won't want us breathing down their necks … By the way, you'd better lend me a fiver, Lewis. I've just parted with the only—”

  Morse stopped. Turned round. Stepped back to the scene of the crime. Ordered Flowers to open the boot.

  Not himself knowing the identity of the body he now saw curled up in fetal configuration there, young Edwards was to remember that particular moment with an oddly inappropriate sense of gratitude, for he saw the color of Morse's cheeks fade by swiftly developing degrees from dingy yellow to sickly white, and watched as of a sudden the great man turned away and vomited violently over the recently renovated tarmac. It was like a fledgling actor appearing on stage with Sir John Giel-gud and seeing that great man fluffing the friendliest of lines in rehearsal, and thereby giving some unexpected encouragement to the rest of the cast, all of them now less terrified of fluffing their own.

  Thirty-three

  For the good are always the merry,

  Save by an evil chance,

  And the merry love the fiddle,

  And the merry love to dance:

  And when the folk there spy me,

  They will all come up to me,

  With “Here is the fiddler of Dooney!”

  And dance like a wave of the sea.

  (W. B. Yeats, The Fiddler of Dooney)

  Morse, after disappearing into the Gents for several long minutes, now sat looking slightly more his wonted self as he sank his nose into the deep head on the Guinness.

  “Just the stuff if you've got a foul taste in the throat!”

  Giving his chief a little while to recover some measure of dignity, Lewis gazed around him. Everything was wooden there: the bar, the wall-settles, the floor, the table at which they sat—all good solid if somewhat battered wood, with any once-applied stain long since worn off. The walls and ceilings had originally been painted in yellow and orange, but now were coated over with the nicotine of countless cigarettes. The friezes of the walls were adorned with the dicta of several great Irishmen, their words attractively set in black-lettered Gaelic script. One in particular had already caught Lewis's eye:

  Where is the use of calling it a lend when I know I will never see it again?

  Good question! But a question not so pressing as the one he now put to Morse:

  “Was it a surprise to you?”

  “Was what a surprise?”

  “Finding Harry Repp's body in the boot?”

  Morse nodded as he wiped away a white moustache.

  “This morning I thought I had a fair idea about what we were dealing with. But now that I'm perfectly sure that I've none …” He pointed up at the wall to their right. “Bit like Oscar Wilde, really.”

  Lewis looked up at the words written there:

  I was working on the proof of my poems all this morning and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

  For Lewis it was a somber moment and he sipped his orange juice with little joy; even less joy as he saw the outline of Chief Superintendent Strange looming large in the doorway, then waddling awkwardly to their table, where he sat down, wiping his moistened brow with a vast handkerchief.

  “Pretty kettle o’ fish you've got us into now, Morse!”

  Then, turning to Lewis: “You in the chair?”

  “Well—”

  “Good! Good man! I'll have the same as the Chief Inspector here.”

  “Pint, sir?”

  “The same as the Chief Inspector—that's what I said, Sergeant.”

  Lewis repaired to the bar once more and listened to the comparatively quiet background music that was as Irish as the pub was Irish, all flutes and fiddles, and wondered how long Morse would stick the noise before calling for a few less decibels.

  After taking a deep draught, Strange turned to Morse. “You do realize, don't you, that you and Lewis have dragged me away from the golf course twice!”

  “I'd've thought you'd be glad, especially if you were losing.”

  Strange grinned wryly. “I don't often win these days, you're right.”

  “None of us gets much better as we get older.”
>
  “Only two things we can be sure of, Morse—death and taxes. Some U.S. President said that.”

  “Benjamin Franklin,” supplied Lewis, to whom each of the two senior officers turned with some surprise, though without inquiry into the provenance of such splendid knowledge.

  “What do you make of all this?” continued Strange quietly.

  Morse shook his head. “You may have been having a lousy round of golf. I was having a lovely sleep myself.”

  “That's no answer.”

  “Dr. Hobson'll be here soon.”

  “Already here.”

  “Nothing we can do till we get some reports, results of the postmortems—”

  “Somebody once told me the plural should be post-mortes.”

  “Bloody pedant!”

  “It was you actually, Morse.”

  “Ah!”

  “You've got a good team of SOCOs.”

  Morse nodded. “So we'll wait to hear about all the bits and bobs they'll be bagging up and labeling and sending off to forensics. And all the fingerprints they'll be taking from windows and side mirrors and body work and seat belt buckles and cassettes and …” Morse had run out of potential surfaces.

  “That's it!” Strange sounded somewhat heartened. “All you've got to do is eliminate ninety-five percent of the dabs, and then you've got your man.”

  “Unless he was wearing gloves,” suggested Lewis.

  “It's all tied up with that bloody Lower Swinstead business!” blurted out Strange.

  “You're probably right,” said Morse.

  “And don't forget the simplest answer is usually the correct answer! Spur o’ the moment stuff, most homicides. You know that.”

  “Perhaps so,” admitted Morse, beckoning the landlord over. “Open all day?”

  “All night too should you wish it, sorr.”

  And yes, of course, the police could make use of one of the bars for the evening; of course the police could make use of whatever the Rosie O'Grady had to offer: telephone, washing and toilet facilities, bar facilities…

  “And perhaps…?” The landlord pointed to the two empty glasses. “On the house—the pleasure's all mine.”

  “Well, perhaps, er …” said Strange.

  “You're twisting my arm,” said Morse.

  “Make it three pints of Guinness,” said Lewis.

  Morse glanced across at his sergeant with a look of astonishment; the landlord departed; and Strange got down to business.

  “Logistics, Morse. Let's talk logistics. How many men do you want?”

  “If you gave me a hundred, I wouldn't know what to do with one of them—not yet.”

  “Now come off it, matey! Couldn't you perhaps have a look at when and how and what and why your bloody corpses were doing? See their relatives, friends, enemies, wives, for God's sake?”

  “Flynn hadn't got a wife,” interposed Lewis.

  “Repp had!”

  “No, sir,” corrected Lewis bravely. “He'd got a partner—”

  “Well go and see her!” snapped Strange.

  “No,” said Morse. “I'll go to see her myself.”

  “Why's that?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  The landlord had returned with the drinks. “As I said—on the house, gentlemen!”

  Morse thanked him and made a request: “You know this, er, music you're playing here—this Irish music …?”

  “Perhaps you'd like it …?”

  “Yes. If you could turn it up just a bit?”

  Lewis glanced across at the Chief Inspector with a look of astonishment; the landlord departed; and Strange leaned back with an expression of contentment. “You know, Morse, I'm glad you said that. The missus … we had a couple of days in Cork and we did a bit of Irish dancing together … me and the missus … or I suppose you'd say the missus and me.”

  “The missus and I, sir.”

  But further grammatical preferences were curtailed by the arrival of Dr. Laura Hobson.

  “Everything all right, Doctor?” shouted Strange, above the background music that had suddenly lunged to the foreground.

  “No, everything's all wrong! I cannot cope with things as they are out there. I want the car moved out to the lab with the body kept in the boot. How on earth you think—?”

  “Done!” Strange held up the great slab that was his right hand. “Lewis will arrange it immediately, once he's finished his drink. Si' down, Doctor. Just give me a minute or two.” He sat back in his chair, beaming like a benign old uncle.

  “Takes you back, Morse, doesn't it?”

  “Remember the old poem, sir?

  ‘When I play on my fiddle in Dooney, Folk dance like a wave of the sea …’ ”

  “Yes! Yes, I do,” said Strange gently.

  And for a while Sergeant Lewis and Dr. Hobson remained silent, as if they knew they should be treading softly; as if they might be treading on other people's dreams.

  Thirty-four

  Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt. (Always in life are there tears being shed for things, and human suffering ever touches the heart.)

  (Virgil, Aeneid, I, I. 462)

  As she opened the door, the recently reapplied blonde dye showed little or no trace of the hair's brunette inheritance.

  “Oh, hullo.” The greeting was less than enthusiastic.

  “May I come in?” asked Morse.

  Apart from the minimal towel held in front of her body, she was naked: “Just wait there a sec—I'll just…”

  She reclosed the door and Morse stood, as she had bidden, on the threshold. Stood there for a couple of minutes. And when she reopened the door and reappeared, it puzzled him that in such a comparatively long time she had done little other than to exchange the white towel for an equally minimal white dressing gown.

  They sat opposite each other in the kitchen.

  “Drink?” she ventured.

  “No. I've had a busy day on the drink.”

  “That good or bad?”

  “Bit of both.”

  “Mind if I have one?”

  “Can you wait? Just a minute?”

  “It's about Harry, isn't it?”

  “Yes.”

  “He's dead, isn't he?”

  “He's been murdered,” said Morse flatly.

  Debbie Richardson leaned forward on her elbows, the long fingers with their crimson nails vertically veiling her features. Then after a while she got to her feet and turned to the sink, where she molded her hands into a shallow receptacle under the cold tap.

  As they had spoken at the kitchen table, Morse had observed (how otherwise?) that whatever else Debbie Richardson had done behind the closed front door she had certainly not been searching for a bra; and now, as she leaned forward and held her face in the water, he observed (how otherwise?) that she'd had no thought for any knickers either. A provocative prick-teaser, that was what she was. Morse knew it; had known it when they'd met that once before. But for the moment his mind was many furlongs from fornication …

  He felt fairly sure that she'd been upstairs when he'd rung the bell, for the light had been on in the front bedroom with the night now drawing in. Yet she'd answered the door very quickly, almost immediately in fact. Whoever the caller was, had she wished to give the impression to someone that she'd been downstairs all the while? It seemed a bit odd. After all, he could well have been a Jehovah's Witness or an equally dreaded member of the Mormons or a charity worker bearing an envelope. Quite certainly though she hadn't rushed down the stairs from a bath, since about her was none of that freshly scented aura of a woman recently risen from her toilet. Rather perhaps (although Morse was no connoisseur in such matters) it was the musky odor of sex that lingered around her.

  Whilst she had stood silently at the sink, he had strained his ears as acutely as any astronomer waiting for the faintest bleep from outer space. But of any other presence in the house there had been no sound at all; no sight at all either, except for the two unwashed wineglass
es that stood on the draining board, a heel-tap of red in each of them. And Morse guessed that Debbie Richardson would never have taken the slightest risk of Claret and intercourse that day with anyone—unless it were with Harry Repp. And it couldn't have been with Harry Repp … Yet she may well have been tempted, this flaunting, raunchy woman who now dried her face and turned back to Morse; could certainly have been tempted if one of her admirers had called that evening for whatever reason—and if she had already known that Harry Repp was dead.

  Morse watched her almost disinterestedly as she returned to the table.

  “Shall I pour you that drink now?” he asked.

  “Only if you'll join me.”

  Quite extraordinarily, Morse gave the impression that he was quite extraordinarily sober; and he poured their drinks—gin (hers), whiskey (his)—with only a carefully camouflaged shake of the right hand.

  Quietly, as gently as he could, he told her almost as much as he knew of what had happened that day; and of the help that immediately awaited her should she so need it: advice, comfort, counseling …

  But she shook her head. She'd be better off with sleepin’ pills than with all that stuff. She needed nothin’ of that. She'd be copin’ OK, given a chance. Independent, see? Never wanted to share any worryin’ with anyone. Loner most of her life, she'd been, ever since she'd been a teenager …

  A tear ran hurriedly down her right cheek, and Morse handed her a handkerchief he'd washed and ironed himself.

  “We ought to ring your GP: it's the usual thing.”

  She blew her nose noisily and wiped the moisture from her eyes. “You go now. I'll be fine.”

  “We'll need a statement from you soon.”

  “Course.”

  “You'll stay here…?”

  Before she could reply the phone rang, and she moved into the hallway to answer it.

  “Hello?”

  …

  “You've got the wrong number.”

  …

  “You've got the wrong number.”

  Had she replaced the receiver with needless haste? Morse didn't know.

  “Not one of those obscene calls?”

  “No.”

  “Best to be on the safe side, though.” Giving her no chance to obstruct his sudden move, Morse picked up the receiver, dialed 1471, and duly noted the number given.