The Remorseful Day

Chapter twenty-nine

Most patiently — no, most impatiently — had PC Ker-shaw been waiting for his passenger to emerge from the closeted consultations. Like some starry-eyed teenager he had been looking forward so much to his first date with Susan Ho, a delightful, delicately featured Chinese girl, a researcher at Oxford’s Criminological Department; and although he had been able to contact her after Morse’s diktat, neither he nor she had been particularly pleased.

He opened the passenger door as Morse approached.

“It’s all right, Kershaw. Sergeant Lewis’ll be taking me back to Oxford.”

“You mean—?”

“I mean you can bugger off, yes.”

“Couldn’t you have told me earlier, sir? I’ve been...”

But his voice trailed off as he found Morse’s blue eyes looking straight at him; uncomprehending, cold.

Lewis was grinning wryly as he pushed the police car into first gear. “You never treated even me as bad as that.”

“Cocky young sod! University graduate, God help us!”

“What’s he doing with us?”

“Dunno. Learning how to make a cup o’ tea, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Exactly where I started.”

“I hope he’s better than you were.”

“Isn’t it about time you told—”

“I just don’t believe this!” said Morse as he picked up the single cassette that lay in the tray beside the gear lever, inserted it into the player, and subsequently sank back into his seat with the look of a man sublimely satisfied with life.

“Just find out who usually drives this car, Lewis. He’s a man after my own heart. I never realized we had such sensitivity in the Force. There’s not much of it out there, you know.”

For a moment it seemed that Lewis was going to speak. But clearly he thought better of it; and as he drove way above the speed limit down the A34 to Oxford, he listened, with considerable enjoyment himself, to the Prelude to Wagner’s Parsifal, convinced that Morse was soundly albeit unsnoringly asleep.

“Turn off here, Lewis.”

“Next exit’s best, sir — avoid the city traffic that way.”

“Turn off here!”

So Lewis turned off there, driving sedately now, up the Abingdon Road, past Christ Church, straight over through Cornmarket and Magdalen Street, where (as bidden) he turned left at the lights by the Martyrs’ Memorial and duly stopped (as bidden) on the double-yellows beneath the canopy of the Randolph, above which the Union Jack and the flag of the EC drooped languorously that late afternoon.

Lewis was still in brave mood. “Like the Super said, don’t you think you ought—”

“Think? That’s exactly why I’m here — to think! I can’t think unless I’m given the chance to think. You don’t imagine I drink just for the pleasure of it, do you?”

Morse sat back with his pint of bitter and stared serenely at the Ashmolean Museum just opposite in Beaumont Street. “If there’s a bar anywhere in Britain with a better view than this...”

Lewis hesitated awhile over his orange juice. “You ready to tell me how you knew it was Paddy Flynn?”

“I didn’t really know. Just that I always wondered about him a bit. Key witness, agreed? Picked up Frank Harrison from the railway station, then parked outside the house just when the burglar alarm was ringing.”

Lewis nodded. “Only person to give Harrison a convincing alibi.”

It was Morse’s turn to nod. “That’s why Strange interviewed him.”

“Interviewed him twice.”

“Suspicious mind, that man’s got!”

“But you’re still not telling me how you guessed it was him.”

“Full of guesses, what we do, isn’t it? After the first couple of days, I only read about the case at second hand—”

“Like me.”

“—but I remember thinking I’d have put an each-way bet on some of the outsiders in the race: the builder — he gave himself and several others an alibi; the landlord at the Maiden’s Arms — he’s got the testosterone level of a randy billy goat; and then there was the taxi driver...”

“Why him, though?”

“Put yourself in his position. You pick up your fare outside the station and drive him out to Lower Swin-stead; and there you’re asked if you want to earn a bit — a lot — of extra money. You don’t really have to do much at all. Fellow says he’s going into the house — his house, anyway — and the burglar alarm is going to ring. All you’ve got to do is to say, if you’re questioned about things, that you heard the alarm ringing while you were parked outside. Not too difficult? The alarm was ringing by then. And you’re offered — what? I dunno — twenty or thirty quid, two or three hundred quid? But the key point is that Flynn never fully realized how vital his testimony was going to be.”

“Are you making it all up?”

“Yes! So allow me to continue making it all up. Flynn’s got little idea of why he’s getting such a bonus for doing virtually bugger-all. But then he starts to read a few press reports; and unlike our boys he puts two and two together, and he smiles to himself because he knows the answer. And pretty soon he realizes he’s sold himself stupidly cheap, and he decides he’ll balance the books a bit better.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying? He’s been trying to blackmail Frank Harrison?”

Morse drained his pint. “Not sure. But I’d like to bet that someone that night was more than ready to pay his way out of trouble.”

“Or her way.”

“Could be, yes.” Morse contemplated an empty glass. “Is it your round or mine, by the way?”

“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.