The Remorseful Day

Chapter thirty-one

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.