The Remorseful Day

Chapter thirty-two

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 Lewis, 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 unsuppleness 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.

“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 synoptically. 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.