The Remorseful Day

Chapter thirty-seven

I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They’ve experienced pain and bought jewelry.

(Rita Rudner)

Five days after Morse had declined the free draw for a miracle at the Oratory, at noon, at Lower Swinstead, at the bar of the Maiden’s Arms, Tom Biffen stood leaning forward on his tattooed arms. Very quiet so far for a Saturday. Just the two hardy perennials, horns already locked over their continuous cribbage; and the pale-faced, ear-pierced, greasy-haired youth already squaring up to the fruit machine.

It was twenty minutes later that the fourth customer arrived.

“Usual?”

The newcomer nodded and placed the requisite monies on the counter. The white van in the car park economically proclaimed the newcomer’s profession: “J. Barron, Builder.”

“Not out at Debbie’s today, John?”

“What do you think? The day after the funeral?”

“No. Have you seen her since Harry...?”

“No. Well, I wouldn’t have gone last weekend anyway, would I? Thought they’d like being on their own, like — you know, the day after they’d let him out and all that.”

“No.”

The youth was standing beside them, a £10 note folded lengthways between the index and middle fingers of his right hand.

“You’re taking all me change,” complained Biffen as he exchanged the note for ten £1 coins from the till.

“You’ll have bugger all left for the honeymoon,” ventured the builder; but the youth, unhearing or uncaring, had already walked back to what was perhaps the first great love of his life.

At the bar a few low-voiced confidences were being exchanged.

“When’s the wedding, Biff?”

“Five weeks today.”

“Nice bit o’skirt?”

“Yeah. Dental receptionist down in Oxford somewhere.”

“Glad one of ‘em’s earning!” The builder half-turned toward the unremunerative machine. “Nobody earns much of a living on them things.”

“Except the Company,” corrected the landlord.

“Except Tom Biffen,” corrected one of the cribbagers.

The landlord grunted.

Odd really. Most men in their latish seventies would ever have been susceptible to deafness, arthritis, baldness, sciatica, hemorrhoids, incontinence, impotence, cataracts, dementia, and all the rest. And perhaps (for all the landlord knew) the two old codgers suffered from every single one of them — except quite certainly the first.

Biffen lowered his voice: “Did you get to the crematorium?”

“No. Family, wasn’t it? I wasn’t exactly a friend of the family.”

“I thought you builders and plumbers were friends of everybody, especially a strapping young fellow like you?”

“Young?”

But the landlord had a point. John Barron, tall and well built, with dark close-cropped hair and clean-cut features, certainly looked younger than his forty-one years; and what appeared a genuinely open smile appealed to all the local ladies — except his wife, who had been known occasionally to feel jealous.

“What exactly are you doing for Debbie?”

“In the back passage, off the kitchen — you know, the old coal shed and the old loo. Knocking ‘em into one so she can get her washing machine in — retiling the floor — replastering the walls — new electrical sockets — usual sort of thing.”

“Just at weekends?”

“Yeah, well...”

“Bit o’ moonlighting? Cash payment?”

For a second or two Barron’s mouth tightened distastefully, but he made no direct reply. “I was hoping to finish it off before Harry was out.”

“Poor sod! Bet he was looking forward... you know. Attractive woman, our Debbie!”

“Yeah.” The builder took a deep draught of his bitter. “Did you go — to the crem?”

“No. Like you said...”

“Have you seen her at all since...?”

“No. Like you said...”

“The police’ve been round, they tell me.”

“Yeah. Came in — when was it? — Tuesday.”

“What’d they want?”

Doubtless the builder would have been enlightened immediately had not two further customers entered at that point: an elderly, backpacking, stoutly booted couple.

“Two glasses of orange juice, please!”

“Coming up, sir.”

“Beautiful little village you’ve got here. So quiet. So peaceful. ‘Far from the madding crowd’ — you’ll know the quotation?”

The landlord nodded unconvincingly as he passed over the drinks.

“And you serve meals as well!”

The couple walked over to the corner farthest from the fruit machine: she consulting the hostelry’s menu; he plotting a possible P.M. itinerary from Family Walks in the Cotswolds.

“Quiet and peaceful!” mumbled the landlord, as one of the elders stepped forward with two empty straight glasses. Words were clearly superfluous.

“You were saying?” resumed the builder.

“Saying what?”

“About the police?”

“Ah, yes. That sergeant came in and asked some of us about Harry and Debbie.”

“But you hadn’t seen either of them?”

“Right! But, I would’ve done, see — would’ve seen her, anyway, if it hadn’t been for them — for the police. That Sat’day night I thought I’d just nip over and take ‘em a bottle o’ Shampers, like — give ‘em both a bit of a celebration. Well, I’d just parked the car and I was just walking along when I saw this police car driving slowly round and the fellow inside making notes of Reg numbers by the look of it.”

“What’d you say?”

“Didn’t say nothing, did I? Just waited till the coast was clear, then buggered off back here smartish. They’d seen the number, though. So not much point in...”

“Good story!”

“Bloody true story, mate!”

The builder finished his pint. “Beer’s in good nick, Biff.”

“Always in good nick!”

(“Is it fuck!” came sotto voce from the region of the cribbage board.)

“Summat else too,” continued the landlord as he pulled the builder a second pint. “The police tell me there was a phone call for Debbie that Sat’day night — from the pay phone here.”

“Could have been anybody.”

“Yeah.”

“Any ideas?”

“Sat’day nights? Come off it! Full up to the rafters, ain’t we?”

The elderly lady now came to the bar and ordered gammon-and-pineapple with chips for two; and during this transaction the builder turned round and, with a fascination that is universal, watched the unequal struggle at the fruit machine.

From outside came the jingle of an ice-cream van — as happy a noise as any to the youngsters of Lower Swinstead that sunny lunchtime; almost as happy a noise as that clunk-clunk-clunk of coins falling into the winnings tray of a fruit machine.

Conversation at the bar was temporarily suspended, since several noisy customers were now arriving, including three members of the highly unsuccessful Lower Swinstead Cricket Club. There was therefore a comparatively large audience for the seemingly endless music of the machine: clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk; and an even larger audience as the impassively faced youth pressed the “Repeat” button — successfully — with a further twenty £1 coins duly clanking into the winnings tray.

“Nearly enough for that honeymoon,” said the builder.

“Nonsense! He’ll be putting it all back,” said one of the cricketers.

But he wasn’t.

With a temporary lull in business, the landlord resumed the conversation. “Business still pretty good, John?”

“Plenty o’ work, yeah. Having to turn some things down.”

“What you got on at the minute?”

“Job in Burford in Sheep Street: bit o’ roofing, bit o’ pointing, bit o’ painting.”

“High up, is it?”

“High enough. I’ll need a coupla extensions on the ladder.”

Biffen screwed up his face and closed his eyes. “You’d never get me up there.”

“You’re OK, so long as things are firm.”

“Not if you get vertigo as bad as me.”

The coins bulged proudly in his trouser pocket as the bridegroom designate walked out of the bar. Once in the passage that led to the toilets, he lifted the receiver from the pay phone there, inserted 20p, and dialed a number.

But what he said, or to whom he spoke, not even the keen-eared elders could have known.