The Remorseful Day

Chapter forty

Morse jerked awake as Lewis entered the office just before 8 A.M., wondering where he was, what time it was, what day it was. Yet it had been a wonderful little sleep, the deep and dreamless sleep that Socrates anticipated after swallowing the hemlock.

“No crossword this morning, sir?”

“Shop wasn’t open.”

“Why don’t you pay a paperboy?”

“Because, Lewis, a little occasional exercise...”

Lewis sat down. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”

Morse pointed to the reports laid out on the desk. “You’ve read these?”

Lewis nodded. “But, like I say, I’ve got something to ask you.”

“And I’ve got something to tell you. Is that all right, Lewis?” The voice was suddenly harsh. “You’ll remember from all our times together how coincidence occurs in life far more frequently than anyone — except me — is prepared to accept. Coincidence isn’t unusual at all. It’s the norm. Just like those consecutive numbers cropping up in the National Lottery every week. But in this case the coincidence is even odder than usual.”

(Lewis raised his eyebrows a little.)

“Let’s go back to Yvonne Harrison’s murder. She was a woman with exceptional sex drive, but she certainly wasn’t just the deaf-and-dumb nymphomaniac with a bedroom just above the public bar that many a man has fantasized about. Oh, no. She was highly intelligent, highly desirable, like the woman in the Larkin poem with the “lash-wide stare,” who in turn was attracted by a variety of men. A lot of men. So many men that over the years she inevitably came across a few paying clients with kinky preferences. I doubt she ever went in for S and M, but it looks very likely that a bit of bondage was on her list of services, probably with a hefty surcharge. It’s well known that some men only find sexual satisfaction with women who put on a show of being utterly submissive and powerless. It gives these men the only sense of real power they’re ever likely to experience in life, because the object of their desire is lying there defenseless, unstruggling, sometimes unspeaking, too. Not uncommon, that, Lewis. And you can read all about it in Krafft-Ebing’s case studies...”

(Lewis’s eyebrows rose significantly.)

“... although, as you know, I’m no great expert in such matters. In fact, come to think of it, I can’t even remember whether he’s got one or two ‘b’s in his name. But it means there’s a pretty obvious explanation of two of the items that puzzled our previous colleagues: a pair of handcuffs, and a gag not all that tightly tied. The woman offering such a specialist service is never going to answer back, never going to scratch your eyes out — and Yvonne Harrison had just about the longest fingernails...”

(Lewis’s eyebrows rose a lot.)

“On the night of the murder she had a client in bed with her, and if ever there was a locus classicus for what they call coitus interruptus, this was it, because someone interrupted the proceedings. Or at the very least, someone saw them there in bed together.”

“Harry Repp?”

“Repp was certainly there at some point. But I think he kept his cool and kept his distance that night. I think he realized there could well be something in it for himself. He was right, too. Because what he saw that night — what he later kept from the police — was going to prove very profitable, as you discovered, Lewis. Five hundred pounds a month from someone just for exercising his professional skills as a burglar in staying well out of sight and keeping his eyes wide open. Exactly what he saw, we shan’t know, shall we? Unless he told Debbie Richardson, which I doubt.”

“What do you think he saw?”

“Pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

“You mean he saw who murdered Mrs. Harrison?”

Morse nodded.

“And you think you know who...?”

Morse nodded.

But Lewis shook his head. “It’s all so wishy-washy, what you’ve just said. I don’t know where to start. When was she murdered? Who rang her husband? Who set off the burglar alarm? Who—?”

“Lewis! We, remember, are investigating something else. But if any study of the first case facilitates the solving of the second? So be it! And it does, as you’ll agree.”

“I will?”

Morse nodded again. “Three people were coincidentally involved in a clever and profitable deception that night, each of them able and willing to throw his individual spanner into any reconstruction the CID could reasonably come up with. First, there was Flynn, our corpus primum, who told as many lies as anybody: both about the time he picked Frank Harrison up from Oxford Station, and about what he noticed — or more probably the person he saw — when he got to Lower Swinstead. Second, there was Repp, our corpus secundum, who told us no lies at all, but only because he told us nothing at all. Third...”

Morse hesitated, and Lewis looked across the desk expectantly.

“There’s this third man of ours, and a man most unlikely to become our corpus tertium. Once Repp was out of jail, the three of them — Repp himself, Flynn, and this third man — they all arranged to meet together. They’d done pretty well so far out of their conspiracy of silence, and they were all keen on continuing to squeeze the milk cow even drier. So they did meet — a meeting where things went tragically wrong. Greed... jealousy... personal antipathies... whatever! Two of them had an almighty row in the car in which they were traveling together. And one of them, probably in a lay-by somewhere, knifed one of the others: one of them knifed Flynn. And the remaining two disposed of the body neatly enough at Redbridge — the rubbish bags proving very handy, I should think. So any profits no longer needed to be split three ways. And now the talk between the two of them must have been all about a fifty-fifty share of the spoils, and how it could be effected. But somewhere in the discussion there was one further almighty row; and this time it was Repp who had his innards ripped open.”

“You know who this ‘third’ man was, you’re saying?”

“So do you. We mentioned him when you produced that admirable schema of yours for the night of Yvonne’s murder.”

“You’re saying there was somebody else there that night?”

“There was always somebody else, Lewis, wasn’t there? The man in bed with Yvonne Harrison.”

“If you say so, sir.”

“You see, the major problem our lads had was the timing of the murder. Her body wasn’t examined until several hours later, and all the pathological guesswork had to be married with the evidence gleaned at the time, or gleaned later. For example, with the fact that someone was in bed with Yvonne at some specific time that night, although nobody really tried to discover who that person was — until I did. For example, again, with the fact that someone had tried to ring her twice that night, at 9 P.M. when the line was engaged, and again half an hour later when the phone rang unanswered. And if you add all this together, you’ll find that the person who sorely misled the police, the person who was in bed with her, and the person who murdered both Paddy Flynn and Harry Repp — was one and the same man.”

There fell a silence between the two of them, broken finally by Lewis. “You’re sure about all this?”

“Only ninety-five percent sure.”

“We’d better get our skates on then.”

“Hold your horses! One or two things I’d like you to check first, just to make it one hundred percent.”

“So we’ve got a little while?”

“Oh, yes. No danger of anyone murdering him—not today, anyway. So this afternoon’ll be fine. Get out to Lower Swinstead — take someone with you, mind! — and bring him back here. OK?”

“Fine. Only one thing, sir. You forgot to tell me his name.”

“Did I? Well, you’ve guessed it anyway. He’s got a little business out there, hasn’t he? A little building business. ‘J. Barron, Builder,’ as it says on his van.”