The Remorseful Day

Chapter forty-four

Sergeant Dixon swallowed the last of the jam-filled, sugar-coated doughnut: “I’m beginning to think he’s losing his marbles. First he says we go and bring Barron in — and the next thing is we’re telling his missus he’s croaked it.”

Sergeant Lewis looked up. “How did she take it?”

“Not very well. Kate was very good with her but...”

“Her GP knows?”

“Yep. And she’s got her mum and sister there, so... The kids though, innit? Poor little buggers: six and four.”

“Easier for them, I suppose.”

“Perhaps so. I just had the feeling though, you know, the marriage wasn’t all that...” Dixon held out a shaky right hand, like that of a man with delirium tremens.

“What gave you that impression?”

Dixon tapped his right temple with a firmer finger. “Experience, mate.”

He got up, walked over to the canteen counter, and looked hopefully along the glass shelves.

Lewis was summoned to Caesar’s tent just after 5:30 P.M.

“Sorry state of affairs, Lewis, when a man can’t even get a round of golf in on a Monday afternoon!”

“I just thought you ought to—”

“Winning I was. Two up at the turn. The swing really in the groove. And then...”

“I’m sorry, sir. But as I say I thought—”

“Where’s Morse?”

“He, er, just went back home for a while.”

“Best place for him. Nothing but disaster since he took over things.”

“It was you wanted him,” said Lewis gently.

“Too clever — that’s Morse’s trouble! Time he jacked it in — like me. Make way for these bright young buggers checking in through the fast track. It’s all degrees these days, Lewis, and DNA, and...”

“Clipboards?”

Strange smiled sympathetically. “Old Morse doesn’t like clipboards much, does he?”

“No.”

“You’ll miss him when he goes, won’t you?”

“Is he going?”

“You’ll be a richer man, for certain.”

Lewis made no reply.

“Did he have a couple of beers out at Burford?”

“Just the one.”

“Remarkable! And who paid for that, pray?”

“Oddly enough, he did.”

Strange looked across the desk shrewdly. “Know something, Lewis? You’re nearly as big a liar as that American president.”

For the next ten minutes, and with no further lies, Lewis told the Chief Superintendent as much as he or anyone else (including Morse?) could know about the deliberate murder of J. Barron, Builder (and increasingly, as it appeared, Decorator) of Lower Swinstead.

“Mm!”

Strange contemplated the phone awhile, then rang Morse. But the ex-directory number was engaged. A minute later, he rang again; and, a minute later, again. Still engaged.

“Taken his phone off the bloody hook. Typical! He’s supposed to be solving an assortment of murders.”

“He’s a bit tired, sir. I don’t think he’s been sleeping very well.”

“Hardly surprising, is it? Having to get up for a pee every half hour?”

“I don’t think it’s just that.”

“What d’you mean?” Strange’s voice was sharper.

“Well, nothing really.”

“Out with it, Lewis.”

“Just that sometimes perhaps it almost seems as if he doesn’t really care all that much...”

“Interesting!”

For a while Strange pondered matters. Then decided: “Go and knock him up!”

“Couldn’t we give him a rest, just for today?” suggested a diffident Lewis. “Not much he can do for the minute, is there? Not much you can do, either.”

“Mm. You could be right.”

“Why not get back to the golf course?”

“Because, Lewis — because I’ve let him off the hook. Three up at the turn...”

“I thought you said it was two up, sir.”

“Did I?”

Strange reached for the phone and rang Morse’s number yet again.

Still engaged.

He stood up and repeated Lewis’s words: “Not much you can do, either. Why don’t you just bugger off home. Eggs and chips, what?”

For a good deal of these exchanges between Strange and Lewis, Deborah Richardson had been standing, head tilted, in the narrow passageway at the back of the property, wondering whether she’d been sensible in choosing that particular shade of maroon for the newly established outhouse. Two of the re-plastered walls had received their first coat — several weekends ago now — and they reminded her, according to the light, either of black currant jam or of blood.

She thought she’d probably change things.

The phone rang.

She reached it at the sixth ring.

The arrangements, unusually involved, took a little while to get sorted out.

Once they were, she felt almost unprecedentedly excited.