The Remorseful Day

Chapter sixty-three

“You know, come to think of it, Lewis, we could do all of this now, couldn’t we? Just the two of us.”

“No Dixon?”

“No Dixon.”

Lewis smiled outwardly and inwardly as he looked down at the action plan. It seemed to him a sensible and fair division of a good deal of labor. For example, he himself had spoken only very briefly with Sarah Harrison; Morse had not as yet spoken at all with Simon Harrison. Both matters now to be dealt with. And all leading up to the two of them, Morse and Lewis, meeting Frank Harrison a.s.a.p. after these and a few other checks and visits had been made. Harrison! — “the corner-stone, the kingpin, the pivot,” as Morse had asserted, before running out of synonyms. “We’ve got plenty of time for all this — well, no, perhaps we haven’t. So we can be pretty direct, but not sharp. Smile occasionally. No aggressiveness, no hostility, no belligerence,” Morse had asserted, before running out of synonyms again.

It all suited Lewis nicely. If Morse’s philosophy in life was to aim high even if the target was altogether missed, he personally preferred to aim low in the hope at least of hitting something.

The voluntary (mornings only) help at the Oxford Animal Sanctuary Shop (Gifts Welcome) lived only a few hundred yards away in Osberton Road: a widow, a cat lover, an intelligent witness — Mrs. Gerrard. It was just that, as every weekday morning, she’d walked down to South Parade to buy the Daily Telegraph, about 8 o’clock before opening the shop, and she’d seen this—

“Yes?” Lewis smiled.

— well, this youngish fellow — smartly dressed, suit and tie — and he put this Sainsbury’s plastic bag in the doorway there. She couldn’t describe him any better than that really; but she remembered his car, parked for a few seconds on the double-yellows alongside the shop. She wouldn’t have noticed that either — except that it was the same make as hers, a Toyota Carina, P-Reg., a different color though: hers was a turquoisy color, his was silvery-grey. The trainers she had put carefully aside, under the counter in the shop.

No one in North Oxford with a Toyota was likely to drive unnecessarily far afield for any servicing and repairs, since there was a specialist garage in Summer-town itself; and it took Lewis only a few minutes to learn that the owner of a silvery-grey P-Reg. Carina was a regular and esteemed customer of the company, a man named Simon Harrison.

Simultaneously Morse was driving himself in the Jaguar through the low range of open hills that border Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. His old pathologist friend, Max, had once told him that two pleasures grew ever deeper with advancing age, the pleasures of the belly and the pleasures of natural beauty. And Morse found himself concurring with the latter proposition as he turned right at the roundabout and drove down into Burford.

Christine Coverley was clearly surprised to see him, and clearly not happy.

“It’s all a bit untidy—”

Morse smiled. “Can I come in?”

“I haven’t got long, I’m afraid.”

“It won’t take long, I promise.”

“How can I...?”

“What were you doing last Monday morning? Between, say, nine and eleven?”

“Not the faintest, have I? Nobody could remember exactly—”

“Did you go out — for a newspaper, shopping, seeing someone?”

“I don’t know. Like I say—”

“Can you have a look in your diary for me?”

“That wouldn’t help.”

“What wow Whelp?”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at. Look, Inspector.” She glanced down at her wristwatch with what appeared incipient panic. “Could we talk some other time, please? You see I’ve got—”

But it was too late.

There was the scratch of a key in the Yale lock and the front door was quickly opened and as quickly closed, and a youth entered from the narrow hallway to stand in the doorway of the single bedsit room.

With staring eyes he looked first at Morse and then at Christine Coverley: “What the fuck?”

“ You haven’t increased your word power much since we last—” began Morse. But Roy Holmes had disappeared even more rapidly than he’d appeared.

In the stillness that followed the crash of the front door closing, Morse sat down in one of the armchairs, and gestured the speechless schoolmistress to seat herself in the other.

“Please tell me all about it,” he said, with no hint of aggressiveness or any of its synonyms. “If you don’t, I’m sorry but I shall have to take you down to Police HQ.”

After his twinkling Irish eyes had scrutinized Lewis’s ID, Mr. Tony Marrinan, the manager of The Randolph, was wholly cooperative; and very soon the outline of Frank Harrison’s recent stay was revealed. Double-room booked with, as staff recalled her, a sultrily attractive if less than attractively mannered partner — late twenties, perhaps; meals taken together quite regularly in the Spires Restaurant — details available, if Sergeant Lewis wanted to see them.

As Sergeant Lewis did.

The pair had breakfasted together on each morning except the Monday, and Lewis was fairly soon looking at that day’s Good Morning Breakfast chit, its details having been transferred immediately to the hotel’s computer before being placed on a spike and then at the end of the day transferred to the accounts department upstairs for a limited period, as a check if any guest should query an entry on the final bill.

Interesting! Especially the bottom half of the chit:

“Covers,” as Lewis learned, signified how many had been at the table: on the other chits it had the figure “2” beside it. But on the Monday morning just the one of them, and the restaurant manager remembered which one of them: “It was the lady. I think Mr. Harrison may have been feeling a little tired.”

Before he left the hotel, Lewis had a word with the chambermaid who had looked after Room 210, discovering that for much of the time over the period in question the do not disturb notice had hung over the outside door-knob.

“And the bed looked as if it had been slept in each night?” (Lewis tried to smile knowingly.)

“Oh yes, sir. Oh yes.”

Perhaps the restaurant manager was right. Perhaps Mr. Harrison’s stay in Oxford had been a busy and tiring one.

For one reason or another.

Before driving back to HQ, Morse called in at the Maiden’s Arms, in the hope of finding Alf and Bert, Lower Swinstead’s answer to “Bill and Ben.” The time was now just after 2:30 P.M.; and Morse expected that they would be gone by then. But he was lucky; or at least half-lucky.

Bert, it seemed, had “got the screws,” and Alf was sitting alone by the window, slowly sipping the last of his beer, and readily accepting Morse’s offer of “one for the road.”

“Lost his nerve!” confided Alf. “Lost the last five times we’ve a’been playing. Lost his nerve!”

“Like me to give you a quick game? Just the one?”

Morse had determined to lose the challenge in as swift and incompetent a manner as possible. But unfortunately the gods were smiling broadly on his hands; and very soon, malgré lui, he had won the single encounter by the proverbial street.

Unfortunately?

Oh no. For Alf appeared to recognize in his opponent a player of supreme skills; and instead of his wonted sullen silence on such occasions, he was soon speaking with unprecedented candor about life there in the village in general, and in particular about the Harrisons — with the result that after twenty minutes Morse had learned more than any other police officer before him from any of the locals in Lower Swinstead.

“Did Frank ever come in the pub here with other women?”

“Never. In Lon’on most of his time, weren’t he?”

“What about Simon?”

“He come in sometimes, but he never had no reg’lar girlfriend. Bit of a loner, Simon.”

“What about Sarah?”

“ Lovely, she were — not seen her though this last coupla years. In fact, last time I seen her was here in the pub — sort of guest appearance singing with a pop group. Nice voice, she had, young Sarah.”

“Did she come in with any boyfriends?”

“Did she? I’ll tell you summat — she did. Could’ve had anybody she wanted, I reckon.”

“Who did she want?”

Alf chuckled. “Didn’t want me — Bert neither! One or two was luckier though, mister.”

The light in Alf’s old eyes suddenly sparked, like the coals on a fire that were almost ready to sink back to an ashen grey; and he nodded his head — just as Bert, in his turn, would have nodded across the cribbage board.

Enviously.

With the consulting rooms all taken up with a series of interviews for diabetes students, Lewis sat with Sarah Harrison behind a curtain in the Blood-Testing Room.

“Did you see your father while he was staying at The Randolph last week?”

“I always see my father when he comes to Oxford. In fact, I had a meal with him one evening.”

“So you get on well with him?”

Lewis’s smile was not reciprocated, and she almost spat her reply at him: “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m not sure really. It’s just that I’ve got a list of questions here from Chief Inspector Morse — by the way, I think you know him...?”

“I’ve met him once.”

“Well he’s asked me to ask you — not very well phrased, that—”

“What’s he want to know?”

“What the relationships were like in your family.”

“I can’t speak for Simon — you must ask him. If you mean did I have any preference? No. I loved Mum, and I loved, love, Dad. Some children love both their parents, you know.”

“You never felt that your mother loved Simon a bit more than she loved you — you know, because he was a bit handicapped, perhaps because he needed more affection than you did?”

There was a silence before Sarah answered the question; and as Lewis looked at her he realized how attractive she must have appeared to all the men and boys in the village; how attractive she was now, and would be for many years to come, in whatever place she found herself.

“You know I’ve never thought of it quite like that before, but yes... I suppose you could be right, Sergeant Lewis.”

After leaving the Maiden’s Arms, where the fruit machine had stood unwontedly and unprofitably silent, Morse called on Allen (sic) Thomas at his home in Lower Swinstead. Alf had told him where to go: the lad was sure to be there. He’d not be at work, because he’d never done a hand’s turn in his life.

And Alf was right.

The dingy room was untidy and undusted, with three empty cans on the top of the TV and a hugely piled ashtray on the arm of the single armchair. But Thomas (the facial resemblance between him and Roy Holmes so very obvious to him now) was a paragon of civility compared with the crudity of that sibling of his, and Morse found himself feeling more pro than anti the unshaven youth in front of him.

“How often do you keep in touch with your dad?” began Morse.

The cigarette that had been dangling from Thomas’s loose mouth fell to the carpet; and although it was swiftly retrieved the damage had been done. Thomas knew it. And Morse knew it. And fairly soon the truth, or what Morse took to be half of the truth, had started to surface.

Yes, Elizabeth Holmes was his natural mother.

Yes, Roy Holmes was his stepbrother — or his real brother — he’d never really known.

Yes, he kept in touch with his natural father, and his natural father kept in touch with him: Frank Harrison, yes — he’d always known that.

No. His father had never sent him what could loosely be called a fruit-machine allowance.

No. His father had never asked him to keep him regularly informed about any developments in the inquiries into Yvonne Harrison’s murder.

No. He’d had no contact whatever recently either with his father or his mother or his brother.

Morse was half-smiling to himself as finally he drove back to Oxford, knowing beyond any peradventure that the No No No was in reality a Yes Yes Yes.

In the semicoordinated strategy earlier agreed between the pair of them, Lewis’s last allotted task had been some further inquiries into the balances and business activities of Mr. Frank Harrison. Somewhat trickier than anticipated though. Yet far more exciting, as Lewis discovered after depositing (as agreed) the Sainsbury’s bag, with contents, in Morse’s office late that same afternoon, and ringing the London offices of the Swiss Helvetia Bank.

Reaching the senior manager surprisingly speedily.

Being informed that he, Lewis, ought really to get to London immediately and urgently.

Deciding to go.

Using the siren (one of Lewis’s greatest joys) if he found himself stuck, as he knew he would be, amid the capital’s inevitable gridlocks.

Morse took the red trainers from the bag and placed them on Simon Harrison’s desk.

“These yours?”

“Pardon? What shorts?”

The interview wasn’t going to be easy, Morse conceded that. Yet already the suspicion had crossed his mind that any deaf man, and especially a canny deaf man, might occasionally pretend to mishear in order to give himself a little more time to consider an awkward question.

“Your car, Mr. Harrison? Toyota, P-Reg.?”

“It ought to be what, Inspector?”

“Llandudno? Mean anything to you?”

“Did you know, you say? Didn’t know?”

“The time for playing games is over, lad,” said Morse quietly. “Let’s start at the beginning again, shall we?” He pointed to the trainers. “These yours?”

The truth, or what Morse took to be half of the truth, was fairly soon out.

The teenaged Simon had known Barron well enough because the builder had done a few things around the house, including a big structural job on the back patio. Frequently he’d found Barron in the kitchen having a mug of coffee with his mother, and he’d sensed that Barron fancied her. Jealous? Yes, he’d been jealous. Angry, too, because his mother had once confided in him that she found Barron a bit of a creep.

Then, so very recently, there’d been this upsurge of interest in his mother’s murder, bringing with it a corresponding upsurge in his hatred of Barron.

Yes, he’d bought the trainers — £70! No, he’d not driven out to Stokenchurch that Monday morning. He’d driven out to Burford instead, where he knew that Barron was working.

Here Morse had interrupted. “How did you know that?”

“Pardon?”

Was it a genuine plea? Morse was most doubtful, but he repeated the question with what he trusted was legible enunciation, conscious as he had been throughout of Simon’s eyes upon his lips.

“He told me himself. You see, I wanted the outside of my flat, er... you know, the windows, doors... they were all getting a bit... Anyway, I asked him if he could do it and he said he’d come round and give me an estimate after he’d finished his next job. And I don’t know why but he just happened to mention where it was, that’s all.”

Morse nodded dubiously. Even if it wasn’t the truth, it wasn’t a bad answer. And Simon Harrison continued his unofficial statement:

He’d just felt — well, murderous. Simple as that. He’d always suspected that Barron was involved somehow in his mother’s murder, and he was conscious of an ever-increasing hatred for the man. So he’d decided to go and see if Barron was there, in Sheep Street, balanced precariously (as he hoped) on the top of an extended ladder, painting the guttering or something. And he was.

Morse made a second interruption: “So why didn’t you...?”

Simon understood the inchoate query immediately, and for Morse his answer had the ring of truth about it:

“I wanted to make sure he could be pushed off. I’d noticed when he was doing Mum’s roof that he used to anchor the top of his ladder to the troughing or chimney stack or something. And he’d done the same there, in Sheep Street — I could see it easily. So even if I’d had the guts to do it, the ladder wouldn’t have fallen. He might have done, agreed, but... Anyway, I was a nervous wreck when I got back home; and when I read in the Oxford Mail that Mrs. Somebody-or-other had mentioned seeing a jogger there wearing red trainers... I should have put them in the dustbin. Stupid, I was! But they’d cost me — well, I told you. And I’ve always loved animals, so... well, that’s it really.”

Although less than convinced by what sounded a suspiciously shaky story, Morse was adequately impressed by the manner of the pleasantly spoken young man. Had he been as vain as Morse and many other mortals, he would probably have grown his hair fairly long over his temples in order to conceal his hearing aids. But Harrison’s dark hair was closely cropped, framing a clean-shaven face that seemed honest. Or reasonably so.

Asking Harrison to remind him of his home address and telephone number, Morse got to his feet and prepared to leave.

“You’ll have to make an official statement, of course.”

“I realize that, yes.”

Morse pushed the trainers an inch or two further across the desk.

“ You might as well keep them now. I only wish I were as fit as you.”

Was there a glint of humor in Simon’s eyes as, in turn, he got to his feet?

“Fit a shoe, did you say, Inspector?”

Morse let it go. The man’s hearing was very poor, little doubt of that. Which made it surprising perhaps that a mobile phone lay on the desk beside him.

On his second impulse that day, Morse drove down to North Oxford and stopped momentarily outside Simon Harrison’s small property at 5 Grosvenor Street. The replacement windows with their aluminium frames had clearly been installed there fairly recently — frames whose glory (as advertised) was never to need any painting at all.

Courteously if somewhat cautiously received, Lewis listened carefully as one of the Bank’s important personages spelled out the situation with (as was stressed) utter confidentiality, with appropriate delicacy, and with (for Lewis) a leavening of incomprehensible technicalities. In simple terms it amounted to this: Mr. Frank Harrison, currently on furlough, was currently also, if unofficially, on suspension from his duties with the Bank on suspicion, as yet unsubstantiated, of misappropriation of monies: viz. an unexplained black hole of some £520,000 in his department’s investment portfolios.