'I see.' But there was an icy note in Morse's reply that suddenly alerted Lewis to an imminent gale, force ten.
'I'd always thought, Lewis, that the job of a detective, however feebleminded he may be, was to produce a faithful and accurate report on whatever facts he'd been able to establish-however insignificant those facts might appear.' The voice was monotonous, didactic, with the slow, refined articulation of a schoolmaster explaining the school rules to a particularly stupid boy. 'You see, it's often the small, seemingly insignificant detail that later assumes a newborn magnitude. You would agree with that, would you not?'
Lewis swallowed hard and nodded feebly. He was in for a carpeting, he knew that. But what had gone wrong?
'So your friend Walters was somewhat remiss, was he not? As you say, I respect your own judgement of what may or may not be important; though, to be honest, I'm disappointed that you don't expect a slightly higher standard of accuracy and thoroughness in your colleagues' reports. But let's forget that. Walters doesn't work for me, does he?'
'What have I done wrong, sir?' asked Lewis quietly.
'What have you done wrong? I'll tell you, Lewis. You're bloody careless, that's what! Careless in the way you've been writing your reports-'
'You know my spelling-'
'I'm not talking about your bloody spelling. Listen, man! There are half a dozen things here that are purely, simply, plainly, absolutely bloody wrong. You're getting slack, Lewis. Instead of getting better, you're getting a bloody sight worse. Did you know that?' Lewis looked down at the desk and said nothing. He knew, deep down, that he'd rushed a few things; but he'd tried so hard. Whenever Morse picked up his coat for the night and asked, as he often did, for 'a report in the morning', he could have had little idea of how long and difficult a job it was for his sergeant to get the sentences right in his mind, and then tick-tick away on the typewriter until late into the evening while his chief was sitting with his cronies in the local. No, it wasn't fair at all, and Lewis felt a sense of hurt and injustice.
'Let me just see what you mean, if you don't mind, sir. I know I-'
'There's this for a start. Remember it?' Morse's right forefinger flicked the statement taken by Lewis from Mrs. Celia Richards. 'And with this one, Lewis, if I remember rightly-as you can be bloody sure I do!-I specifically asked you to take care. Specifically.'
Lewis looked down at the statement brusquely thrust across to him and he remembered exactly what Morse had said. He opened his mouth to say something, but Etna was still erupting.
'What the hell's the good of a sergeant who can't even get an address right? A sergeant who can't even copy three figures without getting 'em cock-eyed? And then look at this one here!' Morse had now picked up another sheet and was launching a second front somewhere else-but Lewis was no longer listening. This wasn't just unfair; it was wrong. The address on the statement he held was perfectly correct-he was convinced of that. And so he waited, like a deaf man watching a film of Hitler ranting at a Nuremberg rally; and then, when the reverberations had settled, he spoke four simple words, with the massive authority of the Almighty addressing Moses.
'This address is right.'
Morse's mouth opened-and closed. Reaching across the desk, he retrieved Celia Richards' statement, and then fingered through the other documents in front of him until he found what he was looking for.
'You mean to say, Lewis, that she lives at two-six-one, and that this address here'-he passed across a Xerox copy of the letter which had accompanied the parking-fine-'is also correct?' The last three words were whispered, and Lewis felt a shiver of excitement as he looked at the copy:
Dear Sirs,
Enclosed herewith please find cheque for £6, being the penalty fixed for the traffic offence detailed on the ticket (also enclosed). I apologise for the trouble caused.
Yours faithfully,
C. Richards.
On the original letterhead, the address had been pre-printed at the top right-hand corner: 216 Oxford Avenue, Abingdon, Oxon.
It was Lewis who spoke first. 'This means that Celia Richards never paid the fine at all, doesn't it, sir? This is Conrad Richards' address.'
Morse nodded agreement. 'That's about it. And I drove past the wretched place myself when…' His voice trailed off, and in his mind at that very moment it was as if a colossal flash of lightning had suddenly illuminated the landscape for a pilot flying lost and blind in the blackest night.
Morse's eyes were still shining as he stood up. 'Calls for a little celebration, don't you think?'
'No, sir. Before we do anything else, I want to know about all those other things in the reports where-'
'Forget 'em! Trivialities, Lewis! Minimal blemishes on some otherwise excellent documentation.' He walked round the table and his right hand gripped Lewis's shoulder. 'We're a team, we are-you realise that, don't you? You and me, when we work together-Christ! We're bloody near invincible! Get your coat!'
Lewis rose reluctantly from his seat. He couldn't really understand why Morse should invariably win, but he supposed it would always be so. 'You reckon you've puzzled it all out, sir?'
'Reckon? Know, more like. I'll tell you all about it over a pint.'
'I'd rather you told me now.'
'All right, Lewis. The fact of the matter is that we now not only know who killed Anne Scott, my old friend, but we also know who killed George Jackson. And you want the names? Want 'em now?'
So Morse gave the two different names. The first one left Lewis utterly perplexed, since it was completely unknown to him; the second left him open-mouthed and flabbergasted.
BOOK FOUR
Chapter Thirty-Three
What shall be the maiden's fate?
Who shall be the maiden's mate?
– Sir Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel
'There are three basic views about human life,' began Morse. 'One of 'em says that everything happens by pure chance, like atoms falling through space, colliding with each other occasionally and cannoning off to start new collisions. According to this view there's nothing in the scheme of things that has sorted us out-you and me, Lewis-to sit here in this pub, at this particular time, to drink a pint of beer together. It's all just a pure fluke-all just a chancy set of fortuitous circumstances. Then you get those who reckon that it's ourselves, as people, who determine what happens-at least to some extent. In other words, it's our own characters that affect the way things turn out. Sooner or later our sins will find us out and we have to accept the consequences. It's a bit like bowls, Lewis. When somebody chucks you down the green, there's a bias, one way or the other, and you're always going to drift in a set direction. And then there's another view: the view that it doesn't matter a bugger what particular circumstances are, or what individual people do. The future's fixed and firm-just like the past is. Things are somehow ordained from on high-preordained, that's the word. There's a predetermined pattern in life. What's going to be-is going to be; and whatever you do and whatever your luck is, you just can't avoid it. If your number's up-your number's up! Fate-that's what they call it.'
'What do you believe, sir?'
'Me? Well, I certainly don’t go for all this "fate" lark-it's a load of nonsense. I reckon I come somewhere in the middle of the other two. But that's neither here nor there. What is important is what Anne Scott believed; and it's perfectly clear to me that she was a firm believer in the fates. She even mentioned the word, I remember, when-when I met her. And then there was that particular row of books just above the desk in her study-all those Penguin Classics, Lewis. It's pretty clear from the look of some of those creased black spines that the works of the Greek tragedians must have made a deep impression on her, and some of those stories-well, let's be more specific. There was one book she'd been rereading very recently and hadn't put back on the shelf yet. It was lying on her desk, Lewis, and one of the stories in that book-'