Where was he? What had happened?...
Not that her grass-widowhood had been entirely minus men. There’d been that nice little affair with the young plasterer who’d come in to patch up a crack in the kitchen wall. And that civilized little liaison with the Oxford don (so undemanding, so appreciative) she’d met in a Burford pub. But in each case, and on every occasion, she’d been so very, very careful...
Only once had she had that dreadful worry, after buying a Home Pregnancy Kit from Boots, when she’d just had to tell Harry, and when he’d been surprisingly sympathetic. If they did have a kid, it’d be good for him (him!) to have a mum and a dad. Yeah! He’d hated both his mum and his dad — but he’d hated his mum less, and it was proper to have a choice. Something else too: you know, when the poor little bugger went to school and one of the other kids said what’s your name or what’s your dad do — well, it was probably old-fashioned to think like that but, yeah! better to have two of them, two parents. So she ought to change her name to his, but no need for any of all that nuptial stuff! Just for the kid’s sake, mind — nothing to do with any social worker!
But she’d be “Debbie Repp,” then; and that would be too close to “demirep” (a word she’d met in the “intercrural” article), which she’d looked up in the biggest dictionary she could find in the Burford Public Library: “a person, esp. a woman, of dubious and libidinous disposition.” Her name, she’d decided, would henceforth remain “Richardson.” And in any case the subsequent messy miscarriage had settled that domestic crisis.
At 12:50 P.M. she left her vigil for the kitchen, where she felt the neck of the champagne bottle, standing beside two glasses on the table there. Inappropriately chambré she decided (another recent addition to her vocabulary), and she put it back in the fridge. Not Premier Division stuff: £8.99 from the supermarket, although in truth she’d begrudged even that. Money! God, how important that was in life! They had enough money — what’s more, money temporarily held in her own name. But that was Harry’s money, and she would never dare to touch more of it than the reasonably generous allowance he’d authorized.
She’d taken some occasional office-cleaning jobs in Burford, usually from 6 P.M. to 8 P.M. But £4.75 per hour was hardly the rate of remuneration to support any reasonable lifestyle; certainly not the style she’d begun to get accustomed to with Harry. So did she find herself almost hoping that he might pick up again on some of those very shady but very profitable activities?
No! No! No!
At 1:15 P.M. she rang Bullingdon Prison, learning that Harry Repp had left on schedule that morning with a bus warrant for Oxford. Nothing further they could tell her: no longer their responsibility, was he? She could ring the Probation Office in Oxford — that might have been his first port-of-call. Which number she was about to dial when she noticed a car pulling up outside — an R-Reg., dark blue, expensive-looking model; and a man she’d never seen before getting out of it, and walking toward her up the narrow, amateurishly cemented front path.
Chapter twenty
Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.
Already, an hour or so before driving out to see Debbie Richardson, it had been an unusual morning for Sergeant Lewis.
Morse had insisted on buying the second round in the Woodstock Arms, albeit one consisting only of one pint of Morrell’s Best Bitter for himself, since as yet Lewis was only halfway down his obligatory orange juice.
Unusual? Yes. And quite certainly surprising.
“Do you really mean it — about the car number, sir?”
“Just be patient!”
“What do you think I am being?”
“You say the car was darkish, newish, toppish range?”
“Like I said, I was really concentrating on the bus.”
“Be more specific, man! Go for it. Back your hunches!”
“All right: black; R-Reg.; twenty thou.”
“That’s better.”
Lewis smiled dubiously. “Thank you.”
“And how many people in that car of yours? One? Two? Three?”
“Certainly one, sir.”
“We’ll make a detective of you yet,” mumbled Morse, leaning forward as he buried his nose in the froth.
“Could’ve been two, I suppose. I can’t really remember but... you know, it was a bit like one of those cars going off on a family holiday, you know what I mean?”
“No.”
“Well, you know—”
“For Christ’s sake stop saying ‘you know’!”
“Well, you’ve got things packed everywhere, haven’t you? Not just cases and things but nappies, bedding, towels, boots, wellingtons, thermoses, carrier bags — all piled up so you can hardly see out of the back window.”
“What sort of bags?”
Lewis was trying hard to revisualize the scene, and fortunately Morse had picked on the one thing that finally jogged his fading memory. Bags! Yes, there’d been bags in the back of that car: bags you could stick all sorts of things inside. And suddenly the picture had grown clearer:
“Black bags!”
“You think he was off to the rubbish dump?”
“Could’ve been. ‘Waste Reception Area,’ by the way, sir.”
“Where’s the biggest rubbish dump in Oxfordshire?”
“Or in Oxford, perhaps?” Lewis’s face had brightened. “Redbridge. People go there from all over the county — straight down the A34 — then turn off—” But Lewis stopped. “Forget it, sir. From Bullingdon you’d turn on to the A41, and then straight on to the A34. You wouldn’t go into Bicester at all.”
“And you’re quite sure the car went into Bicester?”
“That’s one thing I am sure about.”
“If only you’d concentrated on that car, Lewis, and forgotten all about the bus!”
“I just don’t understand why you’re so interested in the car. Repp was on the bus.”
“So you keep saying,” said Morse quietly. “But you’re not right, are you? Repp wasn’t on the bus.”
“Not when he got to Oxford, no.”
“You lost him. You might as well face it.”
Lewis drained his orange juice. “Yep! I agree. I lost him. And that’s exactly why I need a bit of help.”
“Like the number of that car, you mean?”
“I think you’re having me on about that.”
“Oh no. And if you think it’ll help...”
Morse took out his pen and pushed his empty glass across the table: “Your round! And pass me your notebook.”
A minute later, Lewis stared down at Morse’s small, neat handwriting:
And incredulity vied with amazement in his face as Morse continued quietly: “You know, you weren’t your usual sharp self this morning, were you? You failed to observe the car in front of you — and you failed to observe the car behind you.”
“ You — you don’t mean...?”
“I do mean, yes. I was right behind you this morning. But being the law-abiding citizen I am, I instructed my driver to keep an appropriately safe distance from the vehicle in front.”