“The Chief’s on furlough,” interposed a brave Lewis.
“Shut up, Lewis! And he’ll have your guts for garters, Morse. So that’s settled. All you’ve got to do is sober up and put your thinking cap on.”
“I usually think better when—” But Morse’s disquisition on his personal style of ratiocination was cut short by a further knock, with Dr. Hobson’s pretty head appearing round the door.
“Oh, sorry! It’s just—”
“Come in!” growled Strange, his jowls still wobbling.
“Just thought I’d check. We’ve got him outside and Andrews says it’s OK if—”
“Who is he?” asked Strange.
“Don’t know. I had a tentative feel round his pockets. No wallet, though, no cards—”
“He’s pretty easily recognizable though?”
“Oh, yes. His face is fine. It’s his stomach that’s all a gory mess where the knife or whatever it was went in.”
“At least we’ve got a good mug shot of him then.”
“Probably identify him straightaway. I got this from his trouser pocket.”
Strange looked down at a white “Cardholder’s Copy” receipt from Oddbins of Banbury Road, itemizing the purchase of a crate of Guinness, the number of the Visa credit card printed below in a faded indigo.
“There we are, Lewis! Shouldn’t be too difficult, should it?” He handed over the receipt with an unconvincing smile. “Unless you manage to lose that, of course.”
It was a hurtful dig. But the patient Lewis briefly examined the evidence himself and sought to put a finger on the fairly obvious:
“Not much chance this afternoon, sir. Saturday? The banks’ll all be shut.”
“What? For Christ’s sake, man! We’ve put someone on the moon, remember? And you say we can’t trace a credit-card number because it’s a bloody Saturday! Is that what you’re telling me?”
Morse had remained silent during these exchanges; and remained so now, his brain already galloping several furlongs ahead of the field. And Lewis, after such a withering rebuke, also remained silent, holding the receipt tightly, like a punter clutching a winning betting slip. Only Strange, it appeared, was willing to break the awkward silence as he turned again to Dr. Hobson.
“They’re just carting him off, you say?”
“Yes.”
“Well, let us know — let Chief Inspector Morse know — what you come up with. Sooner the quicker. Understood?”
“Of course.”
The assembled personages rose to their feet; and matters at Sutton Courtenay were seemingly now at an end.
But not so; not quite.
It was Morse, at last, who made his brief though extraordinarily significant contribution to the afternoon’s developments.
“Sir, I think you ought to have a look at him.”
“I don’t like dead bodies any more than you do, Morse.”
“I know that, but...”
“But what?”
“... but you ought to have a look at him.” Morse spoke his words slowly and quietly. “You see, I think it’s quite possible that you’ll recognize him.”
Frequently afterward, in the post-Morse years, would Sergeant Lewis recall that afternoon at the fill-in site in Oxfordshire: when Chief Superintendent Strange had looked at the bloodless face of a murdered man; and when his erstwhile ruddy cheeks had paled to chalky white.
“Bloody ‘ell! I knew him, Morse. I interviewed him twice in the Harrison murder inquiry.”
When the top brass had finally dispersed, Eddie Andrews let himself back into the now deserted office, turned on the TV, found Sport (Cricket) on Ceefax and noted with quiet satisfaction that Northamptonshire were really doing rather well that day.
Chapter twenty-nine
CALIPH: And now how shall we employ the time of waiting for our deliverance?
JAFAR: I shall meditate upon the mutability of human affairs.
MASRUR: And I shall sharpen my sword upon my thigh.
HASSAN: And I shall study the pattern of this carpet.
CALIPH: Hassan, I will join thee: Thou art a man of taste.
Most patiently — no, most impatiently — had PC Ker-shaw been waiting for his passenger to emerge from the closeted consultations. Like some starry-eyed teenager he had been looking forward so much to his first date with Susan Ho, a delightful, delicately featured Chinese girl, a researcher at Oxford’s Criminological Department; and although he had been able to contact her after Morse’s diktat, neither he nor she had been particularly pleased.
He opened the passenger door as Morse approached.
“It’s all right, Kershaw. Sergeant Lewis’ll be taking me back to Oxford.”
“You mean—?”
“I mean you can bugger off, yes.”
“Couldn’t you have told me earlier, sir? I’ve been...”
But his voice trailed off as he found Morse’s blue eyes looking straight at him; uncomprehending, cold.
Lewis was grinning wryly as he pushed the police car into first gear. “You never treated even me as bad as that.”
“Cocky young sod! University graduate, God help us!”
“What’s he doing with us?”
“Dunno. Learning how to make a cup o’ tea, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Exactly where I started.”
“I hope he’s better than you were.”
“Isn’t it about time you told—”
“I just don’t believe this!” said Morse as he picked up the single cassette that lay in the tray beside the gear lever, inserted it into the player, and subsequently sank back into his seat with the look of a man sublimely satisfied with life.
“Just find out who usually drives this car, Lewis. He’s a man after my own heart. I never realized we had such sensitivity in the Force. There’s not much of it out there, you know.”
For a moment it seemed that Lewis was going to speak. But clearly he thought better of it; and as he drove way above the speed limit down the A34 to Oxford, he listened, with considerable enjoyment himself, to the Prelude to Wagner’s Parsifal, convinced that Morse was soundly albeit unsnoringly asleep.
“Turn off here, Lewis.”
“Next exit’s best, sir — avoid the city traffic that way.”
“Turn off here!”
So Lewis turned off there, driving sedately now, up the Abingdon Road, past Christ Church, straight over through Cornmarket and Magdalen Street, where (as bidden) he turned left at the lights by the Martyrs’ Memorial and duly stopped (as bidden) on the double-yellows beneath the canopy of the Randolph, above which the Union Jack and the flag of the EC drooped languorously that late afternoon.
Lewis was still in brave mood. “Like the Super said, don’t you think you ought—”
“Think? That’s exactly why I’m here — to think! I can’t think unless I’m given the chance to think. You don’t imagine I drink just for the pleasure of it, do you?”
Morse sat back with his pint of bitter and stared serenely at the Ashmolean Museum just opposite in Beaumont Street. “If there’s a bar anywhere in Britain with a better view than this...”
Lewis hesitated awhile over his orange juice. “You ready to tell me how you knew it was Paddy Flynn?”
“I didn’t really know. Just that I always wondered about him a bit. Key witness, agreed? Picked up Frank Harrison from the railway station, then parked outside the house just when the burglar alarm was ringing.”
Lewis nodded. “Only person to give Harrison a convincing alibi.”