“It’s central-locking,” volunteered Flowers.
But Johnson said nothing, responding only for a semisecond with a look of contemptuous ingratitude.
As far as Edwards could make out, Morse had enjoyed that moment, since more than a semismile formed around his mouth when fifteen seconds later there was a quiet “clunk” as the catches on the four doors sprang upward in simultaneous freedom.
R456 LJB was open for inspection.
After pulling on a pair of green latex gloves, Flowers now opened the two offside doors; and Morse glanced over the front seats, before contemplating for a good deal longer the darkly glutinous covering of blood that stained the seats and flooring in the back. With a softly spoken “OK,” he was walking away toward the Rosie O’Grady when Johnson tapped him on the shoulder.
“You mentioned expenses, Mr. Morse?”
“I did. You’re right.”
“Well, there’s that taxi I came in — eight quid — two-quid tip — ten quid — here and back. Twenny, I make that.”
“Since when’s Snotty Joe been running a taxi business?”
“Well, you know, more a sort of...private hire, like.”
Morse felt in his pockets and pulled out a handful of coins. “85p, isn’t it, the bus fare to St. Giles? And, you’re right, you’ve got to get back.”
He handed Johnson two £1 coins. “Keep the change. You can buy a copy of The Times to read on the ride back.”
“Wrong, aincha, Mr. Morse! Times is 50p Sat’days.”
Unsmiling, Morse handed over a further 20p, and the pair parted without any further word. And Edwards, who had witnessed the brief scene, found himself wondering what exactly were the favors each had bestowed upon the other in the prosecution and pursuance of crime in North Oxford over recent years.
Morse was a few steps ahead of Lewis as he made his way to the pub entrance. “We’d better leave ‘em for half an hour or so. They won’t want us breathing down their necks... By the way, you’d better lend me a fiver, Lewis. I’ve just parted with the only—”
Morse stopped. Turned round. Stepped back to the scene of the crime. Ordered Flowers to open the boot.
Not himself knowing the identity of the body he now saw curled up in fetal configuration there, young Edwards was to remember that particular moment with an oddly inappropriate sense of gratitude, for he saw the color of Morse’s cheeks fade by swiftly developing degrees from dingy yellow to sickly white, and watched as of a sudden the great man turned away and vomited violently over the recently renovated tarmac. It was like a fledgling actor appearing on stage with Sir John Giel-gud and seeing that great man fluffing the friendliest of lines in rehearsal, and thereby giving some unexpected encouragement to the rest of the cast, all of them now less terrified of fluffing their own.
Chapter thirty-three
For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle,
And the merry love to dance:
And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,
With “Here is the fiddler of Dooney!”
And dance like a wave of the sea.
Morse, after disappearing into the Gents for several long minutes, now sat looking slightly more his wonted self as he sank his nose into the deep head on the Guinness.
“Just the stuff if you’ve got a foul taste in the throat!”
Giving his chief a little while to recover some measure of dignity, Lewis gazed around him. Everything was wooden there: the bar, the wall-settles, the floor, the table at which they sat — all good solid if somewhat battered wood, with any once-applied stain long since worn off. The walls and ceilings had originally been painted in yellow and orange, but now were coated over with the nicotine of countless cigarettes. The friezes of the walls were adorned with the dicta of several great Irishmen, their words attractively set in black-lettered Gaelic script. One in particular had already caught Lewis’s eye:
Where is the use of calling it a lend when I know I will never see it again?
Good question! But a question not so pressing as the one he now put to Morse:
“Was it a surprise to you?”
“Was what a surprise?”
“Finding Harry Repp’s body in the boot?”
Morse nodded as he wiped away a white moustache.
“This morning I thought I had a fair idea about what we were dealing with. But now that I’m perfectly sure that I’ve none...” He pointed up at the wall to their right. “Bit like Oscar Wilde, really.”
Lewis looked up at the words written there:
I was working on the proof of my poems all this morning and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
For Lewis it was a somber moment and he sipped his orange juice with little joy; even less joy as he saw the outline of Chief Superintendent Strange looming large in the doorway, then waddling awkwardly to their table, where he sat down, wiping his moistened brow with a vast handkerchief.
“Pretty kettle o’ fish you’ve got us into now, Morse!”
Then, turning to Lewis: “You in the chair?”
“Well—”
“Good! Good man! I’ll have the same as the Chief Inspector here.”
“Pint, sir?”
“The same as the Chief Inspector — that’s what I said, Sergeant.”
Lewis repaired to the bar once more and listened to the comparatively quiet background music that was as Irish as the pub was Irish, all flutes and fiddles, and wondered how long Morse would stick the noise before calling for a few less decibels.
After taking a deep draught, Strange turned to Morse. “You do realize, don’t you, that you and Lewis have dragged me away from the golf course twice!”
“I’d’ve thought you’d be glad, especially if you were losing.”
Strange grinned wryly. “I don’t often win these days, you’re right.”
“None of us gets much better as we get older.”
“Only two things we can be sure of, Morse — death and taxes. Some U.S. President said that.”
“Benjamin Franklin,” supplied Lewis, to whom each of the two senior officers turned with some surprise, though without inquiry into the provenance of such splendid knowledge.
“What do you make of all this?” continued Strange quietly.
Morse shook his head. “You may have been having a lousy round of golf. I was having a lovely sleep myself.”
“That’s no answer.”
“Dr. Hobson’ll be here soon.”
“Already here.”
“Nothing we can do till we get some reports, results of the postmortems—”
“Somebody once told me the plural should be post-mortes.”
“Bloody pedant!”
“It was you actually, Morse.”
“Ah!”
“You’ve got a good team of SOCOs.”
Morse nodded. “So we’ll wait to hear about all the bits and bobs they’ll be bagging up and labeling and sending off to forensics. And all the fingerprints they’ll be taking from windows and side mirrors and body work and seat belt buckles and cassettes and...” Morse had run out of potential surfaces.