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.