Colin Dexter - The Daughters of Cain

There must be easier ways of being able to afford the life of Riley, surely?

Yes, occasionally there were…

It had been Kevin Costyn himself who had answered the door the previous afternoon, to find Mrs Stevens standing there — a subtly scented Mrs Stevens, with a moist, red beauty at her lips.

Could she come in? She’d come in.

Would he listen to what she had to say? He’d listened.

Would he be willing to do as she asked? He’d be willing.

Would he be able to do what she wanted? He’d be able.

Payment? What about payment? Did he understand she had very little money? He’d understood.

How would he like her to pay him, then?

Well…

‘What time’s your mother back?’ she’d asked.

No one over the past few years had deemed it necessary, or deemed it wise, to challenge Costyn’s minority; nor did the young barmaid now, as she pulled him a pint of Burton Ale in the Bird and Baby (‘Open All Day’).

Ten minutes later he made his way to the Gents, where he spat a globule of phlegm on to the tiled floor, and where his left hand was directing his urination whilst his right hand was seeking, wholly ineffectually, to spell out fuck in red Biro on the corrugated surface of the wall in front of him.

‘Fuck’ was a key word in Costyn’s limited vocabulary. Had already been so for many years, ever since, night after night, his mum and dad ( perhaps , his dad) had bawled their mutual ‘fuck-off’s at each other. Until the day when his dad had apparently interpreted the injunction rather too literally — and just, well, ‘fucked off’. Indeed, so significant had the word become to the sole son of that hapless, unhappy union, that he regularly inserted it, in its present-participial form, into any lengthy-ish word which seemed to invite some internal profanation. Such a process is known, in the Homeric epics, as ‘tmesis’ — although, in truth, Costyn knew of ‘Homer’ only as a breed of pigeon; for his father had once kept such a pigeon, trained (once released) to find its way home from the most improbable distances. Which is more than its owner had done, once he had left his home, and his wife, and his son… and his pigeon.

Before leaving the Gents, Costyn made a purchase. The condom machine looked, even to him, pretty theft-proof; and he decided for once to pay for his potential pleasures. For a few seconds he mentally debated the respective merits of ‘lubrication’, ‘sensitivity’, and ‘silkiness’; finally plumping for the latter as he thought — yet again! — of the blouse that he’d slowly eased down over the suntanned shoulders of Mrs Julia Stevens.

At 4 p.m., standing waiting for a Cowley Road bus outside Marks and Spencer in Queen’s Street, Costyn recognized an ex-pupil of the Proctor Memorial immediately in front of him; and he put a hand on her untanned shoulder.

‘Bin ’avin’ a ride, darlin’?’

She turned round. ‘Wha’ d’you want?’

‘What about a little ride with me , darlin’? I got the necessaries.’

‘Fuck off!’

Few girls ever spoke to him in such a fashion. But Costyn felt little resentment as he fingered the two packets of Silken Dalliance in his pocket…

Payment for his services?

‘Half now; half later,’ that’s what Mrs Stevens had promised. And as he sat upstairs on the Cowley Road bus, Costyn savoured yet again that intoxicating cocktail of excitement and sensuality.

Half later… when the job was done; when the jobs (plural, perhaps), were done.

Was it terribly risky, what he’d so willingly agreed to do? Especially since she wasn’t exactly sure of when she’d be calling on him. So what? Much riskier for her than for him. Not that she’d ever need to worry about him : he’d never breathe a word of it to any living soul.

Never.

And anyone who thought he would was suffering under a misapprefuckinhension.

On Wednesday, 7 September 1994, at 11.20 a.m., Ms Ellie Smith sat in a taxi, every half-minute or so nervously consulting her wristwatch and cursing herself for not having taken up Ashley Davies’s offer.

Rightly or wrongly, before walking out on him the previous weekend, she’d informed him of her situation: she was twelve weeks’ pregnant; she was determined to have another abortion; she had an appointment at a South Birmingham clinic for preliminary consultation and advice. But when Davies had rung her the previous afternoon, she’d turned down his offer of a lift — once again. He’d been quite insistent really, saying that he’d got to be in Oxford later the next day, anyway; and it was so quick to Brum now — M40, M42 — and in his car, well, they’d do it in an hour almost; save her no end of time and trouble — and the rail fare into the bargain.

But she’d refused.

She was going by train, catching the 9.11 a.m. from Oxford, due to arrive at Birmingham New Street at 10.30 a.m., which would give her a whole hour to get to the clinic, only five miles distant from the railway station.

That was the plan.

But with the combination of a ‘signalling failure’ just before Leamington Spa and a security scare at Coventry, the train had finally rumbled into New Street forty-eight minutes late — and she’d had no option but to take a taxi. Not that she need have bothered too much, for it was 11.55 a.m. before she was called into the consulting-room.

Looking back on things, Ms Smith knew that she had been strangely impressed by the small, white-coated Pakistani doctor — a kindly, compassionate man, with Spaniel eyes — who had gently encouraged her at least to consider the alternative: that of keeping the child she had conceived.

She felt glad that she had tried to present herself in rather more conventional guise, putting on bra and pants (both!) beneath her only presentable summer dress — and removing the rings from her nostrils. Admittedly that left her hair, still streaked with crimson like the horizon in an angry sunset; but she felt (dare she admit it to herself?) somehow… expiated!

She couldn’t really think why.

No, she could think why.

It was something to do with being with her mum once more…

The 15.09 train from New Street, timetabled to arrive in Oxford at 16.31 p.m., arrived virtually on time. And half an hour later Ellie Smith was back at her flat, reading the brief note contained in the white envelope (‘By Hand’) which she’d found propped up at the foot of her white-painted door on the third floor:

Hope things went OK. Any chance of you thinking again? If there’s even a remote chance of its being mine, I’ll marry you and make an honest woman of you yet. Don’t be cross with me for badgering you.

Ashley, with lots and lots of kisses.

As she put her key into the lock, Ellie Smith wondered whether she’d sadly misjudged Mr Ashley Davies.

‘Thanks for coming,’ said a sombre Phillotson.

In vain Lewis sought to find some suitable rejoinder.

‘Morse on the mend?’

‘Out tomorrow, so they say.’

‘Will he be fit enough to carry on — with the case?’

‘Dunno, sir. I suppose he’ll please himself whatever happens.’

‘I suppose he will, yes.’

Lewis moved away, and briefly surveyed the wreaths laid out there, including a splendid display of white lilies from the Thames Valley Police HQ.

Phillotson’s wife had lived a gently unspectacular life, and died at the age of forty-six. Not much of an innings, really; and not too much of a memorial either, although her husband, her next of kin, and all of her friends, would hope that the little rose-bush ( Rosa rubrifolia ), already happily stuck into a wodge of blackly-rich compost in the Garden of Remembrance, would thrive and prosper — and, metempsychotically, as it were, take over.