Colin Dexter - The Daughters of Cain

His name was Kevin Costyn.

Julia Stevens walked round to her former pupil’s house during the lunch-break that Friday, wishing, if she could, to speak to Kevin’s mother. But the door-bell, like most of the other fixtures there by the look of things, was out of order; and no one answered her repeated knockings. As she slowly turned and walked back through the neglected, litter-strewn front garden, a young woman, with two small children in a pushchair, stopped for a moment by the broken gate, and spoke to her.

‘The people in there are usually out.’

That was all.

Perhaps, thought Julia Stevens, as she made her way thoughtfully back to school — perhaps that brief, somewhat enigmatic utterance could explain more about her former pupil than she herself had ever learned.

In the Major Trauma Ward, on Level 5 of the JR2 in Headington, she explained to the ward-sister that she had rung an hour earlier, at 6 p.m., and been told that it would be all right for her to visit Mr Kevin Costyn.

‘How is he?’

‘Probably not quite so bad as he looks. He’s had a CT test — Computerized Tomography — and there doesn’t seem to be any damage but we’re a little bit worried about his brain, yes. And he looks an awful mess, I’m afraid. Please prepare yourself, Mrs Stevens.’

He was awake, and recognized her immediately.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, speaking through a dreadfully lop-sided mouth, like one who has just received half a dozen injections of local anaesthetic into one half of the jaw.

‘Sh! I’ve just come to see how you’re getting on, that’s all.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Listen! I’m the teacher, remember? Just let me do the talking.’

‘That were the worst thing I ever done in my life.’

‘Don’t talk about it now! You weren’t driving.’

He turned his face towards her, revealing the left cheek, so terribly bloodied and stitched and torn.

‘It’s not that, Mrs Stevens. It’s when I asked you for the money.’ His eyes pleaded with her. ‘I should never a’ done that. You’re the only person that was ever good to me, really — and then I go and…’

His words were faltering further, and there was a film of tears across his eyes.

‘Don’t worry about that, Kevin!’

‘Will you promise me something? Please? ’

‘If I can, of course I will.’ ‘ You won’t worry if I don’t worry.’ ‘I promise.’

‘There’s no need, you see. I won’t ever tell anybody what I done for you — honest to God, I won’t.’

A few minutes later, Julia was aware of movement behind her, and she turned to see the nurse standing there with a uniformed policeman, the latter clutching his flat hat rather awkwardly to his rib-cage.

It was time to go; and laying her hand for a few seconds on Kevin’s right arm, an arm swathed in bandages and ribbed with tubes, she took her leave.

As she waited for the lift down to the ground floor, she smiled sadly to herself as she recalled the nurse’s words: ‘But we’re a little bit worried about his brain’… just like almost all the staff at the Proctor Memorial School had been, for five years… for fifteen terms.

And then, as she tried to remember exactly where she’d parked the Volvo, she found herself, for some reason, thinking of Chief Inspector Morse.

Of the four separate operas which comprise Der Ring des Nibelungen (an achievement which in his view ranked as one of the seven great wonders of the modern world), Siegfried had always been Morse’s least favourite. And on the evening of Saturday, 17 September, he decided he would seek again to discover whether the fault lay with himself or with Wagner. But the evening was destined not to pass without its interruptions.

At 7.35 p.m. Lewis had rung through with the dramatic news that the handle-bars and the saddle on the bicycle recovered from the railings outside the parish church of St Mary Magdalene still bore traces of blood, and that preliminary tests pointed strongly to its being McClure’s blood. Such findings, if confirmed, would provide the police with their first physical link between Felix McClure and Edward Brooks, since the latter’s wife, Brenda, had now identified the bike as her husband’s; as had one of the assistants at Halford Cycles on the Cowley Road, where Brooks had purchased the bike four months previously. A warrant, therefore, should be made out asap for the arrest of Mr Edward Brooks — with Morse’s say-so.

And Morse now said so.

The fact that the person against whom the warrant would be issued was nowhere to be found had clearly taken some of the cream from Lewis’s éclair. But Morse seemed oddly content: he maintained that Lewis was doing a wonderful job, but forbad him to disturb him again that evening, barring some quite prodigious event — such as the birth of another Richard Wagner.

So Morse sat back again, poured himself another Scotch, lit another cigarette, and turned Siegfried back on.

Paradise enow.

Very few people knew Morse’s personal (ex-directory) telephone number, and in fact he had changed it yet again a few months earlier. When, therefore, forty minutes further into Siegfried , the telephone rang once more, Morse knew that it must be Lewis again; and thumping down his libretto with an ill grace, he answered tetchily.

‘What do you want this time?’

‘Hullo? Chief Inspector Morse?’ It was a woman’s voice, and Morse knew whose. Why had he been such a numbskull as to give his private number to the pink-haired punk-wonder?

‘Yes?’

‘Hi! You told me if ever I wanted any help, all I’d got to do was pick up the phone, remember?’

‘How can I help?’ asked Morse wearily, a hint of exasperation in his voice.

‘You don’t sound overjoyed to hear from me.’

‘Just a bit tired, that’s all.’

‘Too tired for me to treat you to a pint?’

Morse wasn’t quite sure at that moment whether his spirits were rising or falling. ‘Sometime next week, perhaps?’ he suggested.

‘No. I want to see you tonight. Now. Right now .’

‘I’m sorry, I can’t see you tonight—’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, to tell you the truth, I’m in the bath.’

‘Wiggle the water a bit so I can hear.’

‘I can’t do that — I’d get the phone wet.’

‘So you didn’t really mean what you said at all.’

‘Yes, I did. I’ll be only too glad to help. What’s the trouble?’

‘It’s no good — not over the phone.’

‘Why on earth not?’

‘You’ll see.’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘I’m just going out to catch a bus to the City Centre. With a bit of luck I’ll be there in twenty minutes — outside Marks and Sparks — that’s where it stops, and then I’m going to walk up St Giles’, and I’m goin’ in the Old Parsonage for a drink. I’ll stay there half an hour. And if you’ve not turned up by then, I’ll just take a taxi up to your place — OK with you?’

‘No, it’s not. You don’t know where I live anyway—’

‘Nice fellah, Sergeant Lewis. I could fall for ’im.’

‘He’s never told you my address!’

‘Why don’t you ring and ask ’im?’

Morse looked at his wristwatch: almost half-past eight.

‘Give me half an hour.’

‘Won’t you need a bit longer?’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Well, you’ve got to get yourself dried and then get dressed and then make sure you can find your wallet and then catch a bus—’