Colin Dexter - Last Seen Wearing

'I'll give you one more chance, Maguire, but this time I want the truth — all of it.'

'I've told you. .'

'Let's get one thing straight,' said Morse. I'm interested in Valerie Taylor — that's all. I'm not worried about any of those other things. .' He left the words in the air, and a flash of alarm glinted in the boy's eyes.

'What other things? I don't know what you're talking about.'

'We've been to your flat today, lad.'

'So?'

'Mrs. Gibbs doesn't seem too happy, does she, about one or two things. .?'

'Old cow.'

'She didn't have to tell us anything, you know.'

'What am I supposed to have done? Come on — let's have it.'

'How long have you been on drugs, lad?'

It hit him solidly between the eyes, and his effort at recovery was short of convincing. 'What drugs?'

'I just told you, lad. We've been to your flat today.'

'And I suppose you found some pot. So what? Just about everybody smokes pot here.'

'I'm not talking about everybody.' Morse leaned forward and let him have it. 'I'm talking about you, lad. Smoking pot's illegal, you know that, and I could frogmarch you out of here and ship you to the nearest police station — remember that! But I've just told you, lad, I'm quite prepared to let it ride. Christ, why do you have to make it so hard for yourself? You can go back to your bloody flat and pump yourself with heroin for all I care. I'm just not bothered, lad — not if you cooperate with me. Can't you get that into your thick skull?'

Morse let it sink in a minute before continuing. 'I want to know just one thing — what you told Inspector Ainley, that's all. And if I can't get it out of you here, I'll take you in and I'll get it out of you somewhere else. Please yourself, lad.'

Morse picked up his overcoat from the seat beside him and draped it across his knees. Maguire stared dejectedly at the table-top and played nervously with a bottle of tomato ketchup. There was indecision in his eyes, and Morse timed what he hoped was his second trump card perfectly.

'How long had you known that Valerie was pregnant?' he asked quietly.

Bull's-eye. Morse replaced his coat on the seat beside him, and Maguire spoke more freely. 'About three weeks before.'

'Did she tell anyone else?'

Maguire shrugged his shoulders. 'She was a real sexy kid — everyone was after her.'

'How often did you go to bed with her?'

'Ten — dozen times, I suppose.'

'The truth, please, lad.'

'Well, three or four times, maybe. I don't know.'

'Where was this?'

'My place.'

'Your parents know?'

'No. They were out working.'

'And she said you were the father?'

'No. She wasn't like that. Said I could have been, of course.'

'Did you feel jealous?' Morse had a suspicion that he did, but Maguire made no answer. 'Was she very upset?'

'Just scared.'

'What of? Scandal?'

'More scared of her mum, I think.'

'Not her dad?'

'She didn't say so.'

'Did she talk about running away?'

'Not to me.'

'Who else might she have spoken to?' Maguire hesitated. 'She had another boyfriend, didn't she,' persisted Morse, 'apart from you?'

'Pete?' Maguire could relax again. 'He didn't even touch her.'

'But she might have spoken to him?' Maguire was amused, and Morse felt that his questioning had lost its impetus. 'What about her form tutor? She might have gone to her, perhaps?'

Maguire laughed openly. 'You don't understand.'

But suddenly Morse realized that he was beginning to understand, and as the dawn was slowly breaking in his mind, he leaned forward and fixed Maguire with grey eyes, hard and unblinking.

'She could have gone to the headmaster, though.' He spoke the words with quiet, taut emphasis, and the impact upon Maguire was dramatic. Morse saw the sudden flash of burning jealousy and knew that gradually, inch by inch, he was moving nearer to the truth about Valerie Taylor.

Morse took a taxi to Southampton Terrace where he found a patient Lewis awaiting him. The car was ready and they were soon heading out along the M40 towards Oxford. Morse's mind was simultaneously veering in every direction, and he lapsed into uncommunicative introversion. It wasn't until they left the three-lane motorway that he broke the long silence.

'Sorry you had such a long wait, Lewis.'

'That's all right, sir. You had a long wait, too.'

'Yes,' said Morse. He made no mention of his return to the Penthouse. He must have gone down a good deal already in his sergeant's estimation; he had certainly sunk quite low enough in his own.

It was five miles outside Oxford that Lewis exploded the minor bombshell.

'I was having a talk with Mrs. Gibbs, sir, while you were with Mr. Maguire.'

'Well?'

'I asked her why he'd been such a nuisance.'

'What did she say?'

'She told me that until recently he'd had a girl in the flat.'

'She what?

'Yes, sir. Almost a month, she said.'

'But why the hell didn't you tell me before, man? You surely realize. .?' He glared at Lewis, incredulous and exasperated, and sank back in despair behind his safety belt.

His stubborn conviction that Valerie was no longer alive would (one had thought) have been sorely tested when he looked back into his office at 8.00 p.m. Awaiting him was a report from the forensic laboratory, short and to the point.

'Sufficient similarities to warrant positive identification. Suggest that investigation proceed on firm assumption that letter was written by signatory, Miss Valerie Taylor. Please contact if detailed verification required.'

But Morse seemed far from impressed. In fact, he looked up from the report and smiled serenely. Reaching for the telephone directory, he looked up Phillipson, D. There was only one Phillipson: 'The Firs', Banbury Road, Oxford.

CHAPTER NINE

We hear, for instance, of a comprehensive school in Connecticut where teachers have three pads of coloured paper, pink, blue and green, which are handed out to pupils as authority to visit respectively the headmaster, the office or the lavatory.

(Robin Davis, The Grammar School)

SHEILA PHILLIPSON WAS absolutely delighted with her Oxford home, a four-bedroomed detached house, just below the Banbury Road roundabout. Three fully grown fir trees screened the spacious front garden from the busy main road, and the back garden, with its two old apple trees and its goldfish pond, its beautifully conditioned lawn and its neatly tended borders, was an unfailing joy. With unimaginative predictability she had christened it 'The Firs'.

Donald would be late home from school; he had a staff meeting. But it was only a cold salad, and the children had already eaten. She could relax. At a quarter to six she was sitting in a deck-chair in the back garden, her eyes closed contentedly. The evening air was warm and still. . She felt so proud of Donald; and of the children, Andrew and Alison, now contentedly watching the television. They were both doing so well at their primary school. And, of course, if they didn't really get the chances they deserved, they could always go to private schools; and Donald would probably send them there — in spite of what he'd told the parents at the last speech day. The Dragon, New College School, Oxford High, Headington — one heard such good reports. But that was all in the future. For the moment everything in the garden was lovely. She lifted her face to catch the last rays of the sloping sun and breathed in the scent of thyme and honeysuckle. Lovely. Almost too lovely, perhaps. At half-past six she heard the crunch of Donald's Rover on the drive.

Later in the evening Sheila did not recognize the man at the door, a slimly built man with a clean, sensitive mouth and wide light-grey eyes. He had a nice voice, she thought, for a police inspector.