Colin Dexter - Last Seen Wearing

'Not been much help, I'm afraid, Inspector.'

Morse shook George's dirty, calloused hand, and prepared to leave.

'Do you think she's alive, Inspector?'

Morse looked at him curiously. 'Do you?'

'Well, there's the letter, isn't there, Inspector?'

For some strange, intuitive reason Morse felt the question had somehow been wrong, and he frowned slightly as he watched George Taylor walk over to the lorry. Yes, there was the letter, and he hoped now that Valerie had written it, but. .

He stood where he was and looked around him.

How would you like to be stuck in a filthy hole like this, Morse — probably for the rest of your life? And when anyone calls to see you, all you can offer is an old ten-gallon paraffin tin sprayed with harmful insecticide. You've got your own black leather chair and the white carpet and the desk of polished Scandinavian oak. Some people are luckier than others.

As he walked away the yellow bulldozer nudged its nose into another pile of earth; and soon the leveller would come and gradually smooth over the clay surface, like a passable cook with the chocolate icing on a cake.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Man kann den Wald nicht vor Baümen sehen.

(German proverb)

LEWIS HAD GONE home when Morse returned to his office at 5.30, and he felt it would probably be sensible for him to do the same. Many pieces of the jigsaw were now to hand, some of them big ugly pieces that looked as if they wouldn't fit anywhere; but they would — if only he had the time to think it all out. For the moment he was too much on top of things. Some of the trees were clear enough, but not the configuration of the forest. To stand back a bit and take a more synoptic view of things — that's what he needed.

He fetched a cup of coffee from the canteen, and sat at his desk. The notes that Lewis had made, and left conspicuously beneath a paperweight, he deliberately put to one side. There were other things in life than the Taylor case, although for the moment he couldn't quite remember what they were. He went through his in-tray and read through reports on the recent spate of incendiary bombings, the role of the police at pop festivals, and the vicious hooliganism after Oxford United's last home game. There were some interesting points. He crossed through his initials and stuck the reports in his out-tray. The next man on the list would do exactly the same; quickly glance through, cross through his initials, and stick them in his out-tray. There were too many reports, and the more there were the more self-defeating the whole exercise became. He would vote for a moratorium on all reports for the next five years.

He consulted his diary. The following morning he would be in the courts, and he'd better get home and iron a clean shirt. It was 6.25 and he felt hungry. Ah well. He'd call at the Chinese restaurant and take-away. . He was pulling on his overcoat and debating between King Prawns and Chicken Chop Suey when the phone went.

'Personal call from a Mr. Phillipson. Shall I put him through, sir?' The girl on the switchboard sounded weary too.

'You're working late tonight, Inspector?'

'I was just off,' said Morse with a yawn in his voice.

'You're lucky,' said Phillipson. 'We've got a Parents' Evening — shan't be home till ten myself.'

Morse was unimpressed and the headmaster got to the point.

'I thought I'd just ring up to say that I checked up at Blackwells — you remember? — about buying a book.'

Morse looked at Lewis's notes and completed the sentence for him.

'. . and you bought Momigliano's Studies in Historiography published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson at £2.50.'

'You checked, then?'

'Yep.'

'Oh well. I thought, er, I'd just let you know.'

'Thoughtful of you, sir. I appreciate it. Are you speaking from school?'

'From my study, yes.'

'I wonder if you've got a phone number for Mr. Acum there?'

'Just a minute, Inspector.'

Morse kept the receiver to his ear and read through the rest of Lewis's notes. Nothing from Peters yet about that second letter; nothing much from anybody. .

To anyone with less than extremely acute hearing it would have been quite imperceptible. But Morse heard it, and knew once again that someone had been eavesdropping on the headmaster's telephone conversations. Someone in the office outside the head's study; and Morse's brain slid easily along the shining grooves.

'Are you there, Inspector? We've got two numbers for Acum — one at school, one at home.'

'I'll take 'em both,' said Morse.

After cradling the receiver, he sat and thought for a moment. If Phillipson wanted to use the phone in his study, he would first dial 9, get an outside line automatically, and then ring the code and the number he wanted. Morse had noticed the set-up when he had visited the school. But if he, Morse, wanted to ring Phillipson, he wouldn't be able to get him unless someone were sitting by the switchboard in the outer office; and he doubted that the faithful Mrs. Webb would be required that evening for the Parents' Evening.

He waited a couple of minutes and rang.

Brr. brr. It was answered almost immediately.

'Roger Bacon School.'

'That the headmaster?' enquired Morse innocently.

'No. Baines here. Second master. Can I help you?'

'Ah, Mr. Baines. Good evening, sir. As a matter of fact it was you I was hoping to get hold of. I, er, wonder if we might be able to meet again fairly soon. It's this Taylor girl business again. There are one or two points I think you could help me with.'

Baines would be free about a quarter to ten, and he could be in the White Horse soon after that. No time like the present.

Morse felt pleased with himself. He would have been even more pleased had he been able to see the deeply worried look on Baines's face as he shrugged into his gown and walked down into the Great Hall to meet the parents.

There was little point in going home now and he walked over to the canteen and found a copy of the Telegraph. He ordered sausages and mash, wrote the precise time in the right-hand margin of the back page and turned to 1 across. Has been known to split under a grilling (7). He smiled to himself. It was too many letters for BAINES, so he wrote SAUSAGE.

Back in the office he felt he was in good form. Crossword finished in only seven and a half minutes. Still, it was a bit easier than The Times. Perhaps this case would be easy if only he could look at it in the right way, and as Baines had said there was no time like the present. A long, quiet, cool, detached look at the case. But it never worked quite like that. He sat back and closed his eyes and for more than an hour his brain seethed in ceaseless turmoil. Ideas, ideas galore, but still the firm outline of the pattern eluded him. One or two of the pieces fitted firmly into place, but so many wouldn't fit at all. It was like doing the light-blue sky at the top of a jigsaw, with no clouds, not even a solitary sea-gull to break the boundless monochrome.

By nine o'clock he had a headache. Leave it. Give it a rest and go back later. Like crosswords. It would come; it would come.

He consulted the STD codes and found that he would have to get Caernarfon through the operator. It was Acum who answered.

As succinctly as he could Morse explained the reason for his call, and Acum politely interjected the proper noises of understanding and approval. Yes, of course. Yes, of course he remembered Valerie and the day she had disappeared. Yes, he remembered it all well.

'Did you realize that you were one of the very last people to see Valerie before she, er, before she disappeared?'

'I must have been, yes.'

'In fact, you taught her the very last school lesson she ever had, I think?'