Colin Dexter - Last Seen Wearing

He dropped her in Mayfair, where she thanked him, a little sadly, and turned towards him and kissed him fully on the lips with her soft, open mouth. And when she was gone, he looked after her, the flared pale-green bottoms of her pyjamas showing below the sleek fur coat. There had been many bad moments that day, but as he sat there in the Lancia slowly wiping the gooey, deep-orange lipstick from his mouth, he decided that this was just about the worst.

Morse drove back to Soho and parked his car on the double yellow lines immediately in front of the Penthouse Club. It was 9.00 p.m. At a glance he could see that the man seated at the receipt of custom was not Maguire, as he hoped it would be. But he was almost past caring as he walked into the foyer.

'Fraid you can't leave your car there, mate.'

'Perhaps you don't know who I am,' said Morse, with the arrogant authority of a Julius Caesar or an Alexander walking among the troops.

'I don't care who you are, mate,' said the young man, rising to his feet, 'you just can't. .'

'I'll tell you who I am, sonny. My name's Morse. M-O-R-S-E. Got that? And if anyone comes along and asks you whose car it is tell 'em it's mine. And if they don't believe you, just refer 'em to me, sonny boy — sharpish!' He walked past the desk and through the latticed doorway.

'But. .' Morse heard no more. The Maltese dwarf sat dutifully at his post, and in a perverse sort of way Morse was glad to see him.

'You remember me?'

It was clear that the little man did. 'No need for ticket, sir. You go in. Ticket on me.' He smiled weakly, but Morse ignored the offer.

'I want to talk to you. My car's outside.' There was no argument, and they sat side by side in the front

'Where's Maguire?'

'He gone. He just gone. I do' know where.'

'When did he leave?'

'Two day, three day.'

'Did he have a girlfriend here?'

'Lots of girls. Some of the girls here, some of the girls there. Who know?'

'There was a girl here recently — she wore a mask. I think her name was Valerie, perhaps.'

The little man thought he saw the light and visibly relaxed. 'Valerie? No. You mean Vera. Oh yeah. Boys oh boys!' He was beginning to feel more confident now and his dirty hands expressively traced the undulating contours of her beautiful body.

'Is she here tonight?'

'She gone, too.'

'I might have known it,' muttered Morse. 'She's buggered off with Maguire, I suppose.'

The little man smiled, revealed a mouthful of large, brilliantly white teeth, and shrugged his oversized shoulders. Morse repressed his strong desire to smash his fist into the leering face, and asked one further question.

'Did you ever take her out, you filthy little bastard?'

'Sometimes. Who know?' He shrugged his shoulders again and spread out his hands, palms uppermost, in a typically Mediterranean gesture.

'Get out.'

'You want to come in, mister policeman? See pretty girls, no?'

'Get out,' snarled Morse.

For a while Morse sat on silently in his car and pondered many things. Life was down to its dregs, and he had seldom felt so desolate and defeated. He recalled his first interview with Strange at the very beginning of the case, and the distaste he had felt then at the prospect of trying to find a young girl in the midst of this corrupt and corrupting city. And now, again, he had to presume that she was alive. For all his wayward unpredictability, there was at the centre of his being an inner furnace of passion for truth, for logical analysis; and inexorably now the facts, almost all the facts, were pointing to the same conclusion — that he had been wrong, wrong from the start.

A constable, young, tall, confident, tapped sharply on the car window. 'Is this your car, sir?'

Morse wound the window down and wearily identified himself.

'Sorry, sir. I just thought. .'

'Of course you did.'

'Can I be of any assistance, sir?'

'Doubt it,' replied Morse. 'I'm looking for a young girl.'

'She live round here, sir?'

'I don't know,' said Morse. 'I don't even know if she lives in London. Not much hope for me, is there?'

'But you mean she's been seen round here recently?'

'No,' said Morse quietly. 'She's not been seen anywhere for over two years.'

'Oh, I see, sir,' said the young man, seeing nothing. 'Well, perhaps I can't help much then. Good night, sir.' He touched his helmet, and walked off, uncomprehending, past the gaudy strip clubs and the pornographic bookshops.

'No,' said Morse to himself, 'I don't think you can.'

He started the engine and drove via Shepherd's Bush and the White City towards the M40. He was back in his office just before midnight.

It did not even occur to him to go straight home. He was fully aware, even if he could give no explanation for it, of the curious feet that his mind was never more resilient, never sharper, than when apparently it was beaten. On such occasions his brain would roam restlessly around his skull like a wild and vicious tiger immured within the confines of a narrow cage, ceaselessly circumambulating, snarling savagely — and lethal. During the whole of the drive back to Oxford he had been like a chess player, defeated only after a monumental struggle, who critically reviews and analyses the moves and the motives for the moves that have led to his defeat. And already a new and strange idea was spawning in the fertile depdis of his mind, and he was impatient to get back.

At three minutes to midnight he was poring over the dossiers on the Taylor case with the frenetic concentration of a hastily summoned understudy who had only a few minutes in which to memorize a lengthy speech.

At 2.30 a.m. the night sergeant, carrying a steaming cup of coffee on a tray, tapped lightly and opened the door. He saw Morse, his hands over his ears, his desk strewn with documents, and an expression of such profound intensity upon his face that he quickly and gently put down the tray, reclosed the door, and walked quickly away.

He called again at 4.30 a.m. and carefully put down a second cup of coffee beside the first, which stood where he had left it, cold, ugly-brown, untouched. Morse was fast asleep now, his head leaning back against the top of the black leather chair, the neck of his white shirt unfastened, and an expression on his face as of a young child for whom the vivid terrors of the night were past. .

It had been Lewis who had found her. She lay supine upon the bed, fully clothed, her left arm placed across the body, the wrist slashed cruelly deep. The white coverlet was a pool of scarlet, and blood had dripped its way through the mattress. Clutched in her right hand was a knife, a wooden-handled carving knife, 'Prestige, Made in England', some 35–36 centimetres long, the cutting blade honed along its entire edge to a razor-sharp ferocity.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many.

(Phaedrus)

LEWIS REPORTED BACK for duty at eight o'clock and found a freshly shaven Morse seated at his desk. He could scarcely hide his disappointment as Morse began to recount the previous day's events, and found himself quite unable to account for the inspector's sprightly tone. His spirits picked up, however, when Morse mentioned the crucial evidence given by Miss Baker, and after hearing the whole story, he evinced little surprise at the string of instructions that Morse proceeded to give him. There were several phone calls to make and he thought he began to understand the general tenor of the inspector's purpose.

At 9.30 he had finished, and reported back to Morse.

'Feel up to the drive then?'

'I don't mind driving one way, sir, but—'

'Settled then. I'll drive there, you drive back. Agreed?'

'When were you thinking of going, sir?'