Colin Dexter - Last Seen Wearing

The lawn, for a start. Benefiting (where he had suffered) from a series of torrential downpours, it had sprouted to alarming proportions during their absence, and was in urgent need of an instant crop. At 9.30 a.m. he discovered that the extension for the electric mower was not functioning, and he sat himself down on the back doorstep with a heavy heart and a small screwdriver.

Life seldom seemed to run particularly smoothly for David Acum, until two years ago assistant French master at the Roger Bacon Comprehensive School in Kidlington, and now, still an assistant French master, at the City of Caernarfon School.

He could find no fault with the fittings at either end of the extension wire, and finally went inside again. No sign of life. He walked to the bottom of the stairs and yelled, his voice betraying ill-temper and exasperation, 'Hey! Don't you think it's about time you got out of that bloody bed?'

He left it at that and, back in the kitchen, sat down cheerlessly at the table where half an hour earlier he had made his own breakfast, and dutifully taken a tray of tea and toast upstairs. Ineffectually he tinkered once more with one of the wretched plugs. She joined him ten minutes later, dressing-gowned and beslippered.

'What's eating you?'

'Christ! Can't you see? I suppose you buggered this up the last time you hoovered — not that I can remember when that was!'

She ignored the insult and took the extension from him. He watched her as she tossed her long blonde hair from her face and deftly unscrewed and examined the troublous plugs. Younger than he was — a good deal younger, it seemed — he found her enormously attractive still. He wondered, as he often wondered, whether he had made the right decision, and once more he told himself he had.

The fault was discovered and corrected, and David felt better.

'Cup of coffee, darling?' All sweetness and light

'Not just yet. I've got to get cracking.' He looked out at the overgrown lawn and swore softly as faintly dotted lines of slanting drizzle formed upon the window pane.

A middle-aged woman, blowzy, unkempt, her hair in cylindrical curlers, materialized from a side door on the ground floor; her quarry was bounding clumsily down the stairs.

'I want to speak to yer.'

'Not now, sweetheart. Not now. I'm late.'

'If yer can't wait now yer needn't come back. Yer things'll be in the street.'

'Now just a minute, sweetheart.' He came close to her, leaned his head to one side and laid a hand on each of her shoulders. 'What's the trouble? You know I wouldn't do anything to upset you.' He smiled pleasantly enough and there was something approaching an engaging frankness in his dark eyes. But she knew him better.

'Yer've got a woman in yer room, 'aven't yer?'

'Now there's no need for you to get jealous, you know that.'

She found him repulsive now, and regretted those early days. 'Get 'er out and keep 'er out — there's to be no more women 'ere.' She slapped his hands from her shoulders.

'She'll be going, she'll be going — don't worry. She's only a young chick. Nowhere to kip down — you know how it is.'

'Now!'

'Don't be daft. I'm late already, and I'll lose the job if I ain't careful. Be reasonable.'

'Yer'll lose yer bed an' all if yer don't do as I tell yer.'

The youth took a dirty five-pound note from his hip pocket. 'I suppose that'll satisfy you for a day or two, you old bitch.'

The woman took the money, but continued to watch him. 'It's got to stop.'

'Yeah. Yeah.'

'How long's she been 'ere?'

'A day or two.'

'Fortnight, nearer, yer bleedin' liar.'

The youth slammed the door after him, ran down to the bottom of the road, and turned right into the Upper Richmond Road.

Even by his own modest standards, Mr. George Taylor had not made much of a success of his life. Five years previously, an unskilled manual worker, he had accepted 'voluntary redundancy' money after the shake-up that followed the reorganization of the Cowley Steel plant, had then worked for almost a year driving a bulldozer on the M40 construction programme and spent the next year doing little but casual jobs, and drinking rather too much and gambling rather too much. And then that terrible row and, as a result of it, his present employment. Each morning at 7.15 he drove his rusting, green Morris Oxford from his Kidlington council house into the city of Oxford, down past Aristotle Lane into Walton Street, and over the concreted track that led through the open fields, between the canal and the railway line, where lay the main city rubbish dump. Each morning of the working week for the past three years — including the day when Valerie had disappeared — he had made the same journey, with his lunchtime sandwiches and his working overalls beside him on the passenger seat.

Mr. Taylor was an inarticulate man, utterly unable to rationalize into words his favourable attitude towards his present job. It would have been difficult for anyone. The foul detritus of the city was all around him, rotten food and potato peelings, old mattresses, piles of sheer filth, rats and always (from somewhere) the scavenger gulls. And yet he liked it.

At lunchtime on Monday the fifteenth, he was sitting with his permanent colleague on the site, a man with a miry face ingrained with dirt, in the wooden hut which formed the only semi-hygienic haven in this wilderness of waste. They were eating their sandwiches and swilling down the thick bread with a dirty brown brew of ugly-looking tea. Whilst his companion mused over the racing columns of the Sun, George Taylor sat silent, a weary expression on his stolid face. The letter had brought the whole thing back to the forefront of his mind and he was thinking again of Valerie. Had he been right to persuade the wife to take it to the police? He didn't know. They would soon be round again; in fact he was surprised they hadn't been round already. It would upset the wife again — and she'd been nothing but a bag of nerves from the beginning. Funny that the letter had come just after Inspector Ainley was killed. Clever man, Ainley. He'd been round to see them only three weeks ago. Not official, like, but he was the sort of bloke who never let anything go. Like a dog with a bone.

Valerie. . He'd thought a lot of Valerie.

A corporation vehicle lumbered to a halt outside the hut, and George Taylor poked his head through the door. 'On the top side, Jack. Shan't be a minute.' He pointed vaguely away to the far corner of the tip, swallowed the last few mouthfuls of his tea and prepared for the afternoon's work.

At the far edge of the tip the hydraulic piston whirred into life and the back of the lorry tilted slowly down and its contents were deposited upon the sea of stinking refuse.

For Morse, this same Monday was the first day of a frustrating week. Another series of incendiary devices had been set off over the weekend in clubs and cinemas, and the whole of the top brass, including himself, had been summoned into urgent conclave. It was imperative that all available police personnel should be mobilized. All known suspects from Irish republicans to international anarchists were to be visited and questioned. The Chief Constable wanted quick results.

On Friday morning a series of arrests was made in a dawn swoop, and later that day eight persons were charged with conspiracy to cause explosions in public places. Morse's own contribution to the successful outcome of the week's inquiries had been virtually nil.

CHAPTER FIVE

She turned away, but with the autumn weather Compelled my imagination many days, Many days and many hours.

(T. S. Eliot, La Figlia Che Piange)

AS HE LAY ABED on Sunday, 21 September, Morse was beset by the nagging feeling that there was so much to be done if only he could summon up the mental resolve to begin. It was like deferring a long-promised letter; the intention lay on the mind so heavily that the simple task seemed progressively to assume almost gigantic proportions. True, he had written to the headmaster of the Roger Bacon Comprehensive School — and had received an immediate and helpful reply. But that was all; and he felt reluctant to follow it up. Most of his fanciful notions about the Taylor girl had evaporated during the past week of sober, tedious routine, and he had begun to suspect that further investigation into Valerie's disappearance would involve little more than an unwelcome continuation of similar sober and tedious routine. But he was in charge now. It was up to him.