Colin Dexter: The Remorseful Day

“I’ve never come to it a first time, apart from those early couple of days — you know that. I was on another case! And not particularly in the pink either, was I? Not all that long out of hospital myself.”

“Morse! I’ve got to reopen this case. You know why.”

“Try someone else!”

“I want you to think about it.”

“Look.” A note of exasperation had crept into Morse’s voice. “I’m on furlough — I’m tired — I’m sleeping badly — I drink too much — I’m beholden to no one — I’ve no relatives left — I can’t see all that much purpose in life—”

“You’ll have me in tears in a minute.”

“I’m only trying to say one thing, sir. Count me out!”

“You won’t even think about it?”

“No.”

“You do realize that I don’t need to plead with you about this? I don’t want to pull rank on you, Morse, but just remember that I can. All right?”

“Try someone else, sir, as I say.”

“OK. Forget what I just said. Let’s put it this way. It’s a favor I’m asking, Morse — a personal favor.”

“What makes you think I’ll still be here?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

But Morse, it appeared, was barely listening as he stared out of the window on to his little patch of greenery where a small bird with a grey crown and darkish-brown bars across its back had settled beneath the diminishing column of peanuts.

“Look!” (He handed the binoculars to Strange.) “Few nuts — and some of these rare species decide to take up special residence. I shall have to check up on the plumage but...”

Strange had already focused the binoculars with, as it seemed to Morse, a practiced familiarity.

“Know anything about bird-watching, sir?”

“More than you, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Beautiful little fellow, isn’t he?”

“She!”

“Pardon?”

“Immature female of the species.”

“What species?”

“Passer domesticus , Morse. Can’t you recognize a bloody house sparrow when you see one?”

For the fourteenth time Morse found himself reappraising the quirkily contradictory character that was Chief Superintendent Strange.

“And you’ll at least think about things? You can promise me that, surely?”

Morse nodded weakly.

And Strange smiled comfortably. “I’m glad about that. And you’ll be pleased about one thing. You’ll have Sergeant Lewis along with you. I... did have a word with him, just before I came here, and he’s—”

“You mean you’ve already...”

Strange flicked a stubby finger against his empty, expensive, cut-glass tumbler: “A little celebration, perhaps?”

It is possible for persons to be friendly toward each other without being friends. It is also possible for persons to be friends without being friendly toward each other. The relationship between Morse and Strange had always been in the latter category.

“Read through this as well!” Strange’s tone was semiperemptory as he thrust a folded sheet of ruled A4 across at Morse, in the process knocking his glass on to the parquet flooring. Where it broke into many pieces.

“Ah! Sorry about that!”

Morse rose reluctantly to fetch brush and pan from the kitchen.

“Could have been worse, though,” continued Strange. “Could have been full, eh?”

As Morse carefully swept up the slivers of the cut-glass tumbler — originally one of a set of six (now three) which his mother had left him — he experienced an irrational anger and hatred wholly disproportionate to the small accident which had occurred. But he counted up to twenty and was gradually feeling better, even as Strange extolled the bargain he’d seen in the Covered Market recently: glasses for only 50p apiece.

“Better not have any more Scotch, I suppose.”

“Not if you’re driving, sir.”

“Which I’m bloody not. I’m being driven. And if I may say so, it’s a bit rich expecting me to take lessons in drink-driving from you! But you’re right, we’ve had enough.”

A further count, though this time only to ten, prolonged Morse’s invariably slow reading of the two handwritten paragraphs, and he said nothing as he finally put the sheet aside.

It was Strange who spoke:

“Perhaps, you know, on second thoughts, we might, er... anither wee dram?”

“Not for me, sir.”

“That was meant to be the ‘royal we,’ Morse.”

Morse decided that a U-turn was merely a rational readjustment of a previously mistaken course, and he obliged accordingly — for both of them, with Strange’s measure poured into one of the cheap-looking wineglasses he’d bought a few weeks earlier from the Covered Market, for only 50p apiece.

“Is this” (Morse pointed to the paper) “what our dutiful duty sergeant transcribed from the phone calls?”

“Well, not quite, no.” (Strange seemed curiously hesitant.) “That’s what I wrote down, as far as I — we — could fix the exact words. Very difficult business when you get things secondhand, garbled—”

Morse interrupted. “No problem, surely? We do record everything that comes into HQ.”

“Not so easy as that. Some of these recordings are poor-quality reception; and when, you know, when somebody’s speaking quietly, muffled sort of voice...”

Morse smiled thinly as he looked directly across at his superior officer. “What you’re telling me is that the recording equipment packed up, and there’s no trace.”

“Anything mechanical packs up occasionally.”

“Both occasions?”

“Both occasions.”

“So all you’ve got to rely on is the duty sergeant.”

“Right.”

“Atkinson, was that?”

“Er, yes.”

“Isn’t he the one who’s been taken off active duties?”

“Er, yes.”

“Because he’s become half-deaf, I heard.”

“It’s not a joke , Morse! Terrible affliction, deafness.”

“Would you like me to have a word with him myself?” For some reason Morse’s smile was broader now.

“I’ve already, er...”

“Were you at home, sir, when this anonymous caller rang you?”

Strange shifted uncomfortably in the chair, finally nodding slowly.

“I thought you were ex-directory, sir.”

“You thought right.”

“How did he know your number then?”

“ ’ow the ’ell do I know!”

“The only people who’d know would be your close friends, family...?”

“And people at HQ,” added Strange.

“What are you suggesting?”

“Well, for starters... have you got my telephone number?”

Morse walked out into the entrance hall and returned with a white-plastic telephone index, on which he pressed the letter “S,” then pushed the list of names and numbers there under the half-lenses now perched on Strange’s nose.

“Not changed, has it?”

“Got an extra ‘five’ in front of it. But you’d know that, wouldn’t you?” The eyes over the top of the lenses looked shrewdly and steadily up at Morse.

“Yes. It’s just the same with my number.”