Colin Dexter - The Remorseful Day

“Most people’ve had a bit on the side with her.”

“You called yourself occasionally? While Harry was inside?”

“Once or twice.”

“Including the day after he was murdered.”

“Only to take a bottle — I told you that.”

“You fancied her?”

“Who wouldn’t? Once she’s got the hots on...”

Morse appeared to have lost his way, and it was Lewis who completed the questioning: “Where were you earlier on the Friday when Flynn and Repp were murdered?”

“In the morning? Went into Oxford shopping. Not much luck, though. Tried to get a couple of birthday presents. You’d hardly credit it, but both o’ my kids were born the same day — 3rd o’ September.”

“Real coincidence.”

“Depends which way you look at it, Sergeant. Others’d call it precision screwing, wouldn’t they?”

It was a crude remark, and Morse’s face was a study in distaste as Biff en continued: “Couldn’t find anything in the shops though, could I? So I sent their mum a check instead.”

Downstairs, it was far too early for any brisk activity; but three of the regulars were already foregathered there, to each of whom Biffen proffered a customary greeting.

“Evening, Mr. Bagshaw! Evening, Mr. Blewitt!”

One of the warring partners allowed himself a perfunctory nod, but the other was happily intoning a favorite passage from the cribbage litany: “Fifteen-two; fifteen-four; two’s six; three’s nine; and three’s twelve!”

With an “Evening, Mr. Thomas!” the landlord had completed his salutations.

In response, the youth pressed the start button yet again, his eyes keenly registering the latest alignment of the symbols on the fruit machine.

“Now! What’s it to be, gentlemen? On the house, of course.”

“Pint of bitter,” said Morse, “and an orange juice. Want some ice in it, Lewis?”

A bored-looking barmaid folded up the Mirror and pulled the hand-pump on the Burton Ale.

It was just after 7:30 P.M. that same evening in the car park of the Maiden’s Arms that Morse, after admitting to a very strange lapse of memory in missing The Archers , suddenly decided on a new line of inquiry that seemed to Lewis (if possible) even stranger: “Drive me round to Holmes’s place in Burford.”

“Why—?” began a weary Lewis.

“Get on with it!”

The ensuing conversation was brief. “What did you make of Biff en, sir?”

“He decided to enlist in the ranks of the liars, like the rest of ‘em.”

“Well, yes... if Mrs. Barron was telling me the truth.”

“Probably not important anyway.”

Lewis waited a while. “What is important, sir?”

“Barron! That’s what’s important. I’m still not absolutely sure I was on the wrong track but...”

“... but it looks as if you were.”

Morse nodded.

“What did you make of—?”

“Concentrate on the driving, Lewis! They’re not used to Formula-One fanatics round here.”

A blurred shape slowly formed through the frosted glass of the front door, its green paint peeling or already peeled, which was finally opened by a pale-faced, wispily haired woman of some fifty-plus summers.

Lewis paraded his ID. “Mrs. Holmes?”

With hardly a glance at the documentation, the woman neatly reversed her wheelchair and led her visitors through the narrow, bare-floored, virtually bare-walled passageway — for indeed there was just the one framed memento of something on the wall to the left.

“I suppose it’s about Roy?” She spoke with the dispirited nasal whine of a Birmingham City supporter whose team has just been defeated.

In the living room, in a much-frayed armchair, sat a youth smoking a cigarette, drinking directly from a can of Bass, a pair of black-stringed amplifiers stuck in his ears.

He vaguely reminded Morse of someone; but that was insufficient to stop him taking an intense and instant dislike to the boy, who had made no attempt to straighten his lounging sprawl, or to miss a single lyric from the latest rap record — until he saw Morse’s lips speaking directly to him.

“Wha’?” Reluctantly Roy Holmes removed one of the ear-pieces.

“Why didn’t you answer the door yourself, lad, and give your mum a break?”

The youth’s eyes stared back with cold hostility. “Couldn’t ‘ear it, could I? Not wi’ this on.”

No Brummy accent there; instead, the Oxfordshire burr with its curly vowels.

His mother began to explain. “It’s the police, Roy—”

“Again? Bin there, ‘aven’t I. Made me statement. What more do they want? Accident, wonnit? I didn’t try to ‘ide nuthin. What the fuck?”

Morse responded quietly to the outburst. “We appreciate your cooperation. But do you know what you’ve made of yourself in life so far? Shall I tell you, lad? You’re about the most uncouth and loutish fourteen-year-old I’ve ever—”

“Fifteen-year-old,” interposed Mrs. Holmes, more anxious, it seemed, to correct her son’s natal credentials than to deny his innate crudity. “Fifteen on March the 26th. Got it wrong in the papers, didn’t they?”

“Well, well! Same birthday as Housman.”

Silence.

“And” (Morse now spoke directly to the mother) “he’ll be able to smoke in a year’s time, and go to the pub for a pint a couple of years after that — if you give him some pocket money, Mrs. Holmes. Because I can’t see him earning anything much himself, not in his present frame of mind.”

If Lewis had earlier noticed the telltale sign of drug dependency in the boy’s eyes, he now saw a wider blaze of hatred there; and was sure that Morse was similarly and equally aware of both, as Mrs. Holmes switched her wheelchair abruptly around and faced Morse aggressively:

“It was an accident — could happen to anybody — he didn’t mean no trouble — like he said — like he told you... That’s right, isn’t it, Roy?”

“Leave me be!”

“Perhaps it wasn’t you we came to Burford to see.”

For a few seconds there was a look of bewilderment, of anxiety almost, on Roy Holmes’s face. Then, draining his can of beer, he got to his feet, and left the room.

Seconds later the front door slammed behind him with potentially glass-shattering force.

“What time will he be back?” asked Lewis.

She shrugged her narrow shoulders.

“You worry about him?”

“Everybody worries about him.”

“How long’s he been on drugs?”

“Year — over a year.”

“How does he pay for them?”

“You tell me.”

“Not much of a son, is he?” said Morse.

She shook what once must have been a very pretty head with a gesture of desperation.

“Does he get the money from you?”

“I’ve got nothing to give him. He’s not stupid. He knows that.”

“But...?” Morse pointed to the empty beer can; the empty packet of cigarettes.

“Idunno.”

Morse got to his feet. Lewis too.

“How long...?” Morse nodded to the wheelchair.

“Six years.”

Morse stopped in front of the one framed picture in the dingy hallway. Not a picture, though. A diploma.

For the second time that day Lewis noticed a film of tears in a woman’s eyes; and for the second time that day Morse felt a shudder of excitement run along his shoulders.