Colin Dexter: The Remorseful Day

Slowly shaking his head, Lewis stared down at the canteen carpet disconsolately.

“It’s just that he seems not quite the man...”

“And you can’t forgive him for that.”

“Course I can forgive him! Just a bit of a jolt, that’s all. Can’t you understand that? After all those years we were together?”

“That’s what’s really eating you, isn’t it? Be honest! It’s just that you don’t think as much of old Morse as you used to.”

“Not quite as much, no.”

Strange struggled to his feet. “Must be off. Good to talk. I’d better get back downstairs.”

Lewis got to his feet. “Mrs. Lewis sends her very best wishes, sir.”

The two policemen shook hands, and the interesting exchange was apparently over.

But not so.

Halfway to the canteen exit, Strange suddenly turned round and came back to the table.

“Do you remember those issue lists for handcuffs, Lewis?”

“It’s a long time ago...”

“Well, they’re just handwritten lists, kept up to date in a series of columns: date, name, rank, serial number. Just like this.” Strange took a folded sheet of A4 from an inside pocket. “But you remember the serial number on the pair you found in Morse’s drawer?”

“Nine-two-two.”

He handed the sheet to Lewis. “You’ve got a good memory!”

“Where did you get this?”

“Someone took it from HQ, Lewis. Morse did!”

Lewis looked down at the list, but could find no mention of Morse’s name. Could see another name though — at the seventh entry down, along with the other details in the neatly ruled lines:

“You mean...?”

“I mean , Lewis, that Morse knew I was having an affair with Yvonne Harrison. I don’t know how he knew, but he always tended to know things, didn’t he? He pinched that form, and he kept it till after the wife’s funeral. Then he gave it to me. Said it would be useless without the cuffs, which he said he was going to keep anyway, just in case I ever did anything bloody stupid. And he said exactly what I said to you a few minutes ago: nothing — nothing — that happened then had affected the inquiry in the slightest way. Is that clear, Lewis?”

Yes it was clear. “You’re saying that all Morse did was to save you... and save Mrs. Strange...”

“It would have broken her to pieces,” said Strange very quietly. “And me. Would have broken both of us to pieces.”

“She never knew?”

“Never had the faintest idea. Thanks to Morse.”

Lewis was silent.

“Just like you, eh? About lots of things. You never had the faintest idea, for example, that I re-opened the Harrison case on the basis of a couple of bogus telephone calls, now did you?”

“You mean—?”

“I mean there were no telephone calls. I made ‘em up myself. Both of ‘em.”

“I just didn’t realize...”

“Nobody did, except Morse of course. He guessed straightaway. But I’d like to bet he never told you! He just didn’t want to let me down, that’s all.”

“Why didn’t he tell me all this though? It would have made such a lot of difference... at the end...”

“I dunno. Always an independent sod, wasn’t he? And always had that great big streak of loyalty and integrity somewhere deep inside him. But you don’t need me to tell you that. So he was never worried too much about what people thought of him. He certainly didn’t give two monkeys what I thought of him, at least most of the time. In fact the only person he did want to think well of him was you , Lewis. So let me tell you something else. It’s one helluva job having to live with guilt, as I’ve done. Almost everybody discovers the same, you know that. Frank Harrison did, didn’t he? Sarah Harrison, too. It’s something I hope you’ll never have to go through yourself. Not that you ever will. Nor did Morse though. He once told me that the guiltiest he ever felt in his life was when a couple of the lads saw him flicking through a girlie magazine in the Summertown newsagent’s. So... So just keep thinking well of him, Lewis — that’s all I ask.”

The former Chief Superintendent lumbered across the still-deserted canteen to join the jollifications below.

But Lewis sat where he was.

Apart from the middle-aged woman at the counter reading the Sun , there seemed no one else there. And after looking around him as guiltily as Morse must have done in the Summertown newsagent’s, for a little while, in his desolation, he wept silently.