Death Is Now My Neighbour (25 page)

After a period of silence, during which Morse several times raised his glass against the window to admire the colour of the beer, Lewis asked the key question.

'What have they said about you starting work again?'

'What do you say about us seeing Storrs and Owens this afternoon?'

You'll have a job with Storrs, sir. Him and his missus are in Bath for the weekend.'

'What about Owens?'

'Dunno. Perhaps he's away, too - on another of his personnel courses.'

'One easy way of finding out, Lewis. There's a telephone just outside the Gents.'

'Look, sir! For heaven's sake! You've been in hospital a week—'

'Five days, to be accurate, and only for observation. They'd never have let me out unless—' But he got no further.

The double-doors of the Cherwell had burst open and there, framed in the doorway, jowls a-quiver, stood Chief Superintendent Strange - looking around, spying Morse, walking across, and sitting down.

'Like a beer, sir?' asked Lewis.

'Large single-malt Scotch - no ice, no water.'

'And it's the same again for me,' prompted Morse, pushing over his empty glass.

'I might have known it,' began Strange, after regaining his breath. 'Straight out of hospital and straight into the nearest boozer.'

'It's
not
the nearest'

'Don't remind me! Dixon's already carted me round to the Friar Bacon - the King's Arms - the Dew Drop -and now here. And it's about time somebody reminded you that you're in the Force to reduce the crime-level, not the bloody beer-level.'

'We were talking about the case when you came in, sir.'

' What
case?' snapped Strange.

'The murder case - Rachel James.'

'Ah yes! I remember the case well; I remember the address, too: Number
17
Bloxham Drive, wasn't it? Well, you'd better get off your arse, matey' (at a single swallow, he drained the Scotch which Lewis had just placed in front of him) 'because if you
are
back at work, you can just forget that beer and get over smartish to Bloxham Drive again. Number
15,
this time. Another murder. Chap called Owens - Geoffrey Owens. I think you've heard of him?'

For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face

(1
Corinthians,
ch.
13,
v.
12)

Deja vu.

The street, the police cars, the crowd of curious onlookers, the SOCOs - repetition almost everywhere, as if nothing was found only once in the world. Just that single significant shift:
the
shift from one terraced house to another immediately adjacent.

Morse himself had said virtually nothing since Strange had brought the news of Owens' murder; and said nothing now as he sat in the kitchen of Number
15,
Bloxham Drive, elbows resting on the table there, head resting on his hands. For the moment his job was to bide his time, he knew that, during the interregnum between the activities of other professionals and his own assumption of authority: a necessary yet ever frustrating interlude, like that when an in-flight air-stewardess rehearses the safety drill before take-off.

By all rights he should have felt weary and defeated; but this was not the case. Physically, he felt considerably fitter than he had the week before; and mentally, he felt eager for that metaphorical take-off to begin. Some people took little or no mental exercise except that of jumping to conclusions; while Morse was a man who took excessive mental exercise and who
still
jumped to dubious conclusions, as indeed he was to do now. But as some of his close colleagues knew - and most especially as Sergeant Lewis knew - it was at times like this, with preconceptions proved false and hypotheses undone, that Morse's brain was wont to function with astonishing speed, if questionable lucidity. As it did now.

Lewis walked through just before
2
p.m.

'Anything I can do for the minute, sir?'

'Just nip out and get me the
Independent on Sunday,
will you? And a packet of Dunhill.'

'Do you think—?' But Lewis stopped; and waited as Morse relucta
ntly
took a five-pound note from his wallet.

For the next few minutes Morse was aware that his brain was still frustrated and unproductive. And there was something else, too. For some reason, and for a good while now, he had been conscious that he might well have missed a vital clue in the case (cases!) which so far he couldn't quite catch. It was a bit like going through a town on a high-speed train when the eyes had
almost
caught the name of the st
ation as it flashed so tantaliz
ingly across the carriage-window.

Lewis returned five minutes later with the cigarettes, which Morse put unopened into his jacket-pocket; and with the newspaper, which Morse opened at the Cryptic

Crossword ('Quixote'), glanced at
1
across: 'Some show dahlias in the Indian pavilion (6)' and immediately wrote in '
howdah'.

'Excuse me, sir - but how do you get that?'

'Easiest of all the clue-types, that. The letters are all there, in their proper, conse
cuti
ve order. It's called
the
"hidden" type.'

'Ah, yes!' Lewis looked and, for once, Lewis saw. 'Shall I leave you for two or three minutes to finish it off, sir?'

'No. It'll take me at least five. And it's
time
you sat down and gave me the latest news on things here.'

Owens' body Morse had already viewed, howsoever briefly, sitting back, as it had been, against the cushions of the living-room settee,
the
green covers permeated with many pints of blood. His face unshaven, his long hair loose down to the shoulders, his eyes open and staring, almost (it seemed) as if in permanent disbelief; and two bullet wounds showing raggedly in his chest. Dead four to six hours, that's what Dr Laura Hobson had already suggested - a margin narrower than Morse had expected, though wider than he'd hoped; death, she'd claimed, had fairly certainly been 'instant' (or 'instantaneous', as Morse would have preferred). There were no signs of any forcible entry to the house: the front door had been found still locked and bolted; the tongue of the Yale on the back door still engaged, though not clicked to the locked position from the inside. On
the mantelpiece above the electr
ic fire (not switched on) was a small oblong virtually free of the generally pervasive dust.

The body would most probably not have been discovered
that day had not John
Benson, a garage mechanic from Hartwell's Motors, agreed to earn himself a
little
untaxed extra income by fixing a few faults on Owens' car. But Benson had been unable to get any answer when he called just after
11.15
a.m.; had finally peered through the open-curtained front window; had rapped repeatedly, and increasingly loudly, against the pane when he saw Owens lying asleep on the settee there.

But Owens was not asleep. So much had become gradually apparent to Benson, who had dialled
999
at about 11.30
a.m. from the BT phone-box at the entrance to the Drive.

Thus far no one, it a
ppeared, had seen or heard anyth
ing untoward that morning between seven and eight o'clock, say. House-to-house enquiries would soon be under way, and might provide a clue or two. But concerning such a possibility Morse was predictably (though, as it
happened, mistakenly) pessimisti
c. Early Sunday morning was not a time when many people were about, except for dog-owners and insomniacs: the former, judging from the warnings on
the
lamp-posts concerning the fouling of verges and footpaths, not positively encouraged to parade their pets along the street; the latter, if there were any, not as yet coming forward with any sightings of strangers or hearings of gunshots.

No. On the face of it, it had seemed a typical, sleepy Sunday morning, when the denizens of Bloxham Drive had their weekly lie-in, arose late, walked around their homes in dressing-gowns, sometimes boiled an egg, perhaps -and setded down to read in the scandal sheets about the extra-marital exploits of the great and the not-so-good.

But one person had been given no chance to read his Sunday newspaper, for the
News of the World
lay unopened on
the
mat inside the front door of Number
15;
and few of the others in the Drive that morning were able to indulge their delight in adulterous liaisons, stunned as they were by disbelief and, as the shock itself lessened, by a growing sense of fear.

At
2.30
p.m. Morse was informed
that
few if any of the neighbours were likely to be helpful witnesses - except
the
old lady in Number
19.
Morse should see her himself, perhaps?

'Want me to come along, sir?'

'No, Lewis. You get off and tr
y to find out something about Storrs - and his missus. Bath, you say? He probably left details of where he'd be at the Porters' Lodge - that's the usual drill. And do it from HQ. Better keep the phone here free.'

Mrs Adams was a widow of some eighty summers, a small old lady who had now lost all her own teeth, much of her wispy white hair, and even more of her hearing. But her wits were sharp enough, Morse sensed that immediately; and her brief evidence was of considerable interest. She had slept poorly the previous night; got up early; made herself some tea and toast; listened to the news on the radio at seven o'clock; cleared away; and then gone out the back to empty her waste-bin.
That
's
when she'd seen him!

'Him?' 'Pardon?'

"You're sure it was a
man?'

'Oh yes. About twenty - twenty-five past seven.'

The case was under way.

"You didn't hear any shots or bangs?'

'Pardon?'

Morse let it go.

But he managed to convey his thanks to her, and to explain that she would be asked to sign a short statement. As he prepared to leave, he gave her his card.

'I'll leave this with you, Mrs Adams. If you remember anything else, please get in touch with me.'

He thought she'd understood; and he left her there in her kitchen, holding his card about three or four inches fr
om her pale, rheumy eyes, squinti
ng obliquely at
the
wording.

She was not, as Morse had quickly realized, ever destined to be called bef
ore an identity parade; for alth
ough she might be able to spot that all of them were men, any physiognomical differentiation would surely be wholly beyond the capacity of those tired old eyes.

Poor Mrs Adams!

Sans teeth, sans hair, sans ears, sans eyes - and very soon, alas, sans everything.

Seldom, in any investigation, had Morse so badly mishandled a key witness as now he mishandled Mrs Arabella Adams.

Alibi
(adv.):
in another place, elsewhere
(Small's Latin-English Dictionary)

Some persons in
life eschew all sense of responsibility, and are never wholly at ease unless they are closely instructed as to what to do, and how and when to do it. Sergeant Lewis was not such a person, willing as he was always to shoulder his share of responsibility and, not infreque
ntly
, to face some apportionment of blame. Yet, to be truthful, he was ever most at ease when given some specific task, as he had been now; and he experienced a pleasing sense of purpose as he drove up to Police HQ that same afternoon.

One thing only disturbed him more than a
little
. For almost a week now Morse had forgone, been forced to forgo, both beer and cigarettes. And what foolishness it was to capitulate, as Morse
had
done, to both, within the space of only a couple of hours! But that's what life was all about — personal decisions; and Morse had clearly decided that the long-term disintegration of his liver and his lungs was a price well worth paying, even with diabetes, for the short-term pleasures of alcohol and nicotine.

Yet Morse was still on the ball. As he had guessed, Storrs had left details of his weekend whereabouts at the Porters' Lodge. And very soon Lewis was speaking to
the
Manager of Bath's Royal Crescen
t Hotel - an appropriately cauti
ous man, but one who was fully co-operative once Lewis had explained the unusual and delicate nature of his enquiries. The Manager would ring back, he promised, within half an hour.

Lewis picked up the previous day's copy of the
Daily Mirror,
and sat puzzling for a few minutes over whether the answer to
1
across - 'River
(3)'
- was
cam, dee, exe, fal
, and so on through the alphabet; finally deciding on
cam
, wh
en he saw that it would fit neatl
y enough with
cod
, the fairly obvious answer to
1
down -'Fish
(3)'.
He had made a firm start. But thereafter he had proceeded
little
, since the combination which had found favour with
the
setter of the crossword (
exe/ eel
) had wholly eluded him. His minor hypothesis, like Morse's earlier major one, was sadly undone.

But he had no time to return (quite literally) to square one, since the phone rang. It had taken the Manager only fifteen minutes to assemble his fairly comprehensive information
...

Mr and Mrs J. Storrs had checked into the hotel at
4
p.m. the previous afternoon, Saturday,
2
March: just the one night, at the special weekend-break tariff of
£125
for a double room. The purpose of the Storrs' visit (almost certainly) had been to hear the Bath Festival Choir, since one of the reception staff had ordered a taxi for them at

7
p.m. to go along to the Abbey, where the Faure
Requiem
was the centrepiece of the evening concert. The couple had been back in the hotel by about half past nine, when they had immediately gone into the restaurant for a late, pre-booked dinner, the only extra being a
bottle
of the house red wine.

If the sergeant would like to see the itemized bill
...
?

No one, it appeared, had seen the couple after about
11
p.m., when they had been the last to leave the restaurant. Before retiring, however, Mr Storrs had rung through to room service to order breakfast for the two of them, in their room, at
7.45
a.m.: a full English for himself, a Continental one for his wife.

Again, the itemized order was available if the sergeant
...