In silence, in abject despair, Shelly Cornford listened, and the tears ran in furrows down her cheeks.
'We're finished. The two of us are finished, Shelly -do you know, I can hardly bring myself to call you by your name? Our marriage is over and done with - make no mistake about
that
. You can feel free to do what you want now. I just don't care. Y
ou're a born flirt! You're a born
prick-teaser! And I just can't live with you any longer. I just can't live with the picture of you lying there naked and opening your legs to another man. Can you try to get that into your thick skull?'
She shook her head in utter anguish.
You said' (Cornford continued) 'you'd have given anything in life
to see me become Master. Well, I
wouldn't - do you understand
that
? But I'd have given anything in life for you to be faithful to me - whatever the prize.'
He turned away from her, and she heard the door of the spare bedroom close; then open again. 'When was it? Tell me that.
When ?
'This morning.'
‘
You mean when I was out jogging?' Yes,' she whispered.
He turned away once more; and she beheld and could see no sorrow like unto her own sorrow. The keys to her car lay on the mantelshelf.
Monday, 4 March
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what's really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself
the
(Philip Larkin,
Aubade)
Never, in his
lifetime of muted laughter and occasional tears, had Morse spent such a horrifying night. Amid fitful bouts of semi-slumber - head weighted with pain, ears throbbing, stomach in spasms, gullet afire with bile and acidity - he'd imagin
ed himself on the verge of fainti
ng, of vomiting, of having a stroke, of entering cardiac arrest. One of Ovid's lovers had once besought the H
orses of the Night to slacken th
eir pace and delay thereby the onset of the Dawn. But as he lay turning in his bed, Morse longed for a sign of the brightening sky through his window. During that seemingly unending night, he had consumed several glasses of cold water, Alka-Seltzer tablets, cups of
black
coffee, and the equivalent of a weekly dosage of Nurofen Plus.
No alcohol, though. Not one drop of alcohol. At last Morse had decided to abandon alcohol.
Lewis looked into Morse's bedroom at
7.30
a.m. (Lewis was the only person who had a key to Morse's flat.)
In the prestigious area of North Oxford, most householders had long since fitted their homes with anti-burglar devices, with neighbours holding the keys to the alarm mechanism. But Morse had
little
need of such a device, for the only saleable, stealable items in his flat were the CDs of all the operas of the man he regarded as a towering gen
ius, Richard Wagner; and his earn
e
stly
assembled collection of first editions of the greatest hero in his life, the pessimistic poet A E. Housman, who, like Morse, had left St John's College, Oxford, without obtaining a degree.
But not even North Oxford burglars had tastes that were quite so esoteric.
And in any case, Morse seldom spoke to either of his immediate neighbours.
You look awful, sir.'
'Oh, for Christ's sake, Lewis! Don't you know if somebody says you
look
awful, you
feel
awful?' 'Didn't you feel awful
before
I said it?' Morse nodded a miserable agreement. 'Shall I get you a bit of breakfast?' 'No.'
'Well, I reckon we can eliminate the Storrs - both of 'em. I've checked with the hotel as
far
as possible. And unless they hired a helicopter
'We can cross off the Comfords, too -
him,
anyway. He's got four witnesses to testify he was running around Oxford pretending to be Roger Bannister.'
'What about
her?'
‘I
can't really see why
...
or how.'
'Owens could have been blackmailing her?'
Morse fingered his stubbled chin. 'I don't think so somehow. But there's
something
there
...
something Cornford didn't want to tell me
abouL'
'What d'you think?'
But Morse appeared unable to answer, as he swung his legs out of bed and sat for a while, alternately turning his torso to left and right
'Just easing the lumbago, Lewis. Don't
you
ever get it?'
'No.'
'Just nip and get me a glass of orange juice from the fridge. The
unsweetened
orange juice.'
As he walked into the kitchen, Lewis heard the post slither through the letter-box.
So did Morse.
'Lewis! Did you find out what time the postman usually calls in Polstead Road?'
'I've already told you. You were right.'
'About the only bloody thing I
have
been right about'
'Arrghh! Cheer up, sir!'
'Just turn out those pockets, will you?' Morse pointed to the suit and shirt thrown carelessly over the only chair in the bedroom. 'Time I had a change of clothes - maybe bring me a change of luck.'
'Who's your new girlfriend?' Lewis held up the invitation card. '"Make it, Morse! DC."' 'That card is wholly private and—' But Morse got no further.
He felt the old familiar tingling across the shoulders, the hairs on his lower arms standing up, as if a conductor had invited his orchestra to arise after a concert
'Christ!' whispered Morse irrevere
ntly
. 'Do you know what, Lewis? I think you've done it again!'
Monday-Tuesday, 4-5 March
The four-barrelled Lancaster Howdah pistol is of
.577
in calibre. Its name derived from the story that it was carried by tiger hunters who travelled by elephant and who kept the pistol as a defence against any tiger that might leap on to the elephant's back
(Encyclopedia of Rifles and Handguns,
ed.
sean
connolly)
For the relatives
, for the statement-takers and the form-fillers, for the boffins at ballistics and forensics, the murder of Geoffrey Owens would be a serious business. No less than for the detectives. Yet for Morse himself the remainder of that Monday had been unproductive and anti-climactic, with a morning of euphoria followed by an afternoon of blood-trouble.
Hospital instructions had been for him to take four daily readings of his blood sugar level, using a slim, penlike appliance into which he inserted a test-strip duly smeared with a drop of his blood, with each result appearing, after only thirty seconds, in a small window on the side of the pen. Whilst the average blood sugar level of the healthy person is about
4.5,
the pen is calibrated from
1
to
25,
since the levels of diabetic patients often vary very considerably. Any level higher than
25
is registered as 'HI'.
Now thus far readings had been roughly what Morse had been led to expect (the highest
15.5):
it would take some
little
while - and then only if he promised to do as he was told - to achieve that 'balance' which is the aim of every diabetic. More than disappointing to him therefore had been the 'HI' registered at lunchtime that day. In fact, more of a surprise than a disappointment, since momentarily he was misled into believing that 'HI' was analogous to the greeting from a fruit-machine: 'Hello And Welcome!'
But it wasn't; and Morse was rather worried about himself; and returned to his flat, where he took two further Nurofen Plus for his persisting headache, sat back in his armchair, decided he lacked the energy to do
The Times
crossword or even to turn on the CD player - and fairly soon fell fast asleep.
At six o'clock he rang Lewis to say he would be doing nothing more that day. Just before seven o'clock he measured his blood sugar once again; and finding it somewhat dramatically reduced, to
14.3,
had decided to celebrate with a small glass of Glenfiddich before he listened to
The Archers.
The following morning, feeling much refreshed, feeling eager to get on with things, Morse had been at his desk in Police HQ for half an hour before Lewis entered, holding a report.
'Ballistics, sir. Came in last night.'
Morse could no more follow
the
technical terminology of ballistics reports than he could
understand a paragraph of Structu
ral Linguistics or recall the configuration of the most recent map of Bosnia. To be sure he had a few vague notions about 'barrels' and 'grooves' and 'cylinders' and 'calibres'; but his knowledge went no further, and his interest not quite so far as that. Cursorily glancing therefore through the complex data assembled in the first five pages, he acquainted himself with the short, simply written summary on page six:
Rachel James was fatally shot by a single bullet fired from a range of c.
45
cms; Geoffrey Owens was fatally shot by two bullets fired from a range of c.
100
cms. The pistol used in each case, of
.577
in. calibre, was of the type freque
ntly
used by HM Forces. Quite certainly the same pistol was used in each killing.
ASH:
4
.iii
.9
6
Morse sat back in the black-leather armchair and looked mildly satisfied with life.
°Ye-es. I think I'm beginning to wake up at last in this case, Lewis. You know, it's high time we got together, you and me. We've been doing our own
little
things so far, haven't we?
You've
gone off to see somebody -
I've
gone off to see somebody - and we've not got very far, have we? It's the same as always, Lewis. We need to do things together from now on.'
'No
time
like the present.'
'Pardon?'
Lewis pointed to the ballistics report. 'What do you
think
?'
'Very interesting. Same revolver.'
'Pistol,
sir.' 'Same difference.'
‘I
think most of us had assumed it was the same, anyway.' 'Really?'
'Well, it's what most of the lads think.'
Morse's smile was irritatingly benign. 'Same revolver - same murderer. Is that what, er, most of the lads think as well?'
'I suppose so.'
'Do you?'
Lewis considered the question. It either was - or it wasn't. Fifty-fifty chance of getting it right, Lewi
s. Go for it! ‘
Yes!'
'Fair enough. Now let's consider a few possibilities. Rachel was shot through the kitchen window when she was standing at the sink. The blind was old and made of thinnish material and the silhouette was pretty clear, perhaps; but the murderer was taking a risk. Revolvers' (Lewis had given up) 'are notoriously inaccurate even at close range, and the bullet's got to penetrate a reasonably substantial pane of glass - enough perhaps to knock the aim off course a bit and hit her in the neck instead of the head. Agreed?'
Lewis nodded at wha
t he saw as an analysis not parti
cularly profound. And Morse condnued:
'Now the shooting of Owens took place
inside
the house - from a bit further away; but no glass this time, and a very clear target to aim at. And Owens is shot in the chest, not in the head. A
modus operandi
quite different from the first.'
Lewis smiled. 'So we've got two
moduses operandi.'
'Modi, Lewis! So it
could
be that we've two murderers. But that would seem on the face of it highly improbable, because it's not difficult to guess the reason for the difference
...
Is it?'
'Well, as I see things, sir, Owens was probably murdered by somebody he knew. He probably invited whoever it was in. Perhaps they'd arranged to meet anyway. Owens was dressed and—' Lewis stopped a moment. 'He hadn't shaved though, had he?'
'He was the sort of fellow who always looked as if he needed a shave.'
'Perhaps we should have checked more closely.'
‘
You don't expect
me
to check that sort of thing, do you? I'm a necrophobe - you've known me long enough, surely.'