The Remorseful Day (27 page)

“Could he have fiddled a few quid here and there?”

“Not so easy these days. Everything's computerized in the cab. But I suppose …”

“How?”

“Well, let's say if he's cruising around the City Centre and gets a fare and doesn't clock it in. Just takes the cash and then goes back to cruising round as if he's been doing nothing else all the time …”

“Did he do that sort of thing?”

“Not that I know of.”

Morse was looking increasingly puzzled. “He seems to have been a reasonably satisfactory sort of cabbie, then.”

“Well…”

“So why did you sack him?”

“Two things, really. As I said, he wasn't a good advertisement for the company. We always tell our drivers about the importance of friendliness and courtesy; but he wasn't quite … he always seemed a bit surly, and I doubt he ever swapped a few cheerful words with any of his passengers. Man of few words, Paddy Flynn. Not always though, by all accounts.”

“No?”

“No. Seems he used to do the rounds of the pubs and clubs—Oxford, Reading, and so on—with a little group. Played the clarinet himself, and introduced things with a bit of Irish blarney. Quite popular for a while, I think, ‘specially in those pubs guaranteeing music being played as loud as possible.”

Morse looked pained as Measor continued: “Anyway, he just didn't fit in here. No one really liked him much. Simple as that!”

“Two
things though, you said?” prompted Morse gently.

For the first time the articulately forthright Company Secretary was somewhat hesitant:

“It's a bit difficult to explain but… well, he never quite seemed up to coping with the radio side of the job. Still very important, the radio side is, in spite of all this latest technology. You know the sort of thing: we'll be phoning from the office here and asking one of the drivers if he's anywhere near Headington or Abingdon Road or wherever … Mind you, Inspector, the radio's not all
that
easy: distortion, interference, crackle, feedback, traffic noise … You've certainly got to have your wits about you—and, well, he just couldn't quite cope with it well enough.”

“It doesn't seem all that much of a reason for sacking him, though.”

“It's not exactly like that, Inspector. You see, I don't myself employ drivers directly. They're contracted out to me. And so if I say to any owner of a taxi, or a group of taxis, ‘Look, there's no more work for you here'—well, that's it. It's like sub-contracting work on a building site. If I want to sack one of my staff here though,
in the office, I'll have to give one verbal—recorded—and two written warnings.”

“No problems with Flynn, then?”

“Oh, no. And glad to see the back of him. Everybody was. One day he was here …”

“… and the next day he was gone,” added Morse slowly, as he thanked the Company Secretary—and felt that long familiar shiver of excitement along his shoulders.

For Morse, that early evening followed much the same old pattern: same sort of bundle of ideas abounding in his brain; same impatience to reach that final, wonderfully satisfying, penny-dropping moment of insight; same old pessimism about the future of mankind; same old craving for a dram of Scotch that could make the world, at least for a while, a kindlier and a happier place; same old chauffeur—Lewis.

It was just after 6:30
P.M.
when they were shown up a spiral flight of rickety stairs to the small office immediately above the bar of the Maiden's Arms. Around the walls, several framed diplomas paid tribute to the landlord's expertise and the cleanliness of his kitchen, although the untidy piles of letters and forms that littered the desk suggested a less than methodical approach to the hostelry's paperwork.

“Quick snifter, Inspector?”

“Later, perhaps.”

“Mind if I, er… ?” Biffen reached behind him and
poured out a liberal tot of Captain Morgan. “You make me feel nervous!” Knocking back the neat rum in a single swallow, he smacked his lips crudely: “Ahh!”

“Royal or Merchant?” asked Morse.

“Bit o’ both.” But Biffen seemed disinclined to discuss his earlier years at sea and came to the point immediately: “How can I help you, gentlemen?”

So Morse told him: for the moment the village seemed to be at the center of almost everything; and the pub was at the center of village life and gossip; and the landlord was always going to be at the center of the pub; so if…

For Lewis, Morse's subsequent interrogation seemed (indeed, was) aimless and desultory.

But Biffen had little to tell.

Of
course
the villagers had talked—still talked—talked all the time except when that media lot or the police came round. No secret, though, that the locals knew enough about Mrs. H.'s occasional and more than occasional liaisons; no secret that they listened with prurient interest to the rumors, the wilder and whackier the better, concerning Mrs. H.'s sexual predilections.

It was left to Lewis to cover the crucial questions concerning alibis.

The day of Mrs. H.'s murder? Tuesday, that was. And Tuesday was always a special day—a sacrosanct sort of day. (He'd mentioned it earlier.) His one day off in the week when he refused to have anything at all to do with cellarage, bar-tending, pub meals—fuck ‘em all! Secretary of the Oxon Pike Anglers’ Association, he was. Had been for the past five years. Labor of love! And every Tuesday during the fishing season he was out all day, dawn to dusk. Back late, almost always, though he couldn't say exactly when that day. No one had questioned him at the time. Why should they? He'd pretty certainly have met a few of his fellow anglers but… what the hell was all this about anyway? Was he suddenly on the suspect list? After all this time?

Thomas Biffen's eyes had hardened; and looking across at the brawny tattooed arms, the ex-boxer Sergeant Lewis
found himself none too anxious ever to confront the landlord in a cul-de-sac.

Biffen was a family man? Well, yes and no, really. He'd been married—still was, in the legal sense. But his missus had gone off four years since, taking their two children with her: Joanna, aged three at the time, and Daniel, aged two. He still regularly gave her some financial support; always sent his kids something for their birthdays and Christmas. But that side of things had never been much of a problem. She was living with this fellow in Weston-super-Mare—fellow she'd known a long time—the same fellow in fact she'd buggered off with when they'd broken up.

“Whose fault was that?” asked Morse quietly.

Biffen shrugged. “Bit o’ both, usually, innit?”

“She'd been seeing someone else?”

Biffen nodded.

“Had
you
been seeing someone else?”

Biffen nodded.

“Someone local.”

“What's that got to do with it?”

It was Morse's turn to shrug.

“Well… chap's got to get his oats occasionally, Inspector.”

“Mrs. Harrison?”

Biffen shook his head. “Wouldna minded, though!”

“Mrs. Barron?”

“Linda? Huh! Not much chance there—with
him
around? SAS man, he was. Probably slice your prick off if he copped you mucking around with his missus.”

Lewis found himself recalling the photograph of the confident-looking young militiaman.

“Debbie Richardson?” suggested Morse.

“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.