The Remorseful Day (3 page)

For a few moments Strange appeared uncomfortable: “It's partly that, yes, but…”

“The Chief Constable wouldn't look at any new investigation—not a serious investigation.”

“Not unless we had some new evidence.”

“Which in our case, as the poet said, we have not got.”

“This fellow that rang—”

“No end of people ring. We both know that, sir.”

“—rang twice. He knows something. I'm sure of it.”

“Did you speak to him yourself?”

“No. He spoke to the girl on the switchboard. Didn't want to be put through to anybody, he said. Just wanted to leave a message.”

“For you?”

“Yes.”

“A'he,'you say?”

“Not much doubt about that.”

“Surely from the recordings… ?”

“We can't record every crazy sod who rings up and asks what the bloody time is, you know that!”

“Not much to go on.”

“Twice
, Morse? The first time on the anniversary of the murder? Come off it! We've got a moral duty to reopen the case. Can't you understand that?”

Morse shook his head. “Two anonymous phone calls? Just isn't worth the candle.”

And suddenly—why was this?—Strange seemed at ease again as he sank back even further in his chair:

“You're right, of course you are. The case wouldn't be worth re-opening—
unless”
(Strange paused for effect, his voice now affable and bland) “unless our caller—identity cloaked in anonymity, Morse—had presented us with some … some new
evidence. And
, after my appeal, my nationally reported appeal, we're going to get some more! I'm not just thinking of another telephone call from our friend either, though I'm hopeful about that. I'm thinking of information from members of the public, people who thought the case was forgotten, people whose memories have had a jog, people who were a bit reluctant, a bit afraid, to come forward earlier on.”

“It happens,” conceded Morse.

The armchair creaked as Strange leaned forward once more, smiling semibenignly, and holding out his empty tumbler: “Lovely!”

After refilling the glasses, Morse asked the obvious question:

“Tell me this, sir. You had two DIs on the case originally—”

“Three.”

“—several DSs, God knows how many DCs and PCs and WPCs—”

“No such thing now. All the women are PCs—no sex
discrimination these days. By the way, you were never guilty of sexual harassment, were you?”

“Seldom. The other way round, if anything.”

Strange grinned as he sipped his Scotch. “Go on!”

“As I say, you had all those people on the case. They studied it. They lived with it. They—”

“Got nowhere with it.”

“Perhaps it wasn't altogether their fault. We're never going to solve everything. It's taken these mathematicians over three hundred years to solve Fermat's Last Theorem.”

“Mm.” Strange waggled his tumbler in front of him, holding it up toward the light, like a judge at the Beer Festival at Olympia.

“Just like the color of my urine specimens at the Radcliffe.”

“Tastes better, though.”

“Listen. I'm not a crossword wizard like you. Sometimes I can't even finish the
Mirror
coffee-break thing. But I know one thing for sure. If you get stuck over a clue—”

“As occasionally even the best of us do.”

“—there's only one way to solve it. You go away, you leave it, you forget it, you think of the teenage Brigitte Bardot, and then you go back to it and—Eureka! It's like trying to remember a name: the more you think about it the more the bloody thing sinks below the horizon. But once you forget about it, once you come to it a second time, fresh—”

“I've never come to it a
first
time, apart from those early couple of days—you know that. I was on another case! And not particularly in the pink either, was I? Not all that long out of hospital myself.”

“Morse! I've
got
to reopen this case. You know why.”

“Try someone else!”

“I want you to think about it.”

“Look.” A note of exasperation had crept into Morse's voice. “I'm on furlough—I'm tired—I'm sleeping badly—I drink too much—I'm beholden to no
one—I've no relatives left—I can't see all that much purpose in life—”

“You'll have me in tears in a minute.”

“I'm only trying to say one thing, sir. Count me out!”

“You won't even
think
about it?”

“No.”

“You do realize that I don't
need
to plead with you about this? I don't want to pull rank on you, Morse, but just remember that I
can.
All right?”

“Try someone else, sir, as I say.”

“OK. Forget what I just said. Let's put it this way. It's a favor I'm asking, Morse—a personal favor.”

“What makes you think I'll still be here?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

But Morse, it appeared, was barely listening as he stared out of the window on to his little patch of greenery where a small bird with a grey crown and darkish-brown bars across its back had settled beneath the diminishing column of peanuts.

“Look!” (He handed the binoculars to Strange.) “Few nuts—and some of these rare species decide to take up special residence. I shall have to check up on the plumage but…”

Strange had already focused the binoculars with, as it seemed to Morse, a practiced familiarity.

“Know anything about bird-watching, sir?”

“More than you, I shouldn't wonder.”

“Beautiful little fellow, isn't he?”

“She!”

“Pardon?”

“Immature female of the species.”

“What
species?”

“Passer domesticus
, Morse. Can't you recognize a bloody house sparrow when you see one?”

For the fourteenth time Morse found himself reappraising the quirkily contradictory character that was Chief Superintendent Strange.

“And you'll at least
think
about things? You can promise me that, surely?”

Morse nodded weakly.

And Strange smiled comfortably. “I'm glad about that. And you'll be pleased about one thing. You'll have Sergeant Lewis along with you. I… did have a word with him, just before I came here, and he's—”

“You mean you've already …”

Strange flicked a stubby finger against his empty, expensive, cut-glass tumbler: “A little celebration, perhaps?”

It is possible for persons to be friendly toward each other without being friends. It is also possible for persons to be friends without being friendly toward each other. The relationship between Morse and Strange had always been in the latter category.

“Read through this as well!” Strange's tone was semiperemptory as he thrust a folded sheet of ruled A4 across at Morse, in the process knocking his glass on to the parquet flooring. Where it broke into many pieces.

“Ah! Sorry about that!”

Morse rose reluctantly to fetch brush and pan from the kitchen.

“Could have been worse, though,” continued Strange. “Could have been full, eh?”

As Morse carefully swept up the slivers of the cut-glass tumbler—originally one of a set of six (now three)
which his mother had left him—he experienced an irrational anger and hatred wholly disproportionate to the small accident which had occurred. But he counted up to twenty and was gradually feeling better, even as Strange extolled the bargain he'd seen in the Covered Market recently: glasses for only 50p apiece.

“Better not have any more Scotch, I suppose.”

“Not if you're driving, sir.”

“Which I'm bloody
not.
I'm being driven. And if I may say so, it's a bit rich expecting me to take lessons in drink-driving from you! But you're right, we've had enough.”

A further count, though this time only to ten, prolonged Morse's invariably slow reading of the two handwritten paragraphs, and he said nothing as he finally put the sheet aside.

It was Strange who spoke:

“Perhaps, you know, on second thoughts, we might, er … anither wee dram?”

“Not for me, sir.”

“That was meant to be the ‘royal we,’ Morse.”

Morse decided that a U-turn was merely a rational readjustment of a previously mistaken course, and he obliged accordingly—for both of them, with Strange's measure poured into one of the cheap-looking wineglasses he'd bought a few weeks earlier from the Covered Market, for only 50p apiece.

“Is this” (Morse pointed to the paper) “what our dutiful duty sergeant transcribed from the phone calls?”

“Well, not quite, no.” (Strange seemed curiously hesitant.) “That's what
I
wrote down, as far as I—we—could fix the exact words. Very difficult business when you get things secondhand, garbled—”

Morse interrupted. “No problem, surely? We
do
record everything that comes into HQ.”

“Not so easy as that. Some of these recordings are poor-quality reception; and when, you know, when somebody's speaking quietly, muffled sort of voice …”

Morse smiled thinly as he looked directly across at his
superior officer. “What you're telling me is that the recording equipment packed up, and there's no trace.”

“Anything mechanical packs up occasionally.”

“Both
occasions?”

“Both occasions.”

“So all you've got to rely on is the duty sergeant.”

“Right.”

“Atkinson, was that?”

“Er, yes.”

“Isn't he the one who's been taken off active duties?”

“Er, yes.”

“Because he's become half-deaf, I heard.”

“It's not a
joke
, Morse! Terrible affliction, deafness.”

“Would you like me to have a word with him myself?” For some reason Morse's smile was broader now.

“I've already, er …”

“Were you at home, sir, when this anonymous caller rang you?”

Strange shifted uncomfortably in the chair, finally nodding slowly.

“I thought you were ex-directory, sir.”

“You thought right.”

“How did he know your number then?”

“'ow the'ell do I know!”

“The only people who'd know would be your close friends, family… ?”

“And people at HQ,” added Strange.

“What are you suggesting?”

“Well, for starters … have
you
got my telephone number?”

Morse walked out into the entrance hall and returned with a white-plastic telephone index, on which he pressed the letter “S,” then pushed the list of names and numbers there under the half-lenses now perched on Strange's nose.

“Not changed, has it?”

“Got an extra ‘five’ in front of it. But you'd know that, wouldn't you?” The eyes over the top of the lenses looked shrewdly and steadily up at Morse.

“Yes. It's just the same with my number.”

“Do you think I should get a tap on my phone?”

“Wouldn't do any harm, if he rings again.”

“When
he rings again.”

“Hoaxer! Sure to be.”

“Well-informed hoaxer, then.” Strange pointed to the paper still on the arm of Morse's chair. “A bit in the know, wouldn't you say? Someone on the inside, perhaps? You couldn't have found one or two things referred to there in any of the press reports. Only the police'd know.”

“And the murderer,” added Morse.

“And the murderer,” repeated Strange.

Morse looked down once more at the notes Strange had made in his appropriately outsized, spidery handwriting:

Morse looked up to find himself the object of Strange's steady gaze.

“It's incompetent, sir, with an ‘e'.”

“Thank you very much!”

“And most people put a ‘k’ on ‘knickers.'”

Strange smiled grimly. “And Yvonne Harrison put an embargo on knickers, however you spell ‘em!”

He struggled to his feet. “My office Monday morning—first thing!”

“Eight o'clock?”

“Nine-thirty?”

“Nine-thirty.”

“Now get back to your Schubert—though I'm surprised you weren't listening to Wagner. Just the job,
The Ring
, for a long holiday, you know. Especially the Solti recording.”

Morse watched his visitor waddling somewhat unsteadily toward the police car parked confidently in the “Resident's Only” parking area. (Yes! Morse had mentioned the apostrophe to the Chairman of the Residents' Welfare Committee.)

He closed the front door and for a few moments stood there motionless, acknowledging with a series of almost imperceptible nods the simple truth about the latest encounter between two men who knew each other well, both for good and ill:

Game, Set, Match, to Strange.

Or was it?

For there was something about what he had just learned, something he had not yet even begun to analyze, that was perplexing him slightly.

The following Sunday was a pleasant summer's day; and along with three-quarters of the population of Hampshire, Morse decided to go down to Bournemouth. It took him over an hour to park the Jaguar; and it was a further half-hour before he reached the seafront where carloads and busloads of formidable families were negotiating rights to a couple of square meters of Lebens-raum. But moving away from the ice-cream emporia,
Morse found progressively fewer and fewer day-trippers as he walked toward the further reaches of the shoreline. He'd always told himself he enjoyed the changing moods of Homer's deep-sounding sea. And he did so now.