Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

) to have a mum and a dad.  Yeah!  He'd hated both his mum and his dad but

he'd hated his mum less, and it was proper to have a choice.  Something else

too: you know, when the poor little bugger went to school and one of the

other kids said what's your name or what's your dad do well, it was probably

old- fashioned to think like that but, yeah!  " better to have two of them,

two parents.

So she ought to change her name to his, but no need for any of all that

nuptial stuff!  Just for the kid's sake, mind nothing to do with any social

worker!

But she'd be

"Debbie Repp', then; and that would be too close to 'demirep' (a word she'd

met in the inter crural article), which she'd looked up in the biggest

dictionary she could find in the Burford Public Library: 'a person, esp.  a

woman, of dubious and libidinous disposition'.  Her name, she'd decided,

would henceforth remain

"Richardson'.  And in any case the subsequent messy miscarriage had settled

that domestic crisis.

At 12.  50 p.  m.  she left her vigil for the kitchen, where she felt the

neck of the champagne bottle, standing beside two glasses on the table there.

Inappropriately chanbre she decided (another recent addition to her

vocabulary), and she put it back in the fridge.  Not Premier Division stuff:

8.  99 from the

supermarket, although in truth she'd begrudged even that.  Money!  God, how

important that was in life!  They had enough money what's more, money

temporarily held in her own name.  But that was Harry's money, and she would

never dare to touch more of it than the reasonably generous allowance he'd

authorized.

She'd taken some occasional office-cleaning jobs in Burford, usually from 6

p.  m.  to 8 p.  m.  But 4.  75 per hour was hardly the rate of remuneration

to support any reasonable lifestyle; certainly not the style she'd begun to

get accustomed to with Harry.

So did she find herself almost hoping that he might pick up again on some of

those very shady but very profitable activities?

No!  No!  No!

At 1.  15 p.  m.  she rang Bullingdon Prison, learning that Harry Repp had

left on schedule that morning with a bus warrant for Oxford.  Nothing further

they could tell her: no longer their responsibility, was he?

She could ring the Probation Office in Oxford that might have been his first

port-of-call.  Which number she was about to dial when she noticed a car

pulling up outside an R-Reg.  " dark blue, expensive-looking model; and a man

she'd never seen before getting out of it, and walking towards her up the

narrow, amateurishly cemented front-path.

85

chapter twenty Then said the Jews unto him.  Thou art not yet fifty years

old, and hast thou seen Abraham?  Jesus said unto them.  Verily, verily, I

say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am (The Gospel according to St John, ch.

VIII, w.  57, 58) already, an hour or so before driving out to see Debbie

Richardson, it had been an unusual morning for Sergeant Lewis.

Morse had insisted on buying the second round in the Woodstock Arms, albeit

one consisting only of one pint of Morrell's Best Bitter for himself, since

as yet Lewis was only halfway down his obligatory orange juice.

Unusual?  Yes.  And quite certainly surprising.

"Do you really mean it about the car number, sir?"

"Just be patient!"

"What do you think I am being?"

"You say the car was darkish, ne wish top pish range?"

"Like I said, I was really concentrating on the bus."

"Be more specific, man!  Go for it.  Back your hunches!"

"All right: black; R-reg; twenty thou."

"That's better."

Lewis smiled dubiously.

"Thank you."

"And how many people in that car of yours?  One?  Two?  Three?"

"Certainly one, sir."

"We'll make a detective of you yet," mumbled Morse, leaning forward as he

buried his nose in the froth.

"Could've been two, I suppose.  I can't really remember but .  .  .  you

know, it was a bit like one of those cars going off on a family holiday, you

know what I mean?"

No.  "

"Well, you know--' " For Christ's sake stop saying "you know"

                                      "

"Well, you've got things packed everywhere, haven't you?  Not just cases and

things but nappies, bedding, towels, boots, Wellingtons, thermoses, carrier

bags all piled up so you can hardly see out of the back window."

"What sort of bags?"

Lewis was trying hard to re-visualize the scene, and fortunately Morse had

picked on the one thing that finally jogged his fading memory.  Bags!  Yes,

there'd been bags in the back of that car: bags you could stick all sorts of

things inside.  And suddenly the picture had grown clearer: "Black bags!"

"You think he was off to the rubbish dump?"

"Could've been.

"Waste Reception Area" , by the way, sir.  "

"Where's the biggest rubbish dump in Oxfordshire?"

"Or in Oxford, perhaps?"  Lewis's face had brightened.

"Red- bridge.

People go there from all over the county straight down the A34 then turn

off--' But Lewis stopped.

"Forget it, sir.  From Bullingdon you'd turn on to the A41, and then straight

on to the A34.  You wouldn't go into Bicester at all."

"And you're quite sure the car went into Bicester?"

"That's one thing I am sure about."