Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

"Put yourself in his position.  You pick up your fare outside 135

 the

station and drive him out to Lower Swinstead; and there you're asked if you

want to earn a bit a lot of extra money.  You don't really have to do much at

all.  Fellow says he's going into the house - his house, anyway and the

burglar alarm is going to ring.  All you've got to do is to say, if you're

questioned about things, that you heard the alarm ringing while you were

parked outside.  Not too difficult?  The alarm was ringing by then.  And

you're offered what?

I dunno twenty or thirty quid, two or three hundred quid?  But the key point

is that Flynn never fully realized how vital his testimony was going to be.  "

"Are you making it all up?"

"Yes!  So allow me to continue making it all up.  Flynn's got little idea of

why he's getting such a bonus for doing virtually bugger-all.

But then he starts to read a few press-reports; and unlike our boys he puts

two and two together, and he smiles to himself because he knows the answer.

And pretty soon he realizes he's sold himself stupidly cheap, and he decides

he'll balance the books a bit better.  "

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?  He's been trying to blackmail

Frank Harrison?"

Morse drained his pint.

"Not sure.  But I'd like to bet that someone that night was more than ready

to pay his way out of trouble."

"Or her way."

"Could be, yes."  Morse contemplated an empty glass.

"Is it your round or mine, by the way?"

"Yours."

Morse consulted his wristwatch.

"Good gracious me!  Time you drove me home.  I need a shot of insulin, Lewis.

You should've reminded me."

'you still haven't told me why you thought it was Flynn," complained Lewis as

he drove north through the Summertown shopping area.

"Small man that's why."

"So's the landlord of the Maiden's Arms."

"Ah, but Flynn was very fond of Guinness."

"What the hell's that got to do with anything?"

"I forget.  I'm, er, I'm getting muddled."

Lewis pulled up outside Morse's flat.

"Anything .  .  .  anything I can do for you, sir?"

"Certainly not.  It's just that I'm beginning to feel exquisitely sleepy,

that's all.  The day's still comparatively young, I grant you.

But don't ring me not tonight not unless anything dramatic happens.  "

"You mean' (Lewis's heart rose within him) 'you mean you are going to take on

the case?"

"Different ball-game, isn't it?  As they say in Chicago or somewhere."

"Shall I let the Super know?"

"I've already told him when we were at the rubbish dp."

Lewis shook his head in benign bewilderment as Morse made to get out of the

car.

"And I'll take possession of this -just temporarily, of course.  And if you

can find out whose it is .  .  ."

He pocketed the Parsifal cassette and was walking towards his front door when

Lewis wound down the car window.

"You can keep it as long as you like, sir.  But let me have it back when

you've finished with it.  They said at Blackwell's it's the top recording by

a fellow called Napperbush."

"You mean ..  .?"

Lewis nodded happily.

"Thou art a man of taste."

"I thought you'd be pleased, sir."

"By the way, Lewis, we pronounce him

"K-napper-t-s-busch" ," amended the Chief Inspector, pedantically separating

the consonantal clusters.

                                      W

chapter thirty Often would the deaf man know the answers had he but the

faculty of hearing the questions.  Likewise would the un imagingative man

guess wisely at the answers had he but the wit of posing to himself the

appropriate questions (Viscount Mumbles, from Essays on the Imagination) As

lewis drove up to HQ, one particular thought was troubling him as it often

had: the marked inferiority of his own mental processes compared with those

of the man he had just left; the man who was doubtless now sleeping off the

effects of what had been (even for Morse) a hyper- alcoholic afternoon.  It

wasn't that his own processes were necessarily all that much slower; just

that they seemed always to leave the starling-blocks way after Morse had

sprinted on ahead.

Obviously (Lewis knew it!  ) innate intelligence was a big factor in

everything: the speed of perception and understanding, the analysis of data,

the linkage of things.  But there was something else: the knack of

prospective thinking, of looking ahead and asking oneself the right

questions, as well as the wrong questions, about what was likely to happen in

the future; and then of coming up with some answers, be they right or wrong.

So frequently in previous cases had Morse led him along, and by prompting the

right questions evinced the right sort of answers.

"Socradc dialectic', Morse had called it, recounting

how Socrates had managed to elicit from a totally untutored slave-boy the

basic principles of plane geometry -just by asking the right questions.

So.

So, in his office that early evening, Lewis visualized himself seated

opposite Morse opposite Socrates, rather.

You 'we got to find the car, haven't you ?  The car that dumped the body?

Where will you find it?

I don't know.

Where would you have driven that car?

I don't know.  Anywhere, I suppose.