Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

"Not easy, is it?  You can always try Gloucester Green' (Evans pointed

vaguely across towards Hythe Bridge Street) 'or one of the side roads."

The two sergeants walked together to the northern area of the park, away from

the main road where, with any choice in the matter, any murderous villain (as

well as Sergeant Evans) would surely have headed with an incriminating car.

But things had changed.  Parading the site, tall stanchions now stood there,

topped with video-cameras and floodlights.  No guarantee of complete security

perhaps, but a sufficient deterrent for casual car thieves.

"You could still squeeze one or two more cars in?"  suggested Lewis (himself

a wizard at vehicular maneuvering) pointing to

^S

 a few square me tres amid heaps of sand and piles of jagged half-bricks and

broken tiles.

"Not if you're worried about your suspension."

"Which he wasn't, Dick."

"No sign of it though, is there?"

They walked systematically through the lines of cars down to the southern end

of the car park, bounded by the Botley Road.

Again, nothing.

And the questions that had already worried Morse were worrying his sergeant

now.  Was there any sign of criminal activity here?  Were they on some

profidess pursuit of a questionable quarry?

Morse!

Top-of-the-head Morse!

Things just didn't happen like that.

At bottom, any police investigation was a matter of pretty firm facts; of

accumulating such facts; and of aggregating them into a hard core of

evidence, on which suspicion could be progressively corroborated, until an

arrest could be made, a charge brought, a prosecution formulated, and finally

a case heard in a court of law.

That's how things happened.

A dispirited Lewis stood with Evans for only a few seconds longer before

walking up to the exit-booth, where a red-and- white striped barrier was

being intermittently raised as a few patrons returning early to Oxford

inserted their parking- tokens, and where a uniformed Transport Policeman,

clearly not at the peak of physical condition, came running towards them:

"What the 'ell are you doing here, Dick?"

Just back from Reading, Bob.  And what the 'ell's up with you?  You know

Sergeant Lewis here from HQ?  "

Mitchell had regained some of his breath.

"HQ?  Huh!  That's exactly what's up.  Chap who said he was from HQ.  Rang

about a car said it was parked here at the station .  .."

Evans finished the sentence for him.

"But it wasn't."

"No.  But I thought I'd look around a bit.  This chap'd sounded pretty

positive, like.  So I went over to Gloucester Green and Bingo!  Just behind

the Trish pub there."

"You've got this chap's number?"  asked Lewis.

"In the office, yes.  He said he couldn't get here himself.  Said he was

tired.  Huh!"

"He must have given his name?"

' "Moss" , I think it was.  Look, I'll just.  .  .  "

A temporarily rejuvenated Mitchell was bounding up the station steps three at

a time as Evans turned to Lewis: "Reckon he mis-heard a bit."

"Just a bit," said Lewis, with quiet resignation.

^5

chapter thirty-two Should any young or old officer experience incipient

or actual signs of vomiting at the sight of some particularly harrowing scene

of crime the said person should not necessarily attribute such nausea to some

psychological vulnerability, but rather to the virtually universal

reflex-reactions of the upper intestine (The SOCO Handbook, Revised 1999)

barry edwards was another of the SOCO personnel called out that busy

Saturday.  In fact, simply because he lived only a short distance away along

the Botley Road, he was the first of the team to arrive at the scene of the

crime.  A well-set, dark-haired man in his late twenties, he had a pair of

diffident brown eyes that seemed to some of his colleagues strangely naive,

as if he would ever be surprised by the scenes that would inevitably confront

him in his new career.

His SOCO training had been completed only a few months previously, and now he

was a fully fledged (civilian) officer, employed by the Thames Valley Police.

Furthermore, thus far, he was enjoying his job.

After leaving school, with a comparatively successful performance in the

comparatively undemanding field of GCSE, he had worked as a supermarket

shelf-filler, hospital porter, barman, and ironmonger's shop-assistant,

before finally completing a police recruitment questionnaire and duly

learning of the opportunities in his present profession.  He had taken his

chance; and he was enjoying his choice.

He felt quite important sometimes, especially when he dealt

THE REMORSEFUL

DAY

off his own bat with some fairly minor affair, when (as he knew) he was

important.  And he'd looked forward to the time when he would be called out

to a big job, to some major incident.  Like murder.  Like now as he sensed

immediately when he drove his van into the Gloucester Green Car Park.  The

full complement of the team would have been called in, and almost certainly

he would witness, for the first time, the operation of those basic principles

preservation of the scene, continuity and non-contamination of evidence which