Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

stock of the past week's activities, Lewis felt solidly satisfied both with

himself and with the performance of the personnel readily allocated to the

case.  There had been so much to cover .  .  .

Lewis had personally supervised the Monday and Tuesday enquiries into the

activities of Paddy Flynn in the years, months, days and morning before his

murder; and if the net result was perhaps somewhat disappointing, at least it

had been thorough.  Flynn had been living in an upstairs flat (converted a

few years previously) in Morrell Avenue.  He had been there for just over

five months, paying 375 per calendar month for the privilege, and having

virtually nothing to do with the tenant of the downstairs flat a middle-aged

account- ant who, rain or shine, would walk each day down to St Clements,

across Magdalen Bridge, and up the High to his

 firm's offices in King

Alfred Street.  He knew Flynn by sight, of course, but only exchanged words

when occasionally they encountered each other in the narrow entrance hall.

Of Flynn's lifestyle, he had no knowledge at all: no ideas about the

activities in which his fellow-tenant might have been engaged.  Well, just

one little observation, perhaps, since not infrequently there was a car

parked outside the semi always a different car, and almost always gone the

following morning.  Lewis's notes had read: "Has no knowledge ofF's

professional or leizure time activities'.  But he'd consulted his dictionary,

ever kept beside him, in case Morse decided to look at his notes, and quickly

corrected the antepenultimate word.

By all accounts Flynn had led a pretty private, almost secretive life.  He

was quite frequently spotted in the local hostelries, quite frequently

spotted in the local bookmakers, though never, apparently, the worse for

excessive liquor or for excessive losses.  His name figured nowhere in police

records as even the pettiest of crooks, although he was mentioned in

dispatches several times as the taxi driver who had picked up Frank Harrison

from Oxford Railway Station on the night of Yvonne's murder.  Radio Taxis had

been his employer at the time; but he had been suspected of (possibly)

fabricating fares for his own aggrandisement, and duly dismissed- without

rancour, it appeared, and certainly without recourse to any industrial

tribunal.

Dismissed too, subsequently, by the proprietors of Maxim Removals, a firm of

middle-distance hauliers, 'for attempted trickery with the tachometer'.

(Lewis had spelled the last word correctly, having checked it earlier.  )

Since that time, five months previously, Flynn had reported regularly to the

DSS office at the bottom of George Street.  But lacking any testimonials to

his competence and integrity, his attempts to secure further employment in

any field of motor transport had been unsuccessful, his completed application

forms seldom reaching even the slush-pile.  It was all rather

sad, as the woman regularly dealing with the Flynn file had testified.

He'd been thirty-two when, seven years earlier, he'd married Josie Newton,

and duly fathered two daughters upon that lady - although (this the testimony

of a brother in Belfast) the offspring had appeared so dissimilar in

temperament, coloration, and mental ability, that there had been many doubts

about their common paternity.

Josie Flynn had been unable or unwilling to offer much in the way of

'character-profiling' of her late husband (they'd never divorced); had scant

interest in the manner of his murder; and, quite certainly, no interest in

attending his 'last rites', whatever form these latter might take.  Although

he had treated her with ever-increasing indifference and contempt, he had

never (she acknowledged it) abused her physically or sexually.  In fact sex,

even in the early months of their relation- ship, had never been a dominant

factor in his life; nor, for that matter, had power or success or social

acceptability or drink or even happiness.  Just plain money.  She'd not seen

him for over two years; nor had her daughters she'd seen to that.  It was

(again) all rather sad, according to Sergeant Dixon's report.  Mr Paddy Flynn

may not have been the ideal husband, but perhaps Ms Josephine Newton (now her

preferred appellation was hardly a paragon of rectitude in the marital

relationship.

"Not exacly a saint herself?"  as Dixon's hand- written addendum had

suggested.  And Lewis smiled to himself again, feeling a little superior.

It had been Lewis himself (no Morse beside him) who had visited Flynn's

upstairs flat: smell of cigarette smoke every- where; sheets on the single

bed rather grubby; dirty cutlery and plates in the kitchen sink, but not too

many of them; the top surface of the cooker in sore need of Mrs Lewis; soiled

shirts, underpants, socks, handkerchiefs, in a neat pile behind the bathroom

door; a minimal assemblage of trousers, jackets,

 shirts, underclothes, in a

heavy wardrobe; a Corby trouser- press; eleven cans of Guinness in the

otherwise sparsely stocked refrigerator; not a single book anywhere; two