Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

copies of the Mirror opened at the Racing pages; a TV set, but not even the

statutory hard-core video; one CD, Great Arias from Puccini, but no CD player

for Flynn to have gauged their magnitude; no pictures on the walls; no

personal correspondence; and very little in the way of official

communications, apart from Social Security forms: no sign of any bank account

or credit facility.

Nothing much to go on.

And yet Lewis had sensed from the start that there was something missing.

Sensed that he knew where that 'some- thing missing' might well be.

And it was.

Most petty crooks had little in the way of imagination, having two or three

favoured niches wherein to conceal their ill-gotten gains.  And Paddy Flynn

proved no exception.  The small, brown-leather case was on the top shelf of

the old mahogany wardrobe, tucked away on the far left, beneath a pair of

faded-green blankets.

It took one DC just under twenty minutes to itemize the contents; a second DC

just over thirty minutes to check the original itemization a cache of

legitimate bank-notes, in fifties, twenties, tens, and fives.  The confirmed

tally was 17,465 and Lewis knew that Morse would be interested.

And Morse, on being told, most decidedly had been interested.

A similarly painstaking review of Repp and Richardson had taken up the whole

of the Wednesday.  Little new had come to light except for the unexpected (?

) discovery that an account with the Burfbrd and Cheltenham Building Society

showed a robust balance of 14,350 held in the name of Deborah Richardson,

with regular monthly deposits (as was confidentially ascertained) always made

in cash.  Debbie Richardson had

smilingly refused to answer Lewis's questions concerning the provenance of

such comparatively substantial income, stating her belief that everybody

bishops, barmaids, presidents, prostitutes all deserved some measure of

privacy.  Yes, Lewis had agreed; but he knew that Morse would be interested.

And Morse, on being told, most decidedly had been interested.

The Thursday and Friday had been taken up largely with a preliminary scrutiny

and analysis of the scores of reports and statements taken from prison

officers, bus drivers, rubbish- dump employees, car-park attendants, forensic

boffins, and so on and so on as well as from those members of the public who

had responded to appeals for information.  But so far there'd been little to

show for the methodical police routine that Lewis had supervised.  Vital,

though!

Criminal investigation was all about motives and relationships, about times

and dates and alibis.  It was all about building up a pattern from the pieces

of a jigsaw.  So many pieces, though.  Some of them blue for the sky and the

sea; some of them green and brown for the trees and the land; and sometimes,

somewhere, one or two pieces of quirky coloration that seemed to fit in

nowhere.  And that, as Lewis knew, was where Morse would come in as he

invariably did.  It was almost as if the Chief Inspector had the ability to

cheat: to have sneaked some quick glimpse of the finished picture even before

picking up the individual pieces.

Frequently when Lewis had seen him that week.  Morse had been sitting in HQ,

immobile and apparently immovable (apart from an hour or so over lunch times

occasionally and almost casually abstracting a page or two of a report, of a

statement, of a letter, from one of the bulging box-files on his desk, yvonne

ha prison written large in black felt-tipped pen down each of the spines.

Clearly (whatever else) Morse had come round to Strange's conviction that

some causal connection between the cases had become overwhelmingly probable.

 But that was no surprise to Lewis.

What had occasioned him puzzlement was the number of green box-files there,

since he had himself earlier studied the same material when (he could swear

it!  ) there had only been three.

184

chapter thirty-nine Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on

dead people?  A: All of my autopsies are performed on dead people (Reported

in the Massachusetts Lawyers' Journal after (for him) an unprecedented early

hour of retirement that same Sunday evening, at 9.  30 p.  m.  Morse had

awoken with a troublous headache.  Assuming that the dawn was already

breaking, he had confidently consulted his watch, to discover that it was

still only 11.  30 p.  m.  Thereafter he had woken up at regular

ninety-minute intervals, in spite of equally regular doses of Alka-Seltzer

and Paracetamol - his mind, even in the periods of intermittent slumber,

riding the merry-go- round of disturbing dreams; his blood sugar ridiculously

high; his feet suddenly hot and just as suddenly icy-cold; an indigestion

pain that was occasionally excruciating.

Ovid (now almost becoming Morse's favourite Latin poet) had once begged the

horses of the night to gallop slowly when- ever some delightfully compliant

mistress was lying beside him.  But Morse had no such mistress beside him;

and even if he had, he would still have wished those horses of the night to