Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

complete their course as quickly as they could possibly manage it.

He finally rose from the creased and crumpled sheets, and was shaving, just

as rosy-fingered Dawn herself was rising over the Cutteslowe Council Estate.

At 6 a.  m.  he once more measured his blood-sugar level, now

 dipped

dramatically from 24.  4 at 1 a.  m.  to 2.  8.  Some decent breakfast was

evidently required, and a lightly boiled egg with toast would fit the bill

nicely.  But Morse had no eggs; no slices of bread either.

So, perforce, it had to be cereal.  But Morse could find no milk, and there

seemed no option but to resort to the solitary king-sized Mars bar which he

always kept some- where in the flat.  For an emergency.  In rebus extremis,

like now.  But he couldn't find it.  Then bless you St Anthony!  - he

discovered that the Coop milkman had already called; and he had a great bowl

of Corn Flakes, with a pleasingly cold pint of milk and several liberally

heaped spoonsful of sugar.  He felt wonderful.

Sometimes life was very good to him.

At 6.  45 a.  m.  he considered (not too seriously) the possibility of

walking up from his North Oxford flat to the A40 Ring Road, and thence down

the gentle hill to Kidlington.  About what?  - thirty-five to forty minutes

to the HQ building.  Not that he'd ever timed himself, for he'd never as yet

attempted the walk.

Didn't attempt the walk that morning.

After administering his first insulin-dosage of the day, he drove up to

Police HQ in the Jaguar.

Far quicker.

In his office, as he re-read the final findings of the two postmortems (sic).

Morse decided, as he usually did, that there was no point whatsoever in his

trying to un jumble the physiological details of the lacerations inflicted on

the visceral organs of each body.  He had little interest in the stomach; had

no stomach for the stomach.

In fact he was more familiar with the nine-fold stomach of the bovine ilk

(this because of crossword puzzles) than with its mono-chambered human

counterpart.  Did it really matter much to know exactly how Messrs Flynn and

Repp had met their ends?  But yes, of course it did!

If the technicalities pointed to a particular type of weapon; if the weapon

could be accurately identified and then found; and if,

finally, it could be traced to someone who was known to have had such a

weapon and who had the opportunity of wielding it on the day of the murders .

.  .

Hold on though, Morse!  Be fair!  Amid a plethora of caveats, Dr Hobson had

pointed to a fairly specific type of weapon, had she not?  And he read again

the paragraph headed

"Tentative Conclusions': The knife was quite probably not all that long,

maybe no more than 6" -9", since in each case the lacerations seem the result

of forceful twisting, as if the murderer had gripped a handle that was short

and firm, say perhaps not much more than 1" -1%" in width.  The knife-blade

was fairly certainly short too (?  W), but very sharp, with its end shaped in

triangular fashion ([^).  It could have been something like a Stanley knife,

the sort of thing commonly used in DIY household jobs, carpentry, building,

that sort of thing.

Morse suddenly stopped reading, sat back in his chair, and placed his hands

on his head, fingers inter linked as he'd done so often at his teacher's

bequest in his infant class.  And what had been a faraway look in his eyes

now gradually focused into an intense gaze as he considered the implications

of the extraordinary idea which had suddenly occurred to him .  .  .

Very soon he was re-reading the whole report from Forensics where almost all

the earlier findings had been confirmed, although there remained much

checking to be done.  Prints of Flynn; prints of Repp; prints of the

car-owner; and several other prints as yet to be identified.  Doubtless some

of these latter would turn out to be those of the car-owner's family.  But

(Morse read the last sentence of the report again): "One set of

fingerprints, repeated and fairly firm, may well prove to be of considerable

interest'.

He leaned back again in his chair, pleasingly weary and really quite pleased

with himself, because he knew whose fingerprints they were.

Oh yes!

188

chapter forty Odd instances of strange coincidence are really not all

that odd perhaps (Queen Caroline's advocate, speaking in the House of Lords)

morse jerked awake as Lewis entered the office just before 8 a.  m.  ,

wondering where he was, what time it was, what day it was.  Yet it had been a

wonderful little sleep, the deep and dreamless sleep that Socrates

anticipated after swallowing the hemlock.

"No crossword this morning, sir?"

"Shop wasn't open."   "Why don't you pay a paper-boy?"   "Because, Lewis, a

little occasional exercise ..   ."

Lewis sat down.

"Do you mind if I ask you something?"  Morse pointed to the reports laid out

on the desk.  "You've read these?  "

Lewis nodded.

"But, like I say, I've got something to ask you."

"And I've got something to tell you.  Is that all right, Lewis?"  The voice

was suddenly harsh.

"You'll remember from all our times together how coincidence occurs in life