Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

far more frequently than anyone except me is prepared to accept.  Coincidence

isn't unusual at all.  It's the norm.  Just like those consecutive numbers

cropping up in the National Lottery every week.  But in this case the

coincidence is even odder than usual."

 (Lewis raised his eyebrows a little.  ) "Let's go back to Yvonne Harrison's

murder.  She was a woman with exceptional sex-drive; but she certainly wasn't

just the deaf-and-dumb nymphomaniac with a bedroom just above the public bar

that many a man has fantasized about.  Oh, no.  She was highly intelligent,

highly desirable, like the woman in the Larkin poem with the 'lash-wide

stare', who in turn was attracted by a variety of men.

A lot of men.  So many men that over the years she inevitably came across a

few paying clients with kinky preferences.  I doubt she ever went in for S

and M, but it looks very likely that a bit of bondage was on her list of

services, probably with a hefty surcharge.  It's well known that some men

only find sexual satisfaction with women who put on a show of being utterly

submissive and powerless.  It gives these men the only sense of real power

they're ever likely to experience in life, because the object of their desire

is lying there de fenceless un struggling sometimes un speaking too.  Not

uncommon, that, Lewis.  And you can read all about it in Kraft-Ebing's

case-studies .  .  .  "

(Lewis's eyebrows rose significantly.  ) '.  .  .  although, as you know, I'm

no great expert in such matters.  In fact, come to think of it, I can't even

remember whether he's got one or two 'b's in his name.  But it means there's

a pretty obvious explanation of two of the items that puzzled our previous

colleagues: a pair of handcuffs, and a gag not all that tightly tied.  The

woman offering such a specialist service is never going to answer back, never

going to scratch your eyes out and Yvonne Harrison had just about the longest

fingernails .  .  .  "

(Lewis's eyebrows rose a lot.  ) "On the night of the murder she had a client

in bed with her, and if ever there was a locus classic us for what they call

coitus interrupt us this was it, because someone interrupted the proceedings.

Or at the very least, someone saw them there in bed together.  "

"Harry Repp?"

"Repp was certainly there at some point.  But I think he kept his cool and

kept his distance that night.  I think he realized there could well be

something in it for himself.  He was right, too.  Because what he saw that

night what he later kept from the police was going to prove very profitable,

as you discovered, Lewis.  Five hundred pounds a month from someone just

for exercising his professional skills as a burglar in staying well out of

sight and keeping his eyes wide open.

Exactly what he saw, we shall't know, shall we?  Unless he told Debbie

Richardson, which I doubt.  "

"What do you think he saw?"

"Pretty obvious, isn't it?"

"You mean he saw who murdered Mrs Harrison?"

Morse nodded.

"And you think you know who .  .  .  ?"

Morse nodded.

But Lewis shook his head.

"It's all so wishy-washy, what you've just said.  I don't know where to

start.  When was she murdered?  Who rang her husband?  Who set off the

burglar alarm?  Who- ?"

"Lewis!  We, remember, are investigating something else.  But if any study of

the first case facilitates the solving of the second?  So be it!  And it

does, as you'll agree."

"I will?"

Morse nodded again.

"Three people were coincidentally involved in a clever and profitable

deception that night, each of them able and willing to throw his individual

spanner into any reconstruction the CID could reasonably come up with.

First, there was Flynn, our corpus primum, who told as many lies as anybody:

both about the time he picked Frank Harrison up from Oxford Station, and

about what he noticed or more probably the person he saw when he got to Lower

Swinstead.  Second, there was Repp, our corpus secundum, who told us no lies

at all, but only because he told us nothing at all.  Third .  .

"

 Morse hesitated, and Lewis looked across the desk expectantly.

"There's this third man of ours, and a man most unlikely to become our corpus

tertium.  Once Repp was out of jail, the three of them Repp himself, Flynn,

and this third man they all arranged to meet together.  They'd done pretty

well so far out of their conspiracy of silence, and they were all keen on

continuing to squeeze the milch-cow even drier.  So they did meet a meeting

where things went tragically wrong.  Greed .  ..  jealousy .  .  .  personal

antipathies .  .

whatever!  Two of them had an almighty row in the car in which they were

travelling together.  And one of them, probably in a lay-by somewhere, knifed

one of the others: one of them knifed Flynn.  And the remaining two disposed

of the body neatly enough at Redbridge the rubbish bags proving very handy, I

should think.  So any profits no longer needed to be split three ways.  And

now the talk between the two of them must have been all about a fifty-fifty

share-out of the spoils, and how it could be effected.  But somewhere in the