Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

Market) had been found in Barren's van evidence, if anything, to substantiate

the claim that the builder had paid for a fairly extensive stay in the centre

of Thame on July the 24th.

Fourth.  There appeared, as yet, no evidence whatever that Barron had

received any monies from anywhere to match the payments so regularly stashed

into the balances of both Flynn and Repp.  In short, i/Barron had been the

third man ifhe had duly received his own share of the spoils for the

conspiracy of silence there was no sign of it, so far.

They were not in any way decisive, these findings and non- findings.

The trouble was they all seemed to be pointing in the same direction.

Or were they?

For example (thought Lewis), it was surely to be expected that Barron would

have got rid of the murder weapon and bought himself a new knife if in fact

he had used the former for the murders.

For example (thought Lewis), it was most unlikely that Barron had only one

pair of overalls And if someone with an extravagantly fanciful mind (Morse!  )

could entertain the idea that a pair of white overalls covered with red paint

was a good disguise for a soaking of blood .  .  .  well, it could be,

perhaps.

For example (thought Lewis), why buy a four-hour parking ticket in Thame on

the day of the murders unless to create an alibi?  Builders would usually

have little difficulty in parking outside the properties in question.  All

right, parking was getting a nightmare everywhere, even for police cars, but.

.  .

For example (thought Lewis), why shouldn't Barren, like Flynn perhaps, have

received his pay-offs in bank-notes, and kept them?  No need to pay them into

a bank or a building society.  Why not put them in the loft?  In the

wardrobe?  In a milk jug in the fridge?  Like a few other self-employed

builders, Barren might well be playing a canny little game with casual

receipts, with ready-cash payments, with VAT evasions.  And, if so, he would

certainly not be over-anxious to account for any largish sums of money

regularly entrusted to some official depository.

Lewis himself had felt pretty certain that Ban-on was their man; Morse was

absolutely convinced.  And yet the evidence thus far gathered seemed to be

stacking up a little bit the wrong way.  Lewis knew it.  He had ever been a

champion of the cumulative- evidence approach to crime: a piece-by-piece

aggregation against a suspect that gradually mounted into an impressively

documented pile that could be forwarded to the DPP.  All right!  Morse's

method was occasionally very different.  Yet many of the murders that the

pair of them had solved together had been relatively uncomplicated: no real

mystery, no real cunning, no real deviousness, no carefully woven web of

deceit.  Domestic stuff, next-door-neighbour stuff, most of it, with the

husband returning home unexpectedly from work and finding his spouse abed

with postman, milkman, gas man .  .  .  builder?

But whichever way one looked at things, any direct evidence against the

builder was proving surprisingly difficult to come by.

At 8.  45 p.  m.  " tired and hungry, Lewis decided that whatever further

developments there were to be and they were coming in all the time - he would

have to take a break; and he drove home to Headington.  But only after trying

Morse's number once more.  Ringing tone.  No answer.

 Morse came into HQ three-quarters of an hour later, and rang Lewis's home

number immediately.  Ringing tone.  Answer.

Resignedly, about to start his eggs and chips, Lewis brought Morse up to date

with the information received, suggesting that it was, at this point, all a

bit ambivalent and equivocal, although in truth Lewis made use of neither of

these epithets himself.

Morse sounded mildly interested, giving his own verdict in somewhat pompous

terms.  He asserted that the character of the human condition was indeed

'ambiguity', the virtually inseparable mixture of the true and the false.

But in the present case such apparent contradictions could be explained so

very easily in fact in exactly the way Lewis himself had just explained them.

"And," continued Morse, 'you can be quite sure of one thing no, two things:

Barren murdered the pair of 'em; then somebody murdered Barren.  Get that

clear in your head, and we might make a bit of progress.  OK?  I'll see you

in the morning.  "

"Sir!  Before you ring off.  We tried to get you several times earlier but

there was the engaged tone all the time."

"That's funny.  I only remember making the one call."

"I thought perhaps you know, you seemed a bit whacked..  ."

"You'd be wrong, Lewis.  I nearly spent some time in bed.  Not quite, though.

Goodnight."

The dramatic news came in at twenty minutes to midnight, as Morse sat at home

making out a rough draft of his will.  He'd no immediate relatives remaining,

none at all; and therefore instructions for the post-mortem dissemination of

all his worldly goods should not present too much of a complication.  Nor did

they.  And he was writing out a fairish copy of a simple second draft when

the phone rang.  "What?"

"What?"