Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

the car park of the Maiden's Arms that Morse, after admitting to a very

strange lapse of memory in missing The Archers, suddenly decided on a new

line of enquiry that seemed to Lewis (if possible) even stranger: "Drive me

round to Holmes's place in Burford."

"Why ?"  began a weary Lewis.

"Get orawith it!"

The ensuing conversation was brief.

"What did you make of Biffen, sir?"

"He decided to enlist in the ranks of the liars, like the rest of'em."

"Well, yes .  ..  if Mrs Barren was telling me the truth."

"Probably not important anyway."

Lewis waited a while.

"What is important, sir?"

"Barren!  That's what's important.  I'm still not absolutely sure I was on

the wrong track but.  .  ."

'.  .  .  but it looks as if you were.  "

Morse nodded.

"What did you make of?"

"Concentrate on the driving, Lewis!  They're not used to Formula-One fanatics

round here."

A blurred shape slowly formed through the frosted glass of the front door,

its green paint peeling or already peeled, which was finally opened by a

pale-faced, wispily haired woman of some fifty-plus summers.

Lewis paraded his ID.

"Mrs Holmes?"

With hardly a glance at the documentation, the woman neatly reversed her

wheelchair and led her visitors through the narrow, bare-floored, virtually

bare-walled passageway for indeed there was just the one framed memento of

something on the wall to the left.

I suppose it's about Roy?  " She spoke with the dispirited nasal whine of a

Birmingham City supporter whose team has just been defeated.

In the living room, in a much-frayed armchair, sat a youth smoking a

cigarette, drinking directly from a can of Bass, a pair of black-stringed

amplifiers stuck in his ears.

He vaguely reminded Morse of someone; but that was insufficient to stop him

taking an intense and instant dislike to the boy, who had made no attempt to

straighten his lounging sprawl, or to miss a single lyric from the latest rap

record until he saw Morse's lips speaking directly to him.

 "Wha'?"  Reluctantly Roy Holmes removed one of the ear- pieces.

"Why didn't you answer the door yourself, lad, and give your mum a break?"

The youth's eyes stared back with cold hostility.

"Couldn't 'ear it, could I?  Not wi' this on."

No Brummy accent there; instead, the Oxfordshire burr with its curly vowels.

His mother began to explain.

"It's the police, Roy ' " Again?  Bin there, 'aven't I.  Made me statement.

What more do they want?  Accident, won nit I didn't try to 'ide nuthin.  What

the fuck?  "

Morse responded quietly to the outburst.

"We appreciate your co-operation.  But do you know what you've made of

yourself in life so far?  Shall I tell you, lad?  You're about the most

uncouth and loutish fourteen-year-old I've ever ' ' Fifteen-yenr-old,"

interposed Mrs Holmes, more anxious, it seemed, to correct her son's natal

credentials than to deny his innate crudity.

"Fifteen on March the 26th.  Got it wrong in the papers, didn't they?"

"Well, well!  Same birthday as Housman."

Silence.

"And' (Morse now spoke directly to the mother) 'he'll be able to smoke in a

year's time, and go to the pub for a pint a couple of years after that if you

give him some pocket- money, Mrs Holmes.

Because I can't see him earning any- thing much himself, not in his present

frame of mind.  "

If Lewis had earlier noticed the tell-tale sign of drug dependency in the

boy's eyes, he now saw a wider blaze of hatred there; and was sure that Morse

was similarly and equally aware of both, as Mrs Holmes switched her wheel-

chair abruptly around and faced Morse aggressively: "It was an accident could

happen to anybody he didn't

mean no trouble like he said like he told you .  .  .  That's right, isn't

it, Roy?  "

"Leave me be!"

"Perhaps it wasn't you we came to Burford to see."

For a few seconds there was a look of bewilderment, of anxiety almost, on Roy

Holmes's face.  Then, draining his can of beer, he got to his feet, and left

the room.

Seconds later the front door slammed behind him with potentially

glass-shattering force.

"What time will he be back?"  asked Lewis.

She shrugged her narrow shoulders.

"You worry about him?"

"Everybody worries about him."

"How long's he been on drugs?"

"Year over a year."

"How does he pay for them?"

"You tell me."

"Not much of a son, is he?"  said Morse.

She shook what once must have been a very pretty head with a gesture of

desperation.

"Does he get the money from you?"

"I've got nothing to give him.  He's not stupid.  He knows that."

"But.  .  .?"  Morse pointed to the empty beer can; the empty packet of

cigarettes.

"I dunno."

Morse got to his feet.  Lewis too.

"How long ...?"  Morse nodded to the wheelchair.

"Six years."

Morse stopped in front of the one framed picture in the dingy hallway.  Not a

picture, though.  A diploma.

 Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire Athletics Association This is to

certify that in the annual three-counties cross- country championships held

in Cutteslowe Park, Oxford, on the 19th July, 1974, the winner of the ladies

event from a field of seventy-two runners was:

ELIZABETH JANE THOMAS