Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

"I get used to it, that's why."  She leaned forward across the table.

And Lewis saw for certain what he had already suspected for semi-certain that

she wore no bra beneath her dress; probably no knickers, either.

"How often do you go to the pub there, the Maiden's Arms?"

"Often as I can."

"Not in the car, I hope?"

"Sometimes get a lift there you know, if somebody rings."

"When were you there last?"

"When I posted the letter."

"Open all day, is it?"

"What's all this quizzin' about?"

"Just that my boss'll be interested, that's all."

"You're all alike, you bloody coppers!"

It seemed a strange reply, and Lewis looked puzzled.

Pardon?  "

"What you just asked me about the pub being' open all day.  Exactly what the

other fellow asked."

"What other fellow?"

"Can't remember his name.  So what?  Can't remember yours, come to that."

"When was this?"

"Last night.  Asked me out for a drink, didn't he?  I reckon he fancied me a

little bit.  But I was already--' 95

 " From the police, you say?  "

"That's what he said."

"You didn't check?"

Debbie Richardson shrugged her shoulders.

"Nice he was sort o' well educated.  Know what I mean?"

"You can't recall his name?"

"No, sorry.  Tell you one thing though.  Sergeant, er .  .."

"Lewis."

"Had a lovely car, he did.  Been nice it would ridin' round in that.

A Jag maroon-coloured Jag.  "

chapter twenty-two .  a mountain range of Rubbish, like an old volcano, and

its geological foundation was Dust.  Coal-dust, vegetable-dust, bone-dust,

crockery-dust, rough dust, and sifted dust all manner of Dust in the

accumulated Rubbish (Dickens, Our Mutual Friend) 'not for scrap, is she?  "

Stan Cox nodded towards the Jag parked in the no-parking area outside his

office window in the Redbridge Waste Disposal Centre.

"Getting on a bit," conceded Morse, 'like all of us.  You know, windscreen

wipers packing up, gear-box starting to jam, no heat.  "

"Sounds a bit like the missus!"

"Pardon?"

"Joke, sir."

"Ah, yes."  Morse's smile was even weaker than the witticism as he looked

round the cramped office, his eyes catching a girlie calendar in the corner,

from which a provocatively bare- breasted bimbo, with short blonde hair,

stared back at him.

"Nice, ain't she!"

Morse nodded.

"Past her sell-by date, though.  She's the May girl."

"Remember the of' song, sir " From May to September"?"

"You just like having her around."

It was Cox's turn to nod: "Drives me mad, she does.  Keeps me sane at the

same time though, if you follows me meaning."

97

 Morse wasn't at all sure that he did, but he was conscious that he'd

drunk too much beer that lunchtime; that he should never have driven himself

out to Redbridge; that what he'd earlier seen as a clear-cut oudine had now

grown blurred around the periphery.  In the pub, with Lewis, he'd felt

convinced he could see a cause, a sequence, a structure, to the crime.

Perhaps two crimes now.

It was the same old tantalizing challenge to puzzles that had faced him ever

since he was a boy.  It was the certain knowledge that something had happened

in the past happened in an ordered, logical, very specific way.  And the

challenge had been, and still was, to gather the disparate elements of the

puzzle together and to try to reconstruct that 'very specific way'.

Not too successfully now, though.  For here, at Redbridge, there seemed a

great gulf fixed between the fanciful hypothesis he'd so recently formulated,

and the humdrum reality of a rubbish dump.

Is that what Cox was trying to say?

"How d'you mean?  Keeps you sane?"

"Well, it's not exactly your Botanical Gardens here, is it?  Just all the

filth and useless stuff people want shut of.  So the re not much good to look

at, 'cept her, bless her heart!  Pearl in a pigsty that's what she is."

"Why don't you write her a fan-letter?"

"Think she'd read it?"

"No."

"So what can we do for you.  Chief?"

Morse told him, making most of it up as he went along.

And when he'd finished.  Cox nodded.

"No problem.  We'd better just let the County Authorities know."

"Already done," lied Morse.  And refusing a cup of coffee, he left the office

and walked unaccompanied around the site, only a few hundred yards from the

soutfiem stretch of

Oxford's Ring Road, thinking about the things he'd learned from Cox .

                                      .

"Do you reckon," he'd asked, 'you could dispose of a body here, in one of

your, er .  .  ?  "

"Only in one of the compactor bins that'd be the best bet.  You'll be able to

see for yourself, though.  The others are a bit too open, really."

"Black bag, say?  Put a body in it?  Just chuck it in?"

"You'd need a big bag."

"Well, let's say we've got a big bag."

"Heavy things, bodies.  Ten, twelve stone, say?  You couldn't just... well,

unless you had two people, I suppose."

"Or cut the body in half, perhaps."

"Mm.  Still a bit awkward, wouldn't you think?  Unless it were stiff, of

course."

"Yes..."

"Was it stiff, this body of yours?"

"Er, no.  No, I don't think it was."

"Or unless it was a pretty small body.  Was it small, this body of yours?"

"Er, no.  No.  I don't think it was."

"Well, as I say..."

"How would you get rid of a body here?"