Forty-nine

The following morning, Morse had been early summoned to the presence, summoned to Caesar's tent.

“Won't do, will it, Morse. Just won't do! You tell us to go and bring Barron in. And why? Because you say he's knifed Flynn and Repp. Fine! There's three of ‘em, you say, originally involved in the cover-up over the Harrison murder, three of ‘em prepared to stick to their stories—for a fee of course. Then suddenly we find two of ‘em murdered, and somebody—somebody, Morse—thinks this'll be as good an opportunity as any to finish off number three. So whoever this somebody is, he decided he's been forking out way over the odds anyway, and he goes ahead with his plan. He's been living with three albatrosses round his neck, and suddenly he finds somebody else has cut the strings off two of ‘em. Too good an opportunity to be missed. All adds up, doesn't it? Except, matey, for one thing: Barron's death turns out to be a bloody accident. Just some teenage lout…”

Strange took a breather, gulped down the last of his coffee, and stuck another chocolate biscuit in his mouth: “Fancy a coffee?”

“No.”

“They'll be open in an hour, you mean?”

“Fifty minutes, actually.”

Strange suddenly sounded extremely pleased with himself: “Did you actually say ‘actually,’ Morse?”

Oh dear.

It was Strange who broke the ensuing silence. “Where are we, in all this?” he asked softly.

“I dunno. I felt convinced that the same fellow—Barron—had murdered both of them, both Flynn and Repp. I thought the motive was a pretty familiar one—money. You know, there's nothing much worse in life than people doing the same job and getting paid at different rates. It happens in every office, in every profession in the land. Anger … jealousy … bitterness… usually controllable but potentially dynamite. And I thought Barron had found out he wasn't doing half so well as his partners in crime.”

“And who exactly is this golden goose?”

“You know that as well as I do.”

“I do?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Morse quietly.

A knock at the door heralded PC Kershaw, the fast-track recruit with a First in History from Keble who'd driven Morse out to Sutton Courtenay, and whose duties for the present consisted mostly of supplying the Chief Superintendent with regular coffee and chocolate biscuits.

“Anything I can do for you, sir?”

“Yes,” growled Strange. “Bugger off!” Then, turning back to Morse: “Are you making any progress?”

“Early days. We've not even had the final path reports yet. Life's full of surprises.”

“And disappointments.”

“That too, yes.”

“Well if it wasn't Barron …”

“Dunno. But I'm sure the key figure in both cases is one and the same person—the man who was in bed with Yvonne Harrison the night she was murdered.”

“You don't think it was Repp?”

“No. As I see it, Repp had been recceing the property, maybe for several nights. It was going to be a gift for any professional burglar like him. And he knew pretty well all that went on that night—”

“Knew the fellow who was in bed with Yvonne?”

“Yes. But I don't think it was Repp or any other burglar who disturbed the bondage session that evening. I think that was somebody else. And I think it's most likely that our lover-boy knew that someone else.”

“And in your book Barron was the lover-boy?”

“Well, he was doing a job for her—hanging about the place quite a bit—strong, good-looking sort of fellow—the husband away a good deal of the time …”

“But I'll say it again—what if it wasn't Barron?”

“Plenty of other candidates, surely?”

“Oh yes?”

Morse measured his words carefully. “I think that anyone meeting Yvonne Harrison, if she turned things on a bit—anyone, including me—would have given a month's beer money—”

“A week's in your case.”

“—for an hour or two between the sheets, or between the bedposts, or between anywhere else. By, er, by all accounts she was a … well, let's say she had the same effect on men as they tell me Viagra has on the impotent, or the victims of chronic erectile dysfunction, as they're known these days.”

“Really! So for all we know, this chap could have been a client from North Wales or somewhere.”

“More probably South Wales, sir.”

“And much more probably, somebody local.”

“Agreed.”

“Any ideas?”

“Well, the only fellow I've met in that little community who's topped up with surplus testosterone is the landlord of the Maiden's Arms.”

“You've interviewed him?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I'm still trying to come to terms with the fact that it wasn't Barron. You see I still think he's the key to all this ridiculously complex business. But complex only because those involved deliberately made it complex.”

“Barron's phone calls, you mean? No luck there?”

“No. Change of BT office, change of procedure, change of monitoring, files reclassified … no hope! Wouldn't help anyway. All Barron said was that he'd rung her and the number was engaged; and then rung her again and the call wasn't answered. Neat, wasn't it? No record of anything.”

“He was lying, you think?”

“Yes.”

“What about the burglar alarm?”

“Thunderstorm, possibly—that sets ‘em off.”

“There wasn't a thunderstorm that night.”

“No? Probably a cat then—they set ‘em off too.”

“They hadn't got a cat.”

“Oh.”

Strange lumbered to his feet. “Look! You surely don't still think Barron's your man, do you?”

Morse smiled. “Don't I?”