The Riddle Of The Third Mile

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Thursday, 24th July

Preliminary investigations are now in full swing, and Morse appears unconcerned about the contradictory evidence that emerges.

It might perhaps appear to the reader that Morse had come off slightly the worse in the exchanges recorded in the previous chapter. But the truth is that after a late pub lunch Morse returned to his office exceedingly, satisfied with his morning’s work, since fresh ideas were breeding in profusion now.

He was still seated there, deep in thought, when three quarters of an hour later the phone rang. It was the police surgeon.

‘Look, I’ll cut out the technicalities. You can read ‘em in my report-and anyway you wouldn’t be able to follow ‘em. Adult, male, Caucasian; sixtyish or slightly more; well nourished; no signs of any physical abnormality; pretty healthy except for the lungs, but there’s no tumour there-in fact there’s no tumour or neoplasm anywhere-we don’t call it cancer these days, you know. By the way, you still smoking, Morse?’

‘Get on with it!’

‘Dead before immersion-’

‘You do surprise me.’

‘-and probably curled up a bit after death.’

‘He was carried there, you mean?’

‘I said “probably”.’

‘In the boot of a car?’

‘How the hell do I know!’

‘Anything else?’

‘Dismembered after death-pretty certain of that.’

‘Brilliant,’ mumbled Morse.

‘And that’s almost it, old man.’

Morse was secretly delighted with these findings, but for the moment he feigned a tone of disappointment. ‘But aren’t you going to tell me how he died? That’s what they pay you for, isn’t it?’

As ever, the surgeon sounded unperturbed. Tricky question, that. No obvious wounds -or unobvious ones for that matter. Somebody could have clobbered him about the head -a common enough cause of death, as well you know. But we haven’t got a head, remember?’

‘Not poisoned?’ asked Morse more quietly.

‘Don’t think so. It’s never all that easy to tell when you’ve got your giblets soaked in water.’

‘Ah, yes. Drop of Scotch there, Morse. But, after all, there’s a drop of Scotch in most – by the way, Morse, you still boozing?’

‘I’ve not quite managed to cut it out.’

‘And some kippers. You interested in kippers?’

‘For breakfast?’

‘He’d had some, yes. But whether he’d had ‘em for breakfast-’

‘You mean he might have had the Scotch for breakfast and the kippers for lunch?’

‘We live in a strange world.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘As I said, that’s almost the lot.’

With huge self-gratification, Morse now prepared to launch his Exocet. ‘Well, thanks very much, Max. But if I may say so I reckon somebody at your end – I’m sure it isn’t you! – deserves a hefty kick up the arse. As you know, I don’t pretend to be a pathologist myself but- ‘

‘I said it was “almost” the lot, Morse, and I know what you’re going to say. I just thought I’d leave it to the end -you know, just to humour an old friend and all that.’

‘It’s that bloody arm I’m talking about!’

‘Yes, yes! I know that. You just hold your horses a minute! I noticed you looking down at that arm, of course, almost as if you thought you’d made some wonderful discovery. Discovery? What? With that bloody great bruise there? You don’t honestly think even a part-time hospital porter could have missed that, do you?’

Morse growled his discomfiture down the phone, and the surgeon proceeded placidly.

‘Funny thing, Morse. You just happened to be right in what you thought-not for the right reasons, though. That contusion on the left arm, it was nothing to do with giving blood. He must have just knocked himself somewhere-or somebody else knocked him. But you were right, he was a blood donor. Difficult to be certain, but I examined his arms very carefully and I reckon he’d probably had the needle about twenty to twenty-five times in his left arm; about twelve to fifteen in his right.’

‘Mm.’ For a few seconds Morse was silent. ‘Send me the full report over, please, Max.’

‘It won’t help much.’

‘I’ll decide that, thank you very much.’

‘What do I do with the corpse?’

‘Put it in the bloody deep-freeze!’

A few minutes later, after slamming down the phone, Morse rang Lonsdale and asked for the college secretary.

‘Can I help you?’ She had a nice voice, but for once it didn’t register with Morse.

‘Yes! I want to know whether the college had kippers for breakfast on Friday llth July.’

‘I don’t know. I could try to find out, I suppose.’

‘Well, find out!’ snapped Morse.

‘Can I ring you back, sir?’ She was obviously distressed, but Morse was crudely adamant.

‘No! Do it now!’

Morse heard a hectic, whispered conversation at the other end of the line, and eventually a male voice, defensive but quite firm, took over.

‘Andrews, here. Perhaps I could help you. Inspector.’

And, indeed, he could; for he happened to live with his family in Kidlington, and professed himself only too glad to call in at police HQ later that same afternoon.

Lewis, who had come in during this latter call, realized immediately that someone had seriously upset the chief, and he was not at all hopeful about how his own two items of information would be received-especially the second. But Morse appeared surprisingly amiable and listened attentively as Lewis recounted what he had learned at the Examination Schools.

‘So you see, sir,’ he concluded, ‘no one, not even the chairman, could be absolutely certain of all the results until just before the final list goes up.’

Morse just nodded, and sat back almost happily.

But Lewis had barely begun his report on his second visit when Morse sat forward and exploded.

‘You couldn’t have looked carefully enough, Lewis! Of course he’s bloody there!’

‘But he’s not, sir. I checked and re-checked everything-so did the girl.’

‘Didn’t it occur to you they’d probably put him under “Smith” or something?’

Lewis replied quietly: ‘If you really want to know, I looked under “Brown”, and “Browne” with an “e”; and “Smith”, and “Smithe” with an “e”; and I looked through all the rest of the “B”s and the “S”s just in case his card was out of order. But you’d better face it, sir. Unless they’ve lost his records, Dr Browne-Smith isn’t a blood donor at all.’

‘Oh!’ For some time Morse just sat there, and then he smiled. “Why didn’t you try under the “W”s?’

‘Pardon?’