'Not yet, no. Forms always give me a terrible headache. I've got a phobia about form-f'filing.'
No words from Morse could have been more pleasing, and Strange's moon-face positively beamed. 'You know, that's exactly what I said to the wife about headaches and all that.'
'Why doesn't she help you?'
'Says it gives her a headache, too.'
The two men chuckled amiably.
'You'd like me to help?' asked Morse tentatively. 'Would you? Be a huge relief all round, I can tell you. We could go for a pint together next week, couldn't we?
And if I go and buy a bottle of aspirin '
'Make it two pints.'
'I'll make it two bottles, then.'
'You're on, sir.'
'Good. That's settled then.'
Strange was silent awhile, as if considering some matter of great moment. Then he spoke.
'Now, let's come to the second thing I want to talk about--far more important.'
Morse raised his eyebrows. 'Far more important than pensions?'
'Well, a bit more important perhaps.'
'Murder?'
'Murder.'
'Not another one?'
'Same one. The one near you. The Mc Clure murder.'
'Phillotson's on it.'
'Phillotson's off it.'
'But--'
'His wife's ill. Very ill. I want you to take over.'
'But--'
'You see, you haven't got a wife who's very ill, have you? You haven't got a wife at all.'
'No,' replied Morse quietly. No good arguing with that. 'Happy to take over?'
'Is Lewis--?'
'I've just had a quick word with him in the canteen.
Once he's finished his egg and chips...'
'Oh!'
'And'---Strange lifted his large frame laboriously from the chair--'I've got this gut-feeling that Phillotson wouldn't have got very far with it anyway.'
'Gut-feeling?'
'What's wrong with that?' snapped Strange. 'Don't you ever get a gut-feeling T' 'Occasionally...'
'After too much booze!'
'Or mixing things, sir. You know what I mean: few pints of beer and a bottle of wine.'
'Yes...' Strange nodded. 'We'll probably both have a gut-feeling soon, eh? After a few pints of beer and a bottle of aspirin.'
He opened the door and looked at the name-plate again. 'Perhaps we shan't need to change them after ail, Morse.'
Chapter Two
Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough, A-top on the topmost twig--which the pluckers forgot somehow-- Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now (D. G. ROSSETTI, Translations from Sappho)
It was to be only the second time that Morse had ever taken over a murder enquiry after the preliminary-- invariably dramatic trappings were done with: the discovery of the deed, the importunate attention of the media, the immediate scene-of-crime investigation, and the final removal of the body.
Lewis, perceptively, had commented that it was all a bit like getting into a football match twenty-five minutes late, and asking a fellow spectator what the score was. But Morse had been unimpressed by the simile, since his life would not have been significantly impoverished had the game of football never been invented.
Indeed, there was a sense in which Morse was happier to have avoided any in situ inspection of the corpse, since the liquid contents of his stomach almost inevitably curdled at the sight of violent death. And he knew that the death there had been violent--very violent indeed. Much blood had been spilt, albeit now caked and dirty-brown-- blood that would still (he supposed) be much in evidence around the chalk-lined contours of the spot on the saturated beige car-pet where a man had been found with an horrific knife-wound in his lower belly.
