he'd treated so cruelly; the step-daughter he'd probably abuser1; and Julia Stevens, who could see how her little cleaner was being knocked about by the man she'd married.
So they hatch a plot. They arrange for the knife to be sto-len, having made sure that none of them could have stolen it--'
'Ellie Smith could have stolen it,' interposed Lewis qui-efiy.
'Yes... perhaps she could, yes. But I don't think so. Didn't the attendant think it was more likely to have been a man? No. My guess is that they bribed someone to steal it--someone they could trust... someone one of them could trust.'
'Ashley Davies?'
'Why not? He's got his reward, hasn't he?'
'You think that's a reward, sir, marrying her?'
Morse was silent awhile. 'Do you know, Lewis, it might be. It might be.... '
'What did they do with the knife?'
'What's the whole point. That's what I'm telling you.
They didn't use the stolen knife at all. They just got rid of it.'
'But you can't just get rid of things like that.'
'Why not? Stick it in a black bag and leave it for the dustmen. You could leave a dismembered corpse in one of those and get away with it. Kein Problem. The only thing the dustmen won't take is garden-refuse--that's a well- known fact, isn't it T'
'You seem to be assuming an awful lot of brains some-where.'
'Look, Lewis! There seems to be a myth going round these days that criminals are a load of morons and that CID personnel are all members of Mensa.'
'Perhaps I should apply then,' said Lewis slowly. 'Pardon?'
'Well, I've been very clever, sir, while you were away. I think I've found Brooks's bike.'
'You have? Why the hell didn't you tell me before?'
Chapter Forty-eight
It'll do him good to lie there unconscious for a bit. Give his brain a rest (N. F. S1MPSON, One-Way Pendulum)
At the Proctor Memorial School that Friday afternoon the talk was predominantly of a ram-mid made on an off- licence in the Blackbird Leys Estate the previous evening, when by some happy chance a murine police patrol-car had been cruising round the neighbourhood just as three youths were looting the smashed shop in Verbena Avenue; when, too, a little later, the same police car had been only fifty or so yards behind when the stolen getaway car had crashed at full speed into a juggernaut lorry near the Horspath round-about on the Eastern Ring Road....
When the chase was over one of the three was seated dead in the driving seat, his chest crushed by the collapsed steering-wheel; another, the one in the front passenger seat, had his right foot mangled and trapped beneath the engine-mounting; the third, the one seated in the back, had severe lacerations and contusions around the head and face and lllll was still unconscious after the firemen had finally cut free his colleagues in crime from the concertina'ed Escort.
The considerable interest in this incident--accident--is readily explicable, since two of the youths, the two who survived the crash, had spent five years at the Proctor Me~ morial School; had spent fifteen terms mocking the at- tempts of their teachers to instil a little knowledge and a few of the more civilised values into their lives. Had they received their educafon at one of the nation's more prestig-ious establishments--an Eton, say, or a Harrow, or a Winchester--the youths would probably have been desig-nated 'Old Boys' instead of the '?ormer pupils' printed in the late afternoon edition of the Oxford Mail. And the former pupil who had been seated in the back of the car had left his Alma Mater only the previous term.
His name was Kevin Costyn.
Julia Stevens walked round to her former pupil's house during the lunch-break that Friday, wishing, if she could, to speak to Kevin's mother. But the door-bell, like most of the other fixtures there by the look of things, was out of order; and no one answered her repeated knockings. As she slowly turned and walked back through the neglected, litter-strewn front garden, a young woman, with two small chil-dren in a push-chair, stopped for a moment by the broken gate, and spoke to her.
'°The people in there are usually out.'
That was all.
Perhaps, thought Julia Stevens, as she made her way thoughtfully back to school--perhaps that brief, somewhat enigmatic utterance could explain more about her former pupil than she herself had ever learned.
In the Major Trauma Ward, on Level 5 of the JR2 in Headington, she explained to the ward-sister that she had rung an hour earlier, at 6 '.M., and been told that it would be ail right for her to visit Mr. Kevin Costyn.
'How is he?'
'Probably not quite so bad as he looks. He's had a CT test-Computerised Tomography--and there doesn't seem to be any damage but we're a little bit worried about brain, yes. And he looks an awful mess, I'm afraid. Plea prepare yourself, Mrs. Stevens.'
He was awake, and recognised her immediately.
'i'm sorry,' he whispered, speaking through a dreadful lopsided mouth, like one who has just received half a dozl injections of local anaesthetic into one half of the jaw.
'Sh! I've just come to see how you're getting on, tha all.'
