Inspector Morse 12 Death is Now My Neighbour

'How did you first hear about it? You seem to have been on the scene pretty quickly, sir.'

'Delia rang me. She lives in the Drive - Number i. She'd seen me leave for work.'

'What time was that?'

'Must have been ... ten to seven, five to seven?'

'You usually leave about dien?'

'I do now, yes. For die past year or so we've been working a fair amount of flexi-time and, well, the earlier I leave home the quicker I'm here. Especially in term-time when-' Owens looked shrewdly across his desk at

Morse. 'But you know as much as I do about the morning traffic from Kidlington to Oxford.'

'Not really. I'm normally going the other way - North Oxford to Kidlington.'

'Much more sensible.'

·Yes...'

Clearly Owens was going to be more of a heavyweight than he'd expected, and Morse paused awhile to take his bearings. He'd made a note only a few minutes since of exacdy how long the same distance had taken him, from Bloxham Drive to Osney Mead. And even with quite a lot of early afternoon traffic about - even with a couple of lights against him - he'd done the journey in fourteen and a half minutes.

'So you'd get here at about ... about when, Mr Owens?'

. The reporter shrugged his shoulders. 'Quarter past? Twenty past? Usually about then.'

A nucleus of suspicion was beginning to form in Morse's brain as he sensed that Owens was perhaps exaggerating the length of time it had taken him to reach work that Monday morning. If he had left at, say, ten minutes to seven, he could well have been in the car park at - what? - seven o'clock? With a bit of luck? So why ... why had Owens suggested quarter past - even twenty past?

'You can't be more precise?'

Again Morse felt the man's shrewd eyes upon him.

'You mean the later I got here the less likely I am to be a suspect?'

'You realize how important times are, Mr Owens - a sequence of times - in any murder enquiry like this?'

'Oh yes, I know it as well as you do, Inspector.

I've covered quite a few murders in my time ... So__

so why don't you ask Delia what time she saw me leave? Delia Cecil, that is, at Number i. She'll probably remember better than me. And as for getting here ... well, that'll be fairly easy to check. Did you know that?'

Owens took a small white rectangular card from his wallet, with a number printed across the top - 008 14922 - and continued: 'I push that in the thing there and the whatsit goes up and something somewhere records the time I get into the car park.'

Clearly the broad-faced, heavyjowled reporter had about as much specialist knowledge of voodoo-technology as Morse, and the latter switched the thrust of his questions.

'This woman who saw you leave, I shall have to see her - you realize that?'

'You wouldn't be doing your job if you didn't Cigarette, Inspector?'

'Er, no, no thanks. Well, er, perhaps I will, yes. Thank you. This woman, as I say, do you know her well?'

'Only twenty houses in the Drive, Inspector. You get to know most people, after a while.'

'You never became, you know, more friendly? Took her out? Drink? Meal?'

'Why do you ask that?'

'I've just got to find out as much as I can about

everybody there, that's all. Otherwise, as you say, I wouldn't be doing my job, would I, Mr Owens?'

'We've had a few dates, yes - usually at the local.'

'Which is?'

'The Bull and Swan.'

'Ah, 'Brakspear', 'Bass', 'Bishop's Finger' ...'

'I wouldn't know. I'm a lager man myself.'

'I see,' said a sour-faced Morse. Then, after a pause, 'What about Rachel James? Did you know her well?'

'She lived next-door, dammit! Course I knew her fairly well.'

'Did you ever go inside her house?'

Owens appeared to consider the question carefully. 'Just the twice, if I've got it right. Once when I had a few people in for a meal and I couldn't find a corkscrew and I knocked on her back door and she asked me in, because it was pissing the proverbials, while she looked around for hers. The other time was one hot day last summer when I was mowing the grass at the back and she was hanging out her smalls and I asked her if she wanted me to do her patch and she said she'd be grateful, and when I'd done it she asked me if I'd like a glass of something and we had a drink together in the kitchen there.'

'Lager, I suppose.'

'Orangeade.'