'Dead. Cirrhosis of the liver.'
Morse nodded morosely.
'Anyway, we'll give the cans a dusting over, just in case.'
'I shouldn't bother,' said Morse.
'Won't do any harm, surely?'
'I said, I shouldn't
And suddenly Andrews understood.
Upstairs there was little to detain Morse. In the front room the bed was still unmade, a pair of pyjamas neatly folded on the top pillow. The wardrobe appeared exactly as he'd viewed it earlier. Only one picture on the walls: Monet's miserable-looking version of a haystack.
The 'study' (Morse's second visit there too!) was in considerable disarray, for the desk-drawers, now liberally dusted with fingerprint powder, had been taken out, their contents strewn across the floor, including the book which had stimulated some interest on Morse's previous visit. The central drawer likewise had been removed, and Morse assumed that after discovering die theft of the manila file Owens had seen no reason to repair the damaged lock.
Nothing much else of interest upstairs, as far as Morse could see; just that one, easy conclusion to be drawn: that die murderer had been looking for something -some documents, some papers, some evidence which could have constituted a basis for blackmail.
Exacdy what Morse had been looking for.
Exacdy what Morse had found.
He smiled sadly to himself as he looked down at the wreckage of the room. Already he had made a few minor blunders in the investigations; and one major, tragic blunder, of course. But how fortunate diat he'd been able to avail himself of JJ's criminal expertise, since odierwise die crucial evidence found in die manila file would have vanished now for ever.
Downstairs, Morse had only die living-room to consider. The kitchen he'd already seen; and die nominal 'dining-room' was dearly a room where Owens had seldom, if ever, dined - an area duck widi dust and crowded widi die sorts of items most householders regularly relegate to their lofts and garden sheds: an old electric fire, a coal scutde, a box of plugs and wires, a traffic cone, an ancient Bakelite wireless, a glass case
containing a stuffed owl, a black plastic lavatory-seat, six chairs packed together in the soixante-neuf position -and a dog-collar with the name 'Archie' inscribed on its disc.
Perhaps, after all, there had been some little goodness somewhere in the man?
Morse had already given permission for the body to be removed, and now for the second time he ventured into the living-room. Not quite so dust-bestrewn here, certainly; but manifestly Owens had never been a houseproud man. Surfaces all around were dusted with powder, and chalk-marks outlined the body's former configuration on the settee. But the room was dominated by blood - the stains, the smell of blood; and Morse, as was his wont, turned his back on such things, and viewed the contents of the room.
He stood enviously in front of the black, three-decked Revox CD-cassette player which stood on a broad shelf in the alcove to the left of the front window, with dozens of CDs and cassettes below it, including, Morse noted with appreciation, much Gustav Mahler. And indeed, as he pressed the 'Play' panel, he immediately recognized
No man is wholly bad, perhaps...
On the shelf beneath was an extended row of videos:
in carpentry with the Open University; and the plain-covered, yet succincdy entided
Morse's attention now turned to die single row of books in die opposite alcove. Mosdy paperbacks: P. D. James, Jack Higgins, Rudi Rendell, Wilbur Smidi, Minette Walters ...
'See this?' Lewis suddenly raised aloft die
'You'd like to see it again, you mean?'
'What? Me? I've got more important diings to do dian watch dial sort of thing. High time I saw Comford, for a start Fix somediing up, Lewis. The sooner die quicker.'
After Lewis had gone, Morse felt unwilling to face die chorus of correspondents and die battery of cameras which awaited those periodically emerging from die front of Number 15. So he sat down, yet again, in die now empty kitchen; and pondered.
Always in his life, he had wanted to know die
to be admonished by an unimaginative middle-aged spinster for being so very silly. And he had been similarly discouraged when as a young grammar-school boy he had asked his Divinity master who it was, if God had created the Universe, who in turn had created God. And after receiving no satisfactory answer from his Physics master about what sort of thing could possibly exist out there at the end of the world, when space had run out, Morse had been compelled to lower his sights a little, thereafter satisfying his intellectual craving for answers by finding the values of 'x' and 'y' in (ever more complicated) algebraic equations, and by deciphering the meaning of (ever more complicated) chunks of choruses from the Greek tragedies.
