something of which he was rather ashamed and very embarrassed; just wanted
his own name, previously his own good name, never to be associated with the
life and the death of Yvonne Harrison. He'd been careless about leaving that
single page of a longer letter but (as he asked Lewis to agree) it was hardly
an incriminating piece of evidence. What Morse stoutly refused to accept was
that what he had done, however cowardly and dishonest and foolish, had in any
way jeopardized the course of the original enquiry, which he now had the
nerve to assert had been conducted with almost unprecedented incompetence.
Such arrogance was of course not all that unusual; yet in the present
circumstances it seemed to Lewis quite gratuitously cheap.
Leaving all such considerations aside though, what stuck in Lewis's throat
was that initial, duplicitous refusal on Morse's part to have anything to do
with the original case. Agreed, once he had been drafted on to what seemed
to both Lewis and Strange the second half of the same case. Morse had risen
to his accustomed heights of logical analysis and depths of human
understanding. Agreed, he had (as usual) been several furlongs ahead of the
field and, for once, on the right racecourse from the 'off'.
Who else but Morse could have put forward the quite extraordinary hypotheses
made earlier that morning about the murder ofJ. Ban-on, Builder? The
hypothesis (seemingly confirmed) that Roy Holmes who'd do almost anything
to get drugs and who'd do absolutely anything when he was on drugs - was
having a sexual relationship with Christine Coverley; the hypothesis
(seemingly confirmed) that the weirdly incongruous
partnership had resulted from some incident or series of incidents at school;
that the youth had agreed, for money, to make a statement to the police about
a supposedly accidental collision with a high ladder a statement that was
wholly untrue, because Roy Holmes had been nowhere near Sheep Street that
morning; the hypothesis (to be confirmed! ) that it was Frank Harrison who
had murdered Barron, and who had engineered an ingenious scheme whereby all
suspicion would be diverted both from himself and from Simon the scheme
itself probably prompted by another son, by Alien Thomas, who regularly
gathered a good deal of information from his vantage-point in the Maiden's
Arms and who regularly passed it on to his father, the man at the centre of
everything.
Lewis nodded to himself. No wonder Frank Harrison had gone to earth
somewhere. Not for long though, surely. He had nowhere to go; nowhere to
hide. Airports and seaports had been apprised of his passport number, and
photographs would be on their way. Unless it was too late.
It was Morse's suggestion that the two of them together should interview Roy
Holmes and Christine Coverley, with Lewis invited to do most of the talking
with the youth.
'I detest him, Lewis! And you're better at those sort of things than I am.'
It was flattering, but it didn't work. Morse was sadly wrong if he thought
he could so easily re-establish some degree of integrity in the eyes of his
sergeant.
In mid-morning, Lewis left the office without asking Morse if he would like a
coffee. He knew that the omission would be noted; he knew that Morse would
feel the hurt.
Not so.
When Lewis returned ten minutes later, he found Morse leaning back and
beaming happily.
'Fetch me a coffee, will you, Lewis! No sugar we diabetics, you know .
Something to celebrate.' The Times was folded
S^
back in quarters in front of him, the crossword-grid completely filled in.
'Six and a half minutes! I've never done it quicker.'
'Shouldn't that be ' more quickly'?'
'Good man! You're learning at last. You see it's a question, as I've told
