around.'
It was Cox's turn to nod: 'Drives me mad, she does. Keeps me sane at the
same time though, if you follows me meaning.'
97
Morse wasn't at all sure that he did, but he was conscious that he'd
drunk too much beer that lunchtime; that he should never have driven himself
out to Redbridge; that what he'd earlier seen as a clear-cut oudine had now
grown blurred around the periphery. In the pub, with Lewis, he'd felt
convinced he could see a cause, a sequence, a structure, to the crime.
Perhaps two crimes now.
It was the same old tantalizing challenge to puzzles that had faced him ever
since he was a boy. It was the certain knowledge that something had happened
in the past happened in an ordered, logical, very specific way. And the
challenge had been, and still was, to gather the disparate elements of the
puzzle together and to try to reconstruct that 'very specific way'.
Not too successfully now, though. For here, at Redbridge, there seemed a
great gulf fixed between the fanciful hypothesis he'd so recently formulated,
and the humdrum reality of a rubbish dump.
Is that what Cox was trying to say?
'How d'you mean? Keeps you sane?'
'Well, it's not exactly your Botanical Gardens here, is it? Just all the
filth and useless stuff people want shut of. So the re not much good to look
at, 'cept her, bless her heart! Pearl in a pigsty that's what she is.'
'Why don't you write her a fan-letter?'
'Think she'd read it?'
'No.'
'So what can we do for you. Chief?'
Morse told him, making most of it up as he went along.
And when he'd finished. Cox nodded.
'No problem. We'd better just let the County Authorities know.'
'Already done,' lied Morse. And refusing a cup of coffee, he left the office
and walked unaccompanied around the site, only a few hundred yards from the
soutfiem stretch of
Oxford's Ring Road, thinking about the things he'd learned from Cox .
.
'Do you reckon,' he'd asked, 'you could dispose of a body here, in one of
your, er . . ? '
'Only in one of the compactor bins that'd be the best bet. You'll be able to
see for yourself, though. The others are a bit too open, really.'
'Black bag, say? Put a body in it? Just chuck it in?'
'You'd need a big bag.'
'Well, let's say we've got a big bag.'
'Heavy things, bodies. Ten, twelve stone, say? You couldn't just... well,
unless you had two people, I suppose.'
'Or cut the body in half, perhaps.'
'Mm. Still a bit awkward, wouldn't you think? Unless it were stiff, of
course.'
'Yes...'
'Was it stiff, this body of yours?'
'Er, no. No, I don't think it was.'
'Or unless it was a pretty small body. Was it small, this body of yours?'
'Er, no. No. I don't think it was.'
'Well, as I say...'
'How would you get rid of a body here?'
'Well, if it were a litd'un, like I said, I'd go for a compactor bin.
They got ramps that go back and forrard reg'lar like, and everything soon
gets pushed through into the back o' the bin. Doubt anybody'd notice it
really not this end, anyway. '
'There's another end?'
'Sutton Courtenay, yes, out near Didcot. The bins get driven out there, to
the landfill-site. Somebody might notice sum mat there, I suppose.'
'Funny, isn't it? Dustmen always seem to notice some things, don't they?'
'You mean our Waste Disposal Operatives.'
99
'They refused to take my little bag of grass cuttings last week.'
'Ah, now you're talking business, sir.'
'Put a human head in the bottom of the bag though ' ' - and you'd probably
get away with it? Right! But I shouldn't try your grass cuttings again.
Inspector.'
As he walked around, Morse was impressed by the layout and the management of
the large area designated there to the various categories of Oxford's
disposable debris: car batteries; can bank; engine-oil cans; paper bank;
clothing bank; tools; bottles (green, brown, white); bulky items; scrap
metal; fridges and freezers; garden waste (green); garden waste (other) . .
.
Only the vast
'Bulky Items' bins seemed to offer any scope so far; and even there a body
would have lain uncomfortably and conspicuously amid the jagged edges of
broken tables, awkwardly angled cupboards, tilted mattresses.
Then Morse stood still for many minutes inspecting what he'd been waiting to
see: the compactor bins twelve of them in a row. Each bin (Morse attempted a
non-too-scientific analysis) was a 12-ton, 6 it. X 20 it. ' white-bodied
