his colleagues in the team ofBOMAC tractor-operators had dismissed as so much
negligible bumf the single Xeroxed sheet which had been handed out that
Saturday morning, both to permanent on-site personnel and to every
dumper-truck driver entering the site from the far quarters of Oxfordshire.
MEMO FROM SITE MANAGER
Thames Valley Police have advised of the possibility of a human body,
probably bagged, being recently conveyed from the Red- bridge Centre in
Oxford. Everyone is asked to be extra vigilant and to report anything
unusual (or usual, provided its a body).
(Morse himself would have been pleased to write such a succinct note though
inserting, of course, an apostrophe in the humorous parenthesis. ) Just
after the start of the shift, a colleague shouted across at Jammie, waving a
copy of the memo.
'Better keep your eyes open!'
'What's the reward?'
'Night with Sophia Loren in the Savoy.'
'Bit young for me.'
'I still reckon you'll keep your eyes open.'
'Yeah! I reckon.'
'Like looking for a needle in an 'aystack though.'
'Like finding a shadow in the black-out, as me of' mum used to say.'
'I like that, Jammie. Sort o' poetic, like.'
Jamold braked his tractor at 10. 05 a. m. and jumped down from his cab on
to the semi-levelled, semi-compacted mound of recently deposited rubbish. It
was not that the specific item he'd spotted was unusual in any way. In fact,
any pair of shoes was a very common sight: thousands of pairs were ever to be
observed on every part of the site, worn down, worn out, worn beyond any
possible repair. But there were unusual aspects about this particular pair
of shoes. For a start, they looked comparatively new and were clearly of
good quality; then, they were the only objects sticking out of a large black
bag; what's more, they seemed strangely reluctant to drop out of that large
'3
black bag, as if (perhaps?) they might be attached, permanently, to
something inside that large black bag.
Jarnold shouted over to a colleague.
'Come over 'ere a sec!'
But already he had half-torn one side of the plastic.
'Christ!'
He turned away to vomit full- throatedly over a piece of conveniently
positioned carpeting.
Had he been dining with Miss Loren at the Savoy, this would have caused
considerable consternation. Not here, though. Not at the land-fill site at
Sutton Courtenay in Oxfordshire.
chapter twenty-six undergraduate: But you're blowing up the wrong tyre, sir.
It's the back one that's flat.
don: Goodness me. ' You mean the two of them are not connected?
(Freshman seeking to assist his tutor outside Trinity College, Oxford) morse
(for some reason) was in that Saturday morning when Lewis knocked on his
office door just after ten.
'Spare a few minutes, sir?'
'C'm in! I've finished the crossword.'
'How long?'
'Let's just say the brain is deteriorating.'
'Thirty thousand brain-cells a day we lose after thirty, so you told me once.'
Morse nodded morosely.
'I just thought I was the exception, that's all. Si' down!'
Lewis did so, and took a deep breath.
'I've been following you, sir.'
Morse looked across at his sergeant uncomprehendingly.
'You were at Debbie Richardson's house before me; you were at the Maiden's
Arms before me; you were at Bulling- don before me; you were at Redbridge -
before me; you were out at Sutton Courtenay before me. You've been one move
ahead of me all the time.'
'5
' Only oneT 'Why couldn't you just tell me?'
'Tell you what?' asked Morse.
'And don't forget that time when it was me following you: from Bullingdon.
At exactly the distance recommended in the Highway Code.'
'Which is?'
'Next question?'
'You will be taking on the case, won't you?'
'Next question?'
'Why not?'
'Pass.'
'You're getting people's backs up here, you know that?'
'Nothing new about that.'
'But surely ?'
'Listen!' Unblinking blue eyes glared across the desk.
'I am not taking on the Harrison case.'
'I was just hoping you'd help me, that's all.'
'Yes?'
'Well, do you mind me asking you if ... if you've got any personal interest
in all of this?'
'Nil.' If there had been a quick flicker of unease in Morse's eyes, it was
as quickly gone.
'But you know a lot about it, don't you? So you must have some idea about
what happened on the night she was murdered?'
'Ideas plural.'
