assorted medicaments seemingly justified once more.
Suddenly, too, he decided to follow his consultant's somewhat despairing
exhortation to take a bit of exercise occasionally. Why not? It was a warm
and gentle summer's day.
In the small entrance hall, he noticed the figure '2' on the window of his
Ansafone. Pressing
'Play' he listened to the first message: Morse? Janet! Ten-fast one
Saturday afternoon. Good news! I hope to be back in Oxford on the 14th. So
you'll be able to take me somewhere? To bed perhaps? Give me a ring soon.
Bye!
Any semi-remembrance of Debbie Richardson was lingering no longer, and Morse
smiled happily to himself. He would ring immediately. But the second
message had followed with- out a pause, and he was destined not to ring
Sister McQueen that afternoon.
Instead he dialled HQ and finally got through to the young PC who had driven
him out to Bullingdon the previous morning in an unmarked police car.
'Get the same car, Kershaw - nice, comfy seats and pick me up from home quam
ceterrime.'
'Pardon?'
'Smartish!'
'Sir, I was just going off duty when you rang and I've ' ' Make it five
minutes! '
Deeply puzzled. Morse walked back into the sitting-room where he sat in the
black-leather armchair; and where his right hand reached for whisky once more
as mentally he rehearsed that second, quite extraordinary message on the
Ansafone: Sir? Lewis here half-fast one, nearly I'm out at Sutton Courtenay.
Please come along as soon as you can -for my sake if nobody else's. I think
you should get here before we move the body. You see, sir, it isn't the body
of Harry Repp.
127
chapter twenty-eight Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio
(Shakespeare, HamUf) it was just after 4 p. m. that same Saturday afternoon
when Morse and Lewis finally sat down together in the requisitioned office of
the site manager.
'Straightaway I knew it wasn't him, sir, when I saw his arms. Harry Repp had
this tattoo: all twisted chains and anchors, you know a sort of. . .'
Lewis undulated his hands vertically, as if tracing a woman's willowy figure.
'Convoluted involvement,' suggested Morse gently.
'Well, this fellow's not got any, has he? Anyway he's much smaller, only
what? - five-four, five-five. Doesn't weigh much either eight, nine stone?
No more.'
Morse nodded.
'And he's got different coloured hair, and he's got a port-wine stain on his
neck, and he's not wearing Repp's clothes, and his shoes are three sizes
smaller ' ' All right. I wasn't expecting the Queen's Medal! '
At which Eddie Andrews, the 2i/c senior SOCO, knocked on the door and entered
the office, at once uncertain whether to address himself to Morse or to
Lewis. He decided on the former: 'Safe, I reckon, to move him now? Dr
Hobson says there's not much else she can do here.'
Morse shrugged.
'You'd better ask Sergeant Lewis. He's in charge.'
And Lewis rose to the occasion.
'Yes, move him. Thank you.'
As he was about to leave, Andrews noticed the TV set. 'Mind if I just see
how Northants are getting on in the cricket?'
'Important to you, is it?' queried Morse mildly. Andrews was digitally
discovering Sport (Cricket) on Ceefax when the office door burst open to
admit a florid-faced Chief Superintendent Strange, an officer resolutely
determined to retain the appellation
'Chief, whatever most of his collateral colleagues in the Force were doing.
'You've ruined my afternoon's golf, Lewis! You know that?'
Surprisingly, the words were spoken with little sign of animus. But before
Lewis could respond in any way, Strange was addressing Morse in considerably
sharper tones: 'And how exactly do you come to be here?'
'Same as you really, sir.
Ruined my day, too. I was just indulging in a little Egyptian PT - ' 'After
indulging in a lot of Scottish whisky by the smell of it!'
' - when Lewis here rang and asked me to come along. Well, he's been a
faithful soul most of the time, so . . '
'So you just came along as a sort of personal
