page.'
'You don't read the obituaries?'
'Well, perhaps just a glance sometimes.'
'To see if you're there?'
'To see if some of them are younger than me.'
'I don't follow you.'
'If they are younger, so a statistician once told me, I've got a slightly
better chance of living on beyond the norm.'
'Mm.' Strange nodded vaguely.
'You frightened of death?'
'A bit.'
Strange suddenly picked up his second half-full tumbler of Scotch and tossed
it back at a draught like a visitor downing an initiatory vodka at the
Russian Embassy.
'What about the telly, Morse? Did you watch Newsroom South- East last night?'
'I've got a TV - video as well. But I don't seem to get round to watching
anything and I can't work the video very well.'
'Really? And how do you expect to understand what's going on in the great
big world out there? You're supposed to know what's going on.
You're a police officer. Morse! '
'I listen to the wireless--' ' Wireless? Where 'we you got to in life, matey?
'Radio' - that's what they've been calling it these last thirty years. '
11
It was Morse's turn to nod vaguely as Strange continued: 'Good job I got
this done for you, then.'
Sorry, sir. Perhaps I am a bit behind the times as well as The Times.
But Morse gave no voice to these latter thoughts as he slowly read the
photocopied article that Strange had handed to him. Morse always read slowly.
MURDER POLICE SEEK ANONYMOUS CALLER
A man has rung the police hear from this caller again as anonymously with
in for- soon as possible. He can contact mat ion that could help identify us
in the strictest confidence. We the killer of Mrs Yvonne Harrison, don't
believe the calls are a hoax son who was found handcuffed and we don't
believe the caller and battered to death a year ago. himself is the killer.
But we think Detectives yesterday appealed that he can give us more inforfor
the caller to make contact mat ion to substantially further again. No clear
motive has ever our enquiries into this brutal been established for the
murder murder. '
of the 48-year-old nurse who was At the time of the murder Mrs alone in her
home in the Oxford- Harrison's husband Frank was in shire village of Lower
Swinstead London where he works for the when her killer broke in through
Swiss Helvetia Bank. Their son a ground-floor window. Simon works at the
Daedalus Detective Chief Superintend- Press in Oxford; their daughter ent
Strange of Thames Valley Sarah is a junior consultant in the CID said that a
man had rung Diabetes Centre at the Radcliffe twice: 'We are very anxious to
Infirmary in Oxford.
Had Morse's eyes narrowed slightly as he read the last few lines? If they
had, he made no reference to whatever might have puzzled or interested him
there.
'I trust it wasn't you who split the infinitive, sir?'
'You never suspected that, surely? We're all used to sloppy reporting,
aren't we?'
Morse nodded as he handed back the photocopied article.
'No! Keep it. Morse I've got the original.'
'Very kind of you, sir, but...'
'But it interested you, perhaps?'
'Only the bit at the end, about the Radcliffe.'
'Why's that?'
'Well, as you know, I was in there myself after I was diagnosed.'
'Christ! You make it sound as if you're the only one who's ever been bloody
diagnosed!'
Morse held his peace, for his memory needed no jogging: Strange himself had
been a patient in the self-same Radcliffe Infirmary a year or so before his
own hospitalization. No one had known much about Strange's troubles. There
had been hushed rum ours about 'endocrinological dysfunction'; but not
everyone at Police HQ, was happy about spelling or pronouncing or identifying
such a polysyllabic ailment.
'You know why I brought that cutting, Morse?'
'No! And to be honest with you, I don't much care. I'm on furlough, you
know that. The quack tells me I'm run down blood sugar far too high blood
pressure far too high. Says I need to have a quiet little rest-cure and try
to forget the great big world out there, as you call it.'
'Some of us can't forget it though, can we?' Strange spoke the words very
softly, and Morse got to his feet and turned off the CD player.
'Not one of your greatest triumphs that case, was it?'
'One of the few very few, Morse I got no-bloody- where with. And it wasn't
