noisy
customers were now arriving, including three members of the highly
unsuccessful Lower Swinstead Cricket Club. There was therefore a
comparatively large audience for the seemingly endless music of the machine:
clunk-clunk clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunkc
unk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk; and an even larger audience as
the impassively faced youth pressed the 'Repeat' button successfully with a
further twenty 1 coins duly clanking into the winnings-tray.
'Nearly enough for that honeymoon,' said the builder.
'Nonsense! He'll be putting it all back,' said one of the cricketers.
But he wasn't.
With a temporary lull in business, the landlord resumed the conversation.
'Business still pretty good, John?'
'Plenty o' work, yeah. Having to turn some things down.'
'What you got on at the minute?'
'Job in Burford in Sheep Street: bit o' roofing, bit o' pointing, bit o'
painting.'
'High up, is it?'
'High enough. I'll need a coupla extensions on the ladder.'
Biffen screwed up his face and closed his eyes.
'You'd never get me up there.'
'You're OK, so long as things are firm.'
'Not if you get vertigo as bad as me.'
The coins bulged proudly in his trouser-pocket as the bride- groom
designate walked out of the bar. Once in the passage that led to the
toilets, he lifted the receiver from the pay- phone there, inserted 20p, and
dialled a number.
But what he said, or to whom he spoke, not even the keen- eared elders could
have known.
178
chapter thirty-eight All persons are puzzles until at last we find in
some word or act the key to the man, to the woman; straightway all their past
words and actions lie in light before us (Emerson, Journals) for much of the
week Lewis had been working three- quarters of the way round the clock; but
on Sunday, the day following the events described in the previous chapter, he
felt refreshed after a good sleep and arrived at Kidlington Police HQ at 8.
45 a. m. No sign of Morse. But that mattered little. It had been facts
that were required. Not fancies. Not yet, anyway. And as he sat taking
stock of the past week's activities, Lewis felt solidly satisfied both with
himself and with the performance of the personnel readily allocated to the
case. There had been so much to cover . . .
Lewis had personally supervised the Monday and Tuesday enquiries into the
activities of Paddy Flynn in the years, months, days and morning before his
murder; and if the net result was perhaps somewhat disappointing, at least it
had been thorough. Flynn had been living in an upstairs flat (converted a
few years previously) in Morrell Avenue. He had been there for just over
five months, paying 375 per calendar month for the privilege, and having
virtually nothing to do with the tenant of the downstairs flat a middle-aged
account- ant who, rain or shine, would walk each day down to St Clements,
across Magdalen Bridge, and up the High to his
firm's offices in King
Alfred Street. He knew Flynn by sight, of course, but only exchanged words
when occasionally they encountered each other in the narrow entrance hall.
Of Flynn's lifestyle, he had no knowledge at all: no ideas about the
activities in which his fellow-tenant might have been engaged. Well, just
one little observation, perhaps, since not infrequently there was a car
parked outside the semi always a different car, and almost always gone the
following morning. Lewis's notes had read: 'Has no knowledge ofF's
professional or leizure time activities'. But he'd consulted his dictionary,
ever kept beside him, in case Morse decided to look at his notes, and quickly
corrected the antepenultimate word.
By all accounts Flynn had led a pretty private, almost secretive life. He
was quite frequently spotted in the local hostelries, quite frequently
spotted in the local bookmakers, though never, apparently, the worse for
