excessive liquor or for excessive losses. His name figured nowhere in police
records as even the pettiest of crooks, although he was mentioned in
dispatches several times as the taxi driver who had picked up Frank Harrison
from Oxford Railway Station on the night of Yvonne's murder. Radio Taxis had
been his employer at the time; but he had been suspected of (possibly)
fabricating fares for his own aggrandisement, and duly dismissed- without
rancour, it appeared, and certainly without recourse to any industrial
tribunal.
Dismissed too, subsequently, by the proprietors of Maxim Removals, a firm of
middle-distance hauliers, 'for attempted trickery with the tachometer'.
(Lewis had spelled the last word correctly, having checked it earlier. )
Since that time, five months previously, Flynn had reported regularly to the
DSS office at the bottom of George Street. But lacking any testimonials to
his competence and integrity, his attempts to secure further employment in
any field of motor transport had been unsuccessful, his completed application
forms seldom reaching even the slush-pile. It was all rather
sad, as the woman regularly dealing with the Flynn file had testified.
He'd been thirty- two when, seven years earlier, he'd married Josie Newton,
and duly fathered two daughters upon that lady - although (this the testimony
of a brother in Belfast) the offspring had appeared so dissimilar in
temperament, coloration, and mental ability, that there had been many doubts
about their common paternity.
Josie Flynn had been unable or unwilling to offer much in the way of
'character-profiling' of her late husband (they'd never divorced); had scant
interest in the manner of his murder; and, quite certainly, no interest in
attending his 'last rites', whatever form these latter might take. Although
he had treated her with ever-increasing indifference and contempt, he had
never (she acknowledged it) abused her physically or sexually. In fact sex,
even in the early months of their relation- ship, had never been a dominant
factor in his life; nor, for that matter, had power or success or social
acceptability or drink or even happiness. Just plain money. She'd not seen
him for over two years; nor had her daughters she'd seen to that. It was
(again) all rather sad, according to Sergeant Dixon's report. Mr Paddy Flynn
may not have been the ideal husband, but perhaps Ms Josephine Newton (now her
preferred appellation was hardly a paragon of rectitude in the marital
relationship.
'Not exacly a saint herself?' as Dixon's hand- written addendum had
suggested. And Lewis smiled to himself again, feeling a little superior.
It had been Lewis himself (no Morse beside him) who had visited Flynn's
upstairs flat: smell of cigarette smoke every- where; sheets on the single
bed rather grubby; dirty cutlery and plates in the kitchen sink, but not too
many of them; the top surface of the cooker in sore need of Mrs Lewis; soiled
shirts, underpants, socks, handkerchiefs, in a neat pile behind the bathroom
door; a minimal assemblage of trousers, jackets,
shirts, underclothes, in a
heavy wardrobe; a Corby trouser- press; eleven cans of Guinness in the
otherwise sparsely stocked refrigerator; not a single book anywhere; two
copies of the Mirror opened at the Racing pages; a TV set, but not even the
statutory hard-core video; one CD, Great Arias from Puccini, but no CD player
for Flynn to have gauged their magnitude; no pictures on the walls; no
personal correspondence; and very little in the way of official
communications, apart from Social Security forms: no sign of any bank account
