breaking, he had confidently consulted his watch, to discover that it was
still only 11. 30 p. m. Thereafter he had woken up at regular
ninety-minute intervals, in spite of equally regular doses of Alka-Seltzer
and Paracetamol - his mind, even in the periods of intermittent slumber,
riding the merry-go- round of disturbing dreams; his blood sugar ridiculously
high; his feet suddenly hot and just as suddenly icy-cold; an indigestion
pain that was occasionally excruciating.
Ovid (now almost becoming Morse's favourite Latin poet) had once begged the
horses of the night to gallop slowly when- ever some delightfully compliant
mistress was lying beside him. But Morse had no such mistress beside him;
and even if he had, he would still have wished those horses of the night to
complete their course as quickly as they could possibly manage it.
He finally rose from the creased and crumpled sheets, and was shaving, just
as rosy-fingered Dawn herself was rising over the Cutteslowe Council Estate.
At 6 a. m. he once more measured his blood-sugar level, now
dipped
dramatically from 24. 4 at 1 a. m. to 2. 8. Some decent breakfast was
evidently required, and a lightly boiled egg with toast would fit the bill
nicely. But Morse had no eggs; no slices of bread either.
So, perforce, it had to be cereal. But Morse could find no milk, and there
seemed no option but to resort to the solitary king-sized Mars bar which he
always kept some- where in the flat. For an emergency. In rebus extremis,
like now. But he couldn't find it. Then bless you St Anthony! - he
discovered that the Coop milkman had already called; and he had a great bowl
of Corn Flakes, with a pleasingly cold pint of milk and several liberally
heaped spoonsful of sugar. He felt wonderful.
Sometimes life was very good to him.
At 6. 45 a. m. he considered (not too seriously) the possibility of
walking up from his North Oxford flat to the A40 Ring Road, and thence down
the gentle hill to Kidlington. About what? - thirty-five to forty minutes
to the HQ building. Not that he'd ever timed himself, for he'd never as yet
attempted the walk.
Didn't attempt the walk that morning.
After administering his first insulin-dosage of the day, he drove up to
Police HQ in the Jaguar.
Far quicker.
In his office, as he re- read the final findings of the two postmortems (sic).
Morse decided, as he usually did, that there was no point whatsoever in his
trying to un jumble the physiological details of the lacerations inflicted on
the visceral organs of each body. He had little interest in the stomach; had
no stomach for the stomach.
In fact he was more familiar with the nine-fold stomach of the bovine ilk
(this because of crossword puzzles) than with its mono-chambered human
counterpart. Did it really matter much to know exactly how Messrs Flynn and
Repp had met their ends? But yes, of course it did!
If the technicalities pointed to a particular type of weapon; if the weapon
could be accurately identified and then found; and if,
finally, it could be traced to someone who was known to have had such a
weapon and who had the opportunity of wielding it on the day of the murders .
. .
Hold on though, Morse! Be fair! Amid a plethora of caveats, Dr Hobson had
pointed to a fairly specific type of weapon, had she not? And he read again
the paragraph headed
'Tentative Conclusions': The knife was quite probably not all that long,
maybe no more than 6' -9', since in each case the lacerations seem the result
of forceful twisting, as if the murderer had gripped a handle that was short
and firm, say perhaps not much more than 1' -1%' in width. The knife-blade
was fairly certainly short too (? W), but very sharp, with its end shaped in
triangular fashion ([^). It could have been something like a Stanley knife,
