'Quid a week — sometimes a bit more. And at weekends she used to work on the till down the supermarket. Used to spend it on clothes mostly — shoes, that sort of thing. She was never short of money.'
With a powerful snarl the bulldozer shovelled a few more cubic yards of earth across a stinking stretch of refuse, and then slowly retreated to manoeuvre diagonally into position behind the next heap, criss-crossing the ground with the patterned tracks that Morse had noticed earlier. And as the gleaming teeth of the scoop dug again into the crumbling soil, something stirred vaguely in the back of Morse's mind; but George was speaking again.
'That inspector what was killed, you know, he came to see me a few weeks back.'
Morse stood very still and held his breath, as if the slightest movement might be fatal. His question would appear, he hoped, to spring from casual curiosity.
'What did he want to see you about, Mr. Taylor?'
' 'S funny really. He asked me the same as you. You know, about Valerie staying out at nights.'
Morse's blood ran slightly cold, and his grey eyes looked into the past and seemed to catch a glimpse of what had happened all that time ago. . Another corporation lorry rumbled up the slight incline, ready to stock-pile the latest consignment of rubbish, and George stood up to direct proceedings.
'Not been much help, I'm afraid, Inspector.'
Morse shook George's dirty, calloused hand, and prepared to leave.
'Do you think she's alive, Inspector?'
Morse looked at him curiously. 'Do you?'
'Well, there's the letter, isn't there, Inspector?'
For some strange, intuitive reason Morse felt the question had somehow been wrong, and he frowned slightly as he watched George Taylor walk over to the lorry. Yes, there was the letter, and he hoped now that Valerie had written it, but. .
He stood where he was and looked around him.
How would you like to be stuck in a filthy hole like this, Morse — probably for the rest of your life? And when anyone calls to see you, all you can offer is an old ten-gallon paraffin tin sprayed with harmful insecticide. You've got your own black leather chair and the white carpet and the desk of polished Scandinavian oak. Some people are luckier than others.
As he walked away the yellow bulldozer nudged its nose into another pile of earth; and soon the leveller would come and gradually smooth over the clay surface, like a passable cook with the chocolate icing on a cake.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Man kann den Wald nicht vor Baumen sehen.
(German proverb)
LEWIS HAD GONE home when Morse returned to his office at 5.30, and he felt it would probably be sensible for him to do the same. Many pieces of the jigsaw were now to hand, some of them big ugly pieces that looked as if they wouldn't fit anywhere; but they would — if only he had the time to think it all out. For the moment he was too much on top of things. Some of the trees were clear enough, but not the configuration of the forest. To stand back a bit and take a more synoptic view of things — that's what he needed.
He fetched a cup of coffee from the canteen, and sat at his desk. The notes that Lewis had made, and left conspicuously beneath a paperweight, he deliberately put to one side. There were other things in life than the Taylor case, although for the moment he couldn't quite remember what they were. He went through his in-tray and read through reports on the recent spate of incendiary bombings, the role of the police at pop festivals, and the vicious hooliganism after Oxford United's last home game. There were some interesting points. He crossed through his initials and stuck the reports in his out-tray. The next man on the list would do exactly the same; quickly glance through, cross through his initials, and stick them in his out-tray. There were too many reports, and the more there were the more self-defeating the whole exercise became. He would vote for a moratorium on all reports for the next five years.
He consulted his diary. The following morning he would be in the courts, and he'd better get home and iron a clean shirt. It was 6.25 and he felt hungry. Ah well. He'd call at the Chinese restaurant and take-away. . He was pulling on his overcoat and debating between King Prawns and Chicken Chop Suey when the phone went.
'Personal call from a Mr. Phillipson. Shall I put him through, sir?' The girl on the switchboard sounded weary too.
'You're working late tonight, Inspector?'
'I was just off,' said Morse with a yawn in his voice.
'You're lucky,' said Phillipson. 'We've got a Parents' Evening — shan't be home till ten myself.'
Morse was unimpressed and the headmaster got to the point.
'I thought I'd just ring up to say that I checked up at Blackwells — you remember? — about buying a book.'
Morse looked at Lewis's notes and completed the sentence for him.
'. . and you bought Momigliano's
'You checked, then?'
'Yep.'
'Oh well. I thought, er, I'd just let you know.'
'Thoughtful of you, sir. I appreciate it. Are you speaking from school?'
