The Secret of Annexe 3

'Perhaps,' said Morse, a shiver running down his vertebrae, 'we should take our first positive moves in this case, Lewis, eh? Let's close those bloody windows! And turn on the radiator!'

'You're not worried about the prints, sir?'

'It's not going to help us to arrest anybody if we land up in some intensive-care unit with bronchial pneumonia.'

(Lewis, at that moment, felt quite unconscionably happy.)

The twin beds occupied most of the area in the rest of the room, their tops close against the wall to the right, beneath a long headboard panel of beige plastic, set into which were the controls for TV and radio, loudspeakers, various light switches, and an early-morning-alarm unit with what seemed to Lewis instructions that were completely incomprehensible. On a small table between the beds was a white digital telephone; and on a shelf beneath that, the Holy Bible, as placed by the ever-persevering Gideons. The walls and ceiling were painted in a very pale shade of apple green, and the floor was carpeted wall to wall in a grey-green chequered pattern.

All very neat, very clean, and very tidy — apart from the obscene blotch of dried blood across the further bed.

Completing the circuit of this accommodation, the two men came to the tiny bathroom, only some seven feet by five feet, whose door stood a few feet inside and to the right of the main entrance to Annexe 3. Immediately facing was the WC, a unit of the usual white enamel, the bowl a sparkling tribute to the ministrations of the conscientious Mandy; on the left was a washbasin by which stood two tumblers and a diminutive bar of soap (unopened) in a pink paper wrapping bearing the name 'Haworth'; to the right was a bath, fairly small, with shower attachment, and a ledge let into the wall containing a second bar of soap (also unopened); finally, on the wall opposite, to the left of the WC, were racks for a whole assortment of fluffy white towels (all seemingly unused), and fixtures for toilet paper and Kleenex tissues. The walls were tiled in a light olive-green, with the vinyl flooring of a slightly darker, matching green.

'They don't look, whoever they were, as if they made much use of the facilities, sir.'

'No-o.' Morse walked back into the main part of the room and stood there nodding to himself. 'Good point! I wonder if. .' He fiddled with some of the buttons and switches which appeared to determine the reception of a TV programme; but with no effect.

'Shall I plug it in, sir?'

'You mean. .?' Again Morse appeared deep in thought as an indeterminate blur dramatically developed into a clearly delineated picture, and a late-night newsreader announced that in Beirut the Shi'ite and the Christian Militias had begun the new year with exactly the same implacable hatred as they had finished the old one.

'Funny, you know, Lewis — turn that thing off! — you'd have thought they would have made some use of the facilities, wouldn't you?' Morse carefully drew back the coverings on the bed nearer the window; but the sheets appeared quite virgin, apart from the indentations caused by the superimposition of a corpse. With the other bed, too, the evidence seemed very much the same: someone might well have sat on the side, perhaps, but it seemed reasonably clear that neither bed had been the scene of any frolicsome coition.

It was Lewis, emerging from the bathroom, who had found the only tangible trace of the room's most recent tenants: a screwed-up brown-stained Kleenex tissue, which had been the only item in the waste-bin.

'Looks like this is the only thing they left behind, sir.'

'Not blood is it?'

'It's the stage-black for the make-up, I think.'

'Well, at least we've got one clue, Lewis!'

Before leaving, Morse once more slid open the door of the wardrobe along its smooth runners and took another look inside.

'Doesn't look as if your fingerprint lads did much dusting here.'

Lewis looked at the powder marks that covered several points on the white outer-door: 'I wouldn't say that, sir. It looks as if—'

'I meant inside,' said Morse quietly.

It was midnight before Sarah Jonstone got to bed that night, and way into the early hours before she finally dropped off into a restless slumber. Her mind was reverting continually to the strangely disturbing chief inspector — a man she was growing to dislike intensely — and to what he had asked, and asked, and asked her. Occasionally, as he had listened to her answers, he had seemed to promote a simple, honest confession of ignorance or forgetfulness on her part to the status of an almost unforgivable sin. And above all her mind reverted to his repeated insistence that she must try to recall anything unusual: anything unusual; anything unusual. . The words had re-echoed round the walls of her brain — being all the more disturbing precisely because there had, she thought, been something unusual. . Yet this 'something' continued to elude her: almost, on several occasions, she had it in her grasp — and then it had slithered away like a slippery bar of soap along the bottom of the bath.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Thursday, January 2nd: A.M.

Snow is all right while it is snowing: it is like inebriation, because it is very pleasing when it is coming, but very unpleasing when it is going.

(OGDEN NASH)

MORSE HAD DECIDED that it was needful, at least for a couple of days, to set up a temporary Murder HQ in situ; and from the comparatively early hours of the next morning, the room at the rear of the annexe building, a broad-windowed area that looked as if it would make an excellent classroom, was taken over by Lewis and Morse as an official 'Operations Room'.

An innocently deep night's sleep, an early-morning shower and a fried breakfast of high cholesterol risk had launched a zestful Lewis on his way to the Haworth Hotel at 6.30 a.m., where an ill-rested, unshowered, unbreakfasted Morse had joined him twenty minutes later.