The Secret of Annexe 3

the evidence. It means, I think, that the pair of them were very often near each other, and that he very sensibly agreed to avoid all contact with her in the place where they found themselves. And you don't need me to tell you where that might have been— must have been — do you? It was on the Locals site itself, where twenty-odd workmen were employed on various jobs — but mostly on the roof — between May and September last year.'

'Phew!' Lewis looked down at the letter again. If what Morse was saying were true. .

'But there's a second thing,' continued Morse, 'that's more specific still. There's a rather nice little bit of English at the end of the letter—'but I think I was in love with you the very first time I saw the top of your golden head in the summer sunshine'. Now you were right in saying that this tells us roughly when he first met her. But it also tells us something else, and something even more important. Don't you see? It tells us from which angle he first saw her, doesn't it, Lewis? He saw her from above! '

Lewis was weighing up what Morse had just said: 'You mean this fellow might have been on the roof, sir?'

'Could be!' Morse looked extremely pleased with himself. 'Yes, he could have been on the roof. Or he could have been—higher, perhaps? The flat roof at the Locals has been causing a lot of trouble, and last summer they had a complete new go at the whole thing.'

'So?'

'So they had quite a few workmen there, and they'd need something to lift all that stuff. .'

'A crane!' The words were out of Lewis's excited lips in a flash.

'It makes sense, doesn't it?'

'Did they have a crane on the site?'

'Don't know, do I.'

'Do you remember,' said Lewis slowly, 'that it was me who suggested he might be a crane-driver?'

'Nonsense!' said Morse happily.

'But I—'

'You may have got the right answer, Lewis, but you got it for the wrong reasons, and you can't claim much credit for that.'

Lewis's smile was as happy as Morse's. 'Shall I give the Secretary a ring, sir?'

'Think she's still there? It's gone half-past five.'

'Some people stay on after office hours. Like I do!'

The Secretary was still at her desk. Yes, there had been a crane on the site — a big yellow thing — from May to October! And no, the Secretary had no objection at all to the police coming to look at the security passes kept all together in a filing cabinet in Reception.

Morse got up from his chair and pulled on his greatcoat. 'And there's something else, you know, Lewis. Something to crown the whole lot, really. They keep all their records carefully at the Locals — well, the chap on the desk does. All passes have to be shown and I'd like to bet that those workmen were given semi-permanent passes so that they could make use of the facilities there without having to get a badge every time they went to the lavatory or whatever. Just think of it! We sit here and rack our brains — and all the time the fellow we're looking for is sitting there on a little card — in a little drawer at the Locals — with a photograph of himself on it! By Jove, this is the simplest case we've ever handled, my old friend. Come on. On your feet!'

But for a while, Lewis sat where he was, a wistful expression across his square, honest face. 'You know, it's a pity in a way, isn't it? Like you say, we've done all this thinking — we've even given the fellow a name! The only thing we never got round to was deciding where he lives, that's all. And if we'd been able to work that out — well, we wouldn't need any photograph or anything, would we? We'd have, sort of, thought it all out.'

Morse sat on the edge of his desk nodding his balding head. 'Ye-es. 'Tis a pity, I agree. Amazing, you know, what feats of logic the human brain is capable of. But sometimes life eludes logic — and sometimes when you build a great big wonderful theory you find there's a fault in the foundations and the whole thing collapses round your ears at the slightest earth tremor.'

Morse's voice had sounded strangely earnest, and Lewis noticed how tired his chief looked. 'You don't think we're in for an earthquake, do you?'

'Hope not! Above all I hope we get a chance to save Margaret Bowman — save her from herself as much as anything. Nice looker, you know, that woman. Lovely head of hair!'

'Especially when viewed from the top of a crane,' said Lewis, as he finally rose to his feet and pulled on his coat.

As they were leaving the office, Morse paused to look at a large white map of Oxford City that was fastened on the wall to the left of the door. 'What do you think, Lewis? Here we are: South Parade — that's where he picked her up. Now we want somewhere no more than five minutes away, so you say. Well, one thing's certain — he either turned left or he turned right at the Woodstock Road, agreed?' Morse's finger slowly traced a route that led off to the south: it seemed most unlikely that the man would be living in any of the large villa-type residences that lined the road for most of the way down to St. Giles', and Morse found himself looking at the map just below St. John's College playing fields, and especially at the maze of little streets that criss-crossed the heart of Jericho. For his part, Lewis's eyes considered the putative route that might have been taken if the man had turned right and towards the north; and soon he spotted a small cluster of streets, between (he Woodstock Road itself and, to the west of it, the canal and the railway. The writing on the map was very small but Lewis could just about read the names: St. Peter's Road; Ulfgar Road; Pixey Place; Diamond Close. . All council property, if Lewis recalled correctly — or used to be until, in the 1980s, the Tories remembered Anthony Eden's promises of a property-owning democracy.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Tuesday, January 7th: P.M.