Inspector Morse 11 The Daughters of Cain

"I saw your cycling helmet in the hall, that's ali."

"SOT'

"Didn't mind me asking, did you T'

"Why the 'ell should I?"

"Well, Dr. Mc Clure was knifed to death, as you knc, and there was an awful lot of blood ail over the place--a: all over the murderer, like as not. So if he'd driven off a car, well... these clever lads in the labs, they can tra the tiniest speck of blood "

"As I said, though, I 'aven't got a car."

"I still think we'd quite like to have a look at your bt What do you think, Sergeant Lewis.'?"

"Not a question of 'liking,' sir. I'm afraid we shall ht to take it away."

"Well, that's where you're wrong, 'cos I 'aven't got bike no longer, 'ave I2 Bloody stolen, wasn't it? Sat'c lunchtime, that were--week yesterday. Just went to t Club for a pint and when I got out--there it was, got Lock 'n' all on the back wheel. Ten bloody quid, that faa] lock cost me."

"Did you report the theft, sir?"

"Wha'? Report a stolen bike? In Oxford? You must jokin'."

Mrs. Brooks came in with a tray.

"I must ask you to report the theft of your bike, sir," s Lewis quietly. "To St. Aldate's."

"Milk and sugar, Inspector?"

For the first time her eyes looked unflinchingly straight into his, and suddenly Morse knew that behind the ner-vousness, behind the fear, there lay a look of good companionship.

He smiled at her; and she, fleetingly, smiled back at him.

And he felt touched.

And he felt poorly again.

And he felt convinced that he was sitting Opposite the man who had murdered Felix Mc Clure; felt it in his bones and in his brains; would have felt it in his soul, had he known what such a thing was and where it was located.

When ten minutes later Mrs. Brooks was about to show them out, Morse asked about the two photographs hanging on the wail of the entrance-hall.

"Well, that one" she pointed to a dark, broody-looking girl in her mid-teens or so---"that's my daughter. That's Ellie. Her first name was Kay, really, but she likes to be called Ellie."

Phew!

With an effort, Lewis managed not to exchange glances with Morse.

"That one"--she pointed to a photograph of herself arm-in-ann, in front of a coach, with a younger, taller, strikingly attractive wommv--"that's me and Mrs. Stevens, when we went on a school-party to Stratford last year. Lovely, it was. And with a bit of luck I'll be going with her again this next week. She teaches at the Proctor Memorial School. I clean for her.... Well, as I say... I clean for her."

It seemed for a few seconds that she was going to add a gloss to that last repeated statement. But her husband had shouted from within, and Morse managed not to look down at that disfigured palm again as Brenda Brooks's hands in-dulged in a further spasm of fioccillation.

Chapter Thirty-one

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern (SAMUEL JOHNSON, Obiter Dictum, March 21, 1776)

"Well, well! What do you made of all that?

The Jaguar was gently negotiating half a dozen traffi calming humps, before reaching the T-junction at the Cot ley Road.

"Not now, Lewis!"

"How're you feeling, sir?"

"Just change the first letter of my name from 'M'

"You should be in bed."

Morse looked at his wristwatch. "Nearest pub, Lew We need to think a little."

Morse was comparatively unfamiliar with the part of O. ford in which he now found himself. In his own undergm uate days, it had seemed a long way out, being dubbed 'Bridge Too Far'--on the farther side, the eastern side, ti wrong side, of Magdalen Bridge--beyond the pale, as were. Yet even then, three decades earlier, it had been ( it still was) a cosmopolitan, commercial area of fascinati contrasts: of the drab and the delightful; of boarded-premises and thriving small businesses; of decay m regenemtion--a Private Sex Shop at the city-centre en and a police station at the far Ring Road end, with alm( everything between, including (and particularly) a string highly strred Indian resmur. Icluding, now trusted), a local pub selling real ale.

Lewis himself knew the area well; and after turning right at the T-junction, he almost immediately turned left it0 Marsh Road, pulling up there beside the Marsh Hua'ier.

Ashley Davies, he thought, would almost certaiol Y have approved.

The Good Pubs of Oxford guide always reserved its high. est praise for those hostelries where conversation was not. peded (let alone wholly precluded) by stentorian juke. boxes. And certainly Morse was gratified to find n O music here. Yet he appeared to Lewis clearly ill-at-ease as he started--well, almost finished really--s first swift pint Fuller's 'London Pride.'

"What's worrying you, sir?"

"I dunno. I've just got a sort of premonition--"

"Didn't know you believed in them."

"---, about this copy-cat-crime business. You knorr, you get a crime report in the press--somebody pinching a baby from outside a supermarket, say--and before you can say 'Ann Robinson' somebody else's having a go at the same thing."