Inspector Morse 11 The Daughters of Cain

In midaftemoon on Tuesday, September 6 (two days after Lewis had telephoned the Summertown Health Centre), Kevin Costyn was sauntering under the plane trees there, along the various rides and amusements and candy-floss stalls. Nothing could really kindle his imagination or interest, for the Naked Lady of earlier years, in her rat-infested cage, no longer figured in the fair's attractions. And as Kevin considered the jazzy, jolty, vertiginous cars and car-riages, he felt no real wish to part with any of his limited money.

That day the children in the state schools in Oxfordshire had returned to their classrooms; and for the first twelve years Costyn himself was not one of them. Notimemorein school. But no job yet, either. He'd signed on at the Job Centre. Even taken away some literature on Youth Employment Schemes and Opportunities. Not that he was going to a9 read that bumf. He wasn't interested in jobs. Just money. Well, not just money, no.

Smugly he grinned to himself as he stood outside the Bird and Baby and watched the gigantic, gyrating structure of the Big Wheel.

The previous month he'd been part of a three-man ram-raid at a Summertown supermarket, but it hadn't proved the windfall they'd expected. Shop windows--replaced shop windows--were being made of tougher glass; and several regular, and formerly profitable, targets were now protected by concrete frontal pillars. That wasn't the real trouble, though. It was getting rid of the stuff that was getting trick-ier all the time. Cigarettes had usually been the best bet: lightweight, handy to stack, easy to sell. But booze was be-coming one helluva job to sell; and the cases of whiskey, gin, and vodka they'd got away with then had changed hands for a miserly 850, pounds though according to Costyn's (admittedly less than competent) calculation their street-value would have been four times that amount. It was the police becoming far cannier at tracking down the whole-sale-market contacts--they were the real trouble.

There must be easier ways of being able to afford the life of Riley, surely?

Yes, occasionally there were....

It had been Kevin Costyn himself who had answered the door the previous afternoon, to find Mrs. Stevens standing there--a subtly scented Mrs. Stevens, with a moist, red beauty at her lips.

Could she come in? She'd come in.

Would he listen to what she had to say? He'd listened.

Would he be willing to do as she asked? He'd be wil-ling.

Would he be able to do what she wanted? He'd be able.

Payment? What about payment? Did he understand she had very little money? He'd understood.

How would he like her to pay him, then?

Well...

"What time's your mother back?" she'd asked.

No one over the past few years had deemed it necessary, or deemed it wise, to challenge Costyn's minority; nor did the young barmaid now, as she pulled him a pint of Burton Ale in the Bird and Baby ("Open All Day").

Ten minutes later he made his way to the Gents, where he spat a globule of phlegm on to the tiled floor, and where his left hand was directing his urination whilst his right hand was seeking, wholly ineffectually, to spell out c K in red Biro on the corrugated surface of the wall in front of him.

"Fuck" was a key word in Costyn's limited vocabulary.

Had already been so for many years, ever since, night after night, his mum and dad (perhaps, his dad) had bawled their mutual "fuck-off's" at each other. Until the day when his dad had apparently interpreted the injunction rather too literally--and just, well, "fucked off." Indeed, so significant had the word become to the sole son of that hapless, un-happy union, that he regularly inserted it, in its present-participial form, into any lengthy-ish word which seemed to invite some internal profanation. Such a process is known, in the Homeric epics, as "tmesis"--although, in truth, Costyn knew of "Homer" only as a breed of pigeon; for his father had once kept such a pigeon, trained (once released) to find its way home from the most improbable distances.

Which is more than its owner had done, once he had left his home, and his wife, and his son... and his pigeon.

Before leaving the Gents, Costyn made a purchase. The condom machine looked, even to him, pretty theft-proof; and he decided for once to pay for his potential pleasures. For a few seconds he mentally debated the respective mer-its of "lubrication,"

"sensitivity," and "silkiness"; finally plumping for the latter as he thought--yet again!---of the blouse that he'd slowly eased down over the suntanned shoulders of Mrs. Julia Stevens.

At 4 P.M., standing waiting for a Cowley Road bus outside Marks and Spencer in Queen's Street, Costyn recognised an ex-pupil of the Proctor Memorial immediately in front of him; and he put a hand on her untanned shoulder.

"Bin 'avin' a ride, darlin'?"

She turned round. "Wha' al'you want?"

"What about a little ride with me, darlin'? I got the necessaries."

"Fuck off!"