“Not really, surely? ‘No wise man ever wished to be younger.’ ”
“Bloody nonsense!”
“Not my nonsense — Jonathan Swift’s.”
Elbows on the desk, Strange rested his large head on his large hands.
“I’m probably finishing in September, I suppose you’d heard.”
Morse nodded. “I’m glad they’re letting you go.”
“What the ’ell’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, I should think Mrs. Strange’ll be pleased to have you around, won’t she? Retirement, you know... Getting up late and watching all the other poor sods go off to work, especially on Monday mornings. That sort of thing. It’s what we all work for, I suppose. What we all wait for.”
“You mean,” muttered Strange, “that’s what I’ve been flogging me guts out all this time for — thirty-two years of it? I used to do your sort of job, you know. Caught nearly as many murderers as you in me day. It’s just that I used to do it a bit different, that’s all. Mostly used to wait till they came to me. No problem, often as not: jealousy, booze, sex, next-door neighbor between the sheets with the missus. Motive — that’s what it’s all about.”
“Not always quite so easy, though, is it?” ventured Morse, who had heard the sermon several times before.
“Certainly not when you’re around, matey!”
“This case needs some very careful handling, sir. Lots of sensitive inquiries—”
“Such as?”
“About Owens, for a start.”
“You’ve got some new evidence?”
“One or two vague rumors, yes.”
“Mm... I heard a vague rumor myself this afternoon. I heard Owens’ place got burgled. I suppose you’ve heard that, too?” He peered at Morse over his half-lenses.
“Yes.”
“Only one thing pinched. Hm! A clock, Morse.”
“Yes.”
“We’ve only got one or two clock specialists on the patch, as far as I remember. Or is it just the one?”
“The one?”
“You’ve not seen him — since they let him out again?”
“Ah, Johnson! Yes. I shall have to call round to see him pretty soon, I suppose.”
“What about tomorrow? He’s probably your man, isn’t he?”
“I’m away tomorrow.”
“Oh?”
“London. Soho, as a matter of fact. Few things to check out.”
“I don’t know why you don’t let Sergeant Lewis do all that sort of tedious legwork.”
Morse felt the Chief Superintendent’s small, shrewd eyes upon him.
“Division of labor. Someone’s got to do it.”
“You know,” said Strange, “if I hadn’t got a Supers’ meeting in the morning, I’d join you. See the sights... and everything.”
“I don’t think Mrs. Strange’d approve.”
“What makes you think I’d tell her?”
“She’s— she’s not been all that well, has she?”
Strange slowly shook his head, and looked down at the carpet.
“What about you, sir?”
“Me? I’m fine, apart from going deaf and going bald and hemorrhoids and blood pressure. Bit overweight, too, perhaps. What about you?”
“I’m fine.”
“How’s the drinking going?”
“Going? It’s going, er...”
“ ‘Quickly?’ Is that the word you’re looking for?”
“That’s the word.”
Strange appeared about to leave. And — blessedly! — Lewis, Morse realized, must have been aware of the situation, since he had put in no appearance.
But Strange was not quite finished: “Do you ever worry how your liver’s coping with all this booze?”
“We’ve all got to die of something, they say.”
“Do you ever think about that — about dying?”
“Occasionally.”
“Do you believe in life after death?”
Morse smiled. “There was a sign once that Slough Borough Council put up near one of the churches there: NO ROAD BEYOND THE CEMETERY.”
“You don’t think there is, then?”
“No,” answered Morse simply.
“Perhaps it’s just as well if there isn’t — you know, rewards and punishments and all that sort of thing.”
“I don’t want much reward, anyway.”
“Depends on your ambition. You never had much o’ that, did you?”
“Early on, I did.”
“You could’ve got to the top, you know that.”
“Not doing a job I enjoyed, I couldn’t. I’m not a form filler, am I? Or a committeeman. Or a clipboard man.”
“Or a procedure man,” added Strange slowly, as he struggled to his feet.
“Pardon?”
“Bloody piles!”
Morse persisted. “What did you mean, sir?”
“Extraordinary, you know, the sort of high-tech stuff we’ve got in the Force these days. We’ve got a machine here that even copies color photos. You know, like the one— Oh! Didn’t I mention it, Morse? I had a very pleasant little chat with Sergeant Lewis in the photocopying room just before I came in here. By the look of things, you’ve got quite a few alternatives to go on there.”
“Quite a lot of ‘choices,’ sir. Strictly speaking, you only have ‘alternatives’ if you’ve just got the two options.”
“Fuck off, Morse!”
That evening Morse was in bed by 9:45 P.M., slowly reading but a few more pages of Juliet Barker’s The Brontës, before stopping at one sentence, and reading it again:
Charlotte remarked, “I am sorry you have changed your residence as I shall now again lose my way in going up and down stairs, and stand in great tribulation, contemplating several doors, and not knowing which to open.”
It seemed as good a place to stop as any; and Morse was soon nodding off, in a semiupright posture, the thick book dropping onto the duvet, the whiskey on his bedside table (unprecedentedly) unfinished.
Chapter thirty-one
A time
Older than the time of chronometers, older
Than time counted by anxious worried women
Lying awake, calculating the future,
Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
And piece together the past and the future.
The result of one election had already been declared, with Mr. Ivan Thomas, the Labor candidate, former unsuccessful aspirant to municipal honors, now preparing to assume his duties as councillor for the Gosforth ward at Kidlington, near Oxford.
At Lonsdale College, five miles further south, in the golden heart of Oxford, the likely outcome of another election was still very much in the balance, with the wives of the two nominees very much — and not too discreetly, perhaps — to the fore in the continued canvasing. As it happened, each of them (like Morse) was in bed — or in a bed — comparatively early that Sunday evening.
Shelly Cornford was always a long time in the bathroom, manipulating her waxed flossing-ribbon in between and up and down her beautifully healthy teeth. When finally she came into the bedroom, her husband was sitting up against the pillows reading the Sunday Times Books Section. He watched her as she took off her purple Jaeger dress, and then unfastened her black bra, her breasts bursting free. So very nearly he said something at that point; but the back of his mouth was suddenly dry, and he decided not to. Anyway, it had been only a small incident, and his wife was probably completely unaware of how she could affect some other men — with a touch, a look, a movement of her body. But he’d never been a jealous man.