Yet it would be an exaggeration to portray the young Harrison as a hapless adolescent, so often mishearing, so often misunderstood. His school fellows were not a gang of unmitigated bullies; nor were his teachers an uncaring crew. No. It was just that no one seemed to like him much; certainly no one seemed to love him.
Except his mother, perhaps.
But Simon did have some residual hearing, as we have seen; and the powerful hearing aids he wore were themselves far more valuable than any sympathy the world could ever offer. And when, after many a struggle, he left school with two A-level certificates (a C in English and a D in History) he very soon had a job.
Still had a job.
In the early 1990s, Oxfordshire’s potential facilities for business and industry had attracted many leading national and international companies. During those years, for example, the county could boast the largest concentration of printing and publishing companies outside the metropolis; and it was to one of these, the Daedalus Press in North Oxford, that on leaving school Simon had applied for the post of apprentice proofreader. And had been successful, principally (let it be admitted) because of the employers’ legal obligation to appoint a small percentage of semidisabled applicants. Yet the “apprentice” appellation was very soon to be deleted from Simon’s job description, for he was proving to be surprisingly and encouragingly competent: accurate, careful, neat — a fair combination of qualities required in a proofreader. And with any luck (so it was thought) experience would gradually bring with it that needful extra dimension of tedious pedanticism.
On the morning of Friday, July 17, he found on his desk a photocopied extract from some unspecified tabloid which some unspecified colleague had left, and which he read through with keen attention; then read through a second time, with less interest in its content, it appeared, than in its form, since his proofreading pen applied itself at five points in the article.
Chief Inspector Morse had not as yet encountered Simon Harrison, but he would have been reasonably impressed by the proofreader’s competence. Only reasonably, of course, since he himself was a man who somewhere, somehow, had acquired the aforementioned dimension of “tedious pedanticism,” and would have made three further amendments. And, of course, would have corrected that gross anachronism, since historical accuracy had engaged him from the age of ten, when he had taken it upon himself to memorize the sequence of the American presidents, and the dates of the kings and queens of England.
Chapter eight
Bankers are just like anybody else,
Except richer.
The London offices of the Swiss Helvetia Bank are tucked away discreetly just behind Sloane Square. The brass plaque pinpointing visitors to these premises, albeit highly polished, is perhaps disproportionately small. Yet in truth the Bank has little need to impress its potential clients. On the contrary. Such clients have every need to impress the Bank.
Just after 4 P.M. on Friday, July 17, a smartly suited man in his late forties waved farewell to the uniformed guard at the security desk and walked out into the sunshine of a glorious summer’s day. Traffic was already heavy; but that was of no concern to Frank Harrison, one of six portfolio and investment managers of SHB (London). His company flat was only a few minutes’ walk away in Pavilion Road.
Earlier in the day he’d been very much what they paid him so handsomely for being — shrewd, superior, trustworthy — when his secretary had poured coffee for a small, grey-haired man and for his larger, much younger, cosmetically exquisite wife.
“You realize that SHB deals principally with portfolio investments of, well, let’s say, over a million dollars? Is that, er...?”
The self-made citizen from South Carolina nodded. “I think you can feel assured, sir, that we shall be able to meet that figure — ah! — fairly easily, shan’t we, honey?”
He’d taken his wife’s heavily diamonded left hand in his own and smiled, smiled rather sweetly, as Harrison thought.
And he himself had smiled, too — rather sweetly, as he hoped — as mentally he calculated the likely commission from his latest client.
Almost managed a smile again now, as he stopped outside Sloane Square Underground Station and bought a copy of the Evening Standard, flicking through the sheets, almost immediately finding the only item that appeared to interest him, then swiftly scanning the brief article before depositing the paper in the nearest litter bin. Had he been at all interested in horse-racing, he might have noticed that Carolina Cutie was running in the 4:30 at Kempton Park. But it had been many years since he had placed a bet with any bookie — instead now spending many hours of each working day studying on his office’s computer screens the odds displayed from the London, New York, and Tokyo stock exchanges.
Considerably safer.
And recently he’d been rather lucky in the management of his clients’ investments.
And the bonuses were good.
He let himself into his flat, tapped in the numbers on the burglar alarm, and walked into the kitchen, where he poured himself a large gin with a good deal of ice and very little tonic. But he’d never had any drinking problem himself. Unlike his wife. His murdered wife.
Lauren had promised to be along about 6 P.M., and she’d never been late. He would call a taxi... well, perhaps they’d spend an hour or so between the sheets first, although (if truth were told) he was not quite so keenly aware of her sexual magnetism as he had been a few months earlier. Passion was coming off the boil. It usually happened. On both sides, too. It had happened with Yvonne, with whom he’d scaled the heights of sexual ecstasy, especially in the first few months of their marriage. Yet even during those kingfisher days he had been intermittently unfaithful to her; had woken with heart-aching guilt in the small hours of so many worryful nights — until, that is, he had discovered what he had discovered about her; and until he had fallen in love with a woman who was living so invitingly close to him in Lower Swinstead.
The front doorbell rang at 5:50 P.M. Ten minutes early. Good sign! He felt sexually ready for her now; tossed back the last mouthful of his second gin; and went to greet her.
“You’re in the paper again!” she blurted, almost accusingly, brandishing the relevant page of the Evening Standard in front of his face after the door was closed behind them.
“Really?”
For the second time Harrison looked down at the headline, new clue to old murder; and pretended to read the article through.
“Well?” she asked.
“Well, what?”
“What have you got to tell me?”
“I’m going to take you out for a meal and then I’m going to take you upstairs to bed — or maybe the other way round.”
“I didn’t mean that. You know I didn’t.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I want you to tell me what happened. You’ve never spoken about it, have you? Not to me. And I want to know!” Her upper lip was suddenly tremulous. “So before we do anything else, you’d better—”
“Better what?” He snapped the words and his voice seemed that of a different man. “Listen, my sweetheart! The day you tell me what to do, that’s the day we finish, OK? And if you don’t get that message loud and clear” (paradoxically the voice had dropped to a whisper) “you’d better bugger off and forget we ever met.”