Service of all the dead Page 8

  Chapter Fourteen

  From the City Police H.Q. Morse walked up past Christ Church to Cornmarket. To his left he noticed that the door of Carfax tower stood open, and beside it a notice inviting tourists to ascend and enjoy a panoramic view of Oxford. At the top of the tower he could see four or five people standing against the sky-line and pointing to some of the local landmarks, and a teenage youth actually sitting on the edge, with one of his boots wedged against the next parapet. Morse, feeling a twinge of panic somewhere in his bowels, lowered his eyes and walked on. He joined the small bus-queue just outside Woolworth, thinking again of what he'd just been reading: the life-histories of Josephs and Lawson, the accounts of their deaths, the subsequent investigations. But for the moment the filters of his brain could separate out no new nugget of precious information, and he turned towards St Giles' and looked up at the tower of St Frideswide 's. No one up there, of course… Just a minute! Had anyone been up there – recently? Suddenly a curious thought came into his mind – but no, it must be wrong. There'd been something in Bell 's file about it: 'Each November a group of volunteers go up to sweep the leaves.' It had just been a thought, that's all.

  A Banbury Road bus nudged into the queue, and Morse sat upstairs. As they passed St Frideswide's he looked up again at the tower and made a guess at its height: eighty, ninety feet? The trees ahead of him in St Giles' had that long-distance look of green about them as the leaves began to open; and the bus, as it pulled into the lay-by outside the Taylorian Institute, was scraping against some of their budded branches, when something clicked in Morse's mind. How tall were the trees here? Forty, fifty feet? Not much more, certainly. So how in the name of gravity did the autumnal leaves ever manage to dance their way to the top of St Frideswide's tower? Wasn't there perhaps a simple answer, though. They didn't. The November leaf-sweeping brigade had no need to go up to the main tower at all: they just cleared the lower roofs over the aisle and the Lady Chapel. That must be it. And so the curious thought grew curiouser still: since the time of Lawson's death, when doubtless Bell 's minions had sieved every leaf and every fragment of stone, had anyone been up to the roof of the tower?

  The bell pinged for the bus to stop at the Summertown shops; and simultaneously another bell rang in Morse's mind, and he joined the exodus. In Bell's notes (it was all 'bells' now) there'd been a few tactful mentions of Josephs' weakness for gambling on the horses, and the intelligent early suggestion (before Bell's visit to Josephs' bank manager) that the £100 or so found in the dead man's wallet might have had a fairly simple provenance – the licensed betting-office in Summertown.

  Morse pushed open the door and immediately registered some surprise. It was more like a branch of Lloyds Bank than the traditional picture of a bookmaker's premises. A counter faced him along the far wall, with a low grille running the length of it, behind which two young women were taking money and stamping betting-slips. Round the three other walls the racing pages of the daily newspapers were pinned, and in front of them were placed black plastic chairs where clients could sit and study the form-guides and consider their own fancies or the tipsters' selections. There were about fifteen people there, all men – sitting or standing about, their minds keenly concentrated on the state of the going, the weights and the jockeys, their ears intent on the loudspeaker which every few minutes brought them the latest news of the betting direct from the courses. Morse sat down and stared vacantly at a page of the Sporting Chronicle. To his right, a smartly dressed Chinaman twisted the knob on a small machine affixed to the wall and tore off a betting-slip. And from the corner of his eye Morse could see exactly what he wrote: '3.35 Newmarket – £20 win – The Fiddler'. Phew! Surely most of the punters here had to be satisfied with a modest fifty pence or so each way? He turned his head and watched the Chinaman at the pay-in counter, four crisp fivers fanned out neatly in his right hand; watched the girl behind the grille, as she accepted the latest sacrifice with the bland indifference of a Buddhist deity. Two minutes later the loudspeaker woke up again, and without enthusiasm an impersonal voice announced, the 'off'; announced, after a period of silence, the order of the runners at the four-furlong marker; then the winner, the second the third – The Fiddler not amongst them. To Morse, who as a boy had listened to the frenetically exciting race-commentaries of Raymond Glendenning, the whole thing seemed extraordinarily flat, more like an auctioneer selling a Cézanne at Sotheby's.

  The Chinaman resumed his seat beside Morse, and began to tear up his small yellow slip with the exaggerated delicacy of one who practises the art of origami.

  'No luck?' ventured Morse.

  'No,' said the Chinaman, with a polite oriental inclination of the head.

  'You lucky sometimes?'

  'Sometime.' Again the half-smile, the gentle inclination of the head.

  'Come here often?'

  'Often.' And, as if to answer the query on Morse's face, 'Me pretty rich man, you think so?'

  Morse took the plunge. 'I used to know a fellow who came in here most days – fellow called Josephs. Used to wear a brown suit. About fifty.'

  'Here now?'

  'No. He died about six months ago – murdered, poor chap.'

  'Ah. You mean Harree. Yes. Poor Harree. I know heem. We often talk. He murdered, yes. Me verree soiree.'

  'He won quite a bit on the horses, I've heard. Still, some of us are luckier than others.'

  'You wrong. Harree verree unluckee man. Always just not there quite.'

  'He lost a lot of money, you mean?'

  The Chinaman shrugged. 'Perhaps he rich man.' His narrow eyes focused on the 4.00 card at Newmarket, his right hand reaching up automatically for the knob on the wail machine.

  Probably Josephs had been losing money pretty consistently, and not the sort of money he could hope to recoup from the unemployment exchange. Yet he'd got money from somewhere, by some means.

  Morse considered a little wager of his own on the Chinaman's next selection, but squint as he would he couldn't quite see the name, and he left and walked thoughtfully up the hill. It was a pity. A few minutes after Morse had let himself into his flat, the little Chinaman stood smiling a not particularly inscrutable smile at the the pay-out counter. He hadn't really got his English syntax sorted out yet, but perhaps he'd coined as fitting an epitaph for Harry Josephs as any with those five disjointed adverbs: 'Always just not there quite.'

  Chapter Fifteen

  'No, I'm sorry, Inspector – he isn't.' It was ten-past seven and Mrs Lewis regretted the interruption to The Archers: she hoped that Morse would either come in or go away. ' Oxford are playing tonight, and he's gone to watch them.'

  The rain had been falling steadily since tea-time, and still pattered the puddles in the Lewises' front drive. 'He must be mad,' said Morse.

  'It's working with you, Inspector. Are you coming in?'

  Morse shook his head and a raindrop dripped from his bare head on to his chin. 'I'll go and see if I can find him.'

  'You must be mad,' muttered Mrs Lewis.

  Morse drove carefully through the rain up to Headington, the windscreen-wipers sweeping back and forth in clean arcs across the spattered window. It was these damned holidays that upset him! Earlier this Tuesday evening he had sat in his armchair, once again in the grip of a numbing lethargy that minute by minute grew ever more paralysing. The Playhouse offered him a Joe Orton farce, hailed by the critics as a comedy classic. No. The Moulin Rouge announced that the torrid Sandra Bergson was leading a sexy, savage, insatiable all-girl gang in On the Game: an X trailer, no doubt, advertising a U film. No. Every prospect seemed displeasing, and even women, temporarily, seemed vile. Then he'd suddenly thought of Sergeant Lewis.

  It had been no problem parking the Jaguar in Sandfield Road, and Morse now pushed through the stiff turnstile into the Manor Road ground. Only a faithful sprinkling of bedraggled spectators was standing along the west-side terrace, their umbrellas streaked with rain; but the covered terrace at the London Road end was tightl
y packed with orange-and-black-scarved youngsters, their staccato 'Ox-ford – clap-clap-clap' intermittently echoing across the ground. One row of brilliant floodlights was suddenly switched on, and the wet grass twinkled in a thousand silvery gleams.

  A roar greeted the home team, yellow-shirted, blue-shorted leaning forward against the slanting rain, and kicking and flicking a series of white footballs across the sodden pitch until they shone like polished billiard balls. Behind him, as Morse turned, was the main stand, under cover and under-populated; and he walked back to the entrance and bought himself a transfer ticket.

  By half-time Oxford were two goals down, and in spite of repeated scrutinies of those around him, Morse had still not spotted Lewis. Throughout the first half, when the centre of the pitch and the two goal-mouths had churned up into areas of squelchy morass reminiscent of pictures of Passchendaele, Morse's thoughts had given him little rest. An improbable, illogical, intuitive notion was growing ever firmer in his mind – a mind now focused almost mesmerically on the tower of St Frideswide's, and the fact that he himself was quite unable to check his forebodings served only to reinforce their probability. He needed Lewis badly – there could be no doubt of that.

  Greeted by a cacophony of whistles and catcalls, his black top and shorts shining like a skin-diver's suit, the referee came out to inspect the pitch again, and Morse looked at the clock by the giant Scoreboard: 8.20 p.m. Was it really worth staying?

  A firm hand gripped his shoulder from behind. 'You must be mad, sir.' Lewis clambered over the back of the seat and sat himself down beside his chief.

  Morse felt indescribably happy. 'Listen, Lewis. I want your help. What about it?'

  'Any time, sir. You know me. But aren't you on-?'

  'Any time?'

  A veil of slow disappointment clouded Lewis' eyes. 'You don't mean-?' He knew exactly what Morse meant.

  'You've lost this one, anyway.'

  'Bit unlucky, weren't we, in the first half?'

  'What are you like on heights?' asked Morse.

  Like the streets around the football ground, St Giles' was comparatively empty, and the two cars easily found parking-spaces outside St John's College.

  'Fancy a beefburger, Lewis?'

  'Not for me, sir. The wife'll have the chips on.' Morse smiled contentedly. It was good to be back in harness again; good to be reminded of Mrs Lewis' chips. Even the rain had slackened, and Morse lifted his face and breathed deeply, ignoring Lewis' repeated questions about their nocturnal mission.

  The large west window of St Frideswide's glowed with a sombre, yellow light, and from inside could be heard the notes of the organ, muted and melancholy.

  'We going to church?' asked Lewis; and in reply Morse unlatched the north door and walked inside. Immediately on their left as they entered was a brightly-painted statue of the Virgin, illumined by circles of candles, some slim and waning rapidly, some stout and squat, clearly prepared to soldier on throughout the night; and all casting a flickering kaleidoscopic light across the serene features of the Blessed Mother of God.

  'Coleridge was very interested in candles,' said Morse. But before he could further enlighten Lewis on such enigmatic subject-matter a tall, shadowy figure emerged from the gloom, swathed in a black cassock.

  'I'm afraid the service is over, gentlemen.'

  'That's handy,' said Morse. 'We want to go up the tower.'

  'I beg your pardon.'

  'Who are you?' asked Morse brusquely.

  'I am the verger,' said the tall man, 'and I'm afraid there's no possibility whatsoever of your going up to the tower.'

  Ten minutes later with the verger's key, and the verger's torch, and the verger's warning that the whole thing was highly irregular, Morse found himself on the first few steps of the ascent – a narrow, steep, scalloped stairway that circled closely upwards to the tower above. With Lewis immediately behind he shone the torch ahead of him, and, increasingly breathless from exertion and apprehension, gritted his teeth and climbed. Fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven… On the sixty-third step a small narrow window loomed on the left, and Morse shut his eyes, hugging the right-hand wall ever more closely; and ten steps higher, steps still religiously counted, he reached the inexorable conclusion that he would climb one step higher, make an immediate U-turn, descend to the bottom, and take Lewis for a pint in the Randolph. A cold sweat had broken out on his forehead, and the planes registering the vertical and horizontal realities were merging and sliding and slanting into a terrifying tilt. He craved only one thing now: to stand four-square on the solid ground outside this abominable tower and to watch the blessedly terrestrial traffic moving along St Giles'. To stand? No, to sit there; to lie there even, the members of his body seeking to embrace at every point the solid, fixed contours of the flat and comforting earth.

  'Here you are, Lewis. You take the torch. I'm – I'm right behind you.'

  Lewis set off ahead of him, easily, confidently, two steps at a time, upwards into the spiralling blackness; and Morse followed. Above the bell chamber, up and up, another window and another dizzying glimpse of the ground so far below – and Morse with a supreme effort of will thought only of one step upwards at a time, his whole being concentrating itself into the purely physical activity of lifting each leg alternately, like a victim of locomotor ataxia.

  'Here we are, then,' said Lewis brightly, shining the torch on a tow door just above them. "This must be the roof, I think.'

  The door was not locked and Lewis stepped through it, leaving Morse to sit down on the threshold, breathing heavily, his back tight against the door-jamb and his hands tight against his clammy forehead. When finally he dared to look about him, he saw the tessellated coping of the tower framed against the evening sky and then, almost fatally, he saw the dark clouds hurrying across the pale moon, saw the pale moon hurrying behind the dark clouds, saw the tower itself leaning and drifting against the sky, and his head reeled vertiginously, his gut contracted, and twice he retched emptily – and prayed that Lewis had not heard him.

  From the north side of the tower Lewis looked down and across the broad, tree-lined expanse of St Giles'. Immediately below him, some eighty or ninety feet, he guessed, he could just make out the spiked railing that surrounded the north porch, and beyond it the moonlit graves in the little churchyard. Nothing much of interest. He shone the torch across the tower itself. Each of the four sides was about ten or twelve yards in length, with a gully running alongside the outer walls, and a flat, narrow walk, about a yard in width, between these walls and the leaded roof which rose from each side in a shallow pyramid, its apex some eight or nine feet high, on which a wooden post supported a slightly crooked weather-vane.

  He walked back to the door. 'You all right, sir?'

  'Yes, fine. Just not so fit as you, that's all.'

  'You'll get a touch of the old Farmer Giles sitting there, sir.'

  'Find anything?'

  Lewis shook his head.

  'You looked all round?'

  'Not exactly, no. But why don't you tell me what we're supposed to be looking for?' Then, as Morse made no reply: 'You sure you're all right, sir?'

  'Go and – go and have a look all the way round, will you? I'll – er – I'll be all right in a minute.'

  'What's wrong, sir?'

  'I'm scared of bloody heights, you stupid sod!' snarled Morse.

  Lewis said nothing more. He'd worked with Morse many times before, and treated his outbursts rather as he had once treated the saddeningly bitchy bouts of temper from his own teenage daughters. Nevertheless, it still hurt a bit.

  He shone the torch along the southern side of the tower and slowly made his way along. Pigeon-droppings littered the narrow walk, and the gully on this side was blocked somewhere, for two or three inches of water had built up at the south-east corner. Lewis took hold of the outer fabric of the tower as he tried to peer round the east side, but the stonework was friable and insecure. Gingerly he leaned his weight against the slope of the centra
l roofing, and shone the torch round. 'Oh Christ!' he said softly to himself.

  There, stretched parallel to the east wall, was the body of a man – although even then Lewis realised that the only evidence for supposing the body to be that of a man was the tattered, sodden suit in which the corpse was dressed, and the hair on the head which was not that of a woman. But the face itself had been picked almost clean to the hideous skull; and it was upon this non-face that Lewis forced himself to shine his torch again. Twice in all – but no more.

  Chapter Sixteen

  At lunch-time on the following day, Morse sat alone in The Bulldog, just opposite Christ Church, and scanned an early copy of the Oxford Mail. Although the main headline and three full columns of the front page were given over to COMPONENTS STRIKE HITS COWLEY MEN, 'Body Found on Church Tower ' had been dramatic enough news to find itself half-way down the left-hand column. But Morse didn't bother to read it. After all, he'd been sitting there in Bell 's office a couple of hours previously when one of the Mail's correspondents had rung through and when Bell 's replies had been guarded and strictly factual: 'No, we don't know who he is.' 'Yes, I did say a "he".' 'What? Quite a long time, yes. Quite a long time.' 'I can't say at the minute, no. They're holding the post-mortem this afternoon. Good headline for you, eh? P.M. THIS P.M.' 'No, I can't tell you who found him.' 'Could be a link-up, I suppose, yes.' 'No, that's the lot. Ring up tomorrow if you like. I might have a bit more for you then.' At the time Morse had felt that this last suggestion was a bit on the optimistic side, and he still felt so now. He turned to the back page and read the sports headline: UNITED COME UNSTUCK ON PITCH LIKE GLUE. But he didn't read that account, either. The truth was that he felt extremely puzzled, and needed time to think.