Inspector Morse 4 - Service Of All The Dead (4 page)

Morris had moved from his previous post (it was almost three years ago now) primarily to try to forget that terrible day when the young police constable had come to tell him that his wife had been killed in a car accident; when he had gone along to the primary school to collect Peter and watched the silent, tragic tears that sprang from the boy's eyes; and when he had wrestled with that helpless, baffled anger against the perversity and cruelty of the Fates which had taken his young wife from him—an anger which over those next few dazed and despairing weeks had finally settled into a firm resolve at all costs to protect his only child whenever and wherever he could. The boy was something—the only thing—that he could cling to. Gradually, too, Morris had become convinced that he had to get away, and his determination to move—to move anywhere—had grown into an obsession as weekly the Posts Vacant columns in
The Times Educational Supplement
reminded him of new streets, new colleagues, a new school—perhaps even a new life. And so finally he had moved to the Roger Bacon Comprehensive School on the outskirts of Oxford, where his breezy interview had lasted but fifteen minutes, where he'd immediately found a quiet little semi-detached to rent, where everyone was very kind to him—but where his life proved very much the same as before. At least, until he met Brenda Josephs.

It was through Peter that he had established contact with St. Frideswide's. One of Peter's friends was a keen member of the choir, and before long Peter had joined, too. And when the aged choirmaster had finally retired it was common knowledge that Peter's father was an organist, and the invitation asking him to take over was accepted without hesitation.

Gilels was lingering
pianissimo
over the last few bars when the bell sounded the end of the week's schooling. One of the class, a leggy, large-boned, dark-haired girl, remained behind to ask if she could borrow the record for the week-end. She was slightly taller than Morris, and as he looked into her black-pencilled, languidly amorous eyes he once more sensed a power within himself which until a few months previously he could never have suspected. Carefully he lifted the record from the turntable and slipped it smoothly into its sleeve.

'Thank you,' she said softly.

'Have a nice week-end, Carole.'

'You, too, sir.'

He watched her as she walked down the steps from the stage and clattered her way across the main hall in her high wedge-heeled shoes. How would the melancholy Carole be spending her week-end? he wondered. He wondered, too, about his own.

Brenda had happened just three months ago. He had seen her on many occasions before, of course, for she always stayed behind after the Sunday morning service to take her husband home. But that particular morning had not been just another occasion. She had seated herself, not as usual in one of the pews at the back of the church, but directly behind him in the choir-stalls; and as he played he'd watched her with interest in the organ-mirror, her head slightly to one side, her face set in a wistful, half-contented smile. As the deep notes died away around the empty church, he had turned towards her.

'Did you like it?'

She had nodded quietly and lifted her eyes towards him.

'Would you like me to play it again?'

'Have you got time?'

'For you I have.' Their eyes had held then, and for that moment they were the only two beings alive in the world.

'Thank you,' she whispered.

Remembrance of that first brief time together was even now a source of radiant light that shone in Morris's heart. Standing by his side she had turned over the sheet-music for him, and more than once her arm had lightly brushed his own . . .

That was how it had begun, and how, he told himself, it had to end. But that couldn't be. Her face haunted his dreams that Sunday night, and again through the following nights she would give his sleeping thoughts no rest. On the Friday of the same week he had rung her at the hospital. A bold, irrevocable move. Quite simply he had asked her if he could see her some time—that was all; and just as simply she had answered 'Yes, of course you can'—words that re-echoed round his brain like the joyous refrain of the Seraphim.

In the weeks that followed, the frightening truth had gradually dawned on him: he would do almost anything to have this woman for his own. It was not that he bore any malice against Harry Josephs. How could he? Just a burning, irrational jealousy, which no words from Brenda, none of her pathetic pleas of reassurance could assuage. He wished Josephs out of the way—of course he did! But only recently had his conscious mind accepted the stark reality of his position. Not only did he wish Josephs out of the way: he would be positively happy to see him dead.

'You stayin' much longer, sir?'

It was the caretaker, and Morris knew better than to argue. It was a quarter past four, and Peter would be home.

The regular Friday evening fish and chips, liberally vinegared and blotched with tomato sauce, were finished, and they stood together at the kitchen sink, father washing, son drying. Although Morris had thought long and hard about what he would say, it was not going to be easy. He had never before had occasion to speak to his son about matters connected with sex; but one thing was quite certain: he had to do so now. He remembered with devastating clarity (he had only been eight at the time) when the two boys next door had been visited by the police, and when one of the local ministers had been taken to court, and there convicted and sentenced to prison. And he remembered the new words he had then learned, words that his school-fellows had learned, too, and laughed about in lavatory corners: slimy words that surfaced ever after in his young mind as if from some loathsome, reptilian pool.

'I think we may be able to get you that racing bike in a couple of months.'

'
Really
, Dad?'

'You'd have to promise me to be jolly careful . . . '

But Peter was hardly listening. His mind was racing as fast as the bike was going to race, his face shining with joy . . .

'Pardon, Dad?'

'I said, are you looking forward to the outing tomorrow?'

Peter nodded, honestly, if comparatively unenthusiastically. ''Spect I'll get a bit fed up on the way back. Like last year.'

'I want you to promise me something.'

Another promise? The boy frowned uncertainly at the serious tone in his father's voice, and rubbed the tea-towel quite unnecessarily round and round the next plate, anticipating some adult information, confidential, and perhaps unwelcome.

'You're still a young lad, you know. You may think you're getting a bit grown-up, but you've still got a lot to learn. You see, some people you'll meet in life are very nice, and some aren't. They may seem nice, but—but they're not nice at all.' It sounded pathetically inadequate.

'Crooks, you mean?'

'In a way they're crooks, yes, but I'm talking about people who are bad inside. They want—strange sort of things to satisfy them. They're not normal—not like most people.' He took a deep breath. 'When I was about your age, younger in fact—'

Peter listened to the little story with apparent unconcern. 'You mean he was a queer, Dad?'

'He was a homosexual. Do you know what that means?'

' 'Course I do.'

'Listen, Peter, if any man ever tries anything like that—anything!—you have nothing at all to do with it. Is that clear? And, what's more, you'll tell me. All right?'

Peter tried so very hard to understand, but the warning seemed remote, dissociated as yet from his own small experience of life.

'You see, Peter, it's not just a question of a man—touching' (the very word was shudderingly repulsive) 'or that sort of thing. It's what people start talking about or—or photographs that kind of—'

Peter's mouth dropped open and the blood froze in his freckled cheeks. So
that
was what his father was talking about! The last time had been two weeks ago when three of them from the youth club had gone along to the vicarage and sat together on that long, black, shiny settee. It was all a bit strange and exciting, and there had been those photographs—big, black and white, glossy prints that seemed almost clearer than real life. But they weren't just pictures of
men
, and Mr. Lawson had talked about them so—so naturally, somehow. Anyway, he'd often seen pictures like that on the racks in the newsagent's. He felt a growing sense of bewilderment as he stood there by the sink, his hands still clutching the drying-cloth. Then he heard his father's voice, raucous and ugly, in his ears, and felt his father's hand upon his shoulder, shaking him angrily.

'Do you hear me? Tell me about it!'

But the boy didn't tell his father. He just couldn't. What was there to tell anyway?

CHAPTER FOUR

T
HE COACH, A WIDE
luxury hulk of a thing, was due to leave Cornmarket at 7.30 a.m., and Morris joined the group of fussy parents counterchecking on lunch-bags, swimming-gear and pocket-money. Peter was already ensconced between a pair of healthily excited pals on the back seat, and Lawson once more counted heads to satisfy himself that the expedition was fully manned and could at last proceed. As the driver heaved round and round at the huge horizontal steering-wheel, slowly manoeuvring the giant vehicle into Beaumont Street, Morris had his last view of Harry and Brenda Josephs sitting silently together on one of the front seats, of Lawson folding his plastic raincoat and packing it into the overhead rack, and of Peter chatting happily away and like most of the other boys disdaining, or forgetting, to wave farewell. All
en route
for Bournemouth.

It was 7.45 a.m. by the clock on the south face of St. Frideswide's as Morris walked up to Carfax and then through Queen Street and down to the bottom of St Ebbe's, where he stopped in front of a rangy three-storeyed stuccoed building set back from the street behind bright yellow railings. Nailed on to the high wooden gate which guarded the narrow path to the front door was a flaking notice-board announcing in faded capitals ST. FRIDESWIDE'S CHURCH AND OXFORD PASTORATE. The gate itself was half-open; and as Morris stood self-consciously and indecisively in the deserted street a whistling paper-boy rode up on his bicycle and inserted a copy of
The Times
through the front door. No inside hand withdrew the newspaper, and Morris walked slowly away from the house and just as slowly back. On the top floor a pale yellow strip of neon lighting suggested the presence of someone on the premises, and he walked cautiously up to the front door where he rapped gently on the ugly black knocker. With no sound of movement from within, he tried again, a little louder. There must be someone, surely, in the rambling old vicarage. Students up on the top floor, probably? A housekeeper, perhaps? But again as he held his ear close to the door he could hear no movement; and conscious that his heart was beating fast against his ribs he tried the door. It was locked.

The back of the house was enclosed by a wall some eight or nine feet high; but a pair of gates, with NO PARKING amateurishly painted in white across them, promised access to somewhere, and turning the metal ring Morris found the gate unlocked. He stepped inside. A path led alongside the high stone wall beside an ill-tended stretch of patchy lawn, and quietly closing the gates behind him Morris walked up to the back door, and knocked with a quiet cowardice. No answer. No sound. He turned the door-knob. The door was unlocked. He opened it and went inside. For several seconds he stood stock-still in the wide hallway, his eyes unmoving as an alligator's. Across the hall
The Times
protruded downwards through the front-door letter-box like the tongue of some leering gargoyle, the whole house as still as death. He forced himself to breathe more naturally and looked around him. A door on his left was standing ajar, and he tiptoed across to look inside. 'Anyone there?' The words were spoken very softly, but they gave him an odd surge of confidence as though, should anyone be there, he was obviously trying to be noticed. And someone was there; or had been, until very recently. On a formica-topped table lay a knife, stickily smeared with butter and marmalade, a solitary plate strewn with toast-crumbs, and a large mug containing the dregs of cold tea. The remains, no doubt, of Lawson's breakfast. But a sudden shudder of fear climbed up Morris's spine as he noticed that the grill on the electric cooker was turned on full, its bars burning a fierce orange-red. Yet there was the same eerie stillness as before, with only the mechanical tick-tock of the kitchen clock to underline the pervasive silence.