CHAPTER 18 -Something's shameful

Part 1

When Morse called at the Thursday home the next morning to pick up his guvnor, he was still feeling just a little bit the worse for wear. He hadn't planned to have as many beers as he ended up drinking when he took up Thursday's suggestion of a quick pint or two, but then he wasn't to know that he would make the acquaintance of an extremely nice and interesting young woman called Veronica Roberts. He had consequently carried on drinking far longer than he had originally intended, not that he regretted it, not for a moment. It had been quite some time since he had enjoyed the company of a young woman so much, Joan Thursday excepted of course.

They had exchanged telephone numbers before parting and Morse was fully intent on calling her as soon as was decently possible, without making himself look too desperate and over-eager. He had fallen asleep straight away once his head had touched the pillow, hardly surprising considering the number of beers he had polished off the previous evening. But at least he didn't wake up in a cold sweat from any more nightmares involving Joan, not least because it was Veronica whom he vaguely remembered dreaming about.

When he and Thursday got in the car, Morse looked across at Thursday in silence but with raised eyebrows, awaiting his guvnor's instructions.

'Let's hit the city centre, shall we?' he said, as Morse smoothly drove away from the kerb and out into an open road. 'We'll start knocking on pub doors and asking if anyone remembers seeing Ronald Fraser last Friday evening. With the amount of alcohol he had in his system when he was killed, he must have had a right skinful in some pub or other beforehand. It shouldn't be too difficult to find out where.'

'Just calls for a bit of old-fashioned police work, then,' said Morse with half a grin forming on his lips.

'That's right, Morse. Some good old traditional legwork. No need to solve any anagrams or spot the hidden code in a series of numbers. Just do the rounds and ask the questions. Simple as you like.'

Morse was secretly glad that the morning's task for once didn't call for any great flashes of genius or inspiration on his part. He doubted that his still slightly foggy and dull mind would have fared particularly well faced with an intellectual challenge which would have required intense concentration and the active use of his imagination. The two of them travelled into the city in relative silence, though neither of them felt uncomfortable with that. When they arrived in the city centre, Morse found a parking space where he could conveniently leave a police vehicle on business and the pair of them quickly agreed how they would divide up the pubs in this busy part of town between them and when they would reconvene back at the car to compare notes.

Morse's allocation took in all the pubs along the High Street, starting with The Mitre and ending at the corner of High and Cornmarket, and including a short detour to The Bear and St Aldates Tavern. Thursday was going to do the rounds of the pubs further up on Cornmarket and then into George Street and they agreed to meet up at The Crown in Cornmarket for lunch. Morse made his way from the car into the High and within five minutes he was knocking on the door of the Mitre and showing his ID to the man who answered the door. He asked if he could come in for five minutes and ask a couple of questions. He was reluctantly shown in to the pub and led over to the bar where he was asked if he would like something to drink, despite the pub not being open for business yet, an offer which, unusually for him, he readily declined, He knew he needed to steer clear of beer for the next couple of hours at least.

'I'm Detective Sergeant Morse from Thames Valley CID,' he repeated as the bloke hadn't wasted much time checking his ID at the door. 'We're investigating a murder that took place last Friday evening down by the canal and we're anxious to trace the movements of this man earlier on in the evening, any time between eight o'clock and eleven o'clock.'

He took out the post-mortem photo of Ronald Fraser and showed it to the guy. 'Were you working here that evening?'

The man nodded, glanced briefly at the photo and shook his head decisively. 'No,' he said. 'Don't remember seeing him.'

'Are you quite sure?' said Morse. 'Take another good look at the photo. He might have been drinking alone or possibly with one other person.'

The guy did Morse the courtesy of looking at the photo with just a little more attention this time but shook his head a second time. 'No, he wasn't in here.' He had obviously decided he had answered all the copper's questions and didn't need to pay him any more attention since he turned his back on Morse and went back behind the bar.

'Do you remember ever having seen him drink in here before, not just Friday night?' Morse wasn't going to give up just yet and he was irritated that the guy had turned his back on him and had decided that the interview was over as far as he was concerned.

'He wasn't here Friday night and he's never been here. Is that it cos I've got work to do if it's all the same to you.'

Morse briefly considered tearing this guy off a strip for being so manifestly rude, unhelpful and uncooperative, but he decided he wasn't worth the effort. He seemed pretty adamant he had never seen Fraser before, so he left it at that and exited the pub. He wasn't expecting to strike it lucky at the first pub he tried so he wasn't especially despondent, but he was hoping that not all the landlords and bar staff were going to be as surly and defensive as this man. It was going to be a long and arduous morning if they all proved to follow in this guy's footsteps, he thought.

Part 2

George Fancy was fed up and cheesed off. Despite having free rein of the house, which Jim Strange had insisted he should have, he was beginning to go out of his mind with boredom. He had never been much of an indoors man anyway but what was even worse was that he absolutely detested being on his own. He was not one of those people who enjoyed his own company and he was in danger of becoming seriously stir crazy.

Admittedly he was hardly immobile. It wasn't as if his injuries had confined him temporarily to a wheelchair or had necessitated the use of crutches with all the limitations on easy mobility that they often imposed. No, he still had legs, he could still get about even if only to pop up the road to the newsagents to buy a paper or a magazine. There was even a half decent café about fifteen minutes' walk away where he could buy himself a fry-up if he so desired. But eating on his own, even if it was a meal of eggs, bacon and sausages, with two slices of toast and a hot mug of tea, didn't have the same appeal than if he was eating with someone. He hated silence. He couldn't bear blissful peace and quiet and the house he had been spending the best part of two days cooped up in was the epitome of silence. The sound of nothingness all around him was starting to echo in his head like a deafening drill.

He was praying that Trewlove would pop over at lunchtime to see how he was doing again but she had not made any firm promises when she left the previous evening and he had a suspicion that she would choose to leave him to his own devices this lunchtime.

Still, he did at least have an afternoon appointment with the medical guy attached to Cowley Police Station so he was crossing his fingers, toes and anything else he could find to cross that he would get the all clear from the doc and be declared fit to return to work the following week. It would mean leaving his temporary accommodation and going back to face the music from his parents but at least he wouldn't be all on his own during the day anymore. That thought cheered him up a bit and he told himself to think more positively about his situation.

Given that he had free run of the place, he realised he hadn't really made full use of the advantageous position he had been afforded to have a bit of a nose around the house. He was a curious and inquisitive person by nature or, as his Mum was fond of calling him, ' a right little Nosey Parker' and yet in all the time he had been living there, he had never really had much of a look around to see what he could discover about his colleagues that he hadn't known before. Who knows, maybe he might even find a clue or two as to what Morse's first name was! Perhaps he might come across something in Morse's possessions, a book for example, which had been a present from his parents and carried the inscription 'To Ernest, With all our love, Mum and Dad.'

Despite the obvious betrayal of trust and gross invasion of privacy that such an endeavour would inevitably represent, Fancy soon started to warm to the idea. This would while away an hour or two before lunch, he thought. He got up from the sofa and went up the stairs which led to the landing off of which five closed doors invited him the opportunity to explore. Only two held any interest for him – Jim's room and Morse's room, the others being the bathroom, the toilet and a small box room which was too small to be used as a third bedroom and which was used mainly for storage and was highly unlikely to contain any great secrets.

He already had a reasonable idea what was in Jim's room from having slept there the past two nights. Sadly, he hadn't uncovered anything remotely interesting there but then Jim Strange wasn't the man of mystery that Morse was. No, it was definitely Morse's room that held the principal attraction for him but was he brave enough to have a snoop around? Was he nosey enough to pry into someone else's private business which he had absolutely no right to invade so shamelessly? He hesitated outside Morse's bedroom for a few moments, turning those questions around in his head. How would they find out if he was ultra-careful about what he touched and picked up? How could Morse know he had been in his room if he left no evidence behind? Was it worth the risk? He might uncover some small trifle, some tiny nugget of fascinating information which could earn him a huge amount of kudos and brownie points amongst his colleagues back at the nick. It all came down to a conflict between risk and reward!

Part 3

The time was approaching half past twelve when Morse and Thursday finally met up at the Crown public house and compared notes on their morning's efforts.

'Any luck?' asked Thursday and he pulled a face when Morse shook his head. 'Me neither,' he said and as they went into the pub and found themselves a table, Thursday took off his hat and threw it on to the table in a rare gesture of irritation.

'I thought I had struck gold when I tried the Wheatsheaf, 'said Morse, trying to cheer Thursday up. 'The landlord said he recognised Fraser from the photo but when I asked him if Fraser had been in the pub last Friday night, he said no, not Friday. He remembered him being in there a couple of weeks back with a small group of people. He assumed they were work colleagues, but he couldn't be sure.'

'Fraser probably joined some of the staff from the Mail for a couple of drinks after work. But definitely not last Friday?'

Morse shook his head again, but he did have something constructive to suggest. 'Maybe we're looking in the wrong places,' he said.

'How do you mean?' asked Thursday, puzzled by what Morse was implying.

'Well, Fraser wasn't at work on Friday, was he? He had taken the day off, supposedly to travel up north on a fishing trip. So, it's unlikely he would be drinking in any of the pubs in the city centre, surely. If he felt in need of a couple of stiff drinks to face whatever it was he was preparing to face, he'd have chosen a pub nearer home, wouldn't he?'

Thursday listened intently to Morse's coherent and logical argument and nodded at the end of it. 'Yes, you're right, Morse. He wouldn't have come into town for a spot of Dutch courage, would he? He's much more likely to have popped into one of his local pubs. We've been barking up the wrong tree, like you said.'

Morse went off to the bar to get a couple of pints of beer in, leaving Thursday to curse his short-sightedness at not having picked up on that important yet neglected detail considerably earlier. They would have to take themselves off to Fraser's immediate neighbourhood and do the rounds of the pubs there. That would be their immediate task for the afternoon, the DCI thought, after they had lined their stomachs first, of course. Morse returned with the drinks just as Thursday was pulling out Win's sandwiches from his coat pocket. He looked up at Morse to offer him the opportunity to correctly predict the sandwich filling, but Morse was clearly distracted at first, staring off into space and was unaware that Thursday had paused for a moment. When he suddenly became aware that Thursday was looking at him, his eyes full of expectation and anticipation, he smiled and pronounced the sandwiches to be corned beef and pickle which Thursday duly confirmed on a quick inspection of the contents of the brown paper bag.

'I don't think you've ever guessed wrong, have you?' He stared at Morse with the ghost of a smile on his lips and Morse shrugged his shoulders, uncertain quite what to say. He didn't want to imply any criticism of Mrs Thursday, heaven forbid, but she did religiously follow a rather predictable pattern which he had worked out from very early on in his working relationship with his guvnor.

'I'm going to have to tell Win to mix things up a bit, change the order every now and then, just to try and catch you out!' Thursday winked at Morse mischievously and Morse gave him a nervous smile back. 'Please don't tell Mrs Thursday, Sir,' he pleaded. 'I would hate for her to get upset on my account.'

'I'm only pulling your leg, Morse. Don't worry, I won't say a word to Win,' he reassured Morse whom he suspected was genuinely worried for a moment he would spill the beans to his wife about Morse's predictive powers vis-à-vis her sandwich fillings. Thursday munched contentedly on his sarnies while Morse enjoyed his beer, the two coppers sharing a few precious minutes of silence and deep contemplation. Neither felt the need to punctuate the peace and quiet with meaningless conversation, each appreciating the moment of calm relaxation before they would be required to throw themselves back into the hurly-burly of a police investigation.

Part 4

George Fancy had been having a discreet nose around in Morse's room for about half an hour and still hadn't come across anything of great significance or usefulness that would potentially give him the upper hand over Morse or further his standing amongst his colleagues back at Cowley nick. The bedroom was largely given over to books and classical music or opera-based LP's, which came as no surprise to Fancy as Morse's love of opera and his famed intellectual prowess, based on the fact that he was at one time a Classics student at the university, were common knowledge around the station.

He had resisted the temptation to open any drawers or cupboards, feeling that such a wanton invasion of Morse's privacy would be tantamount to burglary and would place him at the same level as a common petty criminal. He had accompanied Morse on a number of occasions when they had been required to search through the contents of a murder victim's rooms, but that was a necessary act of personal invasion in order to learn as much as possible about the victim. This was a very different kettle of fish and Fancy couldn't bring himself to be that nosy and intrusive. He therefore contented himself with having a good look at everything that was visible to the naked eye and in plain view of a casual visitor to the bedroom, including all the books neatly stacked on a couple of bookshelves and a large collection of LP's, almost entirely composed of classical music.

Fancy didn't recognise any of the book titles and they all appeared to be old and well-thumbed, possibly remnants of Morse's time as a Classical scholar when he was up at Oxford. This was a world far removed from Fancy's and as fascinated as he was by it, there was little there to capture his interest and imagination. He had a browse through Morse's record collection and picked up one or two albums at random and read the sleeves but again his knowledge of operatic arias was, to put it mildly, sketchy at best or non-existent if one wasn't being charitable. He came across one record which he recalled Morse waxing lyrical about some time ago and wondered if he ought to at least have a listen to it, in the interests of furthering his appreciation and understanding of opera, he told himself.

He decided he would be bold, so he carefully took out the record from its sleeve, loaded it on to the record player that was situated in a corner of the room, switched on the player and set the machine in motion. The record duly dropped down, the needle swung across and soon the first bars of Verdi's La Traviata began to blare out loud and long into the room. Fancy sat down in the chair at Morse's table and listened while reading the album sleeve notes. He became so preoccupied with the music as he tried hard to appreciate it for being more than just high-pitched screeching and a relentless torrent of incomprehensible lyrics, that he never heard the doorbell ring downstairs. Nor did he hear the sound of a key turning in the lock and the footsteps of someone entering the house, followed after a short interval by the sounds of that person climbing up the stairs.

He was just on the point of giving up on Verdi, dismissing it quite harshly as old people's music, when WPC Trewlove knocked politely on the open door and then walked into the room. His brain must have finally registered the presence of somebody behind him for he turned round in his seat in a blind panic and let out a gasp of surprise and horror at the sight of Trewlove standing in the open doorway looking at him in complete astonishment.

'Jesus, Shirley!' he cried out, unable to stop his initial shock from expressing itself so bluntly. 'You gave me the fright of my life. I didn't hear you come in!'

'Obviously,' said Trewlove with the sternest and most disapproving expression on her face that Fancy had ever seen. 'You were far too busy listening to one of Morse's records, sitting in his own chair in his own bedroom, without an invitation, I should imagine.'

Fancy got up out of the chair, rushed over to the record player and abruptly stopped the music playing. He tuned back to face Trewlove with a face as red as a beetroot and he stumbled to find a plausible explanation for his actions which, in all fairness, made him look as guilty as hell.

'I didn't mean any harm, Shirl. I was…. just having a harmless look around and… thought I'd have a listen to one of his records, that's all.'

'That's all? What do you mean, that's all? How can what I've caught you doing be harmless? You've been snooping around in Morse's room, prying into his private things and even listening to one of his records. Quite apart from breaking into his room uninvited like a common burglar, you know how much he values his record collection and how he doesn't like anyone messing with it.'

Fancy hung his head in shame. He knew Shirley was right, everything she had just said was spot on. He was lost for words and just stood there feebly in front of Trewlove like a naughty schoolboy who'd been caught in the act of stealing food from the tuck shop by the headmaster and was awaiting his punishment.

'Well, you can start off by putting the record back in its sleeve and back with all the others. In the right place as well, if you can remember where it was, For your sake, I hope you can!' Trewlove's face looked like thunder as she barked out precise instructions which George meekly followed to the letter. La Traviata was restored to its original position, the chair was adjusted to how it was placed before Fancy sat down in it and he checked that every object that he had touched was correctly reinstated to its original position. Only when all this was done was Trewlove remotely satisfied, after which she virtually frogmarched Fancy back downstairs and into the living room.

'You'd better start praying Morse doesn't notice anything suspicious when he comes home tonight, George. I mean, for God's sake, what were you thinking of?'

'I know. I'm sorry, Shirley. I was just…' his voice tailed off as he rummaged around in his scrambled head for a convincing excuse to justify his appalling behaviour but there was none to be found. 'I was just bored, I suppose.'

Even as he said it, he recognised how utterly feeble and insufficient that explanation was, but it was too late to take it back. It was out there for posterity and more immediately for Shirley to shoot down in flames, an opportunity which she capitalised on to the full.

'Oh, well that's alright then,' she said with eyes blazing and nostrils flaring up, 'As long as you had a good reason, I'm sure Morse will understand! You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself!'

'I am, believe me, Shirley. I can't think what possessed me to do it.' He paused for a moment, almost terrified to ask the next question, so afraid was he of what Trewlove's response would be but he had to ask it, nonetheless. 'You won't tell Morse, will you?'

Trewlove eyed Fancy up and down like he was a piece of dog mess she had just inadvertently stepped on. 'Never mind telling Morse, George. By rights I ought to arrest you for breaking and entering! '

Fancy stared at Trewlove open-mouthed in disbelief. Christ!, he thought. She had a point. She would have been well within her rights to, instinctively he knew that to be true. His head started spinning and he had to sit down hurriedly on the sofa to stop himself from collapsing on to the floor.

'You won't though, will you?' he begged her with wild, desperate eyes. 'Please, just give me a chance to make amends, Shirley. I promise I'll make up for this, somehow.'

'How, George? How do you make up for virtually rifling through Morse's possessions behind his back? If DCI Thursday ever got to hear about it, he'd probably kick you off the force.'

'Please, don't say anything to anyone. I promise…I promise I'll make it up to Morse somehow. I'll think of something, honestly I will.'

Trewlove looked at Fancy in silence, suddenly tired and bored of laying into him and she decided she had no desire to stay in his presence any longer. She needed time and a quiet place to think about what she should do with this knowledge that she fervently wished she had never been privy to.

'Well. I'm off, George. I suggest you get ready for your appointment with the doc and make yourself scarce pronto. Agreed?'

Fancy nodded silently, eyes firmly cast downwards, the picture of misery and woe. He would have agreed to anything Trewlove told him to do in his vulnerable position, with his fate and future as a police detective seemingly hanging by a thread. His career in the police force, which he had set his heart on since he was a small boy, lay in the hands of a young WPC on whom he had romantic designs for quite some time but who now looked so far out of reach as to be in the realms of cloud cuckoo land.

Part 5

After many hours of fruitless trawling around Oxford's pubs and alehouses, both in the city centre and in the outlying countryside, Morse and Thursday finally struck lucky just as they were beginning to give up hope of finding anyone who remembered seeing Ronald drinking on the night he died. They came across a picturesque old pub about fifteen minutes' walk from the spot where Ronald Fraser was found and when they asked to speak to the landlord, he recognised the picture of Fraser immediately.

'Yes, I remember him,' he said confidently after studying the photo carefully for a few seconds before handing it back to Morse.

'He was in here last Friday night?' asked Morse as he exchanged a glance with Thursday who looked relieved to have finally made a breakthrough. 'Are you absolutely sure?'

'He was here alright. I remember thinking he was going to be in a right old state by the end of the evening if he carried on drinking at that rate.'

'Was he with anyone?' asked Thursday.

'No. He sat over there in the corner by the window, all on his own, knocking back whisky after whisky and looking a right bag of nerves. I got the feeling he was trying to pluck up the courage to do something unpleasant and getting drunk quickly was the only way he could think of to do it.'

'Did he say anything to you to suggest what that could have been?' Morse felt they were on the verge of making a huge discovery, but they just needed one or two more crucial bits of information to give them a chance of cracking the case.

The landlord shook his head. 'He hardly said a thing, other than 'Another whisky, please'. He didn't seem in the mood for talking. He was too engrossed in that letter of his to be bothered about conversation.'

'What letter?' Morse and Thursday asked the obvious question simultaneously and Morse's heart started to beat just a little faster.

'I don't know,' said the landlord. 'Some letter or other he was poring over practically the whole time he was here. I reckon he must have read it over and over with every fresh glass of whisky I served him.'

Morse and Thursday looked at each other in bewilderment. They were both thinking the same thing – there was no letter found on Fraser's body or anywhere near it when he was found dead on Saturday morning. What could have happened to it?

'How long was he here?' asked Morse, getting out his notebook and making a few hurried notes.

The landlord thought a while before answering confidently. 'Well, he got here just after half past nine, I think. He left shortly after eleven so… round about an hour and a half, I'd say. Give or take. I mean, I wasn't checking my watch or the clock the whole time, obviously.'

Thursday nodded. 'Any idea who the letter was from? Did you get a look at it at all?'

The landlord shook his head. 'No, he kept it close to him the whole time. Looked like he didn't want to let it out of his sight. Besides, it was none of my business, was it?'

There didn't look to be any further relevant information they could get out of the landlord, so they thanked him for his troubles and left the pub, with just a bit more of a spring in their collective steps than there had been at lunchtime. This was an important new development in their investigation, and they needed time to process this new information and ponder its significance. Once back in the car, Thursday wasted no time in stating the bleeding obvious. 'We need to find that letter, Morse. Therein lies the key to this whole case.'

Morse nodded in agreement, but he feared that would be easier said than done. He suspected they would only find the letter when they found the killer and not the other way round.

Author's Notes

I hope you enjoyed reading the latest chapter. I would love to hear from anyone with their thoughts on how the story is progressing. Do you have any idea who the killer might be? How do you think the various relationships are shaping up? Will Morse ever cook breakfast for Strange? Let me know what you think!