CHAPTER 30 -Something's paternal?

Part 1

When Morse and Thursday turned up at the Oxford Mail that afternoon, it would be fair to say that hearts sank and faces dropped amongst the staff at the newspaper. They thought they had seen the last of Thames Valley Police after the previous visit, but the intimidating Chief Inspector and his morose sidekick had now reappeared out of the blue to make their lives a misery all over again. Everyone was looking at each other glumly and with a sense of impending doom, wondering who was going to be summoned this time into the panic room – the staff had now given this room that particular moniker owing to the number of times people had been questioned in it by the two detectives. Everyone kept their head down and prayed that they would be spared another round of probing questions and intrusion into their personal and professional relationships with Ronald Fraser.

'Not you two again!' cried Dorothea Frazil when Thursday and Morse turned up at her desk with apologetic expressions which they knew would cut little ice with the paper's editor. 'Haven't you got other leads to follow up? Are you so convinced it's somebody working here?'

She leant back in her chair, lit one of her slim cigars and drew on it furiously as she endeavoured to keep her frustrations and irritation in check.

'I'm sorry, Ms Frazil,' said Thursday with an appropriately solemn face. 'We'll try to be out of your hair as quickly as possible. We would just like to have another brief chat with Miss Jarvis, if that's alright with you.'

'Do I have a choice, Chief Inspector?' she asked, puffing out a ring of billowy smoke into the air above her desk.

'Not really, I'm afraid. But we have made some significant progress in the last few days and these developments do require us to speak again with Ms Jarvis. We feel she may be able to assist us with our enquiries.'

Dorothea Frazil nodded silently and invited the two detectives to wait in the interview room while she arranged for Catherine Jarvis to join them there imminently. 'I'm going to expect a very expensive meal from you two when this is all over, you know. Compensation for all the suffering and inconvenience you've put me through.'

She said it with a straight face but there was just the hint of a wry smile at the corners of her mouth and Morse nodded in response, without daring to commit himself or Thursday to fulfilling their side of the deal.

A few minutes later Catherine Jarvis was sitting in front of Thursday and Morse, an anxious face turned towards the two coppers who contemplated the young journalist with impassive faces which gave no hint as to the grilling she was about to undergo.

'Have you ever seen this photograph before, Miss Jarvis?' asked DCI Thursday, taking out of his pocket the picture of the three year old Carla and placing it on the table in front of her. The young woman bent forward and studied the photo intently for a few seconds before shaking her head slowly and replying,' No, never. Who is she?' she asked, looking up at the two detectives with a seemingly bemused and innocent expression. If she's lying, thought Thursday, then she's very good at it.

'We believe she may have been Ronald Fraser's daughter,' answered Morse.

'Really? Goodness me! I never knew he had a daughter,' she said with eyes open wide in apparent amazement. 'He certainly never mentioned anything about a daughter to me.'

'Well, we believe she was his illegitimate daughter, conceived outside of his marriage, about twenty-five years ago. That picture is of a three year old little girl called Carla.'

'Wow! He kept that quiet, then, didn't he?' Catherine Jarvis seemed astonished at learning of the existence of Fraser's daughter but she certainly didn't appear to be unsettled or unnerved by the news or by being confronted with the photograph. If she had been taken aback by it, then she was concealing it very skilfully.

'I'd say this photo bears a close resemblance to you, wouldn't you say, Miss Jarvis?' DCI Thursday stared hard at the young woman, looking closely for any signs of reaction from her face, her body language, maybe the tiniest stiffening of her muscles, which might indicate that he had touched a nerve with his direct and provocative question.

'Hardly, Inspector,' replied Miss Jarvis with a bemused furrowing of her brow. 'I mean, superficially maybe but I'm sure you could rustle up any number of pictures of a little girl aged three or four that might look a bit like me…or any other woman who would now be in her late twenties. I'm sorry, can I just get this straight? Are you accusing me of being Ronald Fraser's illegitimate daughter?'

'We're not accusing you, Miss Jarvis,' said Morse. 'We're just putting it to you that this could, on the face of it, be a picture of you when you were three years old.'

'But it isn't,' Miss Jarvis stated with absolute conviction in her voice. 'I've seen loads of pictures of me when I was a young child and this definitely isn't one of them. I'm afraid you're barking up the wrong tree if you think that's a picture of me over twenty years ago because it isn't and Ronald Fraser was definitely not my father. My father's still alive and living in Dorset. He and my Mum are divorced but I go to see him every other weekend and I speak to him on the phone most days of the week. So, you see, you couldn't be more wrong.'

Thursday and Morse looked at each other in silence. They would obviously check up on the details about her father but it did look as if they had run into a dead end with Catherine Jarvis, at least as far as a personal family motive was concerned. She still couldn't be completely ruled out as a suspect due to her issues with Fraser at the Mail but it was looking increasingly unlikely that she was Fraser's illegitimate daughter.

'If I were you, gentlemen, I'd look elsewhere at the Mail for a possible daughter of Ronald Fraser's.'

'What do you mean by that, Miss Jarvis?' asked Morse, intrigued and bewildered in equal measure.

'Well, it wasn't me who was always calling Ronald Fraser 'Dad.'

A brief period of stunned silence ensued until it was broken by DCI Thursday. 'Who was?' he asked bluntly.

'Why don't you have a word with Moira Stewart and ask her.'

'What, Ronald Fraser and Ms Frazil's PA?'

Catherine Jarvis nodded. 'She was always very pally with him. Always teasing him and playing around with him, calling him 'Dad' or 'the old man' and winking and smiling at him. She's the one you should be talking to, not me.'

Morse exchanged a furtive glance with Thursday who remained tight-lipped as he tossed this latest nugget of information around in his head for a while. There could be something in it or Miss Jarvis could just be muck-raking and trying to stir things up with Moira against whom she might be holding a grudge and this seemed the ideal way to get her own back on her. They would have to question Moira again, that much was obvious after these latest so-called revelations but he was inclined to be wary about taking anything Ms Jarvis said at face value. He trusted her about as far as he could throw her.

Morse thanked Ms Jarvis for sparing the time to talk with them and they let her go, both coppers observing her closely as she left the room to see if they could detect any signs of smugness, relief or complacency on her part as she went on her way. But her face was a closed book, with no outward signs of emotion or expression visible to the naked eye.

Part 2

As WPC Shirley Trewlove was on her beat, keeping eyes and ears open for any signs of criminal activity or public order disturbances which might require her intervention, she suddenly spotted a familiar face on the other side of the road. She recognised him immediately as it was a face she wasn't likely to forget in a hurry. It was Stevie Simmons, the eighteen year old son of Billy Simmons, one of the most disreputable villains of the parish, and the guy whom she had spotted Fancy tailing in the street a week ago and who, in all probability had assaulted Fancy and put him off work for several days thereafter.

Trewlove's immediate instinct was to radio in her sighting of Simmons junior and ask for instructions but she knew that the decision had been taken recently to put any observations of the Simmons boys on hold temporarily so she held fire on calling in to the station. She should have just made a note in her pocketbook of where and when she had spotted Simmons and left it at that but something made her carry on walking along the road and keep a discreet eye on the young thug from across the street. He didn't know her from Adam, she was sure of that so she couldn't see any danger in her keeping tabs on him from a safe distance and observe what he was up to, where he was going and who he might be meeting. It was safe to assume that whatever it was he was up to, it would be for criminal purposes. The young lad, just like his father, was a born villain and would doubtless remain so his whole life. Like father, like son was one of DCI Thursday's favourite mantras when it came to villains and their offspring and the Simmons family was a classic case in point. Even the mother, Sandra Simmons, had been nicked several times for receiving stolen goods and getting into fights with neighbours and anyone whom she saw as poking their nose into her family's business.

Stevie Simmons was walking down the road, stopping every now and then to look in a shop window and Trewlove had no difficulty keeping a discreet eye on his movements from the other side of the street, whilst maintaining the appearance of a police constable just patrolling her beat as usual and interacting occasionally with the public and the commercial traders along her way. However when Simmons came to a pub on the corner of the street and immediately popped inside, Trewlove was faced with a decision to make. Should she cross the road and follow Simmons into the pub to see who he might be meeting inside or should she hang back and wait for him to come out again, whenever that might be? He could be in there for several hours, she told herself, intent on having a right lunchtime skinful. Or was it possible that he had somehow spotted her despite all the precautions she had taken not to make it obvious she was tailing him and was intent on legging it out of the pub by the back door and losing her? She had to think fast and she decided to cross the road and enter the pub.

It was hardly an unusual occurrence, a police officer going into a pub, either to have a drink or to make some enquiries, but a woman police constable entering a pub alone, particularly a fairly rough pub such as this one, which was known to her by reputation only, was a very risky business, particularly if she was going in without the appropriate back up. But Trewlove decided she didn't have time to radio in for back up and besides, there was no obvious, immediate sign of a threat to the public. Stevie Simmons had, to all intents and purposes, just popped into the pub for a harmless, innocent pint, hardly a criminal offence even if Trewlove was certain there was nothing that the Simmons family ever got up to which was harmless or innocent. She hurried across the road and entered the pub through the same door as Simmons had gone through.

She didn't have a clear plan in her head as to what she would do when she got inside other than to try to locate Simmons and keep a discreet eye on him from somewhere inside the pub but a suitable distance away from him. She walked purposefully towards the bar which wasn't crowded and didn't have to wait long before a guy behind the bar came over and asked her what she wanted. He gave her a funny look, a mixture of suspicion and astonishment which she returned with one of her best false smiles as she ordered a large orange juice. As she was waiting to be served, she turned round to face the room and in as casual a manner as she could manage, scanned the room to see if she could pick out Stevie Simmons. It didn't take her long to spot him in the corner, sitting at a table deep in conversation with a couple of other guys, probably in their late teens or early twenties, she guessed. She attempted to pay for her drink but was told it was on the house – 'we'd never ask one of our girls in blue to pay for a drink' was the explanation she received which she accepted with another cheery smile and a thank you.

She made her way over to an empty table a suitable distance away from Simmons but positioned perfectly to enable her to keep an eye on him from time to time. She sipped at her orange juice and affected a vague interest in all the people in the pub whilst maintaining her principal focus on Simmons and his chums. He clearly knew the other two shifty-looking characters well as they exchanged smiles and laughs at regular intervals and were chatting away nineteen to the dozen. They appeared to be oblivious to her presence in the pub but it was noticeable how all the other patrons kept well away from Trewlove and deliberately took tables as far away from her as possible. What the hell am I doing in here, thought Trewlove after a while as she couldn't help but feel the eyes of dozens of drinkers fixed on her, even though when she looked directly at some of them, they would immediately turn their heads away from her and look somewhere else.

She spent her time in the pub trying to commit to memory the faces of the two men that Simmons was drinking with so that she could provide a decent identikit photo of them back at the station later on. She wasn't close enough to hear what they were saying to each other but she did notice that one of the men took out something from his jacket pocket which he put down on the table and which all three men stared intently at. She wished she could think of an excuse to go past their table so she could try to see what they were looking at but she decided that would be way too obvious and risky. She was on the point of finishing her drink and wondering if she should risk ordering another when one of the guys with Simmons must have noticed that a uniformed policewoman was sitting in the pub, not twenty feet away from them, at which point Stevie Simmons stood up, stony-faced, his eyes bristling with menace and frightening intent and began to make his way over to her.

He came to a halt a few feet away from Trewlove and stood there looking down at her with an ugly, contorted expression on his face.

'Can I help you. Sir?' she asked with what she hoped was a winsome smile.

'Are you following me, CUNTstable?' he asked, his eyes flashing daggers at Trewlove, his hands curling and uncurling menacingly down by his side.

'Certainly not, Sir,' replied Trewlove. 'Why? Should I have a reason to be following you?'

'Only, the last copper to have tried to follow me around town ended up suffering a dreadful accident, so I'm told. I wouldn't want the same thing to happen to you, CUNTstable.'

Trewlove's heart was racing like the clappers but she was desperate to avoid showing any signs of fear or apprehension at the potentially tricky situation she had landed herself in. On the one hand she didn't believe for one minute that Simmons would actually be stupid enough to assault her right there and then, what with there being so many eye witnesses to any possible attack but on the other hand she didn't want to provoke him into leaving it until after she had left the pub before he launched into an assault on her when there were fewer or no witnesses about to point the finger at him.

'I only came in here for a quick drink, Sir. It's a hot day and I was thirsty. But I've finished my drink now, so I will wish you a good day and move on about my business.'

With that Shirley got up, picked up her police handbag and her hat that she had placed on the chair next to her, put on her hat and slung the handbag casually over her right shoulder before calmly walking out of the pub, not daring to look back behind her to see if Simmons was watching her leave. As she emerged outside, Trewlove let out a heavy sigh of relief and vowed not to go into such a dodgy pub ever again without suitable back up and a bloody good procedural reason for doing so. She realised that sometimes there is a very fine line between bravery and nerve on the one hand and recklessness and foolhardiness on the other and on this occasion she might very well have been guilty of the latter.

Part 3

'Come in, Miss Stewart and take a seat,' said DCI Thursday to Moira Stewart who smiled shyly at the Chief Inspector and did as she was told, sitting down in the chair and casually crossing her legs.

'What's all this about, Chief Inspector? I thought I answered all your questions last time you came.'

'We've just got one or two more to ask you, Miss,' said Thursday, with a reassuring smile. 'About Ronald Fraser. In particular, about how well you knew him and how well you got on with him.'

Moira looked back at Thursday puzzled yet not exactly shaken or disturbed by the question. 'Well, like I said last time, I didn't know him that well. I don't think anyone at the Mail knew him terribly well at all. He was a very…private person, you know.'

'Was he easy to get on with?' asked Morse. 'The sort of person you might have a laugh and a joke with, perhaps?'

Moira looked blankly back at Morse and shrugged her shoulders. 'Well, it wasn't impossible to have a bit of a laugh with him, from time to time. He wasn't devoid of a sense of humour.'

'You see, we've been told that you were very friendly with him, always joking around with him, teasing him, calling him silly names, that sort of thing.'

Moira Stewart stared aghast and bewildered at Morse, as if he had just spoken in a completely foreign language that she didn't understood a word of.

'Who told you that?' she demanded to know in a tone of voice that betrayed her genuine agitation and concern that someone had been telling tales on her behind her back.

'Never you mind that, Miss,' said Thursday, his voice rising in authority as they sought to pin the young girl down to giving a truthful account of her relationship with the deceased. 'Just answer the question. Was your relationship with Mr Fraser a lot closer and friendlier than you had previously indicated?

'We got on OK,' said Moira, more than a touch reluctantly, pulling a face to indicate her displeasure at being forced to reveal things she would have preferred to have kept secret. 'You could have a bit of fun with him, more than you could with some others I could mention.'

'Did that fun extend to calling him Dad or even Daddy from time to time? Calling him 'old man' for instance?' Morse joined in the provocation as they pushed hard to extract the real truth behind the young woman's relationship with Fraser.

'No!' cried Moira, her anger and resentment rising to the surface all of a sudden. She clearly resented the implication that there might have been anything inappropriate or unseemly to her relationship with Ronald Fraser. 'It was nothing like that! We just…. had a bit of a laugh occasionally, that's all. He would call me 'little girl' sometimes, just playful, like. He didn't mean it in the sort of pervy, sordid way you're implying.'

'And you would call him Dad in return, would you?' Thursday stared hard at the young girl to see how she would react to this accusation. Moira looked away at the suggestion and Thursday thought he could see her eyes welling up a little as she bit her lip to stop herself from bursting into tears. With a huge effort Moira succeeded in putting a lid on her emotions and composed herself sufficiently to answer the question.

'Sometimes. Just to get my own back for him calling me his 'little girl'. I didn't mean anything by it. It was all just a bit of a laugh and a joke, you know. Look, he was a sad, lonely man and I…. well, I guess I felt sorry for him. Nobody else here bothered to try to get to know him apart from me. We used to talk down the pub on a Friday night sometimes. He even told me about his wife, you know. He told me that she had killed herself many years ago and that he would never forgive himself.'

'What did he mean by that, do you think? Why did he confide in you?' asked Thursday, intrigued at this revelation by Moira, if it was indeed true, that Fraser had confided in her about such a personal detail of his private life when nobody else had seemed even aware of it.

'I've no idea, Inspector. Perhaps he just wanted to get this guilt he felt off his chest. Maybe he was ashamed that he hadn't seen it coming and been unable to prevent it happening. I don't know!'

'So, he wasn't actually your father, then?' asked Morse.

Moira stared wide-eyed at the detective in apparent horror. 'God, no! What on earth makes you think that?'

'So where is your father?' asked Thursday, tired of all the sparring and shadow boxing and now wanting to land the killer blow.

'He died five years ago, Chief Inspector. Cancer of the liver,' she said with head bowed, eyes teary once again.

'We will check up on that, Miss Stewart,' said Morse, making it sound more of a threat than a promise.

'Fine,' replied Moira, choking back her emotions. 'Check up all you like. I've got nothing to hide. I've done nothing wrong.'

'Where were you between eleven o'clock and midnight on the night Mr Fraser was killed, Ms Stewart?'

They hadn't asked her that specific question until now as she hadn't been viewed as a credible suspect but the events and the new information provided to them that day had now made this a relevant line of enquiry.

'I was in town, drinking with a few friends,' she said, a little bit too quickly for Morse's liking. It was almost as if she suspected she would be asked to provide an alibi for the time in question and had already got one prepared for immediate use.

'You were still drinking after eleven o'clock at night? Really?' Thursday's tone of voice didn't conceal his disbelief.

'Well, no, not exactly. I left the pub with the others after last orders and went straight home.'

'So, what time did you actually leave the pub, then?' The pen in Morse's right hand was poised in anticipation over his notebook which Moira had only just realised he was holding in his left hand. She threw her head back, considered for a while before answering confidently and with renewed composure. 'Around half past eleven, maybe a few minutes before.'

'And what time did you get home?' Thursday asked, not taking his eyes off Miss Stewart for a second. He didn't know how much he trusted this young woman any more.

'Just before midnight,' she stated, holding Thursday's gaze and returning his stare with a gesture of defiance.

'Can anyone verify that?' asked Morse as he looked up from his notebook into which he had been busy scribbling down the details Mora had supplied them.

'Yes, my flatmate, Christine. She was still awake when I got back.'

They asked Moira Stewart for her home address and the name of her flatmate which she provided without much enthusiasm or good grace.

'We'll leave it there for the time being, Ms Stewart,' said Thursday, his face expressionless and his eyes cold and unsmiling which made Moira shiver a little as she sat meekly opposite the two imposing detectives. 'Don't leave town, will you? We may wish to talk to you again.'

Moira Stewart got up from her chair, plainly still upset from the grilling she had suffered and from having to expose details of her private life, and left the room without saying goodbye or even another word.

'Check her story, Morse. Every single word of it. I've got a funny feeling about her. I don't think she's told us the full story about her relationship with Ronald Fraser. See if you can get anyone else at the Mail to talk about the pair of them.'

'You think there was something going on between them?' Morse looked at his colleague with curiosity. He wasn't so sure about that but he was happy to go along with his guvnor's instincts on this one. Thursday had a handy and surprising knack for sniffing out secret sexual relationships between unmarried couples and more than once Thursday had been right about an unlikely couple when Morse had dismissed the suggestion as fanciful in the extreme. Morse would keep an open mind for the time being until they had undeniable evidence one way or the other.

Part 4

When Morse got back home around half past five, Jim Strange was just finishing getting ready to go out on his blind double date. Morse had worked out immediately that Strange must be meeting his French girl that evening because the stench of his after-shave was strong almost to the point of overpowering. Strange had also put on a tie and his best jacket which was most unlike him. Although Jim could never be accused of looking untidy, unkempt or remotely scruffy even when he was just going down the pub for a casual pint or two with Morse or Fancy, it was totally out of keeping for him to make such an effort and nod towards a vague sartorial elegance. He was clearly out to impress this young French girl, thought Morse who couldn't help feeling a certain admiration for the effort Strange had put in to looking his smartest and most debonair, especially when such an appearance didn't come naturally to him.

'Well, that's me done,' said Strange with a sigh of relief. 'How do I look?' he asked Morse hesitantly as he stood in the hallway, ready to take his leave.

'You'll do,' nodded Morse approvingly, looking Strange up and down with indecent haste. 'She can't fail to see you've made an effort. Best jacket, smart tie, shoes gleaming. I hope she turns out to be worth it.'

'So do I, matey,' grinned Strange, much relieved that Morse was suitably impressed with his appearance, even if he was only a bloke. 'Well, I'd better get off. Don't want to be late. That wouldn't do, would it?'

'Bonne chance! Amusez-vous bien!' said Morse with an encouraging nod.

'You what?' said Strange, as a look of panic spread across his face. He instinctively knew that Morse had just said something to him in French but he didn't have the foggiest idea what it meant.

'Good luck. Have a great time.' Morse forced out a smile as he translated for Strange's benefit and immediately regretted having shown off by talking to his housemate in French. That was hardly likely to raise Jim's spirits and boost his low self-confidence, he reprimanded himself.

'Oh, right, yes. Thanks, matey,' said Strange and he left the house quickly with an anxious frown on his face before Morse could add any more French words of wisdom that he wouldn't understand for the life of him. He had barely got twenty yards away from the house before he got out his French-English phrasebook from his coat pocket and started thumbing through it in desperation. He hoped to God that Joanie hadn't been exaggerating about Claudine's English proficiency and that he wouldn't have to speak more than a couple of words of French all evening otherwise this could turn out to be the shortest date in his life, although to be fair the competition for that event wasn't terribly fierce.

After Strange had left, Morse took advantage of an empty house to call Veronica. He was glad to find her answering his call quickly and sounding much better than when he had last spoken to her a day or two ago.

'You've got over your cold, then?' he asked, somewhat unnecessarily.

'Yes, thank God,' she replied cheerfully. 'I even went back to work today. I'm not one hundred percent back to normal but I couldn't bear the idea of kicking my heels at home a minute longer. I've been bored out of my mind, stuck indoors on my own these last few days. I feel much better now.'

'Are you well enough for a drink or two tonight?' Morse for once didn't fancy the prospect of spending the evening at home on his own and he thought a pint or two down the pub in the company of Veronica was just what he needed to lift his spirits, get his creative juices flowing and free his mind of whatever it was that was stifling his intellect and blocking his famous intuition. She was quick to take him up on his offer and they agreed to meet up at half past seven at the pub where they first met only a week or so ago.

He put the phone down and went back into the kitchen, opened up the fridge and had a poke around to see what he could throw together for a little light supper. He was peckish without being ravenous but he had the kitchen all to himself for once and this was a rare opportunity not to be overlooked. He took out eggs, onions, potatoes and a little parsley and set about making himself a Spanish omelette, following the recipe he had recently cut out of a magazine and had held onto. Ten minutes later, he was sat at the kitchen table tucking in to his culinary creation while casting no more than a half-interested, casual eye over Vera Cooper's crossword again. But the absence of beer had put a mental block on his little grey cells and he soon pushed the newspaper crossword away and quietly stared into space, an empty bubble forming over his head. Clearly he needed his beer and perhaps he also needed Veronica to channel his inner concentration and his innate inspiration.

Author's Message

Thank you to everyone who is still following the story – I hope you continue to enjoy it. I would be fascinated to hear from one or two of you if you have any suspicions about who the murderer is. I have tried to leave a few small clues here and there. I hope I haven't made them either too obvious or too obscure but I know it is a very fine line to tread and it's easy, I think, to get it wrong and make it too easy or almost impossible to work the answer out.

Time will tell how well I've succeeded in that objective but at least I hope I've managed to keep some of you guessing even now. Let me know who your money's on and maybe why you've come to that conclusion! It would be great to get some feedback even this far in to the plot.