Death Is Now My Neighbour (23 page)

Tuesday, 27 February

The land of Idd was a happy one. Well, almost. There was one teeny problem. The King had sleepless nights about it and the villagers were very scared. The problem was a dragon called Diabetes. He lived in a cave on top of a hill. Every day he would roar loudly. He never came down the hill but everyone was still very scared just in case he did

(Victoria Lee,
The Dragon of Idd)

From the waiting-room
on the first floor, Morse heard his name called.

'How can I help?' asked Dr Paul Roblin, a man Morse had sought so earne
stly
to avoid over the years, unless things were bordering on the desperate.

As they were now.

‘I
think I've got diabetes.'

'Why do you think that?'

'I've got a book. It menti
ons some of the symptoms.' 'Which are?'

'Loss of weight, ti
redness, a longing for drink.' "You've had the last one quite a while though, haven't you?'

Morse nodded wearily. 'I've lost weight; I could sleep all the
time
; and I drink a gallon of tap-water a day.' 'As
well
as the beer?'

Morse was silent, as Roblin jabbed a lancet into the
little
finger of his
left hand, squeezed the skin unti
l a domed globule appeared, then smeared
the
blood on to a test-strip. After thirty seconds, he looked down at the reading. And for a while
sat moti
onless, saying nothing. 'How did you get here, Mr Morse?'

'Car.'

'Is your car here?' 'No, I had a lift. Why?'

'Well, I'm afraid I couldn't let you drive a car now.' 'Why's that?'

'It's serious. Your blood sugar level's completely off the end of the chart. We shall have to get you to the Radcliffe Infirmary as soon as we can.'

'What are you telling me?'

You should have seen me way before this. Your pancreas has packed in comp
letely. You'll probably be on three or four injecti
ons of insulin a day for the rest of your life. You may well have done God-knows-what damage to your eyes and your kidneys - we shall have to find out. The important thing is to get you in hospital immediately.'

He reached for the phone.

‘I
only live just up the road,' protested Morse.

Roblin put his hand over the mouthpiece. 'They'll have a spare pair of pyjamas and a toothbrush. Don't worry!'

You don't realize—' began Morse.

'Hello? Hello! Can you get an ambulance here -Summertown Health Centre - straightaway, please
...
The Radcliffe Infirmary
...
Thank you.'

‘
You don't realize I'm in the middle of a murder enquiry.'

But Roblin had dialled a second number, and was already speaking to someone else.

'David? Ah, glad you're there! Have you got a bed available?
...
Bit of an emergency, yes
...
He'll need an insulin-drip, I should think. But you'll know
...
Yes
...
Er, Mr Morse - initial "E". He's a chief inspector in the Thames Valley CID.'

Half an hour later - weight (almost thirteen stone), blood pressure (alarmingly high), blood sugar level (still off the scale), details of maternal and paternal grandparents' de
aths (ill-remembered), all of th
ese duly recorded - Morse found himself lying supine, in a pair of red-striped pyjamas, in the Geoffrey Harris Ward in
the
Radcliffe Infirmary, just north of St Giles', at the bottom of the Woodstock Road. A tube from the insulin-drip suspended at the side of his bed was attached to his right arm by a Sellotaped needle stuck into him just above the inner wrist, allowing
little
, if any, lateral movement without the sharpest reminder of physical agony.

It was this tube that Morse was glumly considering when the Senior C
onsultant from the Diabetes Centr
re came round: Dr David
Matthews, a tall, slim, Mephis
tophelian figure, with darkly ascetic, angular features.

'As I've told you all, I'm in the middle of a murder enquiry,' reiterated Morse, as Matthews sat on the side of the bed.

'And can I tell
you
something? You're going to forget all about that, unless you want to kill yourself. With a
little
bit of luck you may be all right, do you understand? So far you don't seem to have done yourself all that much harm. Enough, though! But you're
going to have to forget everyth
ing about work -
everything -
if you're going to come through this business without too much damage. You do know what I mean, don't you?'

Morse didn't. But he nodded helplessly.

'Only here four or five days, if you do as we tell you.'

'But, as I say—'

'No "buts", I'm afraid. Then you might be home Saturday or Sunday.'

'But there's so much to do!' remonstrated Morse almost desperately.

'Weren't those the words of Cecil Rhodes?'

‘
Yes, I think they were.'

'The last words, if I recall aright'

Morse was silent

And the Senior Consultant conti
nued: 'Look, there are three basic causes of diabetes - well, that's an oversimplification. But you're not a medical man.'

'Thank you,' said Morse.

'Hereditary factors, stress, excessive booze. You'd score five
...
six out of ten on the first. Your father had diabetes, I see.'

'Latish in life.'

'Well, you're not exa
ctly
a youngster yourself.'

'Perhaps not'

'Stress? You're not too much of a worryguts?'

'Well, I worry about the future of the human race -does that count?'

'What about booze? You seem to drink quite a bit, I see?'

So Morse told him the truth; or, to be more accurate, told him between one-half and one-third of the truth.

Matthews got to his feet, peered at the insulin-drip, and marginally readjusted some control thereon.

'Six out of ten on the second; ten out of ten on the third, I'm afraid. And by the way, I'm not allowing you any visitors. None at all - not even close relatives. Just me and the nurses here.'

‘I
haven't got any close relatives,' said Morse.

Matthews now stood at the foot of his bed. 'You've already had
somebody
wanting to see you, th
ough. Fellow called Lewis.'

After Matthews had gone, Morse lay back and thought of his colleague. And for several minutes he felt very low, unmanned as he was with a strangely poignant gratitude.

Thursday, 29 February

The relations between us were peculiar. He was a man of habits, narrow and concentrated habits, and I had become one of them. But apart from this I had uses. I was a whetstone for his mind, I stimulated him. He liked to think aloud in my presence

(Conan Doyle,
The Adventures of the Creeping Man)

'And 'ow is 'e today
, then?' asked Mrs Lewis when her husband finally returned home on Thursday evening, and when soon the fat was set a-sizzling in the chip-pan, with the two eggs standing ready to be broken in the frying pan.

'On the mend.'

'They always say that.'

'No. He's genuinely on the mend.'

'Why can't 'e 'ave visitors then? Not contagious, is it, this diabetes?'

Lewis smiled at her. Brought up as she had been in the Rhondda Valley, the
gentle
Welsh lilt in her voice was an abiding delight with him - though not, to be quite truthful, with everyone.

'He'll probably be out this weekend.'

'And back to work?'

Lewis put his hands on his wife's shoulders as she stood watching the pale chips gradually turning brown. "This weekend, I should think.'

You've always enjoyed working with 'im, 'aven't you?' 'Well
..

'I've often wondered why. It's not as if 'e's ever treated you all that well, is it?'

'I'm the only one he's ever treated well,' said Lewis qui
etly
.

She turned towards him, laterally shaking the chips with a practised right hand.

'And 'ow are
you
today, then? The case going OK?'

Lewis sat down at the red Formica-topped kitchen table and surveyed the old familiar scene: lacy white doily, knife and fork,
bottle
of tomato ketchup, bread and butter on one side, and a glass of milk on the other. He should have felt contented; and as he looked back over another long day, perhaps he did.

Temporarily, Chief Superintendent David Blair from the Oxford City Force had been given overall responsibility for the Rachel James murder enquiry, and he had spent an hour at Kidlington Police HQ earlier that afternoon, where Lewis had brought him up to date with the latest developments.

Not that they had amounted to much
...

*

The reports from DCs Learoyd and Elton were not destined significa
ntly
to further the course of the investigation. Lord Hardiman, aged eighty-seven, a sad victim of Alzheimer's disease, and now confined to his baronial hall in Bedfordshire, was unlikely, it seemed, to squander any more of his considerable substance in riotous living along the Reeperbahn. Whilst the child-fondler, recognized immediately by his erstwhile neighbours, was likewise unlikely to disturb the peace for the immediate future, confined as he was at Her Majesty's Pleasure in Reading for the illegal publication and propagation of material deemed likely to deprave and corrupt.

More interestingly, Lewis had been able to report on his own enquiries, particularly on his second interview with Julian Storrs, who had been more willing now to divulge details of dates, times, and hotels for his last three visits to Paddington with Rachel James.

And after that, to report on his interview with Sir Clixby Bream, who had informed Lewis of
the
imminent election of a new Master, and who had given him a copy of the College Statutes (fortunately, rendered
Anglice)
with their emphasis upon the need for any candidate for the Mastership to be in good physical health
(in
corpore sano).

'Nobody can guarantee good health,' Blair had observed.

'No, but sometimes you can almost guarantee
bad
health, perhaps, sir?'

'We're still no nearer to finding how Owens got a copy of that letter?'

'No. I went round to
the
Harvey Clinic again yesterday. No luck, though. The doc who wrote the letter got himself killed, as you know, an
d all his records have been distr
ibuted around
...
reallocated, sort of thing.'

'They're all in a mess, you mean?'

Lewis nodded. 'Somehow Owens got to know
that
he hadn't got much time left, didn't he? So he's got three things on him: he knows a good deal about Angela Storrs' past; he knows he was having an affair with Rachel James; and he knows he's pretty certainly hiding his medical reports from his colleagues in College - from everybody, perhaps.'

Quite certainly Morse would have complained about the confusing profusion of third-person pronouns in the previous sentence. But Blair seemed to follow the account with no difficulty.

'From his wife, too?' he asked.

'I wouldn't be surprised.'

You know, Morse once told me that any quack who tells you when you're going to
the
is a bloody fool.'

Lewis grinned. 'He's told me the same thing about a dozen times.'

'He's getting better, you say?'

'Out by the weekend, they think.'

You hope so, don't you?'

Lewis nodded, and Blair continued qui
etly
:

You're peculiar companions, you know, you and Morse. Don't you think? He can be an ungrateful, ungracious sod at times.'

'Almost always, sir,' admitted Lewis, smiling to himself as if recalling mildly happy memories.

'He'll have to take things more easily now.'

'Would you care to tell him that?'

'No.'

'Just one thing more, sir - about Owens. I really think we ought to consider the possibility
that
he's in a bit of danger. There must be quite a few people who'd gladly see him join Rachel in the mortuary.'