Morse's Greatest Mystery and Other Stories (2 page)

On the evening of Strange’s birthday, a wretched man sat wretchedly on his bed in a cell on A-Wing. From what he had gathered so far, he feared that his own temporary accommodation there would very soon be exchanged for a far more permanent tenancy in one of Her Majesty’s top-security prisons somewhere else in the UK.

The man’s name was Kieran Dominic Muldoon.

The question at stake was not really one of innocence or guilt, since there was universal consensus in favour of the latter. Even at the age of sixteen, Muldoon had been flirting with terrorism; and now, twenty years later, she had long been his permanent mistress.

That much was known.

It was now only a question of evidence—of sufficient evidence to shore up a case for a prosecuting counsel.

So far he’d been lucky, Muldoon knew that. Both in Belfast and in Birmingham, when he’d been detained, incriminatory links between people and places and plans had proved too difficult to substantiate; and the authorities had released him.

Had been compelled to release him.

This time, though, he’d surely been a bit
un
lucky?

He’d been conscious of that when they’d arrested him three days earlier from his Cowley Road bed-sit and taken him to St. Aldate’s Police Station in the City Centre, when with conspicuous confidence they’d straightaway charged him, and when the Magistrates’ Court (immediately opposite) had granted a remand into custody without the slightest demur.

That, in turn, had been only a few hours after they’d
discovered the explosive and the timers and the detonators out in the flat in Bannister Close on the Blackbird Leys Estate.

Jesus! What a mistake that had been to tell them he’d never been anywhere near the flat; didn’t even know where the bloody block of flats
was
.

Why had they smiled at him?

Thinking back on things, he
had
felt uneasy that late afternoon a week ago when he’d gone along there—the
only
time he’d even gone along there. He’d heard neither the clicks of any hidden camera nor the tell-tale whirr of a Camcorder; had seen no flashes; had spotted no suspicious unmarked van. No. It must have been someone in one of the council houses opposite—if they’d got some photographic evidence against him.

Because the police had got
something
.

So calm, this time. Especially that bugger Crawford.

So bloody cocky.

It couldn’t be fingerprints, surely? As ever, the three of them had been almost neurotically finicky on that score; and the dozen or so cans of booze had been put into a black plastic bag and duly consigned (Muldoon had no reason to doubt) to one of the skips at the local Waste Reception Area.

But could they have been careless, and left something.

Because the police had got
something
.

Still, he’d kept his cool pretty well when they d grilled him on names, addresses, train-journeys, stolen cars, money-transfers, weapons, explosives … For apart from a few regular protestations of ignorance and innocence, he’d answered little.

Or nothing.

It was at a somewhat lower level of anxiety that he
worried about the ransacking of his bed-sit. They must have found them all by now.

The videos.

Ever since he could remember, Muldoon had been preoccupied with the female body, in which (as he well knew) he joined the vast majority of the human race, masculine, and some significant few of the human race, feminine. But in his own case the preoccupation was extraordinarily obsessive and intense; and intensifying as the years passed by—frequently satisfied (oh, yes!) yet ever feeding, as it were, upon its own satiety.

Only thirteen, he had been, when the hard-eyed woman had ushered him through into the darkened warmth of the cinema where, as he groped for a seat, his young eyes had immediately been transfixed upon the luridly pornographic exploits projected on the screen there, his whole being jerked into an incredible joy …

Since he’d been in Oxford—three months now—he’d learned that the boss of the Bodleian Library was entitled to receive a copy of every single book published in the UK. And in his own darkly erotic fancies, Muldoon’s idea of Heaven was easily conceived: to be appointed Curator of some Ethereal Emporium receiving a copy of every hard-porn video passed by some Celestial Film Censor as “Suitable Only For Advanced Voyeurs,” with crates of Irish whiskey and trays of stout and cartons of cigarettes stacked double-deep all round his penthouse walls …

Jesus!

How could he even begin to cope if they put him inside for five—ten—years? Longer?

Please, God—no!

He’d not started off wanting too desperately to change the world; indeed not too troubled, in those early days,
even about changing the borders of a divided Ireland. Certainly never
positively
wanting to kill civilians … women and children.

But he had done so. Twice now.

Or his bombs had.

He rose from his bed, lit another cigarette, and with the aid of an elbow-crutch stomped miserably around the small cell.

Sixteen years ago the accident had been, in Newry—when he’d crashed a stolen car at 96.5 mph (according to police evidence). Somehow a piece of glass had cut a neat slice from the top of his left ear; and the paramedics had had little option but to leave his right leg behind in the concertina’ed Cortina. All right, they’d given him an artificial leg; patiently taught him how to use it. But he’d always preferred the elbow-crutch; indoors, anyway. And no choice in the matter now, since the leg was back there in the bed-sit—in a cupboard—along with the videos.

Yes, they must have found them all by now.

And a few other things.

According to the solicitor fellow, they were still going through his room with a tooth-comb; still going through the flat in Bannister Close, too.

Jesus!

If they found him guilty—even on the possession of firearms and explosives charge …

Would he talk? Would he grass—if the police suggested some … some arrangement?

Course not!

He had a right to silence; he had a duty to silence.

Say nothing!

Let
them
do the talking.

He
wouldn’t.

Unless things became unbearable, perhaps …

Muldoon sat down on the side of his bed once more, conscious that just a tiny corner of his resolution was starting to crumble.

Twenty minutes later, Sergeant Lewis was still waiting patiently in the corridor outside the office of Detective Inspector Crawford. He could hear the voices inside: Morse’s, Crawford’s, and a third—doubtless that of Detective Sergeant Wilkins; but the general drift of the conversation escaped him. Only when (at last!) the door partially opened did individual words become recognizable—and those, Morse’s:

“No!”
(fortissimo)
“No!”
(forte)
“And if you take
my
advice, you’ll have nothing to do with it yourself, either. There are better ways of doing things than that, believe me.”
(mezzo piano) “Cleverer
ways, too.”

Looking unusually perturbed, his pale cheeks flushed, Morse closed the door behind him; and the words “Christ Almighty!”
(pianissimo)
escaped his lips before he was aware of Lewis’s presence.

“What the ’ell are you doing here?”

“The Super rang me, sir. You told him I was running you back home.”

“So what?”

“Well, I
wasn’t
was I?”

“What’s that got to do with Strange?”

“He was just checking up, that’s all.”

“Suspicious bugger!”

“He didn’t think you should be driving yourself.”

“You get off home. I’m fine.”

“You’re not, sir. You know you’re not.”

About to expostulate, suddenly Morse decided to capitulate.

“What was all that about, then?” asked Lewis, as they walked along the endless corridors towards the car-park.

Behind them, in Crawford’s office, Sergeant Wilkins gave vent to his exasperation:

“A stuffed
prick
—that’s what
he’s
getting!”

“That’s unfair,” said Crawford quietly.

“But he doesn’t seem to understand. We’re not really
planting
evidence at all, are we? We’ve
got
the bloody evidence. It was all there.”

“Was
all there,” agreed Crawford, dejectedly.

“How bloody unlucky can you get in life!”

Crawford was silent.

“You—you still going ahead with things, sir?”

“Look. I’ll
never
let Muldoon off the hook now. I’ll do
anything
to see that murderous sod behind bars!”

“Me, too. You know that.”

“It’s just that I’d have been happier in my own mind if Morse had been with us. He worries me, you see. ‘Cleverer ways’ he said …”

“Seems to me he’s more worried about keeping his nose clean than seeing justice done.”

“Got a pension to worry about, hasn’t he? He’s finishing with us soon.”

A sudden thought struck Sergeant Wilkins:

“He won’t … he wouldn’t
say
anything about it, would he?”

“Morse? Oh, no.”

“Some people blab a bit—especially when they’ve had a drop too much to drink.”

“Not Morse. He’s never had too much to drink, anyway—not as
he
sees things.”

“Not much help, though, is he?”

“No. And I’m disappointed about that, but …”

“But what, sir?”

Crawford took a deep breath. “It’s just that—well, I found it
moving
, what he said just now—you know, what he thought about what was valuable, what was important in life. The Super was saying exactly the same thing really, but … I dunno, compared with Morse he sounded sort of all big words and bull-shit—”

“Instead of all little words and horse-piss!”

“You’ve got him wrong, you know. He’s a funny bugger, I agree. But there’s a big streak of integrity somewhere in Morse.”

“Perhaps so. Perhaps I’m being very unfair.”

Crawford rose to his feet. “Not
very
unfair—don’t be too hard on yourself. Let’s just say he’s a stuffed shirt,
shall we? That’d be a bit fairer than, er, than what
you
just called him.”

The sole trouble with Malt Whisky, Morse maintained, was that it left one feeling rather thirsty; and he insisted that if Lewis really wished to learn what had transpired in Crawford’s office, it would have to be over a glass of beer.

Thus it was that, ten minutes after being driven from Kidlington Police HQ, Morse sat drinking a Lewis-purchased pint at the King’s Arms in Banbury Road, and spelling out Crawford’s unhappy dilemma …

Following information received, a flat in Bannister Close had been under police surveillance for several weeks. Patience had been rewarded, gradatim; and a dossier of interesting, suggestive, and potentially incriminating evidence had been accumulated.

At intermittent periods the flat, it was believed, served in three separate capacities: first, as a meeting-house for members of a terrorist cell (suspected of being responsible for the two recent bombing incidents in Oxford); second, as a store-house for explosive and bomb-making equipment; third, as a safe-house for any other member of the group on the run from elsewhere in the UK.

For the police to rush in where hardened terrorists were so fearful of treading would have been to miss a
golden opportunity of smashing an entire cell and of arresting its ring-leaders. But, perforce, this softly-softly policy had been rescinded on the specific orders of the Home Office, following hot intelligence that a big step-up in terrorist activity was scheduled for mainland Britain in the spring. “Damage limitation”—that was the buzz-phrase now. All very well waiting patiently to net some of the big fish—very laudable, too!—but no longer justifiable in terms of potential civilian casualties.

Hence the slightly precipitate actions taken: first the raiding of the flat, empty of people yet full enough of explosive materials, bombing equipment, and fingerprints; second, the arrest of Kieran Dominic Muldoon, the only one of the shadowed terrorists who had established himself as “of fixed address” in the City of Oxford.

Not the best of outcomes, certainly, since the other birds had by now abandoned their nests; as they would have done in any case, unless they had been cornered en bloc … or unless Kieran Muldoon could now be “persuaded” in some way—bribed, cajoled, decoyed, lured, trapped—into betraying the whereabouts of his fellow fanatics … For example, there were two other properties being watched: one in Jericho; one out on the Botley Road.

There had been some
little
disappointment about the contents of Muldoon’s own small living-quarters in the Cowley Road: a technical manual on bomb-making, though, and some dozens of addresses, code-names, telephone numbers:
almost
enough evidence there, and all duly impounded and documented and despatched for forensic tests and all the rest of it—and finally, of course, to be exhibited.

And—
and
—in addition to all this, two little solidly connecting links between Muldoon’s bed-sit and Bannister Close.

Two little beauties!

The first, a can of Beamish stout, found under a sofa in the flat at Bannister Close, with Muldoon’s fingerprints daubed all over it. The second, a photograph of Muldoon himself, climbing the outside iron staircase leading up to the balconied first floor there: an unequivocal, unambiguous photograph—both of the place, yes, and of the man—with the left side of his face in profile; and a splendid view of that unmistakable ear, a segment sliced so neatly from the top.

In addition the police had a taped interview with Muldoon, as well as a signed statement—the latter containing a firm denial of his ever having been at the Blackbird Leys Estate, let alone in Bannister Close.