The Remorseful Day (35 page)

At 5:20
P.M.
he was still standing beside his minimal hand luggage a few yards from the Euro-Class counter at Heathrow's Terminal 4, looking around him with as yet dismissable anxiety, but with gradually increasing impatience. 5:10
P.M.
—that was when they'd agreed to meet, giving them ample time, once through the fast-track channel, to have some gentle relaxation together in the British Airways Lounge before boarding the 18:30 Flight 338.

Paris …

A long time ago he and Yvonne had gone to Paris on their honeymoon: lots of love, lots of sex, lots of sightseeing, lots of food and wine. A whole fortnight of it, although he'd known even then that just a week of it would have been rather better. It was not difficult (he already knew it well) to get bored even in the presence of a mistress; and he'd begun to realize on that occasion that it was perfectly possible to grow just a little wearied even in the company of a newly wed wife. There had been one or two incidents, too, when he'd thought Yvonne was experiencing similar thoughts … especially that time one evening when she'd quite obviously been exchanging long looks with a moustachioed Frenchman who looked exactly like Proust. He'd called her “a flirtatious bitch” when they got to their hotel room; and when she'd glared back at him and told him they'd make a “bloody good pair” one way or another …

There would be no trouble like that with Maxine: only two and a half days—just right, that! And she was a real honey, a law professor from Yale, aged forty-two, divorced, a little oversexed, a little overweight, and hugely desirable.

She finally appeared, pulling an inordinately large suitcase on wheels.

“You're late!” His tone was a combination of anger and relief; and he immediately moved forward ahead of her to the back of the short queue at the first-class counter.

“You didn't get my message, did you? I tried and tried—”

“Like I told you? On the mobile?”

“It wasn't working. I think you'd forgotten—”

“Christ!” Harrison took his mobile from an inside pocket, tapped a few digits, then another few; then repeated the blasphemy: “Christ! I'd had enough of the bloody mobile recently and—”

“And you forgot that we'd agreed—”

“Sorry! Say you'll forgive me!”

He looked down at her squarish, slightly prognathic face, her dark-brown silky hair cut short in a fringe across her broad forehead and above the quietly gentle eyes that were becoming tearful now, perhaps from her hectic rush, perhaps from the undeserved brusqueness of his greeting, but perhaps above all from the knowledge that his love for her homodyned only with the waves of that physical lust which so often excited him. Yet the brief holiday had been
her
choice, and she knew that she wouldn't regret having made it. She enjoyed being with him: he was good fun and intelligent and well read and still handsome and still excellent in bed and—yes!—he was rich.

They moved nearer the counter, neither of them too anxious to speak—a phenomenon not uncommon with persons queuing, as if their concentration were required for the transactions ahead. But she volunteered some incidental information:

“Accident there was, near Stokenchurch, and I tried to—”

Gently he ran a hand through her silken hair. “Sweetheart? Forget it!”

“It's just that we must have been stuck there half an hour and we saw—one of the other passengers pointed it out—a beautiful bird of prey there. A red kite.”

“Tell me later!”

There was now just the one business-suited man in front of them.

“Where have you booked us?”

“The best.”

“And the best air-tickets—?”

“Sh! Nothing but the best for you. Why not? Just think of me! No wife. No blackmailing kids. No problems at work. Nothing to spend money on for a day or two—except on you. I'm a rich man, sweetheart. I thought I'd told you.”

“Tickets, please?”

The smiling young lady scrutinized the perfectly valid tickets.

“Passports, please?”

The young lady scrutinized the perfectly valid passports.

“Smoking?”

“Nonsmoking.”

“Window-center? Center-aisle?”

“Center-aisle.”

“Luggage?”

Frank Harrison lugged the great case on to the trackway beside the desk.

“Only the one?”

“Yes.”

“You know where the club lounge is?”

“Yes.”

“Enjoy your flight, sir, and enjoy your stay in Paris!”

He handed her a glass of champagne, and two glasses clinked. “Here's to a wonderful little break together. Ritz—here we come!”

He leaned across and kissed her on the soft, unlipsticked
mouth—a long, yearning kiss. His eyes closed. Her eyes closed.

“Mr. Harrison?” A tap on the shoulder. “Mr. Frank Harrison?”

“What—?”

A uniformed police officer stood beside the small table: “I'm sorry, sir, but we need to speak to you. Routine check.”

“Thames Valley Police, is this?”

“That's right, sir.”

“What exactly—?”

“ It's not
just
that. Your employers want to speak to you as well.”

Harrison's eyes squinted in bewilderment.

“What the hell do
they
want? I'm on official furlough, for God's sake. They'll have to wait till I get back.”

“Will you come this way, sir? Please!”

A second uniformed policeman—young, dark-haired—stood just inside the entrance to the executive lounge; was still standing there a quarter of an hour later when Maxine, after drinking the one and then the other glass of champagne, went over to speak to him.

“Do you mind telling me, Officer, by whose authority—?”

“Not mine, miss,” said PC Kershaw. “Please believe me. I also am a man
under
authority.”

“You haven't answered my question.”

“I'm from Thames Valley—we both are.”

“Who sent you here?”

“The CID.”

“Who?”

“Chief Inspector Morse.”

“Who's he when he's in his office?”

“He's an important man.”

“Very important?”

“Oh yes!” Kershaw nodded with a reverential smile.

“You talk as if he's God Almighty.”

“Some people think he is.”

“Do you?”

“Not always.”

“How long will you be keeping Mr. Harrison?”

“I just don't know, Mrs. Ridgway.”

Maxine poured herself a further glass of champagne, and pondered as she sat alone at the small table. They knew
her
name too …

He wasn't a particularly lucky man to associate with, Frank Harrison. The last time she'd been with him, over a year ago, he'd had that phone call from—well, he'd never said who from—to tell him that his wife had been murdered …

She was tempted to get up and—well, just leave. Just get out of there. Her case was on the plane by now though—suits, dresses, lingerie, shoes—but it
could
be returned perhaps? She still had her handbag with its far more important items: cards, keys, diary, money …

But she felt sure the PC at the door would never let her out. That's why he was there. Why else?

An announcement over the lounge Tannoy informed her that first-class passengers for British Airways Flight 338 to Paris should now proceed to Gate 3; and a dozen or so people were draining their drinks and gathering up their hand luggage. But for Maxine Ridgway it was now a feeling of deep sadness that had overtaken those earlier minutes of indecision and despair. She was no fool. She knew by heart the role she'd been asked to play in the Ritz; and she'd accepted the bargain, because it
would
have been a bargain.

She was not even bothering to wonder what she should do next when she heard the voice behind her: “Come on, sweetheart! You heard the announcement. Gate 3.”

With her mind in a mingled state of amazement and relief, she picked up her hand luggage and followed him to the exit-doors, where there was now no sign of PC Kershaw, the man who had seemed to have a greater familiarity with Holy Writ than she had herself.

“Routine check, that's all,” asserted Frank Harrison. “Just like the man said.”

“Let him go, Kershaw. Let him catch his flight.”

“You think that's wise, sir?”

“What?”

“I just wondered—”

“Look, lad! If I ever have to look to you as a fount of wisdom, it'll be the day you're dry behind the ears. Is that clear?”

“Sir!”

Morse put down the phone. It was 6:10
P.M.

“Do you think that was fair, sir?” asked Lewis.

“Probably not,” conceded Morse.

It had been Lewis, an hour earlier, who had received the call from the Bank: profound apology; embarrassing recantation; chagrin unspeakable! Over £500,000 indeed was still unaccountably missing; but not,
not
from Harrison's department. Inquiries subsequent to Lewis's visit had now established that any embezzlement or misappropriation of funds was most definitely not to be laid at the door of one of the Bank's most experienced, most trusted, most valued blah blah blah. It was a call in which Morse was most interested, now repeating (with some self-congratulation) what he had earlier maintained: that Frank Harrison might well be, most likely
was
, capable of murder; but that it
was quite out of character, definitely
infra dignitatem
, for him to stoop to cooking the books and fiddling the balance-and-loss ledgers.

“Do you think you may be wrong, sir?”

“Certainly not. He'll be back from Paris, believe me! There's no hiding place for him. Not from me, there isn't.”

“You think he murdered his wife?”

“No. But he knows who did.
You
know who did. But we've got to get some evidence. We've been checking alibis—recent ones. But we've got to check those earlier alibis again.”

“Who are you thinking of?”

“Of whom am I thinking?” (Morse recalled the suspicion he'd voiced in his earlier notes.) “I'm thinking of the only other person apart from Frank Harrison who had a sufficient motive to kill Yvonne.”

“You mean—?”

“Do you ever go to the pictures?”

“They don't call it the ‘pictures’ any more.”

“I went to the pictures a year and a bit ago to see
The Full Monty.”

“Surely not your sort of—?”

“Exactly
my sort of thing. I laughed and I cried.”

“Oh yes.” (The penny had dropped.) “Simon Harrison said he'd gone—”

“ ‘Said,’ yes.”

“Said he'd gone with someone else, didn't he? A girlfriend.”

“Wasn't checked though, as far as I can see.”

“Understandable, isn't it? Nobody ever really thought of someone inside the family—”

“Oh yes they did. Frank Harrison was one of their first suspects.”

“But with those signs of burglary, the broken window, the burglar alarm …”

Morse nodded. “At first almost everything pointed to an outside job. But then it slowly began to look like something else: a lover, a tryst, a sex session, a quarrel, a murder …”

“And now we're coming back to the family, you say.”

“No one seems to have bothered to get a statement from the young lady Simon Harrison took to the pictures that evening.”

“Perhaps we could still trace her, sir?”

“Yes.”

“It's a long time ago though. She'd never remember—”

“Of course she would! It was all over the papers: ‘Woman Murdered'—and she'd been with that same woman's son the evening when it happened. She could never forget it!”

“It's still a long time—”

“Lewis! I don't eat all that much as you know. But when I'm cooking for myself—”

(Lewis's eyebrows rose.)

“—I always make sure the plate's hot. I can't abide eating off a cold plate.”

“You mean we could heat the plate up again?”

“The plate's already hot again. She's still around. She's a proud, married mum now living in Witney.”

“How do you know all that?”

“You can't do
everything
yourself, Lewis.”

“Dixon, you mean?”

“Good man, Dixon! So we're going to see her tonight. Just you and I.”

“You think Simon murdered his mum.”

“No doubt about that. Not any longer, Lewis,” said Morse quietly.

“Just because he found her in bed with someone …”

“With Barron. I
know
that, Lewis.”

Never before had Lewis been so hesitant in asking Morse a question:

“Did … did Mrs. Harrison ever tell
you
that she was… seeing Barron?”

Morse hesitated—hesitated for far too long.

“No. No, she never told me that.”

Lewis waited a while, choosing his words carefully and speaking them slowly: “If she
had
told you, would
you
have been as jealous as Simon Harrison?”

Again Morse hesitated. “Jealousy is a dreadfully corrosive
thing. The most powerful motive of all, in my view, for murder—more powerful than—”

The phone rang once more and Morse answered.

Kershaw.

“They'll soon be winging their way across the channel, sir. Anything more you want me to do?”

“Yes. Have a pint of beer, just the one, then bugger off home.”

Morse put down the phone.

“Good man, Kershaw! Bit of an old woman though. Reminds me of my Aunt Gladys in Alnwick, my last remaining relative. Well, she was. Dead now.”

“I think he'll do well, yes.”

“Kershaw? Should do. He got a First in History from Keble.”

“Bit more than me, sir.”

“Bit more than me, Lewis.”

The phone was ringing again.

Strange.

“Morse? You've let him out of the country, I hear?”

“Yes. We need a bit more time and a bit more evidence before we bring him in.”

“I agree,” said Strange, unexpectedly. “No good just…”