The Remorseful Day (37 page)

Much earlier (Morse knew it) he should have paid far more attention to the thing that had puzzled him most about the Harrison murder:
motive.
Until now, Simon had fitted that bill pretty well, since Morse was sure that the mother-son relationship had been very close; much
too
close. Good thinking, that! Then, that very afternoon, a busty lusty lass sitting with Simon in the three-and-sixpennies had innocently scuppered his carefully considered scheme of things.

Once home, Morse poured himself a modestly liberal measure of Glenfiddich, and changed into a gaudily striped pair of pajamas that blossomed in white and
purple and red … before continuing, indeed completing, his written record.

He finished writing an hour later at 12:45
A.M.

Or perhaps, to be accurate, he wrote no more thereafter.

At which hour Lewis was somewhat uneasily asleep, not at all sure in his mind whether things were going well or going ill. Morse had insisted that it should be he, Lewis, who would be on hand when Frank Harrison and his lady passed through Arrivals at Heathrow. No problem there though. Still thirty-six hours to go before the scheduled British Airways flight was due to land, and Morse had been adamant that Harrison
would
be on that flight, and not flitting off to Katmandu or the Cayman Islands. Yet one thing was ever troublously disturbing
Lewis's thoughts: the real nature of the puzzling and secret relationship that had clearly existed between Morse and Yvonne Harrison.

Morse awoke at 2:15
A.M.
, his forehead wet with sweat, an excruciating ache along the whole of his left arm running up as far as his neck and jaw, a tightly constricting corselet of pain around his chest. He managed to reach the bathroom sink where he vomited copiously. Thence, in pathetically slow degrees, he negotiated the stairs, one by one—finally reaching the ground-floor telephone, where he dialed
999
, and in a remarkably steady voice selected the first of the Ambulance Fire Police options. He was seated on the lime-green carpet beside the front door, its Yale lock and bolts now opened, when the ambulance arrived six minutes later.

It all happened so quickly.

After being attached to a portable heart monitor, after a pain-killing injection, after chewing an aspirin, after having his blood pressure taken, Morse found himself lying, contentedly almost, eyes open, on a stretcher in the back of the ambulance.

Beside him a paramedic was looking down with well-disguised anxiety at the ghastly pallor of the face and the lips of a purple-blue: “We'll just get the docs to have a look at you. We'll soon be there. Don't worry.”

Morse closed his eyes, conscious that life had always been a bit of a worry and seemed to have every likelihood of so continuing now …

He should perhaps have rung Lewis from upstairs—Lewis had a flat key—instead of ringing
999.

But then, he realized, Lewis wouldn't have had all that medical equipment, now would he?

He'd been a little disappointed that he'd heard no ambulance siren.

But then, he realized, there wouldn't be all that much traffic, even in Oxford, at such an early hour, now would there?

Soon, he knew it, they'd be asking for his “Religion.”

But then, he realized, it wouldn't take too long for him (or them) to write down “None” in some appropriate box, now would it?

“Next of Kin,” too. Trickier that though, because the penultimate member of the Morse clan had recently died, aged ninety-two.

But then it wouldn't take too long to write down “None” again.

And there were more cheerful things to contemplate. Perhaps Nurse Harrison would be there in the ward again to sit by his bed in the small hours …

But then, he realized, Yvonne Harrison was now dead.

Perhaps Sister McQueen would be on duty to pull him through again?

But then, he realized, she was away for a month in far Carlisle, tending a frail, demanding mother.

The kindly paramedic held him down gently as he tried to sit up on the stretcher.

“Lewis! I must see Sergeant Lewis.”

“Of course. We'll make sure you see him as soon as they've had a quick look at you. We're nearly there.”

The night nurse in the “goldfish bowl,” at the right of the Emergencies Entrance watched as the automatic double doors opened and the paramedics wheeled the latest casualty through, deciding immediately that Resuscitation Room B was the place for the newcomer. Quickly she bleeped the Senior House Officer.

The next ten minutes saw swift and methodical action: blood samples were promptly dispatched somewhither; chest X rays were taken; an electrocardiograph test had firmly established that the patient had suffered a hefty anterior myocardial infarct. But it was time for
another move; and the activities of a young and kindly nurse with a clipboard, dutifully requesting details of medical history, next of kin, religion, and the like, were mercifully cut short by a specialist nurse who with all speed supervised an urgent transfer.

Morse had always delighted in sesquipedalian terminology, since his education in the Classics had given him much insight into the etymology of words more than a foot and a half long. And now, as he lay in the Coronary Care Unit, he listened with interest to the words being spoken around him: thrombolysis, tachicardia, strepto-something-something. One thing was certain: much was happening and was happening quickly again. As if there were little time to spare …

Were angels male or female? They'd started off life as male, surely? So there must have been a sort of transsexual interim when … Morse's mind was wondering … What gender was the Angel of Death then, whom he now saw standing at the right-hand side of his bed, with a nurse holding one gently restraining hand on a softly feathered wing, and the other hand on his own shoulder.

Morse awoke to full consciousness again, opened his eyes, and found Lewis's hand on his shoulder.

“Sorry to disturb you, sir.”

“You? What the ‘ell are you doing here?”

“One o’ the paras—knew who you were—and heard you say, you know …”

Morse nodded, and smiled.

“How you doing, sir?”

“Fine! It's just a case of misidentity.”

“I mustn't be long. They've told me just a coupla minutes, you know.”

“Why's that?” asked Morse wearily.

“They say you need, you know, a lot of rest.”

“Lew-is!
Why do you keep saying ‘you know’ all the time?”

“Not said ‘actually’ yet though, have I?”

“When you go up to bring Harrison in today—”

“Tomorrow, sir.”

“You sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“Don't forget!
I'm
doing the interviewing.”

Lewis turned to find Nurse Shelick standing behind him. “Please!” her lips mouthed, as she looked down on Morse's intermittently closing eyes.

“Shan't be a second, nurse.”

He bent down and whispered: “Anything I can do, sir?”

Morse's eyes were still closed, but he seemed to regain some of his earlier coherence.

“Yes. Second drawer down on the right. There's a Carlisle number for Sister McQueen. Give her a ring. Not today though … like you say, tomorrow. Just say I'm …”

Lewis prepared to go. “Leave it to me, sir, and … keep a stout heart! Promise me that!”

Morse opened his eyes briefly. “That's what my old father used to say.”

“So you
will
, won't you, sir?”

Morse nodded slowly. “I'll try. I'll try ever so hard, my old friend.”

Lewis was checking back the tears as he walked away from the Coronary Care Unit, and failed to hear Nurse Shelick's quiet “Good-bye.”

That same day was to be the longest and almost the unhappiest in Lewis's life. At 6:30
A.M.
he drove out to Police HQ and sat quietly in Morse's office, the Harrison case the last thing that concerned him. At 7
A.M.
he
rang the JR2 and learned that Morse's condition was “critical but stable,” although he had little real idea what that might signify on the Coronary Richter Scale.

Strange, early apprised of Morse's hospitalization, came in at 8
A.M.
, himself immediately ringing the JR2, and impatiently asking several questions—and being given the same answer as Lewis: “Critical but stable.” As much was being done as humanly possible, Strange learned, and any visit was, at present, quite out of the question. For the minute it was all tests and further treatment. The ward had the police number of Sergeant Lewis, and would ring if… if there was any news.

Morse was fully conscious of what was going on around him. He felt fairly sure that he was dying and pretended to himself that he would face death with at least some degree of dignity, if not with equanimity. He had been seated beside his old father when he'd died and heard him reciting the Lord's Prayer, as if it were some sort of insurance policy. And Morse wondered whether his own self-interest might possibly be served by following suit. But if by any freak of chance there
was
an Almighty, well, He'd understand anyway; and since, in Morse's view, there wasn't, he'd be wasting his really (at this time) rather precious breath. No. The long day's task was almost done, and he knew that he must sleep …

At 1:30
P.M.
the consultant looked down on the sleeping man. There had been no positive reaction from the comprehensive tests and treatments; no success from the diuretic dosages that should have cleared the fluid that was flooding the lungs; no cause for the slightest optimism from the echocardiogram.

He sat at the desk there and wrote:

The nurse beside him read through what he had written.

“Nothing else we can do, is there?”

The consultant shook his head. “Pray for a miracle, that's about the only hope. So if he asks for anything, let him have it.”

“Even whiskey?”

“Why do you say that?”

“He's already asked for a drop.”

“Something we don't stock in the pharmacy, I'm afraid.”

The nurse smiled gently to herself after the consultant had left, for someone had already slipped a couple of miniature Glenfiddichs into the top of Morse's bedside table; and there'd only been the one visitor.

Seated outside a café on the Champs Elysées, Maxine Ridgway clinked her glass across the table. It had been a splendid lunch and she felt almost happy.

“Thank you! You're a terrible, two-timing fellow—you know that. But you're giving me a wonderful time. You know that, too.”

“Yes, I do know. Trouble is the time's gone by so quickly.”

“No chance of staying another few days? Day or two? Day?”

“No. We're back in the morning as scheduled. I've got a meeting I've agreed to attend.”

“A board meeting?”

“No, no. Much more interesting. A meeting with a chief inspector of police. I've met him once before, only the once, at a funeral; and then only very briefly. But he's—well, he's a bit like me, in a way, I suppose. He'd never run away from anyone, I reckon; and I'd never forgive myself if I ran away from him.”

Maxine looked over at Frank Harrison and realized
for the first time in their relationship that she was probably in love with the man. In those early heady days it had been all Daimlers and diamonds; but she would always have chosen the wine and the roses of these last forty-eight hours …

Suddenly she sensed that she was never going to see him again, and she yearned at that moment to be alone with him, and to give herself to him.

“Let's go back to the hotel, Frank.”

“What? On a beautiful sunny afternoon like this?”

“Yes!”

Frank Harrison leaned across and placed his right hand on her bare shoulder. “Shall I tell you a secret, my darling? I was about to suggest exactly the same thing myself.”

It was a happy moment.

But a moment only.

Harrison got to his feet.

“I've just got to make a phone call first.”

“You can ring from the room.”

“No, it's a private call.”

“And you don't want me to—?”

“No, I don't.”

“If he asks for anything,” that's what the consultant said. And when Morse made his second request (the first already granted) the nurse rang Police HQ immediately. Lewis and Strange—Morse wanted to see them.

Perhaps she had given the two names in alphabetical order, but Lewis hoped it had been in order of preference—a hope though that had probably been unjustified, he thought, as he stood waiting at the back of the unit, since it had clearly been Strange who had been first on Morse's visiting list.

“Right old mess you've got yourself into, Morse!”