The Secret of Annexe 3 (25 page)

‘Phew!’ Lewis looked down at the letter again. If what Morse was saying were true . . .

‘But there’s a second thing,’ continued Morse, ‘that’s more specific still. There’s a rather nice little bit of English at the end of the letter –
“but I think I was in love with you the very first time I saw the top of your golden head in the summer sunshine”. Now you were right in saying that this tells us roughly when he first
met her. But it also tells us something else, and something even more important. Don’t you see? It tells us from which
angle
he first saw her, doesn’t it, Lewis?
He saw her
from above!
’

Lewis was weighing up what Morse had just said: ‘You mean this fellow might have been
on the roof
, sir?’

‘Could be!’ Morse looked extremely pleased with himself. ‘Yes, he could have been on the roof. Or he could have been –
higher
, perhaps? The flat roof at the
Locals has been causing a lot of trouble, and last summer they had a complete new go at the whole thing.’

‘So?’

‘So they had quite a few workmen there, and they’d need something to lift all that stuff . . .’

‘A crane!’ The words were out of Lewis’s excited lips in a flash.

‘It makes sense, doesn’t it?’

‘Did they have a crane on the site?’

‘Don’t know, do I.’

‘Do you remember,’ said Lewis slowly, ‘that it was
me
who suggested he might be a crane-driver?’

‘Nonsense!’ said Morse happily.

‘But I—’

‘You may have got the right answer, Lewis, but you got it for the wrong reasons, and you can’t claim much credit for that.’

Lewis’s smile was as happy as Morse’s. ‘Shall I give the Secretary a ring, sir?’

‘Think she’s still there? It’s gone half-past five.’

‘Some people stay on after office hours. Like I do!’

The Secretary was still at her desk. Yes, there had been a crane on the site – a big yellow thing – from May to October! And no, the Secretary had no objection at
all to the police coming to look at the security passes kept all together in a filing cabinet in Reception.

Morse got up from his chair and pulled on his greatcoat. ‘And there’s something else, you know, Lewis. Something to crown the whole lot, really. They keep all their records carefully
at the Locals – well, the chap on the desk does. All passes have to be shown and I’d like to bet that those workmen were given semi-permanent passes so that they could make use of the
facilities there without having to get a badge every time they went to the lavatory or whatever. Just think of it! We sit here and rack our brains – and all the time the fellow we’re
looking for is sitting there on a little card – in a little drawer at the Locals – with a photograph of himself on it! By Jove, this is the simplest case we’ve ever handled, my
old friend. Come on. On your feet!’

But for a while, Lewis sat where he was, a wistful expression across his square, honest face. ‘You know, it’s a pity in a way, isn’t it? Like you say, we’ve done all this
thinking – we’ve even given the fellow a name! The only thing we never got round to was deciding where he lives, that’s all. And if we’d been able to work that out –
well, we wouldn’t need any photograph or anything, would we? We’d have, sort of,
thought
it all out.’

Morse sat on the edge of his desk nodding his balding head. ‘Ye-es. ’Tis a pity, I agree. Amazing, you know, what feats of logic the human brain is capable of. But sometimes life
eludes logic – and sometimes when you build a great big wonderful theory you find there’s a fault in the foundations and the whole thing collapses round your ears at the slightest earth
tremor.’

Morse’s voice had sounded strangely earnest, and Lewis noticed how tired his chief looked. ‘You don’t think we’re in for an earthquake, do you?’

‘Hope not! Above all I hope we get a chance to save Margaret Bowman – save her from herself as much as anything. Nice looker, you know, that woman. Lovely head of hair!’

‘Especially when viewed from the top of a crane,’ said Lewis, as he finally rose to his feet and pulled on his coat.

As they were leaving the office, Morse paused to look at a large white map of Oxford City that was fastened on the wall to the left of the door. ‘What do you think,
Lewis? Here we are: South Parade – that’s where he picked her up. Now we want somewhere no more than five minutes away, so you say. Well, one thing’s certain – he either
turned left or he turned right at the Woodstock Road, agreed?’ Morse’s finger slowly traced a route that led off to the south: it seemed most unlikely that the man would be living in
any of the large villa-type residences that lined the road for most of the way down to St Giles’, and Morse found himself looking at the map just below St John’s College playing fields,
and especially at the maze of little streets that criss-crossed the heart of Jericho. For his part, Lewis’s eyes considered the putative route that might have been taken if the man had turned
right and towards the north; and soon he spotted a small cluster of streets, between the Woodstock Road itself and, to the west of it, the canal and the railway. The writing on the map was very
small but Lewis could just about read the names: St Peter’s Road; Ulfgar Road; Pixey Place; Diamond Close . . . All council property, if Lewis recalled correctly – or used to be until,
in the 1980s, the Tories remembered Anthony Eden’s promises of a property-owning democracy.

T
HE MOST OBVIOUS
improvements effected by those who had bought their own red-brick houses had been to the doors and the windows: several of the old
doors were replaced completely by stout oaken affairs – or at the very least painted some colour other than the former regulation light blue: and most of the old windows, with their former
small oblong panes, were now replaced by large horizontal sheets of glass set in stainless-steel frames. In general, it seemed fairly clear, the tone of the neighbourhood was on the
‘up’; and number 17 Diamond Close was no exception to this pattern of improved properties. A storm door (behind which no light was visible) had been built across the small front porch;
and the front fence and garden had been redesigned to accommodate a medium-sized car – like the light-green Maestro which stood there now. Under the orange glare of the street-lamps, the
close was strangely still.

The two police cars had moved slowly along St Peter’s Road and then stopped at the junction with Diamond Close. Morse, Lewis and Phillips were in the first car; two uniformed constables
and a plainclothes detective in the second. Both Phillips and the plain-clothes man had been issued with regulation revolvers; and these two (as prearranged) got out of their cars and without
slamming the doors behind them walked silently along the thirty or so yards to the front of number 17, where, with the plain-clothes man rather melodramatically pointing his revolver to the stars,
Sergeant Phillips pushed the white button of the front-door bell. After a few seconds, a dull light appeared from somewhere at the back of the house, and then a fuller light and the silhouette of a
figure seen through the glass of the outer door. At that moment the watching faces of Morse and Lewis betrayed a high degree of tension: yet, in retrospect, there had been nothing whatsoever to
occasion such emotion.

From the outset the man in the thick green sweater had proved surprisingly co-operative. He had requested to be allowed to finish his baked beans (refused), to collect a packet of cigarettes
(granted), to drive to Police HQ in his own car (refused), and to take his scarf and duffel coat (granted). At no stage had he mentioned writs, warrants, lawyers, solicitors, civil rights, unlawful
arrest or Lord Longford, and Morse himself was beginning to feel a little shamefaced about the death-or-glory scenario of the arrest. But one never knew.

In the interview room it was Lewis who began the questioning.

‘Your full name is Edward Wilkins?’

‘Edward James Wilkins.’

‘Your date of birth?’

‘Twentieth September, 1951.’

‘Place of birth?’

‘17 Diamond Close.’

‘The house you live in now?’

‘Yes. My mother lived there.’

‘Which school did you go to?’

‘Hobson Road Primary – for a start.’

‘And after that?’

‘Oxford Boys’ School.’

‘You passed the eleven plus to go there?’

‘Yes.’

‘When did you leave?’

‘In 1967.’

‘You took your O levels?’

‘Yes. I passed in Maths, Physics and Engineering Drawing.’

‘You didn’t take English Literature?’

‘Yes, I did. But I failed.’

‘Did you read any Milton?’ interrupted Morse.

‘Yes, we read
Comus
.’

‘What did you do after you left school?’ (Lewis had taken up the questioning once more.)

‘I got an apprenticeship at Lucy’s Ironworks in Jericho.’

‘And then?’

‘I didn’t finish it. I stuck it for eighteen months and then I got offered a much better job with Mackenzie Construction.’

‘You still work for them?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s your job, exactly?’

‘I’m a crane-driver.’

‘You mean you sit up in the cabin and swing all the loads round the site?’

‘That’s one way of putting it.’

‘This company – Mackenzie Construction – they did some re-roofing last year at the Oxford Delegacy – Oxford Locals, I think you call it. Is that right?’

‘Yes. About April to September.’

‘You worked there all that time?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not
all
that time, surely?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Didn’t you have any summer holiday?’

‘Oh yes, I’m sorry. I was off a fortnight.’

‘When was that?’

‘Late July.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Up to the north of England.’

‘Whereabouts exactly?’

‘The Lake District.’

‘And where in the Lake District?’

‘Derwentwater.’

‘Did you send any postcards from there?’

‘A few. Yes.’

‘To some of your friends here – in Oxford?’

‘Who else?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, Mr Wilkins. If I’d known I wouldn’t have asked, would I?’

It was the first moment of tension in the interview, and Lewis (as Morse had instructed him) left things there for a while, saying nothing; and for a little while the silence hung heavily over
the bare, rather chilly room at the rear of Police HQ in Kidlington.

From the doorway Sergeant Phillips, who had never previously been present at such an interrogation, watched events with a touch of embarrassment. The prolonged period of silence seemed (as
Phillips saw things) particularly to affect Wilkins, whose hands twice twitched at his hip pocket as if seeking the solace of a cigarette, but whose will-power appeared for the minute in adequate
control. He was a large-boned, fairish-haired, pleasantly spoken man who seemed to Phillips about the last person in the world who would suddenly display any symptoms of homicidal ferocity. Yet
Phillips was also aware that the two men in charge of the case, Morse and Lewis, had great experience in these affairs, and he listened to Lewis’s further questions with absorbed
fascination.

‘When did you first meet Mrs Margaret Bowman?’

‘You know all about that?’

‘Yes.’

‘I met her when I was working at the Locals. We had the use of the canteen and some of us used to have a meal there and that’s when I met her.’

‘When did you first meet her outside working hours?’

‘She had a night-school class, and I used to meet her for a drink afterwards.’

‘Quite regularly, you did this?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you invited her back to your house?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you made love to each other?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then she got a bit fed up with you and wanted the affair to stop – is that right, Mr Wilkins?’

‘That’s not true.’

‘You were in love with her?’

‘Yes.’

‘You still in love with her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is she in love with you?’ (Morse was delighted with such a beautifully modulated question.)

‘I didn’t force her along, did I?’ (For the first time a little hesitancy – and a little coarseness – had crept into Wilkins’s manner.)

‘Did you write this?’ Lewis handed over a Xeroxed copy of the letter found in Bowman’s jacket.

‘I wrote it, yes,’ said Wilkins.

‘And you still say you weren’t forcing her along a bit?’

‘I just wanted to see her again, that’s all.’

‘To make love to her again, you mean?’

‘Not just that, no.’

‘Did you actually see her that day – in South Parade?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you took her to your house?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was anyone following you – in a car?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Mr Bowman knew all about you – we found that copy of the letter in one of his jackets.’

Wilkins shook his head, as if with regret. ‘I didn’t know that – honestly, I didn’t. I always said to Margaret that whatever happened I never wanted to – well, to
hurt
anybody else.’

‘You didn’t know that Mr Bowman knew all about you?’

‘No.’

‘She didn’t tell you?’

‘No. I stopped seeing her after that day I met her in South Parade. She said she couldn’t cope with the strain and everything, and that she’d decided to stay with him. It was a
bit hard to take, but I tried to accept it. I hadn’t got much option, had I?’

‘When did you last see her?’

For the first time in the interview, Wilkins allowed himself a ghost of a smile, showing regular though nicotine-stained teeth. ‘I saw her,’ he looked at his wrist-watch, ‘just
over an hour ago. She was in the house when you called to bring me here.’