Chapter Text
They stood in the middle of a frozen field, where a dead girl had been left face down in the dull grass dusted with snow.
There was a heaviness about her, as if she were already fading back into the earth, even though, as Dr. DeBryn gently turned her face, Jakes could tell she must have been the sort who had to live by her wits, who must have been light and quick enough on her feet, in life.
The only color in the muted scene of frozen ground and gray skies was the bright flame of her hair and the brighter flame of her smudged lipstick. But, even in the repose of death, there was a hardness to her brow and chin that Jakes recognized all too well.
Whoever she was, the world had not been kind to her.
Dr. DeBryn searched the pockets of her thin coat, withdrawing two small items which he deposited into Thursday’s outstretched hand.
The first was a velvet black matchbook bearing the silver motif of the Moonlight Rooms.
The second was a folded pay slip from the nightclub made out to Judy Vallens.
“Morse had said it wasn’t her real name,” Thursday said, heavily, considering the yellow slip of paper he held between his calloused fingers.
“She was, what, using her flatmate’s name, then?” Jakes asked. “Rather than coming up with a new alias altogether?”
“People do,” Thursday shrugged. “Morse used your name once. When he called the Yard.”
Jakes scowled.
As if he needed reminding.
Thursday refolded the piece of paper and cast his gaze down to the body on the ground before them.
“People are always pining after something else, something that they think might be right there, right on the horizon,” he murmured, seemingly apropos of nothing.
“It’s what Morse said,” he supplied, then, in answer to the questioning look on Jakes’ face.
Jakes nodded and dug his numb hands deeper into his silk-lined pockets.
It was true enough, most likely, of the girl before them. True enough for all of them, he supposed, really.
But, even so, whatever it was she had been hoping for, it looked as if the girl with the fiery hair and no name had never found it.
“Back of the head,” Dr. DeBryn said, leaning his weight back on his heels as if letting the entirety of his compact body relax into a sigh. “Point blank. Couple of days ago, by the look of things.”
“Couple of days?” Thursday asked.
“Mmmmmm,” DeBryn confirmed.
“Miss Vallens had said her flatmate had cleared out just this morning,” Jakes said. “If this is her, she must have been lying for one reason or another, then.”
Thursday narrowed his eyes, looking about the dreary landscape, his lined face suddenly weary.
“This isn’t Kasper,” he said.
Jakes raised his eyebrows. It had seemed that, up until that point, the old man had been ready to blame anything and everything—even down to a malfunctioning stapler—on his onetime foe.
“No?” Jakes asked.
“A young girl,” he mused. “Back of the head? Just to leave her here, exposed, right in the middle of the grass?”
“You think Kasper has any such compunctions on that score?” Jakes asked.
Thursday looked troubled.
“And leave a pay slip from his own establishment right in her pocket? No. This isn’t a professional job. This is something spur of the moment. Someone who acted out of some sort ... some sort of blind fury.”
Jakes nodded, thoughtfully.
Nothing added up, really.
But whatever the story was, Jakes had the definite sense that Judy Vallens, the real Judy Vallens, knew a hell of a lot more than what she was letting on.
****
“Georgina used different names, depending how the mood took her.”
Jakes felt his heart sinking. He could already see where this was going.
“The mood?” he asked, dully.
“She got in with people when she was younger,” Miss Vallens said. “People who … took advantage.”
She bowed her head, then, her frosty fringe obscuring her face, in what looked to be a moment of real mourning.
Then she took a breath, as if gathering strength from it.
“She had been sent out, to meet a man in a mews in Bayswater, to collect a key from the cubbyhole at Baidley College.”
“Whose cubbyhole?” Thursday asked.
“Froshiber’s. The master at Baidley’s.”
And then, the whole sad story came spilling out. Georgina Bannard had gotten herself involved in god-only-knew what, somehow managing to drag her posh, college friend into it right along with her.
Who knew what Miss Vallens had made of it all?
Certainly must have been a course in life not likely to be offered up at Lady Mathilda’s, anyway.
“I went with her to London, I kept out of the way,” Miss Vallens continued. “And then a man arrived that had something to do with Town Hall. He had a lot to drink… started bragging about some deal the council had going.”
“Booth Hill?” Thursday asked.
“Yes. That’s it. He said he stood to make a packet. Only there was a don at Baidley trying to stop it going through.”
“Professor Coke Norris,” Thursday supplied.
The girl said nothing, only nodded, grimly.
“This man from Town Hall… did he have a name?” Jakes asked.
Miss Vallens hesitated for just a moment, but then she lifted her chin and spoke her final word as if she knew it might be the only way she might get any sort of justice for Georgina—gave them the name of a man who normally would have been too far above her reach, as those sorts always were—far above the reach of an undergraduate from Lady Mathilda’s and certainly far above the reach of a cigarette girl who worked at the Moonlight Rooms.
But now, as she spoke the name to them, she seemed to realize that, with their help, he might be within the sights of her fire, after all.
“Carlisle,” she said.
***
“Anything in?” Thursday asked, as he pulled off his heavy coat and hung it on the stand by the door.
“Sir,” Sergeant Strange replied. “Oddest thing. We’ve had two complaints in, just in the past few hours. Both about that bloke Morse, the one who found Professor Coke Norris’ body. One from Professor Froshiber, the master at Baidley College, and one from Town Hall.”
“Who from Town Hall?” Thursday asked, carefully.
Sergeant Strange looked down at the piece of paper in his hand.
“A Mr. Carlisle.”
Thursday’s dark gaze swept to him at once, and immediately, Jakes read the old man’s thoughts there—an easy enough feat as they were also his own.
If Morse had been harassing Froshiber and Carlisle, that meant he wasn’t randomly going about Oxford making a nuisance of himself, dropping quotes from Peter Pan and Greek poetry in the offices of Oxford’s movers and shakers.
He was on the case.
And, what was more, he was a step ahead of them.
Jakes grimaced. He could only hope that Morse hadn’t made matters all the worse for them, going off half-cocked, putting people on their guard who might have otherwise made a telling slip.
“And Mrs. Thursday rang, too,” Strange added. “Says it’s urgent.”
Thursday’s somber look grew all the graver at that, like storm clouds gathering out at sea. Mrs. Thursday was a copper’s wife through and through. She never rang down to the nick.
If Mrs. Thursday was ringing him up while the old man was on duty…
“Go see to home, sir,” Jakes said. “I’ll find Morse.”
Thursday hesitated, and then nodded with real gratitude, gathering up the coat he had placed onto the hook just a few moments before and sweeping out the door.
Once he had gone, Jakes went over to his desk and picked up the phone. He called Froshiber, he called Carlisle, both trying to smooth ruffled feathers and endeavoring to get some sort of sense as to where Morse might have gone.
He was just hanging up the phone with a rather snippy little Carlisle—a man for whom Jakes was developing an even greater sense of distaste by the minute— when he found himself doing a double take: Morse was there, standing right at the door of the nick, looking over the cluttered and mismatched bay of desks, not his typical stroppy self, but rather oddly subdued, his face pale with the cold, clutching a leather folder in his gloveless hands.
Morse’s big eyes locked on his, lighting up with a blue spark of recognition. Then, he was making a beeline straight for him.
“I need to speak to Inspector Thursday,” he announced without preamble.
“Inspector Thursday is out for the day,” Jakes replied, laconically, not a little annoyed at being spoken to so curtly, like some sort of clerk. “Looks like I’ll have to do.”
Morse’s eyes widened, wavered doubtfully over his face. And then, he actually turned his back on him, turned to look over his shoulder, as if hoping that Thursday might be coming in through the door at any moment.
“Morse?” Jakes prompted. “Is there something you’d like to tell me?”
Morse swung back around to him.
“No.”
“No?” Jakes asked. “That’s funny. We’ve had two calls in about you says otherwise.”
Jakes picked up a spare chair left half-hanging into the passageway and set it squarely down before his desk.
“Sit down,” he commanded. “You might as well start from the beginning.”
Morse regarded him for a moment, and then, much to Jakes’ surprise, he actually did what he was told for once. He said nothing, simply lowered himself into the chair without looking.
It was lucky, really, he landed on the thing, and didn’t topple off onto the floor.
“Start from the beginning?” he asked, faintly.
Then he looked back over his shoulder, a thoughtful frown on his face.
“Thursday’s just left,” Jakes said, shortly. “Not fifteen minutes ago.”
“What?”
“I said, Thursday’s just left. He’s not coming in.”
“Oh.”
“So,” Jakes said. “Do you want to begin with what you were doing out at Baidley College?”
Morse’s dull gaze grew sharper, and Jakes could see it, the mistrust, the doubt in his expression. Then he looked down at the folder he clutched in his hands and swallowed, and Jakes could tell by the slump of his shoulders that he had made his decision, that he was about to spill it.
“I… I know I shouldn’t have done it,” he said.
Oh, Jesus.
“I don’t have a warrant card…. and … I don’t know. Perhaps you can’t use it in court, now.”
Jakes rubbed his eyes with a forefinger and thumb, feeling a terrific headache coming on.
“Use what in court?” he asked dully.
Morse didn’t answer. Instead, he simply regarded him for a moment, and Jakes felt certain he was under scrutiny once more. Then, he placed the leather folder he had been carrying on the desk before him.
“What’s this?” Jakes asked.
“Papers. After a fashion. These are the articles of association for Landersman Construction. Cheques to the sum of 6000 pounds have been drawn against their accounts and cashed over the past twelve months. By Mark Carlisle. Senior planning officer in the Housing Department.”
Jakes flipped the file open and began turning through the pages, running a sure finger down the lines in the ledger.
And… what the hell …?
“Where did you get all this?” he asked, sharply.
“I found it,” Morse said.
Jakes looked at him with deadened eyes.
“You were walking and you just so happened to find this lying around on the pavement.”
“No,” Morse said. “I found it in a train locker.”
“You found it in a train locker,” Jakes said.
“I found out from Miss Frazil that Professor Coke Norris was opposed to the sale of Booth Hill. So I went to his rooms as Baidley,” Morse explained. “And I found a locker ticket there, hidden in the back of a photo frame. And when I went to the train station, I found this.”
“And then you went to confront Carlisle about it?” Jakes asked. “Why? What were you hoping to accomplish?”
“I’m sorry,” Morse said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I just… I just had …”
And then, it was unsettling—his whole tone seemed to change, his low, soft and mournful voice, with its slightly rounded trace of the North, turning slightly sharper, somehow…
Somehow more like his own.
“It just … I dunno… It just felt good. It just felt good to demand a modicum of truth out of one of these people.”
Jakes paused, regarding him warily.
That was just what he had been thinking earlier that day, hadn’t it? As he had sat in the car while Thursday raked over old Maurie?
Nor for the first time, Jakes found himself feeling definitely conflicted about the man sitting before him. On the one hand, there wasn’t a lot to Morse, really—just a wiry thing, he was, with the soft hands of a college boy. But on the other hand, there was something about him that, every now and then, left Jakes with a chill at the back of his nape, with a feeling reminiscent of shadows, of dark, twisting staircases, of curtains billowing in an empty room.
“I wanted him to tell the truth,” Morse was saying.
And then Morse cast his gaze down, to where his hands lay clutched tightly in his lap.
“But he threw me out,” he murmured disconsolately. “Like I was some sort of crank.”
At Morse’s forlorn, even almost unconsciously comic conclusion, Jakes felt at once that sense of foreboding abate, as a cold mist does before the beams of the sun.
He was being ridiculous, really. Letting his fancy get the best of him.
Jakes huffed a sharp laugh.
“Imagine that,” he said.
“Maybe,” Morse said, a light of hope gathering in his face. “Maybe, you can say that you found it. The folder.”
“No,” Jakes said. “I can’t.”
Morse opened his mouth to protest, then snapped it shut again.
“I know,” he said.
Christ, what a thing. Somehow, Morse seemed to have solved the case and to have made a huge mess of it all at once.
“I had to,” Morse protested, as if reading his thoughts. “I had to. It’s not as if you were making inquiries in the right places.”
“That’s because we were busy looking for your Judy Vallens.”
Morse’s eyes widened at that.
“Did you find her?”
“She’s dead.”
Jakes regretted his bluntness as soon as he had said the words. As big of a pain in his arse as Morse was, it gave Jakes no joy to see the man go still with the shock of it, bury his face in his long, thin hands.
For a moment, Jakes feared he might actually start crying, but instead, it was far worse; he simply sat there, as if paralyzed, as if frozen into place.
It got so awkward, Jakes almost wished he would cry, or shout, or do something, rather than to sit like a statue, his face hidden in his hands.
“Morse.”
But Morse remained silent.
“You were right, anyway,” Jakes murmured. “Judy Vallens wasn’t her real name. It was Georgina Bannard.”
Morse made a sharp sound behind his narrow hands, like an intake of breath, leaving Jakes to think that perhaps he had made him feel worse about it, not better, being proved right.
Morse had been hovering around the truth of it, had sensed that something was off, he had been getting there.
Just not quickly enough to warn Miss Bannard of what was to come.
“It’s not your fault,” Jakes said.
“Isn’t it?” Morse asked.
“No. It’s the fault of whoever put a bullet in the back of her head.”
There was another sharp intake of breath, then, and Jakes realized too late he needn’t have put it quite so graphically.
“Morse….”
“I know,” Morse said, his face still obscured. “It’s not by fault. It’s never my fault, is it?”
Jakes made no reply, simply folded his arms and leaned on the desk before him.
So.
That’s how it was, was it?
Morse rattled around, somehow stumbling upon one disaster after another, sensing something was wrong, that some catastrophe was brewing out there on some unknown horizon, never quite able to puzzle it out, to stop the chain of events before someone or another ended up dead. And it had gone on and on, leaving him to accrue layer after layer of regret and remorse until he had filled up his head with it—a head that seemed crammed full of enough rubbish as it was, honestly, to be going on with.
“It could have been much worse at Blythe Mount, you know that, don’t you?” Jakes asked. “One of those little girls could easily have ended up dead.”
But Morse remained just as he was, as if carved out of ice.
“You can’t put it all on yourself,” Jakes continued. “It’s not on you, what one person will do to another. The world doesn’t revolve around you, you know.”
And his angrier tone seemed to do the trick, seemed to move Morse out his weird fug of inertia, because he lowered his hands and asked, tentatively, “Where is Inspector Thursday?”
Jakes sighed. He was trying his best here.
“He went home. Like I said.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because Y’s not Z. It’s personal. Like I said.”
“What do you mean… personal?”
“Morse.”
“Doesn’t sound like Inspector Thursday, to go home in the middle of the day,” Morse observed.
“Would you bloody stop playing the detective? You’ve done enough damage, for today, I’d say.”
“No,” Morse said. “It’s important.”
“What’s important?”
“When I ran into Thursday again, a few days ago,” Morse said, “After….”
He let the sentence fall away, and Jakes nodded to show that he understood that he meant after the incident at Blythe Mount.
“I was sweeping in the main dining room of the Moonlight Rooms. And he was having a row, Thursday. With Vic Kasper. They mentioned. Well. All sorts of things, really. But the level of animosity between them. It seemed … personal. As if they knew each other, from London. As if they still have some sort of unfinished business. As if Thursday has … I don’t know … some sort of vendetta.”
Jakes said nothing, mulling that over.
“You should call her. Mrs. Thursday.”
Jakes looked up sharply.
“If Kasper’s done something to bring their row to Thursday’s home, involved his family in this….”
Morse didn’t need to say anything more. Jakes knew all too well it had been personal with the old man, that he’d had some ties to that lot from his days in the Smoke.
And a man hardly had to have any sense of clairvoyance to know what Thursday might do, if Kasper had done anything to cross that line, anything that touched on his home.
Morse rose at once from the chair, scooping up the leather folder.
“We need to go to the Moonlight Rooms. We need to take this and go.”
“Oh, we’re going,” Jakes said, as he took the folder back from Morse’s hands. “But not you. You aren’t going anywhere.”
“What?” Morse protested.
“You’ve caused enough trouble for one day.”
Jakes picked up the telephone and placed it squarely before him.
“Here,” he said. “Call your sister.”
“How do you know I have a sister?” he asked.
“Just had a feeling,” Jakes said.
Morse widened his eyes, looking alarmed.
“I’m joking,” he said. “She called at the nick. She’s looking for you, wanted to put in a missing persons report about you. You sit here and call her. And stay put. We’ll have to talk to you, when it’s all over, you’ll have to give a statement. Then we’ll get you on a train to Lincolnshire.”
“I’m not going to Lincolnshire.”
“Call your sister,” Jakes said.
Morse looked at the phone almost fearfully, then, as if he thought that, if he picked it up, something might pounce at him from out of the receiver, but at least he remained where he was.
“And stay put until we get back,” Jakes said.
And then he crossed the room, in a handful of strides, calling to Sergeant Strange.
****
Jakes barreled into the Moonlight Rooms, arriving onto a scene entirely apropos of the theatrical backdrop of the tawdry burgundy velvet drapes and the hung silver moon. It was like something out of a play, coming upon Thursday— a pulse beating in his temple visible from half-way across the room—with a gun trained on Vic Kasper, while his son, in turn, had a gun trained on him.
“That’s none of mine!” Vic Kasper said.
“Bad luck for you, then,” Thursday replied, gritting out the words as if they were bits of sand in his teeth.
And then… Christ… He was actually going to pull the trigger.
“Sir! Don’t! He’s telling the truth!” Jakes shouted, as behind him, Strange and Mr. Bright, and a small troop of officers in uniform raised their collective guns.
Vince Kasper lowered his gun, his hard face falling into wariness, while Thursday, betraying just the slightest flicker of surprise and relief beneath the granite-hard exterior, followed suit.
“What’s this?” Vic asked.
Jakes stepped up to the center of the room, then, with just a trace of swagger, just enough to put the lot of them on notice.
“These are the articles of association for Landesman Construction. Four shareholders, equal partners. Sid and Gerald Fletcher, your son Vince, and Cynthia Riley.”
“What?” cried a blonde in a beaded-collared dress. She turned at once to old Vic, shaking her head in denial.
“I don’t know nothing about this, Vic,” she protested. “Vince! Tell him.”
“She don’t, Dad,” Vince Kasper said, laconically. “Cyn’s been loyal. I put it in her name as a surprise for you.”
“Yeah,” Jakes said. “Well, you would have been surprised. Your son’s put together a firm with the Fletchers’ to build houses on Booth Hill.”
“No law against it,” Vince said.
“No. But there certainly is a one against bribing public officials. Cheques to the sum of 6000 pounds drawn against the account of Landesman Construction have been cashed over the past twelve months. By Mark Carlisle, senior planning officer in the Housing Department.”
There was a dead silence, then, as the Moonlight Rooms crowd seemed to process it all.
Took them a bit of time, this lot.
At last, Vic Kasper smiled, in an attempt to look conciliatory.
“It’s between me and the boy, Fred. You let me straighten him out.”
“Can’t do it, Vic,” Thursday said.
Then the guv'nor turned to him and nodded grimly, and Jakes took one more step forward.
“Vince Kasper, I’m arresting you for conspiring to bribe a public official. You don’t have to say anything, but anything you do say may be written down and can be used in evidence against you.”
Strange came forward with a set of handcuffs, then, and it should have been satisfying, seeing the little bastard get what was coming to him.
But somehow, it felt like a hollow victory.
Because if it wasn’t Vic Kasper or one of his heavies who had left Professor Coke Norris dead by a kerb and Georgina Bannard face down in the sparse, gray grass …. then who did?
***
Jakes and Thursday stood out on the frozen pavement, watching as Strange and a couple of PCs bunded Vince Kasper into the back of the wagon.
“Where’d you find that, then?” Thursday asked, with a nod to the folder in his hand.
“I didn’t,” Jakes said. “Morse did.”
Thursday huffed a laugh.
“Turned up, did he?”
“I left him at the nick,” Jakes explained. “Told him to call home.”
Thursday nodded, satisfied. Then, a shadow crossed his face.
“So if it wasn’t Vince or Vic who did for Coke Norris and the girl,” he said, “We’re back where we started.”
Jakes scowled softly, looking down at the folder in his hands, remembering how Morse had clutched it as he had come into the nick, how he had turned to look over his shoulder, a thoughtful expression on his face.
And, suddenly, the answer came to him.
Morse had seemed oddly preoccupied when he had told him that, contrary to his apparent hope, Thursday wouldn’t be waltzing in the door at any moment.
And that was because Morse wasn't looking for Thursday.
Morse being Morse, he had doubtless combed all through these papers; he already knew that Coke Norris’ death was unrelated to the graft of Vince Kasper and Carlisle, he was already working on it, thinking on who else might stand to make a packet off of the sale of Booth Hill—once again, one step ahead of them.
Morse hadn’t been looking for Thursday.
He had been looking to where Mrs. Coke Norris had sat, on that first morning that he had come into the nick.
Maybe Coke Norris was trying to block the sale, but did his wife feel the same way?
“It was his wife, Deianeira,” Morse said.
“Start from the beginning?” he asked.
“Yes,” Jakes said. “Exactly where we started.”
Suddenly, it all fit together.
And suddenly, Jakes came to doubt that Morse was still waiting for them, sitting in the chair before his desk.
****
“Mrs. Coke Norris?” Thursday called.
The door was had been left partially open—in Jakes’ experience, never a good sign. He and Thursday exchanged swift glances, and, as if in silent agreement, charged ahead inside.
The wide hallway was empty and quiet, furnished only with a small, spindle-legged table holding an enormous display of dried flowers reflected before an oval mirror. At the end of the hall, they came onto a large and comfortable living room, painted a muted olive green and set with plush, plum-colored sofas and chairs, where they found Morse, his back turned to them, his thin shoulders hunched beneath the fabric of his cheap white shirt as he stood over a table in the corner, the heavy, black receiver of a telephone pressed hard against his ear...
And, on the other side of the room, Mrs. Coke Norris, dressed in a tweed suit and a blouse with an enormous bow, looking every inch the don’s wife, save for the expression of utter vitriol on her face and the gun in her hand.
Morse spun around at the sound of their footfalls, catching sight of Mrs. Coke Norris and her well-aimed gun, and then, it all seemed to happen as in slow motion: Morse’s enormous eyes widened as he dropped the receiver, his mouth falling open in surprise.
Thursday pulled his gun, and two sharp cracks sounded through the room, almost simultaneously.
It was like some twisted parody of a child’s game of laying out dominoes: almost at once, Morse went down, falling in an oddly vertical manner before crumpling into an ungainly heap by the bay windows, while Mrs. Coke Norris flew back from the force of the impact of a bullet straight to the chest, collapsing sideways into an armchair, where she landed, her eyes blank, staring out at them.
For a moment, Thursday said nothing, only stood there, regarding her.
Even when it was an act of defense, it was no small thing, Jakes knew, to kill.
Then, slowly, the old man seemed to rouse, to come back to himself, as if remembering why it was he had done such a thing.
“Morse?” he called.
Thursday crossed the room in a few brisk strides and crouched down to where Morse lay face-up on the floor, a pool of blood spreading out from his side onto the dark polished oak floor. His face was white, his eyes closed, his breathing shallow with the shock of it.
Quickly, Thursday shrugged off his jacket and pressed it up against Morse’s side, low down on his hip. Not life-threatening, then, it would seem, and Thursday must have realized it too, because he exhaled a loud sigh of relief and then patted Morse lightly on the face.
“Morse?”
Morse’s face was so white and still that he looked almost like a frozen thing, and Jakes was reminded inexplicably of the way in which he had sat across from him at his desk, just a few hours before, overcome with emotion, how he had held himself in that same cast, as though he had been carved out of ice.
Carefully, Jakes stepped over the pair of them and retrieved the telephone receiver, which still hung dangling from its cord. Then he put in two phone calls. One for an ambulance, and one to Dr. DeBryn.
When he hung up the phone, he turned back around to find that Morse seemed to be stirring at the sound of their voices.
“Morse?” Thursday prompted. “Wake up now, lad.”
Morse’s eyes slid open, revealing two slivers of brilliant blue. Then, his bleary gaze roved between the two of them, as if he was trying to make out who they were and how it was that he had come to be lying on the floor between them.
When the answer seemed to come to him, he let out a wordless groan.
“You’re alright, Morse,” Thursday intoned.
Morse’s frozen face collapsed at the words, so that he looked not at all his usual stoic self, but rather utterly miserable, as he let out another soft groan. He murmured something unintelligible, then, so that Thursday tilted his head, as if to better hear him.
“What’s that, lad?”
“I don’t want to die,” he said.
At the words, Jakes felt a tension which he hadn’t even realized had been building in his chest soften, subside.
If Morse was capable of managing such a statement, it was as good as a confirmation that he was in no danger of doing any such thing.
Some residual stiffness in Thursday’s broad shoulders seemed to sag at the words as well, as if he had come to the same conclusion, but soon, Morse’s newfound energy and presence of mind began to backfire on them, as he began to try to roll away, trying to free himself from the pain of the pressure that the old man was applying with his bunched-up jacket in an effort to slow the bleeding.
“Keep, still, Morse,” Thursday said.
“Don’t,” Morse protested. “I don’t want to die. I still have to ..... ”
“He’s trying to help you, Morse,” Jakes said, cutting across him.
“You’re going to be fine, lad,” Thursday said. “You’re going to be fine. All right? The ambulance is on its way.”
Morse shook his head, obviously unconvinced. No doubt the extra pressure hurt like hell, seemed counterintuitive to him at the time, but Morse was going to have to trust him, for once, on this one.
“You’re not dying, Morse,” Jakes said. “Besides. If you were dying, wouldn’t you be the first to know?”
Morse’s eyes wandered over to him, then, in a glaze of confusion, as if trying to work that out, before a look of utter disdain flickered across his face.
Thursday cast him an odd glance, as if he felt it was rather unsporting of him to have a go at Morse while he was down, but, hey…
Kept his mind off it for a moment, didn’t it?
“So, who are were you trying to ring, anyway?” Jakes asked.
“Mmmmm?”
“Who were you ringing up, on the telephone?”
“Oh,” Morse breathed. “You.”
For a moment, Jakes wasn’t sure what to say, taken thoroughly off-guard by the transparency on Morse’s face. He would have thought that Morse would have looked to Thursday when he had said the word, but instead, he had turned his head so that he was looking straight to him.
“Yeah. Well,” Jakes said. “Just look. Here I am. Good thing I sensed it, then. Maybe it’s contagious.”
Thursday cast him another dark look, but the corner of Morse’s mouth hitched up in a twitch of an annoyed smile. Then he scrunched up his face as if in concentration, and you could tell he was thinking real hard to come up with some apt comeback.
But Jakes wasn’t holding his breath. Morse might be clever, have a head full of Greek poetry and obscure facts, but Jakes doubted he was the sort to be all that snappy with his retorts.
No matter.
He’d stew over it, and doubtless come back to him with something really soul-cutting, in three days or so.
Thursday cast him another look, an apologetic one this time, as if he had realized that Jakes wasn’t being a complete prick, that there was design behind it.
For a few long minutes—ones the seemed to stretch on in the silence that fell between them—they simply crouched there in the corner, settling into an odd sort of tableau: Morse staring up at the ceiling, as if willing himself to think of something else, as he and Thursday strained their ears after the wail of sirens.
As long as Morse remained preoccupied, managed to keep still, Thursday seemed to be able to staunch the bleeding well enough, but, then, it was all taking too long—then, the blood began slowly seeping through the dark fabric of Thursday’s jacket, leading Thursday to press down more firmly against the wound and Morse’s face to go even whiter against the stained wood floors, his big eyes to go slightly unfocused as they trailed from him back up to the ceiling.
And then, his eyes flew wide. For a moment, Jakes thought perhaps the wound was more serious than it looked, that perhaps the path of the bullet had ricocheted, leaving a trail of more damage than what was apparent from first glance.
“Morse?” Thursday asked.
“I forgot,” Morse managed. “I need to tell you. There’s another body.”
“What?” Jakes asked.
“In the study. A junior fellow. I met him this morning. He said…”
Morse seemed to run out of steam, then; it was as if he’d been running and had fallen short of breath.
But Jakes heard had enough. He and Thursday exchanged cursory glances, and then Jakes sprang up at once and went through the house until he found a room lined with dark maple bookshelves filled with row after row of stately green and vermillion and brown and blue volumes— and a man in a white shirt and braces shot through the back, lying face down on the black and gold patterned Persian carpet.
Jakes knelt down and checked the man’s pulse.
There was nothing.
Bloody hell.
What had happened here, in this house full of books and dried floral displays and tasteful furnishings?
It was as he had always known, he supposed.
Appearances could be deceiving.
Jakes stood up, then, considering the man before him.
Like Morse said, people were always pining after something or another.
Or, in Mrs. Coke Norris’ case, it seemed, someone.
The sound of sirens blaring in the distance came to Jakes, then, and he crossed back to the living room, where Morse was once again staring stoically at the ceiling, his thin chest rising and falling with shallow breaths as he fought the tide of pain, Thursday murmuring words of comfort.
“See. Hear that? We’ll get you to hospital now. They’ll stitch you up, good as new.”
You’d think Morse would have been relieved to hear the ambulance sirens, but instead, he seemed to drain further at that, mumbling something unintelligible.
“What’s that, lad?”
“No,” he breathed. “I can’t go to hospital. I have to go to my father. I …. What if it’s …..What if he…”
“Hush, now. Don’t worry about that.”
Morse turned his face back up to the ceiling, gazing dully, his face an utter blank, as if he wasn’t fully there. Whether it was because the pain had finally gotten the better of him, or because he was simply lost in whatever thoughts he had been trying to express, Jakes couldn’t say.
But it hardly mattered, now. In the next moment, there was a sound of footfalls in the hall, as the young ambulance driver and the even younger attendant burst through the sedate old house in a whirlwind of urgency.
And suddenly, Morse found his voice, scrambling to escape from under Thursday’s broad hands, as the two men bounded towards him.
“No,” he gasped. “I can’t go. I can’t. I have to go…. ”
The pair of them halted in their tracks at Morse’s outburst, while Thursday redoubled his attempts to get Morse to hold ruddy-well still.
“He really should go to hospital,” the driver said to Thursday, eyeing the pool of blood beside Morse on the floor. It was as if he sensed that the old man was the one in charge, someone who might have some sway over Morse.
“No,” Morse said. “I have to …”
“What’s this?” asked a steady voice—modest and unassuming but redolent with enough quiet authority that all five of them turned to look to where Dr. DeBryn, his bag in hand, was watching the scene, his face impassive, but his eyes behind the rimmed glasses mildly curious.
“His father’s bad off,” Jakes supplied, in answer to the questioning expression on his face. “He’s up in Lincolnshire.”
Morse’s eyes lit, then, on DeBryn.
“You’re a sort of doctor, aren’t you?” Morse asked.
“My medical degree would seem to suggest as much,” DeBryn remarked dryly.
“Can’t you… just… Can’t you just fix it? I don’t have time. I don’t ….”
Thursday cast a glance towards Jakes, and Jakes thought he knew all too well what Thursday was thinking.
If Morse had the sense he was running out of time…
Then perhaps he really was.
“Can you patch him up, doctor?” Thursday asked. “I’ll drive him up, look that he’s seen to.”
The ambulance men scowled, annoyed, as if beginning to think they’d been perhaps called out for nothing.
DeBryn sighed and walked over to Morse, Thursday clearing out of the way so that he could kneel down beside him, while all the while Morse’s big eyes remained trained on the doctor’s round face in a silent appeal.
“Looks like you’ve lost quite a bit of blood,” the doctor began, “but … ”
Gently, he pulled some of the frayed fabric of Morse’s black trousers aside so as to better assess the damage. Then he frowned, as if thinking it over, before appearing to make his decision.
“I’ll make a running repair for now,” he said, at last. “But you’ll have to get it seen to by someone back home, alright?”
“Yes,” Morse said. “Yes. Thank you.”
“Don’t speak too soon,” DeBryn said. “I’m not at all sure that I’m doing you any favors. Just see you get that looked at by someone back home. Hmmmm? Don’t wait too many days. And sign of fever, or if the pain worsens or changes at all, call for an ambulance. All right?”
“Mmmmm.”
“All right?” DeBryn asked, looking him hard in the eyes, as if to make sure he was understood.
“Yes,” Morse said.
Morse went oddly quiet after that. It was as if all of his energy was spent, or as if he realized that he would need to save what he had left for what lay ahead. He let out a small sound of protest when Thursday partially lifted him up from off the floor, so that DeBryn could roll his trousers down, exposing the wound that lay on his hip. But other than that, he said nothing, the eyes that had previously so unnerved Jakes staring up at the ceiling, empty, his mouth a tight line as Dr. DeBryn stitched him up.
Towards the end, a single tear rolled sideways off of Morse’s face, but, even then, Jakes couldn’t tell if he was crying or if his eyes were simply watering because he had been staring so long without blinking.
“Alright?” DeByrn asked, once he had finished.
Thursday put his arm behind Morse’s shoulder, helping to roll him up, and Morse took a deep and shuddering breath, some hint of color returning to his face.
“You’re all right,” Thursday said. “Just had the wind knocked out, that’s all.”
“Yes,” Morse said.
“Come on, lad, up you get.”
He helped Morse to stand, then, stringing one lanky arm over his shoulder. Then, he bundled him down the hall and off to the car.
Jakes followed them out the door and into the white and frozen January afternoon. As he began the work of settling Morse into the passenger’s seat, Thursday turned and looked back at him, and he could read the question there on his face—if he didn’t mind him taking the Jag.
“It’s all right, sir,” Jakes called. “I’ll find my own way back.”
“I can give you a lift, sergeant,” DeBryn said.
Jakes gave him a cursory nod of thanks. He hadn’t spent much time one-on-one with the pathologist before, but…
Should be interesting, anyway.
Jakes dug his hands into his pockets as he stood on the top step, watching until the Jag was slowly pulling away from the kerb.
He hoped Morse found whatever the hell it was he was looking for.
But somehow, he doubted he would.
You didn’t have to have Morse’s uncanny powers of perception to know that anything that hadn’t yet been said between Morse and his father at this point, would never be said, most likely.
Jakes wasn’t a big believer in death-bed confessions, in sudden bursts of contrition, in radical changes of the heart.
People simply were who they were, never much better, never much worse.
A disappointment, for the most part.