Chapter Text
Win didn’t want to leave Oxford without checking one more time. It was the clasp, she said, that must have gone a bit wonky, causing the string of pearls to slip from her throat, to fall somewhere between the pews, perhaps. Or perhaps, she had lost them somewhere on the gravel drive, where she had followed Jim and Joannie out of the church to shower them with rose petals.
The necklace had been her grandmother’s, passed down to her from her Aunt Reenie. They never had much, Win’s family. So they were a family treasure, of sorts.
What saddened her, she said, was not just the thought that the gift given to her with so much love had been lost, left forgotten in some dusty corner, but that she had been careless.
“I felt like the clasp had lost some of its spring,” she had said, “but there was no time to take them for repair, and I so wanted to wear them. Joannie’s special day.”
“Of course, you did,” Thursday had said, consoling her.
So, he thought. Might as well go out and have a shufti. God only knew he was no use with the packing up. So many of the things in the house, he found, after all, were Win’s.
“Be careful with that,” she said. “You’re all thumbs.”
So it was something he could do for her. Make the short journey out to All Angels. Take a quick look around.
It must have been the heat, really. For as soon as he stepped out of the house and into the sun, he felt a funny little turn, a flutter in his chest, as, all of a sudden, he was beset by a disorienting surge of déjà vu—beset by a memory of the first time he had walked in through that very door.
He had been so much younger, then. Stronger. He had felt such a glow of pride when he had turned the key, and the kids had spilled in, running up the steps.
“It seems so small,” Sam had said, just the other day.
It hurt, to be honest. It had seemed so grand to him, when they had moved in. He and Win never would have dreamed they would live in such a house.
But then, Sam did not remember, of course, their old flat in the Smoke. Everything was relative, he supposed.
Or, perhaps .... it wasn’t.
He ran a hand over his face, wiping away a cold sheen of sweat. And then, slowly, he made his way down the drive and got behind the wheel of the small, used Morris that he had bought, now that he would no longer have access to the Jag. He snorted to himself as he cranked the ignition.
One last case, he supposed. A search for a treasure that had been lost.
***
As much as it was bittersweet, Thursday was glad of it, the chance to take this final drive through the city that had become home.
More of a home than London ever was. It was the place he had chosen, not been born to. The place where he had raised his family.
As he cast his gaze out the window, over a passing broad meadow green with the height of the summer, he might almost imagine that he saw themselves now—their ghosts lingering on, drifting over the summer grass. He and Win walking hand in hand, as the children ran up ahead. Sam moving along on his unsteady toddler’s legs. Joannie leaping, bounding, skipping, stooping to pick a buttercup to hold beneath Sam’s chin.
That was all done now. Long since flown.
He knew he should be grateful for it, this unexpected third chance, coming to him so late in life.
But there was something he was missing. Something, still, he could not bear to leave behind.
He couldn’t stop thinking about that handshake. That last goodbye.
When Morse had pulled the holdall from the boot of the Jag, Thursday hadn’t the slightest idea what he was planning next, what it might contain.
“Here’s your money,” Morse had said, then. “All of it.”
Despite the grimness in his choked voice, despite that new harsh note, his blue eyes were swimming, his face full of an unmistakable schoolboy pride.
So shocked had Thursday been that, for a moment, he had had to look away. For a moment, he thought he might well break down, succumb to tears. Even he, at his age.
He was grateful, of course. Beyond grateful.
But, even more than that, he was overwhelmed by a surge of sorrow, of defeat.
As he took the holdall in his broad hands, he could only pray that Morse had not risked more than he already had to get this final gift back for him.
He could only pray that, somewhere, deep down, Morse knew that he would throw it all away, give up the lot of it in an instant—go sweep the streets, anything—rather than see any more harm done to a single wayward hair of his head.
He had tried to tell him.
No, he couldn’t tell him.
But he had tried to show him how very much he had meant.
He had failed him.
Still, Morse had looked on at him, unblinking, with those overlarge and uncanny eyes that seemed in that moment like twin kaleidoscopes, revealing something new with each flicker of their depths.
Loyalty. Filial duty. Despite all, his highest regard.
Even love. Yes. That was there, too.
It was far more than he deserved.
But yet… how Thursday missed it, that sense of easy connection, that fond rapport, he had once shared with that brilliant young man with whom he had ventured along so many dark and dangerous paths, so many winding ways. Because there was something missing from his face now. Or rather, there was something new. A distance. A new hardness. In the midst of summer, he was as a field covered in frost. He was as something unloved and unassailable. When only the second of those had been true.
Thursday had seen all the warning signs, of course. A crack, a glimmer of something in him gone awry, for some time now. And it wasn’t just the drink, mind you.
On that day they had sat on the bench, after the Roberts case, for instance—there was a much older man’s weariness, a bitterness, in the set of Morse’s jaw, even as he closed his eyes and cast his face up to bask in the sun.
“And now, because of the Ostrich Fancier’s Club, they mean nothing to anyone,” Morse had said.
Thursday had started at that. It was as if a stranger sat beside him. It was not the Morse he knew.
“Except to us,” Thursday protested. “They mean something to us.”
Morse gave no answer. He did not even deign to open his eyes.
“To me, at least,” Thursday had said, at last. “I’d have said to you, too, once.”
Morse shrugged. “People make bad choices, they have to pay the consequences.”
Just as easy as that. Just as if, underneath the Latin retorts and the haughty gazes and all of that god-awful, less-than-subtle eye-rolling he always did, there did not lie the deepest well of a tentative, bashful empathy.
Morse would be unhappy, living like that. Going against his own nature, is what it was.
“What about pity, understanding?” Thursday had asked. “Where does that fit into the picture?”
Thursday rounded a bend in the road, blinking, as his eyes, unbidden, filled with tears. Suddenly, the summer’s day, the thread of the road before him, the chestnut trees and tall poplars, the achingly blue skies drifting with clouds, had become bleary, faraway, like a watercolor painting. The irony of it too much to bear.
Pity. Understanding. He might almost have been pleading for his future self.
But, yes. That was the Morse who had stood before him on the pavement outside the Radcliffe Camera beside the open boot of the black Jag, watching his every move with such steadfastness that Thursday had difficulty meeting his gaze.
He was a Morse who was not there to kiss the wounded.
He was there to see justice done.
It was the closest thing Morse could say to “I love you.” Thursday had long understood that.
And yet, how he longed for it, how he wished, for something more.
He wanted more than his forgiveness. He wanted his understanding.
Or even, could it be ..... absolution?
He wanted more than a mortal man could give.
But yet, if anyone could give it, it would have been Morse.
Above all, Thursday had wanted him to know how exceptional he really was.
Even now, even after Thursday had broken his very heart, Morse hadn’t given up on him. But then, he never gave up on anyone.
That truth of him was there, hiding in plain sight. Right there, in his name. The name he kept a secret, but which suited him, in a way almost fearsome to behold.
In his haste to reach out, to bring him back to him again, Thursday let it slip.
The final leap. The final plea.
He had swallowed, thickly. Uttered that forbidden word. Tried to put into those three syllables all that he could to show how very clearly he saw him, his best and truest self.
“Endeavour.”
Morse stood his ground, just as he was, utterly unmoved.
“Just Morse, Sir.” he said, simply. “Just Morse.”
And with that, Thursday understood that it was over.
There was a time, once, when Thursday might have thought that, if anyone might break down those walls that Morse had built up around him, it might have been him. If there was anyone Morse might have learned to trust to say his name, it might have been him.
But he had never really managed it, somehow.
And now, he never would.
But if not him, who? And if not now, when? Morse had grown, over the years, from a boy in an overlarge car coat into a man of an almost intimidating presence—if anything over the years, frostier and more forbidding. His very cool blue gaze enough to keep anyone at arm’s length.
The light within him was gone.
He had killed that.
It was just another casualty of his own recklessness, another murder to add to the long list of his sins. Endeavour, the boy who had held such high faith in him—too much, really—had drifted away. Had been drifting away for years now, if he felt like being honest—Maybe starting from that day when Thursday had stood with Ronnie and watched Morse stride off through that field of overripe grain, under the pylon.
Leaving Morse. Just Morse. In his place.
That thread that bound them together would never be severed—not after so much. But it had been frayed. It would remain always, a brittle thing, with yet enough strength to tug at the fibers of his remorseful and weary heart.
Time might have mended it, some of that hurt. But now they were out of time. No matter how much he might wish it might be otherwise.
No. He should just let Morse go. Even now, he was probably off at his recital, or whatever it was, lost to his music, trying to forget the darkness of these past weeks.
He wondered what Morse looked like as he sang. Was his face more open? Even... happy? It would have been nice to see it, just once.
All of these years, and he had never gone to one of Morse’s concerts. Weekends came and weekends went, and he’d always been busy with this, or that. Errands, repairs, painting the shed and the like.
It was only too late that it came to him: What the hell had been so important?
Nothing to do about it now, those regrets.
The clock had run out. It was the final page of their story. The final scene in the script.
That was why, when Thursday pulled up along the road leading to the small stone church, he could scarcely believe it. A mirage, Thursday thought. Just like he had seen in those days in the desert. Those days when he wanted a thing so badly, that he allowed his eyes to deceive him.
It looked like him, so like him. A young man in a dark blue suit, sitting alone on the bench not far from the front door. That same slouch of his shoulders. That tender ruffle of his hair in the wind.
Thursday got out of the car and headed off across the grass. A few pigeons were clattering on the roof of the church. A breeze had kicked up, stirring the leaves of the shrubbery. Still, the young man on the bench made no move, remained as still as a statue of some fallen-away saint, taking a break from it all.
As he drew nearer, as Thursday noted the familiar manner in which the young man’s hair tapered at his nape, his heart seemed to seize up with a sharp pain in his chest.
It was Morse. He was there, sitting alone, aimlessly, the gun that he had given him in his hand. He was spinning the barrel of his Webley with a terrible casualness.
It was as if he were contemplating a round of Russian roulette.
For a moment, the world went strangely airless.
It was just as he had feared.
Endeavour.
He had as good as killed him.
Thursday felt rooted to the spot, powerless. It was like watching his own execution, his vision dimming, as he watched Morse, slowly, begin to raise the gun ….
“Morse,” he called.
At the sharp sound of his voice, a flock of pigeons rose up from the roof, crying with a great tumult, fluttering off into the sky. Morse jumped and looked over his shoulder. His face was a blank at first. And then, it was only because he knew him so well that Thursday saw it: the glare of accusation followed by something else, something furtive, a guilty look Thursday had never seen there.
“It’s not what you think,” Morse said.
“No?”
“No,” he said.
For all that Morse’s voice was firm enough, there was a definite wariness, a shock in those eyes as clear and as blue as the summer sky.
For once, for all of his brilliance, Morse had not seen this turn coming.
But Thursday understood. It was fate that brought them together. It always had been, from the very start.
He had come out to All Angels on an errand, to search for a treasure that had been lost.
And he had found it.