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The first call came on Monday afternoon. Body in the Thames.
Thursday, Jakes and Morse rode out together, the Jag’s sleek black form flying easily past lush green hedges and trees bursting with bud – summer was less than a month away. Several weeks of heavy rain had brought forth a show of verdant peacefulness on this, the first sunny day.
When they arrived at the scene – a deserted stretch of riverside to the north of Oxford, far from the nearest boathouse or mooring – there was a second tragedy unfolding. Parker, one of the coroner’s men, was being led away by two of his colleagues. He was white and shaking, face stretched in a ghastly grimace.
“What is it?” Thursday looked to DeBryn, standing beside the body with his gloves in his hands. His usually attentive features had tightened to a stony coldness, eyes on the small group retreating towards the cars.
“Parker’s nephew lives at home with him and his sister – her husband died of cancer a few years ago. I met her once – very kind. Never met the boy. Not until now, if you can call it that.”
The three detectives looked down to the body lying in the pathologist’s shadow. It was that of a young man, his face grey and lips blue; mud was smeared across his skin and stuck in thick clots in his dark hair. His eyes were open, wide and staring into the nothingness before them, clouded with the veil of death.
“Cause?” asked Thursday quietly. Beside him Jakes slipped off to examine the surrounding area; Morse listened with his head tilted towards the river’s far bank, eyes flickering back occasionally to the corpse at his feet. The river was running high and fast, swelled from the rain. The police photographers, hanging back out of respect, moved in as they sensed the scene returning to an investigative focus.
“I just arrived,” replied DeBryn with a little of his usual prickly self. He turned and knelt carefully beside the body on a sheet of wood placed there for the purpose. “Preliminarily, drowning could certainly be the cause, judging by the cyanosis of the lips and fingernails. Autopsy will confirm. Time of death,” he paused, removing the thermometer and checking it. “One to two hours ago.”
“He was found by a passing punter,” volunteered a PC, drifting closer. “Bloke came in to take a look, then went on and stopped at the first mooring to call us.”
Thursday nodded. “Is he here?”
The PC looked to a man in a light blazer standing back amidst the cars. Thursday glanced meaningfully at Morse, who slipped off in that direction. Alone now with DeBryn, he looked down at the physician, currently examining the dead man’s hands.
Man? He was scarcely more than a boy. Seventeen or eighteen, Thursday guessed, although death could bring with it a second youth. It was the vulnerability. “Anything else, doctor?”
“Yes, Inspector. I would say he was conscious and unbound when he was drowned. He put his hands into the mud of the riverbank in an attempt to save himself; it’s caked under his nails. There being no part of the bank churned up here, I surmised he was killed elsewhere and brought here, most likely by water, immediately afterwards.” He stood and nodded to the remaining assistant who moved in with a stretcher.
Thursday frowned. Pushed face-first into the river and held there until he drowned. Brutal and cruel. Intentionally so? He turned away from the body and went to find Parker.
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Neither Parker nor his sister, Mrs Matherson, had any light to shed. No enemies, no girl, no quarrels.
“He was apprenticed to an embalmer,” said Parker, gruffly. He was a short, portly with a round face and wide laugh-lines which at the moment were drawing deep furrows around his frown. His eyes were red but dry, skin grey with the pallor of shock and grief. “Not glamourous, but t’were the best I could do for him, poor lad.” He shook his head. “He were quiet-like, never gave trouble, never got none. Never deserved…” Parker stood abruptly and turned to look out the window at the tiny garden beyond. A flower bed had been dug into stony ground, a few flowers struggling bravely through the dry and cracked earth. “You find this bastard, Mr Thursday. You and your bright lads.”
Thursday nodded solemnly. “We will.”
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The autopsy revealed what DeBryn had predicted: the young man had drowned in thick, muddy water. “Bruising to the torso and head suggest he took a beating first,” reported the pathologist, pointing with a pencil.
“Murderer forcing him into the water,” suggested Jakes, taking a drag on his cigarette. No one argued.
“Anything else?” Thursday stood at DeBryn’s side, looking at the half-sheeted figure.
“No. Excellent health, no abnormalities.”
“Not much help, doctor,” sighed Thursday. He put his hat back on and turned to lead the way out of the chill of the autopsy room.
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Follow-up interviews with the victim’s colleagues and friends produced no leads, just the same epitaph as that given by his uncle: quiet, unassuming, likeable enough but unmemorable.
“Bland as wallpaper paste,” summarized Jakes, ignoring Morse’s unimpressed look. “Who’d bother to kill him?”
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Two days of investigation produced no clues.
The third produced a second body.
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“Same as before, sir.” Strange adjusted his helmet, then glanced back down at his notebook. “Passing rower spotted the body and called it in.”
The victim this time was a young woman, her summer dressed soaked and soiled with mud and silt, her mouth oozing it. The woman’s dress was bunched up high on her thighs, near to revealing her underwear. Morse was already looking off downstream, mouth thin and hands tightly fisted. Death be not proud, thought Thursday, a quote quite often trotted out for the occasion. True none the less – no pride and little dignity remained among the deceased.
A crunch of tyres on gravel heralded the approach of the pathologist and a second wave of uniforms. DeBryn, his board carried down for him by a fresh PC, picked his way across the grass and down the damp riverside. As they cleared a small clump of reeds and the body came into view the PC stopped, wooden board falling from his fingers.
He groaned, eyes on the body, and then charged forward. Jakes, closest to him, stepped forward and grabbed him; Morse followed suit. Together they wrestled the flailing man back, his curses turning quickly to tears. The fight drained out of him very suddenly, leaving him limp and sobbing between the two detectives. Another PC appeared to prop him up and help him away.
The dead woman was Carol Beatty, Constable Beatty’s wife. Like the previous victim, she was apparently drowned in the river. According to Beatty’s choked initial statement, collected from him while he sat in the back of a car, she had no enemies and he none who would go so far as to kill – never mind kill his wife.
“How likely is it to be a coincidence, sir?” Morse, now watching DeBryn’s back as the pathologist took notes on the victim’s condition, turned to Thursday. “Two victims related to the police? To scene-of-crime investigations?”
“Coincidences happen, Morse, but rarely in murders,” was Thursday’s gruff reply. “Whatever it’s about, this man is dangerous. I’ll speak to Mr Bright about putting out a notice to our blokes to take precautions. Lucky you’ve no family living locally to worry about.” He gave Morse a narrow, humourless smile. Morse returned it with a thinner one still, tracing the line of his eyebrow with his thumbnail.
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“Unlike Mr Matherson, the second victim was kept somewhere for several hours before being introduced into the river,” announced DeBryn to the small group gathered in the chill of the autopsy room, the pathologist still in his bloody apron. The autopsy findings were more vital than ever if there was a killer targeting relatives of those with a police connection, and he had performed it as soon as he returned to the Radcliffe. Thursday and Jakes watched him closely; Morse watched a point on the wall to his right, jaw tense. “Lividity is fixed in the back and underside of the thighs – the victim lay on her back on a relatively flat surface for some time after death.”
“But she was still drowned in the river?” questioned Thursday.
“A river, yes. I cannot swear to the Thames, although the mud and silt present suggest a soft-bedded and possibly soft-sided river. Not pebbles or stones.”
Jakes frowned, resting a hand on his hip and holding a cigarette in the other. “So the killer drowned her, then hid her somewhere for a few hours before dumping her back in the river? Why?”
“Perhaps the river was too busy when she was killed to release her. Or perhaps the water at the murder site was too shallow,” suggested Thursday, speculatively.
“Or perhaps it was too deep or far from the city, and he wanted her to be found,” finished Morse in a low tone. “If he is killing based on the victim’s association with the police rather than due to an individual grudge, he must be doing it for the publicity – either among us or in the news – or both.”
Thursday nodded slowly. “Jakes, you head the interviews. Morse, organize a search of the river – both banks. Start upstream.”
“But if he had a boat,” begins Morse, protesting.
Thursday shrugged grimly. “Have to start somewhere. And Morse,” he continued, stopping Morse half-way to the door. Jakes had already disappeared into the long corridor. He gave his bagman a heavy look. “Mind you work in pairs, and be careful. We don’t need another murder.”
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The search ran until darkness fell, pairs of PCs and a few straggling sergeants and detectives roaming over swathes of the riverbank searching for disturbances in the bank or boathouses or buildings showing any sign of a struggle.
The search came up empty, spring sky turning from mauve to navy, and they called it quits for the night, Morse returning the Jag to the station and calling through to Thursday to report.
“Nothing, sir. We’ve covered about half the demarked area; we’ll have to start again tomorrow morning,” he said, propping his head up with his knuckles and rubbing his thumb into his temple.
“Morse, it’s ten –” Thursday sighed. “Alright. Take it slow, tomorrow – don’t want anyone to miss something. Don’t push them too hard; weather’s not supposed to turn for another couple of days.”
“It’s an open bank, sir, anyone could come along and ruin the scene – even a couple of swans could,” protested Morse heatedly. “We –”
“You need to be thorough, not quick.”
Morse paused, head drooping. “They’re burying Matherson day after tomorrow,” he said, in a low voice. “Strange told me. And we still don’t even know why he was killed.” He closed his eyes, digging his thumb in deeper as if the pressure could distract from the cutting sting of failure.
“We’ll find out, Morse. In time, we will find out.”
Morse made a vague uncertain sound which could generously be taken for assent, and hung up. He went home and warmed some leftovers for dinner, ironed a shirt, then collapsed into his bed for a few hours’ sleep.
The birds woke him – singing although the sky was dark, as though trying to summon the sleepy dawn. Morse rose, sitting for a moment in his warm bed listening to them. Thought of Matherson’s dead staring eyes and Mrs Beatty lying face-down in the mud. He stood with a sigh and pulled his clothes on.
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By the time he arrived at the river the sky was beginning to lighten at the horizon, although dawn was still at least an hour off.
Here, everything was quiet. No rowers or punters, no picnickers on the river’s edge. The river itself was still running heavily, the rush of the water a constant companion. It would be hours before his partner arrived. Morse stuck his hands in his pockets and started walking.
He passed by two sites too churned up to be the murder site – dog footprints revealed by his torch suggested someone throwing sticks for a pet. Further along up past a short set of rollers, he found a small cabin. Just a hut really, it had a beaten grassless path leading down to the river – a fishing spot, most likely. By the path’s edge the grass had turned to mud, some clumps of reeds missing from the thick thatch of them standing near the bank. Very possibly trampled by someone using waders, but he turned the torch on the cabin and approached.
The door was sticky but not locked; he put his shoulder to it and it opened into a tiny room, floorboards showing muddy footprints in his torch’s harsh glare. In one corner a banker’s box sat; he stepped over and opened the lid. Inside were crime scene photos, black and white with thin white borders and glossy finish. Except they weren’t – instead of focusing on the corpses, these photos were of the living. Morse recognized himself, staring at something out of frame with wide-eyed surprise. Thursday, his usual composure lost and replaced by a tight-lipped look of sympathy; Jakes snarling around a cigarette. Most of the photos, however, focused on Parker and Beatty. On the anguish and horror in their faces, rage transforming to grief as he flipped through the pages.
Behind him, something creaked. Morse straightened, dropping the pictures back into the box.
“Didn’t think you’d find it so soon,” said a low voice behind him, as hands closed around his neck.
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The sweep of the river banks continued early in the morning where it had left off, uniformed officers marching up and down the bank, each half of a pair remaining in visual contact with the other.
It was Strange who found the huddled mass in the reeds, a dark form half in the water, curled on its side. A dark form with a pale face and hints of red hair beneath the mud.
Strange heard rather than felt the low moan slip from his throat as he stiffened, an icy knife stabbing into his heart. “Morse?” he asked, softly. “Oh God.” He knelt, dropped thoughtlessly to his knees in the thick mud, leant in closer and started to stretch out a shaking hand.
Head pillowed in cold sediment, Morse sighed, eyes sliding open.
“Jesus Christ,” swore Strange, heart leaping as he jerked back. Morse tilted his head a fraction but didn’t lift it.
“About time,” he whispered, throat rough.
“Just hold on, matey, I’ll go for help –”
“No,” cut in Morse. Beside him, his white fingers clenched into a fist, the rest of his form lying still. “No. Call it in – a third murder.”
“You’ve been in the water too long,” dismissed Strange immediately, reaching to wrap his arms around Morse. Morse elbowed him away.
“He’s one of us, Strange. A scene-of-crime photographer… someone with a camera.” He coughed quietly, back hunching. He spoke slowly, sentences coming in broken fragments as he expelled slow, shallow breaths. “I saw the pictures. He’s gloating over our misery… the pain of the relatives…. He probably hid the second body… ’til he was sure Beatty’d be on shift.”
“So you thought you’d fake your own death? Just… wait here, until one of us found you?” demanded Strange, voice torn between appalled and angry.
Morse closed his eyes. “More or less. He’ll show up when you call in forensics… Call DeBryn first – he needs to cover for me. Give him a lead… then call in the rest.”
“Morse, this is –”
“You’d rather wait ‘til it’s your sister? Or Thursday’s children?” Morse’s eyes flew open, voice guttural as it scraped out of his throat with the first show of animation since Strange’s arrival.
“I won’t call Thursday in to see this,” Strange said, wavering. Morse slackened, sensing his surrender.
“McNutt then. Just… just do it. It’s cold,” he finished, chin tucking in towards his chest.
“This is complete bollocks,” declared Strange. But taking another look at Morse, lying still and damp amidst the reeds, sighed and headed back up the bank towards the car.
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DeBryn, already anticipating – dreading – another death didn’t take long to arrive at the riverside. He was greeted by DC Nixon at the roadside who directed him down the grassy slope to the water where Strange was standing alone.
“I never knew myself to be so fast a driver,” he said wryly, looking at the empty scene around him. “Where –” his words were checked abruptly by the sight of the body.
“It’s alright, doctor,” broke in Strange hurriedly. “It’s not real – he’s acting. The killer’s a member of the investigation team; we need to identify him before there’s another murder.”
DeBryn turns slowly to look at him very coldly. “You may cause one with this ridiculous stunt. Especially if you haven’t warned Inspector Thursday.” He dropped his equipment and turned his glare on Morse, lying motionless.
“He’s not coming – I asked for McNutt. I couldn’t tell you – if someone else had called you as well…”
DeBryn glared him into silence. “I am perfectly capable of keeping my silence.” Then he lay down the board and knelt on it beside Morse. “You’re dead, are you?”
Morse shivered, then nodded. Lying on his side with his hips and legs in the water and his jacket caked stiff with mud and silt there was little to give him away. In the distance, gravel crunching and engines rumbling announced the approaching men. DeBryn leant forward and slipped his fingers under Morse’s collar. He frowned, holding them there. “Morse, how long have you been in the water? Your –”
“Doctor,” hissed Strange and he fell silent, sitting back.
The first to arrive was a pack of uniforms, hurrying out from their car with fear printed on their faces. Strange’s call – officer down – could have applied to any of a dozen men working the river: a dozen friends and colleagues. They stopped some distance shy of the water, staring like a murder of crows. “Christ,” hissed one beneath his teeth.
“The Old Man’ll –” began another, and was shushed by his companions.
At the sudden silencing DeBryn looked up, pushing his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose to further clarify the two figures walking down from the road. DS Jakes and DI Thursday.
“Strange,” DeBryn began with quick urgency, but Strange was already moving, face pale.
“Sir, I need to speak with you.” He planted himself in Thursday’s way, and was pushed aside.
“Not now, Constable. After.”
“Sir, DI McNutt’s on the way, he can –”
“Since when is it your duty to organize investigations?” growled Thursday, in a black mood. He paused while Jakes went on ahead, turning the force of his attention to Strange. “Or give orders to inspectors?”
“Sir, I…” tried Strange, and quelled under Thursday’s stormy look.
Down at the river’s edge Jakes had arrived and was staring, cigarette burning away between his fingers, forgotten. He blinked, then fell back, taking a few unsteady paces off to the one side like a man struggling to keep his balance. The cigarette’s red-hot end reached his fingers and he threw his hand out, butt flying into the water as he cursed loudly and irreverently. “What the hell –” he began, turning on Strange, his face twisted in a snarl. But he caught sight of Thursday and fell into uncertain, aghast silence.
Thursday had come to stand behind DeBryn’s shoulder and was staring down at Morse’s curled form lying pale and sodden in the mud, cold and alone like a dead animal. Thursday’s face was drawn into a stiff mask of shock, his hands fisted tightly by his sides. His eyes never moved from his bagman’s body, tied to the sight.
“Doctor,” he choked out, locking his jaw and sealing his mouth when his voice began to break.
“Inspector, I –” began DeBryn, tone almost pleading.
Strange, caught by the agony of their interaction, almost forgot his job. But a scan of the men standing silently and staring on Morse’s far side revealed two holding cameras. One with it held at waist height, lens pointed at Thursday and DeBryn. His finger clicked the shutter. And Strange moved.
“Got you, you bastard!” in a second he was in among the group of bystanders, grabbing the photographer and wrestling his hands behind his back. The camera hung from his neck on a leather strap, swinging gently.
“Oi – get out of it – what –” sputtered the captive, fighting fruitlessly against Strange’s grasp.
“Strange, what…” began Thursday, trying to shake off the suffocating shroud of grief and guilt.
“It’s him, sir. He’s been coming to all the scenes, taking photos of us to get his jollies.”
In his grip the photographer struggled, face red with rage. “Jollies? Jollies?! You bastards, I’ll –”
“How do you know?” cut through Thursday, as if he hadn’t been interrupted.
Another PC had come over to help him subdue the photographer, and he spoke heavily as the two of them held the fighting man between them. “Morse told me sir. He found the photos. He’s not dead, sir – it was all his trap.”
Thursday stared at him, then dropped his eyes to Morse. Morse, who made no move to agree.
“Morse?” DeBryn swivelled, reaching out to take Morse’s pulse. His face hardened quickly, eyes narrowing. “Call an ambulance.” He reached out and pulled Morse over onto his back. Morse rolled bonelessly, eyes closed and lips blue. “And fetch my other bag from the boot of my car.” He pulled his keys out and tossed them at Jakes, who took them and ran off.
“He’s bradycardic – hypothermia, most likely.” He pulled Morse’s tie off and opened his collar to reveal blue-black bruises on his throat – strangulation marks. Looking very grim now, he pulled open Morse’s dirty shirt and with a pair of cloth scissors cut open the bottom of his vest, tore it the rest of the way to reveal Morse’s chest. The two men stared at the massive bruising, most of it black with bloody red edges. “He must have gone down the rollers,” said DeBryn quietly to himself, glancing at the short run of wooden logs covered in frothing water a few dozen yards upriver. With the recent heavy rains the cement to either side was hidden by rough grey water rushing violently down.
Thursday dropped down beside him, reaching out to feel Morse’s arm – cold and clammy.
“He’s bleeding internally,” said DeBryn, grimly. “A slow bleed, probably, but God knows how long he’s been here.” He looked at the mud dried into Morse’s hair and the solid indentation he’d made in the riverbed. “Could be hours. We need to get him out of the water. You two.” He singled two men out with a glance, they stepped forward hurriedly. “Don’t jostle him.”
The carried Morse a couple of yards from the riverside, laid him down on a hastily-spread blanket produced from a car. Jakes had reappeared, DeBryn’s black bag in hand; he put it down beside the doctor.
“Are you up-to-date on your first aid?” asked DeBryn of Thursday, fingers keeping track of Morse’s pulse at his throat while he opened his bag with his free hand.
Thursday nodded. “More or less.”
“Good. Mind his pulse; if it starts dropping, tell me.” He leaned back to allow Thursday access, pulling on a pair of gloves and lifting a tray out from the bag to begin shifting out equipment from the bottom – clear rubber tubing, a needle, a small plastic container – and slotting it together quickly.
Morse’s pulse was slow and weak, his heart struggling to find enough blood to keep beating. His throat was cold, his lips blue; the mud smeared across half his face provided a stark contrast to his white skin. He wasn’t shivering despite his obvious chill, and it was all Thursday could do to keep himself from beginning to chafe him, from taking his own suit jacket and laying it over the young man. But there were more immediate concerns. He watched with a hawk-eyed stare as DeBryn hurriedly fitted an IV needle into the back of Morse’s hand and gave the plastic bottle at the other end to Jakes to hold, taping the needle down with strips of adhesive tape.
It was a scene Thursday had seen play out more than a dozen times – a young man slipping silently away. The last time had been in hospital in London at the bedside of his former bagman. He gritted his teeth against the memories and the growing pain in his heart, slicing inwards like barbed wire over muscle. Beneath his fingers, Morse’s pulse was crashing.
“DeBryn,” he barked, sliding his fingers up and down Morse’s neck in case he had simply lost the pulse.
Nothing.
Morse, nothing but a crumpled form lying limp on a cheap scratchy blanket, was on the edge of slipping away. On the edge of turning this into a crime scene, while half the station stood around watching. While Thursday, whose job it was to look out for his bagman, knelt at his side and watched it happen.
DeBryn pushed his hand aside, then pulled away. “Start resuscitation,” he ordered, sifting through his bag again.
Thursday looked sharply to the PCs staring in horror from Morse’s other side. One hurried forward to begin chest compressions. At Thursday’s side, DeBryn stuck a needle into the cap of a tiny glass bottle, drawing the clear contents down into the syringe. His face was grim but calm, composure never wavering.
Taking strength from the pathologist, Thursday waited for the first rounds of compressions to finish, then checked Morse’s pulse. Nothing. He tilted the lad’s heed back and sealed his mouth over Morse’s, pinching the nose shut; Morse radiated cold. Thursday exhaled deeply once, twice, thrice, filling Morse’s lungs with air. No cough, no gasp, no twitch. The constable went back to pumping Morse’s toast-rack chest.
Then DeBryn was pushing them aside, using his fingers to measure the distance from Morse’s ribs and sternum. As the men watched aghast, he shoved the needle deep into Morse’s chest and depressed the plunger.
Morse jerked upwards as though struck by lightning, head falling back as he gasped desperately for air.
“Holy Christ,” hissed one of the observers, ignored by his colleagues. DeBryn was rolling Morse onto his side, fingers pressed tightly over his neck.
“Sir, the ambulance is here,” called someone from nearer the road.
“Tell them to bring a board and an IV of saline,” said DeBryn without looking up.
Lying on his side, Morse was breathing shallowly, eyes closed and form limp. As soon as the ambulance attendants arrived DeBryn took the IV bag from them, swapping it out for the small bottle he’d hooked up, and started forcefully squeezing the bag. “Severe blood loss, recent cardiac arrest, probable hypothermia,” he reported to the men as they lifted Morse onto a hard board, the ground too uneven for a stretcher. “I’ll come with him.”
He turned to Thursday as they walked along beside the constable. “Will I see you there?”
Thursday, eyes on Morse, nodded.
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By the time Thursday got to the Radcliffe, they were prepping Morse for surgery.
“We won’t have any news for a few hours,” DeBryn informed him in the waiting room. It was a depressing place, walls painted a faded pink, floor chipped linoleum, burgundy knit-covered chairs battered and stained. The doctor’s hands were still dark with mud – as were Thursday’s.
“Unless…” began Thursday, failing to force anything further past his throat. DeBryn looked at him, softening.
“He’ll be alright, Inspector. They were transfusing blood on arrival, and his heart rate was steadying out. It’s more a matter of how badly the hypothermia sets in, barring grievous internal injury.”
Thursday ran a hand through his hair; strands were beginning to free themselves and tumble down into his face, giving him a desperate, bedraggled look. “I’ll go back to the nick, then. A few things on fire there, including Strange if I have anything to do about it,” he growled, ominously.
“I’m not sure this is the time, but I must take responsibility for my part in all this. Strange told me of the scheme just before you arrived. I should have continued assessing Morse’s condition before agreeing.”
Thursday’s eyes bored into him, icy and unrelenting. “Yes. You should have.” He donned his hat, staring at DeBryn with hollow, gun-shy eyes, then walked out.
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The firestorm which dozens of officers had already placed bets on – Thursday’s descent on Cowley Station – did not in fact occur. This was partially because Strange’s sergeant had proactively bawled him out, anticipating the DI’s reaction and fearing to do nothing in the face of it, and partially because the suspect was softening up.
So instead Thursday took his rage into the interview room, accompanied only by Jakes. The photographer – George Cyril Peakes – was railing against his captors. When the DS and DC who had been questioning him gave the room over to Thursday he fell silent, the heat of Thursday’s silent anger filling the room.
“Tell me why,” said Thursday quietly as he took a seat, his voice stone-hard. He rested his hands on the table, knuckles facing Peakes.
“You’ve got it wrong, whatever you think I’ve done –”
“There are photographs.”
Peakes sneered. “Your boy says he saw ‘em? You willing to believe a sodden mess like him?”
“I’ll believe the negatives from your camera and the bruises on your hands,” growled Thursday. “Put up more of a fight than you were expecting, did he? Well, it’s harder drowning a grown man than a boy, or a woman.”
“I don’t –”
Thursday slammed up out of his chair, rounded the table in an instant and stared right into Peakes’ eyes. “Two people are dead; my bagman is on an operating table. Don’t lie to me,” he growled. The words held the unmistakable threat of violence.
“I told you –”
Thursday brought his fist down on the table hard enough to make the door shake in its frame; his hand rested less than an inch from Peakes’, spread flat on the table where it was chained beneath the restraining bar.
“You want me to feel sorry for them? Cry crocodile tears? I won’t – I don’t give a damn. None of you bastards did when it was my kid sister lying there, beaten to death by her no-good man – one of your own. You just stood around like a herd of goddamn cattle and let the murdering son of a bitch walk away from it. So tell me why I should give a damn. I’d rather watch you all squirm – it’s the only repayment either she or I’ll get.”
“Cold comfort for Beatty and Matherson’s mum,” remarked Jakes, a few minutes later in the hall as he stood lighting a cigarette. But Thursday was already leaving.
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“I’m sorry, sir,” said Strange miserably, called to Thursday’s office to face the music. Despite the bright rays of sun shining in through the window, the atmosphere in the office was frigid.
“Sorry for what, Constable?” asked Thursday, sitting with the glacial stability of an alpine mountain behind his desk and giving the hapless man no help.
“For going along with it, sir. I swear, I didn’t know he was hurt. I’d never have –”
“Morse’s idea, was it?” Thursday’s face was impassible, unreadable. Strange’s jaw clicked shut and he stood in front of the desk in wretched silence, unwilling to push either himself or Morse off the precipice.
Thursday exhaled, a long audible breath. “Alright, Strange. I’m sure your sergeant’s already spoken to you.”
“Yes, sir,” affirmed Strange, honest face wincing slightly.
“Fine. You can go. But if I ever hear of something so patently brainless happening again…”
“It won’t, sir,” promised Strange fervently, then slipped out.
Thursday ran a hand over his face, then stood and fetched down his hat from the stand.
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The hospital ward was quiet, nurses padding about with hushed footsteps, relatives sitting silently at bedsides. Surgical recovery was rarely lively.
Thursday picked Morse’s bed out from the doorway not by its occupant but by the pathologist sitting beside it.
DeBryn rose as Thursday approached, smoothing his jacket. “Inspector,” he greeted, voice muted. Thursday nodded briefly, eyes fixed on the bed.
Morse looked fragile, skin gossamer-pale and only beginning to show hints of pink in his cheeks. His hair was a tangled mess on the pillow, clean but uncombed, and an oxygen mask rested over his nose and mouth. An IV stand held bags of blood and saline, the line running down under the pile of blankets heaped on top of him.
“How is he?” he asked, gruffly.
“Starting to bounce back. Surgery went well – they found the bleed quickly and got out. His heartrate, temperature and oxygen saturation are all up. They’re monitoring for the potential of pneumonia, but so far his lungs are clear. The drugs will keep him out for a while.” He glanced at the chair. “Are you staying? I’ve a formal report to finish on Mrs Beatty.”
Thursday inclined his head, eyes softening. The good news was melting his glacial anger, and he looked at DeBryn with almost none of his former approbation.
The pathologist began to leave, then paused, licking his lips. “For what it’s worth, between the blood loss and the hypothermia, he almost certainly wasn’t capable of evaluating his decision properly.”
Thursday let DeBryn slip past him, then slowly took his place at his unconscious bagman’s side, hands hanging uselessly between his knees. Through the mask he could see now that Morse was frowning, brow gently furrowed as though problem-solving in his sleep.
Thursday wouldn’t put it past him. Would put very little past the DC, who had crawled out of the Thames after surviving a beating and a trip down some of the river’s brutal rollers only to lie half-dead in the mud for hours waiting to catch a killer. Not himself, as DeBryn had suggested? Or too much so?
It had been less than two years since Morse had been stabbed chasing a serial killer alone and without back-up under the Bodleian, less than a year since he’d come to Blenheim Vale – intentionally walking alone and unarmed into a trap.
“How is it that you’re more trouble than my last three bagmen combined?” he asked the sleeping figure quietly. But that was untrue – Mickey Carter had been easily as much to begin with, and in the end… Thursday closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Perhaps the mark of a good detective was grasping on and never letting go. Still, sometimes it felt like the one being strangled was him. Or, perhaps, Morse himself.
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They moved Morse to a recovery ward a few hours later, his vitals strong and his temperature returned to normal levels. Thursday stepped out to make calls every once and a while, but he was at Morse’s bedside when the DC woke, staring in confusion at the plaster roof.
“You’re alright, lad. You’re in hospital.”
Morse turned his head to blink up at him, brow furrowed. “Sir?” He spoke almost voicelessly, just the movement of his mouth signalling the word. His eyes roamed around the hospital ward before coming back to settle on Thursday. “What happened?”
“The killer got the jump on you. One way or another, you took quite a beating.”
Morse tried to free his arms from the blankets but after a moment of fruitless struggle gave up with a confused flop of his limbs. “’d we catch him?” he asked, head rolling on his pillow.
“Yes. We did.” There were questions, many of them, to ask. But not now. Not while his bagman was still in the shadow of the grave.
Morse’s eyes slid closed. “Good.”
Which left Thursday alone at his bedside staring down at him, a day’s worth of frustration and fear fading into a kind of tired acceptance. Morse might be made into something less volatile, less self-sacrificing, but in that case he wouldn’t be Morse. And he wouldn’t be the bagman Thursday had come to rely on.
Thursday reached out and brushed a tangle of hair from his forehead; Morse sighed and snuggled back into the pillow like an exhausted child. The frown faded from his face and he lay peacefully, slipping back into sleep.
Thursday sat by his bedside until his breathing evened out, then stood to make his way out of the hospital. It was still hours before the end of the day.