Last Seen Wearing by Colin Dexter Read Free Book Online

store for him now. He had worked with the unpredictable inspector before and got on fairly well with him; but he had his reservations.
   Morse was seated in his black leather chair and before him on his untidy desk lay a green box-file.
   'Ah. Come in, Lewis. I didn't want to start without you. Wouldn't be fair, would it?' He patted the box-file with a gesture of deep affection. 'It's all there, Lewis, my boy. All the facts. Ainley was a fact man—no daydreaming theorist was Ainley. And we shall follow where the great man trod. What do you say?' And without giving his sergeant the slightest opportunity to say anything, he emptied the contents of the file face downwards upon the desk. 'Shall we start at the top or the bottom?'
   'Might be a good idea to start at the beginning, don't you think, sir?'
   'I think we could make out a good case for starting at either end—but we shall do as you say.' With some difficulty Morse turned the bulky sheaf of papers the right way up.
   'What exactly are we going to do?' asked Lewis blankly.
   Morse proceeded to recount his interview with Strange, and then passed across to Lewis the letter received from Valerie Taylor. 'And we're taking over, Lewis—you happy about that?' Lewis nodded halfheartedly. 'Did you remember the Sunday Mirror?'
   Lewis dutifully took the paper from his coat pocket and handed it to Morse, who took out his wallet, found his football coupon and with high seriousness began to check his entry. Lewis watched him as his eyes alternately lit up and switched off, before the coupon was comprehensively shredded and hurled in the general direction of the waste-paper basket.
   'I shan't be spending next week in the Bahamas, Lewis. What about you?'
   'Nor me, sir.'
   'Do you ever win anything?'
   'Few quid last year, sir. But it's a million to one chance—getting a big win.'
   'Like this bloody business,' mumbled Morse, distastefully surveying the fruits of Ainley's labours.
   For the next two and a half hours they sat over the Taylor documents, occasionally conferring over an obscure or an interesting point—but for the most part in silence. It would have been clear to an independent witness of these proceedings that Morse read approximately five times as quickly as his sergeant; but whether he remembered five times as much of what he read would have been a much more questionable inference. For Morse found it difficult to concentrate his mind upon the documents before him. As he saw it, the facts, the bare unadulterated facts, boiled down to little more than he had read in the pub the previous day. The statements before him, checked and signed, appeared merely to confirm the bald, simple truth; after leaving home to return to school Valerie Taylor had completely vanished. If Morse wanted a fact, well, he'd got one. Parents, neighbours, teachers, classmates—all had been questioned at length. And amidst all their well-meaning verbosity they all had the same thing to say—nothing. Next, reports of Ainley's own interviews with Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, with the headmaster, with Valerie's form tutor, with her games mistress and with two of her boyfriends. (Ainley had clearly liked the headmaster, and equally clearly had disapproved of one of the boyfriends.) All nicely, neatly written in the small, rounded hand that Morse had already seen. But—nothing. Next, reports of general police inquiries and searches, and reports of the missing girl being spotted in Birmingham, Clacton, London, Reading, Southend, and a remote village in Moray. All wild-goose chases. All false alarms. Next, personal and medical reports on Valerie herself. She did not appear academically gifted in any way; or if she was, she had so far successfully concealed her scholastic potential from her teachers. School reports suggested a failure, except in practical subjects, to make the best of her limited abilities (familiar phrases!), but she seemed a personable enough young