10.30 pm.

It was half an hour since Dr Alan Hardinge had decided it was time to walk along to St Giles' and take a taxi out to his home on Cumnor Hill. But still he sat sipping Scotch in the White Horse, the narrow pub separating the two wings of Blackwell's bookshop in the Broad. The second of his two lectures had not been an unqualified success, and he was aware that his subject-matter had been somewhat under-rehearsed, his delivery little more than perfunctory. And only one glass of wine to accompany a mediocre menu!

Still, £100 was £100…

He was finding that however hard he tried, it was becoming progressively more difficult for him to get drunk. He hadn't read any decent literature for months, yet Kipling had been a hero in his youth and vaguely he recalled some words in one of the short ones: something about knowing the truth of being in hell 'where no liquor no longer takes hold, and the soul of a man is rotten within him'. He knew though that he was becoming increasingly maudlin, and he opened his wallet to look again at the young girl… He remembered the agonies of anxiety they had both experienced, he and his wife, the first time she was really late back home; and then that terrible night when she had not come back at all; and now the almost unbearable emptiness ahead of him when she would never come home again, never again…

He took out too the photograph of Claire Osborne from amongst his membership and credit cards: a small passport photograph, she staring po-faced at the wall of a kiosk somewhere – not a good photograph, but not a bad likeness. He put it away and drained his glass; it was ridiculous going on with the affair really. But how could he help himself? He was in love with the woman, and he was lately re-acquainted with all the symptoms of love; could so easily spot it in others too – or rather the lack of it. He knew perfectly well, for example, that his wife was no longer in love with him, but that she would never let him go; knew too that Claire had never been in love with him, and would end their relationship tomorrow if it suited her.

One other thing was worrying him that night – had been worrying him increasingly since the visit of Chief Inspector Morse. He wouldn't do anything immediately, but he was fairly sure that before long he would be compelled to disclose the truth about what had occurred a year ago…

10.30 p.m.

After watching the weather forecast, Claire Osborne turned off the ITN News at Ten – another half-hour of death, destruction, disease, and disaster. She was almost getting anaesthetized to it, she felt, as she poured herself a gin and dry Martini, and studied one of the typed sheets that Morse had sent her:

MOZART: Requiem (K6a6)

Helmuth Rilling (Master Works)

H. von Karajan (Deutsche Grammophon)

Schmidt-Gaden (Pro Arte)

Victor de Sabata (Everest)

Karl Richter (Telefunken)

In two days' time she would have her fortieth birthday and she was going to buy a tape or a record of the Requiem. All Morse's versions, he'd said, were records: 'But they're not going to be pressing any more records soon, and some of these are museum-pieces anyway.' Yet for some reason she wanted to buy one of the ones he'd got, although she realized it would probably be far more sensible to invest in a CD player. Herbert von Karajan was the only one of the five conductors she'd heard of, and 'Deutsche Grammophon' looked and sounded so impressive… Yes, she'd try to get that one. Again she looked down at the sheet, trying to get the correct spelling of that awkward word 'Deutsche' into her head, with its tricky 't', V, 'c', 'h', 'e' sequence.

Ten minutes later she had finished her drink, and put down the empty glass. She felt very lonely. And thought of Morse. And poured herself another drink, this time putting a little more ice in it.

'God Almighty!' she whispered to herself.

4.30 a.m.

Morse woke in the soundless dark. From his youth he had been no stranger to a few semi-erotic day-dreams, yet seldom at night did he find himself actually dreaming of beautiful women. But just now – oddly! – he dreamed a very vivid dream. It had not been of any of the beautiful women he'd so far met in the case – not of Claire Osborne, nor of the curly-headed dietitian, nor of Laura Hobson – but of Margaret Daley, the woman with those blondish-grey streaks in her hair; hair which had prompted Lewis to ask his cardinal question: 'Why do you think people want to make themselves look older than they are, sir? Seems all the wrong way round to me.' But Margaret Daley had appeared quite young in Morse's dream. And there had been a letter somewhere in that dream: 'I thought of you so much after you were gone. I think of you still and ask you to think of me occasionally – perhaps even come to visit me again. In the hope that I don't upset you, I send you my love…' But there was no letter of course; just the words that someone had spoken in his mind. He got up and made himself a cup of instant coffee, noting on the kitchen calendar that the sun would be rising at 05.19. So he went back to bed and lay on his back, his hands behind his head, and waited patiently for the dawn.

chapter forty-nine

dr laura hobson, one of those who had not been invited across the threshold of Morse's dreams, entered his office the following morning just before nine o'clock, where after being introduced to Sergeant Lewis she took a seat and said her say.

It didn't, she admitted, boil down to very much really, and it was all in the report in any case. But her guess was that the man whose bones were found in Pasticks was about thirty years of age, of medium height, had been dead for at least nine or ten months, might well have been murdered – with a knife-wound to the heart, and that perhaps delivered by a right-handed assailant. The traces of blood found beside and beneath the body were of group O; and although the blood could have been the result of other injuries, or of other agencies, well, she thought it rather doubtful. So that was it. The body had most probably 'exited' (Morse winced) on the spot where the bones were found; not likely to have been carried or dragged there after death. There were other tests that could be carried out, but (in Dr Hobson's view at least) there remained little more to be discovered.

Morse had been watching her carefully as she spoke. At their first meeting he'd found her north-country accent (Newcastle, was it? Durham City?) just slightly off-putting; but he was beginning to wonder if after a little while it wasn't just a little on-putting. He noticed again, too, the high cheek-bones, and the rather breathless manner of her speaking. Was she nervous of him?

Morse was not the only one who looked at the new pathologist with some quiet admiration; and when she handed him the four typed sheets of her report, Lewis asked the question he'd wanted to put for the last ten minutes.

'You from Newcastle?'

'Good to hear it pronounced correctly! Just outside, actually.'

Morse listened none too patiently as the two of them swapped a few local reminiscences before standing up and moving to the door.

'Anyway,' said Lewis, 'good to meet you.' Then, waving the report: 'And thanks for this, luv!'

Suddenly her shoulders tightened, and she sighed audibly. 'Look! I'm not your "luv", Sergeant. You mustn't mind me being so blunt, but I'm no one's "luv" or-'