It feels strange after all these years to be back on the
blog, writing about crime. In many ways, I am a different person now to the man
I was when some of you may have read and helped solve a couple of local puzzles
. We still had Morse then. Not a day goes past without me thinking about the
old bugger. There’s a phrase both Morse and Hathaway used, something about
standing on giants’ shoulders, that reminds me of how it used to be like.
Hathaway said it was something to do
with Oasis (but with “that” look on his face). I thought Morse got it off the
side of a two pound coin, back in the day when you could get a pint for one in
an Oxford pub. Not that Morse would have known that you could, but I had plenty of
opportunities to look while get one for him.
Anyway, I’m retired now. Quite happily. Still looking after
the little garden in Headington. Get calls now and then from the Force, mostly the
Old Boys – sorry, Superannuated Officers Society (gender-neutral). But
occasionally from the serving chaps. Mostly the local knowledge that never made
it onto computers. If it’s not in a database then there are precious few of us
old hands left who might remember. James pops round for a beer and chat now and
then. I’m sure he already knows the answer to the questions he asks but he
seems to still want to go through the “old channels”.
But being retired gives me time to go through stuff. And
quite a lot of that stuff isn’t mine, it was Morse’s. We all know how good he
was with paperwork and over his career he had quite a lot of it. Most of it
ended up in unsorted box files that I took from his flat before it got sold. They’ve
been gathering dust in my loft since. And I’ve slowly been going through them.
Most of it is copies of reports, things he’s scribbled on beer mats or fag
packets about cases while thinking (drinking). Occasionally there’s personal
stuff, mostly letters from the girls from cases that he thought didn’t give a
damn about him. They all ended up falling for those sad, blue eyes though.
And occasionally there’s full cases in there that he clearly
started looking at then got bored. Nothing too serious, as far as I can see . I
hope there aren’t any murderers wandering around Oxford that Morse and me
should have banged up years ago. And I’m sure Thames Valley Police would take a
very dim view to all that evidence sitting there slowly browning. But it’s
mostly stuff that was sent to him unofficially. Missing money, rings, cars,
cats. Like he was Oxford’s answer to Sherlock Holmes: Mr E. Morse, 221b Banbury
Road.
Anyway, one of the boxes is about a missing husband. Statements from both the missus and his mates. A Missing Person’s log. A newspaper
cutting. A few handwritten notes (not Morse’s) with scribbles in the margins
(Morse’s). Other quite detailed notes in the hands of the great man himself. The thing is, the case is so far up Morse’s street that there’s no
way he won’t have solved it. He just didn’t leave anything to suggest he did.
So I’m going to need your help. We may just find out what happened to a missing
Oxford don and an answer to the Oxford Pub Mystery.
