"Dexter, Colin - Inspector Morse 01 - Last Bus to Woodstock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dexter Colin)

Morse smiled. 'Then we needn't keep you long, need we, Mr Sanders?'
The young man fidgeted. Morse sat opposite him, looked him hard in the eye and waited.
'Well, I just walked into the courtyard and there she was. I didn't touch her, but I knew she was
dead. I came straight back in to tell the manager.'
Morse nodded. 'Anything else?'
'Don't think so.'
'When were you sick, Mr Sanders?'
'Oh yes. I was sick.'
'Was it after or before you saw the girl?'
'After. It must have upset me seeing her there - sort of shock, I suppose.'
'Why don't you tell me the truth?'
'What do you mean?'
Morse sighed. 'You haven't got your car here have you?'
'I haven't got a car.'
'Do you usually have a stroll round the courtyard before you go home?" Sanders said nothing.
'How much drink did you have tonight?'
'A few whiskies - I wasn't drunk.'
'Mr Sanders, do you want me to find out from someone else?' It was clear from Sanders's manner
that he hardly welcomed an inquiry along such lines. What time did you come here?' continued Morse.
'About half past seven.'
'And you got drunk and went out to be sick.' Reluctantly Sanders agreed. 'Do you usually drink on
your own?'
'Not usually.'
Who were you waiting for?' Sanders did not reply. 'She didn't show up?'
'No' he said flatly.
'But she did come, didn't she?'
'No, I told you. I was on my own all the time.'
'But she did come, didn't she?' repeated Morse quietly. Sanders looked beaten. 'She came,'
continued Morse in the same quiet voice. 'She came and you saw her. You saw her in the courtyard,
and she was dead.'
The young man nodded.
We'd better have a little chat, you and me,' said Morse ungrammatically.

3 Thursday, 30 September

As he stood alone in the bedroom of Sylvia Kaye, Morse felt measurably relieved. The grim duties of
the night were over, and he switched on the natural defence mechanism of his weary mind. He wished
to forget the awakening of Mrs Dorothy Kaye, and the summoning of her husband from his night-shift
in the welding division of the Cowley car plant; the fatuous, coarse recriminations and the
overwhelming hurt of their bitter, empty misery. Sylvia's mother was now under sedation, postponing
the day and the reckoning; whilst Sergeant Lewis sat at headquarters learning what he could from
Sylvia's father. He took many pages of careful notes but doubted if it all amounted to much. He was to
join Morse in half an hour.
The bedroom was small, one of three in a neat semi-detached house in Jackdaw Court, a quiet
crescent with rotting wooden fences, a few minutes' walk off the Woodstock Road. Morse sat down on
the narrow bed and looked around him. He wondered if the neatness of the bed was mum's doing, for
the remainder of the room betrayed the slack and untidy living of the murdered girl. A vast coloured
portrait of a pop artist was pinned rather precariously above the gas fire in the chimney breast, and
Morse reminded himself that he might understand young people rather better if he had a teenage family
of his own; as it was, the identity of the handsome youth was cloaked in anonymity and whatever