The Way Through the Woods

Morse apologized for disturbing her, looked around him at the newly decorated, neatly furnished, through-lounge; offered a few nice-little-place-you-have-here' type compliments; and explained why they'd called and would be calling again -one of them, certainly -at seven o'clock that evening.

'It was you, Mrs Daley, wasn't it, who got your husband to hand the rucksack in?'

'Yes - but he'd have done it himself anyway. Later on. I know he would.'

The shelves around the living area were lined with china ornaments of all shapes and sizes; and Morse walked over to the shelf above the electric fire, and carefully picked up the figure of a small dog, examining it briefly before replacing it on its former station.

'King Charles?'

Margaret Daley nodded. 'Cavalier King Charles. We had one -till last February. Mycroft. Lovely little dog -lovely face! We all had a good cry when the vet had to put him down. Not a very healthy breed, I'm afraid.'

'People living next to us have one of those,' ventured Lewis. 'Always at the vet. Got a medical history long as your arm.' 'Thank you, Lewis. I'm sure Mrs Daley isn't over-anxious to be reminded of a family bereavement'

'Oh, it's all right! I quite like talking about him, really. We all -Philip and George -we all loved him. In fact he was about the only thing that'd get Philip out of bed sometimes.'

But Morse's attention appeared to have drifted far from dogs as he gazed through the french windows at the far end of the room, his eyes seemingly focused at some point towards the back of the garden -a garden just over the width of the house and stretching back about fifty feet to a wire fence at the bottom, separating the property from the open fields beyond. As with the patch of garden in the front, likewise here: George Daley, it had to be assumed, reckoned he did quite enough gardening in the course of earning his daily bread at Blenheim, and carried little if anything of his horticultural expertise into the rather neglected stretch of lawn which provided the immediate view from the rear of number 2.

'I don't believe it!' said Morse. 'Isn't that Asphodelina lutea?'

Mrs Daley walked over to the window.

There!' pointed Morse. 'Those yellow things, just across the fence.’

‘Butter cups!' said Lewis.

‘You’ve . er, not got a pair of binoculars handy, Mrs Daley?'

‘No - I - we haven't, I'm afraid.'

'Mind if we have a look?' asked Morse. 'Always contradicting me, my sergeant is!'

The three of them walked out through the kitchen door, past the (open) out-house door, and on to the back lawn where the daisies and dandelions and broad-leaf plantain had been allowed a generous freedom of movement. Morse himself stepped up to the fence, looking down at the ground around him; then, cursorily, at the yellow flowers he had spotted earlier, and which he now agreed to be nothing rarer than buttercups. Mrs Daley smiled vaguely at Lewis; but Lewis was now listening to Morse's apparently aimless chatter with far greater interest.

'No compost heap?'

‘No. George isn't much bothered with the garden here, as you can see. Says he's got enough, you know . . .' She pointed vaguely towards Blenheim, and led the way back in.

'How do you get rid of your rubbish then?'

'Sometimes we go down to the waste disposal with it. Or you can buy those special bags from the council. We used to burn it, but a couple of years ago we upset the neighbours -you know, bits all over the washing and-'

'Probably against the bye-laws, too,' added Lewis; and for once Morse appeared to appreciate the addendum.

It was Lewis too, as they were leaving, who spotted the rifle amid the umbrellas, the walking sticks, and the warped squash racket, in a stand just behind the front door.

'Does your husband do a bit of shooting?'

'Oh that! George occasionally . . . yes ...’

Gently, for a second time, Lewis reminded her of the law's demands: 'Ought to be under lock and key, that. Perhaps you'd remind your husband, Mrs Daley.'

Margaret Daley watched them through the front window as they walked away to their car. Just a bit of a stiff-shirt, the sergeant had been, about their legal responsibilities. Whereas the inspector -well, he'd seemed much nicer with his interest in dogs and flowers and the decoration in the lounge -her decoration. Yet during the last few minutes she'd begun to suspect her judgement a little, and she had the feeling that it would probably be Morse who would be returning that evening. Not that there was anything to worry about, really. Well, just the one thing, perhaps.

I n spite of that day being Saturday - and the first of the holidays -Mrs Julie Ireson, careers mistress at the Cherwell School, Oxford, had been quite willing to meet Lewis just after lunch; and Lewis was anxious to get the meeting over as soon as possible, for he was desperately tired and had been only too glad to accept Morse's strict directive for a long rest -certainly for the remainder of the day, and perhaps for the next day, Sunday, too - unless there occurred any dramatic development.

She was waiting in the deserted car park when Lewis arrived, and immediately took him up to her first-floor study, its walls and shelves festooned with literature on nursing, secretarial courses, apprenticeship schemes, industrial training, FE's, poly's, universities . . . For Lewis (whose only career advice had been his father's dictum that he could do worse than to keep his mouth mostly shut and his bowels always open), a school-based advice centre for pupils leaving school was an interesting novelty.

A buff-coloured folder containing the achievements of Philip Daley was on the table ready for him. Non-achievements rather He was now just seventeen years old, and had officially abandoned any potential advancement into further education w.e.f. 17 July -the previous day. The school was prepared to be not over-pessimistic about some minor success in the five GCSE subject; in which, the previous term, he had tried (though apparently not overhard) to satisfy his examiners: English; Technical Drawing; Geography; General Science; and Communication Studies. Over the years, however, the reports from his teachers, even in non academic subjects, had exhibited a marked lack of enthusiasm about his attitude and progress. Yet until fairly recently -appeared not to have posed any great problem to the school community: limited, clearly, in intellectual prowess; limited too in most technical and vocational skills; in general about average.

Current educational philosophy (Lewis learned) encouraged a measure of self-evaluation, and amongst other documents in folder was a sheet on which eighteen months previously, in own handwriting, Philip had filled in a questionnaire about his six main 'Leisure Interests/Pastimes', in order of preference. The list read thus:

1 Football

2 Pop music

3 Photography

4 Pets

5 Motorbikes

6 TV

'He can spell OK,' commented Lewis.

'Difficult to misspell "pets", Sergeant.'

'Yes. But - well, "photography" . . .'

'Probably had to look it up in the dictionary.'

'You didn't like him?' said Lewis slowly.

'No, I'm afraid I didn't. I'm glad he's gone, if you must know.' She was younger than Lewis had expected: perhaps more vulnerable too?

‘Any particular reason?'

‘Just general, really.'

‘Well, thanks very much, Mrs Ireson. If I could take the folder?'

‘Any particular reason you want to know about him?'

‘No. Just general, really,' echoed Lewis.

He slept from 6.30 that evening through until almost ten the following morning. When he finally awoke, he learned there had been a telephone message the previous evening from Morse: on no account was he to come in to HQ that Sunday; it would be a good idea though, to make sure his passport was in order.

Well, well!

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Every roof is agreeable to the eye, until it is lifted; then we find tragedy

and moaning women, and hard-eyed husbands

(Ralph Waldo Emerson, Experience)

IT WAS two minutes to seven by the Jaguar's fascia clock when Morse pulled up in the slip-road outside number 2 Blenheim Villas. He was fairly confident of his ground now, especially after reading through the folder that Lewis had left. Certain, of course, about the electric fire in the Daleys' main lounge; almost certain about the conversion of the old coal-house into a utility room, in which, as they'd walked out to the garden, he'd glimpsed the arrangement of washing-machine and tumble-drier on newly laid red tiles; not quite so certain about the treeless back garden though, for Morse was ridiculously proud about never having been a boy scout, and his knowledge of camp-fires and cocoa-barbecues, he had to admit, was almost nil.

For once he felt relieved to be on his own as he knocked at the front door. The police as a whole were going through a tough time in public esteem: allegations of corrupt officers, planted evidence, improper procedures -such allegations had inevitably created suspicion and some hostility. And -yes, Morse knew it -he himself was on occasion tempted to overstep the procedural boundaries a little -as shortly he would be doing again. It was a bit like a darts player standing a few inches in front of the oche as he threw for the treble-twenty. And Lewis would not have brooked this; and would have told him so.

In the lounge, in a less than convivial atmosphere, the Daleys sat side by side on the settee; and Morse, from the armchair opposite, got down to business. .

'You've managed to go through the statement again, Mr Daley?’

'You don't mind the wife being here?'

‘Id prefer it, really,' said Morse innocently.

'Like I said, there's nothin' as I can add.'

‘Fine.' Morse reached across and took the now rather grimy photocopy and looked through it slowly himself before lifting his eyes to George Daley.

'Let me be honest with you, sir. It's this camera business that's worrying me.'

'Wha' abou' i'?' (If the dietitian sometimes had paid overnice attention to her dental consonants, Daley himself almost invariably ignored them.)

Morse moved obliquely into the attack: 'You interested in photography yourself?'

'Me? Not much, no.'

'You, Mrs Daley?'

She shook her head.

'Your son Philip is though?'

'Yeah, well, he's got fairly interested in it recently, hasn't he, luv?’ Daley turned to his wife, who nodded vaguely, her eyes on Morse continuously.

'Bit more than "recently", perhaps?' Morse suggested. 'He put it down on his list of hobbies at school last year - early last year - a few months before you found the camera.'

'Yeah, well, like I said, we was going to get him one anyway, for his birthday. Wasn't we,

luv?'

Again, apart from a scarce-discernible nod, Margaret Daley appeared reluctant verbally to confirm such an innocent statement.

'But you've never had a camera yourself, you say.'

‘Correck!'

'How did you know the film in the camera was finished then?'

'Well, you know, it's the numbers, innit? It tells you, like, when -.: u^!ve got to the finish.'

"When it reads "ten", you mean?'

"Somethin' like that.'

‘What if there are twelve exposures on the reel?'

‘Dunno.' Daley appeared not to be at all flustered by the slightly more aggressive tone of the question. 'It was probably Philip as said so.' Again he turned to his wife. 'Was his ten or twelve, luv? Do you remember?'

Morse pounced on the answer: 'So he had a camera before?'

'Yeah, well, just an el cheapo thing we bought him-'

'From Spain.' (Mrs Daley had broken her duck.)

'Would you know how to get the film out of a camera, Mr Daley?'

'Well, not unless, you know-'

'But it says here' - Morse looked down at the statement again -'it says here that you burnt the film.'

'Yeah, well, that's right, isn't it, luv? We shoulda kept it, I know. Still, as I said - well, we all do things a bit wrong sometimes, don't we? And we said we was sorry about everything, didn't we, luv?'

Morse was beginning to realize that the last three words, with their appropriate variants, were a rhetorical refrain only, and were not intended to elicit any specific response.

'Where did you burn it?' asked Morse quietly.

'Dunno. Don't remember. Just chucked it on the fire, I suppose.' Daley gestured vaguely with his right hand.

'That's electric,' said Morse, pointing to the fireplace.

'And we got a grate for a coal-fire next door. All right?' Daley's voice was at last beginning to show signs of some exasperation.

'Did you have a fire that day?'

'How the 'ell am I supposed to remember that?'

'Do you remember, Mrs Daley?'

She shook her head. 'More than a year ago, isn't it? Could you remember that far back?'

'I've not had a coal-fire in my flat for fifteen years, Mrs Daley. So I could remember, yes.'

'Well, I'm sorry,' she said quietly, I can't.'

'Did you know that the temperature in Oxfordshire that day was seventy-four degrees Fahrenheit?' (Morse thought he'd got it vaguely correct.)

'Wha'! At ten o'clock at night?' Clearly Daley was losing his composure, and Morse took full advantage.

'Where do you keep your coal? Your coal-house has been converted to a utility-room - your wife showed-'

'If it wasn't here - all right, it wasn't here. Musta been in the garden, mustn't it?'

'What do you burn in the garden?'

'What do I burn? What do I burn? I burn bloody twigs and leaves and-'

'You haven't got any trees. And even if you had, July's a bit early for leaves.'

'Oh, for Christ's sake! Look-'

'No!' Suddenly Morse's voice was harsh and authoritative. 'You look, Mr Daley. If you do burn your rubbish out there in the garden, come and show me where!' All pretence was now dropped as Morse continued: 'And if you make up any more lies about that, I'll bring a forensic team in and have 'em cart half your lawn away!'

They sat silently, the Daleys, neither looking at the other.

'Was it you who got the film developed, Mr Daley? Or was it your son?' Morse's voice was quiet once more.

'It was Philip,' said Margaret Daley, finally, now assuming control. 'He was friendly with this boy at school whose father was a photographer and had a dark-room an' all that, and they developed ‘em there, I think.' Her voice sounded to Morse as if it had suddenly lost its veneer of comparative refinement, and he began to wonder which of the couple was potentially the bigger liar.

'You must tell me what those photographs were.' Morse made an effort to conceal the urgency of his request, but his voice betrayed the fear that all might well be lost.

'He never kept 'em as far as I know-' began Daley.

But his wife interrupted him: 'There were only six or seven out of the twelve that came out. There was some photos of birds - one was a pinkish sort of bird with a black tail-'

'Jay!' said Daley.

'-and there was two of a man, youngish man -probably her boyfriend. But the others, as I say . . . you know, they just didn't. . . come out.'

'I must have them,' said Morse simply, inexorably almost.

'He's chucked 'em out, surely,' observed Daley. 'What the 'ell would he keep 'em for?'

'I must have them,' repeated Morse.

'Christ! Don't you understand? I never even saw 'em!'

'Where is your son?'

Husband and wife looked at each other, and husband spoke: "Gone into Oxford, I should think Sa'day night. . .'

'Take me to his room, will you?'

'We bloody won't!' growled Daley. 'If you wanna look round 'ere, Inspector, you just bring a search-warrant, OK?'

'I don't need one. You've got a rifle behind the front door, Mr Daley, and it's odds-on you've got a box of cartridges somewhere lying around. All I need to do to take your floorboards up if necessary is to quote to you -just quote, mind -Statutory Instrument 1991 No. 1531. Do you understand? The pair of you? That's my only legal obligation.'

But Morse had no further need for inaccurate improvisations regarding the recently enacted legislation on explosives. Margaret Daley rose to her feet and made to leave the lounge.

'You won't search Philip's room with my permission, Inspector. But if he has kept them photos I reckon I just might know . . .'

Morse heard her on the stairs, his heart knocking against his ribs: Please! Please! Please!

No word passed between the two men seated opposite each other as they heard the creak of floorboards in the upstairs rooms. Nor was much said when Margaret Daley returned some minutes later holding seven coloured prints which she handed to Morse -wordlessly.

‘Thank you. No others?'

She shook her head.

After Morse was gone, Margaret Daley went into the kitchen where she turned on the kettle and spooned some instant Nescafe into a mug.

'I suppose you're out boozing,' she said tonelessly, as her husband came in.

'Why the 'ell didn't you tell me about them photos?'

'Shut up!' She spat out the two words viciously and turned towards him.

'Where the 'ell did you find 'em, you-'

'Shut up! And listen, will you? If you must know, I've been looking in his room, George Daley, because if we don't soon get to know what's goin' on and do something about it he'll be in bloody jail or something, that's why! See? There were twelve photos, five of the girl-'

'You stupid bitch!'

'Listen!' she shrieked. 'I never gave him them\ I've hidden 'em; and now I'm gonna get rid of 'em; and I'm not gonna show 'em to you! You don't give a sod about anything these days, anyway!'

Daley walked tight-lipped to the door. 'Stop moaning, you miserable cunt!'

His wife had taken a large pair of kitchen scissors from a drawer. 'Don't you ever talk to me like that again, George Daley!' Her voice was trembling with fury.

A few minutes after hearing the front door slam behind him, she went upstairs to their bedroom and took the five photographs out of her underwear drawer. All of them were of Karin Eriksson, nakedly or semi-nakedly lying in lewdly provocative postures. She could only guess how often her son had ogled these and similar photographs which he kept in a box at the back of his wardrobe, and which she had discovered when spring-cleaning his room the previous April. She took the five photographs to the loo, where standing over the pan she sliced strip after strip from the face, the shoulders, the breasts, the thighs, and the legs of the beautiful Karin Eriksson, intermittently flushing the celluloid slivers down into the Begbroke sewers.

CHAPTER THIRTY

A man's bed is his resting-place, but a woman's is often her rack (James Thurber, Further Fables for Our Time)

THE AMBULANCE, its blue light flashing, its siren wailing, finally pulled into the Casualty Bay of the John Radclifie 2 Hospital at 9.15 p.m. The grey face of the man hurriedly carried through the automatic doors on a stretcher -the forehead clammy with sweat, the breathing shallow and laboured -had told its immediate story to the red-belted senior nurse, who straightaway rang through to the medical houseman on duty, before joining one of her colleagues in taking off the man's clothes and fastening a hospital gown around his overweight frame. A series of hurried readings -of electrocardiograph, blood pressure, chest X-ray -soon confirmed the fairly obvious: a massive coronary thrombosis, so very nearly an immediately fatal one.

Two porters pushed the trolley swiftly along the corridors to the Coronary Care Unit, where they lifted the heavy man on to a bed; around which curtains were quickly drawn, and five leads connected to the man's chest and linked to monitors, which now gave continuous details of heart rhythm, blood pressure, and pulse rate, on the screen beside the bed. A very pretty, slightly plump young nurse looked on as the houseman administered a morphine injection.

'Much hope?' she queried quietly a minute or two later, as the two of them stood at the central desk, where the VDU monitors from each of the small ward's six beds were banked.

'You never know, but. . .'

'Quite a well-known man, isn't he?'

'Taught me as a student. Well, I went to his lectures. Blood -that was his speciality, really; and he was a world authority on VD! Police get him in all the time, too -PMs, that sort of thing.'

The nurse looked at the monitor: the readings seemed significantly steadier now, and she found herself earnestly willing the old boy to survive.

'Give him some Frusemide, Nurse - as much as you like. I'm worried about all that fluid on his lungs.'

The houseman watched the monitor for another few minutes, then went over to the bed again, where the nurse had just placed a jug of water and a glass on the bedside locker.

After the houseman had left, Nurse Shelick remained beside the sick man's bed and looked down at him with that passionate intensity she invariably felt for her patients. Although still in her twenties, she was really one of that old-fashioned school who believed that whatever the advantages of hyper-technology, the virtues of simple human nursing were almost as indispensable. She laid the palm of her right hand across the wet, cold brow, and for the next few minutes wiped his face gently with a warm, damp flannel -suddenly aware that his eyes had opened and were looking up at her.

'Nurse?'

'I can hear you - yes?'

'Will you . . . will you ... get in touch . . . with someone for me?'

'Of course! Of course!' She bent her right ear towards the purple lips, but without quite making out what he was saying.

'Pardon?'

'Morse!'

'I'm sorry. Please say it again. I'm not quite sure-'

'Morse!'

'I still . . . I'm sorry . . . please.'

But the eyes of the man who lay upon the bed had closed again, and there was no answer to her gently repeated queries.

The time was 11.15 p.m.

The head forester's beautiful young wife was also in bed at this rime. She too lay supine; and still lay supine, wakeful and waiting, until finally at 11.35 pm she heard the front door being opened, then locked, then bolted.

In spite of four pints of Burton ale and two whiskies at the White Hart, David Michaels knew that he was very sober; far too sober -for there was something sadly amiss when a man couldn't get drunk, he knew that. After cleaning his teeth, he went into the bedroom, shed his clothes swiftly, and slid under the lightweight duvet. She always slept naked, and after their marriage he had followed her example -often finding himself erotically aroused not so much by the fact or the sight of her nakedness as by the very thought of it. And now as he moved in beside her in the darkened room, he knew that she was suddenly and wonderfully necessary once 'more. He turned his body towards her and his right hand reached gently across her and fondled her breast. But with her own right hand she grasped his wrist, and with surprising strength moved it from her.

'No. Not tonight.'

'Is there something wrong?'

‘

I just don't want you tonight - can't you understand?'

‘

I think I understand all right.' Michaels' voice was dull and he turned to lie on his back.

'Why did you have to tell them?' she asked fiercely.

'Because I know the bloody place better than anyone else, that's why!'

'But don't you realize-?'

'I had to tell them something. God! Don't you see that? I didn't know, did I?'

She sat up in bed and leaned towards him, her right hand on the pillow beside his head. 'But they'll think you did it, David.'

'Don't be so stupid! I wouldn't be giving them information if it was me. Can't you see that? I'm the very last person they're going to suspect. But if I hadn't agreed to help

She said nothing more; and he wondered for a while whether it would be sensible to go down and make a couple of cups of piping-hot coffee for them, and then perhaps turn on the bedside lamp and look upon his lovely bride. But there was no need. Seemingly Cathy Michaels had accepted the logic of his words, and her mind was more at ease; for she now lay down again and turned towards him, and soon he felt the silky caress of her inner thigh against him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The background reveals the true being of the man or thing. If I do not possess the background, I make the man transparent, the thing transparent (Juan Jimenez, Selected Writings)

IT WAS rather like trying to see the answer to a tricky crossword clue, Morse decided, as at 11 o'clock that same night he sat in his North Oxford lounge, topping up his earlier libations with a few fingers of Glenfiddich, and looking yet again at the photographs that Margaret Daley had given him. The closer he got to the clue -the closer he got to the photograph -the less in fact he saw. It was necessary to stand away, to see things in perspective, to look synoptically at the problem.

As he had just considered the photographs, it was the man himself, pictured in two of them, who had monopolized his interest: a small-to medium-sized man, in his late twenties perhaps, with longish fair hair; a man wearing a white T-shirt and faded-blue denims, with a sunburnt complexion and the suggestion of a day's growth of stubble around his jowls. But the detail was not of sufficient definition or fidelity for him to be wholly sure, as if the cameraman himself -or almost certainly the camerawoman -had scarcely the experience needed to cope with the problems of the bright sunlight that so obviously pervaded the garden in which the snaps had been taken. But although Morse knew little (well, anything) about photography, he was beginning to suspect that he might be slightly more competence in the arrangement of -ic subject' in relation to the 'background' than he'd originally I supposed.

The man had been photographed at an oblique angle across the I garden, with a house clearly shown to the left of the figure: a three-storey, rosy-bricked house, with a french window on the ground floor, slightly ajar, with another window immediately above it, and Be above that, all painted white, and with a black drain-pipe reaching down to ground level; and to the figure's right a smallish tree of some sort with large curly leaves, unidentifiable to Morse who knew little (well, nothing) of such things. But there was even more to learn. Clearly the photographer had been kneeling down, or sitting down, to take the shots, for the man's head showed some way above the line of the garden wall, which rose clearly behind the shrubs and foliage. Even more to learn though! -Morse decided, as he studied the background yet again. The roof-line of the house stretched away in a slightly convex curve (as it appeared) above the man's head, and then was cut off in the middle of the top of the photograph; but not before suggesting that the house could be one of a terrace, perhaps?

It was amazing, Morse told himself, how much he'd managed to miss when first he'd considered the photographs; and with the strange conviction that there would certainly be a final solution to the mystery if only he looked at it long enough, he stared and stared until he thought he could see two houses instead of one, although whether this was an advance in insight or in inebriation, he couldn't be sure. So what, though? So what if it were part of a terrace? The number of three-storeyed, red-bricked terraces in the UK was myriad; and just in Oxford alone it must be ... Morse shook his head and shook his thoughts. No. It was going to be almost impossible to locate the house and the garden; so the only thing left was the young man's face, really.

Or was it. . . ?

Suddenly an exciting thought occurred to him. A straight line could be seen as a curve, so he'd been supposing, either because the camera had looked at it in a particular way, or because in a larger view the line began to bend in a sort of rounded perspective. But such explanations were surely far less probable than the utterly obvious fact that was staring him, literally staring him, in the face; the fact that the roof-line of the terraced houses which formed the backdrop here might look as if it was curving in a convex fashion for one supremely simple and wholly adequate reason: it was curving!

Could it be . . . ? Could it be . . . ? Did Morse, even now, think he knew where it was? He felt the old familiar tingle across his shoulders, and the hairs at the nape of his neck were suddenly erect. He rose from his armchair and went over to his bookshelves, whence he extracted the thick Penguin Oxfordshire, in the 'Buildings of England' series; and his right hand shook slightly as he traced Park Town' in the index - page 320. On which page he read:

Laid out in 1853-5. This was North Oxford's first development, built on land originally intended for a workhouse. The trust created for its developments promised elegant villas and [Morse's eyes snatched at the next word] terraces. What it became is this: two crescents [the blood tingled again] N and S of an elliptical central garden, with stone frontages in late-classical style, and bricked at the rear [!] with attractive french windows [!] leading on to small walled [!] gardens.

Phew!

Ye gods!

Bloody hell!

If he were so disposed (Morse knew) he could go and identify the house at that very moment! It must be in Crescent S -the sunshine would rule out Crescent N; and with that tree with its big, furry, splayed (beautiful!) leaves; and the drain-pipe, and the windows, and the wall, and the grass . . .

As he sat down again in the black leather settee, Morse's face was betraying a high degree of self-gratification -when the phone rang. It was now a quarter to midnight, and the voice was a woman's husky, slightly timid, north-country.

She identified herself as Dr Laura Hobson, one of the new girls in the path labs; one of Max's protegees. She had been working late with Max - on Morse's bones -when just before 9 p.m. she'd found him lying there on the floor of the lab. Heart attack -severe heart attack. He'd been unconscious most of the time since they'd got him to hospital. . . but the sister had rung her (Dr Hobson) and the possibility was that he (Max) had been trying to ask for him (Morse) -if he (Morse) knew what she (Dr Hobson) was trying to say . . .

Oh dear!

‘Which ward's he in?'

'Coronary Care Unit-'

'Yes! But where?’

'The JRa. But it's no good trying to see him now. Sister says - '

'You want to bloody bet?' snapped Morse.

'Please! There's something else, Inspector. He'd been working on the bones all day and-'

'Bugger the bones!'

'But-'

'Look. I'm most grateful to you, Dr, er . . .'

'Hobson.'

'. . . but please forgive me if I hang up. You see,' suddenly Morse's voice was more controlled, more gentle, 'Max and I -well, we ... let's say we don't either of us have too many friends and ... I want to see the old sod again if he's going to die.'

But Morse had already put down the phone, and Dr Hobson heard nothing of the last five words. She too felt very sad. She had known Max for only six weeks. Yet there was something basically kindly about the

man; and only a week before she'd had a mildly erotic dream about that ugly, brusque, and arrogant pathologist.

At least for the present, however, the pathologist appeared to have rallied quite remarkably, for he was talking to Nurse Shelick rationally, albeit slowly and quietly, when he learned of his visitor; and threatened to strike the houseman off the medical register unless Morse (for such it was) were admitted forthwith.

But one patient newly admitted to the JR2 had not rallied that night. Marion Bridewell, an eight-yearold little West Indian girl, had been knocked down by a stolen car on the Broadmoor Lea estate at seven o'clock that evening. She had been terribly badly injured. She died just after midnight.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

And Apollo gave Sarpedon dead to be borne by swift companions, to Death and Sleep,

twin brethren, who bore him through the air to Lycia, that broad and pleasant land

(Homer, Iliad, xvi)

‘How ARE you, old friend?' asked Morse with spurious cheerfulness.

‘Dying.'

'You once told me that we're all moving towards death - at the standard rate of twenty-four hours per diem.'

‘I was always accurate, Morse. Not very imaginative, agreed; at always accurate.'

‘You've still not told me how-'

'Somebody said . . . somebody said, "Nothing matters very much . . . and in the end nothing really matters at all’

‘Lord Balfour.'

'You always were a knowledgeable sod.' 'Dr Hobson rang-'

'Ah! The fair Laura. Don't know how men ever keep their hands off her.'

'Perhaps they don't.'

‘I was just thinnking of her just now . . . Still have any erotic day-dreams yourself,

Morse?' "Most of the time.'

‘Be nice - be nice if she was thinking of me ...’

‘You never know.'

Max smiled his awkward, melancholy smile, but his face looked and ashen-grey. 'You're right. Life's full of uncertainties, have I ever told you that before?'

'Many a time.'

‘I’ve always . . . I've always been interested in death, you know, of hobby of mine, really. Even when I was a lad . . .'

'I know. Look, Max, they said they'd only let me in to see you if-'

'No knickers - you know that?'

'Pardon? Pardon, Max?'

‘The bones, Morse!'

'What about the bones?'

'Do you believe in God?'

'Huh! Most of the bishops don't believe in God.'

'And you used to accuse me of never answering questions!'

Morse hesitated. Then he looked down at his old friend and answered him: 'No.' Paradoxically perhaps, the police surgeon appeared comforted by the sincerity of the firm monosyllable; but his thoughts were now stuttering their way around a discontinuous circuit.

'You surprised, Morse?'

‘Pardon?'

'You were, weren't you? Admit it!'

'Surprised?'

'The bones! Not a woman's bones, were they?'

Morse felt his heart pounding insistently somewhere -everywhere - in his body; felt the blood sinking down from his shoulders, past his heart, past his loins. Not a woman's bones -is that what Max had just said?

It had taken the hump-backed surgeon some considerable time to say his say; and feeling a tap on his shoulder, Morse turned to find Nurse Shelick standing behind him. 'Please!' her lips mouthed, as she looked anxiously down at the tired and intermittently closing eyes.

But before he left Morse leaned forward and whispered in the dying man's ear: 'I'll bring us a bottle of malt in the morning, Max, and we'll have a wee drop together, my old friend. So keep a hold on things

- please keep a hold on things! . . . Just for me!'

It would have been a joy for Morse had he seen the transient gleam in Max's eyes. But the surgeon's face had turned away from him, towards the recently painted, pale-green wall of the GCU. And he seemed to be asleep.

Maximilian Theodore Siegfried de Bryn (his middle names a surprise even to his few friends) surrendered to an almost totally welcome weariness two hours after Chief Inspector Morse had left; and finally loosed his grip on the hooks just after three o'clock that morning. He had bequeathed his mortal remains to the Medical Research Foundation at the JRa. He had earnestly wished it so. And it would be done.

Many had known Max, even if few had understood his strange ways. And many were to feel a fleeting sadness at his death. But he had (as we have seen) a few friends only. And there was only one man who had wept silently when the call had been received in his office in Thames Valley Police HQ at Kidlington at 9 a.m. on Sunday, 19 July 1992.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary

(Richard Harkness, New York Herald Tribune, 15 June 1960)

SUNDAY is not a good day on which to do business. Or to expect others to be at work -or even to be out of bed. But Dr Laura Hobson was out of bed fairly early that morning, and awaiting Morse at the (deserted) William Dunn School of Pathology building at 9.30. a.m.

'Hello.’

'Hello.'

'You're Inspector Morse?'

'Chief Inspector Morse.'

'Sorry!'

'And you're Dr Hobson?'

'I am she.'

Morse smiled wanly. 'I applaud your grammar, my dear.'

'I am not your "dear". You must forgive me for being so blunt: but I'm no one's "luv" or "dear" or "darling" or "sweetheart". I've got a name. If I'm at work I prefer to be called Dr Hobson; and if I let my hair down over a drink I have a Christian name: Laura. That's my little speech, Chief Inspector! You're not the only one who's heard it.' She was smiling sufficiently as she spoke though, showing small, very white teeth -a woman in her early thirties, fair-complexioned, with a pair of disproportionately large spectacles on her pretty nose; a smallish woman, about 5 foot 4 inches. But it was her voice which interested Morse: the broad north-country vowels in "luv" and "blunt"; the pleasing nairm she had -and perhaps the not unpleasant prospect of meeting her sometime orver a drink with her hair doon . . . *

They sat on a pair of high stools in a room that reminded Morse of his hated physics lab at school, and she told him of the simple yet quite extraordinary findings. The report on which Max had been working, though incomplete, was incontestable: the bones discovered in Wytham Woods were those of an adult male, Caucasian, about 5 foot 6 inches in height, slimly built, brachycephalic, fair-haired . . .

But Morse's mind had already leaped many furlongs ahead of the field. He'd been sure that the bones had been those of Karin Eriksson. All right, he'd been wrong. But now he knew whose bones they were -for the face of the-man in the photograph was staring back at him, unmistakably. He asked only for a photocopy of Dr Hobson's brief, preliminary report, and rose to go.

The pair of them walked to the locked outer door in silence, for the death of Max was heavy on her mind too.

'You knew him well, didn't you?'

Morse nodded.

'I feel so sad,' she said simply.

Morse nodded again. ' "The cart is shaken all to pieces, and the rugged road is at its end." '

She watched him, the slightly balding grey-haired man, as he stood for a few seconds beside his Jaguar. He held the photocopied report in his left hand, and raised it a few inches in farewell. She relocked the door, and walked thoughtfully back to the lab.

Morse wondered about driving up to the JR2, but decided against it. There was little time anyway. An urgent meeting of senior police officers had been summoned for 11 a.m. at the HQ building, and in any case there was nothing he could do. He drove along Parks Read, past Keble College, and then turned right into the Banbury Road. He had a few minutes to spare, and he took the second next turn now, and drove on slowly into Park Town, driving clockwise along the North Crescent, and along the South Crescent. . . There would be little chance of doing much that day though, and in any case it would be better to postpone things for twenty-four hours or so.

* Senior personnel from both the City and the County Forces were meeting at a time of considerable public disquiet -and criticism. Hitherto the impression had been abroad that known ringleaders were joy-riding and shop-ramming almost with impunity; and that the police were doing little to check the teenage tearaways who were terrifying many sections of the community on the Broadmoor Lea estate. There was little justification for such a view, since the police were continually finding themselves hamstrung by the refusal of the local inhabitants to come out and name names and co-operate in seeking to clean up their crime-ridden neighbourhood. But the death of Marion Bridewell had changed all that.

During this Sunday, 19 July, major decisions were taken, and their immediate implementation planned: a string of arrests would be made in a co-ordinated swoop the following morning, with special sittings of magistrates' courts scheduled for the following two evenings; council workmen would be sent in during the next few days to erect bollards and to construct sleeping-policeman humps across selected streets; police presence on the estate during the next week would be doubled; and a liaison committee of police officers, local head-teachers, social workers, and church ministers would be constituted forthwith.

It was a long and sometimes ill-humoured meeting; and Morse himself contributed little of any importance to the deliberations, for in truth his mind was distanced, and only once had his interest been fully engaged. It had been Strange's inveterate cynicism about committees which had occasioned the little contretemps:

'Give us a week or two at this rate,' he growled, 'and we'll have a standing committee, a steering committee, an ad hoc committee -every committee you can put a name to. What we should be doing is hitting 'em where it hurts. Fining 'em; fining their dads; docking it off their dads' wages. That's what I reckon!'

The Chief Constable had agreed quietly. 'Splendid idea -and the new legislation, I think, is going to be a big help to us. But there's just one snag, isn't there? You see, a good many of these young lads haven't got any fathers, Superintendent.'

Strange had looked disconcerted then.

And Morse had smiled his second smile of the day.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The newly arrived resident in North Oxford is likely to find that although his

next-door neighbour has a first-class degree from some prestigious university this

man is not quite so clever as his wife

(Country Living, January 1992)

MORSE was on his own when finally, in mid-morning the following day, he drove down to Park Town, this time again slowly circling die two crescents on either side of the elliptical central garden, well stocked with trees and flowering shrubs. There were plenty of parking spaces, and after his second circuit he pulled in the Jaguar along the south side and walked past the fronts of the dozen Italianate properties which comprised the attractive stone-faced terrace. At the eastern end he turned down an alley-way, and then into the lane, about three yards wide, which ran behind the properties. To his right the continuous brick wall which protected the small back gardens was only about five feet in height, and he realized that it would not even be necessary to enter any of the gardens to find the one he was looking for. It was all childishly easy - no Holmesian intellect needed here; indeed a brief Watsonian reconnoitre would have established the spot almost immediately. Thus it was that after only a couple of minutes Morse found himself leaning over the curved coping-stones of the western-most property, and finding the details on his photographs so easily matchable here: the configuration of the black drain-pipes, the horizontal TV aerial, and then, crucially, the tree upon whose lower bough a child's red swing was now affixed. At the left of the garden, as Morse observed it, was a wooden garden seat, its slats disintegrating; and he felt thrillingly certain that it was from this scat, in this very garden, that someone -and most probably Karin Eriksson herself -had taken the two photographs of the fair-beaded, bracycephalic, slimly built. . . what else had Dr Hobson said? He couldn't remember. And it didn't matter. Not at all.

He walked to the imposing front door of the end property, designated 'Seckham Villa' by a small plaque on the right-hand wall of the porch; and below it, three bells: second floor Dr S. Levi; first floor Ms Jennifer Coombs; ground floor Dr Alasdair McBryde. An area clearly where D.Phils and Ph.Ds proliferated. He rang the bottom bell.

The door was opened by a tallish, heavily bearded man in his mid-thirties, who studied Morse's authorization cautiously before answering any questions. He was over from Ostrylia (he said) with his wife, to pursue some research project in micro-biology; they had been in the flat since the previous August, and would be returning home in two weeks' time; he'd learned of the property from a friend in Mansfield College who had been keeping an eye open for suitable accommodation the previous summer.

The previous August. . .

Was this to be Morse's lucky day?

'Did you know the people - did you meet the people who were here before you?'

'Fried not,' said the Australian.

'Can I - have a quick look inside?'

Rather unenthusiastically, as it seemed, McBryde led the way into the lounge, where Morse looked around the rather splendid, high-ceilinged room, and tried to attune his senses to the vaguest vibrations. Without success. It was only when he looked out through the french window at the sunlit patch of lawn that he felt a frisson of excitement: a dark-haired little girl in a pink dress was swinging idly to and fro beneath the tree, her white ankle-socked feet just reaching the ground.

'Your daughter, sir?'

'Yeah. You got any kids yourself, Inspector?'

Morse shook his head. 'Just one more thing, sir. Have you got your book, you know, your rent-book or whatever handy? It's important I get in touch with the, er, people who were here just before you last year ..."

McBryde stepped over to an escritoire beside the french window and found his Property Payment book, the legend 'Finders Keepers' on the cover.

'I'm not in arrears,' said McBryde with the suggestion of his first smile.

'So I see. And I'm not a bailiff, sir,' said Morse, handing back the book.

The two men walked back towards the entrance, and McBryde knocked very gently on the door to his right, and put his ear to the panel.

'Darling? Darling?'

But there was no reply.

At the front door Morse asked his last question.

'Finders Keepers - that's the Banbury Road office, is it?'

'Yeah. You off there now?'

'I think I'll drop in straightaway, yes.'

'Is your car parked here?'

Morse pointed to the Jaguar.

'Well, I should leave it here, if I were you. Only five minutes' walk, if that -and you'll never park in North Parade.'

Morse nodded. Good idea. And the Rose and Crown was just along in North Parade.

Before leaving Park Town however, Morse strolled across into the central oval-shaped garden separating the Crescents, where he read the only notice he could find, fixed to the trunk of a cedar tree:

THIS GARDEN, LAID OUT CIRCA 1850, IS MAINTAINED BY THE RESIDENTS FOR PLEASURE AND PEACE. PLEASE RESPECT ITS AMENITIES. NO DOGS, BICYCLES, BALL GAMES, OR TRANSISTORS.

For a few minutes Morse sat on one of the wooden seats, where someone had obviously not respected the amenities, for an oblong plate, doubtless commemorating the name of a former inhabitant, had been recently prised from the back. It was a restful spot though, and Morse now walked slowly round its periphery, his mind half on Max's death, half on the photographs taken in the :back garden of the ground-floor flat at Seckham Villa. As he turned at the western edge of the garden, he realized that this same Seckham Villa was immediately across the road from him, with -the maroon Jaguar parked just to the left of it. And as once again he admired the attractive frontages there, he suspected perhaps a heavily bearded face had suddenly pulled itself back behind rather dingy curtains in the front room of Seckham Villa, where Mrs Something McBryde lay suffering from goodness knows what. Was her husband slightly more inquisitive than he'd appeared to be? Or was it the Jaguar - which often attracted some interested glances?

Thoughtfully Morse walked out of Park Town, then left into the Banbury Road. Finders Keepers was very close. So was North Parade. So was the Rose and Crown.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does (Steuart Henderson Britt, New York Herald Tribune, 30 October 1956)

AFTER two pints of cask-conditioned ale in the Rose and Crown, Morse walked the short distance to Finders Keepers, where he was soon ushered through the outer office, past two young ladies busy with their VDUs, and into the inner sanctum of Mr Martin Buckby, the dark, smartly suited manager of Property Letting Services. It was fairly close to lunch-time, but the manager would be only too glad to help - of course he would.

Yes, his department was responsible for letting a good many of the Park Town properties, most of which had been converted from single homes into two, sometimes three, flats and were more often than not let out to graduates, occasionally to students. Naturally the accommodation varied, but some of the flats, especially those the ground floor -or first floor, as some of them called it were roomy, stylish, and well maintained. The letting year usually divided itself into two main periods: October to June, covering the academic year at Oxford University; and then June/July to the end of September, when very frequently various overseas tenants: interested in short-term leases. Advertisements for the availability of such accommodation were regularly placed in The Oxford Times, and occasionally in Property Weekly. But only advertised once, for the flats were almost invariably snapped up straightaway. Such adverts gave a brief description of the property available, and the price asked: about £200-£250 a week for a short-term let (at current and slightly less, proportionately, for a long-term let. Business in the first instance, was usually conducted by phone, often through agents; and someone -either the client himself or a representative of an agency -would go along to view the property ('Very important, Inspector!') before the paperwork was completed, either there in the firm's offices or, increasingly now, directly by fax interchange with countries overseas. A deposit would be lodged, a tenancy agreement signed, a reference given -that was how it worked. There was no guarantee of bona fides, of course, and basically one had to rely on gut-reaction; but the firm experienced very few problems, really. When the client was due to move in, a representative would go along to open the property, hand over keys, explain the workings of gas, electricity, stop-cocks, central heating, fuses, thermostats, everything, and to give the client a full inventory of the property's effects -this inventory to be checked and returned within seven days so that there could be no subsequent arguments about the complement of fish-knives or feather pillows. The system worked well. The only example of odd behaviour over the previous year, for example, had been the overnight disappearance of a South American gentleman who had taken his key with him -and absolutely nothing else. And since, as with all short-term lets, the whole of the rental was paid in advance, as well as an extra deposit of £500, no harm had been done there -apart from the need to change the lock on the front door and to get a further clutch of keys cut.

'Did you report that to the police, sir?'

'No. Should I have done?'

Morse shrugged.

He had a good grasp now of the letting procedure; yet his mind was always happier (he explained) with specific illustrations than with generalities; and if it were proper for him to ask, for example, what Dr McBryde was paying for the ground-floor flat at Seckham Villa . . . ?

Buckby found a green folder in the filing cabinet behind him and quickly looked through it. 'Thirteen hundred pounds per month.'

'Phew! Bit steep, isn't it?'

'It's the going rate -and it's a lovely flat, isn't it? One of the best in the whole crescent.' Buckby picked out a sheet from the folder and read the specification aloud.

But Morse was paying scant attention to him. After all, that was the manager's job, wasn't it? To make the most of what Morse had seen with his own eyes as a pretty limited bit of Lebensraum. especially for a married couple with one infant - at least one infant.

'Didn't you just say that the maximum for a short-term let was two hundred and fifty pounds a week?'

Buckby grinned. 'Not for that place -well, you've seen it. And what makes you think it's a short-term let, Inspector?' The blood was tingling at the back of Morse's neck, and subliminally some of the specifications that Buckby had recited were beginning to register in his brain. He reached over and picked up the sheet.

Hall, living room, separate dining room, well-fitted kitchen, two bedrooms, studio/ study, bathroom, full gas CH, small walled garden

Two bedrooms . . . and a sick wife sleeping in one of them . . . studio . . . and a little girl sitting on a swing . . . God! Morse shook head in disbelief at his own idiocy.

‘I really came to ask you, sir, if you had any record of who was living in that property last July. But I think - I think -you're going to tell me that it was Dr Alasdair McBryde; that he hasn't got a wife; that the people upstairs have got a little dark-haired daughter; that the fellow probably hails from Malta-'

Gibraltar, actually.'

‘You've got some spare keys, sir?' asked Morse, almost despairingly

In front of Seckham Villa the Jaguar sat undisturbed; but inside there were to be no further sightings of Dr McBryde. Yet the little girl still sat on the swing, gently stroking her dolly's hair, and Morse unlocked the french window and walked over the grass towards her.

'What's your name?'

‘My name's Lucy and my dolly's name's Amanda.'

Do you live here, Lucy?'

‘Yes. Mummy and Daddy live up there.' Her bright eyes lifted to the top rear window.

‘Pretty dolly,' said Morse.

‘Would you like to hold her?'

'I would, yes - but I've got a lot of things to do just for the moment.'

Inside his brain he could hear a voice shouting, 'Help, Lewis!' and he turned back into the house and wondered where on earth to start.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Nine tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent feelings concerning

sex which moralists inculcate in the young; the other tenth is physiological, and

will occur in one way or another whatever the state of the law may be

(Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals]

LEWIS arrived at Seckham Villa at 2.15 that afternoon, bringing ith him the early edition of The Oxford Mail, in which many column-inches were devoted to the wave of car crime which was hitting Oxfordshire -hitting the national press, too, with increasing regularity. Everyone and everything in turn was blamed: the police, the parents, the teachers, the church, the recession, unemployment, lack of youth facilities, car manufacturers, the weather, TV, the brewers, left-wing social workers, and right-wing social workers; original sin received several votes, and even the Devil -.self got one. Paradoxically the police seemed to be more in the dock than the perpetrators of the increasingly vicious crimes being emitted. But at least the operation that morning had been successful, so Lewis reported: the only trouble was that further police activity in Wytham Woods was drastically curtailed -four men -only now, one of them standing guard over the area cordoned in Pasticks.

The temporarily dispirited Morse received the news with little surprise, and briefly brought Lewis up to date with his own ambivalent achievements of the morning: his discovery of the garden where in all probability Karin Eriksson had spent some period of time before she disappeared; and his gullibility in allowing. McBryde -fairly certainly now a key figure in the drama -more than sufficient time to effect a hurried escape.

At the far end of the ground-floor entrance passage, fairly steep stairs, turning 180 degrees, led down to the basement area in Seckham Villa, and it was here that the first discovery was made. The basement comprised a large, modernized kitchen at the front; and behind this, through an archway, a large living area furnished with armchairs, a settee, coffee tables, bookshelves, TV, HiFi equipment -and a double-bed of mahogany, stripped down to a mattress of pale blue; and beside the bed, a jointed series of square, wooden boards, four of them, along which, for the length of about ten feet, ran two steel rails -rails where, it was immediately assumed, a cine-camera had recently and probably frequently been moving to and fro.

Morse himself (with Lewis and one of the DCs) spent most of his time that afternoon in this area, once the fingerprint men, the senior scenes-of-crime officer and the photographer had completed their formal tasks. Clear fingerprints on the (unwashed) non-stick saucepan and cutlery found in the kitchen sink would doubtless match the scores of others found throughout the flat, would doubtless be McBryde's, and (as Morse saw things) would doubtless advance the investigation not one whit. No clothing, apart from two dirty pairs of beige socks found in one of the bedrooms; no toiletries left along the bathroom shelves; no videos; no correspondence; no shredded letters in either of the two waste-paper baskets or in the dustbin outside the back door. All in all it seemed fairly clear that the flat had been slimmed down - recently perhaps? -for the eventuality of a speedy get-away. Yet there were items that had not been bundled and stuffed into the back of the white van which (as was quickly ascertained) McBryde had used for travelling; and cupboards in both the ground-floor and the basement contained duvets, sheets, pillow-cases, blankets, towels, and table cloths -clearly items listed on the tenant's inventory; and the kitchen pantry was adequately stocked with tins of beans, fruit, salmon, spaghetti, tuna fish, and the like.

Naturally however it was the trackway beside the basement double bed which attracted the most interest, much lifting of eyebrows, and many lascivious asides amongst those investigators whose powers of detection, at least in this instance, were the equal of the chief inspector's. Indeed, it would have required a man of monumental mutton-headedness not to visualize before him the camera and the microphone moving slowly alongside the mattress to record the assorted feats of fornication enacted on that creaking charpoy. For himself Morse tried not to give his imagination too free a rein. Sometimes up at HQ there were a few pornographic videos around, confiscated from late-night raids or illegal trafficking. Often had he wished to view some of the crude, corrupting, seductive things; yet equally often had he made it known to his fellow officers that he at least was quite uninterested in such matters.

In a corner of the kitchen, bundled neatly as if for some subsequent collection by Friends of the Earth, was a heap of old newspapers, mostly the Daily Mail, and various weeklies and periodicals, including Oxford Today, Oxcom, TV Times, two RSPB journals, and the previous Christmas offers from the Spastic Society. Morse had glanced very hurriedly through, half hoping perhaps to find the statutory girlie magazine; but apart from spending a minute or so looking at pictures of the black-headed gulls on the Loch of Kinnordy, he found nothing there to hold his interest.

It was Lewis who found them, folded away inside one of the free local newspapers, The Star. There were fourteen A4 sheets, stapled together, obviously photocopied (and photocopied ill) from some glossier and fuller publication. On each sheet several photographs of the same girl were figured (if that be the correct verb) in various stages of undress; and at the bottom of each sheet there appeared a Christian name, followed by details of height, bust, waist, hips, dress-shoe-and glove-measurements, and colour of hair and eyes. In almost every case the bottom left-hand picture was of the model completely naked, and in three or four cases striking some sexually suggestive pose. The names were of the glitzy showgirl variety: Jayne, Kelly, Lindy-Lu, Mandy . . . and most of them appeared (for age was not given) to be in their twenties. But four of the sheets depicted older women, whose names were possibly designed to reflect their comparative maturity: Elaine, Dorothy, Mary, Louisa . . . The only other information given (no addresses here) was a (i), (ii), (iii), of priority "services', and Lewis, not without some little interest himself (and amusement), sampled a few of the services on offer: sporting-shots, escort duties, lingerie, stockings, leather, swim-wear, summer dresses, bras, nude-modelling, hair-styling, gloves. Not much to trouble the law there, surely. Three of the girls though were far more explicit about their specialisms, with Mandy listing (i) home • ideos, (ii) pornographic movies, (iii) overnight escort duties; and with Lindy-Lu, pictured up to her thighs in leather boots, proclaiming an accomplished proficiency in spanking.

And then, as Morse and Lewis were considering these things, the big discovery was made. One of the two DCs who had been given the job of searching the main lounge above had found, caught up against the top of one of the drawers in the escritoire, a list of names and addresses: a list of clients, surely! Clients who probably received their pornographic material in plain brown envelopes with the flap licked down so very firmly. And there, fourth from the top, was the name that both Morse and Lewis focused on immediately: George Daley, 2 Blenheim Villas, Begbroke, Oxon.

Morse had been delighted with the find -of course he had! And his praise for the DC had been profuse and (in Lewis's view) perhaps a trifle extravagant. Yet now as he sat on the settee, looking again at the unzippings and the unbuttonings of the models, reading through the list of names once more, he appeared to Lewis to be preoccupied and rather sad.

'Everything all right, sir?'

'What? Oh yes! Fine. We're making wonderful progress. Let's keep at it!'

But Morse himself was contributing little towards any further progress; and after desultorily walking around for ten minutes or so, he sat down yet again and picked up the sheet of addresses. He would have to tell Lewis, he decided -not just yet but. . . He looked again at the seventeenth name on the list: for he was never likely to forget the name that Kidlington HQ had given him when, from Lyme Regis, he'd phoned in the car registration H 35 LWL:

Dr Alan Hardinge.

He picked up the pictures of the models and looked again through their names and their vital statistics and their special proficiencies. Especially did he look again at one of the maturer models: the one who called herself 'Louisa'; the one who'd had all sorts of fun with her names at the Bay Hotel in Lyme Regis; the woman who was photographed here, quite naked and totally desirable.

Claire Osborne.

'Pity we've no address for - well, it must be a modelling agency of some sort, mustn't it?'

'No problem, Lewis. We can just ring up one of these johnnies on the list.'

'Perhaps they don't know.' '

‘I’ll give you the address in ten minutes if you really want it.'

'I don't want it for myself, you know.'

'Of course not!'

Picking up his sheets, Morse decided that his presence in Seckham Villa was no longer required; and bidding Lewis to give things another couple of hours or so he returned to HQ; where he tried her telephone number.

She was in.

'Claire?'

'Morse!' (She'd recognized him!)

'You could have told me you worked for an escort agency!'

'Why?'

Morse couldn't think of an answer.

'You thought I was wicked enough but not quite so wicked as that?'

'I suppose so.'

'Why don't you get yourself in your car and come over tonight? -I’d be happy if you did ...’

Morse sighed deeply. 'You told me you had a daughter-'

'So?'

'Do you still keep in touch with the father?'

'The father? Christ, come off it! I couldn't tell you who the father was!'

Like the veil of the Temple, Morse's heart was suddenly rent in twain; and after asking her for the name and address of the modeling? agency (which she refused to tell him) he rang off.

Ten minutes later, the phone went on Morse's desk, and it was Claire -though how she'd got his number he didn't know. She spoke for only about thirty seconds, ignoring Morse's interruptions.

‘Shut up, you silly bugger! You can't see more than two inches in front of your nose, can you? Don't you realize I'd have swapped all the lecherous sods I've ever had for you -and instead of trying understand all you ask me - Christ! - is who fathered-'

‘Look, Claire-'

‘No! You bloody look! If you can't take what a woman tells you -about herself without picking over the past and asking bloody futile questions about why and who he was and-' But her voice broke down completely now.

'Look, please!'

'No! You just fuck off, Morse, and don't you ring me again because I'll probably be screwing somebody and enjoying it such a lot I won't want to be interrupted-'

'Claire!'

But the line was dead.

For the next hour Morse tried her number every five minutes, counting up to thirty double-purrs each time. But there was no answer.

Lewis had discovered nothing new in Seckham Villa, and he rang through to HQ at 6 p.m., as Morse

had wished.

'All right. Well, you get off home early, Lewis. And get some sleep. And good luck tomorrow!'

Lewis was due to catch the 7.30 plane to Stockholm the following morning.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrifying of those extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality (Edgar Allan Poe, Tales of Mystery and Imagination)

THE DEATH of Max was still casting a cloak of gloom round Morse as he sat in his office the following morning. During the previous night his thoughts had been much preoccupied with death, and the mood persisted now. As a boy, he had been moved by those words of the dying Socrates, suggesting that if death were just one long, unbroken, dreamless sleep, then a greater boon could hardly be bestowed upon mankind. But what about the body? The soul might be able to look after itself all right, but what about the physical body? In Morse's favourite episode from The Iliad, the brethren and kinsfolk of Sarpedon had buried his body, with mound and pillar, in the rich, wide land of Lycia. Yes! It was fitting to have a gravestone and a name inscribed on it. But there were those stories that were ever frightening -stories about people prematurely interred who had awoken in infinite and palpitating terror with the immovable lid of the coffin only a few inches above them. No! Burning was better than burying, surely . . . Morse was wholly ignorant of the immediate procedures effected once the curtains closed over the light-wooded coffins at the crematoria . . . like the curtains closing at the end of Götterdämmerung, though minus the clapping, of course. All done and finished quickly, and if somebody wanted to sprinkle your mortal dust over the memorial gardens, well, it might be OK for the roses, too. He wouldn't mind a couple of hymns either: 'The day thou gavest', perhaps. Good tune, that. So long as they didn't have any prayers, or any departures from the Authorized Version of Holy Writ. . . Perhaps Max had got it right, neatly side-stepping the choice of interment or -incineration: the clever old sod had left his body to the hospital, and the odds were strongly on one or two of his organs giving them plenty to think about. Huh!

Morse smiled to himself, and suddenly looked up to see Strange standing in the doorway. 'Private joke, Morse?' 'Oh, nothing, sir.' 'C'mon! Life's grim enough.' 'I was just thinking of Max's liver-' 'Not a pretty sight!' ‘No.^! 'You're taking it a bit hard, aren't you? Max, I mean.' 'A bit. perhaps.' 'You seen the latest?' Strange pushed a copy of The Times across the desk, with a brief paragraph on the front page

informing its readers that 'the bones discovered in Wytham Woods are quite certainly not those of the Swedish student whose disappearance occasioned the original verses and their subsequent analysis in this newspaper. (See Letters, page 13):

'Anything to help us there?' asked Morse dubiously, opening the paper. 'Scraping the barrel, if you ask me,' said Strange. Morse looked down at page 13:

From Mr Anthony Beaulah Sir, Like the text of some early Greek love-lyric, the lines on the Swedish student would appear to have been pondered over in such exhaustive fashion that there is perhaps little left to say. And it may be that the search is already over. Yet there is one significant (surely?) aspect of the verses which has hitherto received scant attention. The collocation of 'the tiger' with 'the burning of the night' (lines 9 and 12) has indeed been commented upon, but in no specific context. In my view, sir, one should perhaps interpret the tiger (the cat) as staring back at drivers in the darkness. And the brilliantly simple invention which has long steered the benighted driver through the metaphorical forest of the night? Cat's eyes!

I myself live too far away from Oxford to be able to test such a thesis. But might the police not interpret this as a genuine clue, and look for some stretch of road (in or around Wytham?) where cat's eyes have recently been installed?

Yours, ANTHONY BEAULAH, Felsted School, Essex.

'Worth getting Lewis on it?' queried Strange, when Morse had finished reading. .'Not this morning, sir. If you remember he's, er, on his holidays.' Morse looked at his

wrist-watch. 'At this minute he's probably looking out of the window down at Jutland.' 'Why didn't you go, Morse? With all these Swedish blondes and that. . .' 'I thought it'd be good experience for him.' 'Mm.' For a while the two were silent. Then Strange picked up his paper and made to leave. 'You made a will yet, Morse?' 'Not much to leave, really.' 'All those records of yours, surely?'

'Bit out of date, I'm afraid. We're all buying CDs now.'

'Perhaps they'll be out of date soon.'

Morse nodded. Strange was not in the habit of saying anything quite so perceptive.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Men are made stronger on realization that the helping hand they need is at the end of their own right arm (Sidney J. Phillips, speech, July 1953)

ON THE forty-kilometre bus ride from Arlanda airport southwards towards Stockholm, Lewis enjoyed what for him was the fairly uncommon view of a foreign country. After a while the tracts of large pine and fir woods changed to smaller coppices and open fields; then farmhouses, red, with barns that were red too, and a few yellow, wooden, Dutch-roofed manor houses, just before the outskirts of Stockholm, with its factories and tidy, newish buildings -and all so very clean and litter-free. In wooded surroundings within the city itself, three-and four-storeyed blocks of flats took over; and finally the end of the journey, at the Central Station terminal.

Lewis had never studied a foreign language at school, and his travel abroad had hitherto been restricted to three weeks in Australia, two weeks in Italy, and one afternoon in a Calais supermarket. The fact that he had no difficulty therefore in summoning a taxi was wholly due to the excellent English of the young driver, who soon brought Lewis into the suburb of Bromma more specifically to an eight-storey block of white flats in Bergsvägen.

The Stockholm CID had offered to send one of its own men to meet him, but Lewis had not taken advantage of this when he'd arranged the details of his visit the previous morning. Seldom was it that he could assert any independent judgement in an investigation; and here was his chance. The entrance hall was of polished pink granite, with the long list of tenants' named displayed there:

ANDREASSON 8A ENGSTROM 8B FASTEN 7A OLSSON 7B KRAFT 6A ERIKSSON 6B

Sixth floor!

Lewis felt excited at the sight of the name; it was almost as if. . . as if he felt he was going to make some significant discovery.

The door, bearing the name-plate ERIKSSON, was opened by a woman in her mid-forties, of medium height, plumply figured, hazel-eyed, and with short, brownish-blonde hair.

'Mrs Eriksson?'

'Irma Eriksson,' she insisted as he shook her hand, and entered the apartment.

The small hallway was lined with cupboards, with what looked like a home-woven mat on one wall and a large mirror on the other. Through the open door to the right Lewis glimpsed a beautifully fitted kitchen, fresh and gleaming, with a copper kettle and old plates on its walls.

'In here, Mr Lewis.' She pointed smilingly to the left and led the way.

Her English was very good, utterly fluent and idiomatic, with only a hint of a foreign accent, just noticeable perhaps in the slight lengthening of the short T vowels ('Meester Lewis').

The place was all so clean; and so particularly clean was the parquet flooring that Lewis wondered whether he should offer to take off his shoes, for she herself stood there in her stockinged feet as she gestured him to a seat on a low, brown-striped settee.

As he later tried to describe the furnishings to Morse, he felt more conscious than anything about the huge amount of stuff that had been packed into this living room: two coffee tables of heavy, dark wood; lots of indoor plants; groups of family portraits and photographs all around; dozens of candle holders; a large TV set; pretty cushions everywhere; vases of flowers; a set of Dala horses; two crucifixes; and (as Lewis learned later) a set of Carl Larsson prints above the bricked fireplace. Yet in spite of all the clutter, the whole room was light and airy, the thin curtains pulled completely back from the south-facing window.

Conversation was easy and, for Lewis, interesting. He learned something of the typical middle-class housing in Swedish cities; learned how and why the Erikssons had moved from Uppsala down to Bergsvagen almost a year ago after . . . after Karin had, well, whatever had happened. As Lewis went briefly through the statement she had made a year ago, Irma Eriksson was watching him closely (he could see that), nodding here and there, and at one or two points staring down sadly at a small oriental carpet at her feet. But yes, it was all there; and no, there was nothing she could add. From that day to this she had received no further news of her daughter -none. At first, she admitted, she'd hoped and hoped, and couldn't bring herself to believe that Karin was dead. But gradually she had been forced to such a conclusion; and it was better that way, really -to accept the virtual certainty that Karin had been murdered. She was grateful -how not? for the recent efforts the English police had made -again! -and she had been following the newspaper correspondence of course, receiving cuttings regularly from an English friend.

'Can I get you coffee? And a leetle Swedish Schnapps, yes?' When she went out to the kitchen, Lewis could scarcely believe that it had been himself who had answered ‘Yes to the first’and 'yes' to the second. So often in his police career he'd prayed for Morse to be on hand to help him; but not now. He stood up and walked slowly round the room, staring long at some of the photographs; and especially at one of them: at three young ladies standing arm in arm, dressed in Swedish national costume.

'Ah! I see you've found my beautiful daughters.' She had moved in silently, and now stood beside him, still in her stockinged feet, some five or six inches shorter than the six-foot sergeant; and he could smell the sweet summer freshness of her, and he felt an unfamiliar tic in a vein at his right temple.

'Katarina, Karin, Kristina.' She pointed to each in turn. 'All of them better looking than their momma, no?'

Lewis made no direct reply as he still held the framed photograph. So much alike the three of them: each with long, straight gold-blonde hair; each with clear-complexioned, high-cheekboned faces.

'That's Karin -in the middle, you say?' Lewis looked at her again, the one who was looking perhaps just a little more serious than her sisters.

Momma nodded; then, unexpectedly, took the photograph from Lewis's hands and replaced it -with no explanation for her slightly brusque behaviour.

'How can I help you any more?' She sat cross-legged opposite Lewis in an armchair, tossed back her small, squat glass of Schnapps, before sipping the hot, strong coffee.

So Lewis asked her a lot of questions, and was soon to be forming a much clearer picture of the daughter about whom her mother spoke so lovingly now.

Karin had been a reasonably clever girl, if occasionally somewhat idle; she had left her secondary school in Uppsala at the age of eighteen, with good prospects before her; attractive, very good at swimming and tennis; and with a series of badges and diplomas from school societies and guides' groups for birdwatching, orienteering, rock-climbing, judo, embroidery, and amateur musicals. It was just after she had left school that Irma's husband, Staffan Eriksson, had moved in with a darkly seductive brunette he had met on a business trip to Norway and, well, that was about it really. She uncrossed her legs and looked over at Lewis with a gentle smile.

'Another Schnapps?'

'Why not?' said Mr Lewis.

Katarina (Irma Eriksson resumed), the eldest daughter (should it be 'elder' now, though?), was married and working with the European Commission in Strasbourg as an interpreter; the youngest (younger) daughter, Kristina -still only eighteen -was in her last year of schooling, studying social sciences. She was living at home, there in the flat, and if Mr Lewis would like to see her . . . ? If Mr Lewis were staying in Stockholm?

The troublesome tic jerked in Lewis's temple once more, as he turned the conversation back to Karin.

What was Karin like -as a person? Well, her mother supposed she would call her 'independent' -yes, above all, independent. The summer before she'd gone to England, she'd spent two months on a kibbutz near Tel Aviv; and the year before that she'd joined a group of enthusiastic environmentalists in the Arctic Circle. But she was never (for the first time Irma Eriksson had seemed to struggle with her English vocabulary) she was never an 'easy' young girl. No! That wasn't the word at all! She was never the sort of girl who went to bed, you know . . . ?

'Was she - do you think she was a virgin, Mrs Eriksson?'

' "Irma", please!'

'As far as you know . …. Irma?'

‘I’m not sure. Apart from the trouble in Israel, if she had sex with anyone it would be with someone she liked. You know how I mean, don't you?'

‘

She was fond of birdwatching, you said?' Lewis was losing his • Aay. (Or was he?) 'Oh, yes! Never did she go out on any holiday or walk without taking the binoculars.' (The idiom was breaking down - just a bit.) There was just the one thing left now which Morse had asked him to confirm: the passport and the work-permit procedures for fa young lady like Karin.

No problem. For the first time Lewis thought he saw the underlying grief behind the saddened eyes, as she explained that Sweden did not belong to the EC; that all Swedish nationals needed to apply for work-permits in the UK if they proposed to stay for any length of time; that even for au pair work it was wholly prudent to do. But Karin had not applied for such a permit; she gave herself only three weeks in the UK; and for this, her Swedish passport, valid for a ten-year period, would have been sufficient.

Lewis was suddenly aware that if there had been anything mildly flirtatious in the woman's manner, the situation had now changed.

'You kept Karin's passport, didn't you?' she continued quietly.

Lewis nodded, and his slight frown prompted her quick explanation:

'You see, I suppose we hoped she might -if she were still alive -she might apply for a new passport - if she'd lost it. Do you see ... ?'

Lewis nodded again.

'And she hasn't, has she, Mr Lewis? So!' She got up briskly, and put her feet into a pair of black, semi-heeled shoes. 'So!'

‘I’m afraid we can't bring you any hopeful news -not really,' said Lewis, himself now rising to his feet.

'It's all right. I knew from the start, really. It's just. . .'

'I know. And thank you. You've been very helpful. Just one more thing - if I could just borrow a photo of the three girls . . . ?'

As they stood in the hallway, Lewis ventured a genuine compliment:

'You know, I always envy people like you, Mrs - Irma - you know, people who can speak other languages.'

'We start learning English early though. In the fourth grade -ten years of age. Well, I was twelve myself, but my daughters all learn from ten.'

They shook hands, and Lewis walked down to the ground floor, where he stood for several minutes beside a play area surrounded by a low palisade of dark-brown wooden slats -not a potato-crisp packet in sight. It was early afternoon now on a beautiful summer's day, with a cloudless blue sky and a yellow sun -like the colours of the flag on the rucksack found at

Begbroke, Oxfordshire. Standing on her high balcony, Irma Eriksson watched him go. As soon as he had disappeared into the main thoroughfare, she stepped back into her flat and let herself into the rear bedroom, where the ensuing conversation was held in Swedish:

'Was he intelligent?'

'Not particularly. Very nice though -very nice.'

'Did you ask him to bed with you?'

'I might have done if you hadn't been here.'

'Do you think he suspected anything?'

'No.'

'But you're glad he's gone?'

Irma Eriksson nodded. 'Shall I get you coffee?'

'Please!'

When her mother had left, the young lady looked at herself in the long wall-mirror in the shaded room, deciding that she was looking tired and dark around the eyes. Yet had Lewis seen her there that afternoon he would have been impressed by her pale and elegant beauty; would have been struck immediately too by a very close likeness to the photograph of the student found in the rucksack at Begbroke, Oxfordshire.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

In a world in which duty and self-discipline have lost out to hedonism and self-

satisfaction, there is nothing like closing your eyes and going with the flow. At

least in a fantasy, it all ends happily ever after

(Edwina Currie, The Observer, 23 February 1992)

ALAN HARDINGE had gained a first in both parts of the Natural Sciences Tripos at Cambridge; had stayed on in that university for a Ph.D.; then done two years' research at Harvard before being elected in 1970 to a fellowship at the 'other place'. A year later he had courted a librarian from the Bodleian, had married her six months later, subsequently siring two offspring, both girls: the one now in her second year at Durham reading Psychology; the other dead -killed nineteen days earlier as she cycled down Cumnor Hill into Oxford.

He had not been wholly surprised to receive the phone call from Chief Inspector Morse that morning of Tuesday, 21 July, and a meeting was arranged for 2 p.m. the same day, in Hardinge's rooms, overlooking the front quad of Lonsdale College.

'What does your wife know about your interests in Seckham Villa?'

'Nothing. Absolutely nothing. So please can we keep Lynne - my wife - out of this? She's still terribly upset and nervy - God knows what. . .'

Dr Hardinge spoke in disjunct bursts, punctuated by the equivalent of verbal dashes. He was a smallish, neat man, with crinkly grey hair, darkly suited still in high summer, when many of his colleagues were walking along the High in T-shirts and trainers.

'I can't promise that, of course-'

'Don't you see? I'd do anything -anything at all -to see that Lynne's not hurt. I know it sounds weak -it if weak -it's what we all say -I know -but it's true.' From his hunched shoulders Hardinge's face craned forward like that of an earnest tortoise.

'Know this man?' Morse handed across one of the photographs taken in the garden of Seckham Villa.

Hardinge took a pair of half-lensed spectacles from their case; but appeared not to need them, glancing for only a second or two at the photograph before handing it back.

'James - or Jamie? - Myton. Yes, I know him - knew him -sort of jack-of-all-trades really.'

'How did you get to know him?'

'Look - it'll be better if I tell you - about myself - I think it will.'

Morse listened with interest, and with no moral reproof, as Hardinge stated his apologia for a lifetime of sexual adventurism. As a boy a series of older women had regularly intruded themselves into his dreams, and he had readily surrendered himself, almost without guilt, into the sexual fantasies he found he could so easily conjure up for himself -fantasies in which there were no consequences, no disappointments. In his twenties he would willingly have preferred -did prefer -to watch the pornographic films and videos that were then so readily available. Then he'd met Lynne -dear, honest, trusting Lynne -who would be utterly flabbergasted and so hurt and ashamed if she even began to suspect a fraction of the truth. After his marriage, though, his fantasies persisted; grew even. He was experiencing a yearning for ever greater variety in his sexual gratification, and this had gradually resulted in a string of rather sordid associations: with private film clubs; imported videos and magazines; live sex-shows; 'hostess' parties -for all of which he'd become a regular and eager client. The anticipation of such occasions! The extraordinarily arousing words that became the open sesame to such erotic entertainments: 'Is everybody known?'

'And that's what happened regularly at Seckham Villa?'

'Fairly regularly - seldom more than five or six of us - usually people we'd met once or twice before.'

Morse watched the middle-aged, dapper deceiver, leaning forward all the time, with his aquiline cast of feature, his pale complexion, his slightly pernickety enunciation. He felt he should have despised the man a little; but he couldn't do that. If Hardinge were a bit of a pervert, he was an extraordinarily honest one; and with his faded, watery eyes he looked rather tired and rather lost; weak, and not pretending to be strong.

'You're not a "medical" doctor, sir?' asked Morse when the carnal confessions were complete.

'No. I just wrote a Ph.D. thesis - you know how these things are.'

'On?'

'Promise not to laugh?'

‘Try me.'

' "The comparative body-weight of the great tit within the variable habitats of its North European distribution".'

Morse didn't laugh. Birds! So many people in the case seemed interested in birds . . .

'Original research, was that?'

'No other kind, as far as I know.'

'And you were examined in this?'

'You don't get a doctorate otherwise.'

'But the person who examined you -well, he couldn't know as much as you, could he? By definition, surely?'

'She, actually. It's the - well, they say it is - the way you go about it - your research; the way you observe, record things, categorize them, and then draw some kind of conclusion. Bit like your job, Inspector.'

‘All I was thinking, sir, is that it might not have been difficult for you to fabricate a few of the facts . . .'

Hardinge frowned, his head moving forward on his shoulders once more. 'I am not, Inspector, fabricating anything about Seckham Villa - if that's what you're getting at.'

'And you first met Claire Osborne there.'

'She told you that was her name?'

' "Louisa Hardinge", too.'

Hardinge smiled sadly. 'Her one and only tribute to me! But she loves changing her name -all the time -she doesn't really know who she is ... or what she wants, Inspector. She's a sort of chameleon, I suppose. But you'll probably know that, won't you? I understand you've met her.'

'What is her name?'

'Her birth-certificate name? I don't really know.'

Morse shook his head. Was there anyone telling him the truth in this case?

'She never went to Seckham Villa herself -as far as I know,' resumed Hardinge. 'I met her through an agency. McBryde -you've spoken to him? -through McBryde. They give you photographs interests - you know what I mean.'

'Measurements?'

'Measurements.'

'And you fell for her?'

Hardinge nodded. 'Not difficult to do that, is it?'

'You still in love with her?'

'Yes.'

'She with you?'

'No.'

'You'll have to give me the address of the agency.'

'I suppose so.'

'How do you manage to get all the stuff without your wife knowing?'

'Plain envelopes -parcels -here -to my rooms. I get lots of academic material delivered here - no problem.'

'No problem,' repeated Morse quietly, with some distaste in his voice at last, as the authority on the great tits wrote down a brief address.

Hardinge watched from his window as the chief inspector walked along to the Porters' Lodge beside the well-watered, weedless lawn of the front quad. He'd seemed an understanding man, and Hardinge supposed he should be grateful for that. If he'd been a little brighter, perhaps, he would have asked one or two more perceptive questions about Myton, though. Certainly Hardinge knew amongst other things the TV company the lecherous cameraman claimed to have worked for. Yet oddly enough the chief inspector had seemed considerably more interested in Claire Osborne than in the most odious man it had ever been his, Hardinge's, misfortune to encounter.

CHAPTER FORTY

Then the little Hiawatha Learned of every bird its language, Learned their names and all their secrets (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha)

THAT afternoon PC Pollard was completely 'pissed off' with life as he later reported his state of mind to his Kidlington colleagues. He'd spoken to no one for more than two hours, since the two fellows from the path lab had been along to examine the cordoned off area, to dig several spits out of the brownly carpeted earth where the bones had lain, and to cart them off in transparent polythene bags. Not that they'd said much to him when they had been there just after lunch-time: the sort of men (Pollard had little doubt) with degrees in science and bio-chemistry and all that jazz. He appreciated the need for such people, of course, although he thought the force was getting a bit too full of these smart-alecs from the universities. He appreciated too that it was important to keep people away from the scene of the crime -if it was a crime. Exactly who these people were though, he wasn't sure. It was a helluva way from the car park for a couple to carry a groundsheet for a bit of clandestine sex; and they wouldn't go there, surely? He'd seen a few birdwatchers as he'd been driven along; but again, not there. Too dark and the birds couldn't fly in there anyway; it'd be like aeroplanes flying through barrage-balloon cables.

The afternoon was wearing tediously on, and for the umpteenth time Pollard consulted his wrist-watch: 4.25 p.m. A police car was promised up along the Singing Way at 5 p.m.; with further instructions, and hopefully with a relief-unless they'd decided to scrub the whole thing now the ground had been worked over, now the first excitement was over.

4-45 pm

4-55 pm.

Pollard folded away his copy of the Sun and picked up the flask they'd given him. He put on his black and white checkered cap, and walked slowly through the woodland riding, wholly unaware .hat a tiny white-fronted tree-creeper was spiralling up a beech ree to his left; that a little further on a lesser-spotted woodpecker -as suddenly sitting very still on a short oak branch as the crunching steps moved alongside.

Another pair of eyes too was watching the back of the shirt-sleeved constable as he walked further and further away; the eyes of a man who made no movement until the woodland around was completely still again, with only the occasional cries of the birds -the thin 'tseet-tseet' of the tree-creeper, and after a while the high 'qui-qui' of the woodpecker -to be heard in that late, still, summer afternoon. For unlike Constable Pollard this man knew much about the woods and about the birds.

The man made his way into the area behind the cordoned square, and, leaning forward, his eyes constantly fixed to the ground, began to tread slowly, as systematically as the terrain would allow, for about twenty yards or so before turning and retracing his steps along a line four or five feet further into the forest; repeating this process again and again until he had covered in area of roughly fifteen yards square. Once or twice he picked up some object from the densely matted floor, only to throw it aside immediately. Such a pattern of activity he repeated on the left-hand side of the cordoned area -into which he ventured at no point -working his way patiently along, ever watchful, ever alert, and occasionally freezing completely like a statue-waltzer once the music has abruptly stopped. In this fashion he worked for over an hour, like an ox that pulls the ploughshare to the edge of the field, then turns round on itself and plods a parallel furrow, right to left . . . left to right. Boustrophedon.

It was just after 6 p.m. when he found it. Almost he had missed it - just the top of the black handle showing. His eyes gleamed with the elation of the hunter pouncing on his quarry; but even as he pocketed his find his body froze once more. A rustle . . . nearby. Very near. Then, just as suddenly, he felt his shoulder muscles relax. Wonderfully so. The fox stood only three yards in front of him, ears pricked, staring him brazenly in the eye - before turning padding off into the undergrowth, as if deciding that this intruder, at least, was unlikely to molest its time-honoured solitary territory.

* The police car was very late ('Traffic!' the driver said) and the four of them -the three at the vehicular access points to the woods, and Pollard himself-couldn't alas be relieved until 7

p.m. Priority was still with the joy-riding kids, and no one seemed to know who was in charge of things there anyway: Sergeant Lewis had buggered off for a skiing holiday in Sweden -Christ! - and Chief Inspector bloody Morse was temporarily 'unavailable', probably in a pub. Pity the walkie-talkie wouldn't function a bit better, probably all those bloody trees, eh?

The tree-creeper was gone, and the lesser-spotted woodpecker was gone, as Pollard plodded reluctantly back to his post. And something else was gone too.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Little by little the agents have taken over the world. They don't do anything, they don't make anything - they just stand there and take their cut (Jean Giraudoux, The Madwoman of Chaillot]

WHETHER the agency was very busy, or whether the phone was out of order, or whether someone just didn't want to speak to him, Morse couldn't know. But it was 4.30 p.m. before he finally got through, and 5 p.m. before, crawling with the other traffic, he finally pulled into the small concreted parking area of the Elite Booking Services in Abingdon Road. The establishment (as it seemed to Morse) should ideally have been a glitzy, marble-and-glass affair, with a seductive and probably topless brunette contemplating her long scarlet fingernails at reception. But things were not so.

The front room of the slightly seedy semi-detached property was so cluttered with file-cases and cardboard boxes that room could be found for only two upright chairs -for the two women proprietors: one, very large, and certainly ill-advised to be wearing a pair of wide, crimson culottes; the other rather small and flat-chested, black-stockinged and minimally skirted. Both were smoking menthol cigarettes; and judging from the high-piled ashtrays around the room, both were continuously smoking menthol cigarettes. Instinctively Morse felt that the latter (if either) would be the boss. But it was the large woman (in her late twenties?) who spoke first:

'This is Selina - my assistant. I'm Michelle - Michelle Thompson. How can I help you?'

The smile, on the rounded dimpled cheeks, seemed warm enough -attractive even -and Morse, reluctantly taking Selina's seat, asked his questions and received his answers.

The agency was the receptor, the collator, and the distributor of 'information', from all quarters of the country, which might be of interest and use to assorted businesses, ranging from TV companies to film producers, clothes designers to fashion organizers, magazine editors to well, all right, purveyors of rather less salubrious products. In its Terms and Conditions contracts, the agency dissociated itself officially, legally, completely, from any liability arising from the misuse of its services. When a particular client hired a particular model, such a booking was made with the strict proviso that any abuse of contractual obligation was a matter to be settled between model and client -never model and agency. But such trouble was rare -very rare. McBryde had been a client for about two years: a very good client, if full and prompt payment were the criterion - 80 per cent of the negotiated fee to the model; 20 per cent to the agency.

Each spring a Model Year Book was produced; there were always new models, of course, and always new clients -with new, differing interests. But one of the Terms and Conditions ('Terribly important, Inspector!') was that any information originally divulged to the agency concerning individual models, and any information subsequently learned by the agency about the activities of either clients or models, would always remain a matter of the strictest confidentiality. Must still remain so now, unless, well . . . But at least the inspector could understand that once trust was gone ...

'And that's why you never contacted the police?'

'Exactly,' asserted Ms Thompson.

The link with the YWCA in London was very simple. The woman the police had earlier interviewed, Mrs Audrey Morris, was her sister. On the Friday before Karin had hitch-hiked to Oxford, Audrey had phoned to say that they had a young Swedish student with them who was down to her last few pennies; that the YWCA had given her a ten-pound note from the charity fund; that Audrey had written out the name, address, and telephone number of the Elite agency, and assured Michelle that the young lady was shapely, very photogenic, and probably sufficiently worldly-wise to know that a suitable session with a photographer might well work wonders for an impoverished pocket.

'You work on Sundays?'

'Sunday's a good day for sin, Inspector. And we had a client willing and waiting -if she came.'

'And she came?'

'She rang us from a call-box in Wentworth Road in North Oxford and Selina here went up in the Mini to fetch her-'

Morse could contain himself no longer. 'Bloody hell! Do you realize how much time and trouble you could have saved us? No wonder we've got so much unsolved crime when-'

'What crime exactly are we talking about, Inspector?'

Morse let it go, and asked her to continue.

But that was about it -little more to say. Selina had brought her there, to Abingdon Road: attractive, bronzed, blonde, full-figured, skimpily dressed; with a rucksack -yes, a red rucksack, and with very little else. The client from Seckham Villa had been on the look-out for such and similar offerings. A phone call. A verbal agreement: £100 for a one-hour session -£80 to the girl, £20 to the agency.

'How did she get up to Park Town?'

'Dunno. She said she'd walk up to the centre -only five minutes -and get a bite to eat. Didn't seem to want much help. Independent sort of girl.'

So that was that. At least for the present.

Before he left Morse asked to look through the current Model Year Book, a thick black-covered brochure from which, fairly certainly -or from a previous edition of which -the selected photocopies found at Seckham Villa had been taken. The photographs were all in black and white, but in this edition Morse could find neither Claire nor Louisa amongst the elegant ladies in their semi-buttoned blouses and suspendered stockings. No Karin either among the Ks: just Katie, and Kelly, and Kimberly, and Kylie . . .

'If I can take this?'

'Of course.'

'And I may have to bother you again, I'm afraid - with my sergeant.'

As Morse was leaving the phone rang and Selina made forward as if to take the call. But the senior partner picked up the receiver first, placed her hand over the mouthpiece, and bade her visitor farewell. Thus it was Selina the Silent who accompanied the chief inspector to the door, and who, a little to Morse's surprise, walked out with him to the Jaguar.

'There's something I want you to know,' she said suddenly. 'It's not important, I know, but. . .'

Unlike the Cockney ancestry of her partner's speech, the vowels here were curiously curly: the vowels of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

'I picked her up, you see. She was a lovely girl.'

'Yes?'

'Don't you see? I wanted her, Inspector. I asked her if she would see me -afterwards. I've got plenty of money, and she'd got she'd got nothing.' A tear, soon to roll slowly down the thin cheek, had formed in the right eye of Selina, the sleeping, weeping partner of the Agency.

Morse said nothing, trusting that for once his instincts were right.

'She said "no",' continued the woman simply. 'That's what I want you to know really: she wouldn't have done . . . some things. She just wouldn't. She wasn't for sale -not in the way most of them are.'

Morse laid a hand on a bony shoulder, and smiled at her under-standingly, hoping that he'd assimilated whatever it was she'd wanted to tell him. He thought he had.

As he drove away, Morse could see the mightily dimensioned Michelle still busily engaged with the needs of another client. She was certainly the dominant partner in the business; but he wondered who might be the dominant partner in the bed.

He was not back in Kidlington HQ until a quarter to seven, where he learned that some directive was needed - pretty soon! -about the personnel in Wytham Woods. Was the police team there to be disbanded? On the whole Morse thought it was becoming a waste of time to maintain any further watch. But logic sometimes held less sway in Morse's mind than feeling and impulse, and so he decided that perhaps he would continue with it after all.

He drove out of the HQ car park and turned on the radio; but' he'd just missed it -blast! - and he heard the signing-off signature-tune of The Archers as he headed towards Oxford, wondering how much else he might have missed that day.

Turning right at the Banbury Road roundabout he continued down to Wolvercote and called in at the Trout, where for more than an hour he sat on the paved terrace between the sandstone walls of the inn and the low parapet overlooking the river: drinking, and thinking -thinking about the strangely tantalizing new facts he was learning about the death of the Swedish Maiden.

Lewis rang at 10.15 p.m. He was back. He'd had a reasonably successful time, he thought. Did

Morse want to see him straightaway?

'Not unless you've got some extraordinary revelation to report.'

'I wouldn't go quite so far as that.'

'Leave it till the morning, then,' decided Morse.

Not that any decision Morse made that night was to be of very much relevance, since the routines of virtually every department at police HQ were to be suspended over the next three or four days. Trouble had broken out again at Broadmoor Lea, where half the inhabitants were complaining bitterly of under-policing and the other half protesting violently about police over-reaction; council workmen there were being intimidated; copy-cat criminality was being reported from neighbouring Bucks and Berks; another high-level two-day conference had been called for Thursday and Friday; the Home Secretary had stepped in to demand a full report; and the investigation of a possible crime committed perhaps a year earlier in either Blenheim Park or Wytham Woods or wherebloody-ever (as the ACC had put the case the following morning) was not going to be the number-one priority in a community where the enforcement of Law and Order was now in real jeopardy.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

To some small extent these Greek philosophers made use of observation, but only

spasmodically until the time of Aristotle. Their legacy lies elsewhere: in their

astonishing powers of deductive and inductive reasoning

(W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers)

LEWIS'S report from Sweden had been far more interesting, far more potentially suggestive, than Morse could have hoped. The flesh was being put on the bones, as it were -though no longer those particular bones which had been discovered in Pasticks. The thoughts of others too appeared to be shifting away from any guesswork concerning the likeliest spot in which to dig for the Swedish Maiden, and towards the possible identity of the murderer who had dug the hole in the first place - his (surely a 'he'?) interests, his traits, his psychological identikit, as it were. Especially the thoughts behind the latest letter to The Times, which Morse read with considerable interest on the morning of Friday, 2 4 July.

From the Reverend David M. Sturdy Sir, Like so many of your regular readers I have been deeply impressed by the ingenuity expended by your correspondents on the now notorious Swedish Maiden verses. All of us had hoped that such ingenuity would eventually reap its reward -especially the wholly brilliant analysis (July 13) resulting in the 'Wytham hypothesis'. It was therefore with much disappointment that we read (Tuesday, July 21) the findings of the police pathologist in Oxford.

I cannot myself hope to match the deductive logic of former correspondents. But is it not profitable to take a leaf out of Aristotle's book, and to look now for some inductive hypothesis? Instead of asking what the original author intended as clues, we should perhaps be asking an entirely different question, viz., what do the verses tell us about the person who wrote them, especially if such a person were trying to conceal almost as much as he was willing to reveal.

Two things may strike the reader immediately. First, the archaisms so prevalent in the verses ('tell'st', 'know'st', 'Wither', 'thy', 'thee', etc.) which strongly suggest that the author is wholly steeped in the language of Holy Writ. Second, the regular resort to hymnological vocabulary: "The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended' (1. n); 'As pants the hart for cooling streams' (1. 15); 'When I survey the wondrous cross' (1. 17) - all of which seem to corroborate the view that the author is a man regularly conditioned by such linguistic influences.

May I be allowed therefore to put two and two together and make, not a murderer, but a minister of God's church? May I go even further? And suggest a minister in the Church of Rome, where the confessional is a commonplace, and where in rare circumstances a priest may be faced with a grievous dilemma -the circumstances, say, when a sinner confesses to an appalling crime, and when the priest may be tempted to compromise the sacred principle of confidentiality and to warn society about a self-confessed psychopath, especially so if the psychopath himself has expressed a wish for such a course of action to be pursued.

Might it not be worthwhile then for the Thames Valley CID to conduct some discreet enquiries among the RC clergy within, say, a ten-mile radius of Carfax?

Yours truly, DAVID M. STURDY St Andrew's Vicarage, Norwich.

This letter was also read by Inspector Harold Johnson on holiday with his wife on the Lleyn Peninsula in North Wales. The small village store was not in the habit of stocking The Times, but he had picked up a copy on a shopping trip to Pwllheli that morning, and felt puzzled by the reference to 'the findings of the police pathologist in Oxford'. Not just puzzled, either; a whole lot pleased, if he were honest with himself. It wasn't very specific, but it must surely mean that the girl still hadn't been found. They'd found some other poor sod. Huh! That must have shot bloody Morse in the foot. Shot him up the arse if Strange had his finger on the trigger. He was reading the letter again quickly as his wife was arranging the supermarket carrier bags in the boot of the Maestro.

'What are you smiling at, darling?' she asked.

On Broadmoor Lea, the erection of bollards and concrete blocks, the construction of humps across the streets, and the simpler expedient of digging several holes to the depth of several feet these activities had put a virtual stop to any possibility of further joy-riding. All a bit makeshift, but all quite effective. There was revulsion too at the young girl's death. And more public cooperation. The police were winning. Or so it appeared. Marion Bridewell had been knocked down by a car (a shiny new BMW stolen from High Wycombe) with four youths inside. The car itself had been abandoned on the neighbouring Blackbird Leys estate, but a good many of the local inhabitants knew who one or two of them were; and some few bystanders, and some few indeed who had earlier applauded the teenagers' skills, were now semi-willing to testify to names and incidents. Earlier that week fourteen youths and two men in their early twenties had been arrested on the estate, and charged with a variety of motoring offences; six of them were still sitting in the cells. There would very soon be four more of them -the BMW four; and looking at things from the point of view of both the City and the County Constabularies, it was fairly certain that normal police duties could be resumed almost immediately.

The following day, Saturday 25 July, Philip Daley had caught the bus into Oxford at 11 a.m., and his mother had watched him disappear up to the main road before venturing quietly, fearfully, into his bedroom with the hoover. The red-covered pocket diary she'd given him for Christmas had remained unused in his drawer until earlier that month, when the entries had started. The first had been on Saturday the 4th, the writing cramped and ill-fitted into the narrow daily space:

Another tonight. Wow!!! What a squeeler what a bute. I never been so exited before.

And then the last, a fortnight later: Finish Finis End! We never meant it none of us. The screems sounded just like the tires but we never meant it.

Margaret Daley looked down again at the date, Saturday, 18 July. Her heart was sinking again within her, and in her misery she wished that she were dead.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

It is not the criminal things which are hardest to confess, but those things of which

we are ashamed

(Rousseau, Confessions)

MRS MARGARET DALEY pulled her white Mini into the tarmacadamed area ('For Church Purposes Only') just above St Michael and All Angels at the northern end of the Woodstock Road in Oxford -a white, pebble-dashed edifice, with a steeply angled roof surmounted, at the apex of the gable, by a small stone cross. Although she was not a regular worshipper - once a month or so, with the occasional Easter or Whitsun or Christmas service -Margaret's face was not unfamiliar there, and on the morning of Sunday, 26 July, she exchanged a few semi-smiling greetings; a few only, however, for the congregation was thin for the first Holy Mass at 8 a.m.

The car was George's really, but so often he used the Blenheim Estate van for getting around that it was almost always possible for her to have the prior call; and especially so on Sunday mornings. There had been very few cars on the road as she had driven down the dual-carriageway to the Pear Tree roundabout - her mind deeply and agonizingly preoccupied.

It had begun two years earlier, when George had bought the video; a bit surprising in any case, because he was no great TV addict, preferring a pint in the Sun most evenings to a diet of soaps. But he had bought a video machine; and soon he'd bought a few videotapes to go with it - the highlights of great sporting occasions, mostly: England's 1966 victory in the World Cup; Botham's miracles against the Australians; that sort of thing. The machine had been a rather complex affair, and from the outset there had been a taboo on anyone else manipulating it without his lordship's permission and supervision. It was his toy. Such possessiveness had irked young Philip a little, but the situation had been satisfactorily resolved when the lad had been presented wit:h a small portable TV of his own on his fifteenth birthday. But -in spite of his growing collection of tapes, her husband seldom actually watched them. Or so she'd thought. Gradually, however, she'd begun to realize that he did watch them - when she was away from the house; and particularly so on the regular occasions she was out, twice a week: aerobics on Tuesdays; WI on Thursdays. It had been one Tuesday night when she had been feeling unwell and flushed that she had left the class early and returned home to find her husband jumping up from his seat on the floor beside the TV screen, hurriedly flicking the 'Stop' switch on the video, turning over to the ITV channel, and taking out the tape. The next day, when he was at work, she had managed, for the first time, to get the wretched thing working -and had witnessed a few minutes of wholly explicit and (to her) monstrously disgusting pornography. She had said nothing though; had still said nothing.

But other things were fitting into place. About once every three weeks a brown, plain A4 envelope would be found among George's limited mail, containing, as she'd guessed, some sort of magazine about thirty or forty pages. Often the post would arrive before George left for work; but she had taken the next opportunity of a later delivery partially to steam open the flap on such a communication, and to discover more than sufficient to confirm her suspicions. But again she'd said nothing; had still said nothing; and would still say nothing. For although it was half of her trouble, it is the half of her trouble that she could the better bear . . ..

Perhaps things were slightly easier as she followed the Order of Mass that early Sunday morning, glancing the whiles around her at the familiar stations of the cross as she sat in a pew at the rear of the church. She knew next to no Latin herself - only what she had learned as a young girl from the RC services in the Douay Martyrs' Secondary School in Solihull. But especially had she then loved the sound of some of the long words they'd all sung: words like 'immolatum' from the Ave Verum Corpus -a serious-minded word, she'd always thought, sort of grand and sad and musical with all those 'm's in it. Although she'd never really known what it meant, she felt disappointed that they'd got rid of most of the Latin and gone for a thin kind of Englishness in the services; felt this disappointment again now as the Celebrant dismissed them:

"The Mass is ended. Go in peace.'

'Thanks be to God,' she'd replied, and waited in her place -until only one other solitary soul lingered there, still kneeling, head bowed, in one of the side pews.

After a few mild exhortations in the porchway to his departing flock, Father Richards reentered the church; and as he did so Margaret Daley rose and spoke to him, requesting a confessional hearing at one of the appropriate times: Saturdays, 11-12 a.m.; 5.30-6.15 p.m. Perhaps it was the earnestness of her manner, perhaps the moist film of her incipient tears, perhaps her voice -unhappy, hesitant, and trembling . . . But whichever, it mattered not. Father Richards took her gently by the arm and spoke quietly into her ear.

'If it will help, my child, come now! Let Christ, through His cross and through His resurrection, set you free from all your sins!'

It was not in the normal confessional box at all; but in a small study in the Manse behind the church that Father Richards heard as much as Margaret Daley felt willing to tell him. But even then she lied -lied when she said she had gone into her son's bedroom :o collect his dirty washing, lied about her deepest and most secret fears.

Twice, surreptitiously, Father Richards had looked down at his wrist-watch as he listened. But he refrained from interrupting her until she had told him enough, until he thought he understood enough. The burden of her sin was heavy; yet even heavier (he sensed it) was her guilt at prying into the affairs of others; her anguished conviction that it was precisely because of her prying, because of her snooping, that there had been such terrible secrets -,to discover. Had she not done so ... the secrets themselves might not have existed. This was her punishment. Oh God! What could she do?

For a while Father Richards offered no words of consolation; it was important, he knew, for the waters to be drained from the poisoned cistern. But soon -soon he would speak to her. And so it was that he sat and waited and listened until she was dry-eyed again; until her guilt and humiliation and self-pity were for the moment spent. She may have told him a lot or a little, she wasn't sure; but she had told him enough, and now it was time for him to speak.

'You must talk to your son, my child, and you must feel able to forgive him; and you must pray to God for guidance and strength. And this I promise -that I too will pray to God for you.' Momentarily there was a twinkle in the old priest's eyes. 'You know, with the two of us praying for the same thing, He might just listen a little bit harder.'

'Thank you, Father,' she whispered.

The priest placed his hand gently on hers, and closed his eyes as he recited the absolution: 'May God Almighty have mercy on you, forgive your sins, and lead you in the paths of righteousness.'

An 'Amen' was called for, but Margaret Daley had been unable to enunciate a single word, and now walked out of the Manse, and fiddled in her handbag for the car keys. The Mini was the only car remaining on the parking area, but another person was standing there, probably waiting for a lift, it seemed; the person who had been kneeling in the church after everyone else had gone; a person who now turned round and looked into Margaret's face -then looked past her face, unrecognizing, and turned away. The look had lasted but a second, yet in that second Margaret Daley's scalp had thrilled with sudden fear.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Impressions there may be which are fitted with links and which may catch hold on each other and render some sort of coalescence possible (John Livingstone Lowes, The Road to Xanadu)

ON THE morning of Monday, 27 July, Morse and Lewis were back in business at Kidlington HQ: Lewis (at Morse's insistence) once more going through his Swedish trip in meticulous detail especially through the furnishings and the photographs on view in Irma Eriksson's living room; and Morse (as always) seeking to convince himself that there was probably some vital clue he'd already missed; or, if not missed exactly, some clue whose true significance had hitherto eluded him. Since early that morning he had, as it were, been shaking the atoms laterally in the frying pan, hoping that a few hooks and eyes might link together and forge some new chain of thought; a new train of thought. . . train spotting . . . bird-spotting . . . birds . . . Yes, birds (like dogs!) had figured all over the place so far, especially the lesser-spotted woodpecker 'spotted' (that word again!) -yet still the link refused to make itself. He considered once again Karin's list of hopefully-soon-to-be-identified British birds, and realized that as yet he had made no contact with the woman who lived down near Llandovery . . . the home of the red kites . . . Llandovery, out into Wales along the A40 . . . A40, the third of the possibilities . . . the third of the roads that led off from the Woodstock Road roundabout. Inspector Johnson had done his pedestrian best with the road out to Blenheim Park; and he himself, Morse, had done his (equally pedestrian?) best with the road posted down to Wolver-cote and Wytham. But what if both of them had been wrong? Morse had re-read the statement made by Mrs Dorothy Evans (not an aunt, it appeared, but some second or third cousin, twice or thrice removed) in which she'd affirmed quite simply that Karin Eriksson had never visited her, never even telephoned her at that time; in fact had not seen 'little Karin' since that now largish girl was ten years old. No! The solution to the murder lay there in Oxford, in the environs of Oxford, Morse was convinced of that.

At 10.30 a.m. he decided that he had to speak to David Michaels once more; the man who had pointed the way -almost literally so -to the body found in Pasticks; the man who knew the woodland ridings out at Wytham better than almost any man alive.

From the very roundabout where Karin Eriksson might well have made her fatal decision, Lewis drove down through the twisting road of Lower Wolvercote, past the Trout Inn, and then up the hill towards Wytham village.

'What exactly is a handbrake-turn?' Morse had asked suddenly.

'Don't you know - really?'

'Well, of course, I've got a vague idea . . .'

'Just a minute, sir. Wait till we're round this next bend and I'll show you.'

'No! I didn't-'

'Only a joke, sir.'

Lewis laughed at his chief's discomfiture, and even Morse managed to produce a weak smile.

The police car drove up to the T-junction at Wytham village, turned left, then immediately right, past the dovecote in the car park of the White Hart, then right again into the lane that led up into Wytham Woods. On a gate-post to the right was fixed a bold notice, black lettering on an orange background:

WYTHAM AMATEUR OPERATIC SOCIETY Presents

THE MIKADO BY GILBERT & SULLIVAN Thursday July 30th, Friday July 3ist, & Saturday August 1st TICKETS £3.50 (Senior Citizens & Children £2.50)

'The wife's very fond of Gilbert and Sullivan. Far better than all your Wagner stuff, that,' ventured Lewis.

'If you say so, Lewis.'

'Full o' tunes - you know what I mean?'

'We don't go in for "tunes" in Wagner - we go in for "continuous melody".'

'If you say so, sir.'

They drove up to the semi-circular clearing at the edge of the Great Wood.

'We did it at school. I wasn't in it myself, but I remember, you know, everybody dressing up in all that oriental clobber.'

'The Mikado, you mean? Oh, yes. Well done!'

Morse seemed for a while almost half asleep, as Lewis stopped the car and looked across at the stone cottage where Michaels lived.

'We're in luck, sir.' Lewis wound down his window and pointed to the forester, a rifle under his right arm, its barrel tilted earthwards at 45 degrees, the black and white Bobbie happily sniffling the route ahead of him.

'Start the car up again, Lewis,' said Morse very quietly.

'Pardon?'

'Back to the village!' hissed Morse.

As the car momentarily drew alongside, it was Morse's turn to -wind his window down.

'Morning, Mr Michaels. Lovely morning!'

But before the forester could reply, the car had drawn away; and in his rear-view mirror Lewis could see Michaels standing and staring after them, a look of considerable puzzlement on his face.

They were almost the first customers in the White Hart, and Morse ordered a pint of Best Bitter

for himself.

'Which would you prefer, sir? We've got-'

'Whatever the locals drink.'

'Straight glass or handle?'

'Straight. Optical illusion, I know, but it always looks as if it holds more.'

'Both hold exactly-'

But Morse had turned to Lewis: 'You'd better not have too much. You're driving, remember.'

'Orange juice - that'll be fine, sir.'

'And, er . . .' Morse fiddled in his trouser pockets. 'I don't seem to have any coins on me. I'm sure the landlord doesn't want to change a twenty this early in the day.'

'Plenty of change-' began the landlord, but Morse had turned to the wall with his pint and was studying a medieval map of the old parishes around Wytham ...

At the time Morse was lifting his first pint, Alasdair McBryde was standing beside reception at the Prince William Hotel in Spring Street, just opposite Paddington railway station. After leaving Oxford -with what a frenetic burst of mental and physical energy! -he had driven the swiftly, chaotically loaded van via the M40 up to London, where he'd parked it in a lock-up garage off the Seven Sisters Road before taking the tube, and a suitcase, to Paddington -to the Prince William. It gave him considerable confidence that he could, if necessary, be standing in front of the departure board of the mainline BR station within one minute of stepping outside this hotel -or if need be by jumping outside it, for the sole window of his en suite bedroom was no more than six feet above the pavement.

The hotel proprietor was a small, perpetually semi-shaven Italian who spent half his working hours at reception studying the racing columns of the Sporting Life. He looked up as McBryde took out his wallet.

'You stay another day, Mr Mac?'

'Mc' had been the only part he could read of the semi-legible scrawl with which his guest had signed the register. And there was no typed name on any cheque to help; no cheque at all - just the two crisp twenty-pound notes he received each day for the following night's B & B, with the repeated injunction (as now) from Mr Mac: 'Give the change to the breakfast girl!' Not a big tip though, for the daily rate was £39.50.

Soon Luigi Bertolese was again reading through the runners in the 2 p.m. at Sandown Park, and looking especially at a horse there named 'Full English', with some moderate form behind him. He looked down too at one of the twenties, and wondered if the Almighty had whispered a tip in his ear.

* 'So you see, old friend? You see?' Morse beamed hugely as he finished his second pint. 'It was all due you Again!'

Lewis could see: for once was able to see perfectly clearly. And this for him was the joy of working with the strange man called Morse; a man who was somehow able to extricate himself from the strait-jacketing circumstances of any crime and to look at that crime from some exterior vantage point. It wasn't fair really! Yet Lewis was very proud to know that he, with all his limitations, could sometimes (as now) be the catalytic factor in the curious chemistry of Morse's mind.

'You having any lunch, sir?'

Morse had been talking for half an hour or so, quietly, earnestly, excitedly. It was now 12.15 pm

'No. Today I'll take my calories in liquid form.'

'Well, I think I'll get myself-'

'Here!' Morse took the precious twenty-pound note from his wallet. 'Don't go mad with it! Get yourself a cheese sandwich or something -and another pint for me.' He pushed his glass across the slightly rickety table. 'And get a beer-mat or something and stick it under one of these legs.'

For a few seconds as he stood at the bar Lewis looked back at his chief. Several other customers were now seated around, and one youth looked almost embarrassingly blissful as he gazed into the bespectacled eyes of the rather plain young woman sitting beside him. He looked, Lewis decided, almost as happy as Chief Inspector Morse.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

His addiction to drinking caused me to censure Aspern Williams for a while, until I

saw as true that wheels must have oil unless they run on nylon bearings. He could

stay still and not want oil, or move - if he could overcome the resistance

(Peter Champkin,, The Waking Life of Aspern Williams)

IN HER laboratory, Dr Laura Hobson had now begun to write her report, after resuming her analysis of the Wytham bones. Not really 'resuming' though, for the bones had hardly left her over the weekend. Quite early on she'd spotted the slight groove on the lower-left rib: it might have been the sharp incision of a rodent's tooth, of course; but it looked so distinctive, that thinly V-shaped mark. It was almost as if someone had deliberately made a notch in the rib -with a knife or similar instrument. It might be important? But no, that was the wrong way of looking at things. It might be important -no question mark; and Laura was oddly anxious to score a few Brownie-points on her first real enquiry. In any case she'd very much like to ingratiate herself a little with the strange policeman who had monopolized her thoughts these last few days. It was odd how you couldn't shake someone out of your mind, however hard you tried. And for Laura that weekend Morse should, she felt, have been reported to the Monopolies' Commission . . .

Once more she studied the scene-of-crime photographs, and she could identify quite easily the bone that was engaging her interest now. It had obviously lain in situ -not disseminated as so many of the others; and she felt fairly certain that the incision which her patient investigation had revealed was unlikely to have been caused by the tooth of some wild creature, tearing away a morsel from the still-fleshed bones. Could the notch have been caused by a knife, she wondered: after all, she was working, was she not, upon a murder'? So if it wasn't the foxes or the badgers or the birds . . .Again she adjusted the focus of the powerful microscope upon the top of the rib-bone, but she knew there could never be any definite forensic findings here. The very most she would suggest in her report was that the marked incision made slantwise across the top of the bottom-left rib-bone might possibly have been caused by some incisor tooth, or more probably some sharp implement -a knife, say. And if it were a knife that had been driven through the lower chest, it could well be, probably was, the cause of death. The body would have bled a good deal, with the blood saturating the clothing (if any?) and then seeping into the soil beneath the body; and not even the intervening months of winter, not even the last of the leaves and the accumulating debris from the growth all round, would ever completely obliterate such traces. That angle, though, was being pursued in the University Agricultural Research Station (coincidentally situated out at Wytham) and doubtless she would be hearing something soon. So what, though? Even if there were clear signs of blood to be found there, at the very most she would have a blood group, and Morse would be able to assume that the body had been murdered in situ. Big deal.

Morse! She'd heard he was a bit of a stickler for spelling and punctuation, and she wanted to make as good an impression as she could. Halfway down the first page of her report she was doubtful about one word, and spying a Chambers Dictionary on Max's shelves she quickly looked up the spelling of 'noticeable'.

It was the Pocket Oxford Dictionary that was being consulted (over proceeding') by another report-writer that afternoon, in the Thames Valley Police HQ. Orthographic irregularities were not an uncommon phenomenon in Lewis's writing; but he was improving all the time, and (like his chief) was feeling very happy with life as he transcribed the full notes he had taken on his Swedish investigation.

At 4 p.m., Mrs Irma Eriksson knocked lightly on the door of her daughter's bedroom, and brought in a tray carrying a boiled egg and two rounds of buttered toast. The flu had been virulent, but .the patient was feeling a good deal better now, and very much more relaxed.

As was her mother.

* At 6.45 p.m. the first -well, the first serious -rehearsal was under way for The Mikado. It was quite extraordinary, really, how much local talent there always was; even more extraordinary was how willingly, eagerly almost, this local talent was prepared to devote so much of its time to amateur theatricals, and to submit (in this instance) to the quite ridiculous demands of a producer who thought he knew -and in fact did know -most of the secrets of pulling in audiences, of ensuring laudatory reviews in the local press, of guiding the more talented vocalists into the more demanding roles, and above all of soothing the petty squabbles and jealousies which almost inevitably arise in such a venture.

Three hours, his wife had said -about that; and David Michaels had been waiting outside the village hall since 9.30 p.m. It wasn't all that far from home -back down the lane, past the pub, then right again up the road into the woods -little more than a mile, in fact; but it was now beginning to get really dark, and he was never going to take any chances with his lovely wife. His talented wife, too. She'd only been a member of the chorus-line in the Village Review the previous Christmas; but it had been agreed by all that a bigger part would be wholly warranted in the next production. So she'd been auditioned; and here she was as one of the three little Japanese girls from school. Nice part. Easy to learn.

She finally emerged at 10.10 p.m. and a slightly impatient Michaels drove her immediately along to the White Hart.

'Same as usual?' he asked, as she hitched herself up on to a bar stool.

'Please.'

So Michaels ordered a pint of Best Bitter for himself; and for his wife that mixture of orange juice and lemonade known as 'St Clements' -a mixture designed to keep the world's bell-ringers in a state of perpetual sobriety.

An hour later, as he drove the Land-rover back up to the cottage, Michaels felt beside the gear-lever for his wife's hand, and squeezed it firmly. But she had been very silent thus far; and remained so now, as she tucked the libretto under her arm and got out, locking the passenger door behind her.

'It's going to be all right, is it?' he asked.

'Is what going to be all right?'

'What do you think I mean? The Mickadoo!'

'Hope so. You'll enjoy me, anyway.'

Michaels locked his own side of the Land-rover. 'I want to enjoy you now!'

She took his hand as they walked to the front porch.

'Not tonight, David. I'm so very tired - please understand.'

Morse too was going home at this time. He was somewhat over-beered, he realized that; yet at least he'd everything to celebrate that day. Or so he told himself as he walked along, his steps just occasionally slightly unbalanced, like those of a diffident funambulist.

Dr Alan Hardinge decided that Monday evening to stay in college, where earlier he'd given a well-rehearsed lecture on 'Man and his Natural Environment'. His largely American audience had been generously appreciative, and he (like others that evening) had drunk too much -drunk too much wine, had too many liqueurs. When at 11.30 p.m. he had rung his wife to suggest it would be wiser for him to stay in his rooms overnight, she had raised not the slightest objection.

Neither Michaels, nor Morse, nor Hardinge, was destined to experience the long unbroken sleep that Socrates had spoken of, for each of the three, though for different reasons, had much upon his mind.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees (William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell]

WEDNESDAY, the 2gth July, was promising to be a busy day; and so it proved.

Inspector Johnson had returned from his holiday the day before, and was now au fait with most of the latest developments in the Swedish Maiden case. At 9.30 a.m. he girded his loins -and rang Strange.

'Sir? Johnson here.'

'Well?'

'I've been sorry to read things haven't worked out at Wytham-' 'Yes?'

'It's just that if you'd be prepared to give me the chance of some men in Blenheim again - '

'No chance. Don't you realize that while you've been lying bare-arsed on the beaches we've had all these bloody joy-riders-'

'I've read all about it, sir. All I was thinking-'

'Forget it! Morse is in charge now, not you. All right, he's probably making a bloody mess of it. But so did yow! And until I give the say-so, he's staying fully in charge. So if you'll excuse me, I've got a train to catch.'

Morse also had a train to catch and left on the ten o'clock for London, where Lewis had arranged for him to meet a representative of the Swedish Embassy (for lunch), and the supervisor of the King's Cross YWCA (for tea).

For Lewis himself, after seeing Morse off at Oxford railway station, there were a great many things still to be done. Preliminary enquiries the previous day had strongly suggested -confirmed really -that Morse's analysis of the case (to which Lewis, and Lewis alone, was hitherto privy) was substantially correct in most respects. Often in the past Morse had similarly been six or so furlongs ahead of the field only later to find himself running on the wrong racecourse. This time, though, it really did look as if the old boy was right; and from Lewis's point of view it was as if he'd dreamed of the winner the night before and was now just going along to the bookmaker's to stick a few quid on a horse that had already passed the winning post.

Fortunately the pressure was temporarily off the troubles at Broadmoor Lea, and it was no difficulty for Lewis to enlist some extra help. Two DCs were assigned to him for the rest of the day; and this pair were soon off to investigate both the City and the County records of car thefts, car break-ins, car vandalism, etc., in the few days immediately following the last sighting of the Swedish Maiden. Carter and Helpston had seemed to Lewis a pretty competent couple; and so, later that Wednesday, it would prove to be the case.

In mid-morning, Lewis rang The Oxford Mail and spoke to the editor. He'd like to fax some copy -copy which Morse had earlier drafted -for that evening's edition. All right? No problem, it appeared.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN SWEDISH MAIDEN MYSTERY Detective Chief Inspector Morse of the Thames Valley CID is confident that recently unearthed evidence has thrown a completely new light on the baffling case of Karin Eriksson, who disappeared in Oxford more than a year ago, and whose rucksack was discovered soon afterwards in a hedgerow-bottom at Begbroke. A body found after a search of Wytham Woods has proved not to be that of the Swedish student, and the chief inspector told our reporter that further searches of the area there have now been called off. Murder enquiries continue, however, and it is understood that the focus of police activity is now once again centred on the Blenheim Estate in Woodstock - the scene of the first phase of intensive enquiries just over a year ago.

The police are also asking anyone to come forward who has any information concerning Dr Alasdair McBryde, until very recently living at Seckham Villa, Park Town, Oxford. Telephone 0865 846000, or your nearest police station.

Later in the day both Chief Superintendent Strange and Chief Inspector Johnson were to read this article: the former with considerable puzzlement, the latter with apparently justifiable exasperation.

And someone else had read the article.

The slim Selina had been more than a little worried ever since Morse had called at the agency. Not worried about any sin of commission; but about one of omission, since she'd been almost certain, when Morse had asked for anything on McBryde, that there had been a photograph somewhere. Each Christmas the agency had given a modest little canape-and-claret do; and later that afternoon in Abingdon Road, and temporarily minus the mighty Michelle, she had decided where, if anywhere, the photograph might be. She looked in the files under 'Parties, Promotions etc.', and there it was: a black and white six-by four-inch photograph of about a dozen of them, party hats perched on their heads, wine glasses held high in their hands -a festive, liberally lubricated crew. And there, in the middle, the bearded McBryde, his arms round two female co-revellers.

Morse had bought a copy of The Times in Menzies book-stall at Oxford railway station. In the context of the case as a whole, the two Letters to the Editor which he read just after Didcot (the crossword finished all but one clue) were not of any great importance. Yet the first was, for Morse, the most memorable letter of them all, recalling a couplet he'd long been carrying around in his mental baggage.

From Mr Gordon Potter Sir, My interest in the Swedish Maiden verses is minimal; my conviction is that the whole business is a time-consuming hoax. Yet it is time that someone added a brief gloss to the admirable letter printed in your columns (July 24). If we are to seek a priest of Roman Catholic persuasions as the instigator of the verses, let me suggest that he will also almost certainly be an admirer of the greatest poet-scholar of our own century. I refer to A. E. Housman. How else do we explain line 3 of the printed verses ('Dry the azured skylit water')? Let me quote Norman Marlow in his critical commentary, A. E. Housman, page 145: Two of the most beautiful lines in Housman's work are surely these:

And like a skylit water stood

The bluebells in the azured wood.

Here again is a reflection in water, and this time the magic effect is produced by repeating the syllable "like" inside the word "skylit" but inverted as a reflection in water is inverted.'

Yours faithfully,

J. GORDON POTTER, 'Arlington', Leckhampton Road, Cheltenham, Glos.

And the second, the sweetest:

From Miss Sally Monroe Sir, 'Hunt' (1. 18)? 'kiss' (1. 20)? And so far I only know one poem by heart. 'Jenny kissed me when we met', by Leigh Hunt (1784-1859).

Yours faithfully, SALLY MONROE (aged 9 years) 22 Kingfisher Road, Bicester, Oxon.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Yonder, lightening other loads, The seasons range the country roads,

But here in London streets I ken

No such helpmates, only men

(A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad)

MORSE'S day was satisfactory - but little more.

He had arrived a quarter of an hour late, with the diesel limping the last two miles into Paddington at walking-pace, for reasons (Morse suspected) not wholly known even to the engine-driver. But he still arrived in good time at the Swedish Embassy in Montague Place for his meeting with Ingmar Engstrom, a slim, blond fellow in his forties, who seemed to Morse to exude a sort, of antiseptic cleanliness, yet who proved competent and helpful, and willing to instigate immediate enquiries into the matter which Morse (with the greatest care) explained to him.

Lunch was brought into Engstrom's office, and Morse looked down unenthusiastically at the thin, pale slice of white-pastried quiche, the half jacket potato, and the large separate bowl of undressed salad.

‘

Very good for the waist-line,' commented the good-humoured Swede. 'And no sugar in this either. Guaranteed genuine!' he added, pouring two glasses of chilled orange juice.

Morse escaped from Montague Place as soon as good manners allowed, professing profuse gratitude but refusing further offers of cottage-cheese, low-fat yoghurt, or fresh fruit, and was quite soon to be heard complimenting the landlord of a Holborn pub on keeping his Ruddles County Bitter in such good nick.

Seldom had tea as a meal, never had tea as a beverage, assumed any great importance in Morse's life. Although relieved therefore not to be faced with the choice of China or Indian, he could well have done without the large plastic cup of weak-looking luke-warm tea which he poured for himself from the communal urn in the virtually deserted canteen of the YWCA premises. For a while they chatted amiably, if aimlessly: Morse discovering that Mrs Audrey Morris had married a Welshman, was still married to the same Welshman, had no children, just the one sister -the one in Oxford -and, well, that was that. She'd been trained as a social worker in the East End, and taken the job of superintendent of the YWCA four years since. She enjoyed the job well enough, but the situation in London was getting desperate. All right, the hostel might be two rungs up from the cardboard-box brigade, but all the old categories were gradually merging now into a sort of communal misery: women whose homes had been repossessed; wives who had been battered; youngish girls who were unemployed or improvident or penniless -or usually all three; birds of passage; and druggies, and potential suicides, and of course quite frequently foreign students who'd miscalculated their monies -students like Miss Karin Eriksson.

Morse went through the main points of the statement she had made the previous summer, but there was, it seemed, nothing further she could add. Like her younger sister she was considerably overweight, with a plump, attractive face in which her smile, as she spoke, appeared guileless and cooperative. So Morse decided he was wasting his time, and sought answers to some other questions: questions about what Karin was like, how she behaved, how she'd got on with the others there.

Was it that Morse had expected a litany of seductive charms -the charms of a young lady with full breasts ever bouncing beneath her low-cut blouse, with an almost indecently short skirt tight-fitting over her bottom, and her long, bronzed legs crossed provocatively as she sat sipping a Diet Coke ... or a Cognac? Only half expected though, for his knowledge of Karin Eriksson was slowly growing all the time; was growing now as Mrs Morris rather gently recalled a girl who was always going to catch men's eyes, who was certainly aware of her attraction, and who clearly enjoyed the attention which it always brought. But whether she was the sort of young woman whose legs would swiftly -or even slowly -ease apart upon the application of a little pressure, well, Audrey Morris was much more doubtful. She'd given the impression of being able to keep herself, and others, pretty much under control. Oh yes!

'But she - she might lead men on a bit, perhaps?' asked Morse.

'Yes.'

'But maybe' - Morse was having some difficulty - 'not go much further?'

'Much further than what?'

'What I'm saying is, well, we used to have a word for girls like that -when I was at school, I mean.'

'Yes?'

'Yes.'

' "Prick-teaser"? Is that the word you're looking for?'

'Something like that,' said Morse, smiling in some embarrassment as he stood up and prepared to leave; just as Karin Eriksson must have stood up to take her leave from these very premises, with ten pounds in her purse and the firm resolve (if Mrs Morris could be believed) of hitch-hiking her way not only to Oxford, but very much further out along the A40 - to Llandovery, the home of the red kite.

Audrey Morris saw him out, watching his back as he walked briskly towards the underground station at King's Cross, before returning to her office and phoning her sister in Oxford.

‘I’ve just had your inspector here!'

'No problems, I hope?'

'No! Quite dishy though, isn't he?'

'Is he?'

'Come off it! You said he was.'

'Did you give him a glass of that malt?'

'What?'

'You didn't give him a drink?'

'It's only just gone four now.'

'A-u-d-r-e-y!'

'How was I to know?'

'Didn't you smell his breath?'

'Wasn't near enough, was I?'

'You didn't manage things at all well, did you, sis!'

'Don't laugh but - I gave him a cup of tea.'

In spite of the injunction, the senior partner of Elite Booking Services laughed long and loud at the other end of the line.

* Morse arrived back in Oxford at 6.25 p.m., and as he crossed over the bridge from Platform 2 he found himself quietly humming one of the best-known songs from The Mikado:

My object all sublime

I shall achieve in time

To let the punishment fit the crime,

The punishment fit the crime . . .

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs (Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson)

FOR SEVERAL persons either closely or loosely connected with the case being reported in these pages, the evening of Thursday, 30 July, was of considerable importance, although few of the persons involved were aware at the time that the tide of events was now approaching its flood.

7.25 p.m.

One of the three little maids peered out from one side of the tatty, ill-running stage-curtain and saw that the hall was already packed, 112 of them, the maximum number stipulated by the fire regulations; saw her husband David -bless him! -there on the back row. He had insisted on buying himself a ticket for each of the three performances, and that had made her very happy. Did he look just a little forlorn though, contributing nothing to the animated hum of conversation all around? He'd be fine though; and she - she felt shining and excited, as she stepped back from the curtain and rejoined her fellow performers. All right, there were only a few square yards 'backstage'; such a little stage too; such an inadequate, amateurish orchestra; such a pathetic apology for lighting and effects. And yet. . . and yet the magic was all around, somehow: some competent singers; excellent make-up, especially for the ladies; lovely costumes; super support from the village and the neighbourhood; and a brilliant young pianist, an undergraduate from Keble, who wore a large earring, who could sing the counter-tenor parts from the Handel operas like an angel, and who spent most of his free time on lonely nocturnal vigils watching badgers in the nearby woods.

Yes, for Cathy Michaels the adrenaline was flowing freely, and any worries her husband might be harbouring for her -or she for him\ -were wholly forgotten as with a few sharp taps of the conductor's baton there fell a hush upon the hall; and with the first few bars of the overture, The Mikado had begun. Quickly she looked again in one of the mirrors there at the white-faced, black-haired, pillar-box-red-lipped Japanese lady who was herself; and knew why David found her so attractive. David ... a good deal older than she was, of course, and with a past of which she knew so very little. But she loved him, and would do anything for him.

7.50 p.m.

The four youths, aged twelve, fourteen, seventeen, and seventeen, were still being held in police custody, in St Aldate's. Whereas collectively on the East Oxford estates they had, by all accounts, appeared a most intimidating bunch, individually they now looked unremarkable. Quite quickly after their arrest had the bravado of this particular quartet disintegrated, and as Sergeant Joseph Rawlinson now looked again at one of the seventeen-year-olds, he saw only a nervous, surly, not particularly articulate lad. Gone was the bluster and aggression displayed in the back of the police car when they had picked him up from home - and now they were taking him back.

'These things all you had on you, son?'

'S'pose so, yeah.'

Rawlinson picked them up carefully, one by one, and handed them across. 'Fiver, £1, £1, 50p, 10p, 5p, 5p, 5p, 2p, 2p, 1p OK? Comb; Marlboro cigarettes; disposable lighter; packet of condoms, Featherlite - only one left; half a packet of Polos; two bus tickets-one blue Biro. OK?'

The youth stared sullenly, but said nothing.

'And this!' Rawlinson picked up a red-covered diary and flicked quickly through the narrow-ruled pages before putting it in his own jacket pocket. 'We're going to keep this, son. Now I want you to sign there.' He handed over a typed sheet and pointed to the bottom of it.

Ten minutes later Philip Daley was once more in the back of a police car, this time heading out to his home in Begbroke, Oxon.

* 'Makes you wonder, Sarge!' ventured one of the constables as Rawlinson ordered a coffee in the canteen.

'Mm.' Joe Rawlinson was unhappy about committing himself too strongly on the point: his own lad, aged fifteen, had become so bolshie these last six months that his mum was getting very worried about him.

'Still, with this -what's it? -Aggravated Vehicle-taking Bill. Unlimited fines! Might make 'em think a bit harder.'

'Got sod-all to start with though, some of 'em.'

'You're not going soft, Sarge?'

'Oh no! I think I'm getting harder,' said Rawlinson quietly, as he picked up his coffee, and walked

over to an empty table at the far corner of the canteen. He hadn't recognized the lad. But he'd recognized the name immediately -from that time the previous summer when he'd been working under Chief Inspector Johnson out at Blenheim. It could, of

course, have just been one of those minor coincidences that were always cropping up in life -had it not been for the diary: a bit disturbing, some of the things written in that. In fact he'd almost expected to meet his old chief Johnson out on the estates at the weekend, amid the half-bricks and the broken bottles. But someone had said he was off on holiday - lucky bugger! Still, Rawlinson decided to get in touch if he could; try to ring him up tomorrow.

8.15 p.m.

Anders Fasten, a very junior official at the Swedish Embassy, had at last found what he was looking for. It had been a long search, and he realized that if only the files had been kept in a more systematized fashion he would have saved himself many, many hours. He would mention this fact to his boss; and -who knows? -the next tricky passport query might be answered in minutes. But he was pleased to have found it: it was important, he'd been informed. In any case, his boss would be pleased. And he much wanted to please his boss, for she was very beautiful.

9 pm.

Sergeant Lewis had arrived home from HQ half an hour earlier, had a meal of eggs (two), sausages (six), and chips (legion), and now sat back in his favourite chair, turned on the BBC news, and reviewed his day with considerable satisfaction . . .

Especially, of course, had Morse been delighted with the photograph of Alasdair McBryde; and even more delighted with the fact that, on his own initiative, Lewis had given instructions for police leaflets to be printed, and for adverts to be placed in the following day's Oxford Mail, Friday's edition of The Oxford Times - and the Evening Standard.

'Masterstroke, that is!' Morse had exclaimed. 'What made you think of the Evening Standard?

'You said you were sure he'd gone to London, sir.'

'Ah!'

'Didn't meet him by any chance?' Lewis had asked happily . . .

After the weather forecast -another fine sunny day, with temperatures ranging from 22 degrees Celsius in the south -Lewis put out the regular two milk-tokens, locked and bolted the front door, and decided on an early night. He heard his wife humming some Welsh melody as she washed up the plates and he went through to the kitchen and put his arms round her.

'I'm off to bed - bit weary.'

‘`appy too, by the sound of you. 'ad a good day?'

'Pretty good.'

'That because bloody Morse beggared off and left you on your own?'

'No! Not really.'

She dried her hands and turned to him. 'You enjoy workin' for 'im, don't you?'

'Sometimes,' agreed her husband. 'It's just that he sort of-lifts me a bit, if you know what I mean.'

Mrs Lewis nodded, and draped the dish-cloth over the tap. 'Yes, I do,' she replied.

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

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which never

yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town-meeting or a

vestry

(Thomas Jefferson, Letters)

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-'

But suddenly she stopped, as she saw Morse grinning hugely beside the door, and Lewis standing somewhat discomfited beside the desk.

'I'm sorry, it's just that-' .

'Please forgive my sergeant, Dr Hobson. He means well - don't you, Lewis?'

Morse watched the slim curves of her legs as she left the office, the colour still risen in her cheeks.

'What was all that about?' began Lewis.

'Bit touchy about what people call her, that's all.'

'Bit like you, sir?'

'She's nice, don't you think?' asked Morse, ignoring the gentle gibe.

To be truthful, sir, I think she's a smasher.'

Somehow this plain statement of fact, made by an honest and honourable man, caught Morse somewhat off his guard. It was as if the simple enunciation of something extremely obvious had made him appreciate, for the first time, its truth. And for a few seconds he found himself hoping that Dr Laura Hobson would return to collect something she'd forgotten. But she was a neatly organized young woman, and had forgotten nothing.

Just before Morse and Lewis were leaving for a cup of coffee in the canteen, a call came through from PC Pollard. This rather less-than-dedicated vigilante of Pasticks had been one of four uniformed constables detailed to the compass-point entrances of Blenheim Park; and he was now ringing, with some excitement in his voice, to report that the Wytham Woods Land-rover, driven by David Michaels (whom he'd immediately recognized), had just gone down to the garden centre there. Should he try to see what was happening? Should he - investigate?

Morse took the portable phone from Lewis. 'Good man! Yes, try to see what's going on. But don't make it too obvious, all right?'

'How the hell's he going to do that?' asked Lewis when Morse had finished. 'He's in uniform.'

'Is he? Oh.' Morse appeared to have no real interest in the matter. 'Make him feel important though, don't you think?'

Chief Inspector Johnson was on his second cup of coffee when Morse and Lewis walked into the canteen. Raising a hand he beckoned Morse over: he'd welcome a brief word, if that was all right? Just the two of them though, just himself and Morse.

Ten minutes later, in Johnson's small office on the second floor, Morse learned of the red diary found the previous day on the person of Philip Daley. But before the two detectives discussed this matter, it was Johnson who'd proffered the olive-branch.

'Look. If there's been a bit of bad feeling - well, let's forget it, shall we? What do you say?'

'No bad feeling on my side,' claimed Morse.

'Well, there was on mine,' said Johnson quietly.

'Yeah! Mine, too,' admitted Morse.

'OK then?'

'OK.'

The two men shook hands firmly, if unsmilingly, and Johnson now stated his case. There'd been a flood of information over the past few days, and one thing was now pretty certain: Daley Junior had been one of the four youths -though not the driver -in the stolen BMW that had killed Marion Bridewell. From all accounts, the back wheels had slewed round in an uncontrollable skid and knocked the poor little lass through a shop window.

'Bit of an odd coincidence, certainly - the boy being involved in both cases,' commented Morse.

'But coincidences never worried you much, did they?'

Morse shrugged. 'I don't reckon he had much to do with the Eriksson case, though.'

'Except he had the camera,' said Johnson slowly.

'Ye-es.' Morse nodded, and frowned. Something was troubling m a little; like a speck of grit in a smoothly oiled mechanism; ke a small piece of shell in a soft-boiled egg.

Since the tragedy, Mrs Lynne Hardinge, a slim, well-groomed, grey-haired woman of fifty, had thrown herself with almost frenetic energy into her voluntary activities: Meals on Wheels, Cruse, Help the Aged, Victim Support. . . Everyone was saying what a wonderful woman she was; everyone commented on how well she was coping.

At the time that Morse and Johnson were talking together, she got out of the passenger seat in the eight-windowed Volvo, and taking with her two tin-foiled cartons, main course and sweet, knocked firmly on a door in the Osney Mead estate.

Most of those who received their Meals on Wheels four times a week were grateful and gracious enough. But not quite all.

'It's open!'

"Here we are then, Mrs Gruby.'

'Hope it's not that fish again!'

'Lamb casserole, and lemon pudding.'

‘Tuesday's was cold - did you know that?'

‘Oh dear!'

The wonderfully well-coping voluntary worker said no more, but her lips moved fiercely as she closed the door behind her. Why didn't you stick it in the fucking oven then, you miserable old bitch? Sometimes she felt she could go quite, quite mad. Just recently too she'd felt she could easily shoot somebody - certainly that pathetic two-timing husband of hers.

CHAPTER FIFTY

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging

whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question

of philosophy

(Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus]

IT WAS immediately following Morse's almost unprecedentedly alcohol-free lunch (cheese sandwich and coffee) that the crucial break in the case occurred. And it was Lewis's good fortune to convey the tidings to the canteen, where Morse sat reading the Daily Mirror.

When earlier in the week Morse had argued that a car would have been required, that a car would have been essential, that a car would have to be disposed of-when earlier Morse had argued these points, the firing plugs in Lewis's practical mind had sputtered into life: cars lost, cars stolen, cars vandalized, cars burned, cars abandoned, cars found on the streets, cars towed away - Lewis had straightway gauged the possibilities; and drawing a vaguely twenty-mile radius round Oxford, after consultation with the Traffic Unit, he had been able to set in motion a programme of fairly simple checks, with attention focused on the few days following the very last sighting of Karin Eriksson.

The key evidence would have been difficult to miss, really, once the dates were specified, since Lt. Col. Basil Villiers, MC, had rung the police on no less than twelve occasions during the period concerned, complaining that the car found abandoned and vandalized, and thereafter further vandalized and finally fired, was a blot on the beautiful landscape -a disgrace, an eyesore, and an ugliness; that he (the aforesaid Colonel) had not fought against despotism, dictatorship, totalitarianism, and tyranny to be fobbed off with petty excuses concerning insurance, liability, obligation, and availability of personnel. But it had only been after considerable difficulty (number plates now gone, though registration markings still on the windows) that the owner of the vehicle had been traced, and the offending 'eyesore' towed away from the neighbourhood of the Colonel's bungalow to some vehicular Valhalla - with a coloured photograph the only memento now of what once had been a newborn, sleek, and shining offspring of some Japanese assembly line.

The keying-in of the registration number now (as presumably a year earlier?) had produced, within a few seconds, the name and address of the owner: James Myton, of 24 Hickson Drive, Baling; or rather formerly of 24 Hickson Drive, Baling, since immediate enquiries at this address had confirmed only that James Myton had not lived there for more than a year! Swansea DVLC had sent three letters to the said address, but without reply. LMJ 5946 was a lapsed registration, though still not deleted, it appeared, from the official records kept in South Wales.

As for Myton himself, his name had appeared on Scotland Yard's missing-persons list for the second half of 1991. But in that year over 30,000 persons were registered as 'missing' in London alone; and a recent report, wholly backed by Sir Peter Imbert himself, suggested that the index was becoming so inaccurate that it should be restarted from scratch, with a completely fresh re-check on each of the legion names listed. As Morse saw things though, it was going to take considerably more than a 'recheck' to revive any hopes of the missing Mr James Myton ever being found alive again.

By mid-afternoon there was firm corroboration from Baling that the body found in Pasticks was that of James William Myton, who as a boy had first been taken 'into care' by the local authority; later looked after by an ageing couple (now deceased) in Brighton; and thereafter supervised for a time by HM Borstal Service on the Isle of Wight. But the young man had always shown a bit of practical talent; and in 1989, aged twenty-six, he had emerged into the outside world with a reputation for adequate competence in carpentry, interior design, and photography. For eighteen months he had worked in the TV studios at Bristol. A physical description from a woman living two doors away from him in Ealing suggested 'a weakish sort of mouth in which the lower teeth were set small and evenly spaced, like the crenellations of a young boy's toy-fort'.

'She should have been a novelist!' said Morse.

'She is a novelist,' said Lewis.

At all events Myton was not now to be found; and unlikely to be found. Frequently in the past he had been a man of no permanent address; but in the present Morse was sure that he was a permanent dweller in the abode of the dead - as the lady novelist might have phrased it in one of her purplier passages.

Yet things were going very well on the whole - going very much as Morse had predicted. And for the rest of the afternoon the case developed quietly: no surprises; no set-backs. At 5.45 p.m. Morse called it a day and drove down to his flat in North Oxford.

For about two hours that afternoon, as on every weekday afternoon, the grossly overweight wife of Luigi Bertolese sat at the receipt of custom in the Prince William Hotel, whilst her husband conducted his daily dealings with Mr Ladbroke, Turf Accountant. The early edition of the Evening Standard lay beside her, and she fixed her pair of half-lenses on to her small nose as she began reading through. At such times she might have reminded some of her paying guests of an owl seated quietly on a branch after a substantial meal -half dopey as the eyelids slowly descended, and then more than commonly wise as they rose ... as they rose again now when number 8 came in, after his lunch. And after his drink - by the smell of him.

The photograph was on the front page, bottom left: just a smallish photograph and taken when he'd had a beard, the beard he'd shaved off the day after his arrival at the hotel. Although Maria Bertolese's English was fairly poor, she could easily follow the copy beneath: 'The police are anxious to interview this man, Alasdair McBryde . . .'

She gave him the room-key, handed over two twenty-pound notes, and nodded briefly to the newspaper.

'I doan wanna no trouble for Luigi. His heart is not good - is bad.'

The man nodded, put one of the twenties in his wallet, and gave her back the other: 'For the breakfast girl, please.'

When Luigi Bertolese returned from the betting shop at four o'clock, number 8, cum luggage, had disappeared.

* At the ticket office in the mainline Paddington terminus, McBryde asked for a single to Oxford. The 16.20, calling at Reading, Didcot Parkway, and Oxford, was already standing at Platform 9; but there was ten minutes to spare, and from a British Telecom booth just outside the Menzies bookshop there he rang a number (direct line) in Lonsdale College, Oxford.

Dr Alan Hardinge put the phone down slowly. A fluke he'd been in his rooms really. But he supposed McBryde would have caught up with him somewhere, sometime; there would have been a morning or an afternoon or an evening when there had to come a rendering of accounts, a payment of the bill, eine Rechnung, as the Germans said. He'd agreed to meet the man of course. What option had he? And he would see him; and they would have a distanced drink together, and talk of many things: of what was to be done, and what was not to be done.

And then?

Oh God! What then?

He put his head in his hands and jerked despairingly at the roots of his thick hair. It was the cumulative nature of all these bloody things that was so terrible. Several times over the last few days he'd thought of ending it all. But, strangely perhaps, it had not been any fear concerning death itself that had deterred him; rather his own inability to cope with the practical aspects of any suicide. He was one of those people against whom all machinery, all gadgetry, would ever wage perpetual war, and never in his life had he managed to come to terms with wires and switches and fuses and screws. There was that way of ending things in the garage, for example -with closed doors and exhaust fumes; but Hardinge suspected he'd cock that up completely. Yet he'd have to do something, for life was becoming intolerable: the failure of his marriage; his rejection by the only woman he'd really grown to love; the futility of academic preferment; his pathetic addiction to pornography; the death of his daughter; and now, just a few minutes ago, the reminder of perhaps the most terrible thing of all ...

* The second performance of The Mikado, as Morse recalled, was scheduled, like the first, for 7.30 p.m. Still plenty of time to get ready and go, really. But that evening too he decided against it.

The first night had been all right, yes - but all a bit nervy, a bit 'collywobbly", as the other girls had said. They'd be in really good form that second night, though. David had said she'd been fine the first night -fine] But she'd be better now; she'd show him!

With five minutes to go, she peeped round the curtain again and scanned the packed audience. David's ticket for each of the three nights had been on the back row, and she could see one empty seat there now, next to the narrow gangway. But she could see no David. He must, she thought, be standing just outside the hall, talking to somebody before the show began. But seat K5 was destined to remain unoccupied that evening until, during the last forty minutes, one of the programme-sellers decided she might as well give her aching feet a welcome rest.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

He that is down needs fear no fall, He that is low, no pride (John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress)

WHETHER Morse had been expecting something of the kind, Lewis wasn't at all sure. But certain it was that the Chief Inspector appeared less than surprised when the telephone call came through from Dr Alan Hardinge the following morning. Could he see Morse, please? It wasn't desperately urgent -but well, yes it was desperately urgent really, at least for him.

Morse was apparently perfectly content for Lewis to interject one or two obvious questions, just to keep things flowing - the meanwhile himself listening carefully, though with a hint of cynicism around his lips. Perhaps, as Lewis saw things, it had been the preliminary niceties that had soured his chief a little:

MORSE: I was very sorry to learn of your daughter's accident, Dr Hardinge. Must have been a -a terrible

HARDINGE: How would you know? You've no children of your own.

MORSE: How did you know that?

HARDINGE: I thought we had a mutual friend, Inspector.

No, it hadn't been a very happy start, though it had finished far more amicably. Hardinge had readily agreed to have his statement recorded on tape; and the admirably qualified WPC Wright was later to make a very crisp and clean transcription, pleasingly free from the multi-Tipp-Exed alterations that usually characterized Lewis's struggles with the typewriter:

On Sunday, 7 July 1991,1 joined four other men in Seckham Villa, Park Town, Oxford. I am more embarrassed than ashamed about the shared Interest that brought us together. Those present were: Alasdair McBryde, George Daley, David Michaels, James Myton, and myself. McBryde informed us that we might be in for an Interesting afternoon since a young Swedish student would be coming to sit for what was euphemistically termed a photographic session. We learned she was a beautiful girl, and desperately in need of money. If we wished to watch, that would be an extra £50: £100 in totol. I agreed. So did Daley. So did Michaels. I myself had arrived first. Daley and Michaels arrived together a little later, and I had the impression that the one had probably picked the other up. I knew next to nothing about these two men except that they were both in the same line of business -forestry, that sort of thing. I had met each of them two or three times before, I had never met them together before.

The fifth man was Myton, whom I'd known earlier, I'm ashamed to say, as the editor of a series of sex magazines whose particular slants ranged from bestiality to paedophilia. He was a smallish, slimly built man, with a weasel-like look about him -sharp nose and fierce little eyes. He often boasted about his time with the ITV Zodiac Production team; and however he may have exaggerated, one thing was perfectly clear: whatever he filmed for videotapes, whatever he photographed for 'stills', Myton had the magical touch of the born artist.

The first part of the afternoon I can remember only vaguely. The room in which we were seated, the basement room, had a largish, erectile screen, and we were there (all except Myton) watching some imported hard-porn Danish videos when we were aware that the eagerly awaited Swedish star had arrived. The doorbell had been rung; McBryde had left us; and soon we were to hear voices just above us, in the garden outside -the voices of Myton and the young woman I now know to have been Karin Eriksson. I remember at that point feeling very excited. But things didn't work out. It soon transpired that the girl had misunderstood the nature of her engagement; that she was happy enough to do a series of nude stills - but only behind a closed door, with a camera, and with one cameraman. No argument.

It was about half an hour later that we heard the awful commotion in the room immediately above us, and we followed McBryde up the stairs. The young woman (we never knew her name until days later) lay on the bed. She lay motionless there, with blood all over the white sheets - vividly red blood, fresh blood. Yet it was not her blood -but Myton's! He sat there crumpled up on the floor, clutching his left side and gasping desperately, his eyes widely dilated with pain - and fear. But for the moment it was the naked girl who compelled our attention. There were horridly bright-red marks around her throat, and her mouth seemed oddly swollen, with a trickle of blood slowly seeping down her cheek. Yes, her cheek. For it was the angle of her head that was so startling -craned back, as though she were trying so hard to peer over her forehead to the headboard of the bed behind her. Then, not immediately perhaps but so very soon, we knew that she was dead.

If ever my heart sank in fear and froze in panic -it was then! Often in the past I had been in some sex cinema somewhere, and wondered what would happen if there were a sudden fire and the exits were blocked with panic-stricken men. The same sort of thoughts engulfed me now: and then, behind me terrifying noise! - I heard a sound like a kitchen sink clearing itself, and I turned to see the vomit of dark-red blood suddenly spurting from Myton's mouth and spilling in a great gush over the carpet. Six or seven times his body heaved in mighty spasms -before he too, like the girl on the bed, lay still.

Of the sequence of events which had led up to this double tragedy, it is impossible to be certain. I can't know what the others there thought; I don't really know what I thought. I suppose I envisaged Myton filming her as she took up her various poses; then lusting after her and trying to assault her there. But she'd fought him off, with some partial success. More than partial success.

What was clear to us all was that she'd stabbed him with a knife, the sort of multi-purpose knife scouts and guides carry around with them, for she still clutched the knife even then in her right hand as if she'd thought he might make for her again. How she came to have such a weapon beside her - as I say, she was completely naked - I can't explain. My next clear recollection is of sitting with the other three in the downstairs room drinking neat whisky and wondering what on earth to do, trying to devise some plan. Something! Anything! All of us - certainly three of us -had the same dread fear in mind, I'm sure of it: of being exposed to society, to our friends, families, children, everyone - exposed for what we really were -cheap, dirty-minded perverts. Scandal, shame, ruin - never had I known such panic and despair.

I now come to the most difficult part of my statement, and I can't vouch for the precise motives of all of us, or indeed for some specific details. But the main points of that day are fairly clear to me still -albeit they seem in retrospect to have taken place in a sort of blur of unreality. Let me put it simply. We decided to cover up the whole ghastly tragedy. It must seem almost incredible that we took such enormous trouble to cover ourselves, yet that is what we did. McBryde told us that the only others who knew of the Swedish girl's visit were the model agency, and he said he would see to it that there was no trouble from that quarter. That left -how terrible it all now sounds -two bodies, two dead bodies. There could be no thought of their being disposed of before the hours of darkness, and so it was agreed that the four of us should reassemble at Seckham Villa at 9.45 p.m. For the last few months Myton had been living out of suitcases -out of two large, battered-looking brown suitcases. And in fact had been staying with McBryde, on and off, for several of the previous weeks. But McBryde was still cursing himself for letting the two of them, Myton and the girl, go out into the back garden, since if any of the neighbours had seen Karin Eriksson they would quite certainly have remembered her clearly. His fears on this score however seem to have been groundless. As far as Myton's suitcases and personal effects were concerned, McBryde himself would be putting them into the back of his van and carting them off to the Redbridge Waste Reception Centre early the following morning. Myton's car was a much bigger headache but the enormous rise in the number of car-related crimes in Oxford that year suggested a reasonably simple solution. It was decided that I should drive the Honda out to the edge of Otmoor at 10.45 p.m. that same night, kick in all the panels, smash all the windows, and take a hammer to the engine. And this was done. McBryde had followed me in his van - and indeed assisted me in my vandalism before driving me back to Oxford.

That was my role. But there was the other huge problem -the disposal of two bodies, and also the ditching somewhere of the girl's rucksack. Why we didn't decide to dump the rucksack with Myton's suitcases, I just don't know. And what a tragic mistake that proved. The bodies were eventually loaded into the back of McBryde's van which drove off under the darkness of that night -this is what I understand - first to Wytham, where after Michaels had unlocked the gate leading to the woods the two foresters had transferred Myton's body to the Land-rover, and then driven out to dispose of the body in the heart of the woods somewhere - I never knew where.

Then the same men drove out to Blenheim where Daley, naturally, had easy access to any part of the Great Park, and where Karin Eriksson's body, wrapped in a blanket and weighed down with stones, was pushed into the lake there - again I never knew where. Looking back, the whole thing seems so very crude and cruel. But some people act strangely when they are under stress -and we were all under tremendous stress that terrible day. Whether the others involved will be willing to corroborate this sequence of events, I don't know. What is to be believed is that this statement has been made of my own free will with no coercion or promptings, and that it is true.

The statement was dated i.viii.1992, and signed by Dr Alan Hardinge, Fellow of Lonsdale College, Oxford, in the presence of Detective Chief Inspector Morse, Detective Sergeant Lewis, and WPC Wright - no solicitor being present, at Dr Hardinge's request.

Whilst Hardinge was still only some halfway through his statement, George Daley, eager as ever to take advantage of overtime, was boxing some petunias in the walled garden at Blenheim Garden Centre. He had not heard the footsteps; but he felt the touch of a hand on his shoulder, and jerked nervously.

'Christ! You got 'ere quick.'

'You said it was urgent.'

'It is bloody urgent.'

'What is?'

'Now look-!'

'No, you look! The police'll have that statement some time this morning -probably got it already. And we've agreed - you've agreed - remember that!'

Daley took off the ever-present hat, and wiped the back of his right wrist across his sweaty forehead.

'Not any longer I haven't bloody agreed, mate. Look at this!' Daley took a letter from his pocket. 'Came in the post this morning, dinnit? That's why I rang. See what I could get done for? Me! Just for that fuckin' twerp o' mine. No, mate! What we agreed's no good no longer. We double it -or else no deal. Four, that's what I want. Not two. Four!'

"Four? Where the hell do you reckon that's coming from?'

'Your problem, innit?'

'If I could find it,' said the other slowly, 'how do I know you're not going-'

'You don't. Trust, innit? I shan't ask nothin' more never though - not if we make it four.'

'I can't get anything, you know that - not till the bank opens Monday.'

There was a silence between them.

'You won't regret it, mate,' said Daley finally.

'You will, though, if you ever come this sort of thing again.'

'Don't you threaten me!'

‘I’m not just threatening you, Daley -I'll bloody kill you if you try it on again.' There was a menace and a power now in his quiet voice, and he turned to go. 'Better if you come to me -fewer people about.'

'Don't mind.'

'About ten - no good any earlier. In my office, OK?'

'Make it outside your office.'

The other shrugged. 'Makes no difference to me.'

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Everything comes if a man will only wait (Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred)

AN HOUR after Hardinge had left -had been allowed to leave -Lewis came back into Morse's office with three photocopies of the document.

Morse picked up one set of the sheets and looked fairly cursorily, - appeared, at the transcript of Hardinge's statement. 'What did you make of things?'

'One or two things a bit odd, sir.'

'Only one or two?'

'Well, there's two things, really. I mean, there's this fellow Daley, isn't there? He's at Park Town that afternoon and that night he shoves the girl's body into the lake at Blenheim.'

‘Yes?'

'Well, then he leaves the girl's rucksack in a hedge-bottom at Begbroke. I mean-'

'I wish you'd stop saying "I mean", Lewis.'

‘Well, you'd think he'd have left it miles away, wouldn't you? He could easily have dumped it out at Burford or Bicester or somewhere. I me - '

'Why not put it in the blanket? With the body?'

'Well, yes. Anywhere - except where he left it.'

'I think you're right.'

'Why don't we ask him then?'

'All in good time, Lewis! You just said two things, didn't you?'

'Ah, well. It's the same sort of thing, really. They decided to put Myton's body in Wytham Woods, agreed? And they did put it there, because we've found it. What I can't understand is why Michaels told you where it was. I mean- Sorry, sir!'

'But he didn't, did he? He didn't exactly give us a six-figure grid-reference.'

'He told you about Pasticks, though.'

'Among other places, yes.' For a while Morse looked out across the tarmac yard, unseeing it seemed, though nodding gravely. 'Ye-es! Very good, Lewis! You've put your finger -two fingers -on the parts of that statement that would worry anyone; anyone even half as intelligent as you are.'

Lewis was unsure whether this was exactly the compliment that Morse had intended; but the master was beginning his own analysis:

'You see -ask yourself this. Why did Daley have to dump the rucksack, and then find it himself? As you rightly say, why so close to the place they'd just dumped her body? What's the reason? What could be the reason? Any reason? Then, again just as you say, why was Michaels prepared to be so helpful to us? Crackers, isn't it - if he didn't want anyone to find the body? So why? Why give us any chance of finding it? Why not give us a duff list of utterly improbable sites? God! Wytham's as big as . . .' (Morse had difficulty with the simile) 'as the pond out at Blenheim.'

' "Lake", sir - about two hundred acres of it. Take a bit of dragging, that.'

'Take a lot of dragging.'

'Forget it, then?'

'Yes, forget it! I think so. As I told you yesterday, Lewis ...’

'You still think you were right about that?'

'Oh, yes! No doubt about it. All we've got to do is to sit back and wait. We're going to have people come to us, Lewis. We're losing nothing. You can take it from me there'll be no more casualties in this case unless . . . unless it's that silly young sod, Philip Daley.'

'We might as well take a bit of a breather then, sir.'

'Why not? Just one thing you can do on your way home, though.’

Look in at Lonsdale, will you? See who was on duty at the Porters' Lodge last night, and try to find out if our friend Hardinge had any visitors in his rooms. And if so, how many, and who they were.

For the moment, however, Lewis seemed reluctant to leave.

'You sure you don't want me to go and pick up Daley and Michaels?'

'I just told you. They'll be coming to us. One of 'em will, anyway, unless I'm very much mistaken.'

'Which you seldom are.'

‘Which I seldom am.'

'You don't want to tell me which one?'

‘Why shouldn't I want to tell you which one?'

‘Well?'

'All right. I'll bet you a fiver to a cracked piss-pot that the Head Warden, the Lone Ranger, or whatever his name is, will call here -in person or on the phone -before you sit watching the six o'clock news on the telly.'

‘Earlier than that, sir - on a Saturday - the TV news.'

‘Oh, and before you go, leave these on Johnson's desk, will you? He won't be in till Monday, I shouldn't think, but I promised to keep him fully informed.' He handed over the third set of photocopied pages, and Lewis rose to depart.

'Do you want me to ring you if I find anything?'

'If it's interesting, yes,' said Morse, with apparent indifference.

Earlier that day, Lewis thought he'd had a pretty clear idea of what the case was all about; or what Morse had told him the case was all about. But now on leaving Kidlington HQ his mind was far more confused, as if whatever else had been the purpose of Hardinge's statement it had certainly muddled the waters of his, Lewis's, mind, though apparently not that of his chief's.

As it happened (had he remembered it) Morse would have lost any bet that might have been made, for no one, either in person or on the telephone, was to call on him that afternoon. In fact he did nothing after Lewis left. At one point he almost decided to attend the last night of The Mikado at Wytham. But he hadn't got a ticket, and it would probably be a sell-out; and in any case he'd bought a CD of Mozart's Requiem.