The Way Through The Woods (15 page)

'Not really all
that
much to go on there, sir.' Lewis nodded the two red box-files on the table.

'I've done my homework too, you know.'

'Where do we start?'

'Difficult. We ought really to wait till we hear from Max before we do too much.'

'All this DNA stuff, you mean?'

'DNA? He doesn't know what it
stands
for!'

'When's the report due?'

'Today some time, he said.'

'What's that mean?'

'Tonight?' Morse shrugged. But he suddenly sat forward in the black leather chair, appeared to sharpen up, took out his silver Parker pen, and began making a few minimal notes as he spoke:

'There are several people we've got to see pretty soon.'

'Who are you thinking of, sir?'

'Of whom am I thinking? Well, number one, there's the fellow who found the rucksack – Daley. We'll go through his statement with a nit-comb. I never did like the sound of him.'

'You never met him, did you?'

'Number two. There's the YWCA woman who spoke with Karin before she left for Oxford. She sounds nice.'

'But you never-'

'I spoke to her on the phone, Lewis, if you must know. She sounds nice – that's all I said. You don't
mind,
do you?'

Lewis smiled to himself. It was good to be back in harness.

'Number three,' resumed Morse. 'We must have a long session I with that Wytham fellow – the Lone Ranger, or whatever he's called.'

'Head forester, sir.'

'Exactly.'

'Did you like
him?'

Morse turned over the palm of his right hand, and considered us inky fingers. 'He virtually told us where she was, didn't he? Told us where
he
would hide a body if he had to…'

‘Not likely to have told us if he'd put it there
himself
though, surely? Self-incrimination, that!'

Morse said nothing.

‘The witnesses who said they saw her, sir – any good going back over them?'

‘Doubt it, but… Anyway, let's put 'em down, number four. And number five, the parents-'

Just the mother, sir.'

‘- in Uppsala -'

‘Stockholm, now.'

‘Yes. We shall have to see her again.'

‘We shall have to
tell
her first, surely.'

‘If it
is
Karin, you mean?'

'You don't really have much doubt, do you, sir?'

‘No!'

‘I suppose you'll be going there yourself? To Stockholm, I mean.'

Morse looked up, apparently with some surprise. 'Or you, Lewis.’

‘Very kind of you, sir.'

‘Not kind at all. Just that I'm scared stiff of flying – you know that' But the voice was a little sad again.

‘You all right?' Lewis asked quietly

‘Will be soon – don't worry! Now, I just wonder whether Mr George Daley's still working on the Blenheim Estate.'

‘Saturday, though. More likely to be off today.'

‘Yes… And his son – Philip, was it? – the lad who had a short-birthday present of a camera, Karin Eriksson's camera. He was still at school last year.'

'Probably still is.'

'No – not precisely so, Lewis. The state schools in Oxfordshire broke up yesterday, the seventeenth.'

'How'd you know that?'

'I rang up and found out. That's how.'

'You've been having a fair old time on the phone!' said Lewis happily, as he got to his feet – and went for the car.

As he drove out along the A44
to Begbroke, Lewis's eyes drifted briefly if incuriously to his left as Morse opened an envelope, took out a single handwritten sheet of A4 and read it; not (in fact) for the first, or even the fourth, time:

Dear Chief Inspector,

V m t f y 1 and for your interesting choice of records.

It would make a good debate in the Oxford Union – 'This house believes that openness in matters of infidelity is preferrable to deception.' But let me tell you what you want to know. I was married in '76, divorced in '82, remarried in '84, separated in '88. One child, a daughter now aged 20. Work that out, clever-clogs! As you know I consort fairly regularly with a married man from Oxford, and at less frequent intervals with others. So there! And now – Christ!
-you
come along and I hate you for it because you're monopolizing my thoughts just when I'd told myself I was beyond all that nonsense.

I write for two reasons. First to say I reckon I've got some idea how that young girl who monopolizes
your
thoughts may have come by a bit of cash. (Same way I did!) Second to say you're an arrogant sod! You write to me as if you think I'm an ignorant little schoolgirl. Well let me tell you you're not the only sensitive little flower in the whole bloody universe. You quote these poets as if you think you're connected on some direct personal line with them all. Well you're wrong. There's hundreds of extensions, just like in the office I used to work. So there!

Please write again.

Dare I send you a little of my love? C.

Morse hadn't noticed the misspelling before; and as he put the letter away he promised himself not to mention it… when he wrote back.

'I'm still not quite sure why we're interviewing Mr Daley, sir.'

'He's hiding something, that's why."

'But you can't say
that-'

'Look, Lewis, if he's
not
hiding something, there's not much reason for us interviewing him, is there?'

Lewis, not unaccustomedly, was bewildered by such zany logic; and he let it go.

Anyway, Morse was suddenly sounding surprisingly cheerful.

george daley, on overtime, was planting out flowers in the Blenheim Garden Centre when he looked up and saw the two men, the shorter of them flashing a warrant card briefly in front of his face. He knew what it was all about, of course.
The Oxford Mail
had been taking a keen interest in the resurrected case; and it would be only a matter of time, Daley had known, before the police would be round again.

'Mr Daley? Chief Inspector Morse. And this is Sergeant Lewis

Daley nodded, prodded his splayed fingers round a marigold and got to his feet. He was a man in his mid-forties, of slim build, wearing a shabby khaki-green pork-pie hat. This he pushed back slightly, revealing a red line on his sweaty forehead.

'It's that thing I found, I suppose?'

'Those things – yes,' said Morse carefully.

'I can only tell you the same as I told 'em at the time. I made a statement and I signed it. Nothin' else as I can do.'

Morse took a folded sheet of A4 from his inside pocket, opened it out, and handed it to Daley. ‘I’d just like you to read this through and make sure it's – well, you know, see if there's anything else you can add.'

'I've told you. There's nothin' else’" Daley rubbed a hand across an unshaven cheek with the sound of sandpaper on wood.

'I'd just like you to read it through
again,'
said Morse simply ‘That's all.'

'I shall need me specs. They're in the shed-'

'Don't worry now! Better if you give yourself a bit of time. No rush. As I say, all I want you to do is to make sure everything's there just as you said it, nothing's been missed out. It's often the little things, you know, that make all the difference.'

'If there was anythin' else I'd've told the other inspector, wouldn't I?'

Was it Lewis's imagination, or was there a momentary glint of anxiety in the gardener's pale eyes?

'Are you in this evening, Mr Daley?' asked Morse.

'Wha' – Saturday? I usually go over the pub for a jar or two at the weekends but-'

'If I called at your house about – what, seven?'

George Daley stood motionless, his eyes narrowed and unblinking as he watched the two detectives walk away through the archway and into the visitors' car park. Then his eyes fell on the photocopied statement once more. There was just that one thing that worried him, yes. It was that bloody boy of his who'd fucked it all up. More trouble than they were worth, kids. Especially
him
Becomin' a real troublemaker he was, gettin' in all hours – like last night. Three bloody thirty a.m. With his mates, he'd said – after the end-of-term knees-up. He'd got a key all right, of course, but his mother could never sleep till he was in. Silly bitch!

‘Where to, sir?' queried Lewis.

'I reckon we'll just call round to see Mrs Daley.'

‘What do you make of Mr?'

'Little bit nervous.'

'Most people get a bit nervous with the police.'

'Good cause, some of 'em,' said Morse.

Lewis had earlier telephoned Margaret Daley about her husband's whereabouts, and the woman who opened the door of number 2 Blenheim Villas showed no surprise. She appeared, on first -impressions, a decided cut or two above her horticultural spouse: – neatly dressed, pleasantly spoken, well groomed – her light-brown hair professionally streaked with strands of blonde and grey.

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.