The Way Through The Woods (28 page)

'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.

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.