The Way Through The Woods (30 page)

Johnson flicked through the brochure's lavish illustrations and promised himself he would soon take his new wife to visit the splendid house and grounds built by Queen Anne and her grateful parliament for the mighty Duke. What was that mnemonic they'd learned at school? BROM – yes, that was it: Blenheim, Ramilles, Oudenarde, Malplaquet – that musical quartet of victories. Then, quite suddenly, he had the urge to go and look again at that wonderful sight which bursts upon the visitor after passing through the Triumphal Gate.

He drove out to Woodstock, past the Bear and the church on his left, then across a quadrangle and up to the gate where a keeper sat in his box, and where Johnson (to his delight) was recognized.

'You going through, sir?'

Johnson nodded. 'I thought we had one of our lads at each of the gates?'

'Right. You did, sir. But you took 'em off.'

'When was that?'

'Saturday. The fellow who was on duty here just said he wouldn't be back – that's all I know. Reckon as he thought the case was finished, like.'

'Really?'

Johnson drove on through, and there it was again, bringing back so many memories: in the middle distance the towers and finials of the Palace itself; and there, immediately to his right, the lake with the Grand Bridge and Capability Brown's beechwood landscape beyond it. Breathtaking!

Johnson accepted the fact that he was a man of somewhat limited sensitivity; yet he thought he was a competent police officer, and he was far from happy about the statement he'd just read. If this Hardinge fellow could be believed, the evidence Daley had given a year earlier had been decidedly uneconomical with the truth; and that, to Johnson, was irksome – very irksome. At the time, he'd spent a good while with Daley, going over that wretched rucksack business; and he wanted to have another word with Daley. Now!

He drove down past the Palace to the garden centre; but no one there had seen Daley that morning. He might be out at the mill, perhaps? So Johnson drove out of the estate, through Eagle Lodge, and out on to the A4095, where he turned right through Bladon and Long Hanborough, then right again and in towards the western boundary of the estate, parking beside the piles of newly cut stakes in the yard of the Blenheim Estate Saw-Mill. Only once had he been there when earlier he'd been the big white chief, and he was suddenly aware that it would have been considerably quicker for him to have driven across the park instead of round the villages. Not that it much mattered, though.

No one recognized him here. But he soon learned that Daley's van wasn't there; hadn't been there since Friday afternoon in fact, when he'd been looking after some new plantation by the lake, and when he'd called at the saw-mill for some stakes for supporting saplings. One of the workers suggested that Daley would probably have taken the van home with him for the weekend – certainly so if he'd been working overtime that weekend; and the odds were that Daley was back planting trees that morning.

Johnson thanked the man and drove to the edge of the estate, only just along the road really; then right along a lane that proclaimed 'No Thoroughfare', till he reached Combe Lodge where, Johnson had been told, the gate would probably be locked. But, well, he
was
a policeman, he'd said.

Johnson read the notice on the tall, wooden, green-painted gate:

ACCESS FOR KEYHOLDERS ONLY.

ALL OTHER VEHICLES MUST USE THE GATE IN WOODSTOCK. DO NOT DISTURB THE RESIDENTS IN THE LODGE.

But there was no need for him to disturb the (single) resident, since a tractor-cum-trailer was just being admitted, and in its wake the police car was waved through without challenge. A little lax perhaps, as Johnson wondered. Immediately in front of him the road divided sharply; and as a lone, overweight lady, jogging at roughly walking pace, took the fork to the right, Johnson took the fork to the left, past tall oak trees towards the northern tip of the lake. Very soon, some two or three hundred yards ahead on his left, he saw the clump of trees, and immediately realized his luck – for a Blenheim Estate van stood there, pulled in beside an old, felt-roofed hut, its wooden slats green with mildew. He drew in alongside and got out of the car to look through a small side-window of glass.

Nothing.'Well, virtually nothing: only a wooden shelf on which rested two unopened bags of food for the pheasants. Walking round to the front of the hut, he tried the top and bottom of the stable-type door: both locked. Then, as he stepped further round, something caught the right-hand edge of his vision, and he looked down at the ground just beyond and behind the hut – his mouth suddenly opening in horror, his body held momentarily in the freezing grip of fear.

At the time that Chief Inspector Johnson had set out for Woodstock, Lewis was driving, at slightly above the national speed limit, along the A40 to Cheltenham. It appeared to have been a late, impulsive decision on Morse's part:

'You realize, Lewis, that the only person we've not bothered about in this case so far is auntie whatever-her-name-is from Llan-dovery.'

'Not an "auntie" exactly, sir. You know, it's like when little girls sometimes call women their aunties – '

'No. I don't know, Lewis.'

'Well, it seems Karin called her Auntie Dot or Doss – this Mrs Evans. "Dorothy", I seem to remember her Christian name was.'

'You've profited from your weekend's rest, Lewis!'

'Don't you think we ought to get Daley and Michaels in first though, sir? I mean, if they're prepared to back up what Dr Hardinge says-'

'No! If I'm right about this case – which I am! – we'll be in a far better position to deal with those two gentlemen once we've seen the Lady of Llandovery. Remember that sign at the Woodstock Road roundabout? Left to Wytham; right to Woodstock; straight over for the A40 to West Wales, right? So we can be there in…? How far is it?'

'Hundred and thirty? Hundred and forty miles? But don't you think we should give her a ring just in case-'

'Get the car out, Lewis. The way you drive we'll be there in three hours.'

'Try for two and a half, if you say so,' replied Lewis with a radiant smile.

it had been after Cheltenham, after Gloucester and Ross-on-Wye, after Monmouth and the stretch of beautiful countryside between Brecon and Llandovery, that Morse had come to life again. Never, in Lewis's experience, had he been any sort of conversationalist in a car; but that day's silence had broken all records. And when finally he did speak, Lewis was once again conscious of the unsuspected processes of Morse's mind. For the great man, almost always so ignorant of routes and directions and distances, suddenly jerked up in his passenger seat:

'The right turn in a couple of miles, Lewis – the A483 towards Builth Wells.'

'You don't want to stop for a quick pint, sir?'

'I most certainly
do.
But if you don't mind, we'll skip it, all right?'

'I still think it would've been sensible to ring her, sir. You know, she might be off for a fortnight in Tenerife or something.'

Morse sighed deeply. 'Aren't you enjoying the journey?' Then, after a pause: 'I rang her yesterday afternoon, anyway. She'll be there, Lewis. She'll be there.'

Lewis remained silent, and it was Morse who resumed the conversation:

'That statement – that statement Hardinge made. They obviously got together the four of them – Hardinge, Daley, Michaels, and McBryde – got together and cooked up a story between them. Your porter couldn't give us any names, you say; but he was pretty sure there were at least three, probably four, of 'em in Hardinge's rooms on Friday night. And if they all stick to saying the same -well, we shall have little option but to believe them.'

'Not that
you
will, sir.'

'Certainly not.
Some
of it might be true, though; some of it might be absolutely crucial. And the best way of finding that out is seeing Auntie Gladys here.'

'Dorothy.'

'You see, there was only
one
really important clue in this case: the fact that the Swedish girl's rucksack was found so quickly -
had
to be found – left beside the road-side –
sure
to be found.'

‘I think I'm beginning to see that,' said Lewis, unseeing, as he turned left now at Llanwrtyd Wells, and headed out across the Cambrian Hills.

But not for long. After only a couple of miles, on the left. they came to a granite-built guest-house, 'B & B: Birdwatchers Welcome'. Perhaps it was destined to do a fairly decent trade. Was
certainly
so destined, if there were any birdwatchers around, since there was not another house to be espied anywhere in the deeply wooded landscape.

Mrs Evans, a smallish, dark, sprightly woman in her late forties showed them into the 'parlour'; and was soon telling them something of herself. She and her husband had lived in East Anglia for the first fifteen years of their (childless) marriage; it was there that she'd met Karin for the first time eight or nine years ago. She, Mrs Evans, was no blood relation at all, but had become friendly with the Eriksson family when they had stayed in the guest-house in Aldeburgh. The family had stayed the next year too, though minus Daddy that time; and thereafter the two women had corresponded off and on fairly regularly: birthday cards, Christmas cards, holiday postcards, and so on. And to the three young Eriksson girls she had become 'Auntie Doss'. When Karin had decided to come to England in 1991, Mrs Evans had known about it; and not having seen the girl for six years or so, had suggested to her mother that if Karin was going to get over towards Wales at all there would always be a welcome for her – and a bed.
And
some wonderful birdwatching, since the beautiful red kites were becoming an increasingly common sight there. What
sort
of girl was Karin? Of course, she'd only been thirteen or fourteen when she'd seen her last but, well – lovely, really. Lovely girl. Attractive – very
proper,
though.

As the conversation between them developed, Lewis found himself looking idly round the room: armchairs, horse-hair settee, mahogany furniture, a coffee table piled high with country magazines, and on the wall above the fireplace a large map of Dyffed and the Cambrian Mountains. It seemed to him a rather bleak and sunless room, and he thought that had she reached this far, the young Karin Eriksson would not have felt too happy there…

Morse had now got the good lady talking more rapidly and easily, her voice rising and falling in her native Welsh lilt; talking about why they'd moved back to Wales, how the recession was hitting them, how they advertised for guests – in which magazines and newspapers. On and on. And in the middle of it:

'Oh! Would you both like a cup of tea?'

'Very kind – but no,' said Morse, even as Lewis's lips were framing a grateful 'yes'.

'Tell me more about Karin,' continued Morse. ' "Proper" you said. Do you mean "prim and proper" – that sort of thing? You know, a bit prudish; a bit… straightlaced?'

'Nor, I dorn't mean
that.
As I say it's five or six years back, isn't it. But she was… well, her mother said she'd always got plenty of boyfriends, like, but she knew, well… she knew where to draw the line – let's put it like that.'

'She didn't keep a packet of condoms under her pillow?'

"I dorn't think so.' Mrs Evans seemed far from shocked by the blunt enquiry.

'Was she a virgin, do you think?'

'Things change, dorn't they? Not
many
gels these days who ought to walk up the aisle in white, if you ask me.'

Morse nodded slowly as if assimilating the woman's wisdom, before switching direction again. What was Karin like at school -had Mrs Evans ever learned that? Had she been in the – what was it? – Flikscouten, the Swedish Girl Guides? Interested in sport was she? Skiing, skating, tennis, basketball?

Mrs Evans was visibly more relaxed again as she replied: 'She was always good at sport, yes. Irma – Mrs Eriksson – she used to write and tell me when her daughters had won things; you know, cups and medals, certificates and all that.'

'What was Karin best at, would you say?'

'Dorn't know really. As I say it's a few years since-'

'I do realize that, Mrs Evans. It's just that you've been so helpful so far – and if you could just cast your mind back and try – try to remember.'

'Well, morst games, as I say, but – '

'Skiing?'

'I dorn't think so.'

'Tennis?'

'Oh, she loved tennis. Yes, I think tennis was her favourite game, really.'

'Amazing, aren't they – these Swedes! They've only got about seven million people there, is that right? But they tell me about four or five in the world's top-twenty come from Sweden.'

Lewis blinked. Neither tennis nor any other sport, he knew, was of the slightest interest to Morse who didn't know the difference between side-lines and touch-lines. Yet he understood exactly the trap that Morse was digging; the trap that Mrs Evans tumbled into straightaway.

'Edberg!' she said. 'Stefan Edberg. He's her great hero.'

'She must have been very disappointed about Wimbledon last year, I should think, then?'

'She was, yes. She told me she-'

Suddenly Mrs Evans's left hand shot up to her mouth, and for many seconds she sat immobile in her chair as if she'd caught a glimpse of the Gorgon.

'Don't worry,' said Morse quietly. 'Sergeant Lewis will take it all down. Don't talk too fast for him, though: he failed his forty words per minute shorthand test, didn't you, Sergeant?'

Lewis was wholly prepared. 'Don't worry about what he says, Mrs Evans. You can talk just how you like. It's not as if – turning to Morse – 'she's done much wrong, is it, sir?'