The Way Through The Woods (33 page)

the noon-day sun shone on the pale-cinnamon stone of the colleges, and the spires of Oxford looked down on a scene of apparent tranquillity as the marked police car drove down Headington Hill towards the Plain, then over Magdalen Bridge and into the High. In the back sat Morse, sombre, and now silent, for he had talked sufficiently to the rather faded woman in her mid-forties who sat beside him, her eyes red from recent weeping, her mouth still tremulous, but her small chin firm and somehow courageous in the face of the terrible events she had only learned about two hours before – when the front doorbell had rung in her sister's council house in Beaconsfield. Yet the news that her husband had been murdered and that her only son had run away from home had left her not so much devastated as dumbfounded, as though a separate layer of emotions and reactions had formed itself between what she knew to be herself, and the external reality of what had occurred. It had helped a bit too – talking with the chief inspector, who seemed to understand a good deal of what she was suffering. Not that she'd bared her soul
too
much to him about the increasing repugnance she'd felt for the man she'd married; the man who had slowly yet inevitably revealed over the years of their lives together the shallow, devious, occasionally cruel, nature of his character. There had been Philip, though; and for so long the little lad had compensated in manifold ways for the declining love and respect she was feeling for her husband. In nursery school, in primary school, even at the beginning of secondary school, certainly until he was about twelve, Philip had almost always turned to her, his mother; confided in her; had (so preciously!) hugged her when he was grateful or happy. She had been very proud that she was the loved and favoured parent.

Whether it was of deliberate, vindictive intent or not, she couldn't honestly say,,but soon after Philip had started at secondary school, George had begun to assert his influence over the boy and in some ways to steal his affection away from her; and this by the simple expedient of encouraging in him the idea of growing up, of becoming 'a man', and doing mannish things. At weekends he would take the boy fishing; often he would return from the Royal Sun in the evening bringing a few cans of light ale with him, regularly offering one to his young son. Then the air-gun! For Philip's thirteenth birthday George had bought him an air-gun; and very soon afterwards Philip had shot a sparrow at the bottom of the garden as it was pecking at some bird-seed she herself had thrown down. What a terrible evening that had been between them, husband and wife, when she had accused him of turning their son into a philistine! Progressively too there had been the coarsening of Philip's speech, and of his attitudes; the brittle laughter between father and son about jokes to which she was never privy; reports from school which grew worse and worse; and the friendship with some of the odious classmates he occasionally brought home to listen to pop music in the locked bedroom.

Then, over a year ago, that almighty row between father and son about the rucksack, which had resulted in an atmosphere of twisted bitterness. Exactly what had happened then, she was still uncertain; but she knew that her husband had lied about the time and place he had found the rucksack. How? Because neither George nor Philip had taken the dog for its walk along the dual-carriageway that morning:
she
had. Philip had gone off to Oxford very early to join a coach party the school had organized; and, on waking, her husband had been so crippled with lumbago that he couldn't even make it to the loo, let alone any lay-by on the dual-carriageway. But she knew George
had
found the rucksack, somewhere – or that someone had given it to him – on that very Sunday when the Swedish girl had gone missing; that Sunday when George had been out all afternoon; and then out again later in the evening, drinking heavily, as she recalled. It
must
have been that Sunday evening too when Philip had found the rucksack, probably at the back of the garage where, as she knew, he'd been looking for his climbing boots for the school trip to the Peak District – and where, as she suspected, he'd found the camera and the binoculars. Oh yes! She was on very firm ground there -because
she too had found them,
in Philip's room. Only later did she learn that Philip had removed the spool of film from the camera and almost certainly developed it himself at school, where there was a flourishing photographic society (of which Philip was a member) with dark-room facilities readily available.

A good deal of this information Morse had known already, she sensed that. But appearances were that she'd held his attention as tearfully and fitfully she'd covered most of the ground again. He'd not asked her how she knew about the photographs; yet he surely must have guessed. But he would never know about those other photographs, the pornographic ones, the ones of the Swedish girl whom she had recognized from the passport picture printed, albeit so badly, in
The Oxford Times.
No! She would tell Morse nothing about that. Nor about the joy-riding – and her mental turmoil when first she'd read those words in Philip's diary; words which conjured up for her the confused images of squealing tyres and the anguished shrieks of a small girl lying in a pool of her own blood… No, it would belittle her son even further if she spoke of things like that, and she would never do it. Wherever he was and whatever he'd done,
Philip would always be her son.

As the car turned left at Carfax, down towards St Aldate's police station, she saw a dozen or more head-jerking pigeons pecking at the pavement; and then fluttering with sudden loud clapping of wings up to the tower above them. Taking flight. Free! And Margaret Daley, her head now throbbing wildly, wondered if she would ever herself feel free again…

'Milk and sugar?'

Margaret Daley had been miles away, but she'd heard his words, and now looked up into the chief inspector's face, his eyes piercingly blue, but kindly, and almost vulnerable themselves, she thought.

'No sugar. Just milk, please.'

Morse laid his hand lightly on her shoulder. 'You're a brave woman,' he said quietly.

Suddenly the flood-gates were totally swept away, and she turned from him and wept quite uncontrollably.

'You heard what the lady said,' snarled Morse, as the constable at the door watched the two of them, hesitantly. 'No bloody sugar!'

just after lunch-time Morse was back in his office at HQ listening to the tape of Michaels' interview.

'What do you think, sir?'

'I suppose some of it's true,' admitted Morse.

'About not killing Daley, you mean?'

'I don't see how he could have done it – no time was there?'

'Who did kill him, do you think?'

'Well, there are three things missing from his house, aren't there? Daley himself, the rifle – and the boy.'

'The son? Philip? You think
he
killed him? Killed his father? Like Oedipus?'

'The things I've taught you, Lewis, since you've been my sergeant!'

'Did he love his mum as well?'

'Very much so, I think. Anyway you'll be interested in hearing what she's got to say.'

'But – but you can't just walk into Blenheim Park with a rifle on your shoulder-'

'His mum says he used to go fishing there; says his dad bought him all the gear.'

'Ah. See what you mean. Those long canvas things, you know – for your rods and things.'

'Something like that. Ten minutes on a bike – '

'Has he
got
a bike?'

'Dunno.'

'But
why?
Why do you think-?'

'Must have been that letter, I suppose – from the Crown Court…'

'And his dad refused to help?'

'Probably. Told his son to clear off, like as not; told him to bugger off and leave his parents out of it. Anyway, I've got a feeling the lad's not going to last long in the big city. The Met'll bring him in soon, you see.'

'You said it was
Michaels,
though. You said you were pretty sure it must have been Michaels.'

'Did I?'

'Yes, you did! But you didn't seem
too
surprised when you just heard the tape?'

'Didn't I?'

Lewis let it go. 'Where do we go from here, then?'

'Nowhere, for a bit. I've got a meeting with Strange first. Three o'clock.'

'What about Michaels? Let him go?'

'Why should we do that?'

'Well, like you say – he just couldn't have done it in the time. Impossible! Even with a helicopter.'

'So?'

Suddenly Lewis was feeling more than a little irritated. 'So
what
do I tell him?'

'You tell him,' said Morse slowly, 'that we're keeping him here overnight – for further questioning.'

'On what charge? We just can't-'

'I don't think he'll argue too loudly,' said Morse.

Just before Morse was to knock on Chief Superintendent Strange's door that Tuesday afternoon, two men were preparing to leave the Trout Inn at Wolvercote. Most of the customers who had spent their lunch-time out of doors, seated on the paved terrace alongside the river there, were now gone; it was almost closing time.

'You promise to write it down?'

'I promise,' replied Alasdair McBryde.

'Where are you going now?'

'Back to London.'

'Can I give you a lift to the station?'

'I'd be glad of that.'

The two walked up the shallow steps and out across the narrow road to the car park: patrons only. no parking for fishermen.

'What about you, Alan?' asked McBryde, as Hardinge drove the Sierra left towards Wolvercote.

'I don't know. And I don't really care.'

'Don't say that!' McBryde laid his right hand lightly on the driver's arm. But Hardinge dismissed the gesture with his own right hand as if he were flicking a fly from his sleeve, and the journey down to Oxford station was made in embarrassed silence.

Back in Radcliffe Square, Hardinge parked on double yellow lines in Catte Street, and went straight up to his rooms in Lonsdale. He knew her number off by heart. Of course he did.

'Claire? It's me, Alan.'

'I know it's you. Nothing wrong with my ears.'

'I was just wondering… just hoping…'

'No! And we're not going to go over all
that
again.'

'You mean you're not even going to
see
me again?'

That's it!'

'Not
ever?'
His throat was suddenly very dry.

'You know, for a university don, you don't pick some things up very quickly, do you?'

For a while Hardinge said nothing. He could hear music playing in the background; he knew the piece well.

'If you'd told me you enjoyed Mozart-
^!

'Look – for the last time! – it's finished. Please accept that!
Finished!'

'Have you got someone else?'

'What?' He heard her bitter laughter. 'My life's been full of "someone elses". You always knew that.'

'But what if I divorced-'

'For Christ's
sake]
Won't you
ever
understand? It's
over!'

The line was dead, and Hardinge found himself looking down at the receiver as if someone had given him a frozen fillet of fish for which for the moment he could find no convenient receptacle.

Claire Osborne sat by the phone for several minutes after she had rung off, the wonderful trombone passage from the
Tuba Mirum Spargens Sonum
registering only vaguely in her mind. Had she been
too
cruel to Alan? But sometimes it was necessary to be cruel to be kind – wasn't that what they said? Or was that just a meaningless cliche like the rest of them? 'Someone else?' Alan had asked. Huh!

The poorly typed letter (no salutation, no subscription) she had received with the cassette that morning was lying on the coffee table, and already she'd read it twenty-odd times:

I enjoyed so much our foreshortened time together, you and the music. One day of the great lost days, one face of all the faces (Ernest Dowson – not me!). A memento herewith. The
Recordare
is my favourite bit – if I'm pushed to a choice. 'Recordare' by the way is the 2nd person singular of the present imperative of the verb 'recorder': it means 'Remember!'

'You're
sure
about all this, Morse?' Strange's voice was sharp, with an edge of scepticism to it.

'Completely sure.'

'You said that about Michaels.'

'No! I only said I was ninety per cent sure on that.'

'OK.' Strange shrugged his shoulders, tilted his head, and opened his palms in a gesture of acquiescence. 'There are just one or two little things – '

But the phone went on Strange's desk: 'Ah! Ah! Yes! Want to speak to him?'

He handed the phone over to Morse: Dr Hobson. Quite certainly, she said, Michaels' rifle hadn't been fired for weeks. That was all.

Strange had heard the pathologist, just. 'Looks as if you're right about
that,
anyway. We'll give the Met a call. Certain to have scarpered to the capital, don't you reckon, the lad?'

'Ninety per cent sure, sir – and we've already given the Met his description.'

'Oh!'

Morse rose to go, but Strange was not quite finished: 'What first put you on to it?'

For a few moments Morse paused dubiously. 'Several things, I suppose. For example, I once heard someone claim that all three types of British woodpeckers could be found in Wytham Woods. I think I heard it in a pub. Or perhaps I just read it on a beer mat.'