The Way Through the Woods

by Colin Dexter

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  He who asks the questions cannot avoid the answers

  (Cameroonian proverb)

  There was little evidence of strain or undue apprehension on David Michaels’ face the following morning when he was shown into Interview Room 2, where Sergeant Lewis was already seated at a trestle table, a tape recorder at his right elbow. He was being held for questioning (Lewis informed him) about two matters: first, about the statement made to the police by Dr. Alan Hardinge, a copy of which was now handed to him; second, about the murder of George Daley.

  Lewis pointed to the tape recorder. “Just to make sure we don’t misrepresent anything, Mr. Michaels. We’ve been getting a bit of stick recently, haven’t we, about the way some interviews have been conducted?”

  Michaels shrugged indifferently.

  “And you’re aware of your legal rights? Should you want to be legally represented—”

  But Michaels shook his head; and began reading Hardinge’s statement …

  He had little legal knowledge, but had assumed in this instance that he could be guilty only of some small-scale conspiracy to pervert the strict course of truth—certainly not of justice. It was the criminal “intention”, the mens rea, that really mattered (so he’d read), and no one could ever maintain that his own intention had been criminal that afternoon a year ago …

  “Well?” asked Lewis when Michaels put the last sheet down.

  “That’s about the size of it, yes.”

  “You’re quite happy to corroborate it?”

  “Why not? One or two little things I wouldn’t have remembered but—yes, I’ll sign it.”

  “We’re not asking for a signature. We’ll have to ask you to make your own statement.”

  “Can’t I just copy this one out?”

  Lewis grinned weakly, but shook his head. He thought he liked Michaels. “Now, last time you pretended—pretended—you’d not got the faintest idea where any body might be found, right?”

  “Yes,” lied Michaels.

  “And then, this time round, you still pretended you didn’t really know?”

  “Yes,” lied Michaels.

  “So why did you nudge Chief Inspector Morse in the right direction?”

  “Double bluff, wasn’t it? If I was vague enough, and they found it, well, no one was going to think I’d had anything to do with the murder.”

  “Who told you it was murder?”

  “The chap standing there on guard in Pasticks: big chap, in a dark blue uniform and checked cap—policeman, I think he was.”

  The constable standing wide-legged across the door of the interview room took advantage of the fact that Lewis had his back towards him, and smiled serenely.

  “Why didn’t you dump the rucksack in the lake as well?” continued Lewis.

  For the first time Michaels hesitated: “Should’ve done, I agree.”

  “Was it because Daley had his eye on the camera—and the binoculars?”

  “Well, one thing’s for sure: he won’t be able to tell you, will he?”

  “You don’t sound as if you liked him much.”

  “He was a filthy, mean-minded little swine!”

  “But you didn’t know him very well, surely?”

  “No. I hardly knew him at all.”

  “What about last Friday night?”

  “What about last Friday night?”

  Lewis let it go. “You’d never met him previously—at your little rendezvous in Park Town?”

  “No! I’d only just joined,” lied Michaels. “Look, Sergeant, I’m not proud of that. But haven’t you ever wanted to watch a sex film?”

  “I’ve seen plenty. We pick up quite a few of ’em here and there. But I’d rather have a plate of egg and chips, myself. What about you, Constable Watson?” asked Lewis, turning in his chair.

  “Me?” said the man by the door. “I’d much rather watch a sex film.”

  “You wouldn’t want your wife to know, though?”

  “No, Sarge.”

  “Nor would you, would you, Mr. Michaels?”

  “No. I wouldn’t want her to know about anything like that,” said Michaels quietly.

  “I wonder if Mrs. Daley knew—about her husband, I mean?”

  “I dunno. As I say, I knew nothing about the man, really.”

  “Last night you knew he’d been murdered.”

  “A lot of people knew.”

  “And a lot of people didn’t know.”

  Michaels remained silent.

  “He was killed from a seven-millimetre gun, like as not.”

  “Rifle, you mean.”

  “Sorry. I’m not an expert on guns and things—not like you, Mr. Michaels.”

  “And that’s why you took my rifle last night?”

  “We’d’ve taken anyone’s rifle. That’s our job, isn’t it?”

  “Every forester’s got a rifle that sort of calibre—very effective they are too.”

  “So where were you between, say, ten o’clock and eleven o’clock yesterday morning?”

  “Not much of a problem there. About ten—no—just after ten it must have been—I was with a couple of fellows from the RSPB. We—they—were checking on the nesting boxes along the Singing Way. You know, keeping records on first or second broods, weighing ’em, taking samples of droppings—that sort of thing. They do it all the time.”

  “You were helping them?”

  “Carrying the bloody ladder most of the time.”

  “What about after that?”

  “Well, we all nipped down to the White Hart—about twelve, quarter-past?—and had a couple of pints. Warm work, it was! Hot day, too!”

  “You’ve got the addresses of these fellows?”

  “Not on me, no. I can get ’em for you easy enough.”

  “And the barman there at the pub? He knows you?”

  “Rather too well, Sergeant!”

  Lewis looked at his wrist-watch, feeling puzzled and, yes, a little bit lost.

  “Can I go now?” asked Michaels.

  “Not yet, sir, no. As I say we need some sort of statement from you about what happened last July … then we shall just have to get this little lot typed up”—Lewis nodded to the tape recorder—“then we shall have to get you to read it and sign it … and, er, I should think we’re not going to get through all that till …” Again Lewis looked at his watch, still wondering exactly where things stood. Then, turning round: “We’d better see Mr. Michaels has some lunch with us, Watson. What’s on the menu today?”

  “Always mince on Tuesdays, Sarge.”

  “Most people’d prefer a sex film,” said Michaels, almost cheerfully.

  Lewis rose to his feet, nodded to Watson, and made to leave. “One other thing, sir. I can’t let you go before the chief inspector gets back, I’m afraid. He said he particularly wanted to see you again.”

  “And where’s he supposed to be this morning?”

  “To tell you the truth, I’m not at all sure.”

  As he walked back to his office, Lewis reflected on what he had just learned. Morse had been correct on virtually everything so far—right up until this last point. For now surely Morse must be dramatically wrong in his belief that Michaels had murdered Daley? In due course they would have to check up on his alibi; but it was wholly inconceivable that a pair of dedicated ornithologists had conspired with a barman from the local pub in seeking to pervert the course of natural justice. Surely so!

  At 12:30 P.M., Dr. Hobson rang through from South Parks Road to say that, whilst she was an amateur in the byways of ballistics, she would be astounded if Michaels’ gun had been fired at any time within the previous few weeks.

  “ ‘Rifle’,” muttered Lewis, sotto voce.

  “Is he, er, there?” the pathologist had asked tentatively.

  “Back this afternoon some time.”

  “Oh.”

  It was beginning to look as if everyone wanted to see Morse.

  Especially Lewis.


  Chapter Fifty-nine

  This is the reason why mothers are more devoted to their children than fathers: it is that they suffer more in giving them birth and are more certain that they are their own

  (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics)

  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 joyriding—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!”

  Chapter Sixty

  Music and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is

  (Samuel Pepys, Diary)

  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 hi
m 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.