It was a maxim with Foxey – our revered father, gentlemen – 'Always suspect everybody'
(Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop)
on the following morning, Saturday, 18 July, Morse appeared as Lewis saw things, somewhat distanced, somewhat reserved. It was customary for the chief to start, if not always to continue the case with a surfeit of confidence and exuberance, and doubtless that would soon be the way of things again; just not for moment.
'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.