Morse smiled to himself, and suddenly looked up to see Strange standing in the doorway. 'Private joke, Morse?' 'Oh, nothing, sir.' 'C'mon! Life's grim enough.' 'I was just thinking of Max's liver-' 'Not a pretty sight!' ‘No.! 'You're taking it a bit hard, aren't you? Max, I mean.' 'A bit. perhaps.' 'You seen the latest?' Strange pushed a copy of The Times across the desk, with a brief paragraph on the front page
informing its readers that 'the bones discovered in Wytham Woods are quite certainly not those of the Swedish student whose disappearance occasioned the original verses and their subsequent analysis in this newspaper. (See Letters, page 13):
'Anything to help us there?' asked Morse dubiously, opening the paper. 'Scraping the barrel, if you ask me,' said Strange. Morse looked down at page 13:
From Mr Anthony Beaulah Sir, Like the text of some early Greek love-lyric, the lines on the Swedish student would appear to have been pondered over in such exhaustive fashion that there is perhaps little left to say. And it may be that the search is already over. Yet there is one significant (surely?) aspect of the verses which has hitherto received scant attention. The collocation of 'the tiger' with 'the burning of the night' (lines 9 and 12) has indeed been commented upon, but in no specific context. In my view, sir, one should perhaps interpret the tiger (the cat) as staring back at drivers in the darkness. And the brilliantly simple invention which has long steered the benighted driver through the metaphorical forest of the night? Cat's eyes!
I myself live too far away from Oxford to be able to test such a thesis. But might the police not interpret this as a genuine clue, and look for some stretch of road (in or around Wytham?) where cat's eyes have recently been installed?
Yours, ANTHONY BEAULAH, Felsted School, Essex.
'Worth getting Lewis on it?' queried Strange, when Morse had finished reading. .'Not this morning, sir. If you remember he's, er, on his holidays.' Morse looked at his
wrist-watch. 'At this minute he's probably looking out of the window down at Jutland.' 'Why didn't you go, Morse? With all these Swedish blondes and that. . .' 'I thought it'd be good experience for him.' 'Mm.' For a while the two were silent. Then Strange picked up his paper and made to leave. 'You made a will yet, Morse?' 'Not much to leave, really.' 'All those records of yours, surely?'
'Bit out of date, I'm afraid. We're all buying CDs now.'
'Perhaps they'll be out of date soon.'
Morse nodded. Strange was not in the habit of saying anything quite so perceptive.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Men are made stronger on realization that the helping hand they need is at the end of their own right arm (Sidney J. Phillips, speech, July 1953)
ON THE forty-kilometre bus ride from Arlanda airport southwards towards Stockholm, Lewis enjoyed what for him was the fairly uncommon view of a foreign country. After a while the tracts of large pine and fir woods changed to smaller coppices and open fields; then farmhouses, red, with barns that were red too, and a few yellow, wooden, Dutch-roofed manor houses, just before the outskirts of Stockholm, with its factories and tidy, newish buildings -and all so very clean and litter-free. In wooded surroundings within the city itself, three-and four-storeyed blocks of flats took over; and finally the end of the journey, at the Central Station terminal.
Lewis had never studied a foreign language at school, and his travel abroad had hitherto been restricted to three weeks in Australia, two weeks in Italy, and one afternoon in a Calais supermarket. The fact that he had no difficulty therefore in summoning a taxi was wholly due to the excellent English of the young driver, who soon brought Lewis into the suburb of Bromma more specifically to an eight-storey block of white flats in Bergsvägen.
The Stockholm CID had offered to send one of its own men to meet him, but Lewis had not taken advantage of this when he'd arranged the details of his visit the previous morning. Seldom was it that he could assert any independent judgement in an investigation; and here was his chance. The entrance hall was of polished pink granite, with the long list of tenants' named displayed there:
ANDREASSON 8A ENGSTROM 8B FASTEN 7A OLSSON 7B KRAFT 6A ERIKSSON 6B
Sixth floor!
Lewis felt excited at the sight of the name; it was almost as if. . . as if he felt he was going to make some significant discovery.
The door, bearing the name-plate ERIKSSON, was opened by a woman in her mid-forties, of medium height, plumply figured, hazel-eyed, and with short, brownish-blonde hair.
'Mrs Eriksson?'
'Irma Eriksson,' she insisted as he shook her hand, and entered the apartment.
The small hallway was lined with cupboards, with what looked like a home-woven mat on one wall and a large mirror on the other. Through the open door to the right Lewis glimpsed a beautifully fitted kitchen, fresh and gleaming, with a copper kettle and old plates on its walls.
'In here, Mr Lewis.' She pointed smilingly to the left and led the way.
Her English was very good, utterly fluent and idiomatic, with only a hint of a foreign accent, just noticeable perhaps in the slight lengthening of the short T vowels ('Meester Lewis').
The place was all so clean; and so particularly clean was the parquet flooring that Lewis wondered whether he should offer to take off his shoes, for she herself stood there in her stockinged feet as she gestured him to a seat on a low, brown-striped settee.
As he later tried to describe the furnishings to Morse, he felt more conscious than anything about the huge amount of stuff that had been packed into this living room: two coffee tables of heavy, dark wood; lots of indoor plants; groups of family portraits and photographs all around; dozens of candle holders; a large TV set; pretty cushions everywhere; vases of flowers; a set of Dala horses; two crucifixes; and (as Lewis learned later) a set of Carl Larsson prints above the bricked fireplace. Yet in spite of all the clutter, the whole room was light and airy, the thin curtains pulled completely back from the south-facing window.
Conversation was easy and, for Lewis, interesting. He learned something of the typical middle-class housing in Swedish cities; learned how and why the Erikssons had moved from Uppsala down to Bergsvagen almost a year ago after . . . after Karin had, well, whatever had happened. As Lewis went briefly through the statement she had made a year ago, Irma Eriksson was watching him closely (he could see that), nodding here and there, and at one or two points staring down sadly at a small oriental carpet at her feet. But yes, it was all there; and no, there was nothing she could add. From that day to this she had received no further news of her daughter -none. At first, she admitted, she'd hoped and hoped, and couldn't bring herself to believe that Karin was dead. But gradually she had been forced to such a conclusion; and it was better that way, really -to accept the virtual certainty that Karin had been murdered. She was grateful -how not? for the recent efforts the English police had made -again! -and she had been following the newspaper correspondence of course, receiving cuttings regularly from an English friend.