Just before Morse and Lewis were leaving for a cup of coffee in the canteen, a call came through from PC Pollard. This rather less-than-dedicated vigilante of Pasticks had been one of four uniformed constables detailed to the compass-point entrances of Blenheim Park; and he was now ringing, with some excitement in his voice, to report that the Wytham Woods Land-rover, driven by David Michaels (whom he'd immediately recognized), had just gone down to the garden centre there. Should he try to see what was happening? Should he - investigate?
Morse took the portable phone from Lewis. 'Good man! Yes, try to see what's going on. But don't make it too obvious, all right?'
'How the hell's he going to do that?' asked Lewis when Morse had finished. 'He's in uniform.'
'Is he? Oh.' Morse appeared to have no real interest in the matter. 'Make him feel important though, don't you think?'
Chief Inspector Johnson was on his second cup of coffee when Morse and Lewis walked into the canteen. Raising a hand he beckoned Morse over: he'd welcome a brief word, if that was all right? Just the two of them though, just himself and Morse.
Ten minutes later, in Johnson's small office on the second floor, Morse learned of the red diary found the previous day on the person of Philip Daley. But before the two detectives discussed this matter, it was Johnson who'd proffered the olive-branch.
'Look. If there's been a bit of bad feeling - well, let's forget it, shall we? What do you say?'
'No bad feeling on my side,' claimed Morse.
'Well, there was on mine,' said Johnson quietly.
'Yeah! Mine, too,' admitted Morse.
'OK then?'
'OK.'
The two men shook hands firmly, if unsmilingly, and Johnson now stated his case. There'd been a flood of information over the past few days, and one thing was now pretty certain: Daley Junior had been one of the four youths -though not the driver -in the stolen BMW that had killed Marion Bridewell. From all accounts, the back wheels had slewed round in an uncontrollable skid and knocked the poor little lass through a shop window.
'Bit of an odd coincidence, certainly - the boy being involved in both cases,' commented Morse.
'But coincidences never worried you much, did they?'
Morse shrugged. 'I don't reckon he had much to do with the Eriksson case, though.'
'Except he had the camera,' said Johnson slowly.
'Ye-es.' Morse nodded, and frowned. Something was troubling m a little; like a speck of grit in a smoothly oiled mechanism; ke a small piece of shell in a soft-boiled egg.
Since the tragedy, Mrs Lynne Hardinge, a slim, well-groomed, grey-haired woman of fifty, had thrown herself with almost frenetic energy into her voluntary activities: Meals on Wheels, Cruse, Help the Aged, Victim Support. . . Everyone was saying what a wonderful woman she was; everyone commented on how well she was coping.
At the time that Morse and Johnson were talking together, she got out of the passenger seat in the eight-windowed Volvo, and taking with her two tin-foiled cartons, main course and sweet, knocked firmly on a door in the Osney Mead estate.
Most of those who received their Meals on Wheels four times a week were grateful and gracious enough. But not quite all.
'It's open!'
"Here we are then, Mrs Gruby.'
'Hope it's not that fish again!'
'Lamb casserole, and lemon pudding.'
‘Tuesday's was cold - did you know that?'
‘Oh dear!'
The wonderfully well-coping voluntary worker said no more, but her lips moved fiercely as she closed the door behind her. Why didn't you stick it in the fucking oven then, you miserable old bitch? Sometimes she felt she could go quite, quite mad. Just recently too she'd felt she could easily shoot somebody - certainly that pathetic two-timing husband of hers.
CHAPTER FIFTY
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging
whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question
of philosophy
(Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus]
IT WAS immediately following Morse's almost unprecedentedly alcohol-free lunch (cheese sandwich and coffee) that the crucial break in the case occurred. And it was Lewis's good fortune to convey the tidings to the canteen, where Morse sat reading the Daily Mirror.
When earlier in the week Morse had argued that a car would have been required, that a car would have been essential, that a car would have to be disposed of-when earlier Morse had argued these points, the firing plugs in Lewis's practical mind had sputtered into life: cars lost, cars stolen, cars vandalized, cars burned, cars abandoned, cars found on the streets, cars towed away - Lewis had straightway gauged the possibilities; and drawing a vaguely twenty-mile radius round Oxford, after consultation with the Traffic Unit, he had been able to set in motion a programme of fairly simple checks, with attention focused on the few days following the very last sighting of Karin Eriksson.
The key evidence would have been difficult to miss, really, once the dates were specified, since Lt. Col. Basil Villiers, MC, had rung the police on no less than twelve occasions during the period concerned, complaining that the car found abandoned and vandalized, and thereafter further vandalized and finally fired, was a blot on the beautiful landscape -a disgrace, an eyesore, and an ugliness; that he (the aforesaid Colonel) had not fought against despotism, dictatorship, totalitarianism, and tyranny to be fobbed off with petty excuses concerning insurance, liability, obligation, and availability of personnel. But it had only been after considerable difficulty (number plates now gone, though registration markings still on the windows) that the owner of the vehicle had been traced, and the offending 'eyesore' towed away from the neighbourhood of the Colonel's bungalow to some vehicular Valhalla - with a coloured photograph the only memento now of what once had been a newborn, sleek, and shining offspring of some Japanese assembly line.
The keying-in of the registration number now (as presumably a year earlier?) had produced, within a few seconds, the name and address of the owner: James Myton, of 24 Hickson Drive, Baling; or rather formerly of 24 Hickson Drive, Baling, since immediate enquiries at this address had confirmed only that James Myton had not lived there for more than a year! Swansea DVLC had sent three letters to the said address, but without reply. LMJ 5946 was a lapsed registration, though still not deleted, it appeared, from the official records kept in South Wales.
As for Myton himself, his name had appeared on Scotland Yard's missing-persons list for the second half of 1991. But in that year over 30,000 persons were registered as 'missing' in London alone; and a recent report, wholly backed by Sir Peter Imbert himself, suggested that the index was becoming so inaccurate that it should be restarted from scratch, with a completely fresh re-check on each of the legion names listed. As Morse saw things though, it was going to take considerably more than a 'recheck' to revive any hopes of the missing Mr James Myton ever being found alive again.
By mid-afternoon there was firm corroboration from Baling that the body found in Pasticks was that of James William Myton, who as a boy had first been taken 'into care' by the local authority; later looked after by an ageing couple (now deceased) in Brighton; and thereafter supervised for a time by HM Borstal Service on the Isle of Wight. But the young man had always shown a bit of practical talent; and in 1989, aged twenty-six, he had emerged into the outside world with a reputation for adequate competence in carpentry, interior design, and photography. For eighteen months he had worked in the TV studios at Bristol. A physical description from a woman living two doors away from him in Ealing suggested 'a weakish sort of mouth in which the lower teeth were set small and evenly spaced, like the crenellations of a young boy's toy-fort'.
'She should have been a novelist!' said Morse.
'She is a novelist,' said Lewis.
At all events Myton was not now to be found; and unlikely to be found. Frequently in the past he had been a man of no permanent address; but in the present Morse was sure that he was a permanent dweller in the abode of the dead - as the lady novelist might have phrased it in one of her purplier passages.