The Way Through The Woods

the black handle showing. His eyes gleamed with the elation of the hunter pouncing on his quarry; but even as he pocketed his find his body froze once more. A rustle… nearby. Very near. Then, just as suddenly, he felt his shoulder muscles relax. Wonderfully so. The fox stood only three yards in front of him, ears pricked, staring him brazenly in the eye – before turning padding off into the undergrowth, as if deciding that this intruder, at least, was unlikely to molest its time-honoured solitary territory.

*

The police car was very late ('Traffic!' the driver said) and the four of them – the three at the vehicular access points to the woods, and Pollard himself- couldn't alas be relieved until 7 p.m. Priority was still with the joy-riding kids, and no one seemed to know who was in charge of things there anyway: Sergeant Lewis had buggered off for a skiing holiday in Sweden – Christ! – and Chief Inspector bloody Morse was temporarily 'unavailable', probably in a pub. Pity the walkie-talkie wouldn't function a bit better, probably all those bloody trees, eh?

The tree-creeper was gone, and the lesser-spotted woodpecker was gone, as Pollard plodded reluctantly back to his post.

And something else was gone too.

chapter forty-one

Little by little the agents have taken over the world. They don't do anything, they don't make anything – they just stand there and take their cut

(Jean Giraudoux, The Madwoman of Chaillot]

whether the agency was very busy, or whether the phone was out of order, or whether someone just didn't want to speak to him, Morse couldn't know. But it was 4.30 p.m. before he finally got through, and 5 p.m. before, crawling with the other traffic, he finally pulled into the small concreted parking area of the Elite Booking Services in Abingdon Road. The establishment (as it seemed to Morse) should ideally have been a glitzy, marble-and-glass affair, with a seductive and probably topless brunette contemplating her long scarlet fingernails at reception. But things were not so.

The front room of the slightly seedy semi-detached property was so cluttered with file-cases and cardboard boxes that room could be found for only two upright chairs – for the two women proprietors: one, very large, and certainly ill-advised to be wearing a pair of wide, crimson culottes; the other rather small and flat-chested, black- stockinged and minimally skirted. Both were smoking menthol cigarettes; and judging from the high-piled ashtrays around the room, both were continuously smoking menthol cigarettes. Instinctively Morse felt that the latter (if either) would be the boss. But it was the large woman (in her late twenties?) who spoke first:

'This is Selina – my assistant. I'm Michelle – Michelle Thompson. How can I help you?'

The smile, on the rounded dimpled cheeks, seemed warm enough – attractive even – and Morse, reluctantly taking Selina's seat, asked his questions and received his answers.

The agency was the receptor, the collator, and the distributor of 'information', from all quarters of the country, which might be of interest and use to assorted businesses, ranging from TV companies to film producers, clothes designers to fashion organizers, magazine editors to well, all right, purveyors of rather less salubrious products. In its Terms and Conditions contracts, the agency dissociated itself officially, legally, completely, from any liability arising from the misuse of its services. When a particular client hired a particular model, such a booking was made with the strict proviso that any abuse of contractual obligation was a matter to be settled between model and client – never model and agency. But such trouble was rare – very rare. McBryde had been a client for about two years: a very good client, if full and prompt payment were the criterion – 80 per cent of the negotiated fee to the model; 20 per cent to the agency.

Each spring a Model Year Book was produced; there were always new models, of course, and always new clients – with new, differing interests. But one of the Terms and Conditions ('Terribly important, Inspector!') was that any information originally divulged to the agency concerning individual models, and any information subsequently learned by the agency about the activities of either clients or models, would always remain a matter of the strictest confidentiality. Must still remain so now, unless, well… But at least the inspector could understand that once trust was gone…

'And that's why you never contacted the police?'

'Exactly,' asserted Ms Thompson.

The link with the YWCA in London was very simple. The woman the police had earlier interviewed, Mrs Audrey Morris, was her sister. On the Friday before Karin had hitch-hiked to Oxford, Audrey had phoned to say that they had a young Swedish student with them who was down to her last few pennies; that the YWCA had given her a ten-pound note from the charity fund; that Audrey had written out the name, address, and telephone number of the Elite agency, and assured Michelle that the young lady was shapely, very photogenic, and probably sufficiently worldly-wise to know that a suitable session with a photographer might well work wonders for an impoverished pocket.

'You work on Sundays?'

'Sunday's a good day for sin, Inspector. And we had a client willing and waiting – if she came.'

'And she came?'

'She rang us from a call-box in Wentworth Road in North Oxford and Selina here went up in the Mini to fetch her-'

Morse could contain himself no longer. 'Bloody hell! Do you realize how much time and trouble you could have saved us? No wonder we've got so much unsolved crime when-'

'What crime exactly are we talking about, Inspector?'

Morse let it go, and asked her to continue.

But that was about it – little more to say. Selina had brought her there, to Abingdon Road: attractive, bronzed, blonde, full-figured, skimpily dressed; with a rucksack – yes, a red rucksack, and with very little else. The client from Seckham Villa had been on the look-out for such and similar offerings. A phone call. A verbal agreement: ?100 for a one-hour session – ?80 to the girl, ?20 to the agency.

'How did she get up to Park Town?'

'Dunno. She said she'd walk up to the centre – only five minutes – and get a bite to eat. Didn't seem to want much help. Independent sort of girl.'

So that was that. At least for the present.

Before he left Morse asked to look through the current Model Year Book, a thick black-covered brochure from which, fairly certainly – or from a previous edition of which – the selected photocopies found at Seckham Villa had been taken. The photographs were all in black and white, but in this edition Morse could find neither Claire nor Louisa amongst the elegant ladies in their semi-buttoned blouses and suspendered stockings. No Karin either among the Ks: just Katie, and Kelly, and Kimberly, and Kylie…

'If I can take this?'

'Of course.'

'And I may have to bother you again, I'm afraid – with my sergeant.'

As Morse was leaving the phone rang and Selina made forward as if to take the call. But the senior partner picked up the receiver first, placed her hand over the mouthpiece, and bade her visitor farewell. Thus it was Selina the Silent who accompanied the chief inspector to the door, and who, a little to Morse's surprise, walked out with him to the Jaguar.

'There's something I want you to know,' she said suddenly. 'It's not important, I know, but…'

Unlike the Cockney ancestry of her partner's speech, the vowels here were curiously curly: the vowels of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.