The Way Through The Woods

taken the job of superintendent of the YWCA four years since. She enjoyed the job well enough, but the situation in London was getting desperate. All right, the hostel might be two rungs up from the cardboard-box brigade, but all the old categories were gradually merging now into a sort of communal misery: women whose homes had been repossessed; wives who had been battered; youngish girls who were unemployed or improvident or penniless – or usually all three; birds of passage; and druggies, and potential suicides, and of course quite frequently foreign students who'd miscalculated their monies – students like Miss Karin Eriksson.

Morse went through the main points of the statement she had made the previous summer, but there was, it seemed, nothing further she could add. Like her younger sister she was considerably overweight, with a plump, attractive face in which her smile, as she spoke, appeared guileless and co-operative. So Morse decided he was wasting his time, and sought answers to some other questions: questions about what Karin was like, how she behaved, how she'd got on with the others there.

Was it that Morse had expected a litany of seductive charms -the charms of a young lady with full breasts ever bouncing beneath her low-cut blouse, with an almost indecently short skirt tight-fitting over her bottom, and her long, bronzed legs crossed provocatively as she sat sipping a Diet Coke… or a Cognac? Only half expected though, for his knowledge of Karin Eriksson was slowly growing all the time; was growing now as Mrs Morris rather gently recalled a girl who was always going to catch men's eyes, who was certainly aware of her attraction, and who clearly enjoyed the attention which it always brought. But whether she was the sort of young woman whose legs would swiftly – or even slowly -ease apart upon the application of a little pressure, well, Audrey Morris was much more doubtful. She'd given the impression of being able to keep herself, and others, pretty much under control. Oh yes!

'But she – she might lead men on a bit, perhaps?' asked Morse.

'Yes.'

'But maybe' – Morse was having some difficulty – 'not go much further?'

'Much further than what?'

'What I'm saying is, well, we used to have a word for girls like that – when I was at school, I mean.'

'Yes?'

'Yes.'

' 'Prick-teaser'? Is that the word you're looking for?'

'Something like that,' said Morse, smiling in some embarrassment as he stood up and prepared to leave; just as Karin Eriksson must have stood up to take her leave from these very premises, with ten pounds in her purse and the firm resolve (if Mrs Morris could be believed) of hitch-hiking her way not only to Oxford, but very much further out along the A40 – to Llandovery, the home of the red kite.

Audrey Morris saw him out, watching his back as he walked briskly towards the underground station at King's Cross, before returning to her office and phoning her sister in Oxford.

‘I’ve just had your inspector here!'

'No problems, I hope?'

'No! Quite dishy though, isn't he?'

'Is he?'

'Come off it! You said he was.'

'Did you give him a glass of that malt?'

'What?'

'You didn't give him a drink?'

'It's only just gone four now.'

'A-u-d-r-e-y!'

'How was I to know?'

'Didn't you smell his breath?'

'Wasn't near enough, was I?'

'You didn't manage things at all well, did you, sis!'

'Don't laugh but – I gave him a cup of tea.'

In spite of the injunction, the senior partner of Elite Booking Services laughed long and loud at the other end of the line.

*

Morse arrived back in Oxford at 6.25 p.m., and as he crossed over the bridge from Platform 2 he found himself quietly humming one of the best-known songs from The Mikado:

My object all sublime

I shall achieve in time

To let the punishment fit the crime,

The punishment fit the crime…

chapter forty-eight

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs

(Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson)

for several persons either closely or loosely connected with the case being reported in these pages, the evening of Thursday, 30 July, was of considerable importance, although few of the persons involved were aware at the time that the tide of events was now approaching its flood.

7.25 p.m.

One of the three little maids peered out from one side of the tatty, ill-running stage-curtain and saw that the hall was already packed, 112 of them, the maximum number stipulated by the fire regulations; saw her husband David – bless him! – there on the back row. He had insisted on buying himself a ticket for each of the three performances, and that had made her very happy. Did he look just a little forlorn though, contributing nothing to the animated hum of conversation all around? He'd be fine though; and she – she felt shining and excited, as she stepped back from the curtain and rejoined her fellow performers. All right, there were only a few square yards 'backstage'; such a little stage too; such an inadequate, amateurish orchestra; such a pathetic apology for lighting and effects. And yet… and yet the magic was all around, somehow: some competent singers; excellent make-up, especially for the ladies; lovely costumes; super support from the village and the neighbourhood; and a brilliant young pianist, an undergraduate from Keble, who wore a large earring, who could sing the counter-tenor parts from the Handel operas like an angel, and who spent most of his free time on lonely nocturnal vigils

watching badgers in the nearby woods.

Yes, for Cathy Michaels the adrenaline was flowing freely, and any worries her husband might be harbouring for her – or she for him – were wholly forgotten as with a few sharp taps of the conductor's baton there fell a hush upon the hall; and with the first few bars of the overture, The Mikado had begun. Quickly she looked again in one of the mirrors there at the white-faced, black-haired, pillar-box-red-lipped Japanese lady who was herself; and knew why David found her so attractive. David… a good deal older than she was, of course, and with a past of which she knew so very little. But she loved him, and would do anything for him.

7.50 p.m.

The four youths, aged twelve, fourteen, seventeen, and seventeen, were still being held in police custody, in St