The Way Through The Woods (35 page)

She was almost at the end of her tether. 'What
is
it?' she shrieked. 'Please! Please
tell
me! What are you
accusing
me of? All of you?'

Resignedly Morse gestured with his right hand to Lewis; and Lewis, in a flat and melancholy voice, intoned the charge:

'Mrs Karin Michaels – Miss Karin Eriksson – I have to inform you that you are under police arrest on suspicion of murdering one James Myton, on the afternoon of Sunday, July seventh, 1991. It is my duty to warn you that anything you may now say in the presence of the three police officers here may be used in evidence in any future proceedings.'

Morse got up, and now stood above her.

'There's no need for you to say anything, not for the time being.'

'You mean you are accusing me –
me –
of being Karin, my sister? The sister who was
murdered?'

'You're still denying it?' queried Morse quietly.

'Of course!
Of course,
I am!'

'You can prove it, you know. The Swedish authorities tell us they don't use that "Remarks" section very much at all on the passport – only really if there's some obvious distinguishing mark that can help in establishing identity. On the passport though -the one you say is yours – that section's filled in, in Swedish. And it says, so they tell me, "Pronounced diagonal scar, inner thigh above left knee-cap, eight and a half centimetres in length, result of motoring accident".'

'Yes?' She looked up at the chief inspector as if she almost willed him, dared him,
wanted
him, to prove his accusation.

'So if you
do
have a scar there, it won't necessarily prove
who
you are, will it? But if you haven't… if you
haven't,
then you're not now, and never were, the woman described on that passport.'

Karin Eriksson, the murderer of James Myton, now sat completely still for many agonizing seconds. Then slowly, tantalizingly, as if she were some upper-class artiste in a strip-tease parlour, centimetre by centimetre her left hand lifted the hem of the beige velvet skirt above her left knee to reveal the naked flesh upon her inner thigh.

Did she rejoice in the gaze of the two detectives there? Had she secretly always thrilled to the admiration of the young boys in her high school class at Uppsala – of the tutors on her course? Even perhaps, for a short while, to the lust of the crude and ratty-faced Myton, who had sought to rape her out in Wytham Woods, and whom she had then so deliberately murdered?

And as Morse looked down at the smooth and unscarred flesh above her knee, he found himself wondering for a little while whether he too, like Myton, might not at some point on a hot and sultry summer afternoon have found this girl so
very
beautiful and necessary.

Lewis drove carefully down the road that led along the edge of the woods towards Wytham village. Beside him was WPG Wright; and in the back sat Karin Eriksson and Chief Inspector Morse.

Almost always, at such a stage in any case, Morse felt himself saddened – with the thrill of the chase now over, with the guilty left to face the appropriate retribution. Often had he pondered on the eternal problem of justice; and he knew as did most men of civilized values that the function of law was to provide that framework of order within which men and women could be protected as they went about their legitimate business. Yes, the criminal must be punished for his misdeeds, for that was the law. And Morse was an upholder of the law. Yet he debated now again, as he felt the body of Karin Eriksson close beside him, that fine distinction between the law and justice. Justice was one of those big words that was so often spelled with a capital 'J'; but really it was so much harder to define than Law. Karin would have to face the law; and he turned to look at her – to look at those beautiful blue eyes of hers, moistened now with the quiet film of tears. For a few seconds, at that moment, there seemed almost a bond between them – between Morse and the young woman who had murdered James Myton.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, she whispered something in his right ear.

'Did you ever have sex with a girl in the back of a car?'

'Not in the back,' whispered Morse. 'In the front, of course. Often!'

'Are you telling me the truth?'

'No,' said Morse.

He was conscious of a brimming reservoir of tears somewhere behind his own eyes as the police car came up to the main road and turned left, down past Wytham towards the police HQ. And for a second or two he thought he felt Karin's left leg pressing gently against him, and so very much he hoped that this was so.

the statement made by Karin Eriksson added little to Lewis's knowledge of the case. Unprecedentedly, Morse had kept him informed, in key respects, from fairly early on of his suspicions surrounding the Swedish Maiden and, eventually, of his virtual certainties. There were one or two significant discrepancies – particularly concerning the amount of money Karin had with her on her arrival in Oxford, and concerning the number of voyeurs who witnessed her photographic session in Seckham Villa. But from the combined statements of Karin herself and of her (wholly legitimate) husband David, it was a straightforward matter to stitch together the sequence of events that occurred on Sunday, 7 July

Out on the M40 Karin had almost immediately been picked up by a van en route for the Rover Car Plant at Cowley, in Oxford. Dropped off at the Headington roundabout, she had been picked up, again almost immediately, by a BMW and dropped at the Banbury Road roundabout on the Northern Ring Road. Walking a few hundred yards down the Banbury Road (buses on Sunday seemed infrequent) she had noticed the Cotswold House, and on impulse felt how wonderful it would be to spend at least one night in such attractive-looking B & B accommodation. She had knocked and enquired the rates; had been told that there was one single room vacancy; but on learning the tariff had decided to find something a little cheaper, a little later. From a phone-box in Wentworth Road, just opposite the Cotswold House, she had phoned the model agency, and fairly soon been collected and driven down to Abingdon Road, where a telephone arrangement was made with McBryde for Karin to present herself at Seckham Villa, at about 2 p.m., for an hour or so's photographic session – the fee suggested, £8o-£120, causing her eyebrows to lift in pleasurable surprise. She had declined further help from the agency, and walked up to St Giles', where she had a ham sandwich and half a glass of lager in the Eagle and Child.

At Seckham Villa she had been admitted by McBryde, and soon introduced to Mytpn. No hard pornography! – she'd immediately made her position clear on that; but, yes, she was willing to pose for a series of nude and semi-nude studies. And for an extra £20 she'd agreed that two other men there could sit in the 'studio' and watch her. Myton, she learned, was a freelance cinematographer in the sex-video world, and almost straightaway she had felt his eyes stripping off her skimpy summer clothing. But he'd seemed all right. Whilst he was preparing his paraphernalia of tripods, umbrellas, backcloths, reflectors, light-meters, and the rest, she had wandered out briefly into the back garden; and when he had come out a little while later she had found him amusing and good fun. He was a smallish, slim man, with a day's growth of darkish beard, but with much lighter-coloured hair, worn quite long with an absurd short pony-tail held in an elastic band. She had teased him a little about this, and indeed asked him to stand by the wall there while
she
could take a couple of snaps. Soon though McBryde had hurriedly ushered them inside, where she was introduced, perfunctorily, to a man in a lightweight summer-suit, and another man in grey slacks and sports jacket, incongruously (as she remembered on that hot day) holding a green pork-pie hat.

Then the 'session'. She had, she confessed, experienced some flush of excitement as the two silent men (McBryde had only come in later) ogled her as she stripped and posed and donned the see-through lingerie provided, and lay there on the bed in gaping gowns and skimpy negligees. Myton had punctuated her posturings with crude encouragements as gradually she'd felt herself relaxing: 'Christ, that's marvellous! Yeah! Ye-eah! Just hold it there, baby! Keep that hand under your tits and sort of, yes, sort of push 'em at me!' Such manner of talk had excited her and, if she were honest with herself, she'd felt a sort of orgasm of sexual vanity.

Afterwards, when she and Myton were alone, she had asked him to take one or two snaps of her with her own camera – just as a reminder really – and he'd readily done so. He'd still not so much as touched her physically, not yet; but he'd asked her where she was going and said he had his car outside if she wanted a lift anywhere. Before leaving McBryde had given her £100, all in ten-pound notes, which she had placed in her money-wallet; and then Myton had driven her back up to the top of the Banbury Road. She told him that she was thinking of going to the charity pop concert at Blenheim the next evening, 8 July, and then – suddenly – as they were passing the Cotswold House she asked him to stop: she
would
stay there now. But a white notice – no vacancies – was across the door, and the lady of the house confirmed sadly that the remaining room had just been taken. As she was getting back into the car, she thought she saw a sparrow-hawk flying over towards the huge trees behind her, and she stopped and sought to focus her binoculars upon it. Fatal moment! Myton asked her if she was interested in birdwatching; and she had shown him her list of hoped-for spottings. Well,
he
knew exactly where she could see the woodpecker – probably see
all
the woodpeckers. In Wytham! He was interested himself in birds: was a member of the RSPB (this later proving untrue) and had a permit for walking in Wytham Woods (also proving to be untrue).

That was the beginning of all her woe.

Setting off from the semi-circular parking area just before the Great Wood, they had walked diagonally across a field and then along some leafy woodland pathway into a thickly forested area, where she remembered the brittle crackling of dead twigs and branches beneath her feet; and then Myton's hands upon her body. At first perhaps she might have been prepared for some limited petting; but very soon he had grown rough and insistent, and told her that he needed her – urgently. Would
have
her! He'd stripped off her thin blouse and pulled her to the floor; but she was herself strong and determined in fighting him off. The pocket of the rucksack in which she kept her binoculars – and her knife – was still open; and she managed to struggle away from him and open the blade of the knife – and plunge it into him… It had entered his flesh so easily, like pushing a knife through soft cheese, she said; but a fountain of blood had spurted across the top of her semi-naked body. Unlike the blood though
he
lay still, utterly still – his eyes wide open and glaring up at her.

She hurled the knife into the trees, picked up her scarlet rucksack, and dressed only in a blood-bespattered skirt she fled the spot in panic – emerging finally into a clearing where, panting and jabbering and whimpering, she ran and ran – she could have no idea how long, how far – before collapsing, and remembering nothing more until she looked up to see a dog, a black and white Welsh Border Collie, and a thick-set, bearded man behind the dog, his face anxious and kindly, looking down at her. A Land-rover was parked a few yards away.

In his cottage David Michaels at first had found it scarcely possible to believe the young woman's extraordinary account of what had occurred. It all seemed like some terrible
nightmare,
she'd pleaded: of a frenetic struggle and of a sudden death, if death it were; or of a man lying in the
agony
of death somewhere out there, somewhere in the woods. Indeed were it not for the blood all over her body, it
must
have been a nightmare surely! The mention of the word 'police' had driven her to hysterical tears; and clearly distressing too was the thought of the
car,
the car that from his cottage window Michaels could see even then across the lane. But
he
would deal with things, he'd promised her that – not knowing what he promised. He learned from her of Seckham Villa, and he made his decision. He got her to bath herself, to swallow half a dozen Disprin; and very soon, so suddenly, so miraculously almost, she had fallen deeply asleep, quite naked between the white sheets of his own double bed. And he realized at that moment that he was just as bad as the rest of them, for he lusted after her, just as other men had lusted after her that afternoon.

At Seckham Villa, Michaels had met the three of them – still there: McBryde, Daley, and Hardinge; and he had begun then to appreciate the complexity of the situation in which they all -including Michaels himself – now found themselves. A plan was conceived. And later executed. Just one detail that was new. Karin's intended visit to the pop concert at Blenheim could be used to their ready advantage, since the discovery of the rucksack and other personal possessions somewhere
near
Blenheim, the day
after
the concert, would throw everyone on to the wrong scent, and would promote dark suspicions of a young lady missing, presumed dead somewhere, doubtless murdered by some drug-crazed, sex-hyped youth whom she'd met at the jamboree. Fear of exposure and financial ruin was more than sufficient motivation for McBryde; fear of exposure and scandal more than sufficient for Hardinge; and a cheque (neither Karin nor David Michaels knew for how much) sufficient to ensure the co-operation of the mercenary Daley.

That night, back in the cottage on the edge of the woods, Karin had become terrifyingly distraught; he had slept with her, for she wished it so; she had sought throughout that night the reassurance of his embrace, and of his love; and gladly, gloriously, he had met her needs.