Colin Dexter - The Way Through The Woods

'You mean,' said Williams slowly, 'you mean it mightn't have been him – driving the van?'

'Exactly.'

Oh dear! Williams didn't know… hadn't even considered…

Two women joggers appeared at the lodge, twisted through the kissing-gate and continued their way into the park itself, their breasts bouncing, their legs (as viewed from the rear) betraying the slightly splay-footed run of the fairer sex. Morse followed them briefly with his eyes, and asked his last question:

'Did you notice any jogger coming this way, out of the park, on Monday morning? About, let's say, half-past ten? Eleven?'

Williams pondered the question. While everything else seemed to be getting more and more muddled in his mind, the chief inspector had just sparked off a fairly vivid recollection. He thought he had noticed someone, yes – a woman. There were always lots of joggers at weekends, but not many in the week; not many at all; and certainly not in the middle of the morning. He thought he could remember the woman though; could almost see her now, with the nipples of her breasts erect and pushing through the thin material of her T-shirt. Was that Monday morning, though? The simple truth was that he just couldn't be certain and again he was unwilling to commit himself too positively.

'I may have done, yes.'

'Thank you very much, sir.'

What exactly he was being thanked for, Mr Williams was not quite clear, and he was aware that he must have appeared a less-than-satisfactory witness. Yet the chief inspector had looked mightily pleased with himself as he'd left; and he'd said 'very much', hadn't he? It was all a bit beyond the gate-keeper of Combe Lodge in Blenheim Park.

the semi-circular area where birdwatchers and the occasional loving couple were wont to park was packed with police cars and vans when, half an hour after leaving Blenheim, Lewis drove through the perimeter gate ('The woods are closed to Permit Holders until 10.00 a.m. every day except Sunday') and into the compound, on his left, marked off with its horizontal four-barred, black-creosoted fencing. Here, under the direction of Chief Inspector Johnson, some fifty or so policemen – some uniformed, some not – were systematically conducting their search.

'No luck yet?’ asked Morse.

'Give us a chance!' said Johnson. 'Lot of ground to cover, isn't there?'

The large wooden sheds, the stacks of logs and fencing-posts, the occasional clump of trees, the rank growth of untended bushes – all precluded any wholly scientific search-pattern. But there was plenty of time; there were plenty of men; they would find it, Johnson was confident of that.

Morse led the way up the curving track towards the furthest point from the compound entrance, towards the hut where David Michaels had his office, right up against the recently erected deer-fence. To the left of this track was a line of forty or so fir trees, about thirty feet high; and to the right, the hut itself, the main door standing padlocked now. On the wooden sides of this extensive hut. at the top, were six large bird-boxes, numbered 9-14; and at the bottom there grew rank clumps of nettles. Morse looked back down the sloping track; retraced his steps, counting as he went; then stopped at a smaller open-sided shed in which stood a large red tractor with a timber-lifting device fixed to it. For a minute or two he stood beside the tractor, behind the shed wall, and then, as if he were a young boy with an imaginary rifle, lifted both his arms, curled his right index-finger round an imaginary trigger, closed his left eye, and slowly turned the rifle in an arc from right to left, as if some imaginary vehicle were being driven past – the rifle finally remaining stationary as the vehicle's imaginary driver dismounted, in front of the head forester's hut.

'You reckon?' asked Lewis quietly.

Morse nodded.

That means we probably ought to be concentrating the search up there, sir.' Lewis pointed back towards Michaels' office.

'Give him a chance! He's not so bright as you,' whispered Morse.

'About fifty, fifty-five yards. I paced it too, sir.'

Again Morse nodded, and the two of them rejoined Johnson.

'Know much about rifles?' asked Morse.

'Enough.'

'Could you use a silencer on a seven-millimetre?''

' "Sound-moderator" -that's the word these days. No, not much good. It'd suppress the noise of the explosion, but it couldn't stop the noise of the bullet going through the sound-barrier. And incidentally, Morse, it might be a.243 – don't forget that!'

'Oh!'

'You were thinking it might be around here, weren't you?' Johnson kicked aside a few nettles along the bottom of the shed, and looked at Morse shrewdly, if a little sadly.

Morse shrugged. 'I'd be guessing, of course.'

Johnson looked down at the flattened nettles. 'You never did have much faith in me, did you?'

Morse didn't know what to say, and as Johnson walked away, he too looked down at the flattened nettles.

'You're quite wrong, you know, sir. He's a whole lot brighter than me, is Johnson.'

But again Morse made no reply, and the pair of them walked down to the low, stone-built cottage where until very lately Michaels and his Swedish wife had lived so happily together.

Just as they were entering, they heard a shot from fairly far off. But they paid little attention to it. As Michaels had informed them, no one was ever going to be too disturbed about hearing a gun-shot in Wytham: game-keepers shooting squirrels or rabbits, perhaps; farmworkers taking a pot at the pestilential pigeons.

Inside the cottage, just beside the main entrance, stood the steel security cabinet from which Michaels' rifle had been taken for forensic examination. But there was no longer any legal requirement for the cabinet to be locked, and it now stood open – and empty. Lewis bent down and looked carefully at the groove in which the rifle had stood, noting the scratches where the butt had rested; and beside it a second groove – with equally tell-tale signs.

'I'm sure you're right,' said Lewis.

'If you remember,' said Morse, 'he told us himself, Michaels did. When you told him you'd seen no rifles in the hut he said… he said "Oh, I couldn't keep 'em there" – those were his exact words, I think.'

'You're still certain he did it, sir?'

'Yes.'

'What about that "Uncertainty Principle" you were on about this morning?'

'What about it?' asked Morse. Infuriatingly.

'Forget it.'

'What's the time?'

'Nearly twelve.'

'Ah, the prick of noon!'

'Pardon?'

'Forget it.'

'We can walk down if you like, sir. A nice little ten-minute walk – do us good. We can work up a thirst.'

'Nonsense!'

'Don't you enjoy walking – occasionally?'

'Occasionally, yes.'

'So?'

'So drive me down to the White Hart, Lewis! What's the problem?'

'what put you on it this time?' asked Lewis as they sat opposite each other in the small upstairs bar, Morse with a pint of real ale, Lewis himself with a much-iced orangeade.

'I think it wasn't so much finding Daley like he was – out at Blenheim. It was the photographs they took of him there. I don't think it hit me at the time; but when I looked at the photographs I got the idea somehow that he'd just been dumped there – that he hadn't been shot there at all.'