The Secret of Annexe 3

But Lewis had got off to a bad start. His first call elicited the disappointing information that the last street-collection in Oxford for the RSPCA had been the previous July; and he had no option but to start making another list, and a very long list at that. First came the well-known medical charities, those dealing with multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, heart diseases, cancer research, blindness, deafness, et cetera; then the major social charities, ranging from Christian Aid and Oxfam to War on Want and the Save the Children Fund, et cetera; next came specific societies that looked after ambulancemen, lifeboatmen and ex-servicemen, et cetera; finally were listed the local charities which funded hospices for the terminally ill, hostels for the criminally sick or the mentally unbalanced, et cetera. Lewis could have added scores of others - and he knew he was getting into an awful mess. He could even have added the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Criminal Offenders. But he didn't.

Clearly some sort of selection was required, and he would have been more than glad to have Morse at his side at that moment. It was like being faced with a difficult maths problem at school: if you weren't careful, you got more and more ensnared in some increasingly complex equations - until the master showed you a beautifully economic short-cut that reduced the problem to a few simple little sums and produced a glittering (and correct) solution at the foot of the page. But his present master, Morse, was still apparently otherwise engaged, and so he decided to begin in earnest: on the second of the two equations.

Yet an hour later he had advanced his knowledge of charity collections in Oxford not one whit: and he was becoming increasingly irritated with telephone numbers which didn't answer when called, or which (if they did answer) appeared manned by voluntary envelope-lickers, decorators, caretakers or idiots - or (worst of all!) by intimidating answering machines telling Lewis to start speaking 'now'. And after a further hour of telephoning, he hadn't found a single charitable organization which had held a flag day in Oxford - or anywhere else in the vicinity, for that matter - in the last few days of December.

He was getting, ridiculously, nowhere; and he said as much when Morse finally put in another appearance at 11 a.m. with a cup of coffee and a digestive biscuit, both of which (mistakenly) Lewis thought his superior officer had brought in for him.

We need some of those men we've been promised, sir.'

‘No, no, Lewis! We don't want to start explaining everything to a load of squaddies. Just have a go at the clinic angle if the other's no good. I'll come and give you a hand when I get the chance.'

So Lewis made another start - this time on those Oxford hair clinics which had bothered to take a few centimetres of advertising space in the Yellow Pages: only four of them, thank goodness! But once again the problem soon began to take on unexpectedly formidable dimensions - once he began to consider the sort of questions he could ask a clinic manageress - if she was on the premises. For what could he ask? He wanted to find out if a woman whose name he didn't know, whose appearance he could only very imperfectly describe, and of whose address he hadn't the faintest notion, except perhaps that it might just be in Chipping Norton - whether such a woman had been in for some unspecified treatment, but probably upper-lip depilation, at some unspecified time, though most probably on the morning of, let him say, any of the last few days of December. What a farce, thought Lewis; and what a fruitless farce it did in fact become. The first of the clinics firmly refused to answer questions, even to the police, about such 'strictly confidential' matters; the second was quite happy to inform him that it had no customers whatsoever on its books with an address in Chipping Norton; a recorded message informed him that the third would re-open after the New Year break on January 6th; and the fourth suggested, politely enough, that he must have misread the advertisement: that whilst it cut, trimmed, singed and dyed, the actual removal of hair was not included amongst its splendid services.

Lewis put down the phone - and capitulated. He went over to the canteen and found Morse - the only one there - drinking another cup of coffee and just completing The Times crossword puzzle.

'Ah, Lewis. Get yourself a coffee! Any luck yet?'

'No, I bloody haven't,' snapped Lewis - a man who swore, at the very outside, about once a fortnight. 'As I said, sir, I need some help: half a dozen DCs - that's what I need.'

‘I don't think it's necessary, you know.'