A Killing Kindness

by Reginald Hill

  Middlefield went such an interesting colour that Dalziel couldn’t resist saying, ‘You stay like that, Bernard, and you’ll have to resign from the golf club.’

  A more dangerous encounter occurred as he was giving his instructions to the constables from the cars. To one of them he handed a plastic bag borrowed from Greenall’s kitchen into which he had transferred his floury finds.

  ‘To the lab,’ he said. ‘I want to know all there is to know. And I want it yesterday.’

  As the other escorted the Lees to the police car, a pale blue Lancia drew up and Thelma Lacewing and Ellie Pascoe got out.

  Thelma was wearing a thin cotton suit in cream with a grey leaf pattern which ought not to have suited her colouring but somehow did. She frowned slightly at the sight of the police cars and went right past Dalziel without a glance.

  Ellie who looked hot and uncomfortable in a smock which was stretched as far as it seemed likely to go said, ‘Hello, Andy. Checking on pilots’ licences, are you?’

  ‘Hello, Ellie,’ said Dalziel, beaming widely. ‘You’re looking grand. There are some flowers that look best in pod. Another business lunch, is it?’

  ‘Another?’

  ‘Aye. Peter told me about your last. You did right to mention Mrs Wildgoose to us. We’ll make a snout of you yet.’

  Ellie looked around uneasily but Thelma was out of earshot talking earnestly to Greenall.

  ‘No, not business this time. Thelma just called unexpectedly. She’s off this afternoon, thought she might try a flight.’

  ‘Oh aye?’

  Dalziel shot her a questioning glance.

  ‘You’re never thinking of going up yourself, lass?’

  ‘I may do,’ said Ellie. ‘What about it?’

  ‘In your state? Does Peter know about this?’

  ‘Look, Andy,’ said Ellie with growing indignation. ‘What I do is my business. I make my own decisions. I’m a big girl.’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ said Dalziel.

  But further discussion was prevented by the return of Thelma Lacewing.

  ‘Those people you have just despatched, Superintendent, have they been charged?’ she said in her quiet, rather over-precise voice.

  Dalziel scratched his neck, winked at Ellie who turned away from this attempt at conspiratorial familiarity, and said, ‘No, Ms Lacewing. They have not.’

  ‘Are they going to be charged?’

  ‘They’re helping with enquiries. At this time I am not in a position to forecast the possible outcome of these enquiries,’ said Dalziel, deliberately self-parodying.

  ‘Not till they’ve been questioned, you mean?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘By you?’

  ‘Right again.’

  ‘Starting when?’

  Dalziel looked reproachfully towards the club house but Greenall was no longer in view.

  ‘After lunch,’ he said. ‘What’s the food like here?’

  ‘Let’s stick to the point, Superintendent. Just what are you questioning these people about?’

  ‘There was a break-in here last night, did your friend not tell you that?’

  ‘Yes. A couple of bottles. Hardly work for one of your eminence, I shouldn’t have thought.’

  ‘I look into crimes. You look into gobs. Neither of us can be selective,’ beamed Dalziel. ‘What’s your interest anyway? The Lees are just a pair of gyppos. You don’t strike me as a candidate for a bit of rough.’

  Ellie shuddered. Peter wouldn’t believe this. On second thoughts, alas, yes he would.

  ‘I dislike abuse of power, especially against women,’ said Thelma. ‘What you’re doing here is on the face of it fascist, racist and sexist.’

  ‘Not sexist,’ said Dalziel cunningly. ‘I’m treating both of ’em the same.’

  ‘I have a friend who is a solicitor. Adrienne Pritchard, you may know her? I shall instruct her to visit your station as soon as may be this afternoon to ascertain the position regarding the illegal holding of Mr and Mrs Lee and to act on their behalf if they so desire.’

  ‘Well, that’s settled then,’ said Dalziel. ‘Grand! I think I will stay here for a spot of lunch. It’s not a bad little place, is it? Ladies, will you join me in a drink?’

  Thelma Lacewing said coldly, ‘As a policeman, you should be aware that non-members are not allowed to purchase drinks on club premises.’

  ‘Is that right?’ said Dalziel, placing one huge hand against each of the women’s backs and urging them forward. ‘In that case, it looks like your shout, lass. Mine’s a pint.’

  Chapter 14

  Mark Wildgoose’s flat was in a district of old Victorian terraces where you were more likely to find nests of students than solitary teachers.

  Not that he was solitary when Pascoe arrived. Directed up the stairs by a bearded youth with a beatific smile, he arrived on the first floor landing just as a door opened and a girl emerged. She didn’t look to be out of her teens. There was a man behind her and she turned to give him a parting kiss. It was an uninhibited affair on her part, almost exhibitionistic, but his eyes remained open and fixed on Pascoe who after a cursory glance at the other two doors had worked out this must be the one.

  The girl finished, slipped past Pascoe and flew down the stairs with the lightness of youth and joy.

  The man began to close the door.

  ‘Mr Wildgoose?’ said Pascoe.

  He nodded.

  ‘I’m Pascoe. Detective-Inspector Pascoe. My warrant card. Could we talk?’

  Wildgoose studied the card carefully, then ushered him into what must once have been a morning room. Like good bone structure, its dignified proportions had been able to absorb the ravages of age, neglect and even student taste. It contained an unmade bed, a scarred mahogany wardrobe, a couple of dilapidated armchairs, a table with the remnants of breakfast on it, three folding chairs, a washbasin and an electric hotplate. Some makeshift bookshelves, planks on stacks of bricks, were packed to danger point, and an overspill pyramided in one corner.

  Bad to heat in winter, thought Pascoe looking up at the leafily corniced ceiling. But at the moment it was warm enough, too warm in fact, stuffy with a rich mingling of smells. He sniffed. Coffee, perspiration, tobacco …

  ‘There is a bit of a fug,’ said Wildgoose, flinging open windows. The girl must have looked up as she left the house for he leaned out and blew a kiss. Pascoe could see his face in the pane of glass.

  ‘It’s about your allotment, Mr Wildgoose,’ he said, and watched the tension come into the averted face.

  But when the man turned, there was nothing but alert frankness there.

  Small, dark, sharp, mobile, it was a good face for a French singer of disillusioned but not despairing ballads. The children got more of their looks here than from their mother.

  ‘Wasn’t that your wife I met yesterday?’ said Wildgoose.

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘Coincidence?’ His eyebrows added their own double questionmark.

  ‘Coincidence?’ echoed Pascoe. ‘A funny thing, coincidences. On the other hand, less funny because less rare than many people believe. It’s noticing them that’s rare.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘And you an English teacher,’ smiled Pascoe. ‘That was a coincidence, wasn’t it? I mean you actually taught Brenda Sorby, didn’t you?’

  ‘Brenda …?’

  ‘Sorby. Choker victim number three. The girl on your allotment was number two.’

  ‘Not my allotment, Inspector. And no, I can’t remember teaching a Brenda Sorby, though I’m willing to accept I did, if you tell me so. Is that it? For coincidences, I mean?’

  ‘Not quite. You drink at the Cheshire Cheese, don’t you?’

  The man sat down in an armchair and lit a cigarette. His face was thoughtful now. He used the smoke as a mask.

  ‘I have done,’ he said.

  ‘What about the fairground, Mr Wildgoose? Have you been to the Fair this year?’

  �
�Yes. I always go. I like fairs.’

  ‘When were you there?’

  ‘Last week. Thursday night if you like.’

  He smiled and Pascoe felt irritated. But it had been his own idea to start playing this game. He couldn’t blame the other for joining in.

  ‘What about lunch-time two days ago? Wednesday, that is?’

  ‘I think I was out walking,’ said Wildgoose after some thought.

  ‘By yourself?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘And where did you walk?’

  ‘Oh, here and there. I expect I strolled along the river bank. It’s so pretty down there, don’t you think?’

  ‘Along the bank, and through Charter Park, you mean.’

  ‘That’s where the river flows, Inspector,’ said Wildgoose. ‘Now, how are we doing for coincidences?’

  He doesn’t give a bugger! thought Pascoe. He’s mocking me.

  Yet there had been something there when we started. Where had they started?

  ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a look at your allotment, Mr Wildgoose,’ he said abruptly.

  That was better. The tension had flickered back momentarily.

  ‘It’s a stretch of wasteland, Inspector,’ he said lightly. ‘I haven’t bothered much with it this year. In fact, I’m not sure it’s even still mine, officially. The rent could be overdue.’

  ‘All the same, I think I’ll have a look,’ said Pascoe. ‘Would you care to join me?’

  Wildgoose stood up. His muscles were aggressively tensed.

  ‘Where’d you get my address from, Pascoe?’ he asked. ‘Have you been talking to my ex-wife?’

  ‘Your wife, surely? There’s no divorce yet, is there?’

  ‘Hardly. But there will be, whatever she thinks. Even the law’s delay doesn’t last for ever these days.’

  Pascoe said, ‘The law’s delay. That’s Hamlet, isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so. So what?’

  ‘Coincidence, that’s all.’

  Wildgoose laughed and relaxed and pulled on a cotton jacket over his T-shirt which was not the one described by Ellie, unless he was wearing it inside out.

  ‘Half the clichés in the language are Shakespeare and most of the rest Pope,’ he said. ‘Not a very valuable coincidence, is it?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been saying about coincidences all along,’ said Pascoe. ‘Isn’t it?’

  As they drove along the road which was the quickest route to Pump Street, Pascoe said, ‘Why aren’t you coming all over indignant, Mr Wildgoose?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Well, for a start, you’ve obviously worked out I’ve been chatting to your family about you. That would annoy a lot of men. And there’d be very few men indeed who wouldn’t get extremely indignant when they realized the police were trying to tie them in with the Choker killings.’

  ‘Including the Choker?’

  ‘Perhaps especially the Choker,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Then perhaps I’m busy establishing my innocence, Inspector,’ said Wildgoose calmly. ‘If you turn down here, you’ll cut off the traffic lights.’

  Pump Street consisted mainly of two long rows of terraces opening on to the pavement. One side had been built for railway workers in the mid-nineteenth century, the other, still known as the New Side although identical in style, had been put up speculatively about ten years later as the demand for low-cost housing exploded in this area. What gave Pump Street some individual character and even beauty was the ground contour which had made it easier to build on a curve, and chance had produced an arc fit for a Nash crescent. The allotments were situated in a break in the New Side where a Dornier with its full load had come down one still-remembered night in ’41 and reduced a hundred yards of terracing to rubble, and thirty-nine men, women and children to corpses. There was no time for rebuilding then, but gradually the site had been cleared, and eventually planted on, by the garden-less locals eager to plug some of the gaps in their diet. Eventually, after complaints of piracy and landgrabbing, the council stepped in and regularized matters, and so things continued for more than thirty years till the June morning when the death toll rose to forty.

  There were two or three old men working on their allotments and they watched with open curiosity as Pascoe and Wildgoose picked their way across to the latter’s strip. It was indeed sadly neglected though no more so than half a dozen others.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Wildgoose. ‘If you seek my memorial, look around you.’

  Pascoe bent and examined the furrowed ground. There were potatoes here still, some straggly carrot tops, something which could have been leaf spinach.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  ‘A couple of years ago it seemed a good idea. Self-sufficiency. Part of the male menopause.’

  ‘You’re a little young for that, surely?’

  ‘Forty,’ said Wildgoose. ‘I just know a good couturier. And the male menopause has nothing to do with age or physical changes. It has to do with meanings.’

  ‘And you found something more meaningful?’

  ‘Still looking, Inspector.’

  Pascoe too was looking. The rickety old shed in which June McCarthy’s body had been found stood about twenty-five yards away. As he watched, the door opened and a man emerged. He had a bucket in one hand and a garden fork in the other. Carefully with the economic movements of age and experience he began to unearth some potatoes. This was Mr Ribble, the owner of the shed and the only one of the allotment holders that Pascoe had interviewed personally. A man in his late sixties, he had taken the discovery of the body with a phlegm which was to some extent explained when Pascoe found out that he had cancer of the bowel and had already outlived the surgeon’s estimate by eighteen months.

  Pascoe turned back to Wildgoose and coldly wondered how such a diagnosis would affect his search for meanings.

  ‘I see you keep your greenhouse locked,’ he said. ‘Worried about your tomatoes?’

  ‘I kept my tools in there,’ said Wildgoose. ‘I didn’t really grow much. It came with the allotment. The old boy who had it before me died and it seemed a kindness to pay his missus a couple of quid for the thing. Would you like a look?’

  He searched in his pocket for a key while Pascoe examined the greenhouse from the outside. It was very much a homemade affair, more of a converted garden shed than a proper greenhouse. It was glazed with panels of translucent plastic which had the advantage of not being so fragile as glass. In one or two places kids had hurled stones without doing more damage than denting and cracking, easily repaired with transparent tape.

  Wildgoose found the key and unlocked the padlock which fastened the door. Pascoe let him go in first. Mrs Wildgoose had been wrong. While you could not see clearly through the plastic, you could certainly distinguish shapes and it would take either irresistible passion or brazen exhibitionism to persuade a couple to fornicate in here. Pascoe did not dismiss the possibility. But it was unlikely that one of the elderly gardeners would not have passed on details of this shadowy entertainment to Sergeant Brady.

  The interior of the greenhouse smelt hot and stuffy. There was a rusty spade in one corner, a broken hoe in another. A few earthenware plantpots were stacked along a sagging shelf. Nothing was growing in here, though the mummified remains of some unidentifiable plants crowded together sadly in a propagating tray. The floor was wooden, beginning to rot in places. A couple of sacks were draped across a particularly decayed section. An almost empty plastic bag of some proprietary fertilizer lay alongside them. Pascoe’s memory was stirred. Among many other things, the laboratory examination of June McCarthy’s clothes had revealed the presence of traces of peat and other fibrous organic material associated with gardening, precisely the kind of thing you’d expect to find in a garden shed.

  He wondered whether anyone had bothered to make sure they were definitely present in Mr Ribble’s shed.

  For Wildgoose to kill her in his greenhouse and then lug the body twenty-
five yards across the allotment didn’t seem likely. It had been early in the morning, but broad daylight.

  Still, when you had nothing, anything was something.

  He stooped to pick up the bag.

  And smiled with incredulous delight as he saw the small adhesive price tag still clinging to the grubby plastic. The name of the retailer was still on it.

  The Linden Garden Centre.

  He picked it up carefully.

  ‘You use a lot of this stuff?’ he asked.

  ‘In the first flush of enthusiasm, I used everything,’ said Wildgoose. ‘Soot, blood, horse-shit, sea-weed. Why?’

  ‘And where did you buy your garden stuff, Mr Wildgoose?’

  ‘Where? Hell, wherever I was. Garden shops, market stalls, Woolworth’s even. They’re very good in Woolworth’s these days.’

  ‘Garden centres? This price tag says Linden Garden Centre.’

  ‘I don’t remember that. Is it important?’

  ‘It’s on the East Coast Road,’ said Pascoe. ‘Four, five miles.’

  ‘Sorry. I don’t recall, for all I know that stuff was here when I took the allotment on. Don’t tell me it’s a clue!’

  For someone who had seemed so bright and alert to every innuendo, he was being very dim about this, thought Pascoe.

  ‘I’d like to take this if I may.’

  ‘I’ll need a receipt,’ mocked Wildgoose. ‘What about a few old plant pots into the bargain?’

  The plastic bag was leaking, Pascoe discovered, and the remaining fertilizer was spilling out of it. Picking up one of the old sacks from the floor, he thrust the bag inside.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Why, back to your flat, of course, Mr Wildgoose. Unless I can drop you anywhere else?’

  ‘No, that’ll be fine.’

  He managed not to sound relieved.

  On the drive back, Pascoe stopped by a telephone kiosk, ‘to check what my boss wants next,’ he explained half grumblingly to Wildgoose.

  He stopped a little later to get some cigarettes, then got stuck behind a slow double-decker bus.

  ‘Sorry to have taken up so much of your time,’ he said to Wildgoose as he got out of the car in front of the house which contained the flat.