A Killing Kindness

by Reginald Hill

  You cunning old bastard! thought Pascoe.

  He glanced back as he left the office. The fat man was smiling and nodding his head as though in accord.

  If you have to do a job, do it properly, was a maxim which Pascoe believed in. The essence of search is surprise. For this reason he had devised the strategy of dividing his team, sending four round to the Industrial Estate entrance to the encampment while he and two other DC’s drove into the Aero Club car park where Wield was already waiting.

  With him was a rather puzzled-looking blond man who was introduced to Pascoe as Austin Greenall, the club secretary. He and Wield were looking towards the section of the old aerodrome where the gypsies were. Just over the picket fence a large bonfire had been lit. Its flames were scarcely more than a violet vibration of the air in the bright sunlight, but a plume of dark smoke curved up from the fire towards the club house.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Pascoe.

  ‘Perhaps they feel the cold, sir,’ suggested the shirt-sleeved Wield.

  ‘Is it a hazard?’ said Pascoe to Greenall, glancing up beyond the smoke to where five or six gliders wheeled slowly high in the sky.

  ‘No, there’s not enough for that,’ said Greenall. ‘If anything, it could be useful. Shows the wind drift and strength.’

  ‘So, no complaints, sir?’

  ‘Do you want me to complain?’ wondered Greenall looking at Pascoe curiously. ‘I mean, are you after an excuse to go in there?’

  ‘Don’t need an excuse, sir,’ interjected Wield. ‘Not if we’ve got a warrant.’

  ‘Which we have,’ said Pascoe. He spoke into his personal radio. ‘Preece, you and the others ready? OK. Wait till you see us coming over the fence, then move in.’

  ‘Are you expecting someone to run?’ asked Wield as they set off across the grass.

  ‘Not really,’ said Pascoe. ‘But if someone did run I don’t want Mr Dalziel asking why I hadn’t thought of it.’

  In fact if anyone had wanted to run, there was plenty of time for it. The picket fence had been repaired so effectively that the policeman had to climb over it, a dangerous and undignified business that soon drew the attention of the crowd of gypsies standing just outside the circle of unbearable heat from the fire which seemed to be centred on a wooden pole rising out of the flames, gruesomely like a martyr’s stake.

  ‘It’s the tent,’ said Pascoe suddenly, and his guess was confirmed by the emergence from the spectators of Rosetta Stanhope. She looked all gypsy now in a dirndl skirt with a red and blue blouse and her hair tied back in a green and yellow bandanna. Her brow was smeared with ash, though whether by accident or by ritual design, Pascoe did not know.

  ‘Mrs Stanhope,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry if we’re disturbing a ceremony …’

  ‘Don’t let it bother you,’ she said. ‘Pauline will be getting a straightforward Anglican burial. This is just a cleaning up, for my benefit mainly. To most of these people, she was just a gorgio, hardly worth taking your hat off for.’

  ‘But they’re helping you,’ said Pascoe. ‘They took the tent away.’

  She smiled grimly.

  ‘When a chovihani asks you the time, you buy a clock,’ she said. ‘Have you come to bring me the clothes she died in?’

  ‘I’m sorry. We haven’t found them yet,’ said Pascoe.

  She looked worried.

  ‘That’s a pity. They should be burnt, above all things.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if they had been already,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘You think so? I hope you’re right,’ she said. ‘What is it you’re after, then?’

  ‘Is there someone here who’s in charge, some sort of leader?’

  She left him and went to the main group of gypsies and talked to them for a moment. A short fat man emerged who might have been anything between fifty and seventy and returned with the woman. He was introduced as Silvester Herne and he enquired pleasantly of Pascoe, ‘How can I help you, pal?’

  Pascoe regarded him dubiously, wondering what his qualifications as leader were. He didn’t look much like a gypsy king. Most likely he had been selected as a front man because of some qualities of glibness or shrewdness he possessed. Still, that was their business.

  Briefly he explained that he and his men wanted to look around the camp site and talk to the people on it. They had a warrant which entitled them to enter any or all of the caravans and make a search but this might not be necessary.

  Herne scratched his nose reflectively.

  ‘Looking for anything special, pal?’

  Pascoe thought for a moment, then said slowly and clearly, ‘It’s the Choker case I’m working on, Mr Herne. Anything relevant to that case is what I’m looking for. Nothing else interests me much. You might tell your people that.’

  ‘OK,’ said Herne.

  He rejoined the others.

  ‘Trying to keep the peace, Inspector?’ said Rosetta Stanhope.

  ‘That’s what I’m paid for,’ said Pascoe. ‘Tell me, Mrs Stanhope, if any of them knew anything about the Choker, would they keep quiet? Out of loyalty, I mean?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘And maybe I’m not the person to ask. I’m one of them too, remember?’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Pascoe. ‘I also know you came to me offering to help only last Wednesday morning, but since then you’ve been a lot less keen.’

  There was a time to be subtle, a time to push. Dalziel was pushing forward like a traction engine at this moment. Pascoe suspected his direction but he knew he would have to get up a good head of steam himself to head him off.

  ‘Since then my niece got killed,’ said Mrs Stanhope sharply. ‘Have you forgotten already?’

  ‘No. But I’d have thought that would have sharpened your appetite to help, if anything,’ answered Pascoe just as tartly. ‘You know Dave Lee’s in trouble?’

  ‘I know he’s in hospital,’ said Rosetta. ‘His missus told me that.’

  ‘She’s here?’

  Mrs Pritchard must have worked even faster than Dalziel anticipated. This hardly boded well for the search.

  ‘Over there, sir,’ said Wield.

  Pascoe looked and saw a thin, not bad-looking woman with a fading bruise on her left cheek crouching among a gaggle of children, talking to them. She rose as he watched and the children ran off, whooping excitedly at which noise others detached themselves from the group round the fire and galloped after them. Pascoe looked round to get his bearings. To the south was the Aero Club, to the north-west was the arterial road with the sprawl of the Avro Industrial Estate beyond, to the northeast was the suburb of Millhill, while due east would be the river, invisible in a heavily coppiced fold of land some fifty yards beyond the airfield boundary. That was the direction the children were taking. Pascoe, envied them. The combination of sun and fire was bringing the sweat to his brow.

  ‘Let’s get to it,’ he said to Wield.

  Wield nodded and with calm efficiency set the men to work. He was a good man, thought Pascoe and wondered as he had done before why Wield had stuck at sergeant.

  The gypsies seemed indifferent to the search though not so indifferent that there wasn’t at least one member of each family present as the caravans were searched in turn.

  Silvester Herne moved from one caravan to the next, then back to Pascoe with offers of help so solicitous that they bordered on parody.

  It was hopeless, thought Pascoe. Dalziel had struck lucky because because he had taken the Lees completely by surprise and because he didn’t give much of a damn for the niceties of the law. No, that was too grudging an assessment. Dalziel like all good cops made his own luck and wasn’t afraid of pursuing it no matter what unlikely direction it took him in.

  He found himself quite close to Mrs Lee who was standing with arms folded and a twistedly cynical smile on her face.

  Pascoe introduced himself.

  ‘Well, ain’t you a change from them other mumply old hedgecrawlers that keep talking to me,’ she said, lo
oking at him with mock admiration. ‘A good-looking one at last. Theys’ll try anything!’

  ‘I’m pleased your husband is out of danger, Mrs Lee,’ said Pascoe.

  She looked at him with blank indifference.

  ‘Unfortunately he’s not out of trouble,’ pursued Pascoe. ‘Not unless he can explain how that money and the watch and ring came into his possession.’

  ‘Which money? Which watch and ring?’ she asked.

  Pascoe sighed.

  ‘Look, there’s no one can hear us now, Mrs Lee,’ he said. ‘Dave’s not a very good husband to you, is he? I mean, a fine-looking woman like you can’t much enjoy being knocked around. Just a couple of words now, just a hint, and we could get him out of your life for a bit. No need to worry about the money, married woman with kids and a husband in gaol, you’d probably get more out of the social security than Dave makes in a moderate week. We’d see the forms were filled in properly, all that sort of thing. No one has to suffer these days!’

  She didn’t answer but fixed her gaze over his shoulder. Pascoe looked round and saw Rosetta Stanhope talking with a woman who didn’t look like a gypsy.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Pascoe. ‘Are you frightened of Mrs Stanhope? Frightened because she’s a chovihani?’

  ‘Chovihani? Her?’ snorted the woman. ‘She’s nowt but a didikoi, a posh-ratt. Coming here from her little house and expecting us to treat her like a traveller still after fifty years. She even smells like a gorgio!’

  Pascoe recognized the insulting terms for half-breed, but was less than convinced of the sincerity of this expression of fearless contempt. It seemed to him more based on deep resentment than genuine scorn.

  ‘Mrs Lee?’

  Pascoe turned and groaned inwardly as he recognized the woman who had joined them. This was Pritchard, the solicitor. The last thing he wanted at the moment was an antagonistic legal eye peering over his shoulder.

  ‘You don’t have to talk to this man, Mrs Lee,’ continued Pritchard in clear tones resonant with upper-class certainty. ‘Certainly you don’t have to answer any questions he might put to you without benefit of legal advice.’

  ‘Doesn’t the Law Society have some convention about not touting for business?’ wondered Pascoe aloud.

  ‘You’re Pascoe, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘I’ve heard about you. If protecting women against the police means touting for business then I’ll do it. And if the Law Society objects, then they can go and screw themselves.’

  ‘It’s your licence,’ said Pascoe. ‘Excuse me.’

  He went away to urge Wield and his men to accelerate their search so that it could be completed before Ms Pritchard turned her crusading eye in their direction. Wield said thirty minutes and Pascoe, pointing out Pritchard, said that he was taking a stroll down to the river and that if the solicitor did start sticking her nose in, she should be met by a display of subordinate blankness and referred to him. By the time she found him, with luck their business would be over.

  It was easy to find the exit hole in the boundary fence. During the hot weather the children’s feet had beaten a distinct path towards it. Folding back the wire, Pascoe squeezed through and within a few paces had dropped out of sight of the encampment. He could hear the children at play – cries of delight, excitement, abuse and fear accompanied by much splashing of water. Forcing his way through a tight-knit clump of sallows, he reached the bank.

  It wasn’t much of a river, at its widest no more than fifty or sixty feet, though the farmer who owned the huge field of turnips which lay on the further bank must have been glad to have this barrier between him and the encampment. How many turnips could a swimming child carry? wondered Pascoe.

  He sat down on the bank where the hungry water had eaten away a crescent of earth to form a small bay with a deep still pool. The children were playing a little further upstream, too absorbed in their games to take notice of Pascoe. He watched them with pleasure, delighting in their easy movements, their lithe brown bodies, their undiluted animal spirits, and tried to recall when last he had been capable of such total submersion in present joy. Not counting sex, that was; though even in the great gallop of sex there was all too often that little slave clinging to the back of the chariot and whispering in his ear, remember you are you.

  A pair of small boys detached themselves from the other children and came running down the bank to peer speculatively into the pool above which Pascoe sat. They were young enough to be stark naked – gypsies have extremely rigid ideas about carnal exposure – and were urging each other to plunge in.

  One of them looked up and saw Pascoe and spoke to the other. Pascoe smiled amiably at them and, convinced he was harmless, they returned to the debate till another older boy, spotting them from the river, floated on his back and shouted angrily at them. Pascoe caught the word mokadi repeated several times. This he knew was the Romany term for taboo or unclean, and at first he assumed, not without hurt, that the expression was meant for himself.

  But observation of the two naked children told him he was wrong. It was not himself but the edge of the bank they were withdrawing from with expressions of uncertainty and trepidation. In fact their retreat brought them closer to Pascoe’s position and he addressed them gently.

  ‘Hey, chavvies,’ he said. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like to swim? Here, I’ll give this to the one who makes the biggest splash!’

  He held up a fifty-pence piece so that it glinted in the sun.

  The boys chattered excitedly, then ran to the bank a little way upstream.

  ‘No. Here,’ commanded Pascoe, pointing to the pool.

  They shook their heads.

  ‘Oh all right,’ said Pascoe, rising and strolling towards them. ‘Here will do.’

  He squatted down alongside them.

  ‘But why’s that pool mokadi?’ he asked. ‘It’s a good place to swim. Why is it mokadi?’

  He held up the coin as he spoke. One of the boys, the younger, took a step backwards, then turned and ran towards his friends. The other looked as if he might follow instantly.

  Pascoe instinctively reached out and grasped his arm lightly.

  ‘Do you not want the money, son?’ he asked.

  There was movement behind him.

  ‘Chikli muskro!’ screamed a furious voice. ‘Sodding dirty old queer!’

  Pascoe looked up. It was Mrs Lee. Behind her trailed Miss Pritchard and Sergeant Wield. He let go of the child and began to rise, but he was still at the crouch and unbalanced when the gypsy woman hit him. It wasn’t really a blow, just a simple shove with both arms.

  But it was enough to set him teetering on the edge of the river and it took hardly more than another gentle touch to send him plunging over.

  The water was green and deep close by the bank. He came up and saw the children’s heads craning over the edge to view this fascinating spectacle. He grabbed at the bank but his fingers slipped in the wet clay and down he went once more.

  This time when he surfaced, he lay back and floated. The small brown faces were still there, big-eyed, watching. And beyond them, high in the summer blue sky, slowly wheeling like huge birds of prey, black crosses in the aureole of the sun, he saw the gliders.

  The water was filling his clothes, pulling him down. But he was in no danger. Wield’s strong grip was on his forearm. And as he was dragged gasping from the pool that was mokadi, he found himself looking up at Rosetta Stanhope and he wondered how an English judge would react to the production of a dead witness by proxy in a murder trial.

  Chapter 21

  Michael Conrad was at first puzzled, then rather frightened when, arriving home that Saturday lunch-time, he found a policeman waiting outside his shop. His relief was great when he realized that the policeman’s presence did not mean a break-in, nor did it have anything to do with the three litres of cognac he had just smuggled in from Corfu.

  But his shock on hearing of Brenda Sorby’s death was deep and genuine. He had not heard the news bef
ore he left on Friday night and it was a point of honour with him not to read an English paper while on holiday abroad.

  Yes, he knew her well. Didn’t she often serve him in the bank? Yes, he had seen her that Thursday lunch-time, just before he closed. She had collected and paid for a gentleman’s gold signet ring. That was the ring there on the Superintendent’s desk, no doubt. And the watch too. A gift for her young man. A nice watch for the money and he had given her a good discount because he liked her. Her engagement ring he had admired. Not an expensive stone and the setting … well, he would have been ashamed to sell such a setting but it was no business of his to dull a young girl’s happiness so he had admired it as the most perfect of rings and taken her to the door and waved goodbye to her.

  And would never see her again.

  His eyes filled with tears and he had to blow his nose before he could sign his statement.

  ‘Grand,’ said Dalziel rubbing his hands together. ‘Now for Lee. Peter, we should put you back on the beat. I’d forgotten how pretty you looked in uniform.’

  Pascoe had been provided with a blue shirt and a pair of uniform trousers while his own gear dried off. He had just escaped from a neighbouring interview room which Lee’s wife, four of her children, Silvester Herne, two policemen and Ms Pritchard had turned into a Bedlam cell.

  ‘And I’d forgotten how itchy these trousers were,’ he answered, ‘Look, sir, I haven’t got much sense yet out of that lot. They keep jabbering away at each other in Anglo-Romany every time I think I’m getting somewhere, but here’s how it’s looking to me …’

  Dalziel put a huge finger to his broad lips.

  ‘Later,’ he said. ‘Lee’ll tell us all or I’ll personally undo his stitches. That Pritchard thing’s still there, is she?’

  Pascoe nodded.

  ‘Right,’ said Dalziel. ‘We’ll send Wield in, tell him to be a bit aggressive towards the woman and the kids. That should keep her busy while we do our spot of hospital visiting!’