‘Ha ha,’ said Pascoe. ‘Bye.’
The technicians were finished with the house in Danby Row now and soon it was left to grief and silence. It was a relief to be back in the busy, functional Murder Room.
Dalziel had put the full national machinery of pursuit into motion. Locally, bus stations, railway stations, taxi and car-hire firms were checked thoroughly as were hotels and lodging-houses. Descriptions were issued to the media and, despite the fact that Wildgoose’s passport, all visa’d for his approaching tour, was found in his flat, seaports and airports were alerted too.
‘You’re sure he’s our man?’ said Pascoe uneasily.
‘I’m sure I want to talk to him,’ said Dalziel, belching. ‘Christ. It’s after eight o’clock and I’ve not had a proper meal today. Why shouldn’t he be our man?’
‘Well, no reason. Except, maybe, the sex. I mean, before there’s never been …’
‘Before he’s never killed anyone he’s been screwing,’ interrupted Dalziel. ‘All right, he’s not a sex killer, the killing and the screwing don’t go together. But that’s no reason why he shouldn’t enjoy it. I mean, he’s having an affair with this kid, with the others he wasn’t.’
‘Then why kill her at this moment?’
‘For fuck’s sake, Peter, you know a better moment, you show me it!’
‘There was the ring,’ stuck in Wield.
‘The ring?’
‘Yes, sir. On her engagement finger. Mr Pascoe said that Dr Pottle said …’
‘Pottle snottle!’ snarled Dalziel. ‘What the hell can a ring have to do with it? Look, let’s just find the sod and pull bits off him till he gives us a few answers.’
‘Don’t let it bother you,’ said Pascoe as Dalziel moved away. ‘It’s the time of the month.’
‘Or he’s not so sure,’ said Wield.
‘He’s right about the ring, though. I mean, if Wildgoose gave it to her, then he’s not likely to kill her for wearing it!’
‘And if he did give it to her, he was jumping the gun a bit, wasn’t he?’ added Wield.
‘We’ll probably find out at the Aero Club,’ said Pascoe. ‘Preece! Come here. I want to take you to a disco.’
As he explained in the car, his reasons for choosing Preece were that the DC could pass for a dissolute twelve-year-old in the dusk with the strobe behind him. But in the event, such diplomatic considerations proved unnecessary. As Pascoe had observed before, this younger generation who were supposed to hold the police in greater fear and distrust than any previous age certainly had strange ways of showing it. Though it was still relatively early, the Aero Club was crowded, the curtains drawn so that evening sunlight should not interfere with the electronic glories within, and the whole place throbbing to a violent beat. Once identified as the fuzz, they were rapidly surrounded by a throng of enthusiastic potential witnesses whose demeanour was far from fearful.
‘Sergeant, you and Preece pick the bones out of this lot and I’ll join my own age group,’ said Pascoe.
‘Not many bones here, sir,’ said Preece, unambiguously enjoying the pressure of a pair of fourteen-year-old breasts whose fullness bore splendid testimony to the benefits of the National Health service.
Pascoe’s ‘own age group’ consisted of Bernard Middlefield, Thelma Lacewing and Austin Greenall, the secretary, who were standing together looking far more distressed than any of the dead girl’s contemporaries. The first two had both heard the news on the radio, recognized its relevance to their own whereabouts the previous night, and been drawn here again by motives which were not yet clear.
‘You know Mark Wildgoose, sir?’ Pascoe asked Middlefield.
‘Not at all. But I noticed him last night. He stuck out, that much older than the rest. I asked who he was.’
‘And you know him, sir?’ Pascoe addressed Greenall.
‘No,’ said the secretary. ‘He hadn’t been here before. But Thelma, Miss Lacewing, she knew him.’
‘I’m a friend of his wife. As you probably know,’ said Thelma Lacewing.
‘Yes. How was he behaving?’ asked Pascoe. ‘Anything unusual?’
‘What’s usual at something like this?’ asked Middlefield. ‘I’m going to be suggesting to the committee that we put a stop to this kind of thing. This is a flying club, supposed to be, not a sex-maniacs’ kindergarten!’
‘Most of their parents are members, they are all potential members, and it subsidizes your cheap gin-and-tonics the rest of the week,’ flashed the woman.
‘He was a bit unusual,’ said Greenall, ignoring the other two. ‘You sometimes get an older man in. Usually he’s trying to show that he’s as good as any of the youngsters. Wildgoose hardly danced at all. They came late. I got the impression it was the girl’s idea and it came as a bit of a shock to him to see who was here. I heard one or two of the kids calling him “sir”. They must have been pupils at the school he taught at.’
‘And what about the ring?’
‘Ring?’
‘The girl was wearing an engagement ring. A large red stone.’
‘No, I didn’t notice anything of that,’ said Greenall. ‘Excuse me. The barman’s looking a bit distressed. Ages are a bit difficult. I’d better go to the rescue.’
‘A bit difficult!’ said Middlefield. ‘Inspector, you ought to bring some of your squad down here one weekend just to check this lot!’
‘Perhaps I will, sir,’ said Pascoe mildly. ‘Any irregularities could, as you must know, mean that the club’s licence might be completely revoked.’
‘I saw the ring,’ said Thelma Lacewing. ‘It looked like a piece of costume jewellery. I noticed the girl showing it to a group of other girls.’
‘And was Wildgoose with her?’
‘No. He was at the bar. He didn’t seem to want to know.’
The picture that emerged when he cross-checked with Preece and Wield confirmed Thelma Lacewing’s impression.
Andrea Valentine had been dropping large hints for some time to her contemporaries about her conquest of Wildgoose. More recently she had been talking in terms of a permanent liaison when he finally unshipped his wife. Last night she had clearly set out to demonstrate in public the truth of the present closeness and the hoped-for permanence of their relationship.
‘Yeah,’ one girl had said to Preece. ‘I thought she were just trying it on, like. I mean she could’ve bought the ring herself, couldn’t she? And Wildgoose, he didn’t seem all that pleased, did he?’
‘Mebbe that’s why he killed her?’ suggested another girl.
‘Yeah,’ said the first, bright-eyed, pressing close against Preece. ‘Is that why he killed her, mister! And how did he do it, mister? What did he do to her?’
Preece had retreated in disarray.
Before they left the Aero Club, Pascoe got Thelma Lacewing to herself and asked, ‘Why did you come back here tonight?’
She answered. ‘Another woman killed, this is probably the last place where she was seen alive, where else should I go, Peter? I should have said something to him last night. Perhaps if I had …’
‘Forget it,’ said Pascoe gently. ‘You’ve got enough worries that aren’t yours resting on your shoulders without looking for more. Thanks for looking in on Ellie, by the way. She needs company, I think, and I’m very tied up at the moment.’
‘So’s she,’ said Lacewing. ‘So’s she.’
At midnight there was still no trace of Wildgoose and in the Murder Room they were running out of jokes about his name.
‘Let’s wrap it up,’ said Dalziel wearily. ‘He’ll have to show soon. Penny gets you a pound he’s spotted in the morning.’
No one took him up, which was as well for the taker would have lost his penny.
Not that Dalziel was precisely right either. Wildgoose was certainly spotted, but not quite as he had implied in his forecast.
Ted Agar cycled slowly into the forecourt of the Linden Garden Centre early on Sunday morning. The dew still sparkled along the lines
of rose-bushes and the church bells had not yet begun to summon the good people of Shafton to their Sabbath duties of car-washing, lawn-mowing and the like.
Agar was only paid to keep the place ticking over for half a day five days a week, but he liked to keep a closer eye on things, especially at weekends when potential customers, on discovering the Centre was closed, were not above excavating a couple of young bushes and tossing them into the boot before driving off. The previous day, Saturday, he had been otherwise engaged, watching Yorkshire prod their way to a draw in a County Championship match. Today however there was only a one-day game on offer and Agar believed that if God had wanted cricket to end in a day, He’d have rested on Tuesday instead of waiting till the end of the week.
As he propped his bike against the side of the house, his eyes were already checking the rose-plantation. So familiar was he with the silhouette of each row that he instantly spotted someone had been mucking about. Not that there was a gap, but out there in the middle where the orange-vermilion of his Super-Stars ran alongside the dappled apricot of his Sutter’s Golds something was awry, the line had somehow altered.
Perhaps just a couple of stray dogs who imagined that no one would disturb the earth except to bury bones.
Dogs, however, didn’t put the earth back after digging it out. Nor did they scatter earth regularly and evenly between the rows as though disposing of a surplus.
Four of the Super-Stars were looking a bit the worse for wear compared with their neighbours, a bit askew. A bit raised up.
He prodded the earth with the hoe he had instinctively picked up from the lean-to behind the house. He saw something small and white just alongside the union of one of the bushes. Like the end of a freshly pruned sucker.
He stooped and looked closer. Looked for a long time. Touched. Let out a long breath.
It was a little finger.
He backed slowly away for five or six paces before turning and hobbling rapidly towards the house.
Chapter 24
It didn’t take long to identify the body. The name in the wallet was Wildgoose, Pascoe recognized the face instantly, and finally in the interests of bureaucracy Lorraine Wildgoose was asked to make it official.
‘Was it suicide?’ she asked afterwards, almost casually.
Not unless he could knock himself unconscious, strangle and bury himself, thought Pascoe.
He shook his head.
‘No,’ he said and when that produced no response, added gently, ‘He was killed, I’m afraid, Mrs Wildgoose. But it does mean he probably wasn’t the Choker.’
‘Does it?’ she said indifferently. ‘I don’t see why.’ Then as though making an effort to find a more acceptable response, she added, ‘But I’m glad for the children’s sake.’
‘Well, she’s not going to toss herself on to her old man’s pyre,’ commented Dalziel after a WPC had taken Mrs Wildgoose out to the awaiting car.
‘I think she’s really broken up inside,’ said Pascoe.
‘Like my guts,’ said Dalziel, beating his belly and belching. ‘You didn’t find out what she was doing early yesterday morning, between say midnight and four A.M.?’
‘No,’ said Pascoe. ‘You don’t really believe that … no, I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t think.’
‘You’re probably right. Any road, I’ve told that lass with her to check as best she can, talk to the kids, that sort of thing. Better safe than sorry. She did hate the poor sod and she looks tough enough. That’d be the best solution too. He’s the Choker, runs home for solace after killing the Valentine girl, wife bumps him off and buries him. End of case.’
‘And who phones the Evening Post on Saturday afternoon?’ wondered Pascoe.
‘Who knows? Mebbe we’ve got a Joker as well as a Choker,’ said Dalziel. ‘We’ve got at least four voices on tape so far according to Laurel and Hardy, haven’t we?’
‘Urquhart and Gladmann,’ said Pascoe. ‘Yes. But yesterday afternoon only the Choker knew the girl was dead.’
‘The Choker and anyone he might have told before he got himself killed,’ urged Dalziel gently. ‘What do your experts say about yesterday’s voice anyway?’
‘Nothing,’ said Pascoe who had checked that the envelope was still at the desk. ‘They must both be away for the weekend.’
Dalziel snorted his derision for people who had weekends away, a derision which included Wield whose day off it was and who had been heading north on his motorbike too early for even the long arm of Dalziel to haul him in.
Wildgoose had been knocked unconscious by a single blow at the top of the spine, either a very lucky or a very expert punch. Then he had been strangled. The only other point of significance was that he had had sexual intercourse not long before death.
‘If we assume that he himself is not the Choker,’ said Pascoe in deference to what he felt was probably a merely provocative theory on Dalziel’s part, ‘then it seems likely that after he left the girl, the Choker, who was perhaps waiting outside, moves swiftly in and kills her. As he leaves in his turn, he runs into Wildgoose who has returned for some reason.’
‘Seconds,’ said Dalziel ghoulishly.
‘The Choker kills him. Carts him away. Presumably he has transport.’
‘But why?’ interrupted Dalziel. ‘Why not leave the body in the house? I mean, why not lug the guts into the kitchen and take off rather than risk meeting someone in the back lane?’
Pascoe started inwardly. Dalziel was full of surprises. Lug the guts. Despite his mockery, had he too been studying Hamlet closely for whatever clues it might contain? Or was it just coincidence? There was no art to read Dalziel’s mind in his ten-acre face.
‘Perhaps he felt it would spoil the set-up there.’ he answered. ‘Girl neatly laid out, all decent and proper. Religious almost.’
‘Or perhaps he just wanted to trail a red herring,’ said Dalziel. ‘Make us think that Wildgoose did it.’
‘It’s another link anyway,’ said Pascoe. ‘Burying him at the Garden Centre, I mean.’
‘Aye, but what’s it signify?’
‘That’s what we’re paid to find out, sir,’ said Pascoe sententiously.
If that were so, they did not earn their money that Sunday.
In hospital Dave Lee was well enough to work out that perhaps he could trade off his allegations of brutality against Dalziel’s accusations of complicity. Ms Pritchard accompanied Mrs Lee during visiting hours and later to the station.
Dalziel, encountering them in the vestibule, refused a private audience, listened impatiently for a couple of minutes, got the drift and bellowed, ‘You do what you bloody well like, my girl. Me, I’ve got more important things to occupy myself with. Like murder. Like the Choker.’
‘You don’t seem to be doing so well in that field either,’ said the solicitor coolly.
‘No, I’m not,’ snarled Dalziel. ‘And one reason why I’m not is that your client, if that’s what he is, came as near as damn to catching this man in the act. And instead of getting hold of the police, he robbed the victim. And hid the body. And misled the police. And delayed the investigation. And probably made a large contribution to at least two more women and one man getting killed in the past five days. You tell him that, love. And if you don’t care to, mebbe I’ll come in and shout it down his ear-hole till his stitches pop!’
‘There’s no need to get excited,’ said Ms Pritchard.
‘You couldn’t excite me on a desert island, love,’ said Dalziel.
‘That wasn’t exactly conciliatory,’ said Pascoe as they moved rapidly away.
‘You don’t conciliate that sort,’ said Dalziel. ‘Make ’em think you’re a thick, racist, sexist pig. Then they underestimate you and overreach themselves.’
‘Ah,’ said Pascoe and wondered privately what strange self-image Dalziel kept locked away in his heart.
Thereafter it was a day of routine. Plain-clothes men going from house to house in Shafton village, checking whereabouts, taking statements; lines o
f men in dark blue moving slowly through the bands of red and yellow and pink and orange and white in the rose field, stooping and searching like gleaners after the harvest; Pascoe sitting in the Murder Room going painstakingly through every statement as it came in; Dalziel moving slowly around in threatening anger, like a tornado distantly glimpsed in a mid-West landscape and fled by all who saw it.
The taxi-driver who had taken Wildgoose and Andrea Valentine to the Aero Club was finally found.
The man who had taken them from the Club had been easier to track because his company was known. He had already made a statement saying that, after first directing him to Danby Row, they had changed their minds and asked to be dropped in Bright Avenue which ran at right-angles to Danby Row. As this gave access to the lane which ran behind the girl’s house, it was presumed they had used the back entrance to avoid attracting attention.
The earlier driver had picked them up from Wildgoose’s flat about nine-forty-five. They were both quite high, but he got the impression that it was the girl who wanted to be going out while the man was less enthusiastic. The girl had instructed him to drive to the Aero Club.
Dalziel now insisted on a check being made on the alleged whereabouts of every man concerned with the case between midnight and two A.M. on Saturday morning. He even got the man on duty at the hospital to confirm that Lee and Ron Ludlam were safely tucked up in bed all night. He himself did the check on Alistair Mulgan and Bernard Middlefield. The bank manager had watched the midnight movie on television by himself. His wife had gone to bed to read, had heard the television noise as she lay there and was able to confirm that her husband had come to bed as soon as the film finished at one-thirty.
‘Good film, was it?’ said Dalziel.
Mulgan cleared his throat and then gave a detailed résumé of the plot. Dalziel was not impressed. The picture had been shown at least twice before. But, while Danby Row was within walking distance, just, to get Wildgoose’s body to the Garden Centre needed a car and Mrs Mulgan was adamant that the car had not left the garage which was next door to her bedroom in the bungalow.
A Killing Kindness Page 22
