Bernard Middlefield was approached rather less directly. Dalziel couldn’t see him as a killer, certainly not of the kind described by Dr Pottle. But he was a customer at Brenda Sorby’s bank, his company works were next to the Eden Park Canning Plant where June McCarthy had been employed, and he had been at the Aero Club the night Andrea Valentine was killed. So Dalziel treated him as a witness and only obliquely enquired about his own movements that night.
It emerged that he had stayed on after the disco finished. He hadn’t noticed Wildgoose and the girl leave in particular, though he had said goodnight to Thelma Lacewing.
‘What time would that be?’ wondered Dalziel.
‘Eleven. Eleven-fifteen. I don’t know exactly.’
Middlefield was even vaguer about the time of his own departure. He’d had a couple of drinks with Greenall while the bar-helpers cleared up. Then, after they had gone, he had finally called it a night. He had then driven home, a distance of about three miles, arriving in time to join his wife in watching the last part of the same film that Mulgan was so well acquainted with.
Greenall whom Dalziel consulted later was able to be more precise. It had been nearly a quarter to one before Middlefield had left.
‘I offered to drive him myself,’ said Greenall. ‘He was OK, you understand, but he’d put away quite a lot of Scotch. He got a bit huffy at that and I had to make a joke of it. But he drove away very steadily, I noticed. I remember thinking he was more likely to attract attention going at that rate than speeding!’
So, a sedate three miles – say ten minutes at the outside. It fitted, thought Dalziel not without relief. If there’d been any doubt, the next step would have been an examination of the boot of the JP’s Mercedes, which would have meant coming into the open. Dalziel didn’t give a bugger for anyone, but he knew who he wanted his friends to be.
In the middle of the afternoon Wield appeared. Quizzed about this devotion to duty on his day off, he shrugged, said he’d heard about the discovery of Wildgoose’s body on the radio and thought he’d better check in to see if he could help.
‘What a bloody miserable existence the poor sod must have,’ commented Sergeant Brady to anyone who cared to listen. ‘Nothing better to do than come in here on his Sunday off. What he needs is a short-sighted woman!’
Wield did not hear this, would not have reacted if he had. All his emotion for that day had been spent in a stormy scene in Maurice’s Newcastle flat. Their usual roles had been reversed. Maurice, the more effervescent extrovert of the two, had tried to play it cool. Yes, there was somebody else, an interesting young chap who worked in the Borough Surveyor’s office. Wield would like him. He was coming to lunch. Why didn’t Wield stay on and have a drink and meet him?
And Wield, the calm, controlled, inscrutable Wield, had exploded in a wild, near hysterical fury which had amazed and frightened himself almost as much as it did his friend. He had left and made the normally two-hour journey back in seventy-five minutes. For two hours he had sat in his room examining the new vistas of violence his morning’s experience had opened up for him. And finally he poured the tumblerful of whisky which had been standing before him back into the bottle untouched and went to work.
But there was little to do, just routine, nothing happening, no leads developing.
And when at six o’clock Gladmann appeared, full of the marvellous couple of days he had spent with rich and generous friends in their cottage on the coast, Pascoe thrust the envelope with the tape into his hands, said ‘Sod it!’ out loud, and went home, feeling, as he told Ellie, as if he’d spent the entire Sabbath at a very long and very tedious church service where the preacher’s text had been It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows.
It still felt pretty vain the next morning. Monday mornings normally don’t mean much to policemen. If anything, they bring a sense of relief. The incidence of crime shoots up at weekends, much of it petty, it’s true, but all of it time-consuming. But this Monday, all the Monday morning feelings they had skipped for so long seemed to be lying in wait for those working on the Choker case.
The papers were full of comment, nearly all critical. An editorial in the Yorkshire Post wondered heretically if it might not be time to ask the Yard for assistance. Dr Pottle telephoned first thing to say that he had been invited to take part in a chat show on television and he wanted to be clear about what he should and shouldn’t say.
‘He thinks he knows something important?’ queried Dalziel incredulously. ‘Why hasn’t the silly bugger told us, then?’
Pascoe removed the hand which he had pressed very firmly over the mouthpiece and said, ‘Mr Dalziel says he can see no reason not to rely on your professional discretion, Doctor.’
‘That’s kind of him. By the way, have the papers got it right? This man, Wildgoose – you believe the Choker killed him to cover up his latest murder?’
‘More or less. How does that fit with your profile?’ asked Pascoe.
‘Very well,’ said Pottle. ‘The killing of the girls he can clearly justify to himself. Even a one-off cover-up killing. But a second opens up the possibilities of a third, a fourth, indeed an infinitude. And that, if, as I posit, he is a man of conscience, must be very distressing.’
‘What’s he say?’ asked Dalziel when Pascoe replaced the receiver.
‘He says the Choker’s probably sorry about killing Wildgoose.’
‘Je-sus,’ said Dalziel.
At ten A.M. the phone rang.
Wield took it. He looked unusually pale this morning and there were deeper shadows than usual in the canyons of his eyes.
‘For you, sir,’ he said to Pascoe. ‘The Service Children’s Education Authority.’
‘Probably want their degree back,’ muttered Dalziel. ‘Obtaining by fraud.’
It was a woman, friendly, apologetic. She introduced herself as Captain Casey.
‘Sorry this wasn’t dealt with more promptly,’ she said. ‘But like most government offices, it’s difficult to find anyone but half-wits round the place after lunch-time on Friday. I expect it’s the same in the police.’
‘All the time,’ said Pascoe. ‘What can you tell me, please?’
‘Everything. Or at least all you asked for. Yes, there was a Peter Dinwoodie on the staff of Devon School. He resigned at the end of Summer Term, 1973. He hasn’t been employed in any of our schools since. Nor does he seem to have had a job in the public sector in this country. I rang the DES to check. Thought you might like to know.’
‘That was kind of you,’ said Pascoe.
‘Amends for the delay,’ said Captain Casey. ‘Now, you also asked whether his wife was employed at the same school, Mr Pascoe. No, she wasn’t. In fact, according to our records, Mr Dinwoodie was a bachelor when last he worked for us.’
‘Bachelor? Not married, you mean?’ said Pascoe foolishly.
‘I often do mean that when I say bachelor,’ she said pleasantly.
‘You’re certain?’
‘Our records are.’
‘Well, thank you very much, Captain.’
‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘You also wanted to know if a Mark Wildgoose had ever taught in Germany. The answer is no, definitely not. By the way, I saw that name in the newspaper this morning. A man murdered. Is it anything to do …’
‘Thank you, Captain Casey,’ said Pascoe firmly. ‘Thanks a lot.’
‘Oh well. Any time,’ she said. ‘Before lunch on Friday that is. Cheerio!’
‘What was all that about?’ asked Dalziel who had been watching Pascoe’s reactions.
‘More mystery,’ said Pascoe.
When he had outlined the call, Dalziel said, ‘Yes, well, all right. So he got married later, when he got back to the UK. What about it?’
‘There was a daughter,’ said Pascoe. ‘She was killed in a car crash early this year. She was seventeen.’
He watched as Dalziel deliberately counted on his fingers.
‘I’m with you,
’ said the fat man. ‘But so what? He married a widow.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Pascoe. ‘Something the old man said. Agar. It struck me at the time, but I didn’t know why. I think I’ll have another word with him, if that’s OK, sir.’
‘It’s better than having you wandering around here, being cryptic,’ said Dalziel. ‘But when the blinding flash comes, I’d like to be among the first to know.’
As though it had been specially ordered for fair fortnight, the fine weather which had begun to break up the day before was now definitely at an end. It was still warm, but in the eastern sky great ridges of violet-tinged cloud blocked out the sun and as he drove slowly by the empty expanse of Charter Park, seagulls driven inland by the still distant storm floated covetously over the heads of the council workmen clearing up the debris. There would be a couple of policemen hovering too in case anything relevant was discovered, but Pascoe reckoned that the seagulls had a better chance.
Heading for Shafton took him directly towards the storm and the air was quite dark by the time he reached the Garden Centre. He had Agar’s home address, but he slowed as he approached the Centre and saw that his judgement had been right. There in the rose field was a solitary figure with a hoe, carefully repairing the damage done by yesterday’s line of searching coppers.
The old man glanced up as Pascoe approached but did not pause in his work.
‘Big feet some of you lads have,’ he said, heeling a loosened root into the earth.
‘They had to look,’ said Pascoe.
‘I dare say.’
‘Looks like rain,’ said Pascoe, falling into slow step alongside him.
‘We can do with it,’ said Agar. ‘But that lot looks like it’s going to come down cats and dogs, and any of these plants that’re not firmly set can easy be toppled.’
‘Well, I won’t keep you back,’ said Pascoe. ‘It was just that last Friday when we talked you said something that didn’t really register till later. You said that Mrs Dinwoodie blamed herself for letting her daughter run off to Scotland to be married. Now Mrs Dinwoodie as a widow would be solely responsible for her daughter while she was still a minor. If she agreed to the wedding, why did the girl have to go to Scotland?’
The old man paused.
‘I said that? Well, mebbe I shouldn’t have. But there’s no harm to be done now. The lass, Alison, she weren’t Mr Dinwoodie’s daughter. No, she used the name, but she weren’t his daughter. I knew, but only at the end when there was trouble and I heard ’em talking. Mrs Dinwoodie knew she could trust me.’
Pascoe put his hand on the old man’s shoulder and brought him to a halt.
‘Please, Mr Agar. Tell me everything you know,’ he said.
It wasn’t much. Shortly before Dinwoodie’s death, Alison had met a boy, a nice lad, just eighteen, down from the Borders to do a six-month course at the Yorkshire Agricultural Institute. Their relationship had intensified after and probably as a result of her stepfather’s death and they had been eager to get married. But somehow Alison’s real father had emerged on the scene just about now. Still legally the girl’s guardian, his permission was needed for an under-age marriage in England, and he was making a fuss about giving it. So Mary Dinwoodie had not raised any objection when her prospective son-in-law proposed taking Alison back to Scotland with him and marrying her there after she had the necessary residential qualifications.
She had gone up to the wedding, taken a train back to Yorkshire after the ceremony and was met at her house by the news that the honeymooners’ car had skidded on the wintry roads only twenty miles after setting out and the young couple were both killed.
‘Like I said, she went off after that. To stay with friends, she said, but I reckon she was off by herself and it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d killed herself. But I took care of the place as best I could, and the bank helped to keep the accounts straight, and then, lo and behold, last month she comes back, and it looks as if we can mebbe get things on a proper basis. Well, you know the rest, mister. Better if she’d stayed away forever. Better mebbe if she had killed herself even.’
The sky was completely veiled in cloud now and Pascoe felt the first splashes on his cheek, big warm drops that burst ripely as they struck.
‘You should have told someone this before, Mr Agar,’ he said.
‘Should I? I never thought. It seemed of no account somehow, what with her dead. No account.’
‘And the man’s name? Mrs Dinwoodie’s first husband. Alison’s father.’
‘Nay, I know nothing of that, mister,’ said Agar, ‘nothing more than what I’ve told you. Nothing more.’
Back at the station he found that Dalziel was out. This suited him very well. There was a driving urgency in him which rendered him impatient of diversions for explanations and hypotheses. Ignoring Wield’s curious glances, he went to his own office, picked up the telephone and asked to be connected with the SCEA in London.
It took a few minutes to track down Captain Casey.
‘Hello again,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect you so soon.’
‘Me neither. Look, that school in Linden, the Devon – do you have a complete list of staff? What I’m particularly interested in is other people who resigned in 1973.’
‘You’re lucky, I haven’t sent the file back yet,’ she said. ‘Hold on a sec. Here we are. You want the lot?’
‘Just the resignations to start with,’ he said.
Besides Dinwoodie there were only another two, and only one of these a woman.
‘Now, do you want the whole list?’
‘No thanks,’ he said slowly. ‘I think this’ll do.’
He replaced the receiver and carefully drew a ring round the woman’s name.
Mary Greenall.
Then he picked up the telephone again.
‘I want the Air Ministry,’ he said. ‘I want the section that deals with personnel records.’
Twenty minutes later he came out of his room, the sense of urgency pulsing stronger than ever. He found Wield and asked, ‘Mr Dalziel back yet?’
‘Not yet,’ said the sergeant.
‘Damn.’
‘Are you on to something, sir?’ asked Wield.
Pascoe hesitated, then said firmly. ‘Yes. It may open up the whole damn thing. I’m almost certain. Listen, I’m going out now. Tell Mr Dalziel I’ll be at the Aero Club. That’s it. The Aero Club.’
It was silly. There was no need for all this rushing. But he felt impelled to it. Perhaps if there’d been a bit more rushing early on and a little less painstaking, step-by-stepping …
As he went through the door that led into the car park, he almost collided with Dicky Gladmann, clad in a streaming plastic mac.
‘Hello there!’ said the linguist. ‘I say, I’ve had a listen. Most interesting.’
‘Fine,’ said Pascoe, turning his collar against the rain. ‘I’m in a bit of a rush. We’ll talk later.’
‘Well, it’s all written down,’ said Gladmann, producing the buff envelope. ‘Really, it’s been terribly interesting. I’m not sure how significant it might be …’
‘I’ll let you know,’ said Pascoe, taking the envelope and thrusting it into his jacket pocket. ‘Many thanks. We’ll be in touch.’
He dashed out into the storm and was well dampened in the short time it took to get into his car. The light was so bad now that he switched his headlights on before moving off. Behind him through the rear-view mirror he could see Gladmann standing forlornly in the doorway looking with his old-young-man’s face and his plastic mac like the nucleus of a queue outside a porno-cinema.
The storm was at its height as he drove into the old aerodrome. There was no wind and the orange windsock hung heavily from its pole, its fluorescence dulled by the torrential rain. Sheet lightning flickered through canyons of cloud and thunder cracked and rolled like an artillery barrage. There would be no flying today, and precious little drinking either if the absence of cars was anything to go by.
Pascoe glanced at his watch. Nearly twelve-thirty.
He parked as close to the club-house door as he could get and dashed in, realized he’d left his lights on, dashed out again, switched them off and was sodden wet by the time he made his second entrance.
‘Thought you’d changed your mind,’ said Austin Greenall. ‘Welcome. We were just beginning to think the weather had robbed us of all custom today.’
He was sitting on a stool at the bar. Behind it, a barmaid was arranging bottles and glasses.
Glancing significantly at her, Pascoe said, ‘May we talk, Mr Greenall?’
‘Of course,’ said the secretary. ‘Come into my office. Would you care for a drink en route? No? All right, this way.’
He led Pascoe into a small airless room with a desk, a filing cabinet and a couple of hard chairs.
‘Sit down, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Now what is it you want to talk about?’
Pascoe sat.
We could start with your ex-wife, Mary Dinwoodie,’ he said. ‘And go on from there.’
The telephone began to ring. It rang thirteen times. Both men ignored it. Finally it stopped, leaving its tone hanging on the air almost as long again.
‘My wife, Mr Pascoe,’ said Greenall. ‘We are Roman Catholics. There was no divorce.’
Both men sighed gently, almost inaudibly, out of a sort of relief in both cases and, as if recognizing this, they exchanged shy smiles, glimmers fading almost as soon as they showed, but establishing a tenuous link for all that.
‘Talking of wives, was it yours that talked you down here in the end?’ said Greenall. His tone was light, cocktail-partyish, but with a harmonic of strain.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘She was talking about that seance when she was here last week. She had all kinds of daft ideas about it. But I saw the transcript on the table and I wondered if in the end … That’s why of course I had to …’
The phone started ringing again. This time Greenall turned his attention to it, not touching it but staring fixedly at it as though the ceasing of the noise would be the signal of a beginning.
Pascoe took from his pocket the envelope which Gladmann had given him. As expected, it contained the short tape of the Choker’s last call and the cassette of Rosetta Stanhope’s interrupted seance. There were also several sheets in the linguist’s rather self-consciously ornate handwriting.
A Killing Kindness Page 23
