A Killing Kindness

by Reginald Hill

  The Judge before whom this argument had been conducted in the absence of the jury agreed with the defence. He wondered whether he should make his sternly rebuking speech about the waste of the court’s time now or save it up till after the acquittal he now anticipated. In the event he never made it. After all, it was the kind of thing that the papers would quote gleefully if this fellow went out of court free and then was found in the act of strangling some other poor girl. You couldn’t be too careful. Judges were not accorded the respect that was once their due, not even in obituaries.

  In fact, he was surprised by how long the jury took. Five hours. Prosecution hopes had begun to rise. But then they had filed back in, twelve good men and true, and Austin Greenall had stood and regarded them neither defiantly nor fearfully, and nodded in quiet agreement as he heard the words Not Guilty.

  ‘There he is,’ said Wield suddenly.

  Greenall emerged into the pale sunlight surrounded by reporters. They pressed and jostled around him but he moved steadily forward, the calm centre of their turbulence. He glanced across towards the group of policemen on the steps but did not pause. Pascoe caught the words ‘… get back to work …’ and then the slight, dapper figure passed out of earshot and, soon after, out of sight.

  A reporter detached himself from the group as they passed and said, ‘Any reaction, Super?’

  Pascoe said quickly, ‘No comment.’

  The reporter said, ‘How’s the Choker hunt going on? Is it true you’re calling in the Yard? Or is it back to the crystal ball?’

  ‘Same thing,’ grunted Dalziel. ‘They’ll none of ’em work without their palms being crossed with silver.’

  ‘Can I quote that?’ grinned the reporter.

  ‘Quote what?’ said Pascoe. ‘Who said anything? On your bike, Beaverbrook.’

  ‘They love it,’ said Dalziel as the man moved away. ‘Seeing us look stupid. Bastards.’

  ‘We won’t look so stupid if he starts up again,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Is that likely, sir?’ asked Wield.

  ‘Pottle says that his motivation is unique in his experience. He reacted to the idea of a young girl being spoilt by marriage, with the engagement ring acting as a kind of trigger. It’s quite possible, he says, that being held in custody for so long will have effected a cure, given him time to think the thing through and come to terms with it.’

  ‘You don’t see many young girls with engagement rings in the nick,’ said Dalziel.

  ‘If he does that, perhaps it’ll get to his conscience and he’ll be ready to confess again,’ said Wield.

  ‘Pottle thinks not,’ said Pascoe. ‘He wanted to confess in the first place because of the unnecessary killings – that is, those that were motivated by simple self-preservation. It was a confession in the religious sense. He’s a Catholic, remember. Pottle says I was the priest, but I turned out to be fraudulent. Real priests don’t duck out of the confessional and send a curate in to finish things off. So, end of confession.’

  ‘Fuck Pottle,’ said Dalziel. ‘I’ll tell you one thing. That bugger won’t pick his nose without me knowing about it from now on.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Aye. Young Preece is on him now.’

  ‘But he knows Preece,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘He’ll know a lot of us before we’re done,’ said Dalziel. ‘Day and night.’

  ‘He’ll be after us for harassment,’ protested Pascoe.

  ‘You reckon?’ Dalziel looked at Pascoe curiously. ‘Bothers you, does it?’

  ‘A lot of things bother me, sir,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘I’ll tell you something, Peter,’ said Dalziel seriously. ‘When I started this job, there was us and them and their weapons were brutality and deceit and not-giving-a-sod and our weapon was the law. Now the law’s their weapon too, or haven’t you noticed? So me, I’ll use whatever I can lay my hands on.’

  ‘Even if it’s something they have discarded?’ wondered Pascoe.

  ‘Dog turds, if necessary,’ said Dalziel. ‘I’m off. If I see them lawyers coming out, all arm in arm and friendly, I may thump their bloody wigs together.’

  Pascoe and Sergeant Wield watched as the fat man stumped down the steps.

  ‘He’s not happy,’ said Wield.

  ‘I’m not happy,’ said Pascoe. ‘But what the hell?’

  ‘Mr Pascoe,’ said a woman’s voice.

  They turned. Rosetta Stanhope was standing on the step above them.

  ‘Hello,’ said Pascoe. ‘I noticed you in court. You know Sergeant Wield, I think.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman. ‘We were talking earlier.’

  ‘I’d best be off,’ said Wield. ‘See you later, sir. Goodbye, Mrs Stanhope.’

  They watched him go.

  ‘Nice man,’ said the woman. ‘He’s been very unhappy lately, I think.’

  ‘Has he?’ said Pascoe. Somehow the states of happiness and unhappiness did not seem to relate to Wield.

  ‘You haven’t noticed? No, he wouldn’t show much. He’ll be happy again, eventually, I think. But you’ve got a lot to be happy about now, so he was telling me, Inspector. Congratulations.’

  Pascoe returned the woman’s warm smile and suddenly felt a surge of delight rising in him which drove out all the post-trial despondency.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Thank you. Last week. It’s been very worrying. Ellie, that’s my wife, was ill for a long time. We thought she was going to lose it. She spent weeks in hospital. And it came a couple of weeks early.’

  ‘It?’

  ‘She,’ said Pascoe. ‘I haven’t got used yet. She wasn’t very heavy, but she’s fine. She’s OK. Perfect, I mean.’

  ‘And your wife?’

  ‘Fine too. She’ll be all right soon. It’s been very hard for her. Very hard.’

  Pascoe frowned as he spoke and Rosetta Stanhope put a thin brown hand on his arm.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘It’ll be all right. I feel it.’

  ‘Yes. Well, thanks,’ said Pascoe. ‘And you? How are you? Look, I’m sorry. About all this, all being for nothing, I mean.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she repeated, smiling. ‘That will be all right too. I feel it. It will be as Pauline would have wanted it. I visited Dave the other day.’

  ‘Lee? How is he? He should be out early next year if he’s been behaving himself. He might even have got away with probation if it hadn’t been for his record.’

  ‘Yes, you were very gentle with him in the end. Perhaps the fat man has a bit of a conscience, eh? I explained this to Dave when he asked me to curse him.’

  ‘Curse Mr Dalziel?’ said Pascoe, amused.

  ‘All of you, but especially Mr Dalziel,’ said Rosetta Stanhope without amusement.

  ‘But you wouldn’t do it?’

  ‘With your troubles, who needs curses?’

  ‘Thanks anyway,’ grinned Pascoe.

  This time she smiled back. She was very smart in a tweed coat and elegant brogues.

  ‘You’re right not to be frightened of an ordinary old woman like me,’ she said. ‘But don’t forget I’m pure-bred Romany under this outfit. I’ve been away a long time but you can’t be away for ever.’

  ‘You’re not really thinking of going back?’

  ‘To end my days sitting on the vardo steps puffing away at an old pipe to keep off the flies, you mean? Well, it may not seem a bad option when the spring’s back in the air and the green’s among the trees. I’d be someone there, at least. Here … well, I miss her, Mr Pascoe. She stopped me missing him and now she’s gone, I miss them both.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Pascoe helplessly. ‘About everything.’

  ‘It’s going to be all right,’ said Rosetta Stanhope. ‘It’s taken care of. Let me have your little girl’s date and time of birth, if you like. I’ll cast her horoscope. It’ll be a fortunate one, I feel it. Everything’s going to be all right. Everything.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pascoe.

  Chapter 27

  A
ustin Greenall went straight to the Aero Club from the courtroom, but news of his acquittal had preceded him. Bernard Middlefield had been in court too and had had no lawyers and journalists to delay his departure.

  It was late afternoon and the shadows were long. The only glider in the sky was making its approach, but in the club house were a dozen or so members who had presumably managed to organize their work so that they could enjoy their flight earlier in the afternoon. Perhaps not coincidentally they included three other committee members besides Middlefield. A quorum.

  There was silence as he entered, then someone said, ‘Congratulations, Austin.’ This started a small spatter of yes, well done, never doubted for a minute, hardly felt before quickly drying up.

  Middlefield said, ‘Can we go into the office?’

  ‘By all means,’ said Greenall. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘No; with you, I mean,’ said Middlefield exasperatedly. ‘There’s business to do. We’ve had a committee meeting …’

  ‘A very brief one, surely?’

  ‘Not just now. Earlier this week. We had to make decisions.’

  ‘Contingency plans? In case I got acquitted?’

  ‘All we want is to find out what you plan to do.’

  ‘I thought, first, a little flight. Just to clear the mind, stretch the muscles. Roger. Peter. Would you give me a hand?’

  ‘It’s a bit late, Austin,’ protested the first man addressed, Roger Minstrel, his assistant, who had been running the Club single-handed for the past few months.

  ‘I’ll give you a hand,’ said Thelma Lacewing from the doorway. She looked very fetching in boots, pink cords and a light blue anorak. ‘Assistance is getting hard to find round here. I thought I’d hit the deserted village when I came down just now.’

  ‘Thelma, I’m sorry,’ apologized Minstrel. ‘Honestly, I was out there watching you, but …’

  He tailed off.

  ‘You came inside for the welcome home party,’ concluded Lacewing. ‘You’d better get a move on, Austin. The lights are going out all over Yorkshire. Starting here, as usual.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Greenall making for the door. ‘Roger?’

  ‘All right, but it is late,’ said Minstrel.

  ‘We’ll talk later,’ called Middlefield after them in an attempt to re-affirm his authority.

  By the time Greenall had got himself ready, Minstrel and Lacewing had manoeuvred the glider into position and the man went off to the towing winch.

  Greenall climbed into the cockpit and strapped himself in.

  ‘I gather you were acquitted,’ said the woman.

  He nodded.

  ‘How do you feel about it?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said.

  ‘Do the police still think you’re guilty?’

  ‘I don’t know. You’d better ask your friend.’

  ‘Ellie Pascoe?’ said Lacewing, frowning. ‘She’s had – still has – other things to worry her apart from whether you’re guilty or not. What about you? What do you think?’

  ‘About being guilty?’ he said with a faint smile. ‘I’m not very clear yet.’

  ‘I should try to be clear before you land,’ she said. ‘For everyone’s sake.’

  She turned away and retreated to the wing tip which she grasped and raised. The signal was given to Minstrel. The winch engine bellowed into life. The glider began to move.

  It was a perfect launch. The skills were too deeply grafted into Greenall’s sinews and nerves for his enforced lay-off to have damaged them. Released from the towline, the glider soared as he expertly used the wind to carry him over the industrial estate where there was a complex of thermal activity he could read like a contour map.

  Why had he chosen the glider? he wondered. The Cub would have taken him higher and further, given him more control. But he knew why, he realized. In the small aeroplane he was always aware of what it had once felt like to have at his fingertips control of such speed and power as most men could hardly dream of. A king of infinite space. Soaring in the glider brought no such memories. This was something different, not mastery of a kingdom by force of conquest, but more like acceptance as a citizen by a kind of naturalization process. Citizen of infinite space. Not quite the same ring about it but at this moment, at this time, the experience brought a peace and sense of belonging which he desperately needed.

  What were his plans? Middlefield had asked.

  What did he think about his guilt or innocence? Thelma Lacewing had wondered.

  Stupid questions. Guilt, innocence, the future; these were not things to be decided or even usefully contemplated. He had felt guilty, it was true, else why had he talked at such length to that fellow Pascoe? But with the talking the guilt had lessened, was already going as he talked to the man, and had gone completely by the time that sergeant with a face like a hangman’s labourer had come in.

  Guilt might return, though it had not returned since then. And even if it did return, he now knew from experience that innocence returned too. So the future must take care of itself, whatever it brought. It was written. He knew it.

  He hadn’t told Pascoe everything, not quite everything. When he had slipped into Madame Rashid’s tent at Charter Park, he hadn’t killed the girl straightaway. He had given her his palm to read. She had examined it, murmuring a few well-worn platitudes, then she had gone very quiet, and looked at his hand quite fixedly, and slowly risen, pushing his hand away and raising her own to her mouth. He had punched her then, very hard, in the stomach, and killed her. She had seen he was going to kill her, he was sure of that. And what was going to happen had to happen. Guilt he had felt then, and again, still stronger, after the slaying of Wildgoose. But he was an evil man, a debaucher of youth. He saw that now. There was no more guilt to be felt there.

  The flight was doing him good. He had known it would. He felt ready for the earth again, ready to go back and take his place once more and do whatever had to be done.

  He looked down to get his bearings. Up here it was still bright but the height made a lot of difference. At ground level the sun was now dipping below the horizon, but it made no difference, not to a citizen of infinite space. He dipped across the airfield in a long descending run with the light wind behind him and turned for his landing approach. To his surprise he realized he was still rather high. Perhaps he was more out of practice than he imagined. To compensate and to reassure himself of his touch, he applied full airbrake and side-slipped to lose height till he was satisfied he was approaching at the optimum angle.

  He was now low enough to be out of the full orb of the sun and the gloom of early evening visibly thickened beneath him, but not enough to cause concern. He was coming down parallel to the picket fence which the council had erected to keep the gypsies away from the airfield. To his right he could see the club house quite clearly. The flagpole, brilliant white and exactly thirty feet high, gave him a precise point of reference for his round-out, even though the ground surface itself seemed far from clear. It was rushing beneath him, vague and shadowy. And the shadows were uneven too. Some seemed to be moving across the line of his approach, and these had a look of shape and substance.

  ‘Jesus!’ he muttered suddenly, realizing what they were.

  No shadows these, but ponies, a whole bloody herd by the look of it, wheeling and swerving beneath him as though driven in panic by the sound of his descent.

  The picket fence must be broken again. The bloody things were everywhere. He shouted, knowing they couldn’t hear and that it would make no difference if they could; but still he shouted. And still they thundered directly beneath him. Christ, they must be moving! He was doing almost fifty knots and he wasn’t outrunning them.

  It was time for decisions. Continue the landing as planned and hope the blasted things got out of the way. Or overshoot. He visualized what lay behind that section of the boundary fence directly ahead. Rough ground. Some gorse bushes, very substantial. And then the belt of trees beyond which curved the river.<
br />
  Perilous country even if he could see it. But black as it was now, certain disaster.

  So it had to be the landing as planned. He hadn’t got enough speed to gain enough height for another turn on to a different line from the stampeding herd. Only the crassest of novices would try that, a fool, an idiot.

  Yet that was what his hands and feet were trying to do. He cursed them and fought back, held the glider level, straight and level, the animals weren’t stupid, they would get out of his way.

  And suddenly he had won. He felt relaxed, looked out through the perspex. There seemed to be rather more light now. Everything was quite clear. And he could no longer see the ponies.

  Suddenly he knew what was happening.

  By the time Dalziel and Pascoe reached the airfield, the ambulance had gone and the excited and horror-struck members were busy exchanging notes in the club house. Preece who met them in the car park was equally excited and eager for an audience.

  ‘I saw it,’ he said. ‘I was just sitting in my car, waiting. I saw him coming in to land. It looked fine, but he just kept on going and going, made no attempt to touch down or lose speed. Just going and going. Right into the boundary fence. I couldn’t believe it. I was watching and I couldn’t believe it!’

  ‘Dead?’ said Dalziel.

  ‘Oh yes. I was first across there. It was a mess. Broken neck, it looked like. I called an ambulance, but I might as well have called a dust-cart.’

  ‘Let’s take a look,’ said Dalziel.

  The three policemen walked across to the wreckage. The glider had hit the wire mesh of the boundary fence, flipped over and landed upside down with considerable fracturing of metal and fibreglass.

  And bone.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Dalziel. ‘Suicide?’

  ‘He just flew straight into it,’ repeated Preece. ‘He made no attempt to avoid it.’

  ‘OK, lad,’ said Dalziel. ‘Peter, what do you think?’

  ‘Guilty conscience, you mean? It’ll be a popular theory with half the Great British Public.’

  ‘And the other half?’

  ‘Innocent man driven to extremes by false accusation and police harassment.’