A Killing Kindness (28 page)

'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 rosebushes 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 of  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 resume 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.

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.