A Killing Kindness (3 page)

Now a regiment of corpses could have been  deposited without drawing much attention.

But by now, Tommy Maggs was already in deep  conversation with the police and was to continue  in their company until dropped at his door at  one-thirty
A.M
.
His father, watching a late western  on the telly, confirmed his arrival. So unless he  later stole from the house and, carless, contrived to re-encounter Brenda, lure her to the canal bank  some five miles away and there murder her, he was  in the clear.

But what had happened to Brenda after she left  her boy-friend by his broken-down mini, no one  could say. Except one person.

At six o'clock on Friday the news editor of the 
Evening Post
picked up his phone.

'I must be cruel, only to be kind,' said a voice.

The line went dead. The news editor yelled for his secretary.

Chapter 3

Ellie Pascoe was not enjoying the rich rewarding  experience of pregnancy.

At roughly the halfway point she was still suffering the morning sickness which should have died  away a month earlier and was already experiencing  the backache and heartburn which might decently  have waited till a month later.

‘For Christ's sake don't make soothing noises,'  she said as she returned pale-faced to the breakfast table. 'I'm having a baby, not turning into  one.'

Pascoe, warned, returned to his cornflakes and  said lightly, 'You shouldn't have bought the ticket  if you didn't want the trip.'

'I didn't know it meant the end of civilization as  I know it,' she said grimly.

'At least you don't have to go to work,' said  Pascoe.

They were well into July and the long vacation  had begun at the college where Ellie lectured.

'It's the students who get the holiday, not us,'  she retorted. This was an ancient tract of disputed  land, full of shell holes. Pascoe made a tactical  withdrawal.

'Can I have the butter, please?'

'If by that you mean that if I'd taken your  advice and resigned last term I wouldn't need to  be thinking about next September's courses then  let me remind you that, first, I personally need  the work and, secondly, we personally need the  money and, thirdly, that women having fought  for centuries to get the meagre rights they've  got, including the right not to lose their jobs  because some careless fellow puts them up the  stick, I am not about to renounce those rights  just because you're feeling all patriarchal and  protective. Excuse me.'

When she came back, Pascoe said, 'Thank God  I didn't ask for the marmalade,' but she didn't  respond.

'What are you doing today?' he asked as he  finished his coffee.

'I'm going to be sick at the Aero Club,' she  said.

'Good God,' he said, alarmed. 'You're not taking  up gliding, are you?'

'No. Just having lunch there. They do a chicken-in-the-basket. Today they might see it there twice.'

'Come on,' said Pascoe. 'It can't be that bad.  Can it? And why the Aero Club? Not your normal  stamping ground.'

'I'm meeting Thelma.'

'Lacewing? You surprise me. I shouldn't have  thought it was her scene either.'

'And what do you know about Thelma's scene?'

'Me? Nothing. Nothing at all,' said Pascoe uninterestedly.

He had good reason for sounding uninterested  in Thelma Lacewing. First she was the leading light of WRAG, the Women's Rights Action  Group which put the law a very poor second to  its principles; secondly, he had recently helped  to put her uncle, a respected local businessman,  away on a pornography charge; thirdly, he (in a  purely aesthetic sense of course) rather fancied  her and sometimes thought she might rather  fancy him.

'Anyway, her scene or not, it's her idea,' continued Ellie. 'I promised that when the summer  vac came and I had more time, I'd take some of the  secretarial work off Lorraine Wildgoose's plate.'

'But you said it was only students who got  holidays,' protested Pascoe.

'Oh, go to work!' said Ellie disgustedly. 'See if  you can stop that lunatic from killing more than  half a dozen women today.'

As he finished his toast, he said crumbily,  'Wildgoose. That rings a little bell. Do I know her?'

'I don't think so,' said Ellie. 'Though she's all the  things you admire in a woman. Forty, ferocious,  teaches French and is in the middle of a rather  unpleasant marital shipwreck.'

Pascoe shuddered and rose from the table.

When he returned with his briefcase ready for  departure, Ellie was immersed in the newspaper.

'Hey, there's a little bit here about fat Andy  calling in a clairvoyant.'

'Oh God. Let me see.'

He looked at the paper and said in relief. 'It's  just a couple of lines and I don't think he gets the 
Guardian
anyway.'

'Perhaps not. But just think how large it's likely  to be printed in the tabloids! It's a good story.  At least, you made it sound like a good story  last night.'

'Don't!' he said, kissing her.

'Peter,' she said thoughtfully when he'd finished, 'that transcript of the tape you showed me.  Can I borrow it?'

'Why on earth should you want that?'

'Well, it's just come back to me. I woke up in the  night and I was lying there thinking and I got this  brilliant idea, you know how you do. About that  woman in the trance. Well, I know you said it can't  have anything to do with what actually happened,  but I was remembering, last year the museum  organized a dig in Charter Park, do you remember,  at the bottom end beyond the War Memorial. Our  historians were involved. It was the Roman Level  they were interested in, but they took one section  of the trench much deeper just to see. It was clear  there'd been a settlement thereabouts for as long  as men have been settling.'

'Fascinating,’ said Pascoe. 'So what?'

'So suppose when you die, time shifts? Well,  why not? It certainly
stops,
doesn’t it? Briefly for  a moment as she dies, she goes back. You know  they say your life flashes before you as you drown?  So, it's a cliche, but it's what people who've been  saved from drowning have said. Suppose it's not  just your life but the
whole
of life. And once you're  beyond yours, you're beyond the point of being  saved.'

'All right, all right,' said Pascoe, disturbed by what for Ellie was an untypical flight of fantasy.  'So . . . ?'

'So for a moment, that girl is out of our time  and into, say, the early Mesolittyic period. The  water runs clear. And because of the time shift,  it's still daylight. And those faces, what did she  say, "like beasts at their watering", small wary  brown-skinned people, Cresswellians perhaps, or  some tribe of prehistoric man. And the birds she  saw, pterodactyls perhaps.'

'Jesus!' said Pascoe.

'All right. Be dismissive. But it seems to me that  this famous open mind you're always yapping  about is about as open as a bank on Saturday.'

'I was merely expressing surprise at the depth  of your knowledge of prehistory,' he protested  speciously.

She looked sheepish.

'I know about as much as you, she admitted.  'That's why I wanted the transcript. Thelma was in on the dig, it's one of her hobbies. I thought she  might be able to put me right.'

'A lady of many parts, that one,' said Pascoe.  'Mainly untouched by human hand, or so she  would have us believe.'

'What on earth can you mean?' she said, grinning.

'All right,' he said, opening his briefcase. 'Here  it is. We've got a copy at the station, but don't lose  it all the same. Though strictly speaking, it's hardly  an official document! And in return, promise me  you won't let those viragos con you into taking on  more than you can cope with. OK?'

'Yes, sir,' she said.

He kissed her again, sternly, and left.

But as he backed out of the drive he suddenly  thought
pterodactyls
and chuckled so much he  almost hit the milkman.

Nevertheless something of what Ellie had said  must have tickled his subconscious, for when he  found himself crawling in the nine o'clock traffic  which seemed likely to stretch all the way to  ten, almost without taking a conscious decision  he turned down a side street and ten minutes  later found himself driving through the gates of  Charter Park.

The dry weather had baked the ground so hard  that even the odd thunderstorm hadn't softened  it and the turf was very little cut up so far. But it  was well worn and strewn with litter like the route  of a Blind School paperchase. Pascoe wondered  how long the fair would survive. It had changed considerably even in the comparatively few years  he had known it.

Up until the First World War it had been one of  the great horse-fairs. There were still people who  could recall the days when drovers and gypsies  came from all over the North and the roadsides  for miles on the approaches to the town were lined  with caravans, not the sleek, shining motorized  caravans of today, but the old wooden ones, gold  and green and red and blue. Gradually during the  century, its character had changed in the direction  of a pure pleasure fair, but horses had still been sold  as recently as the early 'sixties. But there had been  growing complaints, not least from the regular fairground people who considered themselves several  cuts above the Romanys and objected to their  presence on all kinds of grounds, notably their  hygienic deficiencies, both human and equine. The  Showman's Guild added its weight to the protests  and when a small herd of gypsy ponies broke loose  from the Park and trotted through the centre of  town, causing several accidents and much indignation, horses were finally banned from Charter  Park. There was still a small gypsy presence at the  Fair, but the main gypsy encampment was now on  a stretch of the old airfield to the south and most of  their business was done door-to-door rather than  at the fairground.

So pleasure had won the day, but even the taste  for pleasure changes and fairs are limited in the  ways they can keep up with these changes. Also, though in the past this had traditionally been the  city's holiday fortnight, and many people still stuck  to the habit, many more objected to being told  when they should or should not go on holiday.  Another decade, thought Pascoe, and the High  Fair could well be another casualty in the war for  individual rights.

But at the moment it still covered a great deal  of ground. Quiet now, though there was plenty of  movement in the caravan park, his mind peopled  it with the milling crowds of a hot summer's night.  After ten-thirty when the pubs closed, there would  have been a new influx of noisy and not very  perceptive pleasure-seekers. Easy for one girl, or  one couple, to pass unnoticed here. But how had  Brenda Sorby got here in the first place?

Pascoe walked slowly over the fairground, deep  in thought. One possibility was that the girl had  met someone she knew on the way home last  Thursday night and accepted an invitation to go  to the fair. But it was after eleven
P.M.,
so he  would have needed to be very persuasive. Perhaps  she had simply been offered a lift home and it  wasn't till the car was moving that the Fair had  been mentioned. By the time they got here, the  storm would have broken, the crowds be heading  for home. But that still left the fair people who  would be clearing up, mopping up, counting up  for another hour or so. So had she just sat in the  car for that time? Perhaps she was already dead or  unconscious? Perhaps . . .

He was walking past a fortune-teller's tent and  the sight of it made him think of Sergeant Wield's  experience the previous day. He had recounted it  jokingly to Ellie when he got home but she had  not been amused.
It strikes me you can do with all  the help you can get,
she had said. She seemed to  be taking these murders very personally. Perhaps  an emotional side effect of her condition? He had  had more sense than to say so!

He reached the small landing-stage where the  hire-boats were moored.

Joe, the boatman, was not there yet for which  Pascoe was grateful. He was the kind of surly  suspicious Yorkshireman who at birth probably  examined his mother's breast closely for several  minutes before accepting the offer. But at least he  made a definite witness.

No, he didn't recognize the photo of Brenda  Sorby. No, there was no boat unaccounted for.  No, there was no one who had come back alone.

Forced to admit that the sudden storm had  brought the boaters back in a bit of a rush, he  grudgingly conceded that a foursome might have  come back as a threesome. But no singles, and he'd  seen 'em all. Rain or no rain, he checked the gear in  each boat before refunding the two pound deposit;  and all deposits had been returned.

But the Choker must have used a boat. The  nearest bridge giving access to the isthmus was a  mile downstream, too far to risk carrying a body.  In any case, why come so far to dump it?

The only alternative was that the Choker was  one of the barge people, a theory approved by Andy  Dalziel who tended to lump all people who lived  itinerant lives together as 'dirty gyppos'. Pascoe,  however, had done a paper at university on the  education of 'travelling children' in England and  knew that the attitudes and lifestyles of the different societies varied considerably. Fairground and  circus folk, for instance, were generally speaking  much concerned about their children's schooling,  and where they could afford it, often sent them  to private boarding-schools. Gypsies on the other  hand were much more suspicious of 'the system',  and much more conscious of their independence  from it, a consciousness which made integration  of their children into any conventional school  much more difficult. The barge people in the  same way had once presented an even greater  problem, but one which had been in part solved  by time and the disappearance of their way of life  as canal traffic ceased to be economically viable.  There were signs of a resurgence recently and no  doubt, thought Pascoe, the problem too would  return.

Meanwhile he had ensured that everyone in any  kind of craft on the canal that night was traced  and interviewed. All had been in company, all  reasonably alibied, none had heard anything. In  any case the signs were that the girl had been put  into the water from the bank, not a boat. There  were traces of mud on her dress corresponding to that in a shallow groove in the bank close by the  place where the body was found.