A Killing Kindness

‘Are you the boss of this lot? The king or whatever you call it?’

‘Me, pal?’ he said again, looking amazed. ‘Just an old gypsy, just old Silvester.’

‘Well, old Silvester, see if you can get it into your friend’s thick skull. I’m not happy about him. I’ll be back. Meanwhile, get that fence mended, stop them ponies straying. Or you’ll all be in trouble. Right?’

‘Right, pal,’ said Herne, beaming co-operation. ‘Straightaway!’

That was telling them! thought Wield as he drove away, but years of experience had taught him that telling gypsies anything was like talking to the trees. Not that he objected to gypsies as such, though the untidiness of their life made him shudder. If anything, he felt a sneaking sympathy with them as outcasts and envy of them as defiant outcasts. And perhaps there was some atavistic fear in his attitude also. He had certainly been more affected by Rosetta Stanhope’s trance yesterday than he cared to reveal.

He should have gone back to the station but instead he found himself driving to his own flat, where he made himself a cup of tea. It was a gloomy place, he thought dejectedly. Even on the brightest of days the small north-facing windows let little light in. And it was drab and impersonal. Not many people visited him here apart from his married sister and the young nephew whose cassette recorder he had used at the seance. But the secretive element in his make-up drew him to the anonymous and noncommittal in all but the most private areas of life.

Reacting against the thought, he picked up his phone and dialled Maurice’s business number in Newcastle. But when the phone was answered he replaced it without speaking. They had an agreement. All contact to be private except in extreme emergency. This was no emergency though somehow it felt as if there might be an emergency in the offing, like an area of low pressure over the Atlantic on the telly weather chart.

When he finally drank his tea it was quite cold and he saw with dismay that he had been sitting totally abstracted for more than an hour. It was after three-thirty.

He left the flat hurriedly. Pascoe was going to want to know how he’d spent his time. He would not be pleased. As for Dalziel …

At least he ought to be able to say he’d spoken to Pauline Stanhope.

He drove back to Charter Park, but swore under his breath when he saw the chair with the BACK SOON sign still outside Madame Rashid’s tent. What the hell did SOON mean to a fortune-teller?

It ought to mean something.

Suddenly uneasy, he pushed the chair aside and opened the flap.

It was dark inside, dark and musty. The triangle of light from the opening fell across a plain trestle table.

‘Oh Jesus,’ said Wield.

He took two steps forward. Looked down. Retreated. As he pulled the flap down and replaced the chair with the sign a pair of young girls approached. One said boldly while the other giggled, ‘Are you the fortune-teller, mister?’

‘No,’ said Wield. ‘She’s gone.’

‘When will she be back?’

He gestured at the sign, then hurried away towards his car to radio for assistance.

BACK SOON. But from where?

Across the trestle table, her legs dangling off one end but her arms neatly crossed over her breast, lay the body of Pauline Stanhope.

She had been strangled.

Chapter 7 (#ulink_911a1ebc-e9b1-5ce1-a4f4-2d86287dac73)

‘Not a good advert, this,’ said Dalziel. ‘Like a butcher getting food poison.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Pascoe, though his more exact mind found the analogy imprecise and therefore dissatisfying. He didn’t say so, but wondered what the newspapers might make of a murder in a fortune-teller’s tent.

The press were imminent, of course. The discovery of a crime by an experienced officer gives the police a head start in getting their investigation under way free from public or professional interference. But once they start, the news speeds like a run on the pound even from sites much more sequestered than a busy fairground. A rope barrier had been erected around the tent to keep the public back. The police doctor had examined the body briefly, pronounced the girl dead, probable cause strangulation, probable time two to four hours earlier. Next, at Pascoe’s suggestion, because of the smallness of the internal area, a single detective had been sent in on hands and knees, armed with a high-powered torch and a plastic bag, to pick over every inch of the floor space before the photographer and fingerprint men further trampled the already well crushed grass. Another couple of men were put to examining the turf in the environs of the tent, but the passage of so many feet there made it a token gesture.

Next, photographs were taken from all angles, sketches made, distances measured. Then the fingerprint boys, who had been dusting the chair and notice outside, moved in and did the chair and table inside with the body still in situ. Finally, after Dalziel had stood and looked phlegmatically at the corpse for a few minutes, he gave the order for it to be slid into its plastic bag and taken to the mortuary where the clothes would be carefully removed and despatched to the lab for examination.

Now the print men did the rest of the table before it and the chairs were also packaged and despatched to the lab.

While all this was going on, a police caravan had been towed into the car park and here already statements were being taken for the second time in a week from the fairground people, with particular attention paid to those whose stalls or entertainments were within sighting distance of the tent.

Of these, the sharp-faced woman on the penny-roll stall was the most positive. Her name was Ena Cooper.

‘Just before twelve she went. I told the ugly fellow. No, I didn’t speak, well, she weren’t all that close, like, and we was busy. Things don’t really pick up while afternoon, but you get a lot of kids round late morning and the roll stalls are always popular with the kids. No, I didn’t see her come back, I went across to our Ethel’s, she’s got a hot-dog stand by the Wheel, for a bite to eat later on, so she could have come back then. About two o’clock, just after the ugly fellow was here the first time. I was away mebbe forty-five minutes. No, it’s no use asking him. He’s so short-sighted he can hardly see the pennies. Kids cheat him rotten when I’m not here!’

Cooper, her husband, nodded melancholy agreement. He’d seen nowt, heard nowt.

Loudspeaker appeals were made to the crowd requesting anyone who had visited Madame Rashid’s tent earlier that day to come forward, but so far without success.

Notable by his absence was Dave Lee. After Wield had described his encounter that afternoon, he was sent to pick the gypsy up and bring him in for questioning. At the same time, Dalziel sent a man round to the Wheatsheaf Garage to check the movements of Tommy Maggs.

Pascoe nodded approvingly. Investigation is ninety per cent elimination. In his mind, Maggs was almost completely in the clear as far as Brenda Sorby’s death was concerned, and he didn’t see the young man as a psychopathic mass murderer. But the obvious has got to be seen to be done.

When he was bold enough to utter these thoughts to Dalziel, the fat man grunted, ‘Oh aye?’

A policewoman had been sent to tell Rosetta Stanhope the tragic news. Pascoe had steered her out of the office earlier that afternoon, with assurances that they would certainly consider her kind offer of psychic assistance.

Later he had been summoned to Dalziel’s office where the fat man was conferring with Detective Chief Inspector George Headingley who was in charge of the Spinks’ warehouse case. This was now murder. The watchman had died in hospital that morning, and Headingley was in search of more manpower. They had gone over the staff dispositions together and seen how tautly stretched they were. Then Pascoe had mentioned Rosetta Stanhope’s offer of help and frivously wondered if they might not take it up.

‘Aye,’ said Dalziel. ‘She can try to make contact with the ACC for a start. That bugger’s been dead from the neck up for years!’

They had all laughed. And not long afterwards Wield had phoned with his news.

Now Pascoe awaited uneasily the arrival of the dead girl’s aunt. She would have to be taken to the mortuary for a formal identification of the body. It was always an unpleasant business, and though Rosetta Stanhope had impressed him as a strong-willed albeit rather eccentric character, experience had taught him there was no way of forecasting reactions.

He felt almost relieved when the policewoman called in with the news that Mrs Stanhope was not at home so she had stationed herself outside her flat to await her return.

Shortly afterwards Wield returned to say that Dave Lee had gone off in his van right after the sergeant’s visit. No one knew, or at least was telling, his destination.

Finally the DC sent to check on Tommy Maggs arrived, also unaccompanied. Maggs had not returned to work after the dinner break and there was no reply to repeated knockings at the door of his home.

‘Check with the neighbours,’ ordered Dalziel. ‘See if he’s contacted his parents at work. Find out who his doctor is. Sergeant Wield, you’ve got Lee’s van number? Right. Put out a call. Peter, you go and deal with the press, will you? You’re better at shooting shit than anyone else.’

‘Thanks,’ said Pascoe. ‘What do I tell them?’

‘What you know, which, unless you’re holding something back, is bugger all.’

‘They’ll be keen to know if it’s the Choker again,’ said Pascoe.

‘Won’t know that till the PM. And then we’ll only know it’s a Choker!’

‘It looks a pretty clear case,’ protested Pascoe. ‘I mean, compared with the Sorby girl …’