A Killing Kindness

‘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.

Pascoe glanced at his watch. Brooding time over, he decided. There was work to be done. He began to retrace his steps.

The fairground was livelier now. Business wouldn’t really get under way till much later in the morning, but meantime there were things to be done, machinery to be checked and oiled, canvas covers removed, brass to be polished. At side-stalls like the rifle-range and the hoopla there were the gimcrack prizes to be set out, gun-sights to check in case they had deviated to accuracy, and hoopla rings in case they had stretched to go over the whisky bottle.

By the fortune-teller’s tent a young woman in jeans and a yellow suntop was talking to a man in a tartan shirt and brown cords, gaitered militarily above ex-army boots. He was about forty with the knitted brow and dark craggy good looks of a Heathcliff.

They looked at Pascoe as he passed and the man said something.

A moment later Pascoe stopped and turned as the woman’s voice called, ‘Excuse me!’ She had started after him. The man watched for a moment and then strode away towards the trailer park.

‘Aren’t you one of the policemen?’ said the girl. Anyone under twenty-five now qualified as a girl, Pascoe realized ruefully. This one certainly did; fresh young skin, clear brown eyes, luxuriant auburn hair escaping from the green and white spotted bandanna which she had tied around it.

‘That’s right,’ said Pascoe. ‘Does it stand out?’

‘I saw you the other day, I think,’ said the girl, evading the question. Pascoe nodded. It was likely. He had spent a great deal of time here on Friday afternoon.

‘You work here?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Do you have a moment?’

Without waiting for his answer she set off towards the fortune-teller’s tent and lifted the flap.

Pascoe paused before the entrance, partly to establish his independent spirit, partly to read the sign. Madame Rashid, it said, Interpreter of the Stars, Admission 50p. The lettering was pseudo-Arabic and the words were surrounded by a constellation of varying hues and shapes.

‘The price of the future’s gone up,’ he said.

‘You should try having a full horoscope cast,’ she said seriously. ‘Besides, we’re not allowed to tell the future.’

‘I know,’ he said.

‘Oh, of course you would. Won’t you come in?’

He passed by her under the flap.

It was a bit of a disappointment, reminding him more of a Boy Scout camp than the Eastern pavilion he had half expected. The smell was of damp canvas and trodden grass and the only furniture was a plain trestle table and two folding chairs.

A suitcase lay on the table and she pointed to this as if sensing his disappointment and said, ‘It looks better when I get the props out.’

‘I’m sure,’ said Pascoe. ‘What did you want to see me about Miss-er-Rashid?’

She laughed, very attractively.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m Pauline Stanhope.’

She held out her hand. He took it. The name sounded familiar.

‘And I’m Detective-Inspector Pascoe,’ he said.

‘I thought you must be. It’s about yesterday, Inspector Pascoe. Won’t you sit down?’

He unfolded the chairs and they sat opposite each other at the table, as though for an interrogation. Or a fortune-telling. It depended on your point of view.

‘Yesterday?’

Yes. Aunt Rose was very upset when she read the paper.’

‘Was she?’ said Pascoe.

Aunt Rose? Of course, Rosetta Stanhope. And this was the niece.