'How did you hear about your niece, Mrs Stanhope?' he asked.
She shot a glance at the man.
'I heard . . . this morning,' she said. 'In the papers.'
'Yes, I see.'
Pascoe reminded himself to check the papers. Most of them were very co-operative in not revealing a victim's name till next-of-kin had been informed. On the other hand the background and setting were unusual enough to make identification easy for anyone in the know.
'So, where did you spend last night?' he gently insisted.
'She was with me,' interposed the man harshly. 'We drove up north. Spent the night with some friends.'
'Rather a sudden decision, wasn't it? For both of you, I mean.'
They exchanged a rapid jabber which Pascoe's academic acquaintance with Anglo-Romany did not help him to understand.
'Qu'est-ce-que vous voulez cacher de moi?' he demanded loudly. He wasn't sure of the preposition but he could see from their blank stares it didn't matter.
'French,' he said in a normal tone. 'You don't understand it? Then you must find it exasperating, or offensive, or stupid, or even suspicious that I use it.'
The man continued to look blank, but Mrs Stanhope gave him a thin apologetic smile.
'It's just habit, Mr Pascoe,' she said. 'Dave said you were being a bit bloody nosey, that was all.’
'And you replied?'
‘That all I wanted to do was see my niece,' she said wearily. 'Yes, it was sudden. I went home after I saw you. Dave called round a bit later. Pauline had told him I wasn't too well that morning and he was a bit worried. He suggested a little drive out, see some friends from the old days, might do me good. So on the spur of the moment, I agreed.'
This picture of a concerned Dave going out of his way to soothe his old cousin's troubles by a little drive in the country was too petit-bourgeois to be true, thought Pascoe.
'What happened yesterday, Mr Pascoe? Can you at least tell us that?' she continued.
'The post-mortem will help us to be sure, but it seems probable, that someone went into your tent at the fairground in the early afternoon, strangled your niece, then left, putting up the BACK SOON notice,' said Pascoe carefully.
'Early afternoon, you say?' said the woman in a puzzled voice. 'And no one saw anything? Or heard anything?'
'Well, of course there's a lot of noise on a fairground,' said Pascoe. 'But no, we haven't been able to find anyone yet who saw anything odd. But we're still taking statements. We'd like one from you, of course, Mr Lee.'
'Me? Why?' demanded the man.
'Because you work at the Fair. Because you spoke with Miss Stanhope yesterday morning. I saw you myself.'
'I was away from the park,' retorted Lee angrily. 'I was back at the camp. Your mate, the funny-looking bugger, he saw me.'
'So I understand. That would be about one-forty-five, I reckon. What time did you leave the fairground?'
'I don't know. Dinner-time, summat like that.'
'You went back to the encampment for your dinner, then?'
That's right.'
'But your wife was still at Charter Park. You prepared your own dinner, did you?'
'I'm not helpless,' said the man.
'Did you?' insisted Pascoe. 'And did you eat alone? Who else saw you at the encampment.'
'I had a beer and a pie in a pub on the way back if you must know,' snarled the man. 'So I was seen all right, pal.'
'Good,' said Pascoe. 'And the pub?'
'What?' The man was suddenly hesitant, unsure.
'What was the name of the pub?' Pascoe enunciated clearly, watching Lee with interest.
‘The Cheese,' said Lee surlily.
‘The Cheshire Cheese?' said Pascoe. 'Well, well.'
Even Rosetta Stanhope looked at Lee curiously.
'A little out of your way,' said Pascoe provocatively.
'It's dead handy!' retorted Lee, defiant again. 'I often have a drink there.'
'Do you now?' said Pascoe. This was interesting. Probably a red herring, but extremely sniffable. But not at this time and place.
The door opened and the clerk came in with a cup of tea. He looked uncertain whom he should offer it to. Pascoe nodded towards Rosetta Stanhope and glanced at his watch.
'If you'll excuse me, I'll go back in. I'm sure it will be all right if you wait here, though it may take some little time, you realize.'
The clerk didn't look at all sure, and Dave Lee did not seem all that happy either. But Mrs Stanhope nodded emphatically.
'Right, then,' said Pascoe. He stepped into the outer office, closing the door firmly behind him, picked up the phone on the clerk's desk and dialled HQ. When he got through he asked for Dalziel. The fat man wasn't available, however, so he got on to Sergeant Wield and told him succinctly what had happened and suggested he got down to the mortuary with a policewoman as quickly as possible.
Then, with reluctant steps, he returned to the examination room.
Ellie Pascoe was stretched out on the broad springy sofa which she and Peter had chosen with overt sensuality aimed at embarrassing the too enthusiastic salesman. They had failed. But the sofa had certainly succeeded, she thought, turning a page of the romantic thriller she was currently using to postpone work on her own great novel.
The doorbell rang.
In best suburban fashion, she peeked through the living-room window before answering it. There was a blue Marina parked at the gateway. In it she could see a man and a couple of children, early teens. She recognized neither car nor inmates.
The bell rang again.
She went to the door.
'Hello,' said Lorraine Wildgoose.
She was dressed in jeans and a loose shirt.
From behind Ellie guessed her slim figure would probably pass for that of a teenager, but they'd get her under the Trades Description Act when they saw the face. It was not unattractive, but fortyish beyond the disguise of eye make-up and blusher.
She was carrying three thick and rather tatty cardboard files.
'I said I'd drop this stuff in,' she explained. 'I was passing, so here it is.'
'Great,' said Ellie with as much enthusiasm as she could manage. 'Come on in.'
She led the way to the living-room and had to stop herself from straightening the cushions on the sofa and at the same time pushing her romantic thriller under them.
'They look a mess, but they're all in sequence,' said Lorraine. 'I think we covered everything yesterday, but any problems, just give a ring.'
'Thanks,' said Ellie. 'Would you like a coffee or something?'
To her surprise, her visitor said, 'Yes, why not?'
Well, mainly because you seem to have left a car full of people broiling in the hot sun, thought Ellie, but she didn't know the woman well enough to say it.
'So this is what a policeman's house looks like,' said Lorraine, following her into the kitchen. 'Nice.'
'The bribes help,' said Ellie.
'Your husband's working on this Choker thing, you said yesterday. Full-time job by the sound of it.'
'He does other things,' said Ellie.
Ellie was quite capable of waking Pascoe up in the middle of the night to tell him that he and his colleagues were stupid, brutal and fascist, but she was very wary of invitations to bring her special relationship to the liberal bar in public debate. But Lorraine went no further, contenting herself with peering into a couple of cupboards Ellie would rather have kept closed.
'What about your . . . friends?' she said as she spooned the instant coffee into mugs.
'Who? Oh, them. They're not friends, they're family,' she said with a tight smile which might have been meant to indicate a joke. 'My kids. And my husband.'
'You're separated, aren't you?' said Ellie.
'So far as you can be when you work in the same school,' she said. 'Still, the hols are here now, so we can get some real separation in. I go off next week for three weeks in Italy, Mark's off the week after for practically the whole of the vaca
tion, and the kids are going up to the Dales with some friends who've got a cottage there.'
'Then you won't be seeing much of each other for a while,' said Ellie, pouring the boiling water.
'No, thank Christ. This is a kind of last rite. We're off for a picnic lunch by the sea. We'd all rather be doing something else, but even the kids don't like to say it.'
'Well brought up,' suggested Ellie.
They went back into the living-room. She managed a glance through the window. The man had got out of the car and was leaning against it. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt with something printed across the chest.
'The usual thing is to say there were faults on both sides,' said Lorraine Wildgoose abruptly. 'Well, there weren't, not this time. You know, I used to enjoy being domesticated. It was nice. I was into the WRAG thing too, but I never pushed it at home. Then it changed.'
'Another woman?' said Ellie conventionally.
'Maybe, I don't know. The bastard just started hating me. I suddenly realized that, whatever the cause, he actually hated me! So I got out. You don't have to take that kind of risk, do you? Not if you're not a prostitute.'
Ellie cast a longing eye at her romantic novel.
'Where are you living now?' she asked to fill a small silence.
'Oh, I'm back in the house and he's out now. I went straight to Thelma and she got things sorted very quickly. She's marvellous, isn't she? Not that Mark raised much objection, to give him his due. Suburbia probably cramped his style, anyway. Too open. Too many eyes behind too many lace curtains.'
She sipped her coffee, then added abruptly. 'This fellow your husband's after. There was another one yesterday. I read it in the paper.'
'They're not certain yet it was the Choker,' said Ellie, cautious again.
'Whoever, he must hate us pretty much too,' said Lorraine, frowning into her coffee.
The doorbell rang.
'That'll be him,' said Lorraine. 'He won't wait. We've a right to protect ourselves, haven't we? A duty.'
'I suppose so.'
Ellie stood up.
'Don't bring him in. I'm finished,’ said the woman, draining her mug. 'You'll get a shock when you see him. I hope it doesn't affect the baby. He's gone weird. You know what he's doing this vac? He's going to Saudi Arabia with a mini-bus camping party. I think he lied about his age, told them he was thirty. The kids get embarrassed. Shit! , I get embarrassed!'
Ellie opened the front door.
Mark Wildgoose was leaning against the jamb and didn't bother to straighten up. He had a thin dark mobile face which might just about pass for a dissolute thirty. The legend on his T-shirt said The Greatest! It looked as if it could do with a wash and he smelt sweaty.
'The kids are pissed off,' he said over Ellie's shoulder. 'Me too. Are you going to be all bloody day?'
'See what I mean?' said Lorraine. 'Despite his language, they let him teach English and Drama at the Bishop Crump Comprehensive School. He used to be my husband. He might even know your husband.'
'Hello,’ said Ellie, pretending this was an introduction. 'I'm Ellie Pascoe.'
'Hello,' said Wildgoose. 'Look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude, but she said a minute and the children are very hot. Your husband . . . Pascoe? Works in the education office, does he?'
'He's a policeman,' interjected his wife. 'He may have interviewed you. When that woman was killed, remember?'
'Of course I remember, but I don't remember the policeman's name. Look, are you coming now or not?'
He was plainly exasperated but Ellie could not really see anything amounting to hatred in his expression, though he did look as if he might have pushed half a grapefruit in his wife's face if he'd happened to have half a grapefruit.
'Yes, I'm coming,' said Lorraine Wildgoose wearily. 'Thanks for the coffee, Ellie.'
'Coffee!' Wildgoose cried with an expressive movement of the shoulders as he headed back for the car.
His wife lingered still.
She wants me to press her, thought Ellie.
'Which woman?' she said.
'I forget her name. The one they found in the allotment shed. They talked to everyone who had an allotment.'
'And your husband . . . ?' Ellie was surprised.
'Yes,’ said Lorraine wearily. 'Last year he was into self-sufficiency. Grow your own veg. I wouldn't let him dig up the lawn so he applied for an allotment. I knew it wouldn't last. He hardly goes at all now.'
'Why are you telling me this, Lorraine?' asked Ellie.
'Telling you what? I'm just talking. My life's in such a turmoil, I don't know what I'm doing half the time,' said Lorraine. 'That's why I'm so glad you can take over this job. You'll let me know if there's anything you don't understand.'
'That's very likely,' said Ellie.
'OK.'
Outside a horn blew. One short, two long blasts.
'Qu'il est triste, le son du cor, au fond du bois,' said Lorraine. 'That girl Brenda Sorby. She went to the Crump Comprehensive, you know.'
Now the car had started up, the engine revving noisily.
'Ciao,' said Lorraine. 'Don't forget, ring if there's anything I can do.'
'I will,’ promised Ellie. 'I will.'
When she returned to the sofa, for a long while she found her romantic thriller unpickupable.
Chapter 9
Sergeant Wield had had another unsatisfactory session with Dave Lee. The gypsy stuck to his story that he had driven Rosetta Stanhope up north on a visit to friends 'to take her out of herself'.
When pressed for detail he said vaguely, 'Teesdale, somewhere near Barnard Castle,' adding that as they were on the move, he couldn't say where they'd be now. Thereafter all that he would add to his story was a mounting degree of exasperated profanity.
He was equally vague and equally profane when the topic changed to his movements earlier in the day. He couldn't remember when last he'd seen Pauline. Early. Nine o'clock perhaps. Nor what they'd talked about. The other cop, the good-looking one, had just gone, so mebbe it was about him. Nor when precisely he'd left the fairground. Dinner- time, somewhere about then.
But he was certain about his pint in the Cheshire Cheese and that he'd been back at the aerodrome no later than one-fifteen which all present would confirm.
Wield didn't doubt it, but turned to the landlord of the Cheshire Cheese for less partisan confirmation of Lee's timetable. Wally Furniss was a round, rubicund man who, had he been an actor, would have made a large fortune playing jovial English landlords in costume dramas. Instead, he made a small fortune playing the same role in real life. Death seemed to be his friend. Recently widowed, he had emerged from the ordeal redder and jollier than ever. And the awful fate of Mary Dinwoodie behind his pub had crowded his bars and broadened his smile in the weeks since.
Wield, used to landlords who were surlily resentful or distastefully sycophantic, found himself greeted with what felt like genuine pleasure and a large vodka and tonic.
'You remembered,' he said. It sounded a foolish thing to say but Furniss grinned delightedly, tapped his brow, and said,’Trick of the trade.'
His memory was equally good when it came to Lee.
'The gyppo? About twenty-five past twelve. A pint of mild and a pastie. Said it was stale, and I asked him how he'd know! He ate it up, though. Yes, we have one or two of his lot in when they're camping on the 'drome. It's just the other side of the by-pass. No, I don't mind 'em, as long as they stick to the taproom, which they mostly do.'
'The night Mrs Dinwoodie was killed, were there any of them in then?'
Furniss pursed his lips. 'Not that I can say definite, else I would've done, wouldn't I?'
Wield had to agree.
'Mind you, they were about,' added Furniss. 'I remember saying, just a bit before, that some of 'em were back early this year. It's usually just the week before the Fair that they start congregating. Poor sods probably got turfed out of their last spot a bit unexpected.'
'That's interesting,' said W
ield. 'Dave Lee, now, the fellow I was asking about, was he one of them?'
'Couldn't say for sure,' said Furnis regretfully. 'Are they mixed up in this Choker business, you reckon?'
'Just enquiries, Mr Furniss,' said Wield heavily. 'And I'd appreciate it if they stayed between you and me.'
'My lips is sealed,' said Furniss with a contradictory breadth of smile.
'And you're sure they were around before Mrs Dinwoodie's death?'
'Oh yes. Ask at the Aero Club if you want to find out just when. They keep a close eye on them down there. Lots of valuable stuff around that place, not to mention the bar! If I catch any of them hanging around outside here, I send them packing pretty quick. Paying customers are one thing, light fingers another! Same again, Sergeant?'
Wield shook his head and put his glass down.
'Work to do,' he said. 'Thanks all the same.'
'Any time you're passing. Watch how you go now.'
Furniss accompanied him to the door and saw him out into the eye-blinding sunshine. Returning to the cool shades of his taproom he said to his barmaid who was checking the bottled beer, 'Bloody cops. Drink you out of business if you let 'em! And, Elsie, keep an eye open for those gyppos who sometimes get in here. The coppers reckon they had summat to do with that Dinwoodie tart's death.'
Wield meanwhile was taking a circuitous route back to the centre of town. The old aerodrome was barely a half-mile away across the by-pass. Roughly rectangular, it was flanked by the river and open country on one side, the by-pass itself on another, and by the Avro Industrial Estate and the suburb of Millhill on the other two. During the war when Wellingtons and Lancasters took off from here nightly, the 'drome had been well outside the city limits, though too close for the comfort of those who unpatriotically wanted to keep the war as far away from themselves as possible. Now the city had caught up with it, industry and suburbia had nibbled into it, and increasingly there were voices raised in council meetings pointing out what a valuable piece of real estate it was. The Aero Club's lease ran out in three years and Wield guessed that with the squeeze on local authority finances getting even tighter, the speculators would be invited in to do their worst.
Dalziel 06 A Killing Kindness Page 7