A Killing Kindness

by Reginald Hill

  Pascoe sighed. His own background made him a lot more sympathetic with academic liberalism than most of his colleagues, but he could understand the feeling behind Dalziel’s complaint on another occasion, ‘If these are the clever buggers, no wonder crime pays!’

  ‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘a scapegoat’s no good. The man we’re after is an unbalanced killer. He’s not going to stop murdering women just because someone else has been arrested.’

  Urquhart did not look wholly convinced but he left without further comment. Gladmann followed, saying, ‘My love to the delectable Ellie. We’ll be in touch.’

  Pascoe closed the door after them and turned his interrogative gaze on Pottle not with a great deal of hope.

  The psychiatrist’s opening comment confirmed his pessimism.

  ‘Not a great deal to go on yet,’ he said.

  ‘Four murders!’ expostulated Pascoe. ‘Not a bad start, surely?’

  ‘Come now,’ said Pottle, amused. ‘What’s your best chance of catching this fellow?’

  Pascoe considered.

  ‘Another murder,’ he admitted unwillingly. ‘Or at least an attempt. Get him in the act.’

  ‘Quite so. Similarly, though in rather a different way, the more I have, the better results I can hope for. Now, to start with, I am making two assumptions which may turn out to be false. One is that these four deaths have been caused by the same man. The other is that basically in each case the motive has been the same, or at the least an aspect of a single consistent motive. As I say, these assumptions may be false. Indeed, there is much in the evidence as you have laid it before me which suggests that they are false.’

  ‘Such as?’ interposed Pascoe.

  ‘The eccentricities of pattern,’ replied Pottle. ‘They are all young unmarried women – except for Mrs Dinwoodie who is a middle-aged widow. They are found neatly laid out with arms crossed on the chest – except Brenda Sorby who has been dumped in the canal. The murders all take place in circumstances made remote by time of day or location, except for Pauline Stanhope’s which occurs in the middle of the day in the middle of a fairground. But it’s only by making these two assumptions that I can even begin to pretend I have something to work at. That’s where another murder would come in so useful. Better still, two. Then we would begin to have enough trees to make a wood!’

  Only the suspicion that this ghoulishness was being used to provoke him in some way kept Pascoe from voicing another protest.

  ‘You’ll be the second or third person to know, Doctor,’ he said. ‘Carry on.’

  ‘Right you are. I summarize, of course. What it would seem to me we have here is an older rather than a younger man, that is, heading away from thirty-five rather than towards it. He is of course unbalanced, but not in the usual pattern of the psychopathic woman-killer, whose murderous impulses tend, as it happens, to become more controllable as he gets older. You must catch your psychopath young. Inspector, if you are to catch him at all. No, this man’s motivation does not seem to be based so much on hate as on, I can find no better term, compassion.’

  ‘Compassion? You mean, he kills women because he’s sorry for them?’ asked Pascoe with interest.

  ‘In a way, yes. There’s good case-law here. The impulse to euthanasia is a strong one in all advanced civilizations.’

  ‘But you can’t be saying these murders are just a form of euthanasia?’

  ‘Only in the same way that you could say Jack the Ripper’s killings were a form of moral protest. In a way, it’s strange that there aren’t more Choker-type killings than Ripper-type. Euthanasia is, after all, half accepted and by definition involves killing, while punishment for sexual immorality eventually disappears from advanced societies and only ever involved death in primitive ones.’

  ‘The Church used to roast you for buggery,’ objected Pascoe.

  ‘Precisely,’ said Pottle drily. ‘Look, I must go, Inspector. I have work to do. You’ll have a written report eventually!’

  ‘Hang on just a minute. The phone messages, the tapes. What about them?’

  ‘Of the taped messages, either (A) or (D) would fit my man, with my money being on the former. The voice seems to me to have that genuinely regretful intonation which fits my ideas. (B) and (C) sound far too delighted with it all. But it’s the first of the messages received that really needs looking at.’

  ‘You mean I say, we will have no more marriages?’

  ‘That’s it. You know how it goes on? Those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are.’

  ‘Yes, I know. So far we’ve had one widow, three spinsters. We’re still waiting for Mrs Right to come along.’

  Pascoe had a nice line in ghoulishness himself.

  ‘Perhaps that’s the way to look at it, Inspector. Odd thing, marriage and engagements. Often kept very secret. I assume you’ve checked very carefully indeed to see if Pauline Stanhope was engaged? The other two girls were, and very recently too.’

  ‘You think that …’

  ‘No, I offer no conclusions, Inspector. But a woman widowed can still be regarded from a certain point of view as a married woman. After all, she retains the title. I should be very interested, if I were you, to know why poor Mrs Dinwoodie should of all the married ladies in the world be the one singled out (if you’ll excuse the expression) to be killed. Now I must go.’

  After he had left, Pascoe sat for a while and wondered whether it were really possible for a man to go around killing people out of compassion. One, yes. That he could understand. Someone near and dear who was suffering greatly. But strangers? And compassion for what? He should have asked that.

  But he couldn’t sit here all day, thinking. It was leg work that solved cases, not metaphysical speculation.

  He headed first for the suburban estate where the Wildgoose family lived. He knew Mark Wildgoose would probably not be there but he had no other address for the man and, though he might have been able to track him down via the school authorities, this gave him an excuse to talk to the woman.

  Lorraine Wildgoose was in the front garden passing a small electric rotary mower over the lawn. She switched it off at his approach and nodded when he introduced himself.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she said.

  ‘Oh? We haven’t met, have we?’

  ‘No. I saw your photo when I called on Ellie yesterday. Come into the house.’

  He followed her. She wore a thin cotton skirt and a brief halter whose shifts as she stooped to disconnect the mower lead gave no hint of a limit to her deep sun tan. The observation was quite objective. Pascoe felt no sensual tingle at these mammary glimpses. There was an intensity of expression on her thin, slightly pock-marked face which precluded any suspicion of prick-teasing and suggested that any man showing an interest in her had better lead with his head, in a manner of speaking.

  ‘Mrs Wildgoose, I’d like to have a word with your husband. I understand he’s not living with you any more.’

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ she said. ‘Coffee or something harder? A couple of years ago, you wouldn’t have got either. We were into organic eating in a big way. That’s when he got interested in the allotment. That’s what you’ll want to talk to him about.’

  ‘You do your own gardening now?’ said Pascoe whose response to obliquities was always oblique. ‘It’s quite a job.’

  He was looking out of a french window which opened on to the back garden. A small patio led on to a rectangle of lawn some fifty feet deep bordered by roses and ornamental shrubs.

  ‘I always did. He showed no interest till he decided he wanted to dig it up to plant beans and ginseng. That’s when I put my foot down, so he got the allotment. I feel responsible for that girl’s death.’

  This was too fast for Pascoe.

  ‘That drink,’ he said. ‘It’s early but I’m quite thirsty. Perhaps a small beer.’

  She went out into the kitchen and returned with a pint can and two tumblers.

  ‘I d
rink anything now,’ she said. ‘If it poisons the system, then I suppose my system’s done for.’

  Pascoe took the can from her thin nervous fingers, opened it, poured the beer and chose his words carefully.

  ‘Mrs Wildgoose, from what you said to Ellie yesterday and what you’ve just said to me, would I be right in saying you think your husband may know something about these so-called Choker killings?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said in a low voice, followed almost immediately by a No! in a semi-scream that startled Pascoe into spilling some drops of beer.

  ‘How could I say that?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t know. He just seems so odd, so fearful. In every sense. So frightening and so full of fear. Do you follow me?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Pascoe, more in response to her compellingly intense gaze than the dictates of reason. He could recall a junior schoolteacher whose urgent questioning had similarly seemed to preclude a negative response. He could also remember her wrath when, inevitably, he had had to admit his real ignorance.

  It was time to take the initiative.

  The door burst open before he could speak and a girl of about thirteen rushed in, closely followed by a slightly younger boy. They stopped dead as they saw Pascoe.

  ‘Oops, sorry,’ said the girl.

  ‘This is my daughter, Sue. My son, Alan. This is Inspector Pascoe, dears. We won’t be long. If you’re finding time’s hanging a bit heavy, you might like to finish off the front lawn for me.’

  The girl made an unenthusiastic face and withdrew. Neither she nor her brother looked much like their mother in their features, though they shared her dark colouring. At least they were obedient, thought Pascoe when almost instantly the whine of the electric mower was heard. A desirable quality in children, one which he and Ellie would look for in their own family. He hoped.

  ‘Mrs Wildgoose, your husband’s mental state may be relevant, but it’s not primary, not yet. Think carefully. Is there anything at all, anything concrete, which links your husband to June McCarthy – or any of the other girls for that matter?’

  Her eyes opened even wider in amazement at his denseness. Doesn’t she ever blink? wondered Pascoe.

  ‘The allotment,’ she said.

  ‘We know about the allotment,’ said Pascoe patiently. ‘Did he ever mention June McCarthy? Or any girl he’d met or seen when he was in Pump Street?’

  ‘Why should he?’ she demanded. ‘He’d want to keep something like that pretty quiet, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Like an affair, you mean?’ said Pascoe doubtfully. ‘You’re suggesting he could have been having an affair with this girl?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have been the first,’ she retorted bitterly. ‘He’s got a little greenhouse down there. Very handy.’

  ‘A greenhouse is not the most discreet of places to have an affair in,’ observed Pascoe pedantically.

  ‘The wall panes are whitewashed,’ she said triumphantly. ‘So you can’t see in. And the children went down there once and he wouldn’t let them in.’

  Pascoe had a quick mental vision of Wildgoose fornicating among the tomato plants. Green thoughts in a green house.

  ‘And that’s all?’ he said.

  ‘What else do you want? Photographs?’ she flashed.

  ‘Did he ever drink in the Cheshire Cheese, do you know?’ asked Pascoe.

  ‘We have done,’ she said. ‘Of course that was before we went off alcohol.’

  ‘Was your husband back on alcohol before you broke up?’

  ‘Yes, he was,’ she said. ‘I remember he came home one evening and I smelt it on his breath. It was round about then that I felt things were beginning to go desperately wrong.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘This hate I told you about. This resentment. It seemed to flare up then.’

  ‘Then being?’

  ‘Earlier in the summer. I don’t know. End of May, I think.’

  Pascoe took out a diary and thumbed through it.

  ‘And you actually left him when?’

  ‘June 14th,’ she said promptly. ‘I remember that. It was Alan’s birthday. Mark was late. I complained. There was a great row. Mark flew out of the house. He didn’t come back till after midnight, in a worse mood than when he’d left and stinking of drink. I slept in the spare room that night with the bed pushed against the door. First thing next morning I got out with the children and went round to Thelma Lacewing’s flat. You’ll know her, I expect.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘She’s marvellous, isn’t she?’

  ‘Uh-huh. And your husband …?’

  ‘Still sleeping, of course. The drink did that for me at least. That at least. Yes, the fourteenth. Just a month. Christ.’

  Pascoe regarded her keenly and waited.

  For a woman so eager to suggest her husband might be the Choker she was missing a golden opportunity.

  Or perhaps she was clever enough to know that some things don’t need underlining. Perhaps she felt she could rely on even the most bumbling of bobbies to recall that it was on the night of June 14th that Mary Dinwoodie had been choked to death behind the Cheshire Cheese.

  He asked one last question as he rose with Mark Wildgoose’s new address in his notebook.

  ‘Despite your suspicions of your husband you still see him. Why’s that?’

  ‘He’s entitled to access to the children. In any case, I certainly don’t want him to think I suspect,’ she said defiantly.

  It didn’t ring true.

  ‘How was your trip yesterday?’ he enquired idly as she escorted him to the open front door.

  The girl was in the garden propelling the electric mower. She seemed to have made very little progress, observed Pascoe.

  ‘Fine,’ said Lorraine Wildgoose. ‘It was OK. The children enjoyed it. Oh, excuse me.’

  Behind her a telephone was ringing. She retreated, closing the door firmly.

  Pascoe walked down the path. The girl was standing still watching him. The mower blades had a different note when it wasn’t in motion.

  Pascoe paused and smiled at the girl.

  ‘Your mother’s upset,’ he said. ‘Don’t take notice of everything she says. It’s a bad time for her.’

  The girl didn’t return his smile but she made no effort to deny her eavesdropping.

  ‘Are you going to arrest Daddy?’ she said.

  ‘No. Why should I? But I’m going to talk with him.’

  ‘It’s not always his fault,’ she said. ‘She spoilt it yesterday.’

  ‘Yesterday?’

  ‘Yes. She went into some woman’s house first of all and didn’t come out for ages. We were roasting in the car. Then when we got to the seaside she nagged all the time. Daddy wanted us all to have tea together later and not come home till the evening, but she started to row with him and we were back home by tea-time.’

  ‘So it wasn’t a very good day for you?’ said Pascoe thoughtfully.

  ‘It could have been,’ she retorted.

  Pascoe dug into his pocket and came up with a 50p piece. In the distance he could hear the carillon of an ice-cream van.

  ‘It’s a funny old world,’ he said. ‘But the grass keeps on growing. Why don’t you find your brother and share a cornet or whatever else you can buy with this nowadays?’

  The silver coin spun through the air. She caught it two-handed, smiled with great charm, said ‘Thank you!’ and ran off out of the garden gate.

  Pascoe watched her go and suddenly felt sick that he might be close to solving this case.

  Chapter 13

  Though Dalziel rarely showed he was impressed by anything his subordinates suggested, nothing went unnoticed. Pascoe he was always very attentive to. Wield also. He hadn’t yet quite fathomed the sergeant, but he seemed to have his feet planted on the ground, the seance aside, that was.

  So he drove slowly round the locations and wondered whether indeed there might be a significance in the relative closeness of Brenda Sorby’s and June McCarthy’s places of
work.

  Wield’s car was parked outside the bank (Dalziel had spent an hour at his desk before setting off on his travels) so the superintendent did not pause. But he sat outside the entrance to the Eden Park Cannery for long enough to attract the gateman’s attention.

  ‘Can I help you?’ enquired the man in a belligerent tone.

  ‘What do you think I’m doing, casing the joint?’ said Dalziel. He held out his warrant card. The gateman was not particularly impressed but when Dalziel heaved his bulk out of the car, he became a little more respectful.

  ‘You knew June McCarthy?’ enquired Dalziel.

  ‘Sure,’ said the man. He was rising sixty, grey-haired, with a cynical mouth and a knowing eye.

  ‘How well?’

  ‘Not well enough to choke her,’ said the man.

  ‘How well’s that?’

  ‘With some women, just one look at ’em’s well enough,’ laughed the man. ‘But she seemed a nice enough lass.’

  ‘Liked the boys, did she?’

  ‘Not really. She went steady with that soldier lad. He was a big burly chap, knew how to handle himself. So I reckon the others kept clear even when he was away.’

  Dalziel knew all this from the records.

  ‘Are you going inside?’ asked the gateman.

  The fat man stood there undecided. A blue Mercedes drew up alongside the kerb and the electrically operated window slid silently down.

  ‘Andy!’

  Dalziel went across to the car.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  It was Bernard Middlefield JP, not a man he cared for all that much, but a friend to the police who needed all the friends they could get these hard days.

  ‘Thought it was you,’ said Middlefield.

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t think it was Fred Astaire,’ said the fat man.

  ‘What brings you round these parts? That poor girl, is it?’

  ‘Sort of. What about you Bernard?’

  ‘Me? That’s my works next door,’ said Middlefield in a pained voice.

  ‘So it is,’ said Dalziel, looking towards the long single-storied brick and glass building. ‘You didn’t know her, by any chance, did you, Bernard?’

  ‘The dead lass? No. But I see enough of them. What a sample you get in this place! It’s like the flight out of Gomorrah when the hooter goes.’