‘Always a pleasure,’ said Wildgoose. ‘Will I see you again?’
‘Who knows? Nothing is impossible to coincidence.’
Pascoe watched Wildgoose walk jauntily up the steps to the front door. Then he looked across the street to make sure that there’d been time to carry out his telephoned instructions. Detective-Constable Preece sitting in a dilapidated VW Beetle raised a languid hand. He looked half asleep. Pascoe hoped it was an act.
He drove round the corner and waited. After a couple of minutes the door of the car opened and Preece slid in. He still looked tired.
‘OK?’ said Pascoe.
Preece passed him a film cartridge.
‘I shot off half a dozen,’ he said. ‘One should be all right. You want me to hang about, sir?’
‘Please,’ said Pascoe. ‘I want to know where he goes, who he talks to.’
‘These houses have got a lane running down the back,’ said Preece diffidently.
‘Sorry,’ said Pascoe. ‘You’re on your own. You’ll just have to hope he comes out of the front. Or be in two places at the same time. Do your best. Which is to say, please don’t lose him. And Preece. It doesn’t bother me if you don’t sleep in your own bed. But make bloody sure you sleep in your own time. OK? Enjoy yourself.’
Preece nodded and left. As he walked away he thought, Christ! He may be politer than Dalziel but he’s just as fucking impossible!
Pascoe decided to short-circuit normal lines of communication and drive round to the police labs himself. These were a fairly recent acquisition, very up to date and a source of such pride to the Chief Constable that he tended to skirt round the fact that shortage of space in the congested city centre had obliged them to be built some considerable distance from the central police HQ. An efficient shuttle service had been devised and all officers were given strict instructions that this was the only channel to be used.
Thus Pascoe was greeted frostily by the duty officer, a fat, normally jolly man called Harry Hopper.
‘You know this is against regulations,’ he said.
‘Oh Christ. Is it? I’m sorry, Harry,’ said Pascoe. ‘It’s a fair cop then. You’d better complain to my boss. Andy Dalziel, that is. I’ll take what’s coming to me.’
‘There’s no need to threaten me,’ grumbled the other. ‘All right. What do you want?’
‘This developed. A couple of prints of each,’ said Pascoe, handing over the cartridge. Alongside it, he laid the sack containing the fertilizer. ‘And this to be given the treatment. I’ll hang on for the photos if it’s not going to take too long, which I’m sure it’s not. And if you could rustle me up a copy of the lab reports on June McCarthy and on the garden shed she was found in, it’ll give me something to look at and stop me getting impatient.’
Hopper went away, returning some time later with the reports and a smile.
‘Everyone’s very busy,’ he said. ‘Some stuff had just come in from your Mr Dalziel – for urgent attention, it was marked, but I told ’em if he gets impatient we’ll just have to explain that you have priority, was that all right?’
‘Bastard,’ said Pascoe.
He sat down and studied the reports. At first things looked hopeful. The fibres of fertilizer on June McCarthy’s clothing were identified as probably belonging to one of three proprietary brands and one of these was the same as that found in Wildgoose’s greenhouse. But a quick glance at the report on the examination of Mr Ribble’s shed revealed that there was a bag of the mixture in question stored there. It was both reassuring and disappointing to find that the reports were models of thoroughness. It had been a long shot that such a discrepancy might exist and have gone unnoticed, but such things did happen.
Still, the reports didn’t disprove that she might have been in the greenhouse, thought Pascoe, seeking a tortuous comfort. And there was that odd air of a recent clear-out about it. Worth sending a team in to give it the full treatment? Not without Dalziel’s say-so, he decided. The press would be on to it like a flash and who knows what kind of shit Wildgoose might be provoked into flinging about.
The photographs arrived. A couple of them, one side, one full face, were good enough to identify Wildgoose from.
‘How’s it going?’ enquired Hopper. ‘Getting anywhere?’
‘If we are, it’s too slow for human perception,’ said Pascoe. ‘Thanks a lot Harry.’
‘A pleasure. But like sex at my age, not one to be repeated too frequently. Here, you might as well take this, it’s marked for you. Final report on that last lot of clothes. Pauline Stanhope’s.’
Pascoe took the sheet of paper and ran his eyes down it.
‘Anything?’ he asked.
‘Bugger all,’ said Hopper. ‘It’s all wrapped up for next-of-kin as soon as you care to release it.’
Pascoe thought a moment.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m going to be seeing her aunt. I’ll take it with me. Better than just having it pushed into her hands by some anonymous bobby.’
He signed for the small bundle of clothes and the box containing Pauline Stanhope’s watch and other personal effects.
‘Poor kid,’ said Hopper. ‘I’ve got one of my own, just turned twenty. They think they know it all, jobs, key of the door, getting engaged next month, but they’re just kids still. I wouldn’t dare tell her, but she’s so bloody defenceless really. I mean, they need protection, Peter. Get this bastard and get him quick, will you?’
‘We’ll try,’ said Pascoe. ‘We’ll try.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘But not till after lunch,’ he added.
And wondered as he walked away how long it took for protective cynicism to seep to the deep heart’s core.
Chapter 15
Pascoe didn’t enjoy his lunch.
Using the justification that the road to the village of Shafton outside which the Linden Garden Centre was situated could (with a detour of a mere six or seven miles) be said to pass his door, he decided to surprise Ellie by eating at home.
His sense of injury at finding she was out intensified when he discovered the larder was almost bare.
A piece of antique cheese and a wrinkled apple later, he continued on his way. The deserted appearance of the Garden Centre did not improve his mood.
It was a medium-sized operation, centred upon an old stone-built farmhouse which looked to be in need of repair. There were two long greenhouses abutting on what had once been a byre but was now a garden shop. Two or three acres of land were under cultivation, mainly to rose-bushes plus a few rows of fruit trees and ornamental shrubs. Even the bright sunshine could not disguise the sense of neglect there was about the place.
Someone was moving behind the house and Pascoe headed in that direction. It was an old countryman with a wheelbarrow in which was a sackful of what looked like bonemeal. He walked slowly past Pascoe, saying out of the corner of his mouth, ‘Place is closed.’
‘So I see,’ said Pascoe, falling into step beside him. ‘Who are you?’
The old man didn’t answer straightaway. He had a skin as hard, brown and cracked as the sun-baked earth he walked on, and his eyes which were the faded blue of hydrangea remained fixed unblinkingly on his load as though he were walking a high wire.
Impatiently Pascoe produced his warrant card and thrust it under the man’s nose.
‘Police,’ he said.
‘I know that.’
‘You mean, you know me?’ said Pascoe, nonplussed.
‘The way you walk. Talk. I know that,’ said the old man.
‘Do you mind telling me who you are?’ said Pascoe wearily. ‘Please.’
The old man stopped, rested the barrow and sat on its edge between the shafts.
‘Agar,’ he said. ‘Ted Agar.’
‘And what’s happened here, Mr Agar.’
‘Since she got herself killed, you mean?’
‘Yes, since then.’
Pascoe perched himself on a stack of ornamental slabs. He was, he realized with an amusement which
helped dissipate his ill-humour, very much in the interviewee’s seat – about six inches lower than Agar who had the sun at his back.
‘Well, nothing rightly,’ said the old man. ‘Lawyers’ business, nowt else.’
‘What’s the trouble?’
‘In the first place, no will. In second place, no close relatives, though you can always find one or two who’ll make a claim. She was a widow, you see, Mrs Dinwoodie. Husband got killed last summer at Agricultural Show. You likely read about it. Run down by a traction engine. It was in the papers. Then the lass. Alison her daughter. Just a few months later. Car accident. She was just a kid. Not a lucky woman, Mrs Dinwoodie.’
Pascoe of course knew most of this. Mary Dinwoodie’s friends had been checked as a priority after the murder. But the family had been non-existent and she had apparently made a determined effort to cut herself off from her acquaintance. Her grief had been very private, rejecting offers of comfort or companionship. It was a sad irony that her first positive move in the direction of human society once more should have taken her into the Choker’s hands.
The Shafton Players had been investigated so closely that Pascoe knew more about some of them than their spouses did. The possibility of a link between a drama group and the Hamlet calls had not gone unnoticed, but it had certainly remained undiscovered. Individually, the Players had neither motive nor opportunity. Collectively, they had never done Hamlet. So it looked as if Mary Dinwoodie had just had the misfortune to be available. Yet Pascoe could not forget Pottle’s insistence that her death was, must be, the key.
‘How long have you worked here, Mr Agar?’ he asked.
‘Six years. Since I left the farming.’
‘What about other help?’
‘No one else most of the time,’ he said. ‘Except I took a lad on when the missus went away after the lass died. Couldn’t do it single-handed. Couldn’t really do it proper with two of us. Before, me and Mr Dinwoodie looked after the trees and such. Planting, hoeing, all that. Mrs Dinwoodie helped with the greenhouses, and ran the shop. She’d been a teacher once or summat, so she was good with paperwork. The lass helped too. She’d just left school, didn’t want to do anything else, an office job or such. She liked to be outside. Her lad was going to go into farming too.’
‘Her lad?’
‘Aye. Didn’t you know? She’d just married him when they got killed. Same day. It doesn’t bear thinking on. Well, after that, the heart went out of Mrs Dinwoodie. She went off. Just told me to look after things and went off. It were all right at first, but when spring got near, it starts getting busy, so I had to take a lad on, and my daughter-in-law came in to help with the shop. I saw the bank manager first. He weren’t sure but I told him business would soon be knackered if I didn’t and he soon changed his tune. Even then we were only open weekends. But we ticked over. And then she came back. I was that glad to see her! But, oh, she’d mebbe had done better to stay away for ever.’
There was a catch in the old man’s voice. He really cares, thought Pascoe, and he said, ‘You liked Mrs Dinwoodie?’
‘I liked all on ’em, but her the best. She was a kind woman. She blamed herself for everything. She said it were her fault they were so close to that engine at the show. And blamed herself for letting the lass run off to Scotland to be wed. Well, that were daft, mebbe, and the girl’s place was here by her mam’s side with her dad only a few months dead. But at seventeen, what’s to fill a lass’s head but boys and such? Well, I never thought I’d see any one of them out, let alone all three. It doesn’t bear thinking on, does it? It doesn’t bear thinking.’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ said Pascoe. ‘So now you’re in sole charge?’
‘Oh aye. Till things is settled. Lawyers asked me to stay on. There’s two relatives of his, half cousins or some such thing, down in the South. Likely they’ll get it. Best I can do by myself is tend the roses and the fruit trees. We sold all the greenhouse stuff up. Market traders and the like. They got a bargain. But I couldn’t have tended them and they’d not hire anyone else. Do you want to look in the house?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Pascoe, not knowing why. ‘But first, I wonder if you’ve ever seen this chap around here?’
He passed over the two photographs of Wildgoose. Agar scrutinized them carefully.
‘Nay,’ said Agar. ‘I don’t recall him. Though that’s not to say I’ve never seen him.’
‘But would you say you might have seen him?’
‘Not if there was money on it,’ said the old man, adding shrewdly, ‘and there’ll likely be more than money on it, eh?’
‘Likely,’ said Pascoe, retrieving the photos.
The old man opened the house for him, then returned to his work. Pascoe went inside. Already the place smelt dank and unlived-in. One of the downstairs rooms had been turned into an office. He poked around for a while but found nothing but a chaos of neglected paperwork. He had no idea what he might be looking for. It was simply an exercise in serendipity. Abandoning the office, he went upstairs.
The girl’s bedroom he found hard to bear. It was untidy, but with the untidiness of youth, as though its owner might be reappearing at any moment. He left it and went into the main bedroom. And here at last he made a find.
It was a cardboard box tucked away at the back of crowded wardrobe. It was a sad box, full of memories which now lacked a mind to remember them. Christmas cards, birthday cards, many homemade, inscribed To Mummy with lots of love from Alison in a young round hand, some childish daubs. And a few secondary school reports. Alison it seemed had attended the Bishop Crump Comprehensive School.
Well, so had thousands of other kids. And Alison’s death had nothing to do with the Choker. She had died in a car accident in the South of Scotland. The scrawled initials after the comments on her English and Drama lessons gave little clue to their author. Of course, mused Pascoe, if Wildgoose had taught this girl, then there were parent-teacher evenings, plenty of chance for him to have met the mother.
He dug deeper and for his pains made one more discovery. It was a programme on a brown card with scalloped edges to give a kind of parchment effect. On the front printed in Gothic script were the words Musik-und-Drama-Fest, Linden, Mai 1973.
That Linden. The town in Germany. This was where the Centre’s name came from. His schoolboy German was still sufficiently remembered to identify this as the general programme of a small amateur festival of music and drama (not difficult!) and get the gist of most of the promised goodies. Then an item caught and held his eye. Scenes from Shakespeare, he translated. By members of a local drama society, he guessed. Plus staff from Devon School. And there were two directors named, one German, the other Herr Peter Dinwoodie.
So here it was at last. Not Hamlet, but Shakespeare at least. Unser Shakespeare. He’d heard how the Germans admired him to the point of possessiveness. And Devon School? A touring party? Hardly. More likely a British Forces School. He’d known a girl who’d gone out there to teach and he seemed to recall the schools often had that kind of name, Gloucester, Cornwall, Windsor.
Linden, if his geography held as well as his German, was hard by Hanover. Lots of BAOR bases round there, so it made some sense.
He went downstairs and asked old Agar if Mary Dinwoodie and her husband had once been schoolteachers in Germany.
‘Nay, I know nowt about that,’ said the old man.
Well, it should be easy to check out, thought Pascoe pocketing the programme.
And at the same time it would be worth checking if Wildgoose had ever done any teaching abroad.
At Rosetta Stanhope’s flat he was admitted quickly, almost as though he were expected. I really must stop endowing her with supernatural powers, he told himself irritably. Certainly the room in which he found himself was ordinary enough. There was a lightly flowered paper on the walls, and the furniture consisted of a three-piece suite in imitation hide, a large colour TV and a small oak sideboard with a nest of matching tables. The only hint of the woman’
s background lay in a large glass-fronted cabinet almost filling one of the narrower walls and packed with what Pascoe had no doubt was fine china.
Rosetta Stanhope herself was dressed like any housewife doing her chores; she wore a blue cotton overall, moccasins on her feet, and her hair was tied back with a red silk bandanna. The only change was in her face where the flesh seemed more tightly drawn than ever over the fine thin bones.
‘Will you have a cup of tea?’ she asked very correctly. ‘I can’t offer you strong liquor. There’s none in the place.’
‘And I couldn’t accept it anyway,’ answered Pascoe even more correctly, though perhaps less accurately. ‘You don’t drink alcohol, Mrs Stanhope?’
‘I can’t afford to get confused, Mr Pascoe,’ she said.
‘And your niece? Did she drink?’
‘Never here.’
‘But elsewhere? A social drink with friends perhaps?’
She regarded him seriously but with no outward sign of distress. Pascoe congratulated himself on the subtlety of his introduction of the topic.
‘Like at the Cheshire Cheese, you mean?’ said Rosetta Stanhope.
Pascoe cancelled his congratulations.
‘That might be significant,’ he said. ‘Did she?’
‘Not that I know of,’ said the woman. ‘And I think I’d have known. It was funny. She was not my blood, not my flesh, but she grew to me like a daughter. Closer perhaps. Daughters grow up, turn away, despise their parents even. I’ve seen it many times. Trouble, misunderstanding, separation. Like poor Brenda Sorby and her father. But Pauline grew closer to me as she got older and when the time came for her to make her own choice of life, instead of turning away, she turned towards me. No one knew her father, but I sometimes think he could not have been gorgio.’
She nodded emphatically, for a moment every inch the gypsy queen.
‘But she would have friends of her own age, a life of her own,’ urged Pascoe.
‘Of course she did,’ said Mrs Stanhope. ‘She was a nice ordinary attractive young lass. People liked her, she made friends easy …’
A Killing Kindness Page 14