A Killing Kindness (24 page)

In fact if anyone had wanted to run, there  was plenty of time for it. The picket fence had  been repaired so effectively that the policeman  had to climb over it, a dangerous and undignified business that soon drew the attention of the  crowd of gypsies standing just outside the circle of  unbearable heat from the fire which seemed to be  centred on a wooden pole rising out of the flames,  gruesomely like a martyr's stake.

'It's the tent,' said Pascoe suddenly, and his guess was confirmed by the emergence from the  spectators of Rosetta Stanhope. She looked all  gypsy now in a dirndl skirt with a red and blue  blouse and her hair tied back in a green and  yellow bandanna. Her brow was smeared with ash, though whether by accident or by ritual design,  Pascoe did not know.

'Mrs Stanhope,' he said. 'I'm sorry if we're disturbing a ceremony

'Don't let it bother you,' she said. 'Pauline will be getting a straightforward Anglican burial. This is just a cleaning up, for my benefit mainly. To most  of these people, she was just a
gorgio,
hardly worth  taking your hat off for.'

'But they're helping you,' said Pascoe. 'They  took the tent away.'

She smiled grimly.

'When a
chovihani
asks you the time, you buy a  clock,' she said. 'Have you come to bring me the  clothes she died in?'

'I'm sorry. We haven't found them yet,' said  Pascoe.

She looked worried.

'That's a pity. They should be burnt, above all  things.'

'I wouldn't be surprised if they had been already,'  said Pascoe.

'You think so? I hope you're right,' she said.  'What is it you're after, then?'

'Is there someone here who's in charge, some  sort of leader?'

She left him and went to the main group of  gypsies and talked to them for a moment. A short fat man emerged who might have been anything  between fifty and seventy and returned with the  woman. He was introduced as Silvester Herne and he enquired pleasantly of Pascoe, 'How can I help  you, pal?'

Pascoe regarded him dubiously, wondering what  his qualifications as leader were. He didn't look  much like a gypsy king. Most likely he had been selected as a front man because of some qualities  of glibness or shrewdness he possessed. Still, that  was their business.

Briefly he explained that he and his men wanted  to look around the camp site and talk to the people  on it. They had a warrant which entitled them to  enter any or all of the caravans and make a search  but this might not be necessary.

Herne scratched his nose reflectively.

'Looking for anything special, pal?'

Pascoe thought for a moment, then said slowly  and clearly, 'It's the Choker case I'm working on,  Mr Herne. Anything relevant to that case is what  I'm looking for. Nothing else interests me much.  You might tell your people that.'

'OK,' said Herne.

He rejoined the others.

'Trying to keep the peace, Inspector?' said Rosetta  Stanhope.

'That's what I'm paid for,' said Pascoe. Tell me,  Mrs Stanhope, if any of them knew anything about  the Choker, would they keep quiet? Out of loyalty,  I mean?'

'Maybe,' she said. 'And maybe I'm not the person to ask. I'm one of them too, remember?'

'Yes, I know,' said Pascoe. 'I also know you  came to me offering to help only last Wednesday morning, but since then you've been a lot  less keen.'

There was a time to be subtle, a time to push.  Dalziel was pushing forward like a traction engine at this moment. Pascoe suspected his direction but  he knew he would have to get up a good head of  steam himself to head him off.

'Since then my niece got killed,' said Mrs Stanhope sharply. 'Have you forgotten already?'

'No. But I'd have thought that would have  sharpened your appetite to help, if anything,'  answered Pascoe just as tartly. 'You know Dave  Lee's in trouble?'

'I know he's in hospital,' said Rosetta. 'His missus  told me that.'

'She's here?'

Mrs Pritchard must have worked even faster than Dalziel anticipated. This hardly boded well  for the search.

'Over there, sir,' said Wield.

Pascoe looked and saw a thin, not bad-looking  woman with a fading bruise on her left cheek crouching among a gaggle of children, talking to  them. She rose as he watched and the children  ran off, whooping excitedly at which noise others detached themselves from the group round the fire  and galloped after them. Pascoe looked round to  get his bearings. To the south was the Aero Club,  to the north-west was the arterial road with the  sprawl of the Avro Industrial Estate beyond, to  the northeast was the suburb of Millhill, while  due east would be the river, invisible in a heavily  coppiced fold of land some fifty yards beyond the airfield boundary. That was the direction the  children were taking. Pascoe, envied them. The combination of sun and fire was bringing the sweat  to his brow.

'Let's get to it,’ he said to Wield.

Wield nodded and with calm efficiency set the  men to work. He was a good man, thought Pascoe and wondered as he had done before why Wield  had stuck at sergeant.

The gypsies seemed indifferent to the search though not so indifferent that there wasn't at  least one member of each family present as the  caravans were searched in turn.

Silvester Herne moved from one caravan to the  next, then back to Pascoe with offers of help so  solicitous that they bordered on parody.

It was hopeless, thought Pascoe. Dalziel had struck lucky because because he had taken the  Lees completely by surprise and because he didn't give much of a damn for the niceties of the law. No,  that was too grudging an assessment. Dalziel like  all good cops made his own luck and wasn't afraid  of pursuing it no matter what unlikely direction it  took him in.

He found himself quite close to Mrs Lee who was  standing with arms folded and a twistedly cynical  smile on her face.

Pascoe introduced himself.

'Well, ain't you a change from them other mumply old hedgecrawlers that keep talking to  me,' she said, looking at him with mock admiration. 'A good-looking one at last. Theys'll try  anything!'

'I'm pleased your husband is out of danger, Mrs  Lee,' said Pascoe.

She looked at him with blank indifference.

'Unfortunately he's not out of trouble,' pursued  Pascoe. 'Not unless he can explain how that money  and the watch and ring came into his possession.'

'Which money? Which watch and ring?' she  asked.

Pascoe sighed.

'Look, there's no one can hear us now, Mrs Lee,'  he said. 'Dave's not a very good husband to you, is he? I mean, a fine-looking woman like you can't much enjoy being knocked around. Just a  couple of words now, just a hint, and we could  get him out of your life for a bit. No need to  worry about the money, married woman with  kids and a husband in gaol, you'd probably get  more out of the social security than Dave makes  in a moderate week. We'd see the forms were filled  in properly, all that sort of thing. No one has to  suffer these days!'

She didn't answer but fixed her gaze over his  shoulder. Pascoe looked round and saw Rosetta  Stanhope talking with a woman who didn't look  like a gypsy.

'What's the matter?' asked Pascoe. 'Are you  frightened of Mrs Stanhope? Frightened because  she's a
chovihani?'

'Chovihani
? Her?' snorted the woman. 'She's  nowt but a
didikoi,
a
posh-ratt.
Coming here from her little house and expecting us to treat her like a traveller still after fifty years. She even smells like a
gorgio!

Pascoe recognized the insulting terms for half-breed, but was less than convinced of the sincerity  of this expression of fearless contempt. It seemed  to him more based on deep resentment than genuine scorn.

'Mrs Lee?'

Pascoe turned and groaned inwardly as he recognized the woman who had joined them. This was  Pritchard, the solicitor. The last thing he wanted at  the moment was an antagonistic legal eye peering  over his shoulder.

'You don't have to talk to this man, Mrs Lee,' continued Pritchard in clear tones resonant with upper-class certainty. 'Certainly you don't have to  answer any questions he might put to you without  benefit of legal advice.'

'Doesn't the Law Society have some convention about not touting for business?' wondered  Pascoe aloud.

'You're Pascoe, aren't you?' she said. 'I've heard  about you. If protecting women against the police means touting for business then I'll do it. And if the  Law Society objects, then they can go and screw  themselves.'

'It's your licence,' said Pascoe. 'Excuse me.'

He went away to urge Wield and his men to  accelerate their search so that it could be completed before Ms Pritchard turned her crusading  eye in their direction. Wield said thirty minutes and Pascoe, pointing out Pritchard, said that he  was taking a stroll down to the river and that if the  solicitor did start sticking her nose in, she should  be met by a display of subordinate blankness and  referred to him. By the time she found him, with  luck their business would be over.

It was easy to find the exit hole in the boundary fence. During the hot weather the children's feet had beaten a distinct path towards it. Folding back the wire, Pascoe squeezed through and  within a few paces had dropped out of sight of  the encampment. He could hear the children at  play - cries of delight, excitement, abuse and fear  accompanied by much splashing of water. Forcing  his way through a tight-knit clump of sallows, he  reached the bank.

It wasn't much of a river, at its widest no more  than fifty or sixty feet, though the farmer who  owned the huge field of turnips which lay on  the further bank must have been glad to have  this barrier between him and the encampment.  How many turnips could a swimming child carry?  wondered Pascoe.

He sat down on the bank where the hungry  water had eaten away a crescent of earth to form  a small bay with a deep still pool. The children were  playing a little further upstream, too absorbed in  their games to take notice of Pascoe. He watched  them with pleasure, delighting in their easy movements, their lithe brown bodies, their undiluted  animal spirits, and tried to recall when last he had been capable of such total submersion in present  joy. Not counting sex, that was; though even in  the great gallop of sex there was all too often that  little slave clinging to the back of the chariot and  whispering in his ear,
remember you are you.

A pair of small boys detached themselves from  the other children and came running down the  bank to peer speculatively into the pool above  which Pascoe sat. They were young enough to  be stark naked - gypsies have extremely rigid  ideas about carnal exposure - and were urging  each other to plunge in.

One of them looked up and saw Pascoe and  spoke to the other. Pascoe smiled amiably at them  and, convinced he was harmless, they returned to  the debate till another older boy, spotting them  from the river, floated on his back and shouted  angrily at them. Pascoe caught the word
mokadi 
repeated several times. This he knew was the  Romany term for taboo or unclean, and at first  he assumed, not without hurt, that the expression was meant for himself.

But observation of the two naked children told  him he was wrong. It was not himself but the edge of the bank they were withdrawing from  with expressions of uncertainty and trepidation.  In fact their retreat brought them closer to Pascoe's  position and he addressed them gently.

'Hey,
chawies,'
he said. 'What's the matter? Don't  you like to swim? Here, I'll give this to the one who  makes the biggest splash!'

He held up a fifty-pence piece so that it glinted  in the sun.

The boys chattered excitedly, then ran to the  bank a little way upstream.

'No. Here,' commanded Pascoe, pointing to the  pool.

They shook their heads.

'Oh all right,' said Pascoe, rising and strolling  towards them. 'Here will do.'

He squatted down alongside them.

'But why's that pool
mokadi
?' he asked. 'It's a  good place to swim. Why is it
mokadi?'

He held up the coin as he spoke. One of the boys,  the younger, took a step backwards, then turned  and ran towards his friends. The other looked as  if he might follow instantly.

Pascoe instinctively reached out and grasped his  arm lightly.

'Do you not want the money, son?' he asked.

There was movement behind him.

'Chikli muskro!
screamed a furious voice. 'Sodding dirty old queer!'

Pascoe looked up. It was Mrs Lee. Behind her  trailed Miss Pritchard and Sergeant Wield. He let  go of the child and began to rise, but he was still  at the crouch and unbalanced when the gypsy  woman hit him. It wasn't really a blow, just a simple shove with both arms.

But it was enough to set him teetering on the  edge of the river and it took hardly more than another gentle touch to send him plunging over.

The water was green and deep close by the bank.  He came up and saw the children's heads craning over the edge to view this fascinating spectacle. He grabbed at the bank but his fingers slipped in the  wet clay and down he went once more.

This time when he surfaced, he lay back and  floated. The small brown faces were still there,  big-eyed, watching. And beyond them, high in  the summer blue sky, slowly wheeling like huge  birds of prey, black crosses in the aureole of the  sun, he saw the gliders.

The water was filling his clothes, pulling him  down. But he was in no danger. Wield's strong  grip was on his forearm. And as he was dragged  gasping from the pool that was
mokadi,
he found  himself looking up at Rosetta Stanhope and he  wondered how an English judge would react to  the production of a dead witness by proxy in a  murder trial.

Chapter 21

Michael Conrad was at first puzzled, then rather frightened when, arriving home that Saturday lunch-time, he found a policeman waiting outside  his shop. His relief was great when he realized that  the policeman's presence did not mean a break-in,  nor did it have anything to do with the three litres  of cognac he had just smuggled in from Corfu.