A Killing Kindness (26 page)

'And what's a Choker motive?' demanded Dalziel.  'What that trick-cyclist - whatsisname? - Potty,  says?'

‘Pottle,' said Pascoe. 'Perhaps. Something like  that. But not personal, not in the strict sense. You  know what I mean, sir.'

'Do I?'

'Oh yes. You were very sure, I recall, that Brenda  was a Choker victim even though she was found  in the water, just as you had doubts about Pauline  Stanhope, even though she was laid out in the  classic style.'

'I can change my mind, can't I?' said Dalziel.  'I mean, a man gets fed up of being right all  the time.'

'It must be painful,' said Pascoe and tried not  to respond to Wield's grin behind the fat man's  shoulder.

He continued. 'I just wondered if you were  thinking what I've been thinking. Perhaps Dave  Lee wasn't the only one to get worried when  Rosetta Stanhope got so near the mark. Perhaps  someone went to the fairground on Wednesday to  shut Madame Rashid up and didn't know enough  to know that Pauline wasn't Rosetta.'

'Perhaps, perhaps,' said Dalziel irritably. 'But  why should anyone but a pig-ignorant gyppo get so upset by this mumbo-jumbo? I mean, what did  that newspaper report say?'

The offending paper was produced.

'Blue sky, golden sun, big birds, black faces,'  itemized Dalziel. 'Makes it sound like a travel  brochure.'

'That's what I thought,' said Pascoe.

'So what's to be scared of?' grumbled Dalziel.  'This was that Duxbury woman, the neighbour?  Oh yes, here she's mentioned. She says it was  definitely the girl's voice.'

'The mother thought so too,' said Pascoe. 'But  of course the situation was hysterical.'

‘Aye. I bet old Wield here was falling about,  pissing himself,' grunted Dalziel in the sergeant's  direction.

'Perhaps I should have let that pair of linguists  have a listen,' said Pascoe.

'For what? Experts, I've shit 'em,' announced  Dalziel. 'What have they done for us so far, tell  me that?'

'They've analysed those phone voices. Why  don't we get every man connected with the case on tape and pass them over for comparison?'  suggested Pascoe.

'That implies that (a) you trust that pair of  Midsummer Night Dreams and (b) you're certain  the Choker made one of those calls. It wouldn't be  admissible evidence in any case.'

'No, but it's surely worth a try,' urged Pascoe.

Dalziel continued to look doubtful. He glanced  at his watch.

'Christ, it's after two o'clock,' he said. 'And I haven’t had my dinner. Peter, I think we may  have gone as far as we can today. Why don't you  push off home, take your rest day as scheduled?  You've earned it.'

'Oh no,' said Pascoe firmly. 'The bargain was, I  get next Friday and Saturday, guaranteed. Try to wriggle out of that and Ellie'll twist your arm off  and hit you with the soggy end. I'll just give her  a ring and see how she is, though.'

But the phone rang before he could reach it.

He picked it up and listened.

'For you,' he said, handing it over to Dalziel.

'Of course I wouldn't try to wriggle out of anything,' said Dalziel, aggrieved. 'I was saying you  could take the afternoon off as a bonus, but seeing  as you don't want it . . .
Hello!

He bellowed into the receiver from which a  tinny voice had been emerging unregarded as he  spoke.

'Jesus!' said the voice. 'Why don't you just open  the window and forget about the phone.'

'Who's that?' demanded Dalziel.

'Sammy Locke,
Evening News.
How's business?'

'Quiet,' said Dalziel suspiciously. 'What've you  heard?'

'Well, one of our contributors has phoned in a piece about strange goings-on among the gypsies. Police raids, brutality, interference with traditional  funeral rites.'

'What? Who the hell was that? You print that  and you won't get within spitting distance of another crime story in this town.' promised Dalziel.

'We'll see,' said Locke indifferently. 'And nothing  else has been happening?'

'No. Why? Should it?'

'You tell me. Listen to this.'

There was a click, a pause, then a voice said  wearily.
'Oh God! I could be bounded in a nut-shell  and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not  that I have bad dreams.'

There,' said Sammy Locke, 'Perhaps you'd better  start looking for a body.'

Chapter 22

Interestingly, a message without a body seemed to stir up Dalziel much more than a message with  a body.

'Got them linguists yet?' he demanded of Pascoe for the third time.

'I've sent cars out, told the lads to pick them  up as soon as they come home,' said Pascoe. 'But  really, all they can tell us is which of the other  four, if any, this is. Sounds like (A) to me.'

'Me too,' said Wield. 'Though it's hard to be sure.  He sounds different somehow. You know, not so  certain of himself. Unhappy.'

'Hell's bells,' said Dalziel.
'He's
unhappy! Wait  till this hits the papers. They'll give us stick, and  not having had the advantage of a public school  education, I don't care for stick.'

'No, sir. But the sergeant's right. I've sent for Dr  Pottle as well to see what he thinks,' said Pascoe.

Dalziel's shrug, like Atlas getting a bit restless, indicated his opinion of Dr Pottle.

Sergeant Brady came into the Murder Room. He had been checking the missing persons reports. Weekend nights always brought in a good crop of  non-returning youngsters.'

'Seven lasses,' said Brady. 'Three turned up very  late, looking satisfied, likely. Another two are back as well, only the parents didn't bother to tell us. That leaves two. They sound like they've just  taken off to the Smoke. Classic backgrounds, like  Mr Pascoe says.'

'Keep after them all the same,' ordered Dalziel,  adding when the sergeant left, 'Christ, Peter, what're  you doing to Brady?
Classic backgrounds
! He'll be spelling psychology with two p's and only one k next!'

On cue, the sergeant returned to announce that  Dr Pottle was here.

'Hasn't he got a golf-course to go to?' muttered  Dalziel.

In fact whatever it was that Pottle did on Saturday afternoons he seemed only too pleased to have  been invited away from it. He took the new tape  into a neighbouring room and played it through  several times.

'You have no body?' he enquired when he had  finished.

'No. You think we're likely to get one?' said  Dalziel.

'That I can't say. But whether this is your man or not, he certainly sounds to me very disturbed.  If we assume that he is the (A) of the previous set  of tapes, the change is marked.'

'That's what I thought,' said Wield. 'Unhappier,  sort of.'

Pottle looked at him approvingly.

'You have a sensitive ear,' he said.

Wield coughed almost noiselessly into his fist.  Pascoe who was beginning to be a keen student of Wieldology noted this down as the equivalent  of a flush of pleasure.

'Last time his tone was regretful but resolved, as though he were performing a painful necessity,'  continued Pottle.

'This is hurting me as much as it hurts you, you mean?' said Dalziel. 'We had an old sod at school  used to say that as he thumped you.'

'Partly that. More being cruel to be kind. Compassionate, almost,' said the doctor. 'As I said  in my written report, these are just impressions,  but supported, I think, by the treatment of his  victims and the tone and content of the telephone  calls. Now, here there are two distinct changes. His voice sounds much more distressed, there's  not the same authority there as before. And the  words he speaks are concerned with himself, not  with his victim.
Oh God! I could be bounded in a  nut-shell and count myself a king of infinite space,  were it not that I have bad dreams.
He's beginning to find it hard to live with himself, I would  say.'

'Would this show in his outer behaviour?' wondered Pascoe.

'Not necessarily. Not yet anyway.'

'More important, does it mean he's less or more dangerous?' demanded Dalziel.

'I can't answer that,' said Pottle.

Dalziel gave an expressive pout of his thick lips  and putting his hand into his waistband began to  scratch his stomach audibly.

'One last thing,' said Pascoe. 'Suppose that his  last killing, that is the last we definitely knew about, had been motivated not by whatever it is  that's bugging him deep down, but by a simple  desire not to be caught. How would this affect  him?'

Pottle lit a cigarette from the one he was already  smoking.

'This is a hypothesis, or do you know something?' he asked.

'An educated guess,' replied Pascoe.

'Then I would guess also that his own survival  might not be sufficient justification to himself for  taking life. Not unless it was definitely a one-off  once-for-all-time act.'

'In other words, he might do it, resolved that after this there would be no more killings.'

'Yes.'

'And then if he found there were going to  be other killings, that the compulsion was still  there . . . ?'

'I see what you're getting at, Mr Pascoe,' said  Pottle. 'Yes, that could explain the change of tone here in this message. If he has killed again because  his compulsion, he now knows he may be tempted to kill again for his survival. And that is  what he finds it hard to contemplate.'

'Hold on, now,' said Dalziel. 'If he killed that girl on the fairground just to protect himself, surely it's  the call that followed that murder which should  be full of this unhappiness your sensitive ears are  picking up.'

'Oh no,' said Pottle. 'His motivation would have  been sufficient at the time to justify himself thoroughly. Therefore he would be most meticulous  about his cover-up.'

'Cover-up?'

'That's right. By laying the girl out as he did and  by making the phone-call in the same tone and  terms as before, he was attempting to misdirect you  into pursuing him as the motiveless Choker still.'

'Which is what you hinted at in the first place, sir,' reminded Pascoe.

'Aye, I know,' muttered Dalziel. 'But I always get  suspicious of my good ideas when clever buggers  start supporting them. Well, thank you, Doctor.  You've been very helpful.'

Pottle closed his notebook so firmly that an ashy emanation puffed out of his hands like fumes from  a censer. He is after all our society's high-priest,  thought Pascoe. The ungodly Dalziel had already  turned away.

'He doesn't care for "clever buggers", I see,'  murmured Pottle. 'And yet . . . how clever is he himself? Of the other, I have no doubts.'

'Oh, he knows a hawk from a handsaw,' said Pascoe lightly. 'Any more thoughts on why Hamlet, Doctor?'

'The first lady is the key, I believe,' said Pottle,  making for the door. 'Had she been a little  older, and had she remarried after her husband's death, and had she got a son who was a thirty-  five-year-old adolescent . . .'

'She had a daughter who died,' said Pascoe.

'That might be significant. But you'll need powers other than mine to establish
that
connection,  Inspector. Good day to you.'

'Inspector Pascoe,' bellowed Dalziel as the door  closed behind the psychiatrist.

Pascoe went to the table behind which the fat  man was sitting, viewing with distaste its paper-strewn surface.

'There's too many people just hanging around  here,' he said fretfully. 'It's like just after pub  closing-time in a brothel.'

'Some brothel,' said Pascoe. 'The girl we're all waiting for is dead.'

'I'll believe that when I see it,' said Dalziel.  'Meanwhile, there's things to be done. The fair  finishes tonight. They'll be packing up in the morning, so I'm sending a team down there just in  case there's any last-minute memories or anything  turns up when the council start raking in the  rubbish. Next, I'm fed up with all these wiseacres  farting about with these tapes. Let's get something  really useful out of 'em. Every man connected with  this case, I want his voice on tape. It can be by agreement or by stealth, I don't mind. Sergeant  Wield's a dab hand at working with a microphone  up his nostrils aren't you, Sergeant? Then we'll see  if these sodding experts can actually say if it was  one of this lot on the telephone, right?'

He glared at Pascoe as if defying him to recall  that this had been his own suggestion only an hour  earlier.

'Excellent idea, sir,' said Pascoe. 'I'll do Wildgoose. I want another word with that sod anyway.'

'And I'll have another chat with Mr Mulgan,'  said Sergeant Wield who had been studying the linguists' report with great interest.

'Talking of Mulgan, was there anything on that  list of the Sorby girl's transctions?' enquired Dalziel.

Guiltily, Wield took it out of his pocket and  handed it over.

'Forgot all about it, sir,' he confessed. 'What with  the bother at the encampment and all.'

Dalziel grunted and glanced down the list. Because  it was half-day closing, a lot of the local traders  had been putting their takings in during the afternoon, including M. Conrad, the jeweller. Also, he  noticed, there had been a deposit made on behalf  of the Aero Club account and a large sum withdrawn from the Middlefield Electronic account.

He frowned.

'She was wearing her engagement ring that day,  wasn't she?' he said.

Pascoe and Wield exchanged glances.

'I think so,' said Wield. 'Why, sir?'

'Nothing. You're getting me as loopy as the rest  of you. Go on, bugger off and get some work done,  will you?'

Before he left the station, Pascoe put a copy of  the latest tape in an envelope and addressed it to Gladmann or Urquhart in case either should  surface before his return. Then, as an afterthought,  he dropped in the Rosetta Stanhope cassette with a  copy of Wield's transcription and a note with the  vague query, 'What do you make of this?'

Wildgoose's milk and paper still remained uncollected. Pascoe contemplated burglary but was  deterred by the appearance of a neighbour, a hairy  young man apparently dying of consumption, who told him in a series of wheezy grunts that he'd heard Wildgoose go out last night but hadn't heard  him return. Deterred from his criminal intents by the young man's presence, if not his information,  Pascoe left.