A Killing Kindness (29 page)

It emerged that he had stayed on after the disco finished. He hadn't noticed Wildgoose and the girl  leave in particular, though he had said goodnight  to Thelma Lacewing.

'What time would that be?' wondered Dalziel.

'Eleven. Eleven-fifteen. I don't know exactly.'

Middlefield was even vaguer about the time of  his own departure. He'd had a couple of drinks with Greenall while the bar-helpers cleared up.  Then, after they had gone, he had finally called  it a night. He had then driven home, a distance  of about three miles, arriving in time to join his  wife in watching the last part of the same film that  Mulgan was so well acquainted with.

Greenall whom Dalziel consulted later was able  to be more precise. It had been nearly a quarter to one before Middlefield had left.

'I offered to drive him myself,' said Greenall. 'He  was OK, you understand, but he'd put away quite  a lot of Scotch. He got a bit huffy at that and I  had to make a joke of it. But he drove away very  steadily, I noticed. I remember thinking he was more likely to attract attention going at that rate  than speeding!'

So, a sedate three miles - say ten minutes at the  outside. It fitted, thought Dalziel not without relief. If there'd been any doubt, the next step would  have been an examination of the boot of the JP's  Mercedes, which would have meant coming into  the open. Dalziel didn't give a bugger for anyone, but he knew who he wanted his friends to be.

In the middle of the afternoon Wield appeared. Quizzed about this devotion to duty on his day off,  he shrugged, said he'd heard about the discovery  of Wildgoose's body on the radio and thought he'd  better check in to see if he could help.

'What a bloody miserable existence the poor sod  must have,' commented Sergeant Brady to anyone who cared to listen. 'Nothing better to do than come in here on his Sunday off. What he needs  is a short-sighted woman!'

Wield did not hear this, would not have reacted  if he had. All his emotion for that day had been spent in a stormy scene in Maurice's Newcastle  flat. Their usual roles had been reversed. Maurice, the more effervescent extrovert of the two, had tried to play it cool. Yes, there was somebody  else, an interesting young chap who worked in  the Borough Surveyor's office. Wield would like him. He was coming to lunch. Why didn't Wield  stay on and have a drink and meet him?

And Wield, the calm, controlled, inscrutable Wield, had exploded in a wild, near hysterical fury which had amazed and frightened himself  almost as much as it did his friend. He had left  and made the normally two-hour journey back in seventy-five minutes. For two hours he had sat in  his room examining the new vistas of violence his  morning's experience had opened up for him. And  finally he poured the tumblerful of whisky which  had been standing before him back into the bottle untouched and went to work.

But there was little to do, just routine, nothing  happening, no leads developing.

And when at six o'clock Gladmann appeared, full of the marvellous couple of days he had spent with rich and generous friends in their cottage on  the coast, Pascoe thrust the envelope with the tape  into his hands, said 'Sod it!' out loud, and went  home, feeling, as he told Ellie, as if he'd spent the entire Sabbath at a very long and very tedious  church service where the preacher's text had been 
It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the  bread of sorrows.

It still felt pretty vain the next morning. Monday  mornings normally don't mean much to policemen. If anything, they bring a sense of relief. The incidence of crime shoots up at weekends, much  of it petty, it's true, but all of it time-consuming.  But this Monday, all the Monday morning feelings they had skipped for so long seemed to be lying in  wait for those working on the Choker case.

The papers were full of comment, nearly all  critical. An editorial in the
Yorkshire Post
wondered  heretically if it might not be time to ask the Yard  for assistance. Dr Pottle telephoned first thing to  say that he had been invited to take part in a chat  show on television and he wanted to be clear about what he should and shouldn't say.

'He thinks he knows something important?' queried Dalziel incredulously. 'Why hasn't the  silly bugger told us, then?'

Pascoe removed the hand which he had pressed very firmly over the mouthpiece and said, 'Mr  Dalziel says he can see no reason not to rely on  your professional discretion, Doctor.'

'That's kind of him. By the way, have the papers  got it right? This man, Wildgoose - you believe  the Choker killed him to cover up his latest murder?'

'More or less. How does that fit with your profile?' asked Pascoe.

'Very well,' said Pottle. 'The killing of the girls he  can clearly justify to himself. Even a one-off cover-up killing. But a
second
opens up the possibilities of  a third, a fourth, indeed an infinitude. And that, if, as I posit, he is a man of conscience, must be very  distressing.'

'What's he say?' asked Dalziel when Pascoe replaced the receiver.

'He says the Choker's probably sorry about killing Wildgoose.'

'Je-sus,' said Dalziel.

At ten
A.M
. the phone rang.

Wield took it. He looked unusually pale this  morning and there were deeper shadows than  usual in the canyons of his eyes.

'For you, sir,' he said to Pascoe. 'The Service Children's Education Authority.'

'Probably want their degree back,' muttered  Dalziel. 'Obtaining by fraud.'

It was a woman, friendly, apologetic. She introduced herself as Captain Casey.

'Sorry this wasn't dealt with more promptly,' she  said. 'But like most government offices, it's difficult to find anyone but half-wits round the place after lunch-time on Friday. I expect it's the same in the  police.'

'All the time,' said Pascoe. 'What can you tell  me, please?'

'Everything. Or at least all you asked for. Yes, there was a Peter Dinwoodie on the staff of Devon  School. He resigned at the end of Summer Term, 1973. He hasn't been employed in any of our  schools since. Nor does he seem to have had a  job in the public sector in this country. I rang the  DES to check. Thought you might like to know.'

'That was kind of you,' said Pascoe.

'Amends for the delay,' said Captain Casey.  'Now, you also asked whether his wife was employed at the same school, Mr Pascoe. No, she wasn't. In fact, according to our records, Mr Dinwoodie was  a bachelor when last he worked for us.'

'Bachelor? Not married, you mean?' said Pascoe  foolishly.

'I often do mean that when I say bachelor,' she  said pleasantly.

'You're certain?'

'Our records are.'

'Well, thank you very much, Captain.'

'Hang on,' she said. 'You also wanted to know if a Mark Wildgoose had ever taught in Germany. The answer is no, definitely not. By the way, I saw that name in the newspaper this morning. A man  murdered. Is it anything to do . . .'

'Thank you, Captain Casey,' said Pascoe firmly.  'Thanks a lot.'

'Oh well. Any time,' she said. 'Before lunch on Friday that is. Cheerio!'

'What was all that about?' asked Dalziel who  had been watching Pascoe's reactions.

'More mystery,' said Pascoe.

When he had outlined the call, Dalziel said, 'Yes, well, all right. So he got married later, when he got back to the UK. What about it?'

'There was a daughter,' said Pascoe. 'She was killed in a car crash early this year. She was seventeen.'

He watched as Dalziel deliberately counted on  his fingers.

'I'm with you,' said the fat man. 'But so what? He married a widow.'

'I don't think so,' said Pascoe. 'Something the old man said. Agar. It struck me at the time, but I didn't know why. I think I'll have another word  with him, if that's OK, sir.'

'It's better than having you wandering around here, being cryptic,' said Dalziel. 'But when the  blinding flash comes, I'd like to be among the first  to know.'

As though it had been specially ordered for fair fortnight, the fine weather which had begun to  break up the day before was now definitely at an  end. It was still warm, but in the eastern sky great  ridges of violet-tinged cloud blocked out the sun  and as he drove slowly by the empty expanse of Charter Park, seagulls driven inland by the still  distant storm floated covetously over the heads of  the council workmen clearing up the debris. There  would be a couple of policemen hovering too in case anything relevant was discovered, but Pascoe reckoned that the seagulls had a better chance.

Heading for Shafton took him directly towards the storm and the air was quite dark by the time  he reached the Garden Centre. He had Agar's home address, but he slowed as he approached the Centre and saw that his judgement had been  right. There in the rose field was a solitary figure with a hoe, carefully repairing the damage done  by yesterday's line of searching coppers.

The old man glanced up as Pascoe approached but did not pause in his work.

'Big feet some of you lads have,' he said, heeling a loosened root into the earth.

'They had to look,' said Pascoe.

'I dare say.'

'Looks like rain,' said Pascoe, falling into slow step alongside him.

'We can do with it,' said Agar. 'But that lot looks  like it's going to come down cats and dogs, and any of these plants that're not firmly set can easy  be toppled.'

'Well, I won't keep you back,' said Pascoe. 'It  was just that last Friday when we talked you said something that didn't really register till later. You  said that Mrs Dinwoodie blamed herself for letting  her daughter run off to Scotland to be married. Now Mrs Dinwoodie as a widow would be solely  responsible for her daughter while she was still a  minor. If she agreed to the wedding, why did the  girl have to go to Scotland?'

The old man paused.

'I said that? Well, mebbe I shouldn't have. But  there's no harm to be done now. The lass, Alison, she weren't Mr Dinwoodie's daughter. No, she  used the name, but she weren't his daughter. I  knew, but only at the end when there was trouble  and I heard 'em talking. Mrs Dinwoodie knew she  could trust me.'

Pascoe put his hand on the old man's shoulder  and brought him to a halt.

'Please, Mr Agar. Tell me everything you know,'  he said.

It wasn't much. Shortly before Dinwoodie's  death, Alison had met a boy, a nice lad, just  eighteen, down from the Borders to do a six-month  course at the Yorkshire Agricultural Institute. Their  relationship had intensified after and probably as a  result of her stepfather's death and they had been eager to get married. But somehow Alison's real  father had emerged on the scene just about now.  Still legally the girl's guardian, his permission was  needed for an under-age marriage in England,  and he was making a fuss about giving it. So  Mary Dinwoodie had not raised any objection  when her prospective son-in-law proposed taking Alison back to Scotland with him and marrying her there after she had the necessary residential  qualifications.

She had gone up to the wedding, taken a train  back to Yorkshire after the ceremony and was met  at her house by the news that the honeymooners'  car had skidded on the wintry roads only twenty  miles after setting out and the young couple were  both killed.

'Like I said, she went off after that. To stay with friends, she said, but I reckon she was off  by herself and it wouldn't have surprised me if  she'd killed herself. But I took care of the place  as best I could, and the bank helped to keep the  accounts straight, and then, lo and behold, last  month she comes back, and it looks as if we  can mebbe get things on a proper basis. Well, you know the rest, mister. Better if she'd stayed  away forever. Better mebbe if she had killed herself even.'

The sky was completely veiled in cloud now and  Pascoe felt the first splashes on his cheek, big warm  drops that burst ripely as they struck.

'You should have told someone this before, Mr  Agar,' he said.

'Should I? I never thought. It seemed of no account somehow, what with her dead. No account.'

'And the man's name? Mrs Dinwoodie's first  husband. Alison's father.'

'Nay, I know nothing of that, mister,' said Agar,  'nothing more than what I've told you. Nothing  more.'

Back at the station he found that Dalziel was out. This suited him very well. There was a driving  urgency in him which rendered him impatient of diversions for explanations and hypotheses. Ignoring Wield's curious glances, he went to his own  office, picked up the telephone and asked to be connected with the SCEA in London.

It took a few minutes to track down Captain  Casey.

'Hello again,’ she said. 'I didn't expect you so  soon.'

'Me neither. Look, that school in Linden, the 
Devon
- do you have a complete list of staff? What  I'm particularly interested in is other people who  resigned in 1973.'

'You're lucky, I haven't sent the file back yet,'  she said. 'Hold on a sec. Here we are. You want  the lot?'

'Just the resignations to start with,' he said.

Besides Dinwoodie there were only another two,  and only one of these a woman.

'Now, do you want the whole list?'

'No thanks,' he said slowly. 'I think this'll do.'

He replaced the receiver and carefully drew a ring round the woman's name.

Mary Greenall.

Then he picked up the telephone again.

'I want the Air Ministry,' he said. 'I want the  section that deals with personnel records.'

Twenty minutes later he came out of his room, the sense of urgency pulsing stronger than ever. He found Wield and asked, 'Mr Dalziel back yet?'

'Not yet,' said the sergeant.

'Damn.'

'Are you on to something, sir?' asked Wield.

Pascoe hesitated, then said firmly. 'Yes. It may  open up the whole damn thing. I'm almost certain.

‘Listen, I'm going out now. Tell Mr Dalziel I'll be at  the Aero Club. That's it. The Aero Club.'

It was silly. There was no need for all this rushing. But he felt impelled to it. Perhaps if  there'd been a bit more rushing early on and a  little less painstaking, step-by-stepping . . .