A Killing Kindness (5 page)

'First time here, Mulgan?' said his host. 'How  d'you like it?'

Mulgan looked round. A group of young men  were drinking pints and noisily exchanging gliding experiences. Three women were sitting in a  corner beneath a fluorescent notice announcing  that Friday and Saturday were disco nights. On  the blue emulsioned walls a formation of china  Spitfires banked through photographs of smiling  young men in flying kit towards an old school  clock whose face was ringed in RAF colours. The hands, propeller-shaped, stood at twelve- fifteen.

'It's very nice,' said Mulgan politely.

'Yes, I thought we'd meet here. It's handy for us  both and I hate them stuck-up places with their  fancy prices. Besides, I'm going up a bit later on,  so I'd have to be here anyway. You ever tried it,  Mulgan?'

His host was Bernard Middlefield who with  his brother John was co-owner and dictator of  a small electrical assembly plant on the Avro  Industrial Estate.
Middlefield Electric
was feeling  the pinch of the latest credit squeeze and Mulgan  guessed that these new friendly overtures in his  direction were just so much bread scattered on the waters. He was not offended. Middlefield under his  abrupt, loud-mouthed manner was a sharp enough operator. Chicken-in-the-basket today meant that  he had been spotted as being possibly worth filet mignon tomorrow. That was one thing about  these Yorkshiremen. You knew precisely where  you were with most of them.

'No, I haven't,' said Mulgan. 'What kind of plane  do you fly?'

'Plane? Not a
plane,
Mulgan. Do you never  look up from that desk of yours? It's gliders  we fly here. Though planes have been known  to land, isn't that right, Austin? Alistair Mulgan.  This is Austin Greenall, our CFI, that's Chief  Flying Instructor, secretary, and master of all  trades.'

'As you see,' said the man who had taken the  place of the middle-aged woman who had been  behind the bar to start with. 'Except cooking. We're short-handed today. Summer flu, would  you believe! Jenny has to keep an eye on the  kitchen too, so if there's anything else you require  from the bar, I'm your man.'

'No, thanks. These'll do us. I'm flying and Mr  Mulgan's got to keep his head clear else he'll get  his sums wrong at the bank.'

'I thought I recognized you,' said Greenall. 'The  Club account's there.'

'Watch him,' said Middlefield to Mulgan. 'He'll  be wanting to screw some money out of you for  another couple of planes if he can.'

'The Club does own some planes already, then?'  said Mulgan.

'A plane. We've got a Cub we use for towing  but it's long past its best. And there's a Cherokee  owned by a consortium of local businessmen, Mr  Middlefield included. No, it's the gliding that keeps  us going. Just.'

'But not if you have your way, eh, Austin? He's  only been here five minutes and he's got ambitions  to turn us into Heathrow.'

'Hardly. I just think there's a lot that can be done  to improve facilities and attract members.'

'As long as you keep in mind it's not like Surrey  up here. We know what we like and we like value  for money. How's our grub coming on? Take a  look, there's a good chap.'

Greenall smiled amiably and left the bar.

In the corner Ellie Pascoe said to Thelma Lacewing, 'Why doesn't your secretary hit him with  a bottle?'

'Middlefield's on the committee, also a JP,'  said Thelma. 'But mainly he's a reactionary shit. For instance, trying to get the weekend discos  stopped on the grounds that they breed immorality. I keep a very close eye on that sod, I  tell you.'

The two women made a striking contrast. Ellie  was long-limbed, mobile, though the taut line of  her athletic figure was now slackened by the contours of pregnancy; black-haired, grey-eyed, and with a face that after thirty-odd years was handsome rather than pretty, and her chin gave promises of determination her character kept. Thelma's  face had the frank wide-eyed pensive beauty that  goes with folded wings and flowing white robes  and that a monk might dream of without sin. She  was a dental hygienist.

'Let's get down to business,' she said. 'Ellie,  are you going to sink cow-like into the placid,  man-pleasing, expectant-mother role, or are you  going to cut your brain off from your belly and  start doing some real work for WRAG?'

'Depends what you mean by real work,' said  Ellie.

The third woman spoke. This was Lorraine  Wildgoose, teacher of French at a local comprehensive school. She had a striking face, with high  cheekbones and intense eyes. Her hair was at fag  end of an old freak-out cut and her figure had the  kind of thinness that derives from nerves rather  than diets.

'Vacancies in all areas,' she said. 'Typing, telephoning, tea-making.'

'Propagandizing, preaching, protesting,' murmured Thelma.

'Not to mention subverting, suborning, and  sabotaging,' added Lorraine.

'I rather fancied assailing, assaulting, and assassinating,' said Ellie, not to be outdone. 'But seriously,  look, I want to help, but also I want some time  to write. I'm into another novel. I've finally got over my feelings of failure with the first. I mean twenty-two publishers can't be wrong! And I  really want to get this new one sorted out before 
this.'

She patted her stomach disgustedly.

'We've all got calls on our time,' flashed Lorraine.  'Two kids, a pending divorce and an unbalanced  husband takes a bit more of your time than a couple  of neatly turned paragraphs.'

This unexpected outburst brought a hiatus in  the conversation which was filled by the timely  arrival of Greenall with their baskets of food. At  the bar the discussion seemed to be getting a little  heated too.

'Well, you know your own employees best, I dare say,' Middlefield was saying. 'But give me  leave to know something too. When you've been  on the bench a bit, you get to read between the  lines. I mean, just look at the facts. A field behind  a pub! A shed on an allotment! The canal bank! Not  the kind of places you'd look to meet the vicar's  wife, are they?'

'I can assure you, Brenda Sorby was as nice  and decent a young woman as you could hope  to meet,' protested Mulgan, his rather fleshy face  pinking with indignation or embarrassment.

'That's how they all
seem,'
scoffed Middlefield.  'You see a bit more of the world in my line than  yours, I dare say.'

'You're not saying those poor women deserved  what happened to them?'

'Don't be daft! But them as take chances can't complain overmuch when things go wrong.'

'Those women certainly can't complain, can  they?' said Thelma in a clear, carrying voice.

'I beg your pardon?' said Middlefield turning on  his stool to view her. 'Oh, it's you, Miss Lacewing.'

'I'll just fetch the tartare sauce,' murmured  Greenall. He retreated to the kitchen.

'I suppose you might say that unaccompanied  women coming to places like this take the chance  of overhearing primitive sexist prejudices being  expressed by loud, ill-informed men,' continued  Thelma.

'I expect I know as much about it as you, young  woman,' said Middlefield grimly.

'Really? Perhaps we ought to put the police  in touch with you, then. Fortunately one of my  friends is married to one of the officers on the  case. Ellie, perhaps you'll pass the word to your  husband that Mr Middlefield knows more than he  has yet been willing to volunteer.'

Ellie smiled warily. There weren't many people  left in the world who could embarrass her, but Thelma was certainly one of them. Which was  probably why, as Peter had theorized, she allowed  her the moral ascendancy.

Greenall had emerged from the kitchen with  two more baskets which he placed before the  two men at the bar, saying blithely, 'Here you  are. Piping hot.'

Thelma turned back to her friends, completely  unruffled. That's what I envy too, thought Ellie. I get all pink and abusive.

'Is your husband really on the case?' asked  Lorraine Wildgoose.

Ellie nodded.

'Are they getting anywhere?' pursued the woman rather intensely.

'I'm not sure. I expect so,' said Ellie cautiously.

Lorraine Wildgoose looked as if she might be  going to say something more and Ellie's heart  sank at the prospect of having to listen to an  attack on the police, no matter which of the  many possible forms it took. But Thelma, as if  spotting the danger, said lightly, 'What about all  this clairvoyant help?'

'You read about that?' said Ellie, relieved. 'Listen, I've got a theory. I pinched a transcript of  what this woman actually said from Peter. It might  interest you in your archaeological hat.'

She produced the transcript and was holding forth when Greenall returned with the tartare  sauce.

'Sorry to interrupt,' he said, putting the sauce  on the sheet of paper in front of Thelma.

'Don't do that, Austin!' she said. 'You may offend  the spirits.'

'You're doing a bit of table rapping, are you?'  he said. 'Be careful. It's Mr Middlefield you don't  want to offend!'

'It's OK. This is police business,' said Thelma.

'My friend is a Mrs Detective-Inspector. These are  official documents.'

Greenall picked up the transcript and pretended to rub it with his sleeve, murmuring at  the same time, 'By the by, Middlefield's threatening to drop in at the disco on Friday on a  fact-finding tour.'

'Is he? I may join him. Thanks, Austin. Join us  for a drink later?'

'I'd love to, but another time. I've got things to do and his lordship's got to be launched after  lunch.
Per ardua ad astra,
as they say.'

He left and Ellie fluttered her eyebrows at Thelma.

'Now he seems nice, Thelma.'

'He's bearable,' she said noncommittally. 'When  he came six months ago I thought
Christ, another ex-RAF wizard-show chauvinist pig.
But he was a nice  surprise. I think he's got genuine sympathy with  the feminist position.'

'I bet,' grinned Ellie.

'That, if I may say so, is the kind of crack that  comes from too close an association with the racist,  sexist constabulary.'

'Is that so? And perhaps you'll now explain  how you come to be rolling around with evident pleasure in this male chauvinist sty,' said  Ellie.

'Why, to overcome my fear of flying, of course,' said Thelma, wide eyes wider with surprise. 'Now  let's eat. Ellie, you've nearly finished your drink. Would you like something else? A quart of warm  milk, perhaps.'

Ellie giggled girlishly.

'You'll think I'm silly,' she said coyly. 'But being like this and all, I get these funny urges, you know how we mothers-to-be are, and whenever I eat  scampi and get put down at the same time, I've  just
got
to have a couple of glasses of Dom Perignon. It brings up the wind so nicely!'

Chapter 5

Andy Dalziel, according to much of his acquaintance, had a very simplistic approach to life. He saw  everything as either black or dark blue. In this they  were mistaken. Life was richly coloured for the  fat man; full of villainy and vice, it was true, but  with shifting shades and burning pigments, like  Hogarthian scenes painted by Renoir.

Pascoe understood this. 'He detects with his  balls,' he had once told Ellie gloomily.

To Pascoe's rational mind, there was still some  doubt whether Brenda Sorby's murder was truly  in sequence with the other two strangulations.

'She wasn't laid out like the other two,' he said.  'In fact the body was hidden, whereas with the  others, the killer obviously wanted it to be found.  Also, to let herself be picked up at that time of  night (and there had to be a car - she wasn't  going to
walk
five miles to the canal!), it had to  be someone she knew.'

Dalziel wasn't much interested. He
knew
it was part of the sequence. But he didn't mind exploding  a younger colleague.

'Mebbe she just scrambled away and fell in. He wouldn't be about to jump in after her, would he?  Or mebbe he left her for dead, all neatly laid out,  and she recovered enough to roll over. Splash! Or  mebbe he was disturbed and just slipped her over  the edge, not wanting her to be found while he  was still so close in the vicinity. And as for the  car, mebbe he pulled her into it, threatened her  with a knife, even knocked her out. Or mebbe it  was someone she'd trust without knowing him, a copper, say. What were
you
doing that night,  Peter?'

Laughter (Dalziel's). End of discussion.

Curiously, the one thing which seemed to confirm the superintendent's judgement that Brenda's  death was linked with the others, he had treated  most dismissively.

'Anyone can make a phone call,' he said. 'And  everyone's got a Complete Shakespeare.
I've
got a  Complete Shakespeare!'

Pascoe sat in his office and studied the pathologist's reports which he knew almost off by heart. All three women had been strangled by someone  using both hands. The bruising on their necks indicated this and the cartilage in the area of the voice  boxes was fractured to a degree which demonstrated the violence and strength of the attack. But  the pathologist was adamant that Brenda Sorby  had not been quite dead when she went into the water . . .
all over me, choking, the water, all boiling at  first, and roaring, and seething . .
. Pascoe shook the  medium's taped words out of his mind and went  on with his reading.

There was a degree of lividity down the left side which was unusual for a corpse taken from the  water, but it could be explained by the fact that  the body seemed to have been wedged in the  debris by the canal bank rather than rolling free  in the current. Also (another difference from the  previous cases) there was some bruising around  and underneath the breasts, possibly indicating a  sexual assault, though the lacerations caused by  the barge propeller had made examination difficult  in this area. Elsewhere there was no indication of  sexual interference.

Pascoe sighed. The bloody pathologist thought 
he
was having things difficult!

Sergeant Wield came in.

'I just had CRO run some of those fairground  people through the computer,' he announced.