A Killing Kindness (6 page)

'Including Miss Stanhope?' said Pascoe with a  grin.

Wield's creased and pitted face had shown no  response to Pascoe's twitting about Pauline Stanhope's interest earlier that day. Now he managed  something not unlike a grimace.

'There was a statement from her and her aunt,'  he said. 'Like all the rest. Nothing. This was interesting, though.'

David Lee had been in the hands of the police several times. Disorderly conduct had cost him  half a dozen fines. In 1974 he had been put on probation for assault on his common law wife.  Assaulting a council officer in charge of an operation to move on a gypsy encampment got him  three months in 1976, and this had been doubled  in 1978 when he punched a police officer who  was attempting to stop him from beating another  common law wife.

There was also a charge of rape in 1979, dismissed by a majority verdict.

'What made you pick on this one?' wondered  Pascoe. 'Not because I saw him chatting up Miss  Pauline, I hope?'

'There's half a dozen others,' grunted Wield. 'If  you'd care to have a look.'

Pascoe thought for a moment.

'Tell you what,' he said. 'If Mrs Sorby's such  an enthusiast for peering over the Great Divide,  perhaps Brenda got roped in too.'

'And might have known about the Madame  Rashid connection,' said Wield.

'And met Dave Lee through it?'

Pascoe shook his head even as he spoke.

'It's stretching things a bit,' he said. 'Still, it's  worth checking. Fancy a trip to the fairground to  have your fortune told?'

Wield shrugged.

'I go where I'm sent,' he said indifferently.

'All right,' said Pascoe. 'It's twelve now. Have  your lunch, then with your vigour fully restored go and cross the lady's palm with silver. Either lady,  depending whether you prefer mutton or lamb.'

I must stop this nudge-nudge, wink-wink bit, he  thought as Wield left. I'm getting more like Dalziel  every day!

A few moments later the phone rang. It was the  desk sergeant.

'There's a lady here wants a word with someone  in CID, sir,' he said. 'It's a Mrs Rosetta Stanhope.'

'What? Oh, look, Sergeant Wield probably wants  to speak with her anyway, so let him sort it out,  will you? He should be on his way out any moment  now.'

'He just went past, sir. I don't think he noticed  the lady. He seemed in a bit of a hurry.'

'The bastard!' swore Pascoe. 'He's opted for lamb.  All right. Wheel her in.'

Rosetta Stanhope had adapted well to her chosen  environment. In her late fifties, her hair tightly  permed with just the suggestion of a blue rinse,  dressed in a stylishly cut grey suit with toning  shoes and handbag, she could have chaired a WI  meeting or opened a flower show without remark. Only a certain rather exotic stateliness of bearing  and darkness of skin which even a carefully layered  mask of make-up could not disguise hinted at her  origins.

Her voice was quiet, a little hoarse, perhaps; the  result of twisting her vocal cords to produce her  spirit voices? wondered Pascoe.

'I met your niece this morning,' said Pascoe. 'You  haven't seen her?'

The woman considered, then smiled.

'You're quite right, Mr Pascoe. I wouldn't do  Madame Rashid dressed like this. And I wouldn't  go home specially to change just to impress a  policeman.'

Pascoe
was
impressed. She'd cut right to the  source of his question. Not that you needed to be a  mind-reader, but it was a good policeman's trick.

'So you've left your niece in charge of the  future?'

Lucky old Wield.

'I didn't feel able today,' she said. 'I don't put on  a show. It's got to be right.'

'What about Pauline?'

Mrs Stanhope made an entirely un-English
moue 
of dismissal.

'Palmistry,' she said. 'It's a craft. You learn it.'

Pascoe decided to do a bit of short-cutting  himself.

'I'm afraid you're not going to be able to get  an apology out of us, Mrs Stanhope. It wasn't our  doing. A denial perhaps, but I tried that yesterday  and you saw the report. I'm sorry it upset you.'

'I'm not upset, Inspector,' she said. 'Don't heed  our Pauline. She probably told you I'm not very  practical? Well, I'm practical enough to let her  think so. She needs to be looking after folks,  that one. It probably comes of never knowing her  mother.'

'You brought her up from birth, I believe,' said  Pascoe. 'I'm surprised she doesn't regard you as  her mother.'

'She did when she was young, poor mite. But  she had to be told. I remember she was twelve  and casting her own horoscope. It wouldn't come  right. Well, it wouldn't, would it? Bert and me  had always decided to tell her. It was a relief in  a way.'

'Why so?'

'She knew about me and my background. I'm  proud of it, why not? And Bert always used to joke  that he'd stolen me from the gypsies. Pauline and  me, we got very close, but I could see it was a bit  difficult for a young lass thinking she'd got a gypsy  mother but not feeling of the blood, if you follow.  It were odd, but when we told her, it seemed to  bring us even closer together.'

'And finally she joined that side of the family  business?'

'She could hardly become an engine-driver,  could she, even in this age,' said Rosetta Stanhope  lightly.

'I believe it's possible,' said Pascoe, suddenly  picturing Thelma Lacewing wiping her brow with  an oily rag on the footplate of the 'Flying Scotsman'. 'But tell me, Mrs Stanhope, if you're not  here to complain, threaten, or cast a gypsy's curse,  why have you come?'

She leaned forward and tapped his desk significantly. Or perhaps she was knocking on wood?

‘I was upset last night, Inspector. Not by the  paper, though that irritated me. I was upset by  the contact I'd made with that poor girl. I hardly  slept. I just kept on getting impressions; no, not  visions or words, nothing definite like that; but,  like colours and feelings. I let Pauline think it was  just the newspaper report that had upset me. I  wanted to think things out for myself.'

'So what
do
you want, Mrs Stanhope?'

She opened her youthfully clear brown eyes in  big surprise.

'I want to do what that
Evening Post
said I was  doing already,' she said. 'I've come to help you  with your enquiries.'

Chapter 6

When Sergeant Wield reached Charter Park the  fairground was doing good business. It was a  fine sunny day with just enough breeze to cool a fevered brow and send little puffs of cloud,  picturesque to the point of artificiality, drifting  across the deep blue cyclorama above. The green  of the grass and trees, the sparkling band of the  river, the bright brash music of the steam organ, all  these combined to produce a pleasantly euphoric  sensation in the sergeant's breast which he allowed  to surface in the form of a light almost soundless  whistle through gently pursed lips.

His reaction when he reached the fortune-teller's  tent and found the flap closed and a folding  chair pushed against it to which was pinned a  card saying
BACK SOON
was disappointment, but it  was a purely professional emotion. Pascoe's winks  and nods about Pauline Stanhope's fancy for him  were seeds on the stoniest of ground. Wield's  self-containment and reticence were not linked, as the amateur psychologist might have guessed,  to his fearsome appearance. They derived from his  early recognition that the best way to conceal one  thing was to conceal all things, to have so many  secrets that the only important one would not  be suspected. And this was that he was wholly  and uncompromisingly homosexual. In the police,  the usual circular syndrome applied. Homosexuals  were disapproved of because they were blackmail risks because they were secretive because they  were disapproved of . . .

Ten years earlier Wield had found himself growing increasingly fond of a man called Maurice  Eaton, a Post Office executive who was even more  anxious than Wield about the damage an open  liaison might do to his career. But they had reached  the stage of discussing setting up house together in  Yorkshire when Eaton was offered a promotion in  the North-East. To Wield, the move had seemed  tragic at the time, but soon a routine of weekends  in Newcastle and holidays abroad had been established which, while it was not without its tensions  and dangers, had proved viable for a decade. But though having the centre of his emotional life a  hundred miles away had made him 'safe', it also  made him a bit of a cypher. Institutions do not like what they do not understand and now he was  stuck at sergeant with younger men like Pascoe  leapfrogging over his head.

Eventually something would give, he felt it in  his bones. Meanwhile, on with the job.

The stall closest to the fortune-telling tent was  an old fashioned 'penny-roll' at which coins were  rolled down grooved ramps to land on a numbered  chequer board, winning the amount stated if the  coin fell plumb in the middle of a square. The man  in charge shrugged indifferently, but his sharp-featured helpmeet believed she had seen Pauline  leave about twenty minutes earlier. So
BACK SOON
 
could mean an hour or so yet.

He ought to get back to the station. He felt a  little guilty at the way he had turned a blind eye  to Rosetta Stanhope as he left, but it had seemed  amusing to reinforce Pascoe's impression that he  was more concerned with the good-looking niece  than the old aunt. But it was very pleasant being  out in the sunshine and he found himself asking  the penny-roll woman if she knew where he might  find Dave Lee.

She gave him a sharp, inquisitive look, then said,  'He could be on the dodgems, or the waltzer. He  helps around when they're busy.'

'He doesn't have anything of his own then? A  stall, I mean?'

The woman answered sneeringly, 'He's pure didicoi, not real fair people, don't like regular  work, them. There is a stall, a lot of gypsy tat  if you ask me. Over there, by the river. You're a  copper, aren't you?'

'No, I'm his rich uncle from Australia,' said  Wield gravely.

The dodgems and the waltzer producing no sign of Lee, he made his way to the stall which  did nothing to make him feel the penny-roll  woman had been unjust. Even in this temple of tawdriness, this looked extra tawdry and  the dark-skinned woman with high, aristocratic  cheekbones, one of which was livid with a wide  bruise, seemed to be making little effort to entice  customers.

'I'm looking for Dave Lee,' said Wield.

'What for? Are you going to arrest the bastard?'  she answered.

'Just talk.'

'Pity. Why not put him in jail for a while?'

She seemed sincere.

'Why? What's he done?'

'Him? What hasn't he?'

Suddenly she seemed to tire of the conversation  as if even resentment and hatred could not stimulate her interest for long.

'He's not here,' she said flatly.

'Where might he be?'

She shrugged. Wield consulted his notebook.

'You don't have a trailer here, do you? Could  he have gone back to the encampment?'

Another shrug. Wield's patience began to go.

'All right. Come on.'

'Come on where?'

'To the station.'

'Me? What have I done?'

The interest had been restimulated.

'You? What haven't you?' mimicked Wield.

She swore. He didn't understand Romany, but  he had no doubt what she was calling him.

'He went in the van,' she said, gesticulating at  the nearby trailer park. 'Half an hour. To the camp,  perhaps. Does he tell me where he goes? If you see  him tell him he can..’

'What?' asked Wield.

The woman's face went sullen, flat, once more.  Only the bruise gleamed.

'Nothing,' she said.

Wield strolled down to the river's edge. Boats  were in large demand and the isthmus was full of people. For two days as a couple of dozen coppers  crawled on their hands and knees from one end to  the other, it had been closed to the public. The only  result had been the most efficient litter-clearing  operation in the city's history. Now the picnickers  were back, their appetites doubtless whetted by the  thought that on this very spot perhaps a girl had  been done to death. And if they got bored with  that, they could stroll a hundred yards or so down  the canal bank and peer greedily across at the blank wall of Spinks' Electrical Depository where earlier  the same night a watchman had had his skull  fractured for the sake of a few cheap transistor  radios made in Hong Kong.

Though typically he kept them to himself, Wield  had his own carefully worked out ideas about  crime and punishment. They included doling out in exactly measured and scientifically monitored  doses the kind of pain to the attacker which he had inflicted on the attacked. Nothing to do with  barbarities like chopping off hands or cutting off  ears. Just the pain.

Though how to measure the pain of terror which  these murdered women must have felt, he did  not know. But something was needed, something  better than we had.

He went back to Madame Rashid's tent. The notice was still there. He glanced at his watch.  One-thirty. The station? Or could he justify going  after Dave Lee? It was just a fifteen-minute drive  at the most.

'Sod it,' he said and headed for his car.

He drove rapidly and efficiently, roughly following the course of the river out of town till he  reached the old airfield which lay to the south-east. There had been a time in the affluent days  of Super-Mac at the end of the 'fifties when it  had teetered on the edge of development into  a full-scale airport. But the moment had passed  and now it was two-thirds disused, the remaining  one-third being in the hands of the local Aero  Club. Occasionally small private planes landed,  particularly when there was a big race meeting at the city track, but generally speaking only the  breathless
swoosh
of the gliders disturbed the air. There were a couple up now. Wield watched them, admired their soaring freedom but felt no desire to  share it. He was a motor-bike man himself. Black  leather and 100 mph up the motorway. Something  else he kept quiet about at the station.