A Killing Kindness (8 page)

Cooper, her husband, nodded melancholy agreement. He'd seen nowt, heard nowt.

Loudspeaker appeals were made to the crowd  requesting anyone who had visited Madame  Rashid's tent earlier that day to come forward,  but so far without success.

Notable by his absence was Dave Lee. After Wield had described his encounter that afternoon, he was sent to pick the gypsy up and bring him in for questioning. At the same time, Dalziel sent  a man round to the Wheatsheaf Garage to check  the movements of Tommy Maggs.

Pascoe nodded approvingly. Investigation is ninety per cent elimination. In his mind, Maggs was  almost completely in the clear as far as Brenda Sorby's death was concerned, and he didn't see  the young man as a psychopathic mass murderer.  But the obvious has got to be seen to be done.

When he was bold enough to utter these thoughts  to Dalziel, the fat man grunted, 'Oh aye?'

A policewoman had been sent to tell Rosetta Stanhope the tragic news. Pascoe had steered her  out of the office earlier that afternoon, with assurances that they would certainly consider her kind  offer of psychic assistance.

Later he had been summoned to Dalziel's office where the fat man was conferring with Detective Chief Inspector George Headingley who was in  charge of the Spinks' warehouse case. This was  now murder. The watchman had died in hospital  that morning, and Headingley was in search of  more manpower. They had gone over the staff dispositions together and seen how tautly stretched  they were. Then Pascoe had mentioned Rosetta  Stanhope's offer of help and frivously wondered  if they might not take it up.

'Aye,' said Dalziel. 'She can try to make contact with the ACC for a start. That bugger's been dead  from the neck up for years!'

They had all laughed. And not long afterwards Wield had phoned with his news.

Now Pascoe awaited uneasily the arrival of the  dead girl's aunt. She would have to be taken to the mortuary for a formal identification of the  body. It was always an unpleasant business, and  though Rosetta Stanhope had impressed him as a strong-willed albeit rather eccentric character, experience had taught him there was no way of  forecasting reactions.

He felt almost relieved when the policewoman called in with the news that Mrs Stanhope was not at home so she had stationed herself outside  her flat to await her return.

Shortly afterwards Wield returned to say that Dave Lee had gone off in his van right after the  sergeant's visit. No one knew, or at least was  telling, his destination.

Finally the DC sent to check on Tommy Maggs arrived, also unaccompanied. Maggs had not returned to work after the dinner break and  there was no reply to repeated knockings at the door of his home.

'Check with the neighbours,' ordered Dalziel. 'See if he's contacted his parents at work. Find  out who his doctor is. Sergeant Wield, you've got Lee's van number? Right. Put out a call. Peter, you  go and deal with the press, will you? You're better  at shooting shit than anyone else.'

'Thanks,' said Pascoe. 'What do I tell them?'

'What you know, which, unless you're holding something back, is bugger all.'

'They'll be keen to know if it's the Choker again,'  said Pascoe.

'Won't know that till the PM. And then we'll only know it's
a
Choker!'

'It looks a pretty clear case,' protested Pascoe. 'I mean, compared with the Sorby girl . . .'

'You think so? We'll have to see,' said Dalziel.

The old bastard thinks he's on to something,  thought Pascoe. Or perhaps he just likes being  contrary.

The journalists who had gathered at the fairground were not just local. Word had spread, and there  were even a couple from London already, though it  emerged that they had travelled up attracted by the  clairvoyance story, and Pauline Stanhope's murder  was just a bonus. In the car park, a television crew  were unshipping their cameras. They would get some good atmospheric footage if nothing more,  thought Pascoe. The fairground amusements, after  a brief hiatus, were back to full steam, whirling,  glittering, blaring. Did the laughter, the music, the  excited shrieking hold perhaps a more than usually  strident note of hysteria? wondered Pascoe. It was  almost indecent, but at the same time it was inevitable. Death, the biggest barker of them all, had  gathered together a huge crowd and the fair people could hardly be expected to ignore this opportunity. It wasn't even as if Pauline Stanhope was one of  their own. Nor Rosetta, for that matter. Once a year  they joined the show while the rest of them formed  a shifting but constant community.

He stonewalled the questions for ten minutes. As he'd anticipated, they were most eager for  confirmation that this was a Choker killing.

'What about the
Hamlet
calls, Inspector?' asked one of the reporters. 'Has there been one yet?'

'I don't know.' Pascoe smiled. 'You'd better ask your colleague from the
Evening Post.
His boss gets  them first.'

One of the TV men caught his sleeve as he turned  away and asked if they could do a filmed interview  in about five minutes.

‘I’ll have to check,' said Pascoe.

'Well, it's not with you, actually. It's Superintendent Dalziel we'd like.'

Piqued, Pascoe returned to the caravan where he  found Dalziel on the phone which the Post Office  had just connected.

'The telly men request the pleasure of your  company, sir,' he said when the fat man had  finished.

'What's up with you, lad? Not photogenic?'

'Perhaps I don't fill a twenty-six-inch screen,' said Pascoe acidly.

'What? Put you out, has it, lad?' chortled Dalziel. 'Here's something to put you back in. I've just been talking to Sammy Locke at the
Post.'

'There's been a call?' said Pascoe eagerly.

'I knew that'd please you, Peter. You reckon you'll get the bugger through these calls, don't you? Well, best of luck. There's two of the sods  at it now!'

He was wrong.

By the time Pascoe got home that night there'd been four
Hamlet
calls.

The first, at four-forty-two, said,
Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch  thick, to this favour she must come.

The second, at five-twenty-three, said,
One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

The third, at six-fifteen, said,
To be, or not to be, that is the question.

The fourth, at seven-nine, said,
The time is out of joint: - 0 cursed spite, that ever I was born to set  it right.

Ellie, for a change, was in bright good spirits and  Pascoe was so pleased to see this that he restricted  himself to no more than a forty degree roll of the  eyeballs when she announced that she was now the  membership secretary of WRAG. In any case, she seemed much more keen to talk about the Choker.

'These phone calls. Are they really going to be  any use?'

'We don't have much else,' said Pascoe, tucking  into his re-heated beef and mushroom pie. 'But  they can't all be the Choker. Sammy Locke's memory of the first voice is a bit vague. He  reckons that two, possibly three, of this lot are  not so very different from it.'

'You've got all today's calls on tape, you say,'  said Ellie. 'What you want is a language expert to  listen to them.'

'Good thinking,' said Pascoe, who'd already made the suggestion to Dalziel but wasn't about to be a clever-sticks. 'Anyone in mind?'

'Well, there's Dicky Gladmann and Drew Urquhart at the College. They impress their students by  working out regional and social backgrounds by  voice analysis.'

'And are they right?'

'One hundred per cent usually, I gather. But I think they probably check the records first. Still, they're certainly incomprehensible enough to be  good linguists.'

Pascoe finished his pie, drew breath and started  in on the apple crumble, also warmed up.

She wants
me
to get fat too! he suddenly thought.

'I'll give them a try. Though they're probably enjoying their little vacation in Acapulco,' he said.  'By the way, you never said, how did la Lacewing respond to your theory about the medium  message?'

Thought it was a load of crap,' said Ellie  moodily.

'Did she now? Well well. Let me have the transcript back, won't you?'

'Yes. And she got pretty close to embarrassing me by talking about you being in charge of  the case.'

That embarrasses you?'

'Of course not. No, I mean she was trying to put down some loud-mouthed, fellow called  Middlefield, he's a JP or something, thinks all  murdered women are
ipso facto
whores. I tell  you what was interesting, though. I gathered  the fellow
he
was talking to was the manager of  the bank where that other girl worked. The one  on the tape. Or not.'

'Brenda Sorby. Now that is interesting,' said  Pascoe.

Later as they lay in bed, Ellie said drowsily. This  poor woman at the fairground. You say she was Rosetta Stanhope's niece?'

That's right.'

'Then maybe she'll get in touch with her. I mean, they must have been close.'

'Maybe,' said Pascoe. 'We'll call you in if it  happens.'

She dug her elbow in his ribs and soon her  breath steadied into the regularity of sleep.

Pascoe found sleep difficult, however, and when  it did come, it came in fits and starts and flowed  shallowly over a rocky bed. Ellie was partly responsible by putting the thought of Pauline Stanhope  into his mind, but she would have been there anyway. He always slept badly the night before attending a post-mortem and tomorrow he was due at  the City Mortuary at nine
A.M
. to attend the last  forensic rites on the body of Pauline Stanhope.

Chapter 8

The police pathologist was a swift, economical  worker who never took refuge in the kind of ghoulish heartiness with which some of his colleagues sought to make their jobs tolerable. Pascoe  was glad of this. He liked to enter an almost trance-like state of professional objectivity on these occasions and had already offended the Mortuary Superintendent and the nervous new Coroner's  Officer by his brusque response to their efforts at  socialization.

The pathologist examined the neck first before  asking the Superintendent to remove the clothes  which were then separately packaged and sent  on their way to the laboratory. After a further  careful examination of the naked body, turning  it over on the slab so that nothing was missed, the  pathologist was ready to make the median incision.  As the scalpel slipped through the white skin, the  Coroner's Officer swayed slightly. This was his first  time, Pascoe had gathered from the man's nervy conversation with the Mortuary Superintendent.  He reached into his pocket, pulled out a notebook,  and tapped the man on the shoulder.

'Borrow your pen a moment?' he asked brusquely.

'Yes, of course,' said the man.

Pascoe scribbled a few notes, then returned the  implement.

'Thanks,' he said. 'You'd better have it back. Your need's greater than mine. Your boss is a  stickler for detail in all these forms, isn't he?'

The man managed a pale grin, then began writing at a furious rate.

After a while Pascoe took his own pen from his pocket and followed suit.

There was another disturbance, more obvious  this time, about thirty minutes later.

Voices were heard distantly upraised. After a while the door opened and a porter came in and  spoke quietly to the Mortuary Superintendent who  relayed the information to Pascoe.

'There's a woman outside with a man. She says  she's the girl's aunt and she's making a fuss about  seeing the body.'

Pascoe looked at the cadaver on the examination table. The sternum and frontal ribs had been  removed and the omentum cut away so that heart,  lungs and intestine were visible.

The pathologist continued with his work, undisturbed by the interruption.

'I'll sort it,' said Pascoe.

He went out of the examination room, through  the storage room, into a small reception area, where a clerk was holding Rosetta Stanhope at  bay.

With her, to Pascoe's surprise, was Dave Lee.

'Mr Pascoe,' she said, 'they say my niece is here. I've a right to see her, haven't I? I'm entitled. I want to see her.'

Emotion was giving her voice rhythms and  resonances from her childhood, forcing them up through the heavy overlay of conventional urban  Yorkshire.

'You can't stop her, mister,' said the man. 'It's  her niece.'

'I'm sorry, Mrs Stanhope,' said Pascoe quietly. 'There's an examination going on just now. When it's all over we'll make arrangements, I promise you.'

'You've no right to stop her,' said the man  belligerently. 'Like she says, she's entitled.'

'I don't think you'd want to see her now, Mrs  Stanhope,' said Pascoe. 'Please. Later. It's for the  best.'

'You mean, they're cutting her up?' asked the  woman.

'There has to be a post-mortem,' said Pascoe  gently.

She nodded and Pascoe took her arm and led  her through the door of the Superintendent's office. The clerk looked uncertain at this procedure but Pascoe who knew all about social dynamics said to him, 'Get us a cup of tea, will  you?' and he went away quite happily feeling his  function reinforced.

'We tried to get hold of you last night,' said  Pascoe after Rosetta Stanhope had sat down. There  were only two chairs in the room and Pascoe took  the other, leaving Dave Lee to stand awkwardly  and with ill grace by the window.

'I went away,' she said.

'You didn't say anything about going away when we talked yesterday lunch-time,' said Pascoe.  'Unexpected, was it?'

'Yes. Unexpected. I left a note in the flat for  Pauline.'

Her voice choked as she spoke the girl's name. Pascoe looked at her carefully. She was wearing the same grey suit as on the previous day, only  it wasn't quite so smart now, a little crumpled, a  little awry and straggly.

'How did you hear about your niece, Mrs Stanhope?' he asked.

She shot a glance at the man.

'I heard . . . this morning,' she said. 'In the  papers.'