A Killing kindness

Chapter 21

Michael Conrad was at first puzzled, then rather frightened when, arriving home that Saturday lunch-time, he found a policeman waiting outside his shop. His relief was great when he realized that the policeman's presence did not mean a break-in, nor did it have anything to do with the three litres of cognac he had just smuggled in from Corfu.

But his shock on hearing of Brenda Sorby's death was deep and genuine. He had not heard the news before he left on Friday night and it was a point of honour with him not to read an English paper while on holiday abroad.

Yes, he knew her well. Didn't she often serve him in the bank? Yes, he had seen her that Thursday lunch-time, just before he closed. She had collected and paid for a gentleman's gold signet ring. That was the ring there on the Superintendent's desk, no doubt. And the watch too. A gift for her young man. A nice watch for the money and he had given her a good discount because he liked her. Her engagement ring he had admired. Not an expensive stone and the setting… well, he would have been ashamed to sell such a setting but it was no business of his to dull a young girl's happiness so he had admired it as the most perfect of rings and taken her to the door and waved goodbye to her.

And would never see her again.

His eyes filled with tears and he had to blow his nose before he could sign his statement.

'Grand,' said Dalziel rubbing his hands together. 'Now for Lee. Peter, we should put you back on the beat. I'd forgotten how pretty you looked in uniform.'

Pascoe had been provided with a blue shirt and a pair of uniform trousers while his own gear dried off. He had just escaped from a neighbouring interview room which Lee's wife, four of her children, Silvester Herne, two policemen and Ms Pritchard had turned into a Bedlam cell.

'And I'd forgotten how itchy these trousers were,' he answered, 'Look, sir, I haven't got much sense yet out of that lot. They keep jabbering away at each other in Anglo-Romany every time I think I'm getting somewhere, but here's how it's looking to me…'

Dalziel put a huge finger to his broad lips.

'Later,' he said. 'Lee'll tell us all or I'll personally undo his stitches. That Pritchard thing's still there, is she?'

Pascoe nodded.

'Right,' said Dalziel. 'We'll send Wield in, tell him to be a bit aggressive towards the woman and the kids. That should keep her busy while we do our spot of hospital visiting!'

On their way to the hospital Pascoe said, 'I don't think he did it, sir.'

Dalziel hushed him again, but. with sufficient good humour to make Pascoe believe their conclusions were in accord till they stood by Lee's bedside and the fat man said without any preamble, 'Lee, we're here to charge you with murder.'

'You must be cracked? Who says I killed anyone?' demanded the recumbent man.

'Not a soul,' admitted Dalziel. 'Your wife, kids, mates, not one of 'em is telling us anything. That's your bad luck, lad. You'll need all the talking you can get on your behalf to pull you out of this. We can prove that the money, the watch and the ring were all in Brenda Sorby's handbag when she left the bank that night. They ended up in your caravan. That's what tells us you killed her, lad. We need nowt else.'

Lee twisted uneasily in his bed.

'Look, mister,' he said. 'If I tell yous what really happened, will you look out for me, like?'

Dalziel seized the man's hospital pyjamas lapel and pulled him a little way off the pillow.

'Listen, Lee,' he said viciously. 'I think I know what really happened. You killed her. If you want anyone to believe different, you'd better open your mouth and hope that what comes out flows like…’

A nurse came into the room and paused at the door as she took in the scene.

'Just rearranging his pillows, Sister,' assured Dalziel. 'There we are, Dave. That better? Grand. Off you go, dear. This is private.'

The nurse went out.

Lee said, 'I didn't kill her. She was dead.'

'If you're going to make up a story, at least give it a proper beginning, lad,' said Dalziel wearily. There was one armchair in the room. The fat man slumped into it while Pascoe perched on a hard plastic chair with his notebook on his knee.

'It were the kids,' said Lee. 'It were the kids that saw her.'

It had been round about seven o'clock. Lee had been answering a call of nature by the boundary fence when his four children who had just headed down to the river for a swim came running back, full of excitement, crying there was a woman in the water.

Lee had gone down to investigate. There she was, Brenda Sorby (as he found out later), floating face upwards. He pulled her out, tried what he knew of artificial respiration, but it was useless. Then he noticed the marks on her neck and realized it was not just a simple case of accident.

His eldest boy was sent to summon Silvester Herne, with strict instructions to tell no one else. Herne, as Pascoe had suspected, was not so much the gypsy leader as their cunning counsellor, the man who knew how to fix things. Lee then peered in the water again and saw the woman's handbag. He had fished this out and was just opening it as Herne arrived. Together they discovered the watch, the ring, the wad of notes.

This it was that tipped the scales.

Herne's first advice was to dump the woman back into the river. A gorgio woman, let the gorgios find her. It would do the gypsies in general and Lee, with his record, in particular no good to be mixed up in this. Not that merely returning the body to the water would prevent them from being involved, though. Centuries of experience have taught gypsies that proximity is guilt.

So, on second thoughts, Herne had suggested, it might be better to dump her somewhere more distant.

For the general good.

Also, that way, they could keep the money, the watch and the ring with impunity.

Lee had backed his van up to the hole in the wire and together he and Herne had loaded the body on to it. The children were frightened to silence with all the superstitious threats that arise naturally from Romany lore. And Lee had driven his van back to the fairground where he was working that night.

The intention had been to wait till after dark which came late in early July, and then to put the body back in the river somewhere further downstream beyond Charter Park. But when the storm broke and the fairground cleared, Herne had suggested they gild the lily a bit by transporting it across the river and dropping it into the canal. This served the double purpose of keeping it out of the river which after all ran by the gypsy encampment, and perhaps postponing discovery, as the canal was that much deeper and murkier.

It also provided a group of ready-made suspects in the form of the canal people who, in Herne's opinion, were capable of any crime known to man and some known only to fish.

And that's what they had done. The padlock on the hire-boats had presented no problems to Herne who emerged more and more in Lee's narrative as the moving force behind the whole sequence of events. Only when it came to the question of the money did Lee assert himself. He'd found it. He would keep it safe till the time seemed propitious for a split.

'Which was just as well,' said Dalziel. 'Herne wouldn't have hidden it somewhere so easy to spot.'

'You believe him then?'

'Why not?'

They were hanging around in the corridor outside Lee's room. The consultant surgeon, triumphant from his morning golf, had turned up a few moments earlier and Dalziel after a brief trial of strength had abandoned the field, acknowledging that only fools or heroes challenged consultants on their own ground.

'We haven't found out yet what happened on Wednesday, when he disappeared with Rosetta Stanhope,' said Pascoe.

'Simple. He read, if he can read, or was told what the papers said about that bloody message from the stars…’

'Which turned out to be pretty accurate,' observed Pascoe parenthetically.

'… and he checked with the girl, Pauline, in the morning – you said you saw him chatting to her and because he's a superstitious pagan like the rest of his tribe and he reckoned it wouldn't be long before the spirits were being even more precise about time and place, and the subsequent travels of the dead body, he went round to see Rosetta.'

The door opened, the consultant emerged trailing clouds of interns, nodded distantly at Dalziel and went on his way.

'Very grand seigneur,' observed Pascoe.

'They'll find the bugger pissed in his Daimler one of these days and then it'll be hello Andy!' said Dalziel philosophically. 'Let's get back to it.'

The superintendent's forecast of Lee's actions on the Wednesday proved remarkably accurate. Rosetta Stanhope was summoned, still smelling of smoke. She largely subtantiated the story, though in her version it became apparent that a minor form of kidnapping had taken place, in that she had been picked up by Lee in his van as she left her flat and driven north while in a round-about way he explained his involvement with the Sorby case. At first she had thought he was confessing to the murder and that had kept her quiet. They had indeed ended up in a camp in Teesdale where the presence of some elderly relatives and some mechanical trouble with the van had persuaded her to spend the night. She had rung her flat, not been too bothered when she couldn't get Pauline at first, tried again much later, began to be concerned, and woken up the following morning to learn from the radio of her niece's death.

Loyalty to Lee had prevented her from attempting to use her gifts to help the police as she had volunteered to Pascoe, but now the truth about Brenda Sorby was out, – she repeated her offer vehemently.

Dalziel shrugged when Pascoe told him.

'You want to cross her palm with silver, that's up to you, lad. But don't let it get into the papers. And don't make a claim on your expenses sheet!'

The children, after being absolved from their vow of silence by their father who was now only too eager for them to talk, had chattered away merrily to Wield who lubricated their vocal cords with cream cake and ginger beer from the canteen. They had heard someone moving away through the sallows along the river bank just before they found the lady. Pressed for more details they had indicated to Wield, who was now a great favourite, that whatever he wanted them to have seen – large, small, fair, dark, man, woman, orang-utan – was OK with them. Mrs Lee and Ms Pritchard were present throughout the questioning, the former indifferent now that the men had given their approval, the latter vociferously alert to any hint of police pressure. Finally Wield pointed at her and said to the children, 'Was this figure anything like that lady.'

'Yes,' said the eldest after close scrutiny. 'I think it was her, mister.'

'No,' shouted the littlest carried away by this imaginative game. 'She's the lady that was in the water!'

And burst into sobs of terror which rapidly spread and could not be stemmed till Ms Pritchard reluctantly left the room.

Silvester Herne too supported Lee's story with some slight modification which reduced his role to that of innocent dupe, unwittingly involved through misplaced loyalty.

And finally the pathologist with the hindsight which is the basis of all great expertise confirmed that the circumstances described by Lee accounted precisely for the state of the body as described in his report and even managed to suggest that they were so clearly implied by his findings that he could not imagine how the police had overlooked them.

'Where's it leave us?' wondered Wield.

'Up shit creek,' said Dalziel.

'No,' argued Pascoe. 'We're a lot further forward. We must be. We now know very precisely where and when Brenda Sorby was killed. Someone strangled her on that river bank and was probably going to leave her nicely laid out like the others when he heard the kids coming. So he tipped her body, not quite dead as it happened, into the water and made off. So, question: did he force Brenda to go with him? Answer, unlikely, the final attack must have been so unexpected she didn't have time to scream, else the kids would have heard her. Conclusion: she knew the man, and trusted him.'

'Question,' said Wield. 'Even if she knew the man and trusted him, what was she doing strolling along the river bank with him when she should have been out shopping prior to meeting Tommy?'

'There's an obvious answer to that,' said Dalziel.

'Hardly!' protested Pascoe. 'She doesn't sound like a two-timer. And she'd just got engaged and bought the ring for Tommy, not to mention the watch.'

'Who said the watch was for Tommy?' asked Dalziel cynically. 'She wouldn't have been the first girl to run two men at the same time – one her own age, one a bit more mature, maybe, bit more exotic.'

'Like a tall, dark, handsome gypsy, you mean, sir?' said Wield.

'Why not?' said Dalziel.

Pascoe snorted in disgust, a noise which Ellie had taught him.

'You're not back to Lee. Is he that cunning?'

'It would be bloody clever,’ admitted Dalziel. 'I mean, the double alibi. And them buggers are all cunning enough, Peter. They're born with the art. Besides, if not Lee, there's plenty of others of his tribe. Come fair fortnight and there's enough golden earrings about the place to hang the Grand Theatre curtain on.'

'No,' said Pascoe vehemently. 'I don't see it. Not this girl, not at this time.'

'All right,' said Dalziel. 'If a bit of nooky's the most likely reason for being along that river bank on a summer evening, and if you think she was too bloody upright for a bit on the side, what's wrong with the legal tenant?'

'You mean Maggs, sir?' said Wield, incredulous.

'Why not? Has anyone asked him yet precisely what he was doing between six and seven that night?'

'No!' protested Pascoe. 'I'd find it easier to believe in Lee than that Tommy could carry something like this off!'

'Racial prejudice,' said Dalziel smugly.

'No, not just that,' said Pascoe, grinning. 'Some of my best friends are Yorkshiremen. But it's just that while I go along with the personal connection, I don't think we should confuse this with the personal motive. Now, Tommy or a secret lover might both have very good motives for murdering Brenda – jealousy, or fear of revealment for instance – but they're not Choker motives, if you follow me.'

'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.'