A Killing Kindness (17 page)

There were two or three old men working on  their allotments and they watched with open curiosity as Pascoe and Wildgoose picked their  way across to the latter's strip. It was indeed  sadly neglected though no more so than half a  dozen others.

'Here we are,' said Wildgoose. 'If you seek my  memorial, look around you.'

Pascoe bent and examined the furrowed ground. There were potatoes here still, some straggly carrot tops, something which could have been leaf  spinach.

'What happened?' he asked.

'A couple of years ago it seemed a good idea.  Self-sufficiency. Part of the male menopause.'

'You're a little young for that, surely?'

'Forty,' said Wildgoose. 'I just know a good couturier. And the male menopause has nothing  to do with age or physical changes. It has to do  with meanings.'

'And you found something more meaningful?'

'Still looking, Inspector.'

Pascoe too was looking. The rickety old shed in  which June McCarthy's body had been found stood about twenty-five yards away. As he watched,  the door opened and a man emerged. He had  a bucket in one hand and a garden fork in the  other. Carefully with the economic movements  of age and experience he began to unearth some potatoes. This was Mr Ribble, the owner of the  shed and the only one of the allotment holders that Pascoe had interviewed personally. A  man in his late sixties, he had taken the discovery of the body with a phlegm which was  to some extent explained when Pascoe found  out that he had cancer of the bowel and had already outlived the surgeon's estimate by eighteen  months.

Pascoe turned back to Wildgoose and coldly  wondered how such a diagnosis would affect his  search for meanings.

'I see you keep your greenhouse locked,' he said. 'Worried about your tomatoes?'

'I kept my tools in there,' said Wildgoose. ‘I didn't really grow much. It came with the allotment. The old boy who had it before me died  and it seemed a kindness to pay his missus a  couple of quid for the thing. Would you like a  look?'

He searched in his pocket for a key while  Pascoe examined the greenhouse from the outside. It was very much a homemade affair, more  of a converted garden shed than a proper greenhouse. It was glazed with panels of translucent  plastic which had the advantage of not being  so fragile as glass. In one or two places kids  had hurled stones without doing more damage  than denting and cracking, easily repaired with  transparent tape.

Wildgoose found the key and unlocked the padlock which fastened the door. Pascoe let him  go in first. Mrs Wildgoose had been wrong. While  you could not see clearly through the plastic, you  could certainly distinguish shapes and it would take  either irresistible passion or brazen exhibitionism  to persuade a couple to fornicate in here. Pascoe  did not dismiss the possibility. But it was unlikely  that one of the elderly gardeners would not have  passed on details of this shadowy entertainment  to Sergeant Brady.

The interior of the greenhouse smelt hot and  stuffy. There was a rusty spade in one corner, a broken hoe in another. A few earthenware plant pots were stacked along a sagging  shelf. Nothing was growing in here, though  the mummified remains of some unidentifiable  plants crowded together sadly in a propagating tray. The floor was wooden, beginning to  rot in places. A couple of sacks were draped  across a particularly decayed section. An almost  empty plastic bag of some proprietary fertilizer  lay alongside them. Pascoe's memory was stirred.  Among many other things, the laboratory examination of June McCarthy's clothes had revealed  the presence of traces of peat and other fibrous  organic material associated with gardening, precisely the kind of thing you'd expect to find in  a garden shed.

He wondered whether anyone had bothered  to make sure they were definitely present in Mr  Ribble's shed.

For Wildgoose to kill her in his greenhouse and  then lug the body twenty-five yards across the  allotment didn't seem likely. It had been early in  the morning, but broad daylight.

Still, when you had nothing, anything was  something.

He stooped to pick up the bag.

And smiled with incredulous delight as he saw  the small adhesive price tag still clinging to the  grubby plastic. The name of the retailer was still  on it.

The Linden Garden Centre.

He picked it up carefully.

'You use a lot of this stuff?' he asked.

'In the first flush of enthusiasm, I used everything,' said Wildgoose. 'Soot, blood, horse-shit,  sea-weed. Why?'

'And where did you buy your garden stuff, Mr  Wildgoose?'

'Where? Hell, wherever I was. Garden shops,  market stalls, Woolworth's even. They're very  good in Woolworth's these days.'

'Garden centres? This price tag says
Linden Garden Centre.'

'I don't remember that. Is it important?'

'It's on the East Coast Road,' said Pascoe. 'Four,  five miles.'

'Sorry. I don't recall, for all I know that stuff was  here when I took the allotment on. Don't tell me  it's a clue!'

For someone who had seemed so bright and alert to every innuendo, he was being very dim about  this, thought Pascoe.

'I'd like to take this if I may.'

'I'll need a receipt,' mocked Wildgoose. 'What  about a few old plant pots into the bargain?'

The plastic bag was leaking, Pascoe discovered,  and the remaining fertilizer was spilling out of it.  Picking up one of the old sacks from the floor, he  thrust the bag inside.

'Let's go,' he said.

'Where?'

'Why, back to your flat, of course, Mr Wildgoose.  Unless I can drop you anywhere else?'

'No, that'll be fine.'

He managed not to sound relieved.

On the drive back, Pascoe stopped by a telephone kiosk, 'to check what my boss wants next,'  he explained half grumblingly to Wildgoose.

He stopped a little later to get some cigarettes,  then got stuck behind a slow double-decker bus.

'Sorry to have taken up so much of your time,'  he said to Wildgoose as he got out of the car in  front of the house which contained the flat.

'Always a pleasure,' said Wildgoose. 'Will I see  you again?'

'Who knows? Nothing is impossible to coincidence.'

Pascoe watched Wildgoose walk jauntily up the  steps to the front door. Then he looked across  the street to make sure that there'd been time to carry out his telephoned instructions. Detective-Constable Preece sitting in a dilapidated VW Beetle raised a languid hand. He looked half asleep. Pascoe  hoped it was an act.

He drove round the corner and waited. After a  couple of minutes the door of the car opened and  Preece slid in. He still looked tired.

'OK?' said Pascoe.

Preece passed him a film cartridge.

'I shot off half a dozen,' he said. 'One should be  all right. You want me to hang about, sir?'

'Please,' said Pascoe. 'I want to know where he  goes, who he talks to.'

'These houses have got a lane running down the  back,' said Preece diffidently.

'Sorry,' said Pascoe. 'You're on your own. You'll  just have to hope he comes out of the front. Or  be in two places at the same time. Do your best. Which is to say, please don't lose him. And Preece.  It doesn't bother me if you don't sleep in your own  bed. But make bloody sure you sleep in your own  time. OK? Enjoy yourself.'

Preece nodded and left. As he walked away he  thought,
Christ! He may be politer than Dalziel but  he's just as fucking impossible!

Pascoe decided to short-circuit normal lines of  communication and drive round to the police labs  himself. These were a fairly recent acquisition, very  up to date and a source of such pride to the Chief  Constable that he tended to skirt round the fact  that shortage of space in the congested city centre  had obliged them to be built some considerable distance from the central police HQ. An efficient shuttle service had been devised and all officers  were given strict instructions that this was the only  channel to be used.

Thus Pascoe was greeted frostily by the duty officer, a fat, normally jolly man called Harry Hopper.

'You know this is against regulations,' he said.

'Oh Christ. Is it? I'm sorry, Harry,' said Pascoe.  'It's a fair cop then. You'd better complain to my  boss. Andy Dalziel, that is. I'll take what's coming  to me.'

'There's no need to threaten me,' grumbled the  other. 'All right. What do you want?'

'This developed. A couple of prints of each,' said  Pascoe, handing over the cartridge. Alongside it, he  laid the sack containing the fertilizer. 'And this to  be given the treatment. I'll hang on for the photos  if it's not going to take too long, which I'm sure it's  not. And if you could rustle me up a copy of the lab  reports on June McCarthy and on the garden shed  she was found in, it'll give me something to look  at and stop me getting impatient.'

Hopper went away, returning some time later  with the reports and a smile.

'Everyone's very busy,' he said. 'Some stuff had just come in from your Mr Dalziel - for urgent  attention, it was marked, but I told 'em if he gets  impatient we'll just have to explain that you have  priority, was that all right?'

'Bastard,' said Pascoe.

He sat down and studied the reports. At first  things looked hopeful. The fibres of fertilizer on June McCarthy's clothing were identified as probably belonging to one of three proprietary brands  and one of these was the same as that found in Wildgoose's greenhouse. But a quick glance at the  report on the examination of Mr Ribble's shed  revealed that there was a bag of the mixture in  question stored there. It was both reassuring and  disappointing to find that the reports were models  of thoroughness. It had been a long shot that such a  discrepancy might exist and have gone unnoticed,  but such things did happen.

Still, the reports didn't
disprove
that she
might 
have been in the greenhouse, thought Pascoe,  seeking a tortuous comfort. And there
was
that  odd air of a recent clear-out about it. Worth sending a team in to give it the full treatment? Not  without Dalziel's say-so, he decided. The press  would be on to it like a flash and who knows  what kind of shit Wildgoose might be provoked  into flinging about.

The photographs arrived. A couple of them, one  side, one full face, were good enough to identify  Wildgoose from.

'How's it going?' enquired Hopper. 'Getting anywhere?'

'If we are, it's too slow for human perception,'  said Pascoe. 'Thanks a lot Harry.'

'A pleasure. But like sex at my age, not one to  be repeated too frequently. Here, you might as well  take this, it's marked for you. Final report on that  last lot of clothes. Pauline Stanhope's.'

Pascoe took the sheet of paper and ran his eyes  down it.

'Anything?' he asked.

'Bugger all,' said Hopper. 'It's all wrapped up for  next-of-kin as soon as you care to release it.'

Pascoe thought a moment.

'All right,' he said. 'Look, I'm going to be seeing  her aunt. I'll take it with me. Better than just  having it pushed into her hands by some anonymous bobby.'

He signed for the small bundle of clothes and  the box containing Pauline Stanhope's watch and  other personal effects.

'Poor kid,' said Hopper. 'I've got one of my own,  just turned twenty. They think they know it all,  jobs, key of the door, getting engaged next month, but they're just kids still. I wouldn't dare tell her, but she's so bloody defenceless really. I mean, they  need protection, Peter. Get this bastard and get him  quick, will you?'

'We'll try,' said Pascoe. 'We'll try.' He glanced at  his watch. 'But not till after lunch,' he added.

And wondered as he walked away how long it took for protective cynicism to seep to the deep  heart's core.

Chapter 15

Pascoe didn't enjoy his lunch.

Using the justification that the road to the village of Shafton outside which the Linden Garden  Centre was situated could (with a detour of a mere  six or seven miles) be said to pass his door, he  decided to surprise Ellie by eating at home.

His sense of injury at finding she was out intensified when he discovered the larder was almost  bare.

A piece of antique cheese and a wrinkled apple later, he continued on his way. The deserted appearance of the Garden Centre did not improve  his mood.

It was a medium-sized operation, centred upon an old stone-built farmhouse which looked to be in  need of repair. There were two long greenhouses  abutting on what had once been a byre but was  now a garden shop. Two or three acres of land  were under cultivation, mainly to rose-bushes plus  a few rows of fruit trees and ornamental shrubs.

Even the bright sunshine could not disguise the  sense of neglect there was about the place.

Someone was moving behind the house and Pascoe headed in that direction. It was an old countryman with a wheelbarrow in which was a  sackful of what looked like bonemeal. He walked  slowly past Pascoe, saying out of the corner of his  mouth, 'Place is closed.'

'So I see,' said Pascoe, falling into step beside him. 'Who are you?'

The old man didn't answer straightaway. He had  a skin as hard, brown and cracked as the sun-baked  earth he walked on, and his eyes which were the faded blue of hydrangea remained fixed unblinkingly on his load as though he were walking a high wire.

Impatiently Pascoe produced his warrant card and thrust it under the man's nose.

'Police,' he said.

'I know that.'

'You mean, you know me?' said Pascoe, non-plussed.

'The way you walk. Talk. I know that,' said the  old man.

'Do you mind telling me who you are?' said  Pascoe wearily. 'Please.'

The old man stopped, rested the barrow and sat on its edge between the shafts.

'Agar,' he said. 'Ted Agar.'

'And what's happened here, Mr Agar.'

'Since she got herself killed, you mean?'

'Yes, since then.'

Pascoe perched himself on a stack of ornamental  slabs. He was, he realized with an amusement which helped dissipate his ill-humour, very much  in the interviewee's seat - about six inches lower  than Agar who had the sun at his back.