A Killing Kindness (25 page)

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.'