A Killing Kindness (27 page)

He thought of going round to see Lorraine  Wildgoose. But it didn't seem likely that the man  would be there and he felt he ought to be careful  about feeding the woman's obsession.

No, the girl, Andrea Valentine, seemed the best  bet. Preece had gathered that the parents were  due back this weekend, so perhaps Wildgoose was  having a last fling round there. He got in his car  and headed for Danby Row.

He spotted the house and drove slowly past. There was no sign of life. The milk was on the doorstep here too, which meant that the parents  almost certainly had not returned and the happy  couple if they were indeed inside were still probably making each other happy.

He turned at the end of the street and drove  back. Dalziel, he thought, wouldn't have driven past the first time. Young girl screwing around  with her middle-aged and married schoolteacher  - her parents had a right to know. Pascoe's softness wasn't doing anyone any good, least of all  the girl.

To some extent Pascoe had to agree. Certainly  he'd been as kind as he could. Theoretically,  suspecting that Wildgoose might have dumped  the remains of his cannabis crop in Danby Row,  he ought to have gone in there the previous day,  searching it out and slapping a possession charge  so hard on the girl that she'd try to ease the pain  by agreeing to witness the more serious charge of  cultivation and distribution against Wildgoose.

That's what he should have done. But he hadn't.  Still, don't get uptight about it, he told himself  philosophically as he leaned on the doorbell. It  was impossible to be a cop and not break the  rules. And in the great scheme of things perhaps  his being soft on cannabis compensated for the  readiness of some of his colleagues to drive home  their arguments with a fist in the gut.

There was no answer here either. He didn't want  to attract the neighbour's attention, so he went  round the side of the house. At the front there had only been a paved rectangle with a homesick  magnolia in the middle of it. Behind, however, a long narrow garden, made private and well-nigh  impenetrable by profusion of competing shrubs,  stretched down to a wall with a green-shrouded  door in it, presumably leading into a back lane.

Pascoe rapped on the rear door. There was no  response, so he tried the handle. It turned and the  unlocked door swung creakingly open.

He stepped into an old-fashioned kitchen - marble sink, solid fuel stove, a wooden clothes pulley  hanging from the ceiling, blue and white lavatorial  tiles everywhere. The Valentines obviously didn't  spend their money on home improvements. If the  parents' attitudes were like their home, they'd  have a fit when they found out what little Andrea  had been getting up to.

'Hello!' called Pascoe opening the interior door. 'Anyone home?'

His voice echoed up the stairwell, gloomy with  brown paint and dark green flocked wall paper.

'Hello,' he called again, but more softly now, not  expecting an answer.

Yet there was someone or something here, he  felt it, and his heart was suddenly tight with dread.  He found himself thinking of Wield pulling back  the tent-flap and stepping inside. What he had  found there had taken him completely by surprise.  But perhaps the anticipated horror is even worse.

Oddly, it wasn't. It was anti-climactic, a relief  almost. He pushed open another door. It led into a shadowy sitting-room. There on a threadbare chaise-longue lay Andrea Valentine. She was  wearing only a short towelling wrap, but it had  been decently arranged to effect maximum coverage. Her slippered feet were together and her hands  were crossed on her breast. On the third finger of  her left hand glowed a bright red stone set in a  circlet of silver.

Pascoe touched the hand. It was quite cold. He  looked for a moment at the blood-suffused face and knew the regrets and self-accusations that the  sight was stirring up for him.

It was no time for them now.

Ignoring the telephone in the hallway he went  out of the house the way he had come in and spoke  rapidly and urgently into his car radio.

Then he returned inside to wait.

Chapter 23

It was the story as before.

The girl had been strangled and then laid out  with limbs and features arranged to conceal the  violence of her death as much as possible. She had  been killed between midnight and two
A.M.

A unique feature was that this girl had had  sex shortly before dying. There were no signs  of force.

In a shoe-box at the back of her wardrobe  they found what they took to be the remnants of  Wildgoose's Indian hemp harvest.

All over the house, they found his fingerprints  or at least prints which corresponded with those  they found all over his flat.

But these were the only trace of the man they  found.

Pascoe went to see Lorraine Wildgoose.

'What's happened?' she said.

He tried to by-pass the question, but she was not  easy to by-pass, so he told her.

'You'll want to look around,' she said. 'To make  sure I'm not hiding him. Jesus!'

Feeling foolish, Pascoe looked. Fortunately the  children were both out.

'You don't seem very surprised. Or shocked,' he  suggested.

'What do you want, hypocrisy?' she asked fiercely. 'Who put you on to him in the first place?'

'It's still only surmise,' he urged gently. 'We just  want to talk to him.'

'What do you mean, surmise?'

'All right, the evidence points that way, but  we've got to talk to him first. If he does get in  touch, you'll let us know?'

'If possible I'll crack the bastard's skull and bring him in personally,' she said.

Pascoe regarded her uneasily. Was she fit to be  left alone?

'Is there anyone you could go to? Parents perhaps. You and the children,' he began.

'Go? Why?'

'For the children's sake, I mean,' he said quickly. 'Once the press get on to it, they'll be round here  straightaway. And they have the same notions of  delicacy as a pack of wolves.'

'I'm beyond sensitivity, Mr Pascoe,' she said.

'But not your children, perhaps.'

'You may be right,' she said more soberly. 'Thanks for the advice.'

'If you do go, let us have an address,' said Pascoe.  'Goodbye, Mrs Wildgoose.'

He was glad to get away, less glad when he  returned to Danby Row and found the Valentines  had just returned from their holiday. They were  a tiny couple, at first fragile in grief, but then  growing fierce in anger and inclined to talk as if the police were the perpetrators rather than  the investigators of the crime. Neighbours were  summoned to placate them, neighbours who had  already been questioned and had heard nothing  unusual from inside the house the previous night though one thought she may have heard a rustling in the garden as she summoned her cat shortly after midnight.

The same woman had seen Wildgoose visit the  house a couple of times, but only in daylight and  never staying long enough for 'anything to happen'. Sin, she clearly thought, needed working at.

So Wildgoose had been most discreet, a sensible  trait in a man of his profession. The sedated Valentines knew him only as one of Andrea's teachers.  The suggestion that he might have been having  an affair with their daughter seemed to take them  aback almost as much as the murder.

Pascoe sneaked away now to ring Ellie. It was six o'clock already and he could see a long night  unwinding before him.

There was a worrying delay before she answered  the phone, but she assured him she'd just been  sunbathing in the garden.

'People used to hire light aeroplanes to fly overhead in the hope of glimpsing my naked flesh,' she said in self-mockery. 'Now they use radar to avoid  hitting it. What's new with you, darling?'

He was reluctant to puncture her light mood,  but he couldn't stop her listening to the news on  the radio.

'Oh Peter,' she said after he had told her. 'How  old do you say? Oh Jesus. And Mark Wildgoose is  definitely your man?'

'He's certainly top of the list at the moment!'

'Poor Lorraine. I must ring her.'

'Don't use up too much sympathy. I've just seen  her. She's got a bad case of the I-told-you-so's.'

'She has to cover up somehow. Peter, listen, I don't know if you've found out yet or if it's useful,  but I can tell you where Mark Wildgoose was last  night. Presumably that poor girl too.'

'You can? Well, come on, Sherlock!'

'It was Thelma. She was round here today. We  were talking about Lorraine and she said that last  night she'd seen Lorraine's husband at the disco  at the Aero Club. There's one every Friday and  Saturday night, evidently.'

'And Thelma goes to discos!' said Pascoe disbelievingly.

'Why not? But no, not really. This was different.  There's been a bit of trouble recently, suggestions  that kids under eighteen were buying the hard  stuff, that sort of thing. Well, Bernard Middlefield  JP, you probably know him, he's on the Club committee and he took it on himself to conduct  a personal investigation. Thelma heard about this and she doesn't much care for Middlefield or his  attitudes, so she took it on herself to turn up  too and provide an objective check on his conclusions.'

'Objective!' snorted Pascoe. 'And Wildgoose?'

'She noticed him late on. He didn't do much  dancing. In fact she said he didn't seem too happy. Well, surrounded by sixteen-year-olds mainly from  his own school, who'd blame him?'

'He could have stayed at home with a good book. Anyway, thanks, love. We'd have got there soon  enough, but this saves a bit of leg-work. Now look,  just take me when I come, OK? Don't wait up if  you get tired. You're sure you're all right now?'

'Yes, I'm fine,' she said irritably. 'Take care,  Peter. Don't beat up anyone I wouldn't beat up.'

'Ha ha,' said Pascoe. 'Bye.'

The technicians were finished with the house in Danby Row now and soon it was left to grief and  silence. It was a relief to be back in the busy,  functional Murder Room.

Dalziel had put the full national machinery of  pursuit into motion. Locally, bus stations, railway stations, taxi and car-hire firms were checked  thoroughly as were hotels and lodging-houses.  Descriptions were issued to the media and, despite  the fact that Wildgoose's passport, all visa'd for his  approaching tour, was found in his flat, seaports  and airports were alerted too.

‘You're sure he's our man?' said Pascoe uneasily.

'I'm sure I want to talk to him,’ said Dalziel,  belching. 'Christ. It's after eight o'clock and I've  not had a proper meal today. Why shouldn't he  be our man?'

'Well, no reason. Except, maybe, the sex. I mean,  before there's never been . . .'

'Before he's never killed anyone he's been screwing,' interrupted Dalziel. 'All right, he's not  a sex killer, the killing and the screwing don't go  together. But that's no reason why he shouldn't  enjoy it. I mean, he's having an affair with this  kid, with the others he wasn't.'

'Then why kill her at this moment?'

'For fuck's sake, Peter, you know a better moment, you show me it!'

'There was the ring,' stuck in Wield.

'The ring?'

'Yes, sir. On her engagement finger. Mr Pascoe said that Dr Pottle said . . .'

'Pottle snottle!' snarled Dalziel. 'What the hell  can a ring have to do with it? Look, let's just find  the sod and pull bits off him till he gives us a few  answers.'

'Don't let it bother you,' said Pascoe as Dalziel  moved away. 'It's the time of the month.'

'Or he's not so sure,' said Wield.

'He's right about the ring, though. I mean, if  Wildgoose gave it to her, then he's not likely to  kill her for wearing it!'

'And if he did give it to her, he was jumping the  gun a bit, wasn't he?' added Wield.

'We'll probably find out at the Aero Club,' said  Pascoe. 'Preece! Come here. I want to take you to  a disco.'

As he explained in the car, his reasons for  choosing Preece were that the DC could pass  for a dissolute twelve-year-old in the dusk with  the strobe behind him. But in the event, such  diplomatic considerations proved unnecessary. As Pascoe had observed before, this younger generation who were supposed to hold the police  in greater fear and distrust than any previous  age certainly had strange ways of showing it.  Though it was still relatively early, the Aero Club  was crowded, the curtains drawn so that evening  sunlight should not interfere with the electronic  glories within, and the whole place throbbing to a  violent beat. Once identified as the fuzz, they were  rapidly surrounded by a throng of enthusiastic  potential witnesses whose demeanour was far from  fearful.

'Sergeant, you and Preece pick the bones out  of this lot and I'll join my own age group,' said  Pascoe.

'Not many bones here, sir,' said Preece, unambiguously enjoying the pressure of a pair of fourteen- year-old breasts whose fullness bore splendid testimony to the benefits of the National Health service.

Pascoe's 'own age group' consisted of Bernard  Middlefield, Thelma Lacewing and Austin Greenall,  the secretary, who were standing together looking  far more distressed than any of the dead girl’s contemporaries. The first two had both heard the  news on the radio, recognized its relevance to  their own whereabouts the previous night, and  been drawn here again by motives which were  not yet clear.

'You know Mark Wildgoose, sir?' Pascoe asked  Middlefield.

'Not at all. But I noticed him last night. He stuck  out, that much older than the rest. I asked who  he was.'

'And you know him, sir?' Pascoe addressed  Greenall.

'No,' said the secretary. 'He hadn't been here before. But Thelma, Miss Lacewing, she knew  him.'

'I'm a friend of his wife. As you probably know,'  said Thelma Lacewing.

'Yes. How was he behaving?' asked Pascoe. 'Anything unusual?'

'What's usual at something like this?' asked  Middlefield. 'I'm going to be suggesting to the  committee that we put a stop to this kind of  thing. This is a flying club, supposed to be, not  a sex-maniacs' kindergarten!'

'Most of their parents are members,
they
are all  potential members, and it subsidizes your cheap  gin-and-tonics the rest of the week,' flashed the  woman.