Rreginald Hill: A Killing kindness

Pascoe was impressed. She'd cut right to the source of his question. Not that you needed to be a mind-reader, but it was a good policeman's trick.

'So you've left your niece in charge of the future?'

Lucky old Wield.

'I didn't feel able today,' she said. 'I don't put on a show. It's got to be right.'

'What about Pauline?'

Mrs Stanhope made an entirely un-English moue of dismissal.

'Palmistry,' she said. 'It's a craft. You learn it.'

Pascoe decided to do a bit of short-cutting himself.

'I'm afraid you're not going to be able to get an apology out of us, Mrs Stanhope. It wasn't our doing. A denial perhaps, but I tried that yesterday and you saw the report. I'm sorry it upset you.'

'I'm not upset, Inspector,' she said. 'Don't heed our Pauline. She probably told you I'm not very practical? Well, I'm practical enough to let her think so. She needs to be looking after folks, that one. It probably comes of never knowing her mother.'

'You brought her up from birth, I believe,' said Pascoe. 'I'm surprised she doesn't regard you as her mother.'

'She did when she was young, poor mite. But she had to be told. I remember she was twelve and casting her own horoscope. It wouldn't come right. Well, it wouldn't, would it? Bert and me had always decided to tell her. It was a relief in a way.'

'Why so?'

'She knew about me and my background. I'm proud of it, why not? And Bert always used to joke that he'd stolen me from the gypsies. Pauline and me, we got very close, but I could see it was a bit difficult for a young lass thinking she'd got a gypsy mother but not feeling of the blood, if you follow. It were odd, but when we told her, it seemed to bring us even closer together.'

'And finally she joined that side of the family business?'

'She could hardly become an engine-driver, could she, even in this age,' said Rosetta Stanhope lightly.

'I believe it's possible,' said Pascoe, suddenly picturing Thelma Lacewing wiping her brow with an oily rag on the footplate of the 'Flying Scotsman'. 'But tell me, Mrs Stanhope, if you're not here to complain, threaten, or cast a gypsy's curse, why have you come?'

She leaned forward and tapped his desk significantly. Or perhaps she was knocking on wood?

‘I was upset last night, Inspector. Not by the paper, though that irritated me. I was upset by the contact I'd made with that poor girl. I hardly slept. I just kept on getting impressions; no, not visions or words, nothing definite like that; but, like colours and feelings. I let Pauline think it was just the newspaper report that had upset me. I wanted to think things out for myself.'

'So what do you want, Mrs Stanhope?'

She opened her youthfully clear brown eyes in big surprise.

'I want to do what that Evening Post said I was doing already,' she said. 'I've come to help you with your enquiries.'

When Sergeant Wield reached Charter Park the fairground was doing good business. It was a fine sunny day with just enough breeze to cool a fevered brow and send little puffs of cloud, picturesque to the point of artificiality, drifting across the deep blue cyclorama above. The green of the grass and trees, the sparkling band of the river, the bright brash music of the steam organ, all these combined to produce a pleasantly euphoric sensation in the sergeant's breast which he allowed to surface in the form of a light almost soundless whistle through gently pursed lips.

His reaction when he reached the fortune-teller's tent and found the flap closed and a folding chair pushed against it to which was pinned a card saying BACK SOON was disappointment, but it was a purely professional emotion. Pascoe's winks and nods about Pauline Stanhope's fancy for him were seeds on the stoniest of ground. Wield's self-containment and reticence were not linked, as the amateur psychologist might have guessed, to his fearsome appearance. They derived from his early recognition that the best way to conceal one thing was to conceal all things, to have so many secrets that the only important one would not be suspected. And this was that he was wholly and uncompromisingly homosexual. In the police, the usual circular syndrome applied. Homosexuals were disapproved of because they were blackmail risks because they were secretive because they were disapproved of…

Ten years earlier Wield had found himself growing increasingly fond of a man called Maurice Eaton, a Post Office executive who was even more anxious than Wield about the damage an open liaison might do to his career. But they had reached the stage of discussing setting up house together in Yorkshire when Eaton was offered a promotion in the North-East. To Wield, the move had seemed tragic at the time, but soon a routine of weekends in Newcastle and holidays abroad had been established which, while it was not without its tensions and dangers, had proved viable for a decade. But though having the centre of his emotional life a hundred miles away had made him 'safe', it also made him a bit of a cypher. Institutions do not like what they do not understand and now he was stuck at sergeant with younger men like Pascoe leapfrogging over his head.

Eventually something would give, he felt it in his bones. Meanwhile, on with the job.

The stall closest to the fortune-telling tent was an old fashioned 'penny-roll' at which coins were rolled down grooved ramps to land on a numbered chequer board, winning the amount stated if the coin fell plumb in the middle of a square. The man in charge shrugged indifferently, but his sharp-featured helpmeet believed she had seen Pauline leave about twenty minutes earlier. So BACK SOON could mean an hour or so yet.

He ought to get back to the station. He felt a little guilty at the way he had turned a blind eye to Rosetta Stanhope as he left, but it had seemed amusing to reinforce Pascoe's impression that he was more concerned with the good-looking niece than the old aunt. But it was very pleasant being out in the sunshine and he found himself asking the penny-roll woman if she knew where he might find Dave Lee.

She gave him a sharp, inquisitive look, then said, 'He could be on the dodgems, or the waltzer. He helps around when they're busy.'

'He doesn't have anything of his own then? A stall, I mean?'

The woman answered sneeringly, 'He's pure didicoi, not real fair people, don't like regular work, them. There is a stall, a lot of gypsy tat if you ask me. Over there, by the river. You're a copper, aren't you?'

'No, I'm his rich uncle from Australia,' said Wield gravely.

The dodgems and the waltzer producing no sign of Lee, he made his way to the stall which did nothing to make him feel the penny-roll woman had been unjust. Even in this temple of tawdriness, this looked extra tawdry and the dark-skinned woman with high, aristocratic cheekbones, one of which was livid with a wide bruise, seemed to be making little effort to entice customers.

'I'm looking for Dave Lee,' said Wield.

'What for? Are you going to arrest the bastard?' she answered.

'Just talk.'

'Pity. Why not put him in jail for a while?'

She seemed sincere.

'Why? What's he done?'

'Him? What hasn't he?'

Suddenly she seemed to tire of the conversation as if even resentment and hatred could not stimulate her interest for long.

'He's not here,' she said flatly.

'Where might he be?'

She shrugged. Wield consulted his notebook.

'You don't have a trailer here, do you? Could he have gone back to the encampment?'

Another shrug. Wield's patience began to go.

'All right. Come on.'

'Come on where?'

'To the station.'

'Me? What have I done?'

The interest had been restimulated.

'You? What haven't you?' mimicked Wield.

She swore. He didn't understand Romany, but he had no doubt what she was calling him.