Rreginald Hill: A Killing kindness

'I read what you said,' said Wield.

'Well then.'

'You said you were at the Fair from eight till eleven, mainly on the dodgems.'

'Yes.'

'And you didn't see anyone resembling the dead girl during that time.'

'That's right. ‘You don't sleep at Charter Park, do you?'

'No. They stopped the ponies a few years back. Said they were dangerous. Like that short-arse fool.'

'So you came back here to your caravan at night. How?'

'I've a van. That's it there. Licensed and insured.'

'I never suggested it wasn't,' said Wield. 'But I'll check. I've done a lot of checking on you already, Mr Lee.'

'So?'

'So I know all about you. You've a nasty temper.'

The man shrugged.

'Against women too. I saw a woman today at your stall. She'd had a nasty crack.'

'She's a clumsy bitch.'

'Yes. Rape too. You've not stopped short of that, have you?'

This at last restarted the torrent of words, but not English. Wield said finally, 'Shut up or I'll pull your balls off.'

The man subsided, then burst out again. 'There wasn't no rape! No conviction! Rape that slut? Stick feathers on a chicken!'

'All right, all right,' said Wield impatiently. 'Where was your van parked?'

'Behind the stall,' he answered sullenly.

'And you just drove back here? Straight back? At eleven?'

'Eleven, half past. I don't know. It started raining. We packed the stuff from the stall into the van like every night.'

'We?'

'My wife and me. You met her you said. Then back here.'

'And no doubt she'll confirm this? And that you then went to bed and slept peacefully all night?'

The man didn't bother to answer.

'All right,' said Wield. 'Now tell me about Madame Rashid.'

He had a sense at that moment of the gypsy's receptivity being turned up a notch, though there was no outer physical sign.

'You know her?'

'Yes.'

'In fact she's a relation of yours, isn't that so?'

'She married a gorgio,' he said. 'Many years ago.'

'And her niece. You know her too?'

'I see her at the park.'

Wield paused. He'd no idea why he'd introduced this line of questioning. It wasn't going anywhere.

He decided on the heavily significant abrupt conclusion.

'All right,' he said. That's it.'

'What?'

'Out.'

The big gypsy got out of the car and shut the door with a force that shook Wield. An older grey-haired man with a ruddy open face who had been hanging around close by approached Lee and exchanged words with him in rapid Romany. Wield leaned out of his window and beckoned to the newcomer.

'Who're you?' he demanded.

'Me, pal? I'm Silvester. Silvester Herne's my name, pal.'

'Are you the boss of this lot? The king or whatever you call it?'

'Me, pal?' he said again, looking amazed. 'Just an old gypsy, just old Silvester.'

'Well, old Silvester, see if you can get it into your friend's thick skull. I'm not happy about him. I'll be back. Meanwhile, get that fence mended, stop them ponies straying. Or you'll all be in trouble. Right?'

'Right, pal,' said Herne, beaming co-operation. 'Straightaway!'

That was telling them! thought Wield as he drove away, but years of experience had taught him that telling gypsies anything was like talking to the trees. Not that he objected to gypsies as such, though the untidiness of their life made him shudder. If anything, he felt a sneaking sympathy with them as outcasts and envy of them as defiant outcasts. And perhaps there was some atavistic fear in his attitude also. He had certainly been more affected by Rosetta Stanhope's trance yesterday than he cared to reveal.

He should have gone back to the station but instead he found himself driving to his own flat, where he made himself a cup of tea. It was a gloomy place, he thought dejectedly. Even on the brightest of days the small north-facing windows let little light in. And it was drab and impersonal. Not many people visited him here apart from his married sister and the young nephew whose cassette recorder he had used at the seance. But the secretive element in his make-up drew him to the anonymous and noncommittal in all but the most private areas of life.

Reacting against the thought, he picked up his phone and dialled Maurice's business number in Newcastle. But when the phone was answered he replaced it without speaking. They had an agreement. All contact to be private except in extreme emergency. This was no emergency though somehow it felt as if there might be an emergency in the offing, like an area of low pressure over the Atlantic on the telly weather chart.

When he finally drank his tea it was quite cold and he saw with dismay that he had been sitting totally abstracted for more than an hour. It was after three-thirty.

He left the flat hurriedly. Pascoe was going to want to know how he'd spent his time. He would not be pleased. As for Dalziel…

At least he ought to be able to say he'd spoken to Pauline Stanhope.

He drove back to Charter Park, but swore under his breath when he saw the chair with the BACK SOON sign still outside Madame Rashid's tent. What the hell did SOON mean to a fortune-teller?

It ought to mean something.

Suddenly uneasy, he pushed the chair aside and opened the flap.

It was dark inside, dark and musty. The triangle of light from the opening fell across a plain trestle table.

'Oh Jesus,' said Wield.

He took two steps forward. Looked down. Retreated. As he pulled the flap down and replaced the chair with the sign a pair of young girls approached. One said boldly while the other giggled, 'Are you the fortune-teller, mister?'

'No,' said Wield. 'She's gone.'

'When will she be back?'

He gestured at the sign, then hurried away towards his car to radio for assistance.

BACK SOON. But from where?

Across the trestle table, her legs dangling off one end but her arms neatly crossed over her breast, lay the body of Pauline Stanhope.

She had been strangled.

'Not a good advert, this,' said Dalziel. 'Like a butcher getting food poison.'

'Yes, sir,' said Pascoe, though his more exact mind found the analogy imprecise and therefore dissatisfying. He didn't say so, but wondered what the newspapers might make of a murder in a fortune-teller's tent.

The press were imminent, of course. The discovery of a crime by an experienced officer gives the police a head start in getting their investigation under way free from public or professional interference. But once they start, the news speeds like a run on the pound even from sites much more sequestered than a busy fairground. A rope barrier had been erected around the tent to keep the public back. The police doctor had examined the body briefly, pronounced the girl dead, probable cause strangulation, probable time two to four hours earlier. Next, at Pascoe's suggestion, because of the smallness of the internal area, a single detective had been sent in on hands and knees, armed with a high-powered torch and a plastic bag, to pick over every inch of the floor space before the photographer and fingerprint men further trampled the already well crushed grass. Another couple of men were put to examining the turf in the environs of the tent, but the passage of so many feet there made it a token gesture.

Next, photographs were taken from all angles, sketches made, distances measured. Then the fingerprint boys, who had been dusting the chair and notice outside, moved in and did the chair and table inside with the body still in situ. Finally, after Dalziel had stood and looked phlegmatically at the corpse for a few minutes, he gave the order for it to be slid into its plastic bag and taken to the mortuary where the clothes would be carefully removed and despatched to the lab for examination.

Now the print men did the rest of the table before it and the chairs were also packaged and despatched to the lab.