Rreginald Hill - A Killing kindness

'Like my guts,’ said Dalziel, beating his belly and belching. 'You didn't find out what she was doing early yesterday morning, between say midnight and four A.M.?'

'No,' said Pascoe. 'You don't really believe that… no, I'm sorry, sir. I didn't think.'

'You're probably right. Any road, I've told that lass with her to check as best she can, talk to the kids, that sort of thing. Better safe than sorry. She did hate the poor sod and she looks tough enough. That'd be the best solution too. He's the Choker, runs home for solace after killing the Valentine girl, wife bumps him off and buries him. End of case.'

'And who phones the Evening Post on Saturday afternoon?' wondered Pascoe.

'Who knows? Mebbe we've got a Joker as well as a Choker,' said Dalziel. 'We've got at least four voices on tape so far according to Laurel and Hardy, haven't we?'

'Urquhart and Gladmann,’ said Pascoe. 'Yes. But yesterday afternoon only the Choker knew the girl was dead.'

'The Choker and anyone he might have told before he got himself killed,' urged Dalziel gently. 'What do your experts say about yesterday's voice anyway?'

'Nothing,' said Pascoe who had checked that the envelope was still at the desk. 'They must both be away for the weekend.'

Dalziel snorted his derision for people who had weekends away, a derision which included Wield whose day off it was and who had been heading north on his motorbike too early for even the long arm of Dalziel to haul him in.

Wildgoose had been knocked unconscious by a single blow at the top of the spine, either a very lucky or a very expert punch. Then he had been strangled. The only other point of significance was that he had had sexual intercourse not long before death.

'If we assume that he himself is not the Choker,' said Pascoe in deference to what he felt was probably a merely provocative theory on Dalziel's part, 'then it seems likely that after he left the girl, the Choker, who was perhaps waiting outside, moves swiftly in and kills her. As he leaves in his turn, he runs into Wildgoose who has returned for some reason.'

'Seconds,' said Dalziel ghoulishly.

'The Choker kills him. Carts him away. Presumably he has transport.'

'But why?' interrupted Dalziel. 'Why not leave the body in the house? I mean, why not lug the guts into the kitchen and take off rather than risk meeting someone in the back lane?'

Pascoe started inwardly. Dalziel was full of surprises. Lug the guts. Despite his mockery, had he too been studying Hamlet closely for whatever clues it might contain? Or was it just coincidence? There was no art to read Dalziel's mind in his ten-acre face.

'Perhaps he felt it would spoil the set-up there.' he answered. 'Girl neatly laid out, all decent and proper. Religious almost.'

'Or perhaps he just wanted to trail a red herring,' said Dalziel. 'Make us think that Wildgoose did it.'

'It's another link anyway,' said Pascoe. 'Burying him at the Garden Centre, I mean.'

'Aye, but what's it signify?'

'That's what we're paid to find out, sir,' said Pascoe sententiously.

If that were so, they did not earn their money that Sunday.

In hospital Dave Lee was well enough to work out that perhaps he could trade off his allegations of brutality against Dalziel's accusations of complicity. Ms Pritchard accompanied Mrs Lee during visiting hours and later to the station.

Dalziel, encountering them in the vestibule, refused a private audience, listened impatiently for a couple of minutes, got the drift and bellowed, 'You do what you bloody well like, my girl. Me, I've got more important things to occupy myself with. Like murder. Like the Choker.'

'You don't seem to be doing so well in that field either,' said the solicitor coolly.

'No, I'm not,' snarled Dalziel. 'And one reason why I'm not is that your client, if that's what he is, came as near as damn to catching this man in the act. And instead of getting hold of the police, he robbed the victim. And hid the body. And misled the police. And delayed the investigation. And probably made a large contribution to at least two more women and one man getting killed in the past five days. You tell him that, love. And if you don't care to, mebbe I'll come in and shout it down his ear-hole till his stitches pop!'

‘There's no need to get excited,' said Ms Pritchard.

'You couldn't excite me on a desert island, love,' said Dalziel.

'That wasn't exactly conciliatory,' said Pascoe as they moved rapidly away.

'You don't conciliate that sort,' said Dalziel. 'Make 'em think you're a thick, racist, sexist pig. Then they underestimate you and overreach themselves.'

'Ah,' said Pascoe and wondered privately what strange self-image Dalziel kept locked away in his heart.

Thereafter it was a day of routine. Plain-clothes men going from house to house in Shafton village, checking whereabouts, taking statements; lines of men in dark blue moving slowly through the bands of red and yellow and pink and orange and white in the rose field, stooping and searching like gleaners after the harvest; Pascoe sitting in the Murder Room going painstakingly through every statement as it came in; Dalziel moving slowly around in threatening anger, like a tornado distantly glimpsed in a mid-West landscape and fled by all who saw it.

The taxi-driver who had taken Wildgoose and Andrea Valentine to the Aero Club was finally found.

The man who had taken them from the Club had been easier to track because his company was known. He had already made a statement saying that, after first directing him to Danby Row, they had changed their minds and asked to be dropped in Bright Avenue which ran at right-angles to Danby Row. As this gave access to the lane which ran behind the girl's house, it was presumed they had used the back entrance to avoid attracting attention.

The earlier driver had picked them up from Wildgoose's flat about nine-forty-five. They were both quite high, but he got the impression that it was the girl who wanted to be going out while the man was less enthusiastic. The girl had instructed him to drive to the Aero Club.

Dalziel now insisted on a check being made on the alleged whereabouts of every man concerned with the case between midnight and two A.M. on Saturday morning. He even got the man on duty at the hospital to confirm that Lee and Ron Ludlam were safely tucked up in bed all night. He himself did the check on Alistair Mulgan and Bernard Middlefield. The bank manager had watched the midnight movie on television by himself. His wife had gone to bed to read, had heard the television noise as she lay there and was able to confirm that her husband had come to bed as soon as the film finished at one-thirty.

'Good film, was it?' said Dalziel.

Mulgan cleared his throat and then gave a detailed resume of the plot. Dalziel was not impressed. The picture had been shown at least twice before. But, while Danby Row was within walking distance, just, to get Wildgoose's body to the Garden Centre needed a car and Mrs Mulgan was adamant that the car had not left the garage which was next door to her bedroom in the bungalow.

Bernard Middlefield was approached rather less directly. Dalziel couldn't see him as a killer, certainly not of the kind described by Dr Pottle. But he was a customer at Brenda Sorby's bank, his company works were next to the Eden Park Canning Plant where June McCarthy had been employed, and he had been at the Aero Club the night Andrea Valentine was killed. So Dalziel treated him as a witness and only obliquely enquired about his own movements that night.

It emerged that he had stayed on after the disco finished. He hadn't noticed Wildgoose and the girl leave in particular, though he had said goodnight to Thelma Lacewing.

'What time would that be?' wondered Dalziel.

'Eleven. Eleven-fifteen. I don't know exactly.'