Rreginald Hill: A Killing kindness

'All right, all right,' said Pascoe, disturbed by what for Ellie was an untypical flight of fantasy. 'So…?'

'So for a moment, that girl is out of our time and into, say, the early Mesolittyic period. The water runs clear. And because of the time shift, it's still daylight. And those faces, what did she say, "like beasts at their watering", small wary brown-skinned people, Cresswellians perhaps, or some tribe of prehistoric man. And the birds she saw, pterodactyls perhaps.'

'Jesus!' said Pascoe.

'All right. Be dismissive. But it seems to me that this famous open mind you're always yapping about is about as open as a bank on Saturday.'

'I was merely expressing surprise at the depth of your knowledge of prehistory,' he protested speciously.

She looked sheepish.

'I know about as much as you, she admitted. 'That's why I wanted the transcript. Thelma was in on the dig, it's one of her hobbies. I thought she might be able to put me right.'

'A lady of many parts, that one,' said Pascoe. 'Mainly untouched by human hand, or so she would have us believe.'

'What on earth can you mean?' she said, grinning.

'All right,' he said, opening his briefcase. 'Here it is. We've got a copy at the station, but don't lose it all the same. Though strictly speaking, it's hardly an official document! And in return, promise me you won't let those viragos con you into taking on more than you can cope with. OK?'

'Yes, sir,' she said.

He kissed her again, sternly, and left.

But as he backed out of the drive he suddenly thought pterodactyls and chuckled so much he almost hit the milkman.

Nevertheless something of what Ellie had said must have tickled his subconscious, for when he found himself crawling in the nine o'clock traffic which seemed likely to stretch all the way to ten, almost without taking a conscious decision he turned down a side street and ten minutes later found himself driving through the gates of Charter Park.

The dry weather had baked the ground so hard that even the odd thunderstorm hadn't softened it and the turf was very little cut up so far. But it was well worn and strewn with litter like the route of a Blind School paperchase. Pascoe wondered how long the fair would survive. It had changed considerably even in the comparatively few years he had known it.

Up until the First World War it had been one of the great horse-fairs. There were still people who could recall the days when drovers and gypsies came from all over the North and the roadsides for miles on the approaches to the town were lined with caravans, not the sleek, shining motorized caravans of today, but the old wooden ones, gold and green and red and blue. Gradually during the century, its character had changed in the direction of a pure pleasure fair, but horses had still been sold as recently as the early 'sixties. But there had been growing complaints, not least from the regular fairground people who considered themselves several cuts above the Romanys and objected to their presence on all kinds of grounds, notably their hygienic deficiencies, both human and equine. The Showman's Guild added its weight to the protests and when a small herd of gypsy ponies broke loose from the Park and trotted through the centre of town, causing several accidents and much indignation, horses were finally banned from Charter Park. There was still a small gypsy presence at the Fair, but the main gypsy encampment was now on a stretch of the old airfield to the south and most of their business was done door-to-door rather than at the fairground.

So pleasure had won the day, but even the taste for pleasure changes and fairs are limited in the ways they can keep up with these changes. Also, though in the past this had traditionally been the city's holiday fortnight, and many people still stuck to the habit, many more objected to being told when they should or should not go on holiday. Another decade, thought Pascoe, and the High Fair could well be another casualty in the war for individual rights.

But at the moment it still covered a great deal of ground. Quiet now, though there was plenty of movement in the caravan park, his mind peopled it with the milling crowds of a hot summer's night. After ten-thirty when the pubs closed, there would have been a new influx of noisy and not very perceptive pleasure-seekers. Easy for one girl, or one couple, to pass unnoticed here. But how had Brenda Sorby got here in the first place?

Pascoe walked slowly over the fairground, deep in thought. One possibility was that the girl had met someone she knew on the way home last Thursday night and accepted an invitation to go to the fair. But it was after eleven P.M., so he would have needed to be very persuasive. Perhaps she had simply been offered a lift home and it wasn't till the car was moving that the Fair had been mentioned. By the time they got here, the storm would have broken, the crowds be heading for home. But that still left the fair people who would be clearing up, mopping up, counting up for another hour or so. So had she just sat in the car for that time? Perhaps she was already dead or unconscious? Perhaps…

He was walking past a fortune-teller's tent and the sight of it made him think of Sergeant Wield's experience the previous day. He had recounted it jokingly to Ellie when he got home but she had not been amused. It strikes me you can do with all the help you can get, she had said. She seemed to be taking these murders very personally. Perhaps an emotional side effect of her condition? He had had more sense than to say so!

He reached the small landing-stage where the hire-boats were moored.

Joe, the boatman, was not there yet for which Pascoe was grateful. He was the kind of surly suspicious Yorkshireman who at birth probably examined his mother's breast closely for several minutes before accepting the offer. But at least he made a definite witness.

No, he didn't recognize the photo of Brenda Sorby. No, there was no boat unaccounted for. No, there was no one who had come back alone.

Forced to admit that the sudden storm had brought the boaters back in a bit of a rush, he grudgingly conceded that a foursome might have come back as a threesome. But no singles, and he'd seen 'em all. Rain or no rain, he checked the gear in each boat before refunding the two pound deposit; and all deposits had been returned.

But the Choker must have used a boat. The nearest bridge giving access to the isthmus was a mile downstream, too far to risk carrying a body. In any case, why come so far to dump it?

The only alternative was that the Choker was one of the barge people, a theory approved by Andy Dalziel who tended to lump all people who lived itinerant lives together as 'dirty gyppos'. Pascoe, however, had done a paper at university on the education of 'travelling children' in England and knew that the attitudes and lifestyles of the different societies varied considerably. Fairground and circus folk, for instance, were generally speaking much concerned about their children's schooling, and where they could afford it, often sent them to private boarding-schools. Gypsies on the other hand were much more suspicious of 'the system', and much more conscious of their independence from it, a consciousness which made integration of their children into any conventional school much more difficult. The barge people in the same way had once presented an even greater problem, but one which had been in part solved by time and the disappearance of their way of life as canal traffic ceased to be economically viable. There were signs of a resurgence recently and no doubt, thought Pascoe, the problem too would return.

Meanwhile he had ensured that everyone in any kind of craft on the canal that night was traced and interviewed. All had been in company, all reasonably alibied, none had heard anything. In any case the signs were that the girl had been put into the water from the bank, not a boat. There were traces of mud on her dress corresponding to that in a shallow groove in the bank close by the place where the body was found.