Rreginald Hill: A Killing kindness

'I'd love to, but another time. I've got things to do and his lordship's got to be launched after lunch. Per ardua ad astra, as they say.'

He left and Ellie fluttered her eyebrows at Thelma.

'Now he seems nice, Thelma.'

'He's bearable,' she said noncommittally. 'When he came six months ago I thought Christ, another ex-RAF wizard-show chauvinist pig. But he was a nice surprise. I think he's got genuine sympathy with the feminist position.'

'I bet,' grinned Ellie.

'That, if I may say so, is the kind of crack that comes from too close an association with the racist, sexist constabulary.'

'Is that so? And perhaps you'll now explain how you come to be rolling around with evident pleasure in this male chauvinist sty,' said Ellie.

'Why, to overcome my fear of flying, of course,' said Thelma, wide eyes wider with surprise. 'Now let's eat. Ellie, you've nearly finished your drink. Would you like something else? A quart of warm milk, perhaps.'

Ellie giggled girlishly.

'You'll think I'm silly,' she said coyly. 'But being like this and all, I get these funny urges, you know how we mothers-to-be are, and whenever I eat scampi and get put down at the same time, I've just got to have a couple of glasses of Dom Perignon. It brings up the wind so nicely!'

Andy Dalziel, according to much of his acquaintance, had a very simplistic approach to life. He saw everything as either black or dark blue. In this they were mistaken. Life was richly coloured for the fat man; full of villainy and vice, it was true, but with shifting shades and burning pigments, like Hogarthian scenes painted by Renoir.

Pascoe understood this. 'He detects with his balls,' he had once told Ellie gloomily.

To Pascoe's rational mind, there was still some doubt whether Brenda Sorby's murder was truly in sequence with the other two strangulations.

'She wasn't laid out like the other two,' he said. 'In fact the body was hidden, whereas with the others, the killer obviously wanted it to be found. Also, to let herself be picked up at that time of night (and there had to be a car – she wasn't going to walk five miles to the canal!), it had to be someone she knew.'

Dalziel wasn't much interested. He knew it was part of the sequence. But he didn't mind exploding a younger colleague.

'Mebbe she just scrambled away and fell in. He wouldn't be about to jump in after her, would he? Or mebbe he left her for dead, all neatly laid out, and she recovered enough to roll over. Splash! Or mebbe he was disturbed and just slipped her over the edge, not wanting her to be found while he was still so close in the vicinity. And as for the car, mebbe he pulled her into it, threatened her with a knife, even knocked her out. Or mebbe it was someone she'd trust without knowing him, a copper, say. What were you doing that night, Peter?'

Laughter (Dalziel's). End of discussion.

Curiously, the one thing which seemed to confirm the superintendent's judgement that Brenda's death was linked with the others, he had treated most dismissively.

'Anyone can make a phone call,' he said. 'And everyone's got a Complete Shakespeare. I've got a Complete Shakespeare!'

Pascoe sat in his office and studied the pathologist's reports which he knew almost off by heart. All three women had been strangled by someone using both hands. The bruising on their necks indicated this and the cartilage in the area of the voice boxes was fractured to a degree which demonstrated the violence and strength of the attack. But the pathologist was adamant that Brenda Sorby had not been quite dead when she went into the water… all over me, choking, the water, all boiling at first, and roaring, and seething. .. Pascoe shook the medium's taped words out of his mind and went on with his reading.

There was a degree of lividity down the left side which was unusual for a corpse taken from the water, but it could be explained by the fact that the body seemed to have been wedged in the debris by the canal bank rather than rolling free in the current. Also (another difference from the previous cases) there was some bruising around and underneath the breasts, possibly indicating a sexual assault, though the lacerations caused by the barge propeller had made examination difficult in this area. Elsewhere there was no indication of sexual interference.

Pascoe sighed. The bloody pathologist thought he was having things difficult!

Sergeant Wield came in.

'I just had CRO run some of those fairground people through the computer,' he announced.

'Including Miss Stanhope?' said Pascoe with a grin.

Wield's creased and pitted face had shown no response to Pascoe's twitting about Pauline Stanhope's interest earlier that day. Now he managed something not unlike a grimace.

'There was a statement from her and her aunt,' he said. 'Like all the rest. Nothing. This was interesting, though.'

David Lee had been in the hands of the police several times. Disorderly conduct had cost him half a dozen fines. In 1974 he had been put on probation for assault on his common law wife. Assaulting a council officer in charge of an operation to move on a gypsy encampment got him three months in 1976, and this had been doubled in 1978 when he punched a police officer who was attempting to stop him from beating another common law wife.

There was also a charge of rape in 1979, dismissed by a majority verdict.

'What made you pick on this one?' wondered Pascoe. 'Not because I saw him chatting up Miss Pauline, I hope?'

'There's half a dozen others,' grunted Wield. 'If you'd care to have a look.'

Pascoe thought for a moment.

'Tell you what,' he said. 'If Mrs Sorby's such an enthusiast for peering over the Great Divide, perhaps Brenda got roped in too.'

'And might have known about the Madame Rashid connection,' said Wield.

'And met Dave Lee through it?'

Pascoe shook his head even as he spoke.

'It's stretching things a bit,' he said. 'Still, it's worth checking. Fancy a trip to the fairground to have your fortune told?'

Wield shrugged.

'I go where I'm sent,' he said indifferently.

'All right,' said Pascoe. 'It's twelve now. Have your lunch, then with your vigour fully restored go and cross the lady's palm with silver. Either lady, depending whether you prefer mutton or lamb.'

I must stop this nudge-nudge, wink-wink bit, he thought as Wield left. I'm getting more like Dalziel every day!

A few moments later the phone rang. It was the desk sergeant.

'There's a lady here wants a word with someone in CID, sir,' he said. 'It's a Mrs Rosetta Stanhope.'

'What? Oh, look, Sergeant Wield probably wants to speak with her anyway, so let him sort it out, will you? He should be on his way out any moment now.'

'He just went past, sir. I don't think he noticed the lady. He seemed in a bit of a hurry.'

'The bastard!' swore Pascoe. 'He's opted for lamb. All right. Wheel her in.'

Rosetta Stanhope had adapted well to her chosen environment. In her late fifties, her hair tightly permed with just the suggestion of a blue rinse, dressed in a stylishly cut grey suit with toning shoes and handbag, she could have chaired a WI meeting or opened a flower show without remark. Only a certain rather exotic stateliness of bearing and darkness of skin which even a carefully layered mask of make-up could not disguise hinted at her origins.

Her voice was quiet, a little hoarse, perhaps; the result of twisting her vocal cords to produce her spirit voices? wondered Pascoe.

'I met your niece this morning,' said Pascoe. 'You haven't seen her?'

The woman considered, then smiled.

'You're quite right, Mr Pascoe. I wouldn't do Madame Rashid dressed like this. And I wouldn't go home specially to change just to impress a policeman.'