Reginald Hill - A Killing Kindness

The disused section of the airport, where the urgent weeds and grasses had turned the runway into crazy paving and a couple of derelict buildings gaped like dead mouths at the unremembering sky, was now the site of an unofficial/official gypsy encampment.

It was ‘unofficial’ because the local council had been arguing for years about the need to provide an official site in the area; it was ‘official’ because during the hard months of the winter and during the two weeks of the High Fair the council and the police operated a ‘no-hassle’ policy. But come the spring and come the end of fair fortnight, the stand-pipes were turned off and the travelling folk invited to travel. There was a strong lobby in the gliding club which wanted them cleared off permanently, claiming that apart from polluting the nearby river with their sewage, their ponies (the same which had been banned from Charter Park) were a menace to gliders and small aircraft landing only a quarter-mile away. The council had erected a picket fence to prevent the ponies from straying but this was not proving one hundred per cent effective, as Wield realized when he got out of his car close to the gaudily painted caravans.

Normally the arrival of a stranger would have been viewed with close suspicious interest, but at this moment all attention was focused on a noisy and potentially violent confrontation taking place in the middle of the caravan circle.

On the one side was a group of gypsies with Dave Lee at their head. On the other were two men, one slight, blond, wirily built, in slacks and a sports shirt, the other much bulkier and sweating in a thick windcheater and flying helmet. All around them at a discreet distance stood a circle of interested women and kids.

The heavier man was wagging a finger that wouldn’t take much bending to make a fist in Lee’s face.

‘Listen, you,’ he grated in a harsh Yorkshire accent, ‘I see one more bloody pony on the Aero Club’s ground and I’ll shoot it, you hear? And then I’ll come and shoot the bugger who owns it.’

Dave Lee bared brown-stained teeth in a sneer and answered in an unpunctuated and rather high-pitched gabble. ‘Listen mister what’s up here you come here fucking threatening and talking about some pony which pony show us the fucking pony and what do you think anyway that ponies have no fucking sense to get out of the way of those machines more fucking sense than some fucking idiots who go up in them!’

The wagging finger folded. Wield had recognized the face beneath the flying helmet. It was Bernard Middlefield, JP. Not a man he cared for, but not a bad magistrate from a police point of view. At least he jumped hard on first offenders, believed police evidence like Holy Writ, and started from the useful premise that ninety per cent of what most social workers said was crap.

It would be interesting but not diplomatic to witness him thumping the gypsy. The blond man seemed bent on acting as a peacemaker but there was no guarantee of his success.

Wield advanced, warrant card at the ready, and addressed himself to Lee.

‘Mr Lee?’ he said. ‘Can I have a word?’

The big gypsy laughed scornfully and said in the direction of Middlefield, ‘No wonder he wants to fight when already he’s called the cops!’

‘Are you the police?’ said Middlefield. ‘Just in the nick!’

Wield didn’t want to get involved but he had to hear the tale. The blond man was Austin Greenall, Chief Flying Instructor of the Aero Club. He had been manning the launching winch to get Middlefield’s glider airborne when a pony had come wandering across the path of the accelerating aircraft and nearly caused an accident. Middlefield had come straight to the gypsy encampment closely attended by the secretary.

‘Ultimately it’s the council that are responsible, sir,’ said Wield. ‘They own all this land. You lease from them, I believe? So keeping fences in repair is their job.’

‘Thanks for nothing,’ said Middlefield. ‘If I’d got killed, you might have taken heed, is that it? Well, I’ll tell you something, these buggers need sorting out, and I’m the man to do it. They’re anti-social, dirty and dishonest. I’ve got my works on the estate not a quarter-mile from here. When this site’s occupied, I double my security staff. Double it . And that costs brass!’

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Wield. ‘Unless there’s been a breach of the law …’

Middlefield snorted indignantly, turned on his heel and marched away. Greenall gave an apologetic shrug to Wield, said, ‘For God’s sake, Mr Lee, watch those animals of yours,’ and went after him.

‘Yorkshiremen!’ said Lee. ‘Tough buggers, they think. Always wanting to fight.’

‘Not me,’ said Wield. ‘I want to talk.’

They went to sit in the sergeant’s car. Gypsies don’t invite strangers, especially policemen, readily into their caravans and though the day was balmy, Wield knew that if he talked with Lee out of doors, he would quickly inherit the circle of curious kids.

Away from the excitement of confrontation, the gypsy’s torrential speaking style declined to a reluctant dribble.

‘It’s about last Thursday night,’ said Wield.

‘I’ve told all that.’

‘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.