Reginald Hill - A Killing Kindness

‘Propagandizing, preaching, protesting,’ murmured Thelma.

‘Not to mention subverting, suborning, and sabotaging,’ added Lorraine.

‘I rather fancied assailing, assaulting, and assassinating,’ said Ellie, not to be outdone. ‘But seriously, look, I want to help, but also I want some time to write. I’m into another novel. I’ve finally got over my feelings of failure with the first. I mean twenty-two publishers can’t be wrong! And I really want to get this new one sorted out before this .’

She patted her stomach disgustedly.

‘We’ve all got calls on our time,’ flashed Lorraine. ‘Two kids, a pending divorce and an unbalanced husband takes a bit more of your time than a couple of neatly turned paragraphs.’

This unexpected outburst brought a hiatus in the conversation which was filled by the timely arrival of Greenall with their baskets of food. At the bar the discussion seemed to be getting a little heated too.

‘Well, you know your own employees best, I dare say,’ Middlefield was saying. ‘But give me leave to know something too. When you’ve been on the bench a bit, you get to read between the lines. I mean, just look at the facts. A field behind a pub! A shed on an allotment! The canal bank! Not the kind of places you’d look to meet the vicar’s wife, are they?’

‘I can assure you, Brenda Sorby was as nice and decent a young woman as you could hope to meet,’ protested Mulgan, his rather fleshy face pinking with indignation or embarrassment.

‘That’s how they all seem ,’ scoffed Middlefield. ‘You see a bit more of the world in my line than yours, I dare say.’

‘You’re not saying those poor women deserved what happened to them?’

‘Don’t be daft! But them as take chances can’t complain overmuch when things go wrong.’

‘Those women certainly can’t complain, can they?’ said Thelma in a clear, carrying voice.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Middlefield turning on his stool to view her. ‘Oh, it’s you, Miss Lacewing.’

‘I’ll just fetch the tartare sauce,’ murmured Greenall. He retreated to the kitchen.

‘I suppose you might say that unaccompanied women coming to places like this take the chance of overhearing primitive sexist prejudices being expressed by loud, ill-informed men,’ continued Thelma.

‘I expect I know as much about it as you, young woman,’ said Middlefield grimly.

‘Really? Perhaps we ought to put the police in touch with you, then. Fortunately one of my friends is married to one of the officers on the case. Ellie, perhaps you’ll pass the word to your husband that Mr Middlefield knows more than he has yet been willing to volunteer.’

Ellie smiled warily. There weren’t many people left in the world who could embarrass her, but Thelma was certainly one of them. Which was probably why, as Peter had theorized, she allowed her the moral ascendancy.

Greenall had emerged from the kitchen with two more baskets which he placed before the two men at the bar, saying blithely, ‘Here you are. Piping hot.’

Thelma turned back to her friends, completely unruffled. That’s what I envy too, thought Ellie. I get all pink and abusive.

‘Is your husband really on the case?’ asked Lorraine Wildgoose.

Ellie nodded.

‘Are they getting anywhere?’ pursued the woman rather intensely.

‘I’m not sure. I expect so,’ said Ellie cautiously.

Lorraine Wildgoose looked as if she might be going to say something more and Ellie’s heart sank at the prospect of having to listen to an attack on the police, no matter which of the many possible forms it took. But Thelma, as if spotting the danger, said lightly, ‘What about all this clairvoyant help?’

‘You read about that?’ said Ellie, relieved. ‘Listen, I’ve got a theory. I pinched a transcript of what this woman actually said from Peter. It might interest you in your archaeological hat.’

She produced the transcript and was holding forth when Greenall returned with the tartare sauce.

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ he said, putting the sauce on the sheet of paper in front of Thelma.

‘Don’t do that, Austin!’ she said. ‘You may offend the spirits.’

‘You’re doing a bit of table rapping, are you?’ he said. ‘Be careful. It’s Mr Middlefield you don’t want to offend!’

‘It’s OK. This is police business,’ said Thelma. ‘My friend is a Mrs Detective-Inspector. These are official documents.’

Greenall picked up the transcript and pretended to rub it with his sleeve, murmuring at the same time, ‘By the by, Middlefield’s threatening to drop in at the disco on Friday on a fact-finding tour.’

‘Is he? I may join him. Thanks, Austin. Join us for a drink later?’

‘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?’