Twenty hours took him back to six-thirty P.M. on the Thursday. He was able to move forward to eight P.M. because that was when Brenda and Tommy had met. Their rendezous had been at the Bay Tree Inn, a half-timbered former coaching inn not far from the city centre which had fallen into the hands of a large brewery group renowned for the acuteness of their commercial instincts and the awfulness of their keg beer. Now the Bay Trees history attracted the tourist set, its twin restaurants (one expensive, one extortionate) attracted the dining set, and its cellar disco attracted the young set. Thus it was always packed. The meeting had been witnessed by Ron Ludlam, a workmate of Tommys and one of the friends of whom Mr Sorby so fervently disapproved. He had been drinking with Tommy while he waited for Brenda. Brenda had not wanted to stay at the Bay Tree. Ron Ludlam who had accompanied the distraught Tommy home after the news of Brendas death, said she seemed more interested in having a serious talk with her fiancé about marital matters. Alone. They had gone off in the noisy, multicoloured mini.
According to Tommy they had spent the evening just driving around. Without stopping? Of course they had stopped, just parked out in the country to have a fag and a talk. Was that all? They might have played around a bit but nothing serious.
Nothing serious was confirmed by the pathologist. Brenda was virgo intacta.
The canal was flanked on the one side by warehouses. Access could be obtained to the waterfront, but only by dint of climbing over security gates. In addition, from eleven P.M. on, there had been great police activity in Sunnybank, the canyon-like road which serviced the warehouses, for it was in one of these that the night watchman, whose injuries had kept the doctor from sampling Tommy Maggss blood, had been attacked.
On the other side of the canal, the side where the body had been found, was a grassy isthmus planted with willows and birches to screen the industrial terrace from the view of those taking the air in the pleasant open spaces of Charter Park. This air on the night in question was filled with music and merriment. The citys fortnight-long High Fair was coming to the end of its first week there. The City Fathers in a fit of almost continental abandon permitted the municipal Boating Station to stay open until midnight during the fair and those who tired of the roundabouts and sideshows could hire rowboats to take them across to the isthmus where the trees were strung with fairy lights and a couple of hot-dog stands provided the wherewithal for a picnic. This area was far too well populated for a body to have been dumped in the canal until eleven-thirty when the clouds which had slowly been building up in the south suddenly came rolling northwards, ate up the moon and the stars, and spat rich, heavy raindrops into the sultry night. Within twenty minutes the isthmus was vacated by laughing holiday-makers and cursing hot-dog men alike, while on the canal the pleasure cruisers had either puttered off to more congenial moorings downstream or battened down for the night.
Now a regiment of corpses could have been deposited without drawing much attention.
But by now, Tommy Maggs was already in deep conversation with the police and was to continue in their company until dropped at his door at one-thirty A.M. His father, watching a late western on the telly, confirmed his arrival. So unless he later stole from the house and, carless, contrived to re-encounter Brenda, lure her to the canal bank some five miles away and there murder her, he was in the clear.
But what had happened to Brenda after she left her boy-friend by his broken-down mini, no one could say. Except one person.
At six oclock on Friday the news editor of the Evening Post picked up his phone.
I must be cruel, only to be kind, said a voice.
The line went dead.
The news editor yelled for his secretary.
Chapter 3
Ellie Pascoe was not enjoying the rich rewarding experience of pregnancy.
At roughly the halfway point she was still suffering the morning sickness which should have died away a month earlier and was already experiencing the backache and heartburn which might decently have waited till a month later.
For Christs sake dont make soothing noises, she said as she returned pale-faced to the breakfast table. Im having a baby, not turning into one.
Pascoe, warned, returned to his cornflakes and said lightly, You shouldnt have bought the ticket if you didnt want the trip.
I didnt know it meant the end of civilization as I know it, she said grimly.
At least you dont have to go to work, said Pascoe.
They were well into July and the long vacation had begun at the college where Ellie lectured.
Its the students who get the holiday, not us, she retorted. This was an ancient tract of disputed land, full of shell holes. Pascoe made a tactical withdrawal.
Can I have the butter, please?
If by that you mean that if Id taken your advice and resigned last term I wouldnt need to be thinking about next Septembers courses then let me remind you that, first, I personally need the work and, secondly, we personally need the money and, thirdly, that women having fought for centuries to get the meagre rights theyve got, including the right not to lose their jobs because some careless fellow puts them up the stick, I am not about to renounce those rights just because youre feeling all patriarchal and protective. Excuse me.
When she came back, Pascoe said, Thank God I didnt ask for the marmalade, but she didnt respond.
What are you doing today? he asked as he finished his coffee.
Im going to be sick at the Aero Club, she said.
Good God, he said, alarmed. Youre not taking up gliding, are you?
No. Just having lunch there. They do a chicken-in-the-basket. Today they might see it there twice.
Come on, said Pascoe. It cant be that bad. Can it? And why the Aero Club? Not your normal stamping ground.
Im meeting Thelma.
Lacewing? You surprise me. I shouldnt have thought it was her scene either.
And what do you know about Thelmas scene?
Me? Nothing. Nothing at all, said Pascoe uninterestedly.
He had good reason for sounding uninterested in Thelma Lacewing. First she was the leading light of WRAG, the Womens Rights Action Group which put the law a very poor second to its principles; secondly, he had recently helped to put her uncle, a respected local businessman, away on a pornography charge; thirdly, he (in a purely aesthetic sense of course) rather fancied her and sometimes thought she might rather fancy him.
Anyway, her scene or not, its her idea, continued Ellie. I promised that when the summer vac came and I had more time, Id take some of the secretarial work off Lorraine Wildgooses plate.
But you said it was only students who got holidays, protested Pascoe.
Oh, go to work! said Ellie disgustedly. See if you can stop that lunatic from killing more than half a dozen women today.
As he finished his toast, he said crumbily, Wildgoose. That rings a little bell. Do I know her?
I dont think so, said Ellie. Though shes all the things you admire in a woman. Forty, ferocious, teaches French and is in the middle of a rather unpleasant marital shipwreck.
As he finished his toast, he said crumbily, Wildgoose. That rings a little bell. Do I know her?
I dont think so, said Ellie. Though shes all the things you admire in a woman. Forty, ferocious, teaches French and is in the middle of a rather unpleasant marital shipwreck.
Pascoe shuddered and rose from the table.
When he returned with his briefcase ready for departure, Ellie was immersed in the newspaper.
Hey, theres a little bit here about fat Andy calling in a clairvoyant.
Oh God. Let me see.
He looked at the paper and said in relief. Its just a couple of lines and I dont think he gets the Guardian anyway.
Perhaps not. But just think how large its likely to be printed in the tabloids! Its a good story. At least, you made it sound like a good story last night.
Dont! he said, kissing her.
Peter, she said thoughtfully when hed finished, that transcript of the tape you showed me. Can I borrow it?
Why on earth should you want that?
Well, its just come back to me. I woke up in the night and I was lying there thinking and I got this brilliant idea, you know how you do. About that woman in the trance. Well, I know you said it cant have anything to do with what actually happened, but I was remembering, last year the museum organized a dig in Charter Park, do you remember, at the bottom end beyond the War Memorial. Our historians were involved. It was the Roman Level they were interested in, but they took one section of the trench much deeper just to see. It was clear thered been a settlement thereabouts for as long as men have been settling.
Fascinating, said Pascoe. So what?
So suppose when you die, time shifts? Well, why not? It certainly stops, doesnt it? Briefly for a moment as she dies, she goes back. You know they say your life flashes before you as you drown? So, its a cliché, but its what people whove been saved from drowning have said. Suppose its not just your life but the whole of life. And once youre beyond yours, youre beyond the point of being saved.
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 Mesolithic period. The water runs clear. And because of the time shift, its 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 youre 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. Thats why I wanted the transcript. Thelma was in on the dig, its 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. Weve got a copy at the station, but dont lose it all the same. Though strictly speaking, its hardly an official document! And in return, promise me you wont 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 oclock 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 hadnt 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 Showmans 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 citys 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 summers 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 wasnt 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-tellers tent and the sight of it made him think of Sergeant Wields 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!