Though typically he kept them to himself, Wield had his own carefully worked out ideas about crime and punishment. They included doling out in exactly measured and scientifically monitored doses the kind of pain to the attacker which he had inflicted on the attacked. Nothing to do with barbarities like chopping off hands or cutting off ears. Just the pain.
Though how to measure the pain of terror which these murdered women must have felt, he did not know. But something was needed, something better than we had.
He went back to Madame Rashids tent. The notice was still there. He glanced at his watch. One-thirty. The station? Or could he justify going after Dave Lee? It was just a fifteen-minute drive at the most.
Sod it, he said and headed for his car.
He drove rapidly and efficiently, roughly following the course of the river out of town till he reached the old airfield which lay to the southeast. There had been a time in the affluent days of Super-Mac at the end of the fifties when it had teetered on the edge of development into a full-scale airport. But the moment had passed and now it was two-thirds disused, the remaining one-third being in the hands of the local Aero Club. Occasionally small private planes landed, particularly when there was a big race meeting at the city track, but generally speaking only the breathless swoosh of the gliders disturbed the air. There were a couple up now. Wield watched them, admired their soaring freedom but felt no desire to share it. He was a motor-bike man himself. Black leather and 100 mph up the motorway. Something else he kept quiet about at the station.
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 wouldnt take much bending to make a fist in Lees face.
Listen, you, he grated in a harsh Yorkshire accent, I see one more bloody pony on the Aero Clubs ground and Ill shoot it, you hear? And then Ill 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 whats 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 hes called the cops!
Are you the police? said Middlefield. Just in the nick!
Wield didnt 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 Middlefields 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 its 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 Id got killed, you might have taken heed, is that it? Well, Ill tell you something, these buggers need sorting out, and Im the man to do it. Theyre anti-social, dirty and dishonest. Ive got my works on the estate not a quarter-mile from here. When this sites occupied, I double my security staff. Double it. And that costs brass!
Im sorry, sir, said Wield. Unless theres 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 Gods 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 sergeants car. Gypsies dont 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 gypsys torrential speaking style declined to a reluctant dribble.
Its about last Thursday night, said Wield.
Ive 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 didnt see anyone resembling the dead girl during that time.
Thats right.
You dont 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?
Ive a van. Thats it there. Licensed and insured.
I never suggested it wasnt, said Wield. But Ill check. Ive done a lot of checking on you already, Mr Lee.
So?
So I know all about you. Youve a nasty temper.
The man shrugged.
Against women too. I saw a woman today at your stall. Shed had a nasty crack.
Shes a clumsy bitch.
Yes. Rape too. Youve not stopped short of that, have you?
This at last restarted the torrent of words, but not English. Wield said finally, Shut up or Ill pull your balls off.
The man subsided, then burst out again. There wasnt 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 dont 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 shell confirm this? And that you then went to bed and slept peacefully all night?
The man didnt bother to answer.
All right, said Wield. Now tell me about Madame Rashid.
He had a sense at that moment of the gypsys receptivity being turned up a notch, though there was no outer physical sign.
You know her?
Yes.
In fact shes a relation of yours, isnt 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. Hed no idea why hed introduced this line of questioning. It wasnt going anywhere.
He decided on the heavily significant abrupt conclusion.
All right, he said. Thats 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.
Whore you? he demanded.
Me, pal? Im Silvester. Silvester Hernes my name, pal.
Are you the boss of this lot? The king or whatever you call it?
Me, pal? he said again, looking amazed. Just an old gypsy, just old Silvester.
Well, old Silvester, see if you can get it into your friends thick skull. Im not happy about him. Ill be back. Meanwhile, get that fence mended, stop them ponies straying. Or youll all be in trouble. Right?
Right, pal, said Herne, beaming co-operation. Straightaway!
That was telling them! thought Wield as he drove away, but years of experience had taught him that telling gypsies anything was like talking to the trees. Not that he objected to gypsies as such, though the untidiness of their life made him shudder. If anything, he felt a sneaking sympathy with them as outcasts and envy of them as defiant outcasts. And perhaps there was some atavistic fear in his attitude also. He had certainly been more affected by Rosetta Stanhopes trance yesterday than he cared to reveal.
He should have gone back to the station but instead he found himself driving to his own flat, where he made himself a cup of tea. It was a gloomy place, he thought dejectedly. Even on the brightest of days the small north-facing windows let little light in. And it was drab and impersonal. Not many people visited him here apart from his married sister and the young nephew whose cassette recorder he had used at the seance. But the secretive element in his make-up drew him to the anonymous and noncommittal in all but the most private areas of life.
Reacting against the thought, he picked up his phone and dialled Maurices business number in Newcastle. But when the phone was answered he replaced it without speaking. They had an agreement. All contact to be private except in extreme emergency. This was no emergency though somehow it felt as if there might be an emergency in the offing, like an area of low pressure over the Atlantic on the telly weather chart.
When he finally drank his tea it was quite cold and he saw with dismay that he had been sitting totally abstracted for more than an hour. It was after three-thirty.
He left the flat hurriedly. Pascoe was going to want to know how hed spent his time. He would not be pleased. As for Dalziel
At least he ought to be able to say hed spoken to Pauline Stanhope.
He drove back to Charter Park, but swore under his breath when he saw the chair with the BACK SOON sign still outside Madame Rashids tent. What the hell did SOON mean to a fortune-teller?
It ought to mean something.
Suddenly uneasy, he pushed the chair aside and opened the flap.
It was dark inside, dark and musty. The triangle of light from the opening fell across a plain trestle table.
Oh Jesus, said Wield.
He took two steps forward. Looked down. Retreated. As he pulled the flap down and replaced the chair with the sign a pair of young girls approached. One said boldly while the other giggled, Are you the fortune-teller, mister?
No, said Wield. Shes gone.
When will she be back?
He gestured at the sign, then hurried away towards his car to radio for assistance.
BACK SOON. But from where?
Across the trestle table, her legs dangling off one end but her arms neatly crossed over her breast, lay the body of Pauline Stanhope.
She had been strangled.
Chapter 7
Not a good advert, this, said Dalziel. Like a butcher getting food poison.
Yes, sir, said Pascoe, though his more exact mind found the analogy imprecise and therefore dissatisfying. He didnt say so, but wondered what the newspapers might make of a murder in a fortune-tellers tent.
The press were imminent, of course. The discovery of a crime by an experienced officer gives the police a head start in getting their investigation under way free from public or professional interference. But once they start, the news speeds like a run on the pound even from sites much more sequestered than a busy fairground. A rope barrier had been erected around the tent to keep the public back. The police doctor had examined the body briefly, pronounced the girl dead, probable cause strangulation, probable time two to four hours earlier. Next, at Pascoes suggestion, because of the smallness of the internal area, a single detective had been sent in on hands and knees, armed with a high-powered torch and a plastic bag, to pick over every inch of the floor space before the photographer and fingerprint men further trampled the already well crushed grass. Another couple of men were put to examining the turf in the environs of the tent, but the passage of so many feet there made it a token gesture.
Next, photographs were taken from all angles, sketches made, distances measured. Then the fingerprint boys, who had been dusting the chair and notice outside, moved in and did the chair and table inside with the body still in situ. Finally, after Dalziel had stood and looked phlegmatically at the corpse for a few minutes, he gave the order for it to be slid into its plastic bag and taken to the mortuary where the clothes would be carefully removed and despatched to the lab for examination.