of a giggle at the office party can cause a lot of unpleasantness when it's out of place. Has it bothered you a lot?'
'Not really,' she said. 'Well, it wasn't really me, just sometimes he'd say something. It was more…'
Her eyes filled again.
The door of Mulgan's office opened and Wield had no time for sympathy now.
'You mean, it was more Brenda?'
'Oh yes,' she said with fast-fading coherence. 'I think he asked her out a couple of times and he was always calling her into the office or standing behind her, really close, like. She said that now she had an engagement ring, perhaps it would…' The memory was too much for her.
'Sergeant Wield!' called Mulgan.
'Blow your nose, love,' said Wield. 'Then go and wash your face. You're a good girl.'
He patted her on the arm and returned to the manager's office where he studied his digest of Pascoe's interview notes once more. He felt disappointed. The inspector hadn't got on to Mulgan's lech for Brenda, but his customary thoroughness had led him to check the acting manager's whereabouts between ten and midnight that night. He had been at home. Confirmed by his wife. Wield frowned.
'I hope you haven't been upsetting Miss Brighouse again,' said Mulgan. 'We've had to do without her for half the week already.'
'She seems a very sensitive sort of girl,' said Wield.
'Yes. Now what else can I do for you, Sergeant? We are extremely busy.'
'I'm sorry. I should have called outside banking hours,' said Wield.
'We do work then also,' said Mulgan acidly.
'I'm sure you do.'
Wield closed his notebook with a snap.
'I'll tell you what you can do for us, sir,' he said. 'Is it possible to check back and see what business Brenda dealt with that day, when she was at the counter, I mean?'
'It's possible. But why on earth should you want that?' wondered Mulgan.
Wield looked mysterious. It wasn't difficult. It was a mystery to him. But he wanted a bit of time to think things over.
Mulgan gave him more.
'I'd need to get authority from Head Office,' he said. 'It would mean revealing banking information, you see.'
'That's all right, sir. No rush. I'll call back later, if I may. Or if I don't get back in working hours, stick it in your briefcase and someone can pick it up from your home.'
He rose and took his leave before the man could raise an objection.
Outside in the car he tried to consider possible burgeonings of the seeds he had sown that morning, but all he could think of was the bittersweet tang of Mulgan's aftershave.
Chapter 12
Dr Pottle and the two linguists sat and listened to the tapes of the four telephone messages which had followed Pauline Stanhope's murder.
Pascoe had provided them with a typed transcript with the Hamlet references for good measure.
(A) Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. (Act 5, Scene 1) (B) One may smile, and smile, and be a villain. (Act 1, Scene 3) (C) To be, or not to be, that is the question. (Act 3, Scene 1) (D) The time is out of joint: – 0 cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right. (Act 1, Scene 3)
This was the order in which they had been received. Sammy Locke, the Evening Post news editor, felt that (A) and (D) came nearest to his memory of the voice which he had heard on the first two occasions. But which of the two (if there were two, they sounded very alike to Pascoe) it was, he couldn't say. Pascoe had not felt it necessary to pass this information on to the linguistic experts.
After the tape had been played for the fifth time, there was a long silence. Pottle lit another cigarette and scribbled some notes. Pascoe looked interrogatively at the linguists who were looking interrogatively at each other.
They were an ill-assorted pair. Dicky Gladmann was a small dapper man, fortyish, with bright blue eyes and demi-mutton-chop whiskers, dressed in an old tweed jacket with a red bandanna trailing from his breast pocket and a spoor of gravy running down his old something-or-other tie. The other, Drew Urquhart, was much younger. A small, round, rosy-cheeked face showed fitfully through a dark tangle of beard like a robin in a holly bush. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, he seemed to have little liking for his surroundings.
'Well, we'll see what we can do, shall we?' said Gladmann in a self-parodyingly fruity upper-class voice.
'I suppose so,' said Urquhart, broad Scots, not Glasgow but somewhere close.
They rose. Gladmann took the cassette from the player and slipped it into his pocket.
'Aren't you going to work here?' said Pascoe, taken aback.
‘My dear chap, you must be joking!' said Gladmann. 'Not that it isn't nice. You can hardly see the blood on the walls, can you, Drew, my son? But your equipment's hardly space-age, is it? No, the language lab at the college is the place. And if it seems worthwhile we can even drive across to the university and run it through their sonograph.'
'Well, all right,' said Pascoe. There were, after all, several copies of the tape.
Urquhart said, 'Inspector, I'd like to be sure what you intend. How do you propose to use whatever we tell you?'
'Sceptically, I dare say,' replied Pascoe.
Gladmann hooted, but Urquhart did not smile behind his tangle.
'So long as it's clear I'm not interested in helping the polis find a scapegoat,' he continued.
Pascoe sighed. His own background made him a lot more sympathetic with academic liberalism than most of his colleagues, but he could understand the feeling behind Dalziel's complaint on another occasion, 'If these are the clever buggers, no wonder crime pays!'
'Believe me,' he said, 'a scapegoat's no good. The man we're after is an unbalanced killer. He's not going to stop murdering women just because someone else has been arrested.'
Urquhart did not look wholly convinced but he left without further comment. Gladmann followed, saying, 'My love to the delectable Ellie. We'll be in touch.'
Pascoe closed the door after them and turned his interrogative gaze on Pottle not with a great deal of hope.
The psychiatrist's opening comment confirmed his pessimism.
'Not a great deal to go on yet,' he said.
'Four murders!' expostulated Pascoe. 'Not a bad start, surely?'
'Come now,' said Pottle, amused. 'What's your best chance of catching this fellow?'
Pascoe considered.
'Another murder,' he admitted unwillingly. 'Or at least an attempt. Get him in the act.'
'Quite so. Similarly, though in rather a different way, the more I have, the better results I can hope for. Now, to start with, I am making two assumptions which may turn out to be false. One is that these four deaths have been caused by the same man. The other is that basically in each case the motive has been the same, or at the least an aspect of a single consistent motive. As I say, these assumptions may be false. Indeed, there is much in the evidence as you have laid it before me which suggests that they are false.'
'Such as?' interposed Pascoe.
'The eccentricities of pattern,' replied Pottle. 'They are all young unmarried women – except for Mrs Dinwoodie who is a middle-aged widow. They are found neatly laid out with arms crossed on the chest – except Brenda Sorby who has been dumped in the canal. The murders all take place in circumstances made remote by time of day or location, except for Pauline Stanhope's which occurs in the middle of the day in the middle of a fairground.
