Chapter 22
Interestingly, a message without a body seemed to stir up Dalziel much more than a message with a body.
'Got them linguists yet?' he demanded of Pascoe for the third time.
'I've sent cars out, told the lads to pick them up as soon as they come home,' said Pascoe. 'But really, all they can tell us is which of the other four, if any, this is. Sounds like (A) to me.'
'Me too,' said Wield. 'Though it's hard to be sure. He sounds different somehow. You know, not so certain of himself. Unhappy.'
'Hell's bells,' said Dalziel. 'He's unhappy! Wait till this hits the papers. They'll give us stick, and not having had the advantage of a public school education, I don't care for stick.'
'No, sir. But the sergeant's right. I've sent for Dr Pottle as well to see what he thinks,' said Pascoe.
Dalziel's shrug, like Atlas getting a bit restless, indicated his opinion of Dr Pottle.
Sergeant Brady came into the Murder Room. He had been checking the missing persons reports. Weekend nights always brought in a good crop of non-returning youngsters.'
'Seven lasses,' said Brady. 'Three turned up very late, looking satisfied, likely. Another two are back as well, only the parents didn't bother to tell us. That leaves two. They sound like they've just taken off to the Smoke. Classic backgrounds, like Mr Pascoe says.'
'Keep after them all the same,' ordered Dalziel, adding when the sergeant left, 'Christ, Peter, what're you doing to Brady? Classic backgrounds! He'll be spelling psychology with two p's and only one k next!'
On cue, the sergeant returned to announce that Dr Pottle was here.
'Hasn't he got a golf-course to go to?' muttered Dalziel.
In fact whatever it was that Pottle did on Saturday afternoons he seemed only too pleased to have been invited away from it. He took the new tape into a neighbouring room and played it through several times.
'You have no body?' he enquired when he had finished.
'No. You think we're likely to get one?' said Dalziel.
'That I can't say. But whether this is your man or not, he certainly sounds to me very disturbed. If we assume that he is the (A) of the previous set of tapes, the change is marked.'
'That's what I thought,' said Wield. 'Unhappier, sort of.'
Pottle looked at him approvingly.
'You have a sensitive ear,' he said.
Wield coughed almost noiselessly into his fist. Pascoe who was beginning to be a keen student of Wieldology noted this down as the equivalent of a flush of pleasure.
'Last time his tone was regretful but resolved, as though he were performing a painful necessity,' continued Pottle.
'This is hurting me as much as it hurts you, you mean?' said Dalziel. 'We had an old sod at school used to say that as he thumped you.'
'Partly that. More being cruel to be kind. Compassionate, almost,' said the doctor. 'As I said in my written report, these are just impressions, but supported, I think, by the treatment of his victims and the tone and content of the telephone calls. Now, here there are two distinct changes. His voice sounds much more distressed, there's not the same authority there as before. And the words he speaks are concerned with himself, not with his victim. Oh God! I could be bounded in a nut-shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. He's beginning to find it hard to live with himself, I would say.'
'Would this show in his outer behaviour?' wondered Pascoe.
'Not necessarily. Not yet anyway.'
'More important, does it mean he's less or more dangerous?' demanded Dalziel.
'I can't answer that,' said Pottle.
Dalziel gave an expressive pout of his thick lips and putting his hand into his waistband began to scratch his stomach audibly.
'One last thing,' said Pascoe. 'Suppose that his last killing, that is the last we definitely knew about, had been motivated not by whatever it is that's bugging him deep down, but by a simple desire not to be caught. How would this affect him?'
Pottle lit a cigarette from the one he was already smoking.
'This is a hypothesis, or do you know something?' he asked.
'An educated guess,' replied Pascoe.
'Then I would guess also that his own survival might not be sufficient justification to himself for taking life. Not unless it was definitely a one-off once-for-all-time act.'
'In other words, he might do it, resolved that after this there would be no more killings.'
'Yes.'
'And then if he found there were going to be other killings, that the compulsion was still there…?'
'I see what you're getting at, Mr Pascoe,' said Pottle. 'Yes, that could explain the change of tone here in this message. If he has killed again because his compulsion, he now knows he may be tempted to kill again for his survival. And that is what he finds it hard to contemplate.'
'Hold on, now,' said Dalziel. 'If he killed that girl on the fairground just to protect himself, surely it's the call that followed that murder which should be full of this unhappiness your sensitive ears are picking up.'
'Oh no,' said Pottle. 'His motivation would have been sufficient at the time to justify himself thoroughly. Therefore he would be most meticulous about his cover-up.'
'Cover-up?'
'That's right. By laying the girl out as he did and by making the phone-call in the same tone and terms as before, he was attempting to misdirect you into pursuing him as the motiveless Choker still.'
'Which is what you hinted at in the first place, sir,' reminded Pascoe.
'Aye, I know,' muttered Dalziel. 'But I always get suspicious of my good ideas when clever buggers start supporting them. Well, thank you, Doctor. You've been very helpful.'
Pottle closed his notebook so firmly that an ashy emanation puffed out of his hands like fumes from a censer. He is after all our society's high-priest, thought Pascoe. The ungodly Dalziel had already turned away.
'He doesn't care for 'clever buggers', I see,' murmured Pottle. 'And yet… how clever is he himself? Of the other, I have no doubts.'
'Oh, he knows a hawk from a handsaw,' said Pascoe lightly. 'Any more thoughts on why Hamlet, Doctor?'
'The first lady is the key, I believe,' said Pottle, making for the door. 'Had she been a little older, and had she remarried after her husband's death, and had she got a son who was a thirty- five-year-old adolescent…'
'She had a daughter who died,' said Pascoe.
'That might be significant. But you'll need powers other than mine to establish that connection, Inspector. Good day to you.'
'Inspector Pascoe,' bellowed Dalziel as the door closed behind the psychiatrist.
Pascoe went to the table behind which the fat man was sitting, viewing with distaste its paper-strewn surface.
'There's too many people just hanging around here,' he said fretfully. 'It's like just after pub closing-time in a brothel.'
'Some brothel,' said Pascoe. 'The girl we're all waiting for is dead.'
'I'll believe that when I see it,' said Dalziel. 'Meanwhile, there's things to be done. The fair finishes tonight. They'll be packing up in the morning, so I'm sending a team down there just in case there's any last-minute memories or anything turns up when the council start raking in the rubbish. Next, I'm fed up with all these wiseacres farting about with these tapes. Let's get something really useful out of 'em. Every man connected with this case, I want his voice on tape. It can be by agreement or by stealth, I don't mind. Sergeant Wield's a dab hand at working with a microphone up his nostrils aren't you, Sergeant? Then we'll see if these sodding experts can actually say if it was one of this lot on the telephone, right?'
He glared at Pascoe as if defying him to recall that this had been his own suggestion only an hour earlier.
