'Excellent idea, sir,' said Pascoe. 'I'll do Wildgoose. I want another word with that sod anyway.'
'And I'll have another chat with Mr Mulgan,' said Sergeant Wield who had been studying the linguists' report with great interest.
'Talking of Mulgan, was there anything on that list of the Sorby girl's transctions?' enquired Dalziel.
Guiltily, Wield took it out of his pocket and handed it over.
'Forgot all about it, sir,' he confessed. 'What with the bother at the encampment and all.'
Dalziel grunted and glanced down the list. Because it was half-day closing, a lot of the local traders had been putting their takings in during the afternoon, including M. Conrad, the jeweller. Also, he noticed, there had been a deposit made on behalf of the Aero Club account and a large sum withdrawn from the Middlefield Electronic account.
He frowned.
'She was wearing her engagement ring that day, wasn't she?' he said.
Pascoe and Wield exchanged glances.
'I think so,' said Wield. 'Why, sir?'
'Nothing. You're getting me as loopy as the rest of you. Go on, bugger off and get some work done, will you?'
Before he left the station, Pascoe put a copy of the latest tape in an envelope and addressed it to Gladmann or Urquhart in case either should surface before his return. Then, as an afterthought, he dropped in the Rosetta Stanhope cassette with a copy of Wield's transcription and a note with the vague query, 'What do you make of this?'
Wildgoose's milk and paper still remained uncollected. Pascoe contemplated burglary but was deterred by the appearance of a neighbour, a hairy young man apparently dying of consumption, who told him in a series of wheezy grunts that he'd heard Wildgoose go out last night but hadn't heard him return. Deterred from his criminal intents by the young man's presence, if not his information, Pascoe left.
He thought of going round to see Lorraine Wildgoose. But it didn't seem likely that the man would be there and he felt he ought to be careful about feeding the woman's obsession.
No, the girl, Andrea Valentine, seemed the best bet. Preece had gathered that the parents were due back this weekend, so perhaps Wildgoose was having a last fling round there. He got in his car and headed for Danby Row.
He spotted the house and drove slowly past. There was no sign of life. The milk was on the doorstep here too, which meant that the parents almost certainly had not returned and the happy couple if they were indeed inside were still probably making each other happy.
He turned at the end of the street and drove back. Dalziel, he thought, wouldn't have driven past the first time. Young girl screwing around with her middle-aged and married schoolteacher – her parents had a right to know. Pascoe's softness wasn't doing anyone any good, least of all the girl.
To some extent Pascoe had to agree. Certainly he'd been as kind as he could. Theoretically, suspecting that Wildgoose might have dumped the remains of his cannabis crop in Danby Row, he ought to have gone in there the previous day, searching it out and slapping a possession charge so hard on the girl that she'd try to ease the pain by agreeing to witness the more serious charge of cultivation and distribution against Wildgoose.
That's what he should have done. But he hadn't. Still, don't get uptight about it, he told himself philosophically as he leaned on the doorbell. It was impossible to be a cop and not break the rules. And in the great scheme of things perhaps his being soft on cannabis compensated for the readiness of some of his colleagues to drive home their arguments with a fist in the gut.
There was no answer here either. He didn't want to attract the neighbour's attention, so he went round the side of the house. At the front there had only been a paved rectangle with a homesick magnolia in the middle of it. Behind, however, a long narrow garden, made private and well-nigh impenetrable by profusion of competing shrubs, stretched down to a wall with a green-shrouded door in it, presumably leading into a back lane.
Pascoe rapped on the rear door. There was no response, so he tried the handle. It turned and the unlocked door swung creakingly open.
He stepped into an old-fashioned kitchen – marble sink, solid fuel stove, a wooden clothes pulley hanging from the ceiling, blue and white lavatorial tiles everywhere. The Valentines obviously didn't spend their money on home improvements. If the parents' attitudes were like their home, they'd have a fit when they found out what little Andrea had been getting up to.
'Hello!' called Pascoe opening the interior door. 'Anyone home?'
His voice echoed up the stairwell, gloomy with brown paint and dark green flocked wall paper.
'Hello,' he called again, but more softly now, not expecting an answer.
Yet there was someone or something here, he felt it, and his heart was suddenly tight with dread. He found himself thinking of Wield pulling back the tent-flap and stepping inside. What he had found there had taken him completely by surprise. But perhaps the anticipated horror is even worse.
Oddly, it wasn't. It was anti-climactic, a relief almost. He pushed open another door. It led into a shadowy sitting-room. There on a threadbare chaise-longue lay Andrea Valentine. She was wearing only a short towelling wrap, but it had been decently arranged to effect maximum coverage. Her slippered feet were together and her hands were crossed on her breast. On the third finger of her left hand glowed a bright red stone set in a circlet of silver.
Pascoe touched the hand. It was quite cold. He looked for a moment at the blood-suffused face and knew the regrets and self-accusations that the sight was stirring up for him.
It was no time for them now.
Ignoring the telephone in the hallway he went out of the house the way he had come in and spoke rapidly and urgently into his car radio.
Then he returned inside to wait.
Chapter 23
It was the story as before.
The girl had been strangled and then laid out with limbs and features arranged to conceal the violence of her death as much as possible. She had been killed between midnight and two A.M.
A unique feature was that this girl had had sex shortly before dying. There were no signs of force.
In a shoe-box at the back of her wardrobe they found what they took to be the remnants of Wildgoose's Indian hemp harvest.
All over the house, they found his fingerprints or at least prints which corresponded with those they found all over his flat.
But these were the only trace of the man they found.
Pascoe went to see Lorraine Wildgoose.
'What's happened?' she said.
He tried to by-pass the question, but she was not easy to by-pass, so he told her.
'You'll want to look around,' she said. 'To make sure I'm not hiding him. Jesus!'
Feeling foolish, Pascoe looked. Fortunately the children were both out.
'You don't seem very surprised. Or shocked,' he suggested.
'What do you want, hypocrisy?' she asked fiercely. 'Who put you on to him in the first place?'
'It's still only surmise,' he urged gently. 'We just want to talk to him.'
'What do you mean, surmise?'
'All right, the evidence points that way, but we've got to talk to him first. If he does get in touch, you'll let us know?'
'If possible I'll crack the bastard's skull and bring him in personally,' she said.
Pascoe regarded her uneasily. Was she fit to be left alone?
'Is there anyone you could go to? Parents perhaps. You and the children,' he began.
'Go? Why?'
