'How did you know where to go?'
'I rang for their taxi,' said Greenall. 'Wildgoose gave me the address.'
That simple. No wonder he felt that he was merely an instrument of some benevolent and protective force. His path must have seemed to be smoothed out before him all the way.
He had driven by the house, round the block, spotted the back lane, found the rear entrance to number 73 and stepped inside just in time to meet Wildgoose coming out. The man had grabbed him. Brokenly, Greenall disclaimed any wish to hurt him.
'But he saw my face… it was dark but not that dark… I could see he recognized me… so I had to… again…'
Distressed though he was by this unlooked-for killing, it did not deter him from his main purpose. He went up to the house. There was still a light on in the kitchen. He tapped at the back door. 'Who's there?' asked the girl but was so sure that it must be Wildgoose returning for some reason that a muttered 'It's me,' had her turning the key.
'And then you killed her,' said Pascoe. 'But why? I mean she couldn't be going to get married, could she? Not when you'd just killed the man she was going to marry!'
Greenall hid his face in his hands.
'Don't you think I haven't thought of that?' he said. 'Even as she died, I thought of it. But I had to kill the man, you see. He knew me. I had to kill him.'
He spoke pleadingly as if seeking approval, or absolution. Pascoe was very willing to give him whatever he sought as long as he got his signature at the bottom of every page of the statement he was scribbling.
'Yes, I see that,' he said. 'I quite see that.'
'Do you? Do you really?' asked Greenall.
'I do,' assured Pascoe. 'I really do. Then you took the body to your car?'
The maniac's luck had held. No one had interrupted him. The idea of burying Wildgoose in the rose field of the Garden Centre had seemed like a triumph of logical thinking. He had driven past it from time to time since his wife's death and observed that it was no longer open. It was ideal.
'I didn't want him found. I thought he might get blamed, you see. It was going wrong. There was too much killing, too much unnecessary killing. I thought if you were looking for Wildgoose I might get a bit of peace and quiet to do some thinking in.'
Pascoe regarded the small, slight man who returned his gaze trustingly and hopefully.
'I think we might arrange that, sir,' he said gently. 'What I would like you to do now is…'
There was a perfunctory tap at the door and it burst open to reveal Sergeant Wield.
'Mr Pascoe,' he began.
'Later,' said Pascoe trying to combine the casual and the imperious in his tone.
'I'm sorry, sir, but…'
'I said later, Sergeant!' snapped Pascoe, abandoning his attempt at the casual.
But Wield stood his ground. 'We tried to ring, sir, but there was no answer,' he said. 'It's your wife.'
'What about her?' said Pascoe, standing up now and facing the sergeant. Wield's features, he noticed with a tightening of the heart, were softened to a recognizable anxiety.
'She's had to go to hospital, sir. They rang not long after you'd left. Like I say, we tried to telephone here…’
'What's happened to her?' demanded Pascoe.
'I don't know, sir. But I knew how worried you'd been, so I thought I'd better…'
Pascoe glance from the sergeant to Greenall who was looking musingly out of the window, as though none of this had impinged upon him. Perhaps it hadn't. Perhaps Perhaps… but this was no time to be perhapsing around here. Not with Ellie… oh Christ!
'Excuse me, Mr Greenall,' he said and pushed Wield through the door, closing it behind them.
'Listen,' he said, putting the notebook into the sergeant's hand's. 'It's him. It's all there. Get him to read it. Get him to sign it. Every last bloody page. That first. That most certainly first. No pressing. No taking him down town. Do you follow me?'
'Yes, sir,' said Wield. 'And then?'
'Get his name on that and then you can put him in irons for all I care,' snapped Pascoe. 'Do it. I'm off.'
'I hope Mrs Pascoe's OK,' called Wield after him but he doubted if the inspector heard.
Slowly he turned and quietly opened the door.
'Hello, Mr Greenall,’ he said.
Chapter 26
'And is that the verdict of you all?'
'It is,' said the foreman of the jury.
The Judge nodded and turned towards the figure in the dock.
'Austin Frederick Greenall,' he began.
Outside the sun still looked down from clear skies but it was no longer the burning orange of midsummer but the pale lemon of autumn. There were dry brown leaves from the municipal plane trees patterning the steps of the court building as Pascoe emerged. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and stared moodily at the medieval guildhall across the way.
Wield came out behind him.
'I'm sorry, sir,' he said.
'Not your fault, sergeant,' said Pascoe. 'Even if he'd signed that statement, it would probably have been tossed out as inadmissible.'
'All the same…'
'Lawyers, I've shit 'em!' proclaimed Dalziel's voice. Pascoe looked round. The fat man looked as if he'd just emerged from a battle. In a way he probably had.
'I had a word with that fellow prosecuting. Told him I'd seen better cases presented at the left luggage.'
'What did he say, sir?'
'Threatened to report me. I said if he made complaints like he cross-examined, I'd likely get promoted.'
'It was all circumstantial, sir,' defended Pascoe. 'When you got down to it, there was precious little hard evidence.'
'There was enough, rightly put over,' said Dalziel. 'And I'd have cracked the bugger wide open if we'd got another postponement.'
Pascoe and Wield exchanged glances.
Four months had passed. Dalziel had used every delaying tactic in the book. There had been remands before the committal proceedings. Here there had been reporting restrictions imposed, not (as the general public believed) to conceal horrors which should not be allowed to fall twice on human ears but (as Wield cynically asserted) to conceal from the general public the flimsiness of the case. Fortunately (or not), examining justices are swayed as much by police certainties as police evidence, particularly where crimes like the Choker's are involved, and Greenall had been committed for trial, which should have commenced within eight weeks according to law. Two postponements had been achieved, but even justice gets impatient and on the threat of a writ of habeas corpus from the defence counsel, the trial had gone ahead.
There had been only one charge – the wilful murder of Mary Greenall also known as Mary Dinwoodie. This was where the prosecutors felt at their strongest. They could prove motive and opportunity. They could point to Greenall's record of breakdown, they could make great play of his odd behaviour in not coming forward after the death. They could do many things except prove that he was outside the Cheshire Cheese on the night in question.
Defence challenged the admissibility of medical records, pointed out that Greenall had been performing a responsible and demanding job in civilian life for more than three years without exciting any adverse comment, and tried to explain his silence after his wife's murder by getting their client to admit freely that he was dismayed and
