A Killing kindness

'You do your own gardening now?' said Pascoe whose response to obliquities was always oblique. 'It's quite a job.'

He was looking out of a french window which opened on to the back garden. A small patio led on to a rectangle of lawn some fifty feet deep bordered by roses and ornamental shrubs.

'I always did. He showed no interest till he decided he wanted to dig it up to plant beans and ginseng. That's when I put my foot down, so he got the allotment. I feel responsible for that girl's death.'

This was too fast for Pascoe.

'That drink,' he said. 'It's early but I'm quite thirsty. Perhaps a small beer.'

She went out into the kitchen and returned with a pint can and two tumblers.

'I drink anything now,' she said. 'If it poisons the system, then I suppose my system's done for.'

Pascoe took the can from her thin nervous fingers, opened it, poured the beer and chose his words carefully.

'Mrs Wildgoose, from what you said to Ellie yesterday and what you've just said to me, would I be right in saying you think your husband may know something about these so-called Choker killings?'

'Yes,' she said in a low voice, followed almost immediately by a No! in a semi-scream that startled Pascoe into spilling some drops of beer.

'How could I say that?' she demanded. 'I don't know. He just seems so odd, so fearful. In everysense. So frightening and so full of fear. Do you follow me?'

'I think so,’ said Pascoe, more in response to her compellingly intense gaze than the dictates of reason. He could recall a junior schoolteacher whose urgent questioning had similarly seemed to preclude a negative response. He could also remember her wrath when, inevitably, he had had to admit his real ignorance.

It was time to take the initiative.

The door burst open before he could speak and a girl of about thirteen rushed in, closely followed by a slightly younger boy. They stopped dead as they saw Pascoe.

'Oops, sorry,' said the girl.

'This is my daughter, Sue. My son, Alan. This is Inspector Pascoe, dears. We won't be long. If you're finding time's hanging a bit heavy, you might like to finish off the front lawn for me.'

The girl made an unenthusiastic face and withdrew. Neither she nor her brother looked much like their mother in their features, though they shared her dark colouring. At least they were obedient, thought Pascoe when almost instantly the whine of the electric mower was heard. A desirable quality in children, one which he and Ellie would look for in their own family. He hoped.

'Mrs Wildgoose, your husband's mental state may be relevant, but it's not primary, not yet. Think carefully. Is there anything at all, anything concrete, which links your husband to June McCarthy – or any of the other girls for that matter?'

Her eyes opened even wider in amazement at his denseness. Doesn't she ever blink? wondered Pascoe.

'The allotment,' she said.

'We know about the allotment,' said Pascoe patiently. 'Did he ever mention June McCarthy? Or any girl he'd met or seen when he was in Pump Street?'

'Why should he?' she demanded. 'He'd want to keep something like that pretty quiet, wouldn't he?'

'Like an affair, you mean?' said Pascoe doubtfully. 'You're suggesting he could have been having an affair with this girl?'

'It wouldn't have been the first,' she retorted bitterly. 'He's got a little greenhouse down there. Very handy.'

'A greenhouse is not the most discreet of places to have an affair in,' observed Pascoe pedantically.

'The wall panes are whitewashed,' she said triumphantly. 'So you can't see in. And the children went down there once and he wouldn't let them in.'

Pascoe had a quick mental vision of Wildgoose fornicating among the tomato plants. Green thoughts in a green house.

'And that's all?' he said.

'What else do you want? Photographs?' she flashed.

'Did he ever drink in the Cheshire Cheese, do you know?' asked Pascoe.

'We have done,' she said. 'Of course that was before we went off alcohol.'

'Was your husband back on alcohol before you broke up?'

'Yes, he was,' she said. 'I remember he came home one evening and I smelt it on his breath. It was round about then that I felt things were beginning to go desperately wrong.'

'In what way?'

'This hate I told you about. This resentment. It seemed to flare up then.'

'Then being?'

'Earlier in the summer. I don't know. End of May, I think.'

Pascoe took out a diary and thumbed through it.

'And you actually left him when?'

'June 14th,' she said promptly. 'I remember that. It was Alan's birthday. Mark was late. I complained. There was a great row. Mark flew out of the house. He didn't come back till after midnight, in a worse mood than when he'd left and stinking of drink. I slept in the spare room that night with the bed pushed against the door. First thing next morning I got out with the children and went round to Thelma Lacewing's flat. You'll know her, I expect.'

'Oh yes.'

'She's marvellous, isn't she?'

'Uh-huh. And your husband…?'

'Still sleeping, of course. The drink did that for me at least. That at least. Yes, the fourteenth. Just a month. Christ.'

Pascoe regarded her keenly and waited.

For a woman so eager to suggest her husband might be the Choker she was missing a golden opportunity.

Or perhaps she was clever enough to know that some things don't need underlining. Perhaps she felt she could rely on even the most bumbling of bobbies to recall that it was on the night of June 14th that Mary Dinwoodie had been choked to death behind the Cheshire Cheese.

He asked one last question as he rose with Mark Wildgoose's new address in his notebook.

'Despite your suspicions of your husband you still see him. Why's that?'

'He's entitled to access to the children. In any case, I certainly don't want him to think I suspect,' she said defiantly.

It didn't ring true.

'How was your trip yesterday?' he enquired idly as she escorted him to the open front door.

The girl was in the garden propelling the electric mower. She seemed to have made very little progress, observed Pascoe.

'Fine,' said Lorraine Wildgoose. 'It was OK. The children enjoyed it. Oh, excuse me.'

Behind her a telephone was ringing. She retreated, closing the door firmly.

Pascoe walked down the path. The girl was standing still watching him. The mower blades had a different note when it wasn't in motion.

Pascoe paused and smiled at the girl.

'Your mother's upset,’ he said. 'Don't take notice of everything she says. It's a bad time for her.'

The girl didn't return his smile but she made no effort to deny her eavesdropping.

'Are you going to arrest Daddy?' she said.

'No. Why should I? But I'm going to talk with him.'

'It's not always his fault,’ she said. 'She spoilt it yesterday.'

'Yesterday?'

'Yes. She went into some woman's house first of all and didn't come out for ages. We were roasting in the car. Then when we got to the seaside she nagged all the time. Daddy wanted us all to have tea together later and not come home till the evening, but she started to row with him and we were back home by tea-time.'

'So it wasn't a very good day for you?' said Pascoe thoughtfully.

'It could have been,' she retorted.

Pascoe dug into his pocket and came up with a 50p piece. In the distance he could hear the carillon of an ice-cream van.

'It's a funny old world,' he said. 'But the grass keeps on growing. Why don't you find your brother and share a cornet or whatever else you can buy with this nowadays?'

The silver coin spun through the air. She caught it two-handed, smiled with great charm, said 'Thank you!' and ran off out of the garden gate.