Dalziel 08 Exit Lines

by Reginald Hill

  'Not much,' said Pascoe, returning with a sandwich made to Dalziel standards, that is, two slices of bread half an inch thick each spread with a quarter-inch layer of butter and cemented together with a good half-inch of homemade strawberry jam.

  Dalziel bit into it and washed his bite down with his beer as Pascoe told him about the method of entry, the missing articles, the injuries to Deeks and the boot marks on the bathroom floor.

  'So, some local tearaway who's heard rumours about the old fellow keeping money in the house, but doesn’t know him well enough to know there's a key hidden in the wash-house, is that it?'

  'Seems to fit the bill,' said Pascoe. 'Except that according to his neighbour, there weren't any rumours about money in the house.'

  'There's always rumours,' said Dalziel. 'Lovely jam, this.'

  'Ellie's mother's,' said Pascoe. 'The stolen property seems the best bet, if he's daft enough to try to flog the medals or the watch.'

  'Mebbe,' said Dalziel. 'Anything else going off?'

  'No,' said Pascoe hesitantly. 'Except there was another old fellow died the same night.'

  'Aye, Peter. I know,' said Dalziel quietly.

  'No, I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean him, you know that. This was a man called Parrinder. He had a fall, it seems, broke his hip, cut himself, lay in the wind and sleet for several hours and the exposure and bleeding did for him.'

  'Only . . .' prompted Dalziel.

  Pascoe launched into a description of the affair, not omitting Hector's sackful of stones.

  'I don't know what to do with it,' he said between Dalziel's hoots of laughter. 'I mean, it's evidence in a way. But I daren't send them down to the lab to be looked at when nothing they might or might not find would prove anything about anything! There's nothing to go on, really. I don't know why I'm even talking about it.'

  'I do,' said Dalziel. 'You've got one of them feelings, Peter, and nothing short of a cold shower's going to get rid of it! Let's see what we've got. Parrinder goes out late on a nasty wet afternoon. Why? To collect his pension which his friendly neighbours have already offered to collect. Why's he want it now? To buy some rum. Was there nothing to drink in his flat? Where'd he buy the rum? Where'd he collect his pension, for that matter? You'd think he'd go local, wouldn't you? There's a parade of shops with a sub-post-office and beer-off just the far side of Castleton Court, if I remember right. But if he went local, what was he doing walking over the Alderman Woodhouse Recreation Ground which is a short cut into the town centre? And was he going or coming? Of course, you can get all of this sorted out and it'll still not be evidence that he was attacked! The quacks aren't cooperative, you say?'

  'Not really. All injuries attributable to his fall.'

  'And no evidence of robbery. Pension money intact except for the few quid he'd pay for the rum. It wasn't open, you say?'

  'No. The seal was intact or so the doctor said.'

  'So he hadn't had a few nips. Better if he had, maybe. Could've kept the cold out a bit longer. And he did speak before he died, but didn't say anything to indicate he'd been attacked.'

  'Only Polly,'' said Pascoe.

  'Attacked by a woman, mebbe,' said Dalziel. 'There's plenty as'd pay for the pleasure. No, it looks to me like you've got a sackful of nowt, Peter.'

  'So you'd just forget it,' said Pascoe, half-relieved.

  'No. I didn't say that,' said Dalziel. 'I'd have a bloody good look at his possessions, see if there's a receipt with the rum, look at the Post Office stamp in his pension book. Mebbe I'd do it in my own time, but I'm like you, Peter. Just plain nosey! So I'd do it!'

  They talked a little longer. Pascoe cautiously approached the topic of the road accident, but when Dalziel veered away from it, he didn't press. There was no hint of a specific reason for Dalziel's call and the only one which Pascoe could guess at, which was loneliness and a desire for friendly company, required a mental lese-majeste difficult even to contemplate.

  Finally he left abruptly, saying vaguely he had things to do.

  An hour later the phone rang. It was Dalziel.

  'Just a thought,' he said. 'That old boy, Parrinder, followed the horses you said.'

  'So Seymour told me.'

  'I was just looking at yesterday's paper. It's got Friday's results in it. Last race at Cheltenham, won by a horse called Polly Styrene - yes, two words. Four to one. Just a thought. Thanks for the jam buttie. You'll make someone a lovely mother!'

  The phone went dead and Pascoe went to bed.

  The next morning when he arrived at the station, he checked when the Parrinder inquest was to be. It was later that same day, with Inspector Ernie Cruikshank looking after the police side. Pascoe, knowing the man's dislike of CID in general and himself in particular, approached him with caution.

  'Bit vague, isn't it? What do you want? Adjournment for further inquiries? That'll have the Press sniffing!'

  Pascoe knew this. He could see Ruddlesdin linking this with the other two deaths in a punchy piece about old people being at risk both on the street and in their homes which would have the DCC reaching for his night-stick.

  'Try to make it sound very routine,' he said. 'Parrinder's things, anyone looking at them?'

  It was not his intention to be anything but conciliatory, but Cruikshank was looking for criticism.

  'Listen,' he said. 'If every time some poor old sod dies accidentally we sent his belongings to Forensic, they'd need a fucking warehouse! It's like a fucking Oxfam appeal down there at the best of times with all the rubbish you lot dump on them.'

  'Sorry,' said Pascoe. 'I really just meant, has anyone collected them from the hospital?'

  Cruikshank exploded.

  'They will be collected!' he cried. 'There's no hurry to collect them because there's no one been in any hurry to claim them! You don't see any crowds of mourning fucking relatives or weeping fucking children, do you? But rest assured, they'll get collected as soon as I've got someone to spare to collect them. I'm a bit short-staffed, you see. Why? you ask. Because you lot don't seem to be able to manage without my lads, that's why. Well, that figures, Inspector Pascoe. I put up with that. I even put up with Andy Dalziel fixing for me and a couple of my lads to sit on our arses at the airport all Saturday morning waiting for the Mafia to fly in, which it didn't. But when one of my lads is down to assist you with one case, I don't expect him to be sent off to spend hours gathering old stones which have nothing whatsofuckingever to do with the said case!'

  'Good,' said Pascoe, retreating. 'Fine. Look, I'll collect them, shall I, Ernie? All right? Good. Excellent. Thanks a lot.'

  Half an hour later he was wandering hopefully along the corridors of the City General when he came face to face with Dr Sowden, who was looking so beautifully haggard and weary that any sharp-eyed television director would have snapped him up instantly.

  'You look dreadful,' said Pascoe. 'You ought to see a doctor.'

  'You look lost,' said Sowden. 'You ought to ask a policeman.'

  Pascoe explained his mission and Sowden said, 'You don't give up, do you? I can feel it, you still think there was something odd about Parrinder's death.'

  'Maybe. But no reflection on you, Doctor,' said Pascoe. 'Mr Longbottom didn't find anything suspicious and most of my colleagues think I'm daft.'

  'An honest cop!' exclaimed Sowden. 'The city may yet not be consumed by fire. Come on, I'm just going off duty, I'll show you where you want to be.'

  He stood by and watched curiously as Pascoe removed the dead man's clothes from the plastic storage bag. Carefully he went through the broken glass of the rum bottle and the sodden brown paper in which it had been re wrapped till he came across a receipt.

  'A clue?' said Sowden.

  'Indeed,' said Pascoe gravely. 'His pension book, money, watch and so on, where will they be?'

  'Valuables they lock up,' said Sowden. 'With the dead, wreckers' laws can apply, even in hospitals.'

  Pascoe smiled and removed from Parrinder's raincoat pocket a rolle
d-up newspaper. Soaked by the rain, it had dried almost into a papier-mache cylinder which he prised open with difficulty.

  'Aha,' he said.

  'Another clue?'

  'In a way. Evidently before he died he looked up, saw looming over him a dog which one of my men described as being built like a horse, laughed, said Polly, and expired. Look.'

  He pointed to the list of runners in the 3.55, the last race at Cheltenham. Ringed in blue ballpoint was the horse called Polly Styrene.

  'Clever old you,' said Sowden.

  Pascoe modestly accepted the plaudits on Dalziel's behalf. Things were beginning to make more sense. Here was a real reason for Parrinder's decision to sally forth into the wintry weather. He wanted to place a bet!

  'But,' continued Sowden, 'so what?'

  'It won, at four to one,' said Pascoe.

  'Aha,' said Sowden. 'I think I'm with you. Where, you are wondering, are his winnings? In that bottle of rum, I would suggest. Not to mention in his stomach. He seems to have had a substantial meal not long before he died.'

  'You did take a look at Mr Longbottom's findings, then,' grinned Pascoe. 'Just in case, eh? But how much did he win? I wonder how his other selections did?'

  He pointed at ballpoint rings in two earlier races, round Red Vanessa in the 2.10 and Usherette in the 2.45, then he frowned.

  'What's up?' asked Sowden, his doctor's eyes quick for symptoms. 'Clue run out, has it?'

  'No, it's just that he didn't go out till after three that afternoon, so he would only have had time to back Polly Styrene himself.'

  'Telephone? Got someone else to place his bets?' suggested Sowden.

  'I don't think he was a telephone punter. And if someone had backed it for him, wouldn't they have brought him his winnings too?'

  'Perhaps they didn't and he went out looking for them,' suggested Sowden, who seemed enlivened by this detective game. 'Or perhaps he had backed all these horses himself the week before, say. That's possible, isn't it?'

  'I think so. Only they seem to have been marked as current selections in Friday's paper. I'll have to find out what kind of gambler he was.'

  He went through the rest of the pockets, coming up with nothing except another receipt, this time from the restaurant at Starbuck's, a large department store in the city centre. The main charge was £2.95, which Pascoe remembered from a recent rare visit was the basic cost of the Shopper's Special High Tea. Various smaller items brought the total up to £4.80. This with the rum meant he'd spent £8.75, of which only five pounds had come from his recently collected pension. But how much had he had on him in the first place? Or what if he had decided to place more than his usual fifty pence on Polly Styrene, say a couple of pounds, feeling flush because he hadn't touched his pension that week? That would give him eight pounds in winnings which, come to think of it, was just about right. And he celebrates by having a good meal and buying a bottle to keep the cold out. But mocking fate, which likes its victims at their ease and happy, is lurking . . . End of story, Pascoe told himself determinedly, but with no inner conviction.

  He collected the rest of Parrinder's possessions from the hospital security officer. A glance in the pension book told him last week's money had been collected at the head Post Office in the city centre on Friday. Good. Everything that fitted was good. He thanked Sowden for his help and would have departed, but the young doctor said, 'That other business . . .'

  'Yes?'

  'The road accident. Look, I don't want to cause trouble, but I'd just like to be certain that, well, everything's been done that ought to be done.'

  'I think I can assure you of that,' said Pascoe gravely.

  Sowden's face showed doubt as well as fatigue and Pascoe added, 'I can't say anything more than that, really I can't. I mean, either you believe me or you don't. If you don't, then all you can do is start causing trouble, as you put it. That's your prerogative. And it'll give you something to think about next time a patient complains you've stitched him up with a stethoscope inside.'

  Sowden grinned.

  'All right,' he said. 'But I'll keep an eye on things if you don't mind. To sweeten the pill, let me buy you a drink next time I cross-question you.'

  'You know where to find me,' said Pascoe. 'If I were you, I'd get a few weeks' sleep.'

  'And if I were you . . .'

  'Yes?'

  '. . . I think I'd be telling me to get a few weeks' sleep,' said Sowden, changing direction with a yawn. 'Good hunting.'

  'Good sleeping,' said Pascoe.

  In the caravan in Welfare Lane he put Parrinder's possessions down in a corner next to Hector's sackful of stones. Wield looked at the new acquisition and raised his eyebrows, producing an effect not unlike the vernal shifting of some Arctic landscape as the sun sets an ice-bound river flowing once more through a waste of snows.

  Pascoe explained.

  'So that's that,' said Wield. Pascoe sensed an I-could've- told-you-so somewhere in there and perversely replied, 'We might as well let Seymour cross the t's and dot the i's. But by himself. You won't believe this, Sergeant, but Mr Cruikshank actually objects to being deprived of Hector under false pretences.'

  Wield laughed and said, 'We're all deprived of him today. It's his day off.'

  'What do you imagine he does? Moonlights as a road sign perhaps!' mused Pascoe. 'Is Seymour handy?'

  'Should be here any minute. What about us, sir? How long do we carry on here?'

  'Tired of the gypsy life, are we?' said Pascoe. 'Not much coming in?'

  The function of the caravan was to provide an on-the-spot HQ and also attract local witnesses whose energies or faith in the importance of what they had to say might not take them to the Central Police Station.

  'Nothing,' said Wield.

  'Give it till tonight,' said Pascoe. 'We'll maybe get somebody coming home from work who's been away over the weekend.'

  'Coming home from work?' said Wield. 'Well, it won't be crowds round here, that's for sure.'

  Seymour arrived. He made a face when Pascoe told him to take Parrinder's possessions and deliver them to Inspector Cruikshank, but brightened up a bit when he was given the off-licence and restaurant receipts and told to go and find out what he could about Parrinder's appearance in those establishments.

  'And that doesn't mean sitting around all day sampling their wares,' said Wield, who clearly thought that this was a waste of valuable police time.

  'Oh, and Seymour,' said Pascoe, scribbling on a piece of paper. 'Find out what won these races last Friday.'

  Seymour took the scrap of paper and studied it carefully.

  'He can read, can't he?' said Pascoe to Wield.

  'Depends. Did you join up the letters?'

  With the tired smile with which one greets the wit of superiors, Seymour said, 'Red Vanessa by two lengths, Usherette by a short head. Will there be anything else, sir?'

  'Seymour,' said Pascoe, 'you're a racing man!'

  'I keep an eye open,' said the red-headed detective modestly.

  'Not a good thing in a young CID officer,' said Wield. 'Being a racing man.'

  'Temptation, you mean?' said Pascoe.

  'Gambling, borrowing, debt,' said Wield.

  'Bad company, dirty women, bent bookies,' said Pascoe.

  'Any word on Mr Dalziel, sir?' said Seymour.

  It was a good but not a wise riposte. Wield's face became Arctic once more after its false spring, and Pascoe's features assumed an expression of mild distaste which those who knew him well did not care to see.

  Hastily Seymour gathered together Parrinder's possessions.

  'Sir,' he said in a conciliatory tone, 'what about this?

  Do you want me to give this to Mr Cruikshank too?' He indicated Hector's sack of stones.

  Pascoe was sorely tempted. Cruikshank and Seymour - kill two birds with one sack, so to speak! But judgment defeated justice.

  'No, leave it. Off you go now. Don't hang around.'

  Relieved at getting off so lightly,
Seymour made a rapid exit.

  Wield, who had recognized the names of the horses from Pascoe's account of his hospital visit, said, 'That explains why he went out, then.'

  'Parrinder?'

  'Yes. Racing man, makes three selections, sees two of them come up on the telly, he'd be bound to want to chase his luck and make sure he was on the last one. Poor old devil, he must have thought it was his lucky day!'

  'Yes, I expect so,' said Pascoe.

  It all fitted. Why then couldn't he put it to the back of his mind and concentrate on the Deeks case? Perhaps because there was nothing to concentrate on. Charley Frostick was due home tomorrow, that was the nearest thing to a development, and there seemed little way the young soldier's arrival could help.

  As if catching the military trend of his thought, Wield said, 'By the way, sir, Forensic produced this sole pattern from the bathroom vinyl.'

  Pascoe studied the sheet of cardboard which Wield handed him.

  'Did they have any suggestions?' he asked.

  'Size ten, ten and a half,' said Wield.

  'Army?'

  'Didn't say anything about that. No distinguishing marks, you know, cuts or anything like that. Even the pattern's a bit vague. Wouldn't chance their arm. ‘Well, if they won't, we must!' said Pascoe, eager for some kind of action. 'I'll check it out at Eltervale Camp.'

  Wield, condemned to another boring stint in the caravan, said with no overt sarcasm, 'Lunch at Paradise Hall again, sir?'

  'No!' said Pascoe. 'No way!'

  Chapter 17

  'God bless . . . God damn!'

  Perhaps fortunately for Andrew Dalziel, the Deputy Chief Constable was neither a vindictive nor a naturally suspicious man. There was no denying that the Head of CID had long been a thorn in his side, if one so broad and solid could be thus described. The Superintendent had made small effort in the past to conceal his contempt for the DCC's intellect, outlook and abilities. The DCC found this a considerable but bearable irritation. He knew his own worth and he had a pretty fair idea of Dalziel's too. It was this ability to separate the Superintendent's manners from his morals that had caused him to pitch the investigation in such a low key. He found it hard to believe that Dalziel, even in panic, would attempt to duck responsibility for any action of his own. So he had set George Headingley to take a close but discreet look at things.