Exit Lines

by Reginald Hill

  Peter Pascoe allowed himself to be rehearsed in the whereabouts of fridge, oven, and his clean underwear for some minutes before interrupting with, ‘And that’s a chair, and that’s a table, and there’s a door! Darling, I haven’t lived with a liberated woman these past seventy years, or whatever it is, without becoming moderately self-sufficient.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Ellie. ‘And any more of that crap and I’ll leave Rosie in your tender care while I drive off to Orburn.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ said Pascoe. ‘Even her muckiest nappy’s a pleasanter prospect than anything I’ve got to look forward to. Still, I suppose it’s good timing. It could’ve spoilt a weekend when you were staying at home.’

  He kissed the pair of them fondly.

  ‘See you tomorrow night, then,’ he said. ‘Love to the old folk.’

  It was nearly ten o’clock, a lateness explained though possibly not justified by the hour at which he’d finally got to bed. Pascoe assured himself that the lie-in had been necessary in the interests of his personal efficiency, but he wondered whether he’d have chanced it if he hadn’t suspected Dalziel was going to have other things on his mind that morning than checking on his staff.

  His first stop was the hospital where he found that Longbottom, the pathologist, presumably eager to take advantage on the golf-course of the bright November day which had succeeded the stormy night, had already started on Robert Deeks.

  A native of Yorkshire whom education had deprived of his accent but not of the directness which usually accompanied it, Longbottom summed up his findings in simple non-technical language.

  ‘You can try murder, but it’ll probably end as manslaughter,’ he said. ‘Injuries to the head and face caused by slapping and punching. Possibly by someone wearing a leather glove. Injuries to neck, shoulders and scalp caused by narrow-bladed double-edged knife with a sharp point. None of these injuries severe enough to be fatal of itself. But he was old and frail. I’m surprised he was still living by himself, really. Cause of death, in lay terms, shock. Oh, and there was a bit of bathwater in his lungs. He must have gone under a couple of times.’

  ‘Been forced under, you mean.’

  ‘Could be,’ said Longbottom. ‘Why not? I presume whoever knocked him about was trying to force something out of him. Certainly wasn’t self-defence. But that’s your problem, Inspector. Now, let’s see. What else do we have?’

  He checked a list.

  ‘Road accident and a broken hip with death from exposure? No urgency there, I presume. I’ll leave them over for a rainy day.’

  ‘I think,’ said Pascoe hesitantly, ‘though it’s nothing to do with me directly, that an early report on the road accident would be appreciated.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Longbottom. ‘All right. If I must, I must.’

  ‘And as a matter of interest,’ pushed Pascoe, ‘the other one, I happened to see him last night. His right hip was broken, I believe, as a result of a fall. And he’s got a nasty bruise on the left side of his head which Dr Sowden seemed to think could have been caused in the same fall. I’d be interested in your opinion.’

  ‘Trying to get me to drop a colleague in it, Inspector?’ said Longbottom, smiling thinly. ‘Dr Sowden? Young man, rather pretty?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘I know him. Good face for a doctor. Fatigue just makes it a bit more romantically haggard. Let’s have a look.’

  Thinking that Longbottom’s rather frighteningly sallow and bony features perhaps explained his decision to concentrate on the dead rather than the living, Pascoe followed him to where an attendant, sensitive to his master’s wishes, had already produced Thomas Arthur Parrinder’s cadaver.

  Longbottom ran his fingers along the fractured hip and studied the contusion through a magnifying-glass.

  ‘Thinking of assault, are you?’ he said.

  ‘It’s a conditioned reflex,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Any special reason?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Pascoe. ‘As far as I know there’s no evidence of robbery or of any other person being involved.’

  ‘As far as you know?’ repeated Longbottom sarcastically. ‘So this is another one that’s really nothing to do with you? You must find time hanging heavy on your hands, Inspector. Or do you just want to prove Dr Sowden is fallible?’

  Pascoe considered this. He didn’t think it was true, but when it came down to it, he wouldn’t be too troubled if he undermined that young man’s confidence, and it might even persuade him to greater discretion in the Westerman business.

  ‘If you could just tell me your opinion,’ he said.

  ‘No opinion without proper examination,’ said Longbottom. ‘That’s one of the few perks of working with corpses. But you might care to examine the ground where he fell and see if you can find a stone or some other solid protuberance at least two inches in diameter. Or is that someone else’s business?’

  At the hospital inquiry desk, Pascoe discovered that Mrs Dolly Frostick had discharged herself an hour earlier. This was a nuisance as it meant he would have to make another diversion to see her at home.

  Home, he discovered from the hospital records, was 352, Nethertown Road, a ribbon development of nineteen-thirties semis running alongside the main easterly exit route from the city. In front of the house, like a matchseller’s tray, a tiny square of green-tinged concrete was set with boxes of roses and other ornamental shrubs. This geometric artificiality contrasted strangely with the front of 352's Siamese twin, 354, where an untended lawn and flower-beds had been allowed to run riot, and summer’s profusion lay wrecked but not drowned by the storms of winter.

  A small man with a thin moustache and a discontented face answered his ring.

  ‘Yes?’ he said aggressively.

  Pascoe introduced himself with the aplomb of one used to being greeted as something between a brush-salesman and a Jehovah’s Witness.

  The man was Alan Frostick and while part of his aggression sprang from a natural instinct to defend his wife, a great deal of it seemed to be chronic and indiscriminate.

  ‘You’ll not have caught anyone yet?’ he said as he closed the door behind Pascoe with a last glower at his concrete garden. ‘More stick, that’s what’s needed. More stick.’

  Whether the extra stick was to be applied to the criminals or to the police was not clear. A door whose woodwork had been painted over with brown varnish, into which a wood grain pattern had then been combed, opened into a main sitting-room where two women sat. Mr Frostick had at least not made the little man’s common matrimonial error of biting off more than he could chew. His wife was a good inch shorter than he was, a not unhandsome woman in her forties, perhaps even a pocket Venus in her day, but now haggard with grief and fatigue. Her friend, introduced as Mrs Gregory from next door, looked to be in much the same state, though whether this was sympathetic or merely coincidental did not at first emerge.

  Mrs Gregory offered to make a cup of tea. Alan Frostick sat on the sofa next to his wife and put a comforting arm around her shoulder.

  ‘Make it quick, will you?’ he said. ‘She’s been upset enough.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pascoe. ‘Of course. Mrs Frostick, could you tell me what happened last night? I believe you tried to ring your father earlier in the evening?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the woman in a reassuringly firm and controlled voice. ‘About half past six. Alan had just had his tea. I always like to ring him if I haven’t been able to get round in the day.’

  ‘Do you go round most days?’ inquired Pascoe.

  ‘When I can. It’s two bus rides away, you see, so it’s not always convenient. It used to be all right a couple of times a week maybe, but for the last year or so, since he had his turn…’

  ‘His turn?’

  ‘Yes. He was ill, had to go into hospital. When he came out, he stayed with us for a bit till he was fit again. But he was never the same.’

  ‘But he became fit enough to go back to his own home?’


  ‘He wanted to,’ interrupted Frostick. ‘That’s what he was always saying. Only place for a man is his own home. He wanted to go back.’

  Mrs Frostick nodded agreement.

  ‘That’s when we put the phone in…’

  ‘And the bath,’ interrupted her husband. ‘Don’t forget that bath.’

  ‘Yes, dear. But it was the phone that was most important. It meant I could keep in touch easily. And Mrs Spillings next door was very good at keeping an eye on him. Anyway, when he didn’t answer at first, I wasn’t bothered. He might easily have gone down the road for a paper. And even when I tried again later on and still got no reply, I wasn’t too worried. He usually has a bath on a Friday evening and he can never hear the phone in the bathroom. But by the time it got to eight o’clock, I was getting worried.’

  ‘You didn’t think of phoning one of the neighbours?’

  ‘Well, Tracey, that’s Mrs Spillings, doesn’t have the phone. In fact there’s no one in the Lane with it that I know well enough to bother. So I thought I’d best get myself round there. It was a terrible night but I was lucky with the first bus. Well, it stops just opposite and you can almost see it coming from our front window.’

  ‘I see. You went by bus,’ said Pascoe. There was a wooden garage beside the house and he felt sure he’d glimpsed a car through the partially opened door.

  ‘It’s Alan’s club night,’ explained Mrs Frostick quickly. ‘He was out with the car. I had a long wait for the next bus, though, and it was well after nine by the time I got there. I rang the bell, he always likes you to ring the bell, he’s that independent. But when he didn’t come, I let myself in with my key. I shouted out to him and had a look downstairs. When I saw what a mess things were in, I began to think something terrible must have happened, I was almost too frightened to go upstairs but I went anyway. I was still shouting though I think that now I was really shouting to warn off anyone who might be up there, if you know what I mean. I went up and up, it’s just a short stair but it seemed to go on forever somehow, and even though I thought I was ready for the worst, when I went into the bathroom and saw him lying there, I…’

  The transition from control to collapse was sudden and complete. One moment the voice was firm, the narrative clear and remarkably frank in its analysis of her feelings: the next she was weeping and sobbing convulsively. Frostick patted her shoulders helplessly and glared at Pascoe as if he were to blame. Mrs Gregory returned with a tray set with teacups, which she carefully deposited on an old-fashioned sideboard before sitting next to the weeping woman on the arm of the sofa and taking her in an embrace which completely excluded Frostick.

  After a while the sobs declined to an occasional soft-bursting bubble and the narrative resumed.

  ‘I’m sorry, Inspector. When I saw him, I just stood and shrieked. I tried to lift him out, but even though he weighed next to nothing, he was too much for me. He seemed all slippery and sort of waterlogged and I thought I was likely just to hurt him more by dragging him over the edge of the bath. Or perhaps that’s what I thought I thought later. What I remember vaguely is running down the stairs and into the street and banging on people’s doors and shrieking and shouting. I couldn’t stop. It’s funny. I had this feeling that when I stopped, that’s when it was really going to hurt, so I just went on and on. And then there was the ambulance, and getting to the hospital, and that doctor telling me he was dead, there was nothing they could do. Nothing. Just like that. Nothing. It was all over. All that living, all that worrying. I just couldn’t make any sense of it. No sense at all. It’s not how it should be, is it? It’s not how it should be!’

  It was a poignant moment, suddenly and brutally interrupted by a tremendous hammering noise from the other side of the party wall and a high-pitched male alto voice calling what sounded like Teeny! Teeny! Where’s my tea?

  ‘Oh Dolly, I’m sorry, he must know I’m in here, I don’t know how,’ said Mrs Gregory.

  Frostick leapt to his feet and banged his fist against the wall, bellowing, ‘Shut up! Shut up!’ And now another voice was heard next door, a hoarse bass, rumbling powerfully but incomprehensibly beneath the alto whose cries of Teeny! only increased in pitch and volume. Then the bass exploded; there was a sharp crack; and silence…till like dimples on a smooth flowing stream there came a little run of soft sobs like a child’s comfortless crying.

  ‘I’d better go,’ said Mrs Gregory. ‘I’ll be back later, Dolly. I’m sorry, Alan. Goodbye, Inspector.’

  She rose and left swiftly. Frostick, looking spent after his outburst, said, ‘She never mashed the tea,’ and went out, presumably to the kitchen.

  Pascoe looked inquiringly at the woman on the sofa and after a while she said, ‘It’s Mabel’s father. He’s nearly eighty. He gets very confused. They’ve had to put his bed downstairs now, he’s so awkward on his pins. I don’t think he knows where he is half the time, but he always knows where Mabel is.’

  ‘What was he calling?’ asked Pascoe, thinking a brief diversion to her friend’s problems might have some therapeutic value. ‘It sounded like Teeny.’

  ‘That’s right. It’s what he called Mabel’s mother. That’s who he thinks Mabel is most of the time, when he recognizes her at all.’

  ‘It must be pretty awful,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Oh yes.’ To his horror he saw that tears were forming again in her eyes. ‘It’s been like that for three years and more now. I don’t know how she stands it. It’s just about driven her Jeff mad and Andrea, that’s her daughter, up and left home earlier this year. That’s why we didn’t want Dad to stay with us, partly anyway. It was bad enough when he was convalescing after his turn. Him and Alan got on each other’s nerves and, I’ve got to be honest, it got on mine too a bit. But he seemed all right by himself after that, till just recently. He’d been getting more awkward and forgetful and we’d been talking about having him back here to live with us. I’d say it’d just be for a while till he got right again, but Alan’d say no, it’ll be forever, or at least for as long as he lives, and look at him next door, we shouldn’t kid ourselves, it might be a long, long time. So we’ve talked and talked and sometimes I’ve thought there’s no way round it but he’s got to come, and then I’ve seen Mabel, or heard the noise from next door, and I haven’t been able to face it, and that’s the truth, Inspector.

  ‘And now I know that maybe if I had been able to face it, he’d be here now and alive instead of…instead of…’

  She stared unblinkingly at Pascoe through eyes big and bright with tears.

  ‘It’s not so much him being dead,’ she said. ‘That’s all there was for him, I reckon. But not like that! Not like that!’

  Frostick came in with the teapot and Pascoe waited for a new outburst from him for upsetting his wife. But all the man said was, ‘You take milk?’

  ‘Thank you. No sugar. Mrs Frostick, I’m sorry to bother you when I can see how upset you are, but I have to ask these questions. Did your father keep any money or other valuables around the house?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the woman. ‘No valuables certainly. He never had anything that was worth very much.’

  ‘But money perhaps?’

  ‘He used to keep money,’ said Frostick, handing Pascoe his tea. ‘He liked to settle for things in cash. Never had a bank account or a cheque-book. He wasn’t badly off, either. He had a tidy pension from his work as well as the State. About seven or eight months back, Dolly came across a pile of notes he’d stuffed in an old kettle. More than a hundred pounds, wasn’t there?’

  ‘Yes, but I really got cross with him,’ said Mrs Frostick. ‘I made him go into town with me and I stood over him while he paid most of it into his building society account. I didn’t often lose my rag with him, but when I did, he knew better than to try and outface me.’

  ‘Do you think you cured him of the habit?’ asked Pascoe.

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Frostick. ‘He was a wilful old devil. He’d just hide the next lot somewhere tha
t Dolly wouldn’t find it, that’s what I reckon.’

  ‘Well, perhaps we can check to some degree by looking at his building society pay-in book and seeing if he’s drawn much out recently,’ said Pascoe. ‘I’m afraid we’d very much like it if you could come down to the house as soon as you feel able, Mrs Frostick, and check over everything to see what, if anything, is missing.’

  ‘Do I have to?’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘There’s no one else can do it, is there?’ said Pascoe.

  ‘You’ll have to go some time, Dolly,’ said her husband. ‘Tomorrow morning, Inspector. That suit you?’

  Pascoe would have preferred today, but looking at the woman and understanding now something of the burden of self-reproach she was carrying, he didn’t have the heart to press her.

  ‘One last thing,’ he said. ‘Your father was still alive when you found him. Did he say anything at all that you remember?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing. Only Charley.’

  ‘Charley?’

  ‘That’s our son,’ she said. ‘He and his grandad were very close. He must have wanted to see him, or get me to tell him something.’

  Her voice broke again.

  Pascoe looked on her grief with genuine sympathy, but he was a policeman as well as a fellow human and the best he could do was to try and keep his policeman’s thoughts out of his voice as he said casually, ‘How old’s your son, Mrs Frostick?’

  ‘Eighteen,’ she said.

  ‘Is he at home at the moment?’

  The note of casual, friendly inquiry might have lulled a doting mother but Frostick was both sensitive and aggressive.

  ‘No, he’s bloody well not!’ he snapped. ‘He’s in Germany, that’s where he is!’

  His wife, bewildered by his aggression, said, ‘Charley’s in the Army, Inspector. He couldn’t get a job, you see, so he joined up this summer. It was all right at first, he was out at Eltervale Camp doing his training with the Mid-Yorkies, so we saw plenty of him. Then he got sent off to Germany three weeks ago. It’s not right really, he’s just a boy, and he’d just got himself engaged to Andrea, that’s Mrs Gregory’s girl next door, you’d think they’d have kept him a bit nearer home…’