Exit Lines

by Reginald Hill

  Even with the background central heating, the house felt chill and unwelcoming. He put a frozen casserole in the oven, poured himself a Scotch and went to the telephone.

  ‘Hello, love. I hoped it would be you,’ said Ellie.

  ‘That’s flattering.’

  ‘Yes, I wanted cheering up,’ she went on, unconsciously pre-empting his own need. ‘I’m really worried about Dad, Peter. He’s looking very frail and he’s getting so vague, repeating conversations he had with you half an hour ago, that sort of thing. And sometimes he thinks Rose is me!’

  ‘Well, he is knocking on a bit,’ said Pascoe. ‘And we can all repeat ourselves. I do it all the time! What’s your mother say to all this?’

  ‘Oh, you know Mum. She likes to kid herself everything’s just as it’s always been. She must know something’s wrong, but she just hopes it’ll go away.’

  Pascoe smiled. The mild-mannered, sweet-natured Mrs Soper was as unlike her daughter as could be and their relationship was based on exasperated affection bred of mutual incomprehension.

  ‘Has he been to the doctor?’ asked Pascoe.

  ‘Only incidentally, to renew his old prescription. Mum says she mentioned his vagueness to the doc, but all he could say was it was old age and not to worry!’

  Ellie sounded very angry and to Pascoe’s concern for her and for his parents-in-law was suddenly and irresistibly added a pang of purely selfish dismay as he foretasted what was coming next.

  ‘Peter, I think I really ought to stay on till Monday and see the doctor myself. In fact I rang him up this afternoon when Mum was out of the way – you know what she’s like about bothering doctors at weekends; the great gods will be angry if disturbed! – but all I got was some other idiot who was on call and not feeling very helpful. Well, I suppose you can’t blame him…’

  ‘But you did anyway!’ said Pascoe, laughing.

  ‘Only slightly,’ said Ellie with a responsive lightening of tone which was good to hear. ‘Anyway, I’m afraid it’s another night in a cold empty bed for you. At least I hope it’s cold and empty.’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t looked yet,’ said Pascoe. ‘Ellie, what about college?’

  Ellie lectured in what was now called an Institute of Higher Education. This incorporated the remnants of the college where Pascoe had re-met his former university friend during an investigation some years earlier. The college had started as a tiny teachers’ training establishment in the ‘fifties, blossomed in size and variety of course during the expansive ‘sixties and early ‘seventies, then been hit by the decline of both economy and birthrate during the later ‘seventies and early ‘eighties. Now the delightful rural site had been abandoned, the high-flying academic courses phased out, and the remnants of staff and students sucked into this resoundingly named but hollow centred institute based on the former technical college in the city centre. Clogs to barefoot in one generation was how the cynics described it. Ellie had returned there after maternity leave in September and was far from happy with conditions, courses and many of her colleagues. To be made redundant with a moderate settlement would have been easy and she was certainly tempted. But, as she had put it to Pascoe, ‘The bastards are so obviously keen to be shot of me that I may just stay on forever!’

  Now she said dismissively, ‘I’ve got nothing important till the afternoon and I’ll have to cancel that. Peter, I think this has made up my mind about college for me. Suddenly it all seems so inconsequential. I’m neither valued nor valuable there. I think I’ll tell them to stuff it. After all, a wife’s place is in the home, isn’t it?’

  ‘Good lord!’ exclaimed Pascoe. ‘You’ve been seeing Andy Dalziel behind my back, haven’t you!’

  They talked a little longer. Ellie asked after Pascoe’s day and he replied noncommittally, even though he suspected she would regard his decision not to off-load his own depression at this juncture as typical masculine egotistic role-playing.

  Still, even without the relief and even with the addition of Ellie’s depressive news about her father’s condition and her delayed return, he derived much ease of spirit simply from talking to her.

  It didn’t last long. The phone rang again as he replaced it.

  It was Sammy Ruddlesdin. Having avoided him by design at lunch-time, Pascoe had managed to avoid him more or less by accident for the rest of the day.

  ‘Inspector Pascoe!’ he said. ‘You know, I never thought of trying to get you at home before this. Perhaps I should have started here!’

  ‘I’m just back, and I’m just about worn out,’ said Pascoe. ‘So make it quick. I doubt if there’s anything I can add about the Deeks case to what’s appeared in your evening edition, except perhaps balance.’

  This was sharper than he’d intended after the DCC’s admonitions, but he did have strong feelings about being pestered in his own home, even though tonight it felt more unhomelike than he’d ever known.

  ‘Thanks, but it’s not Deeks; well, not primarily,’ said Ruddlesdin. ‘In fact, it’s hardly a professional matter at all. More personal curiosity, that’s all. I believe you and Inspector Headingley went along to The Towers and spoke with Mrs Warsop today?’

  ‘Look,’ said Pascoe. ‘I really can’t say anything about that. I just drove George Headingley there, that’s all.’

  ‘But you were present during the interview?’

  ‘Sammy, if you care to come and see me in the morning, before or after church, as you will, I’ll be glad to talk about the Deeks murder investigation. Shall we say ten o’clock?’

  ‘Hold on just a moment, please,’ pleaded Ruddlesdin. ‘All I wanted to learn from you is the magic words.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The magic words that you or George Headingley used to change Mrs Warsop’s mind. The close sesame! In other words, why is it that last night when I spoke to her she was adamant that she’d seen Mr Dalziel driving away from Paradise Hall, and yet by this evening when I spoke to her again, she was suddenly doubtful. The weather was foul, the visibility poor, the distance great, and perhaps after all it wasn’t Dalziel who got into the driving seat. Now why should this be, Mr Pascoe? As a humble seeker after knowledge, I should really like to know why!’

  Chapter 14

  ‘Let not poor Nelly starve.’

  Determined that any further hints of delay should be dealt with at source, Pascoe himself called on Dolly Frostick to take her to her father’s house on Sunday morning.

  ‘We’ve got a car. I’d have fetched her,’ protested her husband as though his virility had been slighted.

  ‘It’s in the public service, why should you pay for the petrol?’ said Pascoe expansively.

  He would have preferred Mrs Frostick by herself but there was no way of barring her husband from getting in beside her.

  At the house, he escorted the woman quickly through the living-room, kitchen and bedroom, to get her adjusted to the evidence of ransacking. Not that it was bad; there’d been no deliberate vandalization; but the police examination for traces of the intruder hadn’t exactly improved matters and he knew from experience how distressing these moments could be. Dolly Frostick went pale and very quiet but seemed to be holding together well enough.

  Downstairs again, he said, ‘Good. Now what I’d like you to do, Mrs Frostick, is go round everywhere very carefully, telling us anything you think has gone missing, anything that’s been disturbed or shifted.’

  There was a banging on the front door which admitted straight from the street into the living-room.

  Pascoe opened it. Tracey Spillings stood there, crowding out, without difficulty, the attendant constable.

  ‘Hello, Dolly,’ she said. ‘There’s a pot of tea next door when you’re done here.’

  ‘Thanks, love,’ said Mrs Frostick. ‘I shan’t be long.’

  In the event, she was optimistic. Pascoe tried to keep the atmosphere brisk and businesslike, but he knew he was up against forces stronger than anything his own personality could conjure
up. Every drawer or cupboard she opened, she was looking into memories; with every relict of her father’s day-by-day existence she came across, she was hearing reproaches. Frostick against all expectation proved a godsend, comforting, directing, diverting, and by the time they had finished, Pascoe had forgiven him everything.

  The list of missing items was not long. A small transistor radio, half a dozen campaign medals (Deeks’s own from the Second World War and his father’s from the First) and a pewter-cased pocket watch with a gold sovereign welded on its chain.

  ‘He always said that was to be Charley’s,’ said Mrs Frostick in a low voice. ‘That and the medals. He wanted him to have the medals.’

  ‘He’ll be able to win his own now, won’t he?’ said Frostick. ‘Come on, love. Don’t fret. Your dad always wanted Charley to join up, you know that. He knew it would mean Charley going away, but he knew it was best for the lad too. Just think, love, you’ll be seeing him soon, and he’ll tell you for himself.’

  His effort to dilute his wife’s grief by the reminder of her son’s imminent return failed miserably. Mrs Frostick gave out a half-choked sob and Pascoe got in quickly, saying in his best official voice, ‘Now, Mrs Frostick, think hard. Was there anything else you noticed down here, anything unusual?’

  She looked around helplessly, then pointed through the open living-room door into the kitchen and the broken pane above the outside door.

  ‘I can’t think what he was doing leaving the key in that door. He never used to do that. Whenever he locked the door, he always used to put it on the kitchen table. That was one thing he was most particular about. But he was failing, I knew he was failing, mebbe if we’d paid more heed…’

  She looked pleadingly at her husband but he interpreted it as reproach and said defensively, ‘He wanted to be on his own, Dolly, you know that. And he might have been particular about not leaving the key in the door, but he was daft enough to keep a spare hidden in the wash-house, so where’s the difference?’

  ‘In the wash-house?’ said Pascoe. ‘Can you show me?’

  Leaving his wife in Wield’s care, Frostick led him outside and opened the wash-house door, pointing to an old-fashioned boiler.

  ‘In there,’ he said.

  Pascoe lifted the lid. Among a pile of rubbish he found an old tobacco tin. In it was the spare key.

  ‘Not clever,’ said Pascoe. ‘How many people do you reckon knew he kept this key here?’

  ‘What’s the odds?’ asked Frostick. ‘It wasn’t used.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Pascoe, very Sherlock Holmesish. ‘That’s the interesting thing.’

  Frostick, clearly not one of nature’s Watsons, looked unconvinced and said, ‘Family, of course. Some of his mates, I shouldn’t wonder. Her next door, certainly. She knows everything, that one.’

  ‘Mrs Spillings? Yes. Incidentally, she was saying that Mr Deeks told her a few months back that he loaned your Charley the money to buy an engagement ring.’

  ‘Did she? She’s got a big mouth. What’s it to you anyway?’

  ‘Nothing,’ assured Pascoe. ‘It’s just this question of money, whether there was any lying around. Did Charley get his loan in cash, I wonder, or did his grandfather have to go to the bank?’

  ‘You mean her next door didn’t know? Bloody wonders never cease! Well, I don’t know either. I know nowt about it, except that it was money badly spent!’

  He spoke with such vehemence that Pascoe probed further, saying, ‘Charley’s grandad must’ve liked his girl more than you did.’

  ‘No. He thought she were rubbish.’

  ‘Then why make the loan?’

  He didn’t intend to inflect loan significantly, but Frostick flared up, ‘Don’t you be making imputations, copper! My Charley’s no sponger. Loan it was and every penny’d be to pay back, rest assured of that!’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ insisted Pascoe.

  ‘Who knows how an old man’s mind works?’ said Frostick. ‘I never spoke to him much myself, the miserable old bugger. But we were agreed on Miss bloody Andrea, I tell you. I reckon he coughed up because Charley had just told him he was joining the Army. He’d be so overjoyed at that that he mebbe had a rush of blood to the head, decided that a few months’ soldiering overseas would soon put paid to his daft romance.’

  He turned away and went back into the house. Pascoe slipped the key into his pocket and followed.

  In the living-room he was glad to see Mrs Frostick looking a little more relaxed. Perhaps Wield had been amusing her by pulling funny faces. But there was one more test for the woman to undergo.

  ‘Just one thing more,’ said Pascoe. ‘Before you go, Mrs Frostick, I’d like you to take a look in the bathroom. I’m sorry to ask you, but we’ve got to be thorough.’

  Earlier upstairs, she had come out of her father’s bedroom and walked past the bathroom door with eyes firmly averted. Now she took a deep breath and nodded her agreement. She led the way up the narrow stairs, Frostick behind with Pascoe bringing up the rear.

  The bathroom struck a strange note in this old-fashioned little house. It was a good-sized room, fully tiled in pastel blue with a seaweed motif. The bath with its non-slip bottom and rubberized support grips was in a matching blue fibreglass, neatly boxed in with dark-blue glossed hardboard. The floor was laid with cushion vinyl and the windows curtained with heavy towelling round whose folds a pattern of tiny fishes swam.

  Frostick was looking at it with pride.

  ‘Did a lot of this myself,’ he volunteered. ‘Not the plumbing, of course. Cost a pretty penny. But it puts value on the house, doesn’t it? People expect a bathroom these days. I don’t know how you managed without one when you were a kid, Dolly.’

  His wife didn’t seem to be listening. Her eyes were bright with tears.

  ‘Please, Mrs Frostick,’ said Pascoe helplessly. ‘Just a quick look, say if you see anything that’s changed.’

  ‘Anything that’s changed?’ she echoed. ‘I can see that, Mr Pascoe. This used to be my room when I was a girl. My room.’

  Of course, it must have been. Two up, two down; a wash-house and an outside privy; basic working-class accommodation which solidity of building and pride of possession had prevented from becoming a slum. Dolly Frostick was weeping for more than her dead father; she was mourning for her childhood.

  ‘Come on, Dolly,’ said Frostick. ‘Let’s get that cup of tea from her next door.’

  ‘No, wait,’ said the woman. ‘On the side of the bath. Them scuffs in the paint. And on the floor. Them marks. They weren’t there.’

  The scuffs in the blue-gloss where the hardboard boxing met the vinyl floor were clear enough, but Pascoe had to get down on one knee to see the indentations in the intricately patterned flooring which her houseproud eye had spotted.

  ‘Probably a copper’s big flat feet,’ suggested Frostick, and indeed when Pascoe rose he saw that the vinyl surface was soft enough to have received the impression of the toe of his kneeling leg.

  ‘Maybe,’ he replied. ‘Thank you, Mrs Frostick. If you like to have that cup of tea now, I’ll take you home in shall we say ten minutes?’

  After the Frosticks had gone through the puce portals next door (behind which the sound seemed to have been turned down perhaps as a token of respect for the bereaved) Pascoe returned to the bathroom with Wield and together they examined the indentations.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Pascoe.

  ‘This stuff takes a print if you exert a lot of pressure,’ said Wield, demonstrating with his heel. ‘Then gradually lets it out. Mostly it’ll have gone in a few hours.’

  ‘So it’d need a lot of pressure to leave a mark like this. Looks to me like a boot print, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Hard to tell really,’ said Wield. ‘It’s just the toes here that are really clear. Like maybe someone was standing right close to the bath and rocking forward on their toes, scuffing the paintwork here.’

  He demonstrated.

/>   ‘See. It could be our man, pushing the old boy under,’ he said.

  ‘Or someone trying to lift him out,’ added Pascoe. ‘We’ll need to check everyone who was in here on Friday night. You’ve got Hector’s list?’

  Wield scratched his nose which sat on his face like a shattered boulder on a blasted heath.

  ‘I’ve got Mrs Spillings’s list,’ he said. ‘We’ve spoken to ‘em all, of course.’

  ‘Great. Speak again, and check on footwear. Someone should have spotted this.’

  ‘Mebbe, sir. But the floor must’ve been full of impressions by the time Forensic got here. It’s just that these have lasted. The print boys themselves would be kneeling down and making marks while they were dusting the bath and its surrounds.’

  ‘Good point. Check if we’ve got any kinky boots on the strength. None of our lads would be wearing anything like that, would they?’

  ‘No. It’s all pussyfooting around these days,’ said Wield. ‘I’d better check Mrs Spillings herself, though. It wouldn’t surprise me if she were into Army surplus in a big way!’

  ‘Army surplus,’ said Pascoe thoughtfully. ‘There’s a thought. It’s not a studded boot, though. But do they still wear studded boots in the Army?’

  Wield shrugged.

  ‘They’ll tell you at Eltervale,’ he suggested. ‘But if you’re thinking of the grandson, I thought you said he was definitely in Germany.’

  ‘Mebbe he left a pair of boots at home,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘You’re not thinking of Frostick, are you, sir?’ said Wield, faintly incredulous.

  ‘It’s always nice to keep it in the family, as Mr Dalziel would say,’ replied Pascoe. ‘Check everything. That’s the key to success, Sergeant. Check everything.’

  On the way back to Nethertown Road, he learned that Charley Frostick had been given compassionate leave and would be flying back home as soon as possible. He also learned that the Club where Frostick had been on Friday night was the local Trades and Labour, and he made a note to get confirmation of his attendance there. Not that he really felt the man was a suspect, but presumably the little house in Welfare Lane plus whatever money there was from savings and insurance would pass to Deeks’s daughter. To ask Frostick outright if he owned a pair of boots was further than he cared to go, but when they reached the house, he surprised himself and probably them by accepting the woman’s almost reflex invitation to step inside and have a cup of coffee.