Exit Lines

by Reginald Hill

  As they got out of the car, Mrs Gregory appeared at the front door of the adjoining semi and said, ‘Oh Dolly, here’s Andrea come home.’

  Behind her appeared a young woman, though how young Pascoe found it hard to say without the power to penetrate what seemed like an almost ceramic mask of make-up. Her hair was done in the style Pascoe thought of as ‘startled’, with its probably artificial honey-blondeness modulating into a certainly artificial magenta at the extremities. She was wearing a flouncy black blouse and a very short, very creased straight pink skirt, candystriped leg-warmers and shoes straight out of the Inquisitor’s instrument box. Yet despite all these aesthetic disadvantages, there was somewhere in the girl a current of vitality which leapt out and touched Pascoe as their eyes met and was just as quickly switched off as she looked away.

  This, he presumed, was the Gregorys’ daughter, Charley Frostick’s affianced bride. Frostick was regarding her with the kind of expression he probably reserved for dogs caught crapping on his green concrete.

  ‘Hello, Andrea,’ said Mrs Frostick. ‘Has your mam told you? Charley’s coming home for his grandad’s funeral.’

  ‘Yeah, she said,’ replied the girl in a flat, lifeless tone perhaps caused less by lack of enthusiasm than fear of cracking the mask. ‘How are you, Mrs Frostick? Sorry to hear about your old dad.’

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ said Mrs Frostick.

  ‘Have you got a moment?’ said Mrs Gregory. ‘I’d like a word.’

  ‘Teeny! Teeny! Where are you, woman! I want my dinner! Where’s my dinner!’

  The voice came streaming out of the door behind her.

  She turned and called, ‘It’s not time yet, Dad! Jeff! Can’t you see to Dad? Jeff!’

  ‘He’ll not hear,’ said the girl. ‘He’ll be down the garden.’

  ‘I’m just going to make the Inspector here a cup of coffee, Mabel,’ said Mrs Frostick. ‘I’ll pop round later, shall I?’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Mrs Gregory. ‘That’ll do. That’ll be best.’

  She sounded relieved as though postponing some unpleasantness. But before she could withdraw, Andrea said impatiently, ‘What’s up with you, Mam? Honestly, you’d think you were going to say something dreadful. It’s nowt to do with you or anyone else anyway, is it? All she wants to say, Mrs Frostick, is when Charley comes home, I’m going to tell him I don’t want no more waiting, I want to get married straight off.’

  ‘Straight off, Andrea?’ said Dolly Frostick. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean now, this week, while he’s home, straight off.’

  ‘But … I don’t know … I mean there’s the church, you’d need a licence, and I’m not sure if he’s allowed to get married just like that …’

  ‘Register office,’ said the girl. ‘I’m not bothering with no church, and my dad wouldn’t want to cough up anyway.’

  ‘But the Army …’

  ‘They haven’t bought him, body and soul, have they? His life’s still his own,’ retorted the girl with at last a flash of animation to confirm the existence of that hidden electricity Pascoe had sensed but was beginning to suspect he had mistaken. ‘They’ve got houses over there in Germany, you know; they don’t live in trees. There’s married quarters. Charley wrote about them in his letters.’

  ‘You’d want to go back with him?’ asked Mrs Frostick, amazed.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t want to stay on here by myself,’ said Andrea.

  ‘Are you in trouble, girl? In the club?’ interposed Frostick tersely.

  ‘No, I’m bloody not!’ exclaimed the girl. ‘Grow up. No one gets in trouble nowadays.’

  ‘So what’s the hurry all of a sudden?’ demanded Frostick. ‘Charley’s got his way to make. I thought you’d decided to wait till he got posted back here? At the earliest? And that’d be a sight too early to my way of thinking!’

  This last comment looked set to provoke the girl into some extreme of passion, but her mother intervened.

  ‘She’s lost her job,’ she said wretchedly.

  ‘Lost her job? Now we’re getting to it!’ exclaimed Frostick. ‘What’ve you been getting up to, girl?’

  ‘Nothing! I just got fed up. Slave labour it is there. The hotel’s shut down till Easter, so there’s just the restaurant and they want me working in there day and night. It’s just boring, that’s what it is. And they’re probably glad to be saving my wages, not that there’s much to be saved. Stupid pair of twats. Think they’re God’s gift!’

  This confusion of reasons did not impress Frostick, who got straight to the heart of the matter as he saw it.

  ‘I’ve got it! No job, nowhere to live, so you’ll have to come back here which you don’t much like, do you? So you think you’ll jump on our Charley’s back, don’t you?’

  ‘Listen,’ flared the girl. ‘I can get plenty of jobs easy. I’ve got contacts, you get noticed in a job like mine. So mebbe I won’t go with Charley. But mebbe I will too, if I want to. He’ll want to. It’s him that proposed to me. We’re engaged, or don’t you remember?’

  With a courage which Pascoe could not but admire, she stood up to Frostick and waved her left hand in front of his face. Beneath that eggshell of make-up fluttered a fully formed she-hawk! On her third finger glittered what looked like a not inexpensive cluster of diamonds, reminding Pascoe of the problem of Bob Deeks’s money. Frostick glared at the finger as if he’d have liked to bite it off and exclaimed, ‘Yeah, engaged! It was the worst day’s work he ever did. The very worst!’

  Looking as if he was about to explode, Frostick turned away and marched into the house. Pascoe followed him.

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Frostick,’ he said. ‘I won’t stay for coffee, I’m a bit busy, but if I could just use your bathroom …’

  ‘That bloody girl! She’s a trollop, you could see it when she were still at junior school, a trollop! Did you see the state of her? I wouldn’t have let any girl of mine go around like that! She’d have been out, I tell you. Out!’

  ‘I gathered she was out,’ said Pascoe undiplomatically. ‘Not living at home, I mean.’

  ‘No, not her, not with the old man in there to look after. Help her mam, that one? No way! She’s a decent woman, Mabel, and she gets no help from any side. When they had to move the old lad downstairs, Andrea said that was it, she was off as soon as she could find somewhere to go. I wasn’t sorry to hear it – not that she told me, like, but her mam told my Dolly – I thought she might get herself right away, out of our Charley’s road. But she only goes as far as that hotel, chambermaid come waitress, that’s what she is; supposed to be a classy place and they take on the likes of her …’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Pascoe, for whom this was ringing a bell. ‘Which hotel was it?’

  ‘That Paradise Hall place. Living in, that was the attraction, getting away from home; she’d not do that kind of work at home, I can’t see her doing it properly away! When Charley joined up I thought, grand, at least he’ll be out of the way now. I was worried she’d pester him into getting married soon as he’d finished his training, but he’d got sense enough to see that wasn’t on. I never thought I’d be glad to see our lad go abroad, but I tell you I wasn’t sorry. I reckoned that even if he didn’t find himself someone else, she wasn’t the kind to hang around without getting hold of some other mug. But now she’s got herself sacked, nowhere to live except at home, and if I know Andrea, she’s not the one to put up with that. So it’ll be our Charley who has to suffer. Our Charley!’

  Frostick had worked himself up into a fine frenzy. Pushing past Pascoe, he rushed back out of the front door, eager to rejoin the fray.

  It was too good a chance to miss. Three minutes later, breathing rather hard, Pascoe had checked the Frosticks’ wardrobe, the second bedroom (obviously Charley’s), the spare room and the cupboard under the stairs without finding any sign of a pair of boots.

  He went into the kitchen, tried the cupboard beneath the sink just on the off-chance. No luck. Outside in the back garden
, which consisted of five yards of patio in pink and beige flagstones and one yard of border planted with dwarf conifers, stood a neat shed in green plastic. What implements a man with a garden like this kept in his garden shed teased the imagination, and it was in a spirit of philosophical rather than constabulary inquiry that Pascoe let himself out of the kitchen and moved across the patio.

  The answer was … nothing! The hut was as empty as on the day of its erection. Its function was simply symbolic. But was it a last rude gesture at the whole idea of the suburban garden which Frostick had so manifestly triumphed over? Or was it the last piece in a jigsaw of self-delusion? Did Frostick really believe he had a garden? Or that others would believe he had one? Mystery!

  Pascoe at this moment became aware he wasn’t alone.

  Just beyond the wire fence in the hugely neglected next-door garden, seated on an upturned grassbox almost invisible amid the grass it could never hope to contain, was a man smoking a cigarette. He was in his shirtsleeves, slightly unshaven, and with the haunted look of a fugitive. He regarded Pascoe with the still indifference of a reservation Indian. ‘I was looking for the lavatory,’ said Pascoe, retreating beneath that haggard gaze.

  This had to be Jeff Gregory, hiding here from the family altercation which was distantly audible with the occasional scream of ‘Teeny, I want my dinner!’ rising above it like the melodic line above the choral patter in a Gilbert and Sullivan song.

  ‘I’d better be on my way,’ said Pascoe. ‘Goodbye now.’

  The man didn’t speak.

  Pascoe moved swiftly away.

  Chapter 15

  ‘Bugger Bognor!’

  Detective-Inspector George Headingley was not a man of impulse, nor one who took risks readily.

  Let the Pascoes of this world erect airy hypotheses from which to make intuitive leaps; let the Dalziels kick harem doors down and march boldly in, crying ‘Stick ‘em up!’ to the eunuchs. George Headingley would proceed by the book and what wasn’t written in the book had better be written and signed by a competent superior. He’d already stepped off this straight and narrow line a couple of times in this current business, most disastrously at the very start when he had spotted Dalziel at the hospital and, instead of heading back to Welfare Lane at the speed of light, allowed himself to become embroiled.

  You abandoned a murder case in order to involve yourself with a road accident? he could hear an incredulous voice asking at the Court of Inquiry.

  The DCC’s approval had been a pleasant thing, he had to admit that. And he had allowed its balmy breath to waft him still further off a strictly official course. But winds could quickly veer, breezes blow up into typhoons.

  But what did you imagine you were doing, Inspector? asked the voice in his mind. Investigating a crime? Or covering one up, perhaps?

  Following orders, sir, he replied faintly.

  Whose orders? Did anyone order you to drink four pints of beer with Mr Dalziel at the Paradise Hall Restaurant on Saturday lunch-time? Did anyone order you to interrogate Mrs Doreen Warsop of The Towers in such a way as to make her change her story? Answer, please, Inspector. Answer!

  When the DCC had contacted him on Saturday night to ask him what the hell he was playing at, Headingley knew the time had come to get the answer to all these questions firmly on record.

  He requested the favour of an interview with the DCC on Sunday morning and this was what he was enjoying as Pascoe drove the Frosticks to Welfare Lane.

  ‘So nothing you said could be taken as covering or inducing Mrs Warsop to alter her story?’ said the DCC.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then why did she alter it?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. I just got a message from her early yesterday evening asking me to contact her. I rang her up and she told me she was concerned that she may have misled me into thinking she was absolutely certain Mr Dalziel had driven out of the car park. Well, she wasn’t. It had been very dark and very wet and she’d been a good distance away, et cetera.’

  The DCC thought for a moment, then said, ‘After this cosy lunch you had at Paradise Hall, Mr Dalziel dropped you back at The Duke of York, you say?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘At what time?’

  ‘Half past three, sir.’

  ‘Half past three!’ The DCC’s tone was precisely that of Headingley’s incredulous mental voices. ‘And which direction did he drive off in?’

  ‘Sir?’

  The DCC said patiently, ‘Did he head towards town or turn back along the Paradise Road?’

  ‘I didn’t notice, sir,’ said Headingley truthfully, but he sensed the continuing doubt in the DCC’s gaze.

  ‘Look, sir,’ he went on. ‘What’s the odds? There’s two perfectly good witnesses that Mr Dalziel wasn’t driving. And one of them’s even willing to admit he was driving.’

  ‘How did Charlesworth strike you?’ asked the DCC.

  ‘A bit disconnected really,’ said Headingley. ‘He just states things very flatly as if he’s not much bothered if you believe him or not. Mind you, I spoke to him last night after he’d got back from the races. Perhaps he was worn out counting his money! One thing’s certain, though. He wasn’t drunk. Breathalyser didn’t register at all and they confirmed this at Paradise Hall. Nothing but Perrier water all night. Evidently that’s all he ever does drink.’

  ‘A teetotal bookie,’ mused the DCC. ‘Perhaps he’s too worried to drink!’

  He made a note to contact Customs and Excise in the morning to check on their investigation of Charlesworth’s alleged betting-tax evasion.

  ‘And of course there’s this Major Kassell too,’ he said, brightening. ‘He seems a reliable kind of chap by all accounts.’

  So you’ve been checking round too, thought Headingley.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, and described his encounter with the Major. He’d already given the gist. This time he added the circumstance.

  ‘You say Mr Cruikshank was at the airport?’ said the DCC.

  ‘Yes, sir. In case assistance was needed.’

  ‘And was it?’

  ‘No, sir. I checked with Mr Cruikshank later. All clear.’

  ‘No doubt Sir William Pledger would be relieved. And you say that this stand-by at the airport was arranged with Customs via Mr Dalziel?’

  ‘So Mr Cruikshank told me.’

  The DCC was silent. He’s bothered, thought Headingley. He’s not sure if he should have known about this. In fact, he’ll be searching his files after I’ve gone to check if the Chief Constable left him any word about it that he’s overlooked! It would be interesting to see how the DCC proceeded. Dalziel’s assessment of the man’s brain was that it had been fossilized so long that if you opened it up, you’d find dinosaur droppings in it. Headingley did not rate it so low. The DCC was treading a delicate path. To over-react and place Dalziel on suspension while a senior officer from another force investigated would have been stupid. Public accountability was the catchphrase of the moment, but in terms of a policeman’s career, internal accountability was what mattered, and no amount of protestation of virtuous intent could compensate for lack of bottle. No, he’d need a lot more evidence of improper conduct before the present gentle investigation of the facts of the matter was formalized.

  But it’s the poor sod doing the investigation who runs the risks! thought Headingley indignantly. He decided on one last attempt to get things out in the open.

  ‘Look, sir,’ he said. ‘I’m a plain man, a simple copper, and I like to know what I’m at. What I’m saying, if I get asked, you know, officially, what it is I’m doing, what do I say?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Headingley,’ said the DCC. ‘You’re doing your job, that’s all. It’s a simple accident. The driver, who does not deny being the driver, was stone-cold sober. The victim, who cannot give evidence no matter what a tired young doctor alleges he heard, was old, had been drinking, was riding a bicycle in a howling gale on a narrow country road at night. Open and shut. Your
function is merely preventive. If the Press, or anyone, should start making waves at the inquest, I want there to be an immediate and informed response, that’s all.’

  Headingley must have looked so unimpressed by all this that the DCC dropped his irritated tone and added with a real effort at warmth, ‘Oh, and George, I shouldn’t like to miss this chance of saying how pleased I am that you were the officer on the spot when this unfortunate business blew up. It’s not going unremarked, you know, the way you’re handling things, rest assured of that.’

  A promise? A bribe? Worthless old flannel most likely, thought Headingley gloomily. But at least it emboldened him to make one last request.

  ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘One thing. I wonder if, well, what I mean is, while I’m doing this investigation…’

  ‘Clarification,’ corrected the DCC.

  ‘Clarification,’ said Headingley, ‘it’s not all that helpful, from the point of view of discretion I mean, if, well, if Mr Dalziel’s around and I sort of bump into him, like yesterday.’

  He finished at a rush.

  The DCC smiled sadly, sympathetically, consolingly.

  ‘Yes. I understand,’ he said. ‘I’ll make sure that you won’t be troubled by such coincidental meetings again.’

  After Headingley had left, he picked up his phone and dialled. It rang for at least a minute with no response but he didn’t hang up. Another thirty seconds passed, then a voice bellowed, ‘Yes?’

  ‘Andy, is that you?’

  ‘Depends who that is.’

  ‘It’s me,’ said the DCC.

  He spoke at length and in friendly tones about the troubled times, the subversive movement’s anti-police propaganda, the prurient and sensational press; he spoke eloquently and persuasively; after a while he became aware of a noise on the line, a sort of distant buzz such as might be made by an electric razor in the room next to the telephone.